Tim Pool. Investigative journalism in Sweden after Trump allegations on immigration problems

[mojo pixy]

What's Manspread? I daren't google

 

[DaveCinzano]

What's Manspread? I daren't google

Tumblr

 

[mojo pixy]

Nah I want an explanation. I'm not clicking any links, especially to Tumblr.
Happy to remain ignorant, frankly.

 

[bimble]

Nah I want an explanation. I'm not clicking any links, especially to Tumblr.
Happy to remain ignorant, frankly.

It’s a word to describe the manly way of sitting with your knees really far apart so you take up as much space as possible, esp on crowded public transport.

 

[mojo pixy]

OK, actually I knew that but I'd forgotten.
Glad to see the important stuff is kept up on social media tho.

''Hatespeech'', what a wanker.
That's hatespeech.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Happy to remain ignorant, frankly.

YWIOC

 

[mojo pixy]

Sadly my ignorance has already been sabotaged. It seemed a bit too easy tbf, I'll have to work on that.

 

[1%er]

After all the arguments on this tread about the opinion polls, today is the day we will see what the most important poll says.

We are told by the Swedish press that today in the "most important election in decades", reports claim that the Swedish Democrats could get as much as 20% of the vote, if that is the case they could well emerge as the largest single party, but are highly unlikely to form a government. The center-left are expected to get around 40% and the center-right around 38%, so unless one group decides to work with the SD there is likely to be deadlock.

Could Sweden be yet another European country that takes months to form a government

 

[TruXta]

Exit polls putting the SD on only 16.5%, far below what they hoped to achieve. The centre too are looking to fare badly, with socialists and conservatives doing well.

 

[Dogsauce]

I smell some ‘expectations management’ going on here, has been used against the far right (and plenty of others) before, hype their chances up so when they do well (but not quite as well as predicted) it can be painted as a defeat. 16.5% is still too much.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

17.6%


Deadlock.

 

[1%er]

I smell some ‘expectations management’ going on here, has been used against the far right (and plenty of others) before, hype their chances up so when they do well (but not quite as well as predicted) it can be painted as a defeat. 16.5% is still too much.

They were reported to be up to almost 25% a few months ago while most of the other party's refused to talk about immigration, this prompted the other party's to address the issue of immigration that according to polls was the most important issue with the Swedish electorate.

Some very interesting results in the last few elections in Europe, it looks like the election here in Brazil could move the government even further to the right later this year.

 

[rekil]

On the right wing side you'll be safe and have a conversation

On the left wing side you will be harassed and possibly attacked

I wonder why this specimen feels safe on the side that he does PR for and that all his mates are on for and unsafe on the side he wants to get designated as terrorists for "Calling for violence, saying "by any means necessary" and posting years of anti white racist content".

Apart from relentless far right propaganda and stoner loonery, his twitter machine occasionally has this galaxy brain stuff.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I think he's just a complete joke now, but not offensive enough for anybody to attack or take the piss out of when there are so many other targets.

I've even seen him referred to sarcastically when somebody made some nonsense claim about no go areas or whatever - "yeah you should send Tim Pool over to investigate". Perhaps he's made it to being a figure of speech.

 

[rekil]

I think he's just a complete joke now, but not offensive enough for anybody to attack or take the piss out of when there are so many other targets.

This had occurred to me but there's no harm updating his file once a year. He says his new grift startup raised one million dollars.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

This had occurred to me but there's no harm updating his file once a year. He says his new grift startup raised one million dollars.

I hadn't really thought about him for ages until I saw that reference recently so I've not been keeping up on what he's been up to. I shall take a look, but he doesn't seem to have the outrage factor these days that powers the social media algorithms - he might have when this thread was started, but it's all relative and escalates constantly.

 

[Proper Tidy]

One thing I will say for him is that he's perfected the stoned and depressed gamer look, absolutely nailed it

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I looked through his recent Twitter but honestly it was just repeating the party line and not even in a particularly inflammatory way. I try not to respond to these people's bullshit but even if I wasn't trying, I don't think I would have bothered, just thought "wanker" and moved on. This is not how you get the hate engagement bucks.

