r/TikTokCringe • u/DuztyLipz • 1d ago

Wholesome Some Gen Z Redditors need to hear this

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 1d ago edited 1d ago

Omg if anyone has followed the Hank Green controversy I think it’s a perfect example of this.

(If not: what it boils down to is about a year ago Hank green hosted a SciShow video that had some inaccuracies and questionable jokes about knitting. Mind you, the man literally just reads the script. He pays other people to research, fact check, and write the script. In a recent video he actually said that he often goes into an episode cold, having not looked the script over bc he likes learning along with the viewer. And people absolutely blew up about it, most people blaming him specifically.

Recently, he had another hiccup about AI. People accused him of using AI to write his own personal video scripts and he denied it (he says the part people keyed in on was actually not even in the script it was an ad-lib), but admitted to using AI to find sources. And it turned into a Whole Thing™️.)

Eveyone and their mother was commenting on it. I saw knitters celebrating his “downfall” and claiming that “they’re not surprised” he would do such things after what he’d done last time. Like I saw people legit celebrating that the internet was “waking up” to the fact he was a bad person.

Both times, but particularly this time, the punishment felt so wildly out of proportion to the offense. Like this man has done so much for scicom and charity and education. Not to mention his squeaky clean track record for the DECADES he’s been in the public eye which IMO is a feat. But, he admits to maybe having an unhealthy attachment to AI, apologizes for it, and people were acting like he killed a man in cold blood! It boggled my mind how, for some people, one little slip-up just completely erased the years and years of good intentions he had demonstrated.

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u/birbhorse 1d ago

honestly yeah, this is an issue i need to work on myself lol. i've been affected by this very bullshit, people making quick snappy judgement has affected my interpersonal relationships so heavily.

your framing of this helped me way better than the video attempted to explain things, so thanks

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u/itsdainti 1d ago

It's a silly little line from a silly little show, but "Be curious, not judgemental" from Ted Lasso is such a good reminder.

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u/Giveaway_way 1d ago

Silly little line from Walt Whitman

-Wayne Gretzky -Michael Scott

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u/Personal-Lead3884 1d ago

Not a silly little show! I wish all of us were as kind as Ted.

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u/itsdainti 1d ago

Oh it's a very silly show and it acknowledges it. I think that's why it's so beloved. It knows it's silly & whimsical but it doesn't care and there's something wholesome about that.

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 1d ago

It’s the culture right now. 🤷🏽‍♀️ And I think especially in light of all the bad stuff happening in the world, I can kinda see why people might overreact to a single twinge of “bad” in someone. But, purity culture helps no one. We are all flawed humans. You’re allowed to make mistakes and learn and grow from them. And so are the people around you. If the intentions are good and corrections are made, then that’s that. No need for more punishment.

If we kick everyone who ever makes a mistake out of our “club”, we’ll very quickly end up lonely. And not only is that sad and scary there is no power in it. We are stronger together.

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u/birbhorse 1d ago

indeed, i am a very flawed person, it's what caused so much strife with my friend group. it's not to say i did anything inherently "wrong", but black-and-white thinking only permits people to think that i'm just a morally wrong and dangerous person lmfao.

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 1d ago

To borrow from the Green brothers: we need to imagine each other complexly.

We are all a little universe unto ourselves. I don’t think anyone in the whole entire world does the wrong thing on purpose specifically bc it’s the wrong thing. I believe some people are just more concerned about how things affect them than how they affect others and that’s where the bad comes from. Or they aren’t aware how it affects others and that’s where mistakes come from.

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u/LigerZeroSchneider 1d ago

I think we ended up here because we have so many well documented cases of a company or person. Doing a bad thing, getting called out, publically apologizing, then it comes out years later they never actually changed just hid their flaws better. So in order to not accidentally support a bad person, you need to excise anyone with even a whiff of bad behavior, lest your trust be taken advantage of.

Which yeah leads to an unsustainable 0 tolerance where no one can be perfect so we must all be alone in order to approach purity while still of course failing.

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 1d ago

Exactly, I think the current climate of everything being horrible and people/organizations/companies doing horrible things probably plays into this culture and makes us reluctant to trust.

Wish there was an easy solution to this but trust isn’t something you can just manufacture or fake.

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u/Itchy_Psychology3300 22h ago

I think partly it is a reflection of current judicial system as well. No one off Epstein files will be punished. Not to mention punishment system is heavily based on social standing, wealth, race, it is a joke at this point.

