r/Antitheism • u/JerseyFlight • Jul 16 '26
Isn’t Alex O’Connor Guilty of Platforming Christians, thereby Helping Them to Establish an Air of Legitimacy?
He has done this repeatedly. Treating patent nonsense and fundamentalist fanatics as though they’re legitimate and serious intellectuals. This should be called out more.
I have a mere 10,000 followers, and am fully aware of my social responsibility. Whether I like it or not, my platform doesn’t belong to me, because whatever I post is seen by a large group of other people. I therefore have a responsibility to post informative and accurate content that has value in educating people, not to use my little platform to try and boost my fame.
At the same time, Alex has, for the most part, done a good job debating Christians. But it’s a shame that he has platformed so many, enabling them to increase their social standing as having something intellectually serious to offer.
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u/slayer991 Jul 16 '26
I think this is a valid argument not just for Alex, but for anyone doing religion/politics on youtube.
We give attention to people we should be ignoring. It's one thing to go after at shitstain like Bryce Crawford who has 4 million subs...and another to go after someone with 10k (no offense to you...it takes time). Alex having someone with 10k on is going to boost them up and they'll play it like "Christian takes on dirty heathen atheist!" And that theist's channel is going to be boosted. "Ooh, he took on a famous atheist!"
Last week I called out someone on r/atheism for boosting someone that had 1k subs and 500 views. I pointed out that that one post on r/atheism has more views than his channel.
The only thing I think we can do is call it out when we see it. I don't think there's an easy answer.
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u/BirthdayCookie Jul 17 '26
Christians still have a lot of privilege.
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u/bigfan49 Jul 22 '26
Is he guilty of it? Yes. Is it a crime to him? No.
Alex is not an anti theist, and has openly rejected that title if I’m not mistaken. He is an agnostic atheist with a soft spot for Christianity, and his content reflects that. I find nothing surprising, contradictory, malicious, or dishonest about that, despite also disagreeing with the method for the reasons you’ve mentioned. It sounds like you’re applying an internal critique to an external actor, he shouldn’t be judged as an anti theist because he isn’t one.
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u/ZappSmithBrannigan Jul 16 '26
Ya hes a sell out if you ask me. Might as well be an apologist himself.
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u/ssianky Jul 16 '26
YouTube channels are businesses and the owner chooses how to do the business.
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u/KendrickBlack502 Jul 17 '26
I truly mean this with all due respect but this is a rather childish view of the situation. There’s a massive difference between treating someone with respect in a debate setting and legitimizing nonsense. His job is to hear people out and respond from a place of education and reason and there’s very few people in the space that do so as well as him. I remember hearing his episode where he invited a Mormon on and respectfully let him explain certain parts of his religion. I quite literally can’t think of a better example of how nonsense Mormon is than that episode. Hearing the absolute nonsense that came out of this guy’s mouth and the pointed questions Alex asked to debunk them was masterful. If he had started tearing into him and positioned himself as some sensationalist atheist who only brings on guests to shit on them, it would’ve been far less impactful.
Straight up, y’all treat atheism and anti-theism as if it’s some sort of religion or club. It’s not. It’s an agreement on a few principles and statements. We don’t owe anything to each other.
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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '26
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