One thing I will say for him is that he's perfected the stoned and depressed gamer look, absolutely nailed it

it's the hat I think

 

[Dogsauce]

Just a pathetic bootlicker. The world of social media seems full of them now. I bet there was a time when they considered themselves some kind of rebellion rather than bag-carriers for oligarch capitalists.

 

[Rivendelboy]

Dim Tool, friend of the fascists. Caught himself recently calling Hitler a hero. Just another right wing scumbag getting rich off the right wing outrage brigade

 

[rekil]

His producer is a cunt too.

 

[rekil]

Long piece on Pool's baffling route to riches. It's an indictment of youtube's model as much as anything else. He used to wear a flak jacket in the vice news office and blames "everybody else" for his failure to find a woman to own.

two years ago, Pool announced he wanted a wife who would stay at home and raise his children as opposed to having her own career. It bothered Pool that this desire was now viewed as “socially unacceptable.” Pool complained last year that feminism had negatively impacted his ability to find a romantic partner and start a family. “You know what the problem is, though, it’s definitely not me,” he said. “I think it’s everybody else.”

How ‘Coward and Phony’ Tim Pool Became One of the Biggest Political YouTubers on the Planet

A former darling of Occupy Wall Street, Tim Pool has racked up more than a billion views and millions in earnings while dangerously whitewashing the far right.

www.thedailybeast.com

Our very own Laurie gets quoted which looks like a characteristically weasely attempt to excuse her boosting of scum like weev and milo.

Who was it on here who said they get all their news from Pool. Was it that thieving living dead meth head or some other cunt.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Long piece on Pool's baffling route to riches. It's an indictment of youtube's model as much as anything else. He used to wear a flak jacket in the vice news office and blames "everybody else" for his failure to find a woman to own.

How ‘Coward and Phony’ Tim Pool Became One of the Biggest Political YouTubers on the Planet

A former darling of Occupy Wall Street, Tim Pool has racked up more than a billion views and millions in earnings while dangerously whitewashing the far right.

www.thedailybeast.com

Our very own Laurie gets quoted which looks like a characteristically weasely attempt to excuse her boosting of scum like weev and milo.

Who was it on here who said they get all their news from Pool. Was it that thieving living dead meth head or some other cunt.

Can you paste the text, cheers

 

[hitmouse]

It's a long bugger.
Part 1:

How ‘Coward and Phony’ Tim Pool Became One of the Biggest Political YouTubers on the Planet​

OFF THE DEEP END
A former darling of Occupy Wall Street, Tim Pool has racked up more than a billion views and millions in earnings while dangerously whitewashing the far right.