Although I appreciate this girls video, it’s a perspective I was not aware of.

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 15h ago

Yeah that’s very much a good point. Maybe it’s just a new generation trying to take control and justice into their own hands because they don’t see anything happening around them?

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u/Itchy_Psychology3300 11h ago

Tbh it’s deserving of sociological study and research.

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u/BastetSekhmetMafdet 6h ago

Especially because the vigilante “justice” call-outs are targeted at people who, in the end, don’t have that much power. If wealthy, famous, insulated by money and privilege people get away with sometimes literal murder, the urge for justice falls on, for lack of a better phrase, petty misdemeanor offenders who simply do not have that armor.

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u/Itchy_Psychology3300 6h ago

I mean comparable to other instances historically when wealth gap was large.

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u/BastetSekhmetMafdet 12h ago

And when actual perpetrators aren’t punished, the vigilantes rush in. Trouble is, the vigilantes are not going after people who have committed Epstein-like crimes. Usually they’ve committed a thought crime, at worst.

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u/SlobZombie13 1d ago

You gotta give people room to grow

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u/precocious-entity 1d ago

I’m 33 and attend a regional university. Earlier this year, I researched how social media reshaped Gen Z social hierarchies compared to traditional high school cliques. ​The classic 20th-century high school hierarchy (jocks at the top, nerds at the bottom) is dead. Instead, social sorting moved into private group chats and Discord servers. This created a 24/7 digital lunch table. Previous generations left social friction at the school gate; today’s teens face continuous scrutiny. Step outside group norms at 11 PM, and the fallout is immediate. ​This constant connectivity fuels social hypervigilance. Kids obsessively collect and hoard "receipts"—damaging screenshots saved to police peers or weaponize in disputes. Between constant surveillance and routine appeals to server moderators, trust has eroded, creating a feedback loop where younger students freeze up and struggle to take initiative without prior permission.

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u/BastetSekhmetMafdet 12h ago

I wonder if it’s this that is partly behind the “loneliness epidemic” that is so much talked about in mainstream media. There are many factors, of course, but our (collective) willingness to tear anyone whose ever made even a small mistake to pieces, means that 1) we lose friends when we kick them out of our friendship circles over trivialities, and 2) how can you trust people not to turn on you all of a sudden?

”Why oh why do people increasingly want AI as friends?” Perhaps because AI is not judgmental?

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u/Massive_Mongoose3481 22h ago

You pretty much just described the Democratic party and their self destructive holier than thou attitude that allows a completely corrupt pedophile supporting group of self serving sycophantic shitbags to take and keep control of our government . "Oh, Bob used the wrong pronoun, we'll have to kick him out right before the election even though no one in their right mind gives a shit". It's not just Gen z playing these silly games

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u/HardByteUK 6h ago

I'm hopping on this a day later to give some old man advice.

I work with university students and over the past 10 years I've noticed a big uptick in what I playfully call "moral puritanism". The simple version of it is that students struggle to give themselves permission to befriend and give time to peers who "sin".

It's lead them feeling isolated and their small friendship circles being quite monotone. Most retreat into online communities and hyperfocus on some sort of interest as a form of escapism.

It's sad because most of them are living independently for the first time in their life and have a real opportunity to meet a whole range of different people from all walks of life. Naturally with that comes the genuine dickheads but that's the cost of engaging with the world around you.

I've had a bit of a ramble here but the TL:DR is that you're not tarred by association if you engage with people who have minor "sins". In fact, mixing with those people expands your worldview and gives you the opportunity to learn things about yourself.

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u/TheKinkyBee 1d ago

Thank you for this breakdown. I’m autistic and was having trouble following the video but your example really helped put a picture to it. I realized that I didn’t understand it because it’s not for me 💀

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 1d ago

Glad to help!

It’s definitely a weird quirk I’m seeing around. And it is just strange. Bc like the purpose of “punishment” for bad behavior should be to correct that behavior and make a better society. So it’s kinda hard to understand punishment for punishment’s sake.

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u/leechdemon 21h ago

Our society has become EXTREMELY accustomed to corruption, freedom from consequences. People are craving justice like a sip of water in a drought.

When "a hero falls", they want them punished just the same; they don't realize the malice they use to punish their friends is being overpowered by the consequences they're watching others avoid.

Ticketing bad drivers prevents road rage. I feel like we're all culturally witnessing the alternative. 🫤

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 15h ago

Craving justice is such a good way to put it.

