All is not what it seems, especially when it comes to Tim Pool.
On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, host Will Sommer and guest host Andrew Kirell discuss the new song released by the pro-Trump YouTuber, who has used some of his wealth to fund a rock song, “Only Ever Wanted.”
The song soared up the iTunes music charts, landing in second behind Britney Spears’ first new song in six years, her collaboration with Elton John, “Hold Me Closer.”
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“Butt rock is the phrase of a lot of people would use to describe this,” Kirell says of Pool’s song.
“A lot of people are hearing it and a lot of people who are not necessarily fans, you bring them in with this generic song and you get them then to listen to your near-fascist rants. That’s how he brings in more people to be like, just trust this guy. He’s a punk. He’s one of you. He’s not just some partisan YouTuber. And that’s how he hooks you.”
The song also features The Offspring’s former drummer, Pete Parada, who was booted from the band last year after refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine before a tour. Parada says he suffers from Guillain-Barré Syndrome.
“A lot of supporters of Tim Pool were saying, ‘This is like a middle finger to The Offspring for letting go of their drummer,’” Kirell explains.
The song comes hot on the heels of The Daily Beast contributor Robert Silverman’s piece revealing how Pool’s website, Timcast.com, plagiarized a number of stories from CNN, Bloomberg, and Forbes, among others, despite Pool’s repeated claims that such mainstream news outlets “lie all the time” and that his site will “bring back real journalism.” Pool did not comment to The Daily Beast, but his site did fire the author of the plagiarized stories earlier this year and the articles in question were removed.
“What was interesting about this plagiarism problem that they had is that Tim Pool made a career off saying, ‘I have this website and I have this podcast that is the antidote to the mainstream media. The media is evil, they’re out to get you.’
“Not only was there a plagiarism problem, but it was plagiarizing the very outlets that Tim has made a career pretending to be the exact opposite of.”
Also on the podcast, Andy Kroll, a ProPublica reporter and author of the upcoming book A Death on W Street: The Murder of Seth Rich and the Age of Conspiracy discusses how the story of the late DNC staffer’s life and death took on this bizarre, conspiratorial afterlife online.
“People first on the far left of the political spectrum… back then [began] speculating without any evidence that Seth had somehow been killed because he was going to blow the whistle on corruption at the DNC or that he was on his way,” Kroll says. “There’s different varieties and flavors of this, but this conspiracy theory surfaces online on Twitter, on Reddit, on 4chan and other places and as time goes on, this conspiracy theory starts to undergo these different evolutions or mutations.
“That is the core of this new book of mine. How does this happen? How did this pretty normal guy in Washington, D.C., become the fixation of this conspiracy theory and who are the players involved, and how his family tried to fight back against it first in the court of public opinion, where they got nowhere, and then finally in the court of law.”
In the podcast’s “Fresh Hell” segment, the hosts discuss how easy it is to rile up internet mobs like 4chan.
“There’s so many people out there with a lot of sleuthing time on their hands. I wish they would sleuth themselves up something better to do with their free time,” Sommer laments.
Listen, and subscribe, to Fever Dreams on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