Robert Silverman​

Updated Aug. 02, 2021 3:09AM ET / Published Aug. 01, 2021 4:55AM ET
By mid-afternoon of Jan. 4, it had become increasingly clear that a slew of far-right actors were gearing up for violence at the Capitol. Tim Pool derided and dismissed the accurate reporting out of hand.
Of all the ideological enemies Pool, 35, rails against on YouTube for an audience of millions each day, few stack up to the mainstream press. In his mind, coverage of then-President Donald Trump’s instigations and the mounting threats was yet another example of the media’s “depravity,” he said.
“What do you think they’re going to do?” asked Pool. “It’s so stupid.”
Two days later, a mob stormed the Capitol, whipped into a frenzy by nonsensical claims of a stolen election and determined to put a stop to the constitutional transfer of power. To date, nearly 600 alleged rioters—a mishmash of Trump backers, QAnon adherents, and members of militias and extremist groups—have been arrested.
Throughout the fall of 2020, the wildly successful YouTube pundit had spent countless hours hyping the blinkered legal strategies and half-baked fantasies about voter fraud animating the online right. At the same time, in each video Pool tried to separate himself from the hardcore conspiracy theorists. After all, he was just commenting on the news.
What Pool kept secret from his younger, overwhelmingly male, decidedly right-leaning audience during this time is that he seemed to have a pretty good idea what might happen on Jan. 6.
“Dude, I’ve had messages from people saying that they’ve already got plans to rush to D.C. as soon as Nov. 3 goes chaotic,” Pool said in early September during a recorded conversation reviewed by The Daily Beast.
A few minutes later, Pool added: “The right-wing militias, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, and just the Proud Boys and Trump supporters, they are going to rush full-speed to D.C. They are going to take the White House and do whatever they can and paramilitary.” (Pool made these comments to then-colleagues at the media company he started. The following month, Pool used his YouTube platform to say the Oath Keepers had been unjustly “smeared” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He habitually comes to the defense of the Proud Boys, as well.)
This glaring omission was not out of character for Pool. Far from it. A former digital media journalist who originally built up his name with on-the-ground reporting and livestreaming, including stints at Vice and Fusion, Pool now postures as a rational centrist or “disaffected liberal” who grew to loathe the excesses of the left. If you buy Pool’s branding, he stands in contrast to the bulk of his journalistic peers: “evil” “liars,” he says, who’ve supposedly capitulated to the agendas of Black Lives Matter, antifa, Democrats, Big Tech companies, feminists, and the like.
This self-generated mythology—an anti-authoritarian truth-teller whose successes stemmed from confronting “the machine,” as Pool puts it—bears little resemblance to reality.
Contrary to the overall manner in which Pool portrays himself, he was not an intrepid field reporter and streamer who barreled into conflict zones filled with an unshakable desire to ferret out the real story. Pool was at times reluctant to leave the safety of his hotel room, according to several of the nearly 30 former co-workers and other acquaintances from the past decade who spoke with The Daily Beast. He’d come across as uninterested in interviewing subjects or doing much research. During shoots, Pool’s head was frequently buried in his phone, diligently tracking social media, only to blame his co-workers or equipment when he couldn’t live up to his clippings. Pool’s main focus when reporting, those on the ground with him said, was drawing attention to himself.
“A coward and a phony,” “a joke,” “staggeringly arrogant,” “totally full of shit,” “not smart” and “a bumbling doofus” are a representative sample of how those who worked with Pool at digital media companies described him. Most did so on the condition of anonymity, in some instances citing possible reprisals by Pool and harassment from his fans.

 

[hitmouse]

Part 2:

Since then, Pool has discovered a style of commentary and audience where a lack of knowledge or journalistic skills might not prove an impediment to success. In some ways, incuriosity and incapacity serve as valuable attributes in this medium. Not solely because of the political valence but thanks in part to how YouTube itself functions: rewarding the kind of high-volume, sensationalized, and sloppy churn Pool specializes in.
And it has made Pool both exceedingly rich and one of the most-watched independent YouTube political pundits in the country—over 3.3 million subscribers, 1.5 billion views, and, by all estimates, hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue per month. He earned $600,000 just in August 2020 and “most of it” came from YouTube, Pool claimed in the recorded conversation.
Unlike his peers in conservative media, Pool wasn’t boosted by the usual suspects. Neither the Koch brothers, the Mercer clan, nor another deep-pocketed billionaire forked over seed money, and he didn’t game Facebook’s algorithms. Fox News has more or less ignored him, as has the institutional Republican Party and its network of well-funded think-tanks.
Now, right-wing and far-right figures—many of whom might not be welcomed on a platform to the left of Tucker Carlson Tonight—not only have taken notice, they come to him.
In 2020 and continuing through 2021, a rotating cast of Stop the Steal activists, Capitol rioters, QAnon and Pizzagate promoters, 9/11 truthers, grifters, anti-vaxxers, antisemites, misogynists, cranks, and neo-fascists trundled down to Pool’s Maryland podcast studio to appear on Timcast IRL, his two-hour-plus-long YouTube livestream. There, Pool allows them to peddle their wares before six-digit audiences and receive very little if any pushback. This should come as no surprise. Whenever a right-wing politician, personality or group enters the news cycle, Pool finds a way to sand down their actual, stated beliefs or will claim ignorance.
Business is booming, per Pool, with a dozen employees on payroll since April, a prominence made possible in no small part by YouTube promoting his work to its front page. “I know for a fact,” he said during a December 2020 livestream, “the YouTube algorithm drives the majority of my content.” (At other times he’ll complain that YouTube is suppressing his content or will soon ban him outright.) YouTube picks and chooses which content gets views and which creators become famous, he told a Twitter follower. Apparently they’ve chosen Pool.
For some time now, misinformation has proliferated and its merchants have thrived on YouTube, particularly on the right. Three years ago, Pool’s channel was included in studies about how YouTube serves as a radicalization vector, algorithmically leading viewers to seek out far-right creators and content. But his evolution indicates that YouTube doesn’t just impact audiences—the money and fame radicalizes creators, too. (YouTube did not respond to a request for comment.)
The proof lies in his current output. Despite his continued insistence on being viewed as a “center-left” truth-teller, a Daily Beast review of hundreds of hours worth of Pool’s commentaries revealed a consistent if broad eschatology: No matter which ginned-up atrocity is roiling the online right on a given day, Pool routinely will deem it a crucial sign pointing towards a civilization-ending crisis or imminent civil war. (Sometimes, he’ll declare that a civil war is already underway.) Who is to blame? A vaguely defined yet omnipresent and menacing left-wing other.
As a matter of course, Pool depicts people and groups on the left as potential bomb-tossing radicals or authoritarian lunatics; cultural shifts or gestures towards social and racial justice will lead to chaos and gulags stocked with the victims of morality policing, like the McCloskeys, according to Pool; and if the police are now siding with terrorists like “BLM and antifa” perhaps the time has come to flee the cities and stock up on firearms, as Pool himself has done.