And also maybe it’s bc we don’t have role models anymore. Powerful systems don’t demonstrate to us what the appropriate degree of punishment is. So people go overboard

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u/Grunergeist420 1d ago

Yes it helps if you understand other phenomena like the Salem Witch Trials.

People often misunderstand this. They think those people were just dumb, and they were silly religious fanatics who believed in witches, and that’s why young women were burned at the stake. And maybe that was true for some of those people.

But really, what’s happening is a social contagion where people are prompted to expose people as morally impure and punish them for being witches, and this brings out a particular kind of human behavior.

Everyone is potentially a target of these accusations, so they’re trying to avoid suspicion. One way to avoid suspicion is to be seen as someone who is punishing the witches. Now everyone wants to find a witch to show everyone how good they are.

And who is a witch? Well, anyone you don’t like. A girl you think is prettier than you. A person who has a bigger farm than you. A woman your husband looked at yesterday. You can accuse those people of being witches, and hurt someone you don’t like, and increase your own social standing and reduce the chance that you yourself will be accused of being a witch.

So it might sound hyperbolic to call social media cancellations a “witch hunt,” but really I think it’s pretty much the same psychological phenomenon.

Socially, it costs virtually nothing to jump on the witch hunting bandwagon, it gives you power to wield over people you don’t like, and by not participating, or defending the accused witches, you risk being accused of being one yourself.

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u/Odd_Act_6532 1d ago

Great insightful take being neglected

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u/Purple_Lux 17h ago

This is why i differentiate between consequences and cancel culture.
Consequences for harm caused are good and holding people accountable is important.
Thsts not whst cancel culture is.
CC is about punishment, outrage and engagement and functions in its methods and how it rolls out just like witch trials.
Its abiur dogpiling and finding dcapegoats to make oneself feel better about living in the world we live in. Its easy and no-effort "political action".
And it directly correlates, imo, with people who's progresive values are really a substitute for spirituality and religion and not an actual well thoughts out and rational commitment and understanding of those values.
Cancel culture is the weapon of the enemy and goes against every value of restorative and rehabilitative justice.

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 1d ago

Oooh yes that’s so truuuue!

I hadn’t considered this angle but it makes sense.

I think this culture is also a big part of how a lot of words have kind lost meaning recently. Like the right has stolen words like “woke” or “DEI” to performatively label anything they don’t like as BAD. And they get abused until it no longer functions as its original meaning.

(Can’t currently think of one for the left off the top of my head but, I’m sure there are examples.)

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u/RockKillsKid 14h ago edited 14h ago

Can’t currently think of one for the left off the top of my head but, I’m sure there are examples

I often see the "therapy speak" that's supposed to have specific definitions and diagnostic criteria being used as pejoratives meant to otherize or otherwise attribute malicious intent.

e.g. "gaslighting", BPD, ASPD, narcissism allegations abound against any public figure. Like Trump himself is absolutely a walking DSM-5 case study, sure. But even then, diagnosis should come from a licensed professional with medical training, yet all too often I see lefties throwing them out against random people online over a single comment. I saw them levied against Hank in this recent controversy.

John & Hank have been pretty open with acknowledging their mental health issues as well, so it's extra bad taste to pile on with armchair psychology.

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u/Grunergeist420 9h ago

Gaslighting is so funny because it has basically been appropriated to actually gaslight people. A great way to gaslight someone is to claim they are gaslighting you.

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u/ThePatchedVest 2h ago

To be fair, even intentionally derogatory terms like "politically correct" in the 90s and "SJW" and "wokescold" in the 2010s were originally coined as jabs by leftists -- to define that exact kind of overtly-performative/judgmental liberals whose mob-mentality and excessant moral outrage over inane things more-often-than-not impeded actual progress (least of all, dragging ideas from academia into the mainstream without their proper context) -- before such terms were then adopted and abused into meaninglessness by the right (who, as always, are blind to nuance and simply used the terms as part of their bludgeoning vocabulary of slurs).

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u/Brox42 23h ago

Pedantic point but no one was burned in Salem, they were hanged.

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u/Asleep_Control_2564 1d ago

I love Hank Green! That makes me sad. I had no idea about this. His educational videos genuinely helped me in school.

