I Know These Two Things | Warren Smith

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Heretics | Andrew Gold 51 min 1 speaker 8 chapters transcribed 2 hours ago
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How did Warren Smith’s viral J.K. Rowling video launch his public controversy?

Andrew Gold 0:00
What was it about
Warren Smith 0:00
JK
Andrew Gold 0:01
Rowling that was being said in that video?
Warren Smith 0:02
A student asked me, Do you still like her work despite her negative opinions? And that overnight changed everything. You're being targeted online and I did end up getting fired as a result of it. That must have been painful. I was just throwing up that whole night. Right now we are in a game. Everyone listening to this right now, whether they know it or not. What is this game? Have you heard anything that you would disagree with me on? Well,
Andrew Gold 0:27
so far, no.
Warren Smith 0:28
I would call myself Christian. I go to church. Can you point to a single fact that would disprove God?
Andrew Gold 0:34
No. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Warren Smith 0:36
I describe it as the fabric of reality. And that's what you're striving to live in accordance with. And suddenly, I had this certainty. There was two things. Death is not final.
Andrew Gold 0:47
I desperately want what you're saying to be true. You wouldn't accept any of this as evidence about any other topic. Your belief about something that is not reality.
Warren Smith 0:55
How am I not living in accordance with reality? Because I suspect that there's a deeper explanation. So what makes you strive for morality then? Things literally feel good in the body. So feeling is okay for you?
Andrew Gold 1:08
What was that JK Rowling situation?

What happened when the school targeted Warren and he eventually got fired?

Andrew Gold 1:09
What happened in the classroom?
Warren Smith 1:11
Oh, so you want to do the whole thing? All right. People need to know. Man, it's been years now. So a video. I was teaching multimedia content creation, essentially working with cameras like what we're doing now. And I was then at that year at a special ed school. So working with students with behavioral challenges, trying to utilize this technology in a therapeutic way. We were doing like a newscast and we had been doing little podcasts. They were requesting students like, let's do it. I want to ask you about J.K. Rowling. All right. Hit record that segment. I posted on my. You could call it a teaching portfolio, just there was no one watching my YouTube channel, but it was on a YouTube channel. where we'd been experimenting with stuff with class.
Warren Smith 1:57
And it got a few views. Someone brought it over to X where I had an account, but I never used it. And it kind of blew up and Elon Musk tweeted it. And so that was the start of the journey. And that overnight changed everything in a strange way, especially at the school. The school... there was a lot of people at the school that were not happy there was the school was not public and still like I've never disclosed their name because it just feel like weird to docks a school if they want to do it that's fine but the school that I that was public that I teach a class a semester is Emerson College so that was available and just seeing the amount of people trying to get me fired from there, like with X, I got an email from the dean or the head of the chair saying, hey, our social media team has picked up a massive amount of activity, like targeting you, you're being targeted online.
Warren Smith 3:04
And we have a policy, if we detect a faculty member being targeted, we offer to step in, but I was like, If you need support, let us know." And I was like, I appreciate it, guys. That's nice of you. And I was like, that's surprising because they, I'm sure they were aware of the whole thing. And that was their response. They didn't do anything beyond that. So respect to Emerson for that. But my point is that there was a, so had that school been publicly available, it would have been the same thing across the board. Like there was a push, but It wasn't. A few months went by, and I did end up getting fired still as a result of it in the long run. But it turns out to have been a blessing.
Andrew Gold 3:48
Yeah. Well, now you have a successful YouTube channel, and it's maybe a job that you are more passionate about.
Warren Smith 3:54
For sure. Yes, I enjoy it
Andrew Gold 3:58
a lot. There's things I miss about teaching. What was it about JK Rowling that was being said in that video?
Warren Smith 4:03
A student asked me, how have your views on J.K. Rowling, how have your views on Harry Potter changed given your bigoted opinions, given her bigoted opinions? And there's a presupposition there, just like, what are you basing that on?

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