Carl Benjamin

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This article is about the YouTube commentator. For the Akkadian King, see Sargon of Akkad. For the American abstract expressionist painter, see Karl Benjamin.
Sargon of Akkad
File:Sargon of Akkad Twitter.jpg
Personal information
Born (1979-09-01) September 1, 1979 (age 44)[1]
Swindon, Wiltshire, England[1]
NationalityBritish[2]
Occupation(s)YouTuber
Game developer
Vlogger
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2013–present[3]
Genre(s)Empiricism
Scepticism
Social criticism
Political criticism
Subscribers700,000+[4]
Total views185,000,000+[4]
100,000 subscribersApril 2015[5]
Last updated: 10 October 2017

Carl Benjamin (born September 1, 1979), also known by his pseudonym Sargon of Akkad, is an English YouTube commentator. Benjamin's alias is taken from the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, Sargon of Akkad.[6]

YouTube career

Benjamin's early videos often concerned Gamergate and antifeminism.[6][7] He has hosted live streams with guests, including internet personalities such as JonTron.[8][9] He also appeared as a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience in June 2017.[1][10]

He has secondary YouTube channels such as "Ancient Recitations" which contains numerous audiobooks, including ones for the Epic of Gilgamesh,[11] the Enuma Elish,[12] an Akkadian erotic hymn,[13] an Akkadian hymn to Ishtar,[14] and other ancient historical texts from Ancient Greece and the Ancient Near East. Benjamin's other YouTube channels include "Sargon of Akkad Livestreams", "The Thinkery" and "The New Memedia" (formerly known as "Vae Victis"). "The New Memedia" was removed for copyright reasons and was replaced by "The Thinkery".[citation needed]

His channel first drew attention to itself during the Gamergate controversy in 2014,[15] when he argued in one of his videos that members of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) were actively plotting to influence video game development to conform to their "ideological feminist agenda".[16] He stated that the research produced by DiGRA board members was "sloppy and unprofessional and absolutely overrun by people who have an ideological agenda that they simply cannot leave out of their research".[16] An Inside Higher Ed article described these allegations as a "conspiracy theory".[16]

Several months later, in June 2015, YouTube took down one of Benjamin's videos when it received a copyright claim from The Guardian.[17] Benjamin contested the claim against the video, which used substantial portions of The Guardian's video, but was not successful. The Guardian said it was offering "advice on how to engage with Guardian content without breaching copyright". The video was restored later the same day.[17] However, one Los Angeles Times columnist called it "alarming to see copyright law used to stifle debate in the public square".[17]

In May 2016, in response to Labour Party politician Jess Phillips' statement that rape threats are commonplace for her, Benjamin said "I wouldn't even rape you” in a YouTube video and repeated this on Twitter.[2][6][9][18] Benjamin declined to apologise for the comments.[18]

Benjamin garnered media attention again in early 2017 in regard to a controversy about PewDiePie and alleged antisemitism in his videos. Benjamin had created a YouTube video and a Thunderclap with 13,165 supporters in defense of PewDiePie.[19][20]

Heat Street and others credit Benjamin's videos with popularising Kekistan, which is a fictional country, political meme and online movement.[21][22]

Game development

In March 2014, Benjamin was involved in a Kickstarter campaign created to fund the development of a video game called Necromancer.[23] It raised £8,016, just beating the goal of £8,000. Benjamin took the role of programmer and co-designer for the game.[24] However, by June 2016, the game had not been released and all supporters were refunded.[25]

Personal views

Benjamin is an atheist.[26] He self-identifies politically as centre-left and a classical liberal.[7][27] He has opposed movements that purport to defeat online misogyny, such as the British group 'Reclaim the Internet', which he called "social communism".[6][18]

Benjamin was a vocal supporter of Brexit[28] and described Donald Trump as the lesser of two evils, compared to Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[29] Prior to the primary election of Clinton as the United States Democratic Party candidate, Benjamin stated he would have preferred Bernie Sanders over Clinton or Trump.[29] Along with Trump, Benjamin has endorsed other right wing politicians such as Marine Le Pen.[30]

Portrayal in the media

Benjamin has been characterised as "deliberately provocative",[15] "unabashedly politically incorrect",[17] and "anti-progressive."[31] He has been cited as one of the "most controversial YouTubers" by WatchMojo, who claimed that he "clearly doesn't shy away from saying stuff that others find offensive."[32] In a November 2016 opinion piece, Vice criticised Benjamin's "logic-before-all attitude", claiming that "when you're speaking on issues of a social nature that cannot be boiled down to textbook definitions of words, it's not really an approach that works particularly well".[2]

He has been described as "alt-right" and an "alt-right sympathizer" by media outlets Redbrick,[6] The Daily Dot,[15] Salon,[20] Gizmodo,[33] and Vox.[31] Benjamin has rejected these labels[19] and has criticised the alt-right for collectivist, identitarian and authoritarian thinking.[15] In September 2016, William Hicks writing in Heat Street said that he was "wrongly labeled as alt-right in [the] Daily Dot", and that he has replied to alt-right followers on Twitter with links to interracial pornography so that they would unfollow him.[34] The piece in The Daily Dot stated that although Benjamin is not part of the alt-right, his videos concern "favourite alt-right targets" such as "feminism, Islam, Black Lives Matter, and the notion of straight white male privilege".[15] Benjamin has also been described as "right-wing" by the Nieman Journalism Lab,[30] Vice magazine,[2] and Mic.[35]