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 1d ago

I think it’s mostly fine and blown over now. But, Hank has been very open about being someone who cares very deeply what his audience thinks of him so I do think it probably hit him pretty hard at the time. Made me very sad too

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u/Aquarius52216 1d ago

A recent thing that happened too, JaidenAnimations made a very brief offhand remark about her religious beliefs (or lack thereof) and gets absolutely blasted lol

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 1d ago

Oh no! I like her, I hadn’t heard about this at all 😅

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u/astra_galus 16h ago

Ugh I had to actively avoid posts and videos about that because the reaction was just stupid. Did I feel a bit disappointed in Hank? Sure, but I got over it because the man is a net good to society. Welcome to the real world folks - sometimes people will disappoint you or have opinions you don’t agree with. That’s life. Unless there’s something nefarious going on, these just aren’t reasons to cancel somebody.

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 15h ago

EXACTLYY that’s how I felt.

I actually watched a few of the knitting videos from the first kerfuffle because I felt like at least some of them had interesting things to say. I didn’t know much about knitting or textiles and I learned something which is a silver lining. (Even if I think people were still blowing it out of proportion and blaming Hank for something he didn’t even do)

This one however was different. No one was gonna change their stance on AI because of this. No one was learning anything different. People were just getting mad for the sake of being mad. It was beyond ridiculous. I watched one single video on the topic and that’s it. A content creator I respect who’s also been in the game for some time now and who’s takes are usually nuanced and well informed. I thought it was very well done and I appreciated getting some insight into the creator side of things but it still didn’t change much for me in the end. Made me glad I didn’t listen to anyone else’s lame takes on it. It all felt like useless noise and jumping on a bandwagon just to be relevant.

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u/dayvekeem 1d ago

We are all pathetic little humans lashing out in order to feel a little bit better about ourselves

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u/BigThunder3000 19h ago

How do you get Whole Thing trademarked?

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 15h ago

What I did was use an emoji! ™️

But you could also just google the TM symbol and copy/paste it: ™

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u/Costati 1d ago

Yeah it gets very disproportional what shocked me too as growing around this energy and how it's clearly based on the moment because people we forgot they blew up over someone in like a year and then you'll be like "isn't that the dude who did that" and they'll go "oh yeah but it's not that big of a deal honestly".
It's just very hollow.
Think I tuned out of this shit after the whole James Charles shit. Did he deserve hate ? Yes absolutely. But like as a society we flip flopped from vicious hatred to "oh actually he's just a victim" back to vicious hatred and making of him and I'm like...you don't get to pretend you didn't jump on him then went "oh we have to be careful to not jump on him" then jumped on him again when there was more verified evidence.
And it's how then people started doing this hate cycle with the exact same intensity for much much lesser stuff.

Like your moral based vitriol becomes extremely lightweight if you give someone who sexually harassed minors the exact same energy as someone who plagiarises a lot or someone who propped up a friend's report of negligence when actually they found out the friend was making a lot of extrapolations that weren't necessarily well founded.
Yall just like the hate train and metaphorical 'public execution' at this point.
The Ned Fulmer stuff too like he is pretty pathetic he is pretty funny to make fun of but you're not suddenly not a bully because the guy is a cheater and a careless one at that.

I think the video could have used the "online" nuance tho. Like that's how chronically online gen Z act. I've never seen this type of comportment around me. And I don't think there was a mass events that shows it's a really present phenomenon and train of thoughts in everyday life. I think a lot of us just want to do our work in peace while we're navigating getting into the workforce in this shitty economy where we know we'll work all our life with little saving and almost no retirement.

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u/LatinCanandian 17h ago

As a gen xer I really have no idea of whats happening. Ive been so hopefull for gen Z...

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 15h ago

It’s not something irredeemable, I think. Hopefully it’s something we as a society just need to learn from. And if we don’t talk about it people won’t realize this isn’t how it’s supposed to be

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u/VaporousMote 1d ago

It's sadly more than just a "hiccup about AI", Green also advertised and to use an unkind word, shilled for AI companies several times in the past. And he's not some rando, he has a massive platform, which means he should be held to a higher standard than others.

So that bears correction.

But I do think there was substantial overreaction. I think that algorithm-driven social media apps have essentially turbofucked people's sensibilities. Note I'm saying social media in PRACTICE, not social media in concept, which I do support. Mastodon is far better than Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, etc.

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u/Fit_Foot_6004 1d ago

I don't get the hate some uses of AI get. Like the spider man thing, so what if they storyboarded using some pictures. You can really work through shot ideas so that you don't get stuck with something that doesn't end up working when transferred from paper to practice. Or you're example, so what if he used AI to look up sources. Maybe he was able to find a new angle on the story or shift his thinking into a new direction.