 

[hitmouse]

Part 3:

“They will never stop coming. They will take your job away. They will come for your parents,” Pool said in a keyed-up June 2020 livestream lambasting those who won’t push back against the horde of “woke” cultists. “You will do something wrong, they’ll fire your mom. They will come to your house with fireworks and guns.”
Recently Pool hired a far-right extremist to run his website and, in private, he’ll go beyond howling about civil war. On a few occasions he’s put it more explicitly: a “race war” is soon to come.
When Pool said so to Tarik Johnson, a Black then-employee of his defunct media company in 2019, he also told him to “choose a side,” because his ex-boss couldn’t ascertain “which side you’re going to be on,” is how Johnson recalled Pool phrasing it. Two individuals familiar with the events backed up Johnson’s account.
When reached for comment, Pool fervently denied telling Johnson about a “race war” and called any suggestion he had “insane,” citing his content and mixed-race heritage. Pool further disputed many of the claims and descriptions of events in this article, and alleged they were provided by individuals who harbored a personal vendetta against him. His responses can be read here.
Pool’s journey from beanie-clad Occupy Wall Street livestreamer to “reactionary social media performer,” per the Southern Poverty Law Center, may seem improbable at face value. But some who’ve known him aren’t exactly surprised.
“It’s a trajectory I’ve seen before—almost always with young and young-ish men who are so laser-focused on making their own careers that they arrive at racism and misogyny almost by accident—because that’s what gets the most clicks,” said Laurie Penny, a reporter and writer who has covered far-right provocateurs and knew Pool when he worked for Vice.

 

[hitmouse]

Part 4:

