Steven Crowder Looked Terrible vs. Sam Seder, and Here’s Why

The online politics sphere is an incredibly toxic place. It’s one of the reasons I very rarely write about politics despite my interest in it. I’ve only written one article about politics for this here blog, and it was one I wrote out of sheer anger at the events that unfolded in Washington DC on January 6.

It’s not something that I want to write extensively about, but I’m going to write about a politically charged event today. Much like my pieces on The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima, I am writing this piece because I ultimately have something to say about whatever it is I am writing about. And this event is something I haven’t been able to get out of my head since it occurred.

On Monday, YouTuber Ethan Klein uploaded an episode of the H3 Podcast that showcased his previously scheduled debate with conservative political commentator Steven Crowder. This episode took the internet by storm as Klein brought on leftist political commentator Sam Seder into the Zoom call, taking Crowder and his team by surprise. What followed wasn’t really much of a debate as it was a virtual shit soufflé, but the reactions online really intrigued me.

I’m going to preface this by saying that I wholeheartedly believe that Steven Crowder is a piece of shit. However, I also don’t think that him being a piece of shit is a reason to not feel bad for him being “bombarded” on his show. I believe that there’s a legitimate argument to be made that Steven Crowder, removed from all of the bigotry he regularly exhibits, came out of that “debate" looking really bad. And I hope that those of you who disagree are willing to hear me out and consider this perspective. So, let’s begin.

The Build-Up

To fully understand why this encounter between Crowder and Seder captivated the internet, we need to understand the internet history between the two. Back in 2018, Seder claimed that Crowder had backed out at the last minute of an already agreed upon debate that was supposed to take place at Politicon that year. According to Seder, he was told by a representative from Politicon that either someone on Crowder’s team or Crowder himself “got cold feet” and backed out.

In October 2019, a video was uploaded to the YouTube channel for The Majority Report w/Sam Seder in which Seder showed that he was contacted by a representative of a then-upcoming show hosted by conservative pundit Gavin McInnes in which he was offered $5000 to make an appearance. When the idea of debating Crowder came up, Seder agreed to make the appearance for free, even agreeing to pay his own travel expenses. Later in that video, Seder played a recording of a phone call with a booker for Politicon that took place in 2018. In the call, the booker confirmed that Crowder had backed out of not only the debate, but also the show, and said that they felt Crowder got cold feet.

Shortly after the video was uploaded, Politicon tweeted a photoshopped version of Crowder’s Change My Mind meme with what seemed to be confirmation of the phone call’s contents, using #ColdfeetCrowder and suggesting a “rematch” for Politicon 2019. The two would not meet at the event.

Ethan Klein entered the picture about a month ago when Klein and his wife Hila were reacting to MMA enthusiast Joe Rogan when Rogan mentioned Hila on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. During this reaction, Ethan commented “you don’t even need to think" about trusting the CDC or any information from the CDC. Crowder disagreed with these comments and talked about them on his show, Louder With Crowder. The two sides would trade barbs back and forth for weeks before Crowder challenged Klein to a debate, calling the YouTuber a “layup.”

Seder said that Klein then approached him with the idea of having Seder come in and debate Crowder without the conservative pundit’s knowledge. Klein reasoned that Crowder, knowing he wasn’t going to be challenged by someone who’s admittedly not politically savvy like Klein, was intentionally seeking out a “layup" debate instead of finding someone who could challenge him. And, knowing Seder was politically savvy and interested in debating Crowder, Klein decided to involve Seder.

The debate was originally scheduled on the 14th, but Crowder canceled at the last minute, which Klein claims is due to Seder ending his show early so he could be there for the debate. It was rescheduled for Monday at noon, the same time that Seder usually goes live. Seder decided to pre-record the first half of his show on Monday to make it seem like he was live at the time of the debate.

Why Crowder Looks Bad

First things first, I’ll be referencing specific parts of the debate throughout this section. If you want to watch the full thing, you can either watch it on the H3 Podcast channel or Crowder’s second channel, Crowder Bits.