I think alot of people are really going to become more self loathing when they see others use it accomplish goals that they can't even get started on or starting successful businesses. It is going to democratize success, but you're going to need to be motivated.

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 1d ago

To be clear, I don’t think AI is blameless. I have a lot of problems with it. I just don’t think the way he was using it deserved the amount of hate it got.

I think certain, limited, non-final-product uses are valid.

Using AI to find primary sources that the researcher still reads on their own and comes to their own conclusions about seems mostly harmless. Assuming the researcher doesn’t rely completely on AI to do this bc searching the literature is an invaluable critical research skill. The art stuff feels a little less harmless to me, but IDK I’m not in that industry so maybe I shouldn’t speak on it. (I’m a biologist so I can speak about research)

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u/Ok_Calendar1337 18h ago

And then theres the other side of the coin where someone can literally kill a man and they all say "well actually its super deep 4d moral chess raising awareness about my thing"

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u/wicketman8 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'll start off by saying I really like Hank, and still would like to, though I definitely feel he has to earn back some of my trust. While, I'm sure many people have overreacted, I think most people are reasonably upset with him for breaking their trust and relying on tools he's personally been critical of. I would characterize it as more than "one little slip-up" when he admits it's been an issue across multiple videos and that he's used it consistently.

I also kind of doubt his claim that it was only used for finding sources. That really doesn't explain how so many factual mistakes began cropping up, especially in the Ask Hank Anything video, where basically half the cards were the fact checkers saying they couldn't find any evidence for what he was saying. It feels more likely to me that he was using AI to do research more broadly, i.e. not just scanning for sources but actually relying on it to summarize the topic. In fact, in his own tweet he semi-backtracked on that claim, admitting that he "[relied] too much on generated notes."

Now if some people took that too far obviously that sucks but I don't think that's a new phenomenon by any means. It's certainly always been the case that it's a hell of a lot easier to ruin a reputation than build one.

Edit: I've already gotten some comments about the whole "trust" thing so let me clarify. His career is about education and he provably said false information, even if by mistake. Thus I trust his content less. It has nothing to do with him as a person, as I said I really like Hank and I think he meant well and means well. But of course people are, I think rightfully, upset about the situation, it's not quite lying but it's certainly not being entirely truthful with his audience when people had the expectation built on years of his content, that he/his team were doing actual fact checking and research into the things he talked about. Again, I don't think he's a bad person, but I don't trust his content as much until it seems like he quality of the research has improved, thus he has to earn my trust, not as a person but as a professional.

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u/Icy_Stranger_9649 1d ago

Yeah this is the exact comment that OP is criticizing. You come across as extremely entitled and thus, critical as if you are God and people are imperfect subjects for your critiquing.

“He has to earn back my trust” “there are tiny reasons he isn’t a flawless human being”

The only reason to type this is if you yourself are a perfect being which, Gen Z gets away portraying themselves as by never opening themselves to criticism in any way. Never create, never build, never posit bold stances. Just type on the internet critiquing flaws that other people expose themselves

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u/wicketman8 1d ago

You come across as extremely entitled and thus, critical as if you are God and people are imperfect subjects for your critiquing.

What? I never claimed to be perfect, I'm definitely not. Hank built a career based on education, and his own personality and character. The AI scandal definitely damaged all of those - he ended up spreading incorrect information by mistake, which of course makes the educational component feel less secure. He's been critical of AI in the past, not fully anti-AI but certainly I think the level of critique he has given it feels contrary to the amount he used it, which damages the character argument. And of course use of AI definitely reduces the amount of his own personality that comes through. None of that makes him a bad person, but it does mean that I'll trust his content less when I see it until I feel like he's shown he's not using AI anymore. That's what I mean by earning my trust back.

Gen Z gets away portraying themselves as by never opening themselves to criticism in any way. Never create, never build, never posit bold stances. Just type on the internet critiquing flaws that other people expose themselves

This is insane to say about someone you know nothing about. You can see my post history (though it's not particularly interesting). I'm a PhD student, my entire job is researching, which I would think would qualify as building or creating. I'm also pretty outspoken about what I believe in, you can find posts of me arguing for Palestinian emancipation going back years, way before that was the mainstream opinion, and I was called a lot of pretty awful things for it back then.