“This, of course, does not make them any less dangerous. Because they’re not encumbered by ideology, if anything, it makes them more so.”
Timothy Daniel Pool was born in 1986 in Chicago. Scant biographical information exists beyond what Pool has made public, but during his childhood his father, a now-retired firefighter, and mother, who sold cars, divorced. The family then fell into financial distress, he has said.
He attended a private Catholic school through the fifth grade before transferring to a public school and dropping out by age 14, the year he received “all Fs” in a progress report. “My comprehension level was much higher than that of many of my teachers,” Pool says, and so school made him “miserable.” Jobs in retail and as a baggage handler at American Eagle Airlines while a teenager ensued. (The Transport Workers Union confirmed Pool was a member.) Videos from this time show Pool dabbling in tech and skateboarding. The latter did not abate: Pool erected two custom-built skate ramps at the nearly $1 million eight-bedroom Maryland compound he bought in September 2020.
In his early twenties, Pool did some street canvassing for nonprofits, soliciting donations and signatures. That much is certain. Pool, however, has described the bulk of those jobs in ways that strain credulity.
Sometimes, Pool held the position of “fundraising events and marketing director for one nonprofit,” he claimed, and “a manager at many of the biggest fundraising companies and nonprofits in the world.” Other titles include: “fundraising director at a homeless shelter,” “nonprofit director,” “director at several [activist] organizations,” and even ”fundraising director for many nonprofits.” Pool rarely names the organizations—in one video, he says it’s to avoid possible litigation—but that doesn’t explain why no jobs are listed on his LinkedIn page prior to 2013. On occasion, Pool has let a few names slip.
On air and in private, Pool has claimed he worked for Great Lakes Coalition, the Human Rights Campaign, Greenpeace, and Children’s International. Representatives from these organizations said they had no record of Pool directly working for them, though Greenpeace’s records only dated back to 2008.
In a direct message to a Twitter follower, Pool said he'd been a “supervisor” with the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). Though the PIRG denied employing him directly, a spokesperson for the Fund for the Public Interest, a canvassing organization affiliated with the PIRG, confirmed that Pool worked as a “canvasser or field manager” in California for “a few weeks” between April and May 2010. (Pool has mentioned working for an unnamed subcontractor which serves nonprofits.) That said, “He definitely didn’t run any fundraising,” the spokesperson added.
Turning street canvassing or a low-grade supervisory role into the lofty title of “fundraising director” could be dismissed as mere résumé-pumping. But Pool cites his past work experiences when inveighing against charities or labeling all nonprofits “corrupt,” as if he were privy to their inner workings. “Most of these nonprofits I’ve worked at, I think they’re all scams,” said Pool—a racket designed to wring cash from donors. “They’re really just paying themselves.” (In his comments to The Daily Beast, Pool maintained he did work for Children’s International and Greenpeace, though he did not say what his title was and neither organization’s records confirmed his employment. Pool further claimed he was a “director and manager” for two other nonprofits he can’t name, citing “settlement agreements.”)
By summer 2011, Pool was living with his brother Chris in Newport News, Virginia. After seeing images of police violence in September from the Occupy Wall Street protests at Zuccotti Park, he hopped on a bus.
In New York City, Pool hooked up with Henry Ferry, then an out-of-work realtor and sales manager. The pair began documenting the unfolding political movement on a then-relatively new streaming service: UStream. Before long, Pool had assumed an on-camera role. The live videos took off, and they decided to form a media company called The Other 99.
The barebones DIY operation—Pool filmed using only his cellphone—was often able to get greater access and immediacy than some legacy media shops. Adding to their bona fides, The Other 99 weren’t perceived as neutral observers but rather actively involved with the movement. Eventually, network and cable-news programs began rebroadcasting their footage. Livestreams lasting for hours became a trademark, too, including a notable 21-hour stretch when cops cleared out the park.
Within a month, they’d racked up more than 2 million unique views, Pool claimed, a substantial social media following, and near-universal positive coverage from a wide array of both online and print publications. Awards and accolades followed hard upon. Pool was dubbed “the eyes of the movement,” by Time magazine.
Some of the other activists weren’t buying the hype.
Timothy Fitzgerald and Tess Cohen were both members of the General Assembly (GA), the organizational hub for Occupy. All appearances to the contrary, Pool was never aligned with the movement, they said. “That is 100 percent [Pool’s] mythology,” according to Cohen. Fitzgerald described Pool’s participation as a “branding” exercise—a leveraging of Occupy’s brief notoriety to elevate his own profile.
Unlike livestreamers who were working with the GA, Pool was soliciting donations to The Other 99. This engendered a certain amount of suspicion, if not resentment. (The Other 99 disbanded in 2012 with Pool and Ferry both firing off accusations of mismanaged funds and misplaced priorities. The Daily Beast was not able to reach Ferry for comment.)

