I spent a lot of time poring over Milo's content, both on his YouTube and in his writing, to try and find my own evidence that he believed the things his enemies said he did. For a while I told myself that, even though a lot of what he said resonated with me, I was looking into him because I disagreed. I couldn't wait to find the evidence I was looking for, because my brain was so conflicted.
See, back then, I thought I was a liberal. Or at least, I thought it would be unnatural for me to be otherwise. I also thought that my predispositions, as I'd never heard them validated or spoken aloud by anyone other than myself, were probably immoral.
So as I listened to the first young, edgy conservative I'd ever heard, my brain was on overdrive. Things he was saying were making sense, and my feeling of misplacement among my peers started to melt away. Even the things he said that I didn't agree with were opening my eyes.
I started wanting to hear more. I switched from the “videos” section of his channel to the “playlists” section. I put it on autoplay. I got out my knitting. I tried my best to listen.
But nothing made me want to watch more than the protests I saw. People my age – grown adults – throwing tantrums at other people's opinions just did it for me. Validated my suspicions that all wasn't as it seems.
And I was disappointed. My favorite video to watch, even though it wasn't technically his own video, was the one of him, Stephen Crowder (who is hilarious), and Christina Hoff-Sommers (an amazing woman) speaking at a school in my own state. I was appalled at how people my age – grown adults, capable of making huge financial and personal decisions – couldn't handle a difference of opinion.
I think that's another reason I really want to write, to speak out; to say that we're not all this entitled, we're not all this desperate to be right, we're not all unable to hear discord. In fact, some of us want to be the discord.