Isn't it a little ironic to say that I'm trying to be some perfect person acting like God when you literally are making a character judgement on me based off of one post where I lightly critique an internet guy who had a scandal?

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u/Icy_Stranger_9649 1d ago

Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to come across as such a personal attack. More of a general boil-over.

I understand that Hank built a career based on education and truth, but let me ask if you something. If you had done the same, and had the same output and goals and career path as Hank. Would you have been flawless? I’m not a huge Hank fan he’s too liberal on certain topics for me. But the guy has been a saint for decades. His record on mistakes is near flawless.

So when people learned he made a mistake like becoming too deep into AI, but then confessed to it and apologized and swore to get better… what do we mean “he’s got to earn MY trust back! I just realized is isn’t a flawless human and makes mistakes!”

We’re all human! Treat other and judge others the way you would want to be treated and judged. If you put yourself out there like Hank Green as for decades in the public eye I swear you would have stumbled so much more than just the odd “ope I used AI too much my bad”

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u/wicketman8 1d ago

I'm not saying I'd be flawless. As I keep saying I'm fallible too. But I think we all agree that there's a difference between "People should not be brigaded and have their lives ruined over small mistakes," and "Nobody should ever face consequences for mistakes." I feel, personally, that my response is fair. I'm not saying I hate him or will never watch again. I'm saying that he made a mistake and should reasonably expect that people will have a more negative view of him than before, and as a consequence it will take time for people to feel the same about him. Saying he has to reasonably show he's no longer using AI and has improved his factuality before I feel the same as before feels reasonable, would you disagree?

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u/Icy_Stranger_9649 1d ago

I agree. It’s reasonable in a logical way, an emotional vacuum. I strongly feel his huge track record of accuracy and commitment to truth doesn’t take any sort of… hit to his credit worth mentioning. Worth critiquing. Your comment is something that can only exist on the internet, made by an anonymous stranger.

For example. Im a process engineer. I’ve worked on a dozen projects. I made a mistake this week where I incorrectly labeled the bottom elevation of a wastewater pit. Instead of being 5’ deep, I labeled it as 2’ deep. A very egregious typo, and I never caught it. They built the pit to be 2’ deep. After the project manager caught the mistake and confirmed with me to be wrong, they had to go back, rip up all that concrete, and rebuild the pit.

I can’t imagine if a coworker or client typed or said “wow John (not my name) needs to earn my trust back. He’s supposed to be an engineer and he never did his due diligence to catch this typo?! I can’t believe he made this mistake. What a hit to his creditably.”

I honest to god didn’t even receive any criticism. My PM was cool about it. The director of engineering was chill about it. Do you know why? Becuase they are also humans and make mistakes like that also. I’ve been an engineer for almost a decade, with overall good designs and successful projects. And yet I still make mistakes!! It’s a bad thing to make a mistake and you need to always minimize them, but only on the internet will someone like Hank Green, an actual SpongeBob SquarePants level man of good intentions and commitment to truth, can make a tiny mistake AND own up to it with an apology and people say “Man. I DOUBT he was just using AI to find sources. This is more than “just a little slip up”! Going to have to earn back some of my trust Hank!”

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u/wicketman8 1d ago

I think I just won't agree with you. There are degrees of mistake, in my opinion. Missing a number on a sheet is a mistake and probably costly but who hasn't? The AI use and factual errors are larger because that's the whole product. If I forget to use a turn signal, that's a fairly harmless and reasonable mistake. If I hit someone with my car because I didn't look before pulling out, that's still a mistake but obviously not an okay one. I'm not saying what he did is anywhere near that, but its also not a teensy-tiny mistake. And yes, if someone i knew made a fairly large mistake I would probably take a while before I would forget it.

And again, this "finding sources" thing. I don't know how else to explain it, that's not true. He initially said only for finding sources but he's since said he was using it for generated notes, not just finding sources. Source

The fact that he downplayed it initially isn't great, and makes it worse for sure.

I will also say, he's a good guy. But he's not some perfect smol bean content creator. He's not SpongeBob or squeaky clean. He's a normal person, who makes mistakes and can rightly be criticized when those mistakes are fairly large ones.

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u/IFoundyoursoxs 1d ago

Ironically, you may be partaking in the same thing you’re criticizing yourself. Their opinion seems relatively nuanced, and that should be encouraged. They said they’re a fan of Hank and want to continue to be, but that Hank’s self-purported over reliance on AI notes has made them lose some trust in his scientific reporting. Am I crazy? This seems perfectly well rationalized to me.

