The New York Times has published a glowing profile of “the renegades of the intellectual dark web”, an “alliance of heretics” that is “making an end run around the mainstream conversation” to an audience “thirsty to discuss subjects that have become taboo.”

In other words, they’re controversialists, a bunch of white people with bad opinions pandering to massive YouTube and social media audiences. YouTube is hardly a “dark web” site, what with it being the world’s biggest video site. And many of the people profiled have palled around with conspiracy cranks, racial purists and various other assholes, if they aren’t actually conspiracy cranks, racial purists and various other assholes themselves.

The NYT asks: “should we be listening?”

Of course we shouldn’t.

As my writer colleague Mic Wright put it: “We’re talking next generation shock jocks here, not Martin Luther.”