 

[hitmouse]

Part 5, starting to regret doing it this way at this point:

Many GA-affiliated livestreamers (like Cohen) also felt a duty to not only detail the day-to-day activities of Occupy, but advance the cause. Pool differed. He tended to gravitate towards action and conflict, Cohen said, whether it was a police crackdown or protesters engaging in civil disobedience and at-times illegal activity. To her, Pool had crossed a line.
“I’m not about to endanger other people by creating evidence that could be used against them, and he’s happy to do that,” she said. (Pool has boasted that the police watched his Occupy livestreams.) Pool parachuted into Occupy without understanding its ideological underpinnings, Cohen explained. Over time, protesters grew increasingly wary of Pool’s presence and made it clear he wasn’t welcome. During one broadcast his phone was knocked out of his hand.
Pool would maintain, both to protesters and in interviews, that his adherence to objectivity and transparency meant sharing almost everything he’d recorded. Few would quibble with this explanation from a reporter or citizen journalist. But Pool openly presented himself as a pro-Occupy activist. “I don’t consider myself a journalist… I consider myself an activist 100 percent,” he told On the Media in November 2011, who was there to “support the movement.”
Once Occupy was out of the news cycle, Pool flipped.
“I am not an activist,” he told El Pais 10 months later. He was, however, now calling himself a journalist. By 2018, Pool had gone further. “I don’t align with Occupy Wall Street and never did,” he said. His definition of objectivity doesn’t hold up for Cohen, either. “By singularly focusing on the cop-confrontation and acts-of-dubious-legality beat, he had as much a biased lens as we did,” she said in a follow-up email. (Viral-ready videos of this sort have become something of a growth industry on the right.) “He wasn’t there to document a complicated political moment, he was there to get views. And conflict is what got views.”
These days, Pool paints a harsher picture of Occupy. “It was so crooked,” he claimed. What’s more, his opinions were rejected out of hand because others assumed he was white. When he identified as having a mixed-race background—Pool’s maternal grandmother is Korean—Occupy welcomed his contributions.
“These people were racist, the most racist people I've ever encountered in my life,” Pool claimed in February—more so than the avowed racists and members of the “alt-right” he’s spoken to. (The Daily Beast was unable to identify any interviews with Pool either during or immediately after Occupy in which he mentioned the rampant racism.)
Asked about Pool’s story, Fitzgerald replied: “This sounds like a totally fabricated, ‘overheard at the local coffee shop’-type anecdote meant to launder the false notion that racial justice is zero-sum.” As someone who’d documented “hundreds” of meetings, Fitzgerald said the idea Pool was discouraged from participating is easily disprovable: Pool never participated in public conversations, let alone tried to speak up.
“In reality, white-identified folks like myself were more than well-heard at OWS, and Occupy’s efforts to lift up voices of people who have been marginalized did not come at anybody’s expense,” he continued. “So that definitely would not have happened.”
For the next year and a half, Pool struck out on his own. Pool made appearances at SXSW and journalism panels, and he continued reporting from the field. Offers to crank out a ghostwritten book or work for an unnamed TV news program were turned down, Pool claimed. A “hacker space” in upstate New York he was helping launch never appears to have materialized. Funds were solicited for a documentary of the ongoing Occupy-related protests, which also apparently went unfinished.
The novelty of livestreamed broadcasts was very much held in high regard—the harbinger of a new, democratized, and decentralized kind of reporting. Pool was viewed as its avatar. Vice hired him in spring 2013, when the site was thriving. A partnership with HBO had been announced, and within months, Rupert Murdoch would buy a 5-percent stake, valuing it at $1.4 billion. (By 2017, an additional cash infusion led to a $5.7 billion valuation, and, over time, questions about Vice’s long-term financial stability.)

 

[hitmouse]