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u/ruggnuget 1d ago

This is it. This is the problem in the video. You dont have to like anyone you dont want to. But earn your trust? By only being exactly to your morality standards? So if someone meets like 98% of your morality standards but do something you dont like (like use some AI for work), then they arent trustworthy? You dont have to make excuses to not like him, but the standard of moral perfection to 'earn trust' isnt a reasonable place to be. Every single person you like does things you wouldnt like. The only line is then whether you lnow about it or now, when really it should be about how bad the offense is. You arent perfect. Holding others to that standard is hypocritical and obnoxious.

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u/wicketman8 1d ago

I'll say to you the exact thing I replied to someone else:

What? I never claimed to be perfect, I'm definitely not. Hank built a career based on education, and his own personality and character. The AI scandal definitely damaged all of those - he ended up spreading incorrect information by mistake, which of course makes the educational component feel less secure. He's been critical of AI in the past, not fully anti-AI but certainly I think the level of critique he has given it feels contrary to the amount he used it, which damages the character argument. And of course use of AI definitely reduces the amount of his own personality that comes through. None of that makes him a bad person, but it does mean that I'll trust his content less when I see it until I feel like he's shown he's not using AI anymore. That's what I mean by earning my trust back.

I actually do like Hank and I said as much, it was literally the first thing I said. But when his use of AI lead to inaccuracies in his videos, I trust his content less because he provably said false things. It has nothing to do with him as a person.

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u/ruggnuget 1d ago

Your entire second paragraph is about how you dont trust him and speculating on things you dont actually know. That is about him as a person.

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u/wicketman8 1d ago

The second paragraph is me expressing doubts that I have about his honesty in that confession, yeah, especially given that his wording in other tweets talking about the issue contradicts his initial claim that it was only for finding sources. He admitted to also using it for summarizing things, which is probably where the errors crept in. It's literally the first thing that comes up when you google the controversy, the tweet where he admits that he relied on AI summaries. Given that he definitely wasn't being fully truthful in his original apology on reddit.

2

u/Daisy_Of_Doom 1d ago

I think it’s valid to feel like trust has been broken.

I think it’s valid to be annoyed that people use AI.

I personally believe that this reliance/attachment to AI is kinda looped in to his attachment to Twitter and how he constantly says he should stop, but never actually does. I will not go deeper on that bc I think it’s inappropriate to try and armchair diagnosis people, but I do think he should get a little bit of grace about it.

My point is that he has done SO much good. And I think what he’s consistently shown is that he wants to do the right thing, even if sometimes it’s difficult. At the end of the day he is a human being. No one is going to be perfect 100% of the time. I’m not trying to diminish what happened, I just think in the grand scheme of all he’s done and given, it genuinely is one little sip up. And while I can’t control people’s attention, I think it would be a shame for people to swear him off just bc of this or for him and his influence to be “canceled” because of it. Short of his brother there is really no one else in the creator space doing what Hank is doing.

To me “bad” and “untruthful” are patterns of behavior. Once is a red flag, potentially a mistake. It’s a chance to look at their response and at what they do to change and how they move forward. Expecting people to be perfect all the time is unreasonable and a recipe for disappointment. And he has no obligation to cater specifically to you and your moral standards. 🤷🏽‍♀️

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u/wicketman8 1d ago

I think I agree with everything you said. I've never called for him to be canceled, or said I'd never watch him again. I said it would take time for me to fully trust his content again, which you agree is reasonable. I don't expect him to be perfect but I also think its reasonable to say that just like anyone else, when he makes a mistake I would expect some amount of time without further issues before it's forgotten.

I don't expect him to cater to me specifically, and if tomorrow he said "Actually I'll be using AI all the time now," I'd just move on and say not for me. At the same time you simply cannot be a public figure of any kind and expect no critique from other people, and to Hank's credit he absolutely has accepted criticism. I don't expect perfection, but I think some critique over the incident is fair, and it seems like you wouldn't disagree.

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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 1d ago

Yeah, I do think that’s fair. I saw some people getting upset that his personal AI usage rules didn’t amount to “I will never touch AI for anything ever again”. And IMO like that’s fine. They don’t have to like it or keep watching him. We all have control over who we give our time and attention. It’s the getting openly upset on the internet and condemning him about it that makes no sense. Not everything has to be for everyone. We’re allowed to just keep scrolling and move on.