Personal life

Benjamin is married, has two children, and lives in Swindon, UK.[18]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Carl Benjamin credits". IMDb. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  2. ^ a b c d Bish, Joe (20 November 2016). "Examining the Right Wing British Blowhards Using YouTube to 'Prove Everybody Wrong'". Vice. Retrieved 3 March 2017.
  3. ^ A Wikipedia Article About Me, a YouTube video in which Carl Benjamin reads this page and makes several comments about its accuracy.
  4. ^ a b "About SargonofAkkad100". YouTube.
  5. ^ Benjamin, Carl (25 April 2015). "100,000 Subscriber Vlog and Recommendations". YouTube. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  6. ^ a b c d e Moore, James (2 June 2016). "Birmingham MP in Epicentre of Twitter Abuse Storm". Redbrick. Retrieved 29 May 2017.
  7. ^ a b Rozsa, Matthew (9 April 2016). "Sargon of Akkad and the Importance of Free Speech". The Good Men Project. Retrieved 15 May 2016. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help)
  8. ^ Tamburro, Paul (13 March 2017). "JonTron: 'Wealthy Blacks Commit More Crime Than Poor Whites'". CraveOnline. Retrieved 19 March 2017.
  9. ^ a b Tamburro, Paul (14 March 2017). "The JonTron Controversy and Why Parents Should Be Wary of YouTube". CraveOnline. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  10. ^ Tamburro, Paul (27 June 2017). "VidCon Controversy Continues YouTube's Descent Into Drama". CraveOnline. Retrieved 11 July 2017. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  11. ^ Benjamin, Carl (18 May 2015). "The Epic of Gilgamesh (Complete Audiobook, Unabridged)". YouTube. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
  12. ^ Benjamin, Carl (11 June 2015). "Enuma Elish (Enûma Eliš) (Complete Audiobook, Unabridged)". YouTube. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
  13. ^ Benjamin, Carl (13 August 2015). "Ishtar Will Not Tire - An Akkadian Erotic Hymn". YouTube. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
  14. ^ Benjamin, Carl (18 September 2015). "Exaltation of Inanna". YouTube. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
  15. ^ a b c d e Rozsa, Matthew (7 September 2016). "A Deep Dive into the Alt-right's Greatest YouTube Hits". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
  16. ^ a b c Straumstein, Carl (11 November 2014). "#Gamergate and Games Research". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  17. ^ a b c d Healey, Jon (11 June 2015). "The Guardian uses copyright to shush a critic of its cultural criticism". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 15 May 2016. Sargon used seemingly every frame from Anyangwe's 3 minute, 49 second video. He found fault with most of the points she made, as well as the way she made them. After watching his piece, it's clear that there's no point in going to the Guardian's site to see the original because he's just shown you the whole thing.
  18. ^ a b c d Daubney, Martin (5 June 2016). "I set out to troll her — why all this fuss about 600 rape tweets?". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
  19. ^ a b Menegus, Bryan (27 February 2017). "Prominent YouTubers Find Great Anti-Semitic Hill to Die on". Gizmodo. Retrieved 17 March 2017.
  20. ^ a b Rozsa, Matthew (15 February 2017). "How PewDiePie 'fudged the labels' to avoid anti-Semitism claims because of his YouTube videos". Salon. Retrieved 17 March 2017.
  21. ^ Cheong, Ian Miles (29 May 2017). "What is Kekistan? The Internet's Most Controversial Political Meme Explained". Heat Street. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  22. ^ Alonso, Nicolás (21 February 2017). "Trump World Dictionary [Translated from Spanish]". El País. Retrieved 10 July 2017. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  23. ^ Cross, Beren (26 March 2014). "Zombie slayers call for start-up funders". Swindon Advertiser. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  24. ^ Mark (20 April 2014). "Necromancer– The RPG/Strategy Game That Makes You The Bad Guy". Siliconera. Curse, Inc. Retrieved 13 March 2017.
  25. ^ Necromancer by Other Worlds Software Kickstarter. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  26. ^ Benjamin, Carl (14 May 2017). "What is Your Religion?". YouTube. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
  27. ^ "Sargon of Akkad: Classical Liberal or Libertarian? (Part 2)". Youtube. 7 December 2016. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  28. ^ Benjamin, Carl (24 June 2016). "Britain chooses Freedom over Fear". YouTube. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
  29. ^ a b Benjamin, Carl (20 November 2016). "Blitzing Politics with Secular Talk". YouTube. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
  30. ^ a b Ryan, Padraic (22 May 2017). ""Who's your 4chan correspondent?" (and other questions Storyful thinks newsrooms should be asking after the French election)". Nieman Journalism Lab. Retrieved 29 May 2017.
  31. ^ a b Romano, Aja (30 June 2017). "Gorilla memes, YouTube trolls, and McMansion copyright fights: this week in internet culture". Vox. Retrieved 1 July 2017. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help)
  32. ^ "Top 10 Controversial YouTube Channels - TopX". WatchMojo.com. December 3, 2015. Retrieved 10 July 2017.
  33. ^ Menegus, Bryan (16 February 2017). "YouTube Stars' Defence Of PewDiePie Is Garbage". Gizmodo. Retrieved 16 April 2017.
  34. ^ Hicks, William (22 September 2016). "Popular YouTuber Fought Back Against the Alt Right by Sending Them Interracial Gay Porn". Heat Street. Retrieved 3 March 2017.
  35. ^ Smith IV, Jack (20 March 2017). "YouTube's LGBTQ restriction isn't censorship. It's laziness". Mic. Retrieved 16 April 2017. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help)

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carl_Benjamin&oldid=804702159"