6

Pool’s appeal to the outlet was as a one-man content creator—able to jet from location to location at a moment’s notice and attract gobs of viewers. It didn’t take long before the staff had soured on their new hire. Some former colleagues pointed to Pool’s evident lack of reporting experience or skills, save for his ability to hit play on a livestream.
“He was bringing nothing to the table," a former Vice producer said. “It felt like we were being conned.”
Pool’s first Vice trip to Istanbul, Turkey, saw his colleagues’ worries borne out.
An ex-Vice staffer familiar with the shoot described their issues with much of the footage Pool sent back: him sitting in his hotel room and talking to the camera, and, once the conflict had subsided, emerging to point and gawk at the rubble. The initial version of the short documentary didn’t pass muster with their Vice superiors, they claimed, if only because they’d failed to make it seem as if Pool was on the front lines of the unrest. It had to be drastically re-edited prior to being released.
At a different shoot in Thailand, Vice sent two teams of reporters. One positioned itself in the thick of the protests. Pool rode on a moped on the outskirts of town, shouting into the camera, and removed from the conflict. “It was just hilarious,” a person who worked with Pool at the time said.” A February 2014 shoot in Venezuela ended abruptly. According to Pool, he was forced to flee the country after a high-profile pro-Maduro media figure accused him of being a “spy.” Should he ever return, he “will be killed,” Pool has claimed.
His trepidations were certainly understandable. Providing coverage during civil unrest and from conflict zones can spook even seasoned hands, let alone someone who isn’t familiar with the lay of the land, a former senior Vice editorial employee explained. But Pool had trouble fessing up to his fears, multiple Vice sources said. Instead, he’d toss out thinly veiled excuses, pinning his reluctance to leave the hotel on problems with his technical gear or producers not comprehending the severity of the situation. (Pool strongly disagreed with the criticisms of his field reporting. “I covered the Gezi Park protest to smashing success,” he told The Daily Beast.)
Back at Vice’s Brooklyn offices, Pool found other ways to alienate his colleagues.
One female ex-Vice staffer recalled a 2013 conversation with Pool in which he told her point-blank: “Women are too emotional to be good journalists; their feelings get in the way.” An individual who was present for the exchange confirmed her account; another confirmed they’d been told by the female staffer at the time. (Pool told The Daily Beast it was “absurd” to think he’d made this comment.) Somewhat relatedly, two years ago, Pool announced he wanted a wife who would stay at home and raise his children as opposed to having her own career. It bothered Pool that this desire was now viewed as “socially unacceptable.” Pool complained last year that feminism had negatively impacted his ability to find a romantic partner and start a family. “You know what the problem is, though, it’s definitely not me,” he said. “I think it’s everybody else.”
When Pool was given an early version of Google Glass, he strolled around the office broadcasting his co-workers’ activities live. It was viewed by some at Vice as a transparent attempt to bolster the image he’d been cultivating: a reporter who availed himself of the latest in bleeding-edge tech to expand the boundaries of reporting. Of course there was nothing worth filming in an early 2010s media shop, save for people sitting at their desks, writing stories, and whatnot. Baffled staffers either did their best to ignore him or were forced to politely ask that he stop recording without their consent.
Vice also provided reporters working in conflict zones with protective gear. Pool would wear a flak jacket in the office, per multiple Vice sources. Several Vice employees thought it laughable or made him look like a “poser,” but others found his behavior downright offensive, one former longtime Vice editorial staffer said, since Vice reporters had been detained by hostile foreign governments. In their eyes, Pool treated the gear like a cosplay outfit.
Touting his own bravery, accomplishments, Vice paycheck, or the famous people he knew didn’t go over well, either. At one point he brought hacker-turned-Nazi troll Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer to the Vice newsroom and paraded him around. The former longtime editorial staffer felt Pool was showing off, as if to say, “Check it out, I’m hanging out with Weev, I'm so plugged in to internet culture.” (In the documentary Hacker Wars, Pool appears in scenes with Auernheimer.)
For another glimpse at how some at Vice viewed Pool, while he was on staff, a co-worker drew a satirical cartoon strip depicting him as a penis wearing a beanie.

 

[hitmouse]