Crowder looks bad from the get-go. In his “unedited" footage of the debate, which is basically the same footage as Klein’s just with a before and after segment, Crowder says that he believes Seder would make an appearance in this debate. While some would argue this actually takes the wind out of the debate-and-switch sails, I disagree. I disagree because it is clear from the moment Seder popped on the screen that Crowder didn’t have a plan for how to handle the situation beyond getting mad. And while predicting this would happen is cool, it’s a bad look if you predict it and you’re still unprepared.

The next point where Crowder looks bad comes when Seder mentions that he told his producers that Crowder would do anything to avoid this confrontation. Crowder and his co-host’s response was not to deny they were ducking Seder but to list off names who also haven’t debated Seder, such as Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, and Sam Harris. Admittedly, this could just be me, but I really don’t think “these other people are also avoiding you" isn’t really the argument you want to be making when you’re accused of avoiding someone.

The most damning soundbyte coming out of this whole thing can be viewed at the 11:38 mark of Klein’s footage, and the 9:48 mark of Crowder’s footage. At this point, Crowder admits that he knew Seder took his show off early last week. This looks especially bad for Crowder because the only way he could really know this bit of information is if he or someone on his team were monitoring The Majority Report to see if he was live. You could point out this tweet where Seder mentions the early nature of the show, but (a) this tweet occurred hours after the show went off the air, (b) this tweet is not indicative of him taking the show off early to infiltrate the Crowder/Klein debate, and (c) it’d still be a weird look for Crowder to monitor his Twitter to make sure that Seder would be live at his regular time.

So, the question here would have to be why is Steven Crowder monitoring The Majority Report, especially if he truly feels Seder is beneath him?

And that’s another point in and of itself. Crowder repeatedly mentions how Seder’s reach is significantly lower than Crowder’s, and yet Crowder is not only aware of Seder, but is apparently is monitoring when he’s live and when he’s not. And when Seder pressed him on this, Crowder just yelled “because you’re an idiot and half your staff doesn’t like you.”

Furthermore, this audience-oriented line of argumentation doesn’t make sense from Crowder considering he’s built a career off of debating random college students on university grounds. Furthermore, here’s a shortlist of people Crowder’s debated who have a significantly lower reach on social media than he does:

• Naomi Wolf, a feminist and CEO of The Daily Clout, who have 7.1K Twitter followers, was featured twice (October 2017 and May 2018)
• Julie Rei Goldstein, a trans activist and actor with 2K Twitter followers and 99 YouTube subscribers (August 2018)
• Maria Del Russo, an author and senior style and beauty editor for Insider Reviews with 10.6K Twitter followers (February 2018)
• Josh Constine, former editor at TechCrunch, whose YouTube channel has 549K subscribers (October 2017)
• Jeff Holiday, a YouTuber with 108K subscribers (August 2017)
• Sally Kohn, a USA Today contributor and activist with 117K Twitter followers (December 2016)
• Zack Ford, a former writer for ThinkProgress with 17.7K Twitter followers (June 2016)

Crowder hit a million subscribers in 2017, for reference. I hope I made my point that Steven Crowder isn’t concerned about his opponent’s audience.

Lastly, as an overall general point, Crowder’s approach of hurling insults and rage-induced yelling is an overall bad look, especially when compared to Seder’s calmer and more focused demeanor. Seder is mostly asking variations of the same question: if this is about the issues, why can’t we debate the issues? And not only did Crowder not have a real sufficient answer, but he also kept the conversation away from that idea. It’s a stark contrast from the Crowder who purported to “respect people who step into the arena" at the beginning of the show. It’s a far cry from the man who told Joe Rogan that it was hard to get leftists on his show.

Maybe now we know why it’s so hard.

