Destiny: Politics, Free Speech, Controversy, Sex, War, and Relationships | Lex Fridman Podcast #337

If you have a democratic style of governance, you are entrusting people with one of the most awesome and radical of responsibilities, and that's saying that you're going to pick the people that are gonna make some of the hardest decisions on all of human history. If you're gonna trust people to vote correctly, you have to be able to trust them to have open and honest dialogue with each other. Whether that's Nazis or KKK people or whoever talking, um, you have to believe that your people are going to be able to rise above and make the correct determinations when they hear these types of speeches. And if you're so worried that somebody's gonna hear a certain political figure and they're gonna be completely radicalized instantly, then what that tells me is that you don't have enough faith in humans for democracy to be a viable institution. Which is fine, you can be anti-democratic, but you, I don't think you can be pro-democracy and anti-free speech.

The following is a conversation with Steven Bonnell, also known online as Destiny. He's a video game streamer and political commentator, one of the early pioneers of both live streaming in general and live streamed political debate and discourse. Politically, he is a progressive, identifying as either left or far left depending on your perspective. There are many reasons I wanted to talk to Steven. First, I just talked to Ben Shapiro, and many people have told me that Steven is the Ben Shapiro of the left in terms of political perspective and exceptional debate skills. Second reason is he skillfully defends some nuanced non-standard views. At the same time, being pro-establishment, pro-institutions, and pro-Biden, while also being pro-capitalism and pro-free speech. Third reason is he has been there at the beginning and throughout the meteoric rise of the video game live streaming community. In some mainstream circles, this community is not taken seriously. Perhaps because of its demographic distribution skewing young, or perhaps because of the sometimes harsh style of communication. But I think this community should be taken seriously and shown respect. Millions of young minds tune into live streams like Destiny's to question and to try to understand what is going on with the world, often exploring challenging, even controversial ideas. The language is sometimes harsher and the humor sometimes meaner than I would prefer, but I, Grandpa Lex, put on my rain boots and went into the beautiful chaotic muck of online discourse, and have so far survived to tell the tale with a smile and even more love in my heart than before. On top of all this, we were lucky to have Melina Goranson, a popular streamer and world traveler, join us at the end of the conversation. You can check out her channel on twitch.tv/melina, and you can check out Steven's channel on youtube.com/destiny. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Destiny.