7

“There was a deficit of ideas from Tim Pool,” a former member of Vice’s video team said. “There was frustration about his inability to do a repeat hit like his coverage of Occupy Wall Street.” He still had his fans in upper management, and the ability to remain in their good graces also pissed people off. Specifically, how “seemingly oblivious the upper management and the execs at Vice were to the fact that Tim Pool was a total hack,” as the former longtime editorial staffer put it.
Pool has a different recollection of his stint at Vice. In his comments to The Daily Beast, Pool firmly insisted any allegations he’d failed to perform under duress or shied away from hazardous reporting were false. “I constantly flew into chaos,” he said. As to the broader criticisms, “I don’t care if people say stupid things about me. People are allowed to hate me and there are many people I’m still friends with from Vice.”
Publicly, Pool has repeatedly stated he was both the “first“ and “founding member” of Vice News. Were it not for him, Vice News might not have existed, even. “I convinced [Vice] to do real news, on the ground reporting,” he declared in October. The outlet has been sending reporters to cover stories from far-flung locations dating back to the mid-2000s.
Danny Gold, one of the first Vice News hires, said while Pool had been brought onboard to the vertical fairly early on, “He wasn’t the founding member. That’s not true.” (Multiple Vice sources agreed with Gold, who has occasionally freelanced for The Daily Beast.) “And the idea that he convinced Vice to do real, on-the-ground reporting is also not true,” he added.
Pool has insinuated that his colleagues were lazy and overpaid. Citing conversations he’s had with “a couple” of unnamed former Vice employees, Pool also said “going woke” had led to its downturn, financial and otherwise. Unnamed investors’ capitulation to “feminists” following high-profile sexual-harassment allegations against Vice in 2017 was also to blame. “Imagine what Vice would be today under my leadership,” he mused.
His most recent attempt at creating an independent news site imploded in January. This despite crowdfunding $1.2 million in 2019. In the aftermath, two employees alleged Pool had kidnapped a cat. The former lead reporter has filed a complaint in California charging Pool’s company with engaging in retaliatory termination, per documents obtained by The Daily Beast. Pool has filed a $1.2 million lawsuit in the state of Connecticut accusing the two former employees of unjust enrichment.
The end of Pool’s yearlong tenure at Vice came in the summer of 2014. Mass protests broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, following the police shooting of Michael Brown. Vice sent two crews, including Pool and reporters from their recently launched HBO show. But Pool struggled, because “he wasn’t really a journalist,” a staffer who was part of Vice’s coverage said. Asking questions and interviewing protesters and residents didn’t seem to pique his curiosity, despite the stories they were told about disturbing interactions with the police. Pool tended to keep his head buried in his phone. “It was so bizarre,” said the staffer. “It was always about him.”
Given the heightened tensions in the area and the expanding national conversation about race, many locals were apprehensive when approached by reporters. “If you didn’t strike the right tone, you could easily be dismissed, and that’s what was happening over and over again” with Pool, a second staffer present in Ferguson said. From their perspective, Pool was unable to overcome this obstacle because he was focused on promoting himself. It also seemed as if “any person of color [Pool] interacted with just really had no time for him,” they said.
The second staffer also remarked that Pool spent an inordinate amount of time while on the ground checking his Twitter feed and, for reasons they couldn’t ascertain, touching base with Casey Neistat, a popular YouTuber who was in town to provide his own coverage.
Reached by phone, Neistat confirmed their account. During Ferguson, “Tim was very intrigued with how I was able to build this brand for myself—how I was able to build my own following on YouTube,” he said. At first blush, the second staffer dismissed Pool as being “clueless,” but over the course of the shoot, their perceptions sharpened: “He acted like a narcissist—someone who didn’t care about other people.”
That night in August, the other Vice reporters and producers managed to get behind the barricades law enforcement had established. Pool, who had arrived late, had been shunted into the parking lot of a Target and away from West Florissant Avenue where the main clashes between police and protesters took place.
The livestreamed video from that night shows the differences in the two feeds: Pool’s was shunted into the lower right-hand corner; the other Vice crew took up the rest of the screen. In the comments section, as the evening unfolded, viewers treated the two feeds as if it were a kind of competition—and Pool was losing. Unsurprising, since they were providing real-time reporting, and Pool was merely talking or speculating about things he saw from a distance.
Three years after the Ferguson protests, Pool tried to rewrite history, alleging to The New Yorker that a Vice “camerawoman,” not him, wanted to remain on safe terrain and instead preferred to interview the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Meanwhile, he took to the streets, “to cover what’s happening,” where, he said, “grenades were going off. Guess which one got more views.”
None of that is accurate, per multiple Vice sources. The “camerawoman” he referred to was his producer, who had gotten past the barricades set up by the cops to cover what was happening in the streets—not Pool. The brief interview with Jackson took place early the following morning after an all-nighter spent shooting and editing, not while the protests were taking place. (It never aired on Vice.) And it was the other crew’s videos, not Pool’s, which drove viewership.