Why Crowder Isn’t The Victim

I believe there is a legitimate argument that what Klein did was unfair to Crowder. That maybe Crowder doesn’t have to debate Seder because it was an unsolicited conversation. However, I don’t subscribe to those arguments, and I honestly don’t see how Crowder is a victim here. Crowder isn’t a victim because unsolicited confrontations are what Crowder built his career on.

Earlier, I briefly mentioned Crowder’s Change My Mind segment. During the debate, he tried to say that these segments aren’t debates, but that’s just fundamentally not true. Crowder sets up a table, brings a binder full of facts, and pushes back on whatever college freshman or random person off the street he plucked for the segment. Those are debates, and they’re always with people who aren’t prepared to debate. And the one time Crowder was challenged during this segment, he became visibly flustered and frustrated.

Furthermore, let’s talk about Crowder Confronts. This is a series where Crowder would track down random people who have talked shit about him on the internet and followed them around with a microphone and camera crew while the person they’re following either gets mad at their presence or just walks away from them. It’s an attempt to publicly shame that person for the things they said, and whether or not you believe that’s a fair thing for those people to go through, my point remains that this is a completely unsolicited confrontation with people who aren’t prepared to have a camera shoved in their face for content.

Then, there’s this incident at SXSW 2017. Crowder, impersonating The Young Turks' founder Cenk Uygur, crashed a panel where Uygur was speaking and proceeded to go up to the stage and speak over Uygur. Again, this is another unsolicited confrontation, and this one is especially bad considering Crowder was calling out Uygur for months but never set up a debate. This makes Crowder’s point about Seder not being owed the time of day and that his calling Crowder out meaning nothing a bit suspect, in my opinion.

This is what Crowder does. He picks and chooses these unsolicited confrontations with people who are not prepared to engage in these situations, and props these things up as proof that’s he’s this macho big boi debater. So, I’m sorry, but Crowder doesn’t get to clutch his pearls here and claim he’s the victim of an unsolicited conversation.

How Crowder Could’ve Looked Better

In the interest of fairness, I wanted to examine how Crowder could’ve looked a lot better in this situation:

Drop The Insults

Dropping the insults could’ve made him look a lot better, for starters, especially since it was clear that Klein was really only there to shout a few insults in his own right. It’s a weird look when Crowder answers a question about debating the issues with insults like “you don’t even allow a shred of comedy on your show!” after Seder admits to not running a comedic program. Dropping the insults and explaining why exactly he had no interest in debating Seder would’ve been better in the long run.

Leaving Immediately

This might sound counterproductive, but I honestly think this would’ve looked better for Crowder in the long run. Crowder can keep up the “I don’t get triggered unlike you libtards” aesthetic going while still not engaging with the debate-and-switch. He still has to deal with the Cold Feet Crowder memes, but he avoids screaming “What a fucking nightmare!” in terror at the sight of Seder.

Not Announcing The Donald Trump Jr Interview

This one is straightforward. Crowder announced shortly after the debate went live on the H3 Podcast that the following day, he’d be speaking with Donald Trump Jr. It was clear he was attempting to obfuscate the backlash online, and he would’ve been better off not announcing this when he did.

Just Debating

What does Crowder have to lose? Seriously. What does Steven Crowder have to lose debating Sam Seder, especially if he believes in his arguments like he claims to? Granted, I do wholeheartedly believe he would’ve lost the debate, but he would’ve come out looking so much better if he had just debated with Seder, especially because it was an unsolicited confrontation that he predicted. He looks prepared and he looks like he’s willing to debate anyone. It honestly would’ve been much better for him.

Conclusion

Steven Crowder looked bad because his arguments were weak, he came off incredibly angry and frustrated, and he contradicted himself. He’s not a victim because he has been dishing out these unsolicited conversations for years, but can’t take it now. And it is now obvious that he was searching out a “layup” of a debate instead of actually looking to discuss the issues.

For someone who likes his Fight Like Hell shirt, he did everything he could to avoid the bout.

Photo Credit: Steven Crowder/YouTube