Kennedy | Key | Maldonado 1

Adam Kennedy, Grayson Key, Gabriel Maldonado

Professor Peter A. Blair

UWRT 1104-029

18 March 2019

Shouter with Crowder

Fallacies have been used since before Aristotle's time. He and many other Greek

philosophers created lists of the most common fallacies used both in political and common

speech. Even after centuries passing since the documentation of fallacies, modern society still

falls prey to using many of them. The largest print examples of these fallacies come from both

politicians and journalists alike. Fallacies are used because they are a simple and effective

method of convincing people to agree with you even if you may not always be right. Opinion

based articles are very prone to logical fallacies as the individual is no longer stating the known

facts, but rather how the information is processed through their own logical structure in their

brains. The article chosen was an opinion based read, authored by Nicholas Provenghi on the

form of debate he was introduced to by Steven Crowder.

Steven Crowder is a 31-year-old social media conservative. The former comedian

now runs his own online talk show called “Louder with Crowder” and runs many other

segments such as one called “Change My Mind.” Steven Crowder would position himself

behind a table and ask members from the crowd who disagreed to sit down and have a discussion

with him. This show has garnered him both infamy and fame across social media with his

controversial conservative viewpoints. Nicholas was offered to sit down with Crowder and

rationalized his argument. In the article, he describes his experience and disagreement of the
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format of the debate. The article “STEVEN CROWDER HARMS DEBATE” is filled with

instances of ad hominem, stacked evidence, begging the question, and hasty generalization

fallacies.

The first sentence of the article states the following “Even if you’ve had the pleasure of

not knowing Steven Crowder.” The first sentence clearly displays the author’s perspective of Mr.

Crowder, stating it would be a pleasure to not know of him. This is clear evidence of ad

hominem within the start of the article. Rather than beginning by discussing the actual tactics

used, the author takes the time to attack him. This is shown in other instances across the paper:

“being harassed by the crowd while Crowder himself shoved a microphone and camera in their

face.” This attempts to give Mr. Crowder the appearance of malicious intent even while the

video shows Crowder telling the crowd to quiet down and allow the debate to take place

uninterrupted (Crowder 15:36). The article does not give any critique on how to improve the

debating format of Crowder. Instead, it serves to dismiss his entire form of debate and asks for

the removal of Crowder to protect others (Crowder 15:18). Later in the article, he states “If this

is the best that we as UTD students think we can do to facilitate discussion of national issues on

campus, I’m issuing a challenge to all of us to do better.” Although he does not give an

alternative solution as to how these debates should formatted. The article was meant to attack

both Crowder as a person as well as his intent for the debate, rather than to actually discuss

proper forms of healthy debate. The author goes on to state his role in the debate was like

“Being part of this circus” (Provenghi par. 8). Here he continues to insult the style of

debate by implying it is like a show meant for entertainment, not for serious discussion.

Clearly, the author is willing to insult Crowder’s form of communication; it is always

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justifiable to critique something so long as the argument is backed by some sort of reason

that explains why.

It’s very easy to make any malicious claim without supporting evidence; it is important to

recognize when this happens so that those kinds of accusations – like the ones in this article –

are not published without proof. For instance, the author includes the title of the video

“PROTESTER SCREAMS Then Rethinks” (Provenghi par. 3) but fails to include the link. This

is an example of the stacked evidence fallacy. Stacking the evidence, also called “cherry

picking” involves only including information that supports one side of an argument. In this case,

Provenghi gives the title of the video to claim that Crowder viewed his dialogue as “the most

chuckle-worthy moment of the day” (Provenghi par. 3). This is flawed for a few reasons. For

one, YouTube video titles are always subject to “clickbait,” or in other words, video titles are

usually bolded, capitalized, or exaggerated to make them seem more appealing to watch. The

title was not an attack on the author, but rather a method of attracting more views. After all,

Steven Crowder is the “current conservative social media darling” (Provenghi par. 1).

Additionally, the video title may be exaggerated, but it is not inaccurate. Provenghi did, in fact,

confront Crowder and went on an aggressive tangent regarding his presence on campus, all of

which was misinformed. Just before his rant, Provenghi states: “I don’t know what they said to

you; I don’t know what was said before I got here” (PROTESTER SCREAMS 00:07:15-

00:07:19). This is stacked evidence because the author used the video title as proof of why he

was a victim without including the footage that the title was based on.

The author also uses stacked evidence to misconstrue the facts about Steven

Crowder and his segment “Change my Mind.” Provenghi claims that Crowder is “allowed

to make a profit off of the emotions of the frequently nameless people responding to his
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requests for “debates” while they get thrown to the wolves without even the dignity of

being named” (Provenghi par. 4). There are several things wrong with this statement. First

of all, nobody who is ever featured in Crowder’s “Change my Mind” videos are “nameless

people.” In fact, this segment only involves willing participants who decide to sit down and

have a rational conversation about a controversial topic. Even Nicholas Provenghi himself

was introduced in the video after he sat at the table. Crowder asks, “What was your name

sir?” and after Nicholas gives his name, Steven continues, “Now do you see how sitting

down here outside of the rain just breeds more friendly, productive conversation? I don’t

want to shout out there” (PROTESTOR SCREAMS 00:13:05-00:13:15). Not only does this

prove people are named on Crowder’s videos, it also proves those same people are not

“thrown to the wolves” (Provenghi par. 4). Steven carried out his goal of transforming

argumentative protests into peaceful conversations, and even the author was involved in

this process. Additionally, the people who were not named in the video titled

“PROTESTOR SCREAMS Then Rethinks” were protestors who did not want any

publicity. One individual even said, “We fear for our safety, we don’t want to be put

online” (PROTESTOR SCREAMS 00:01:10-00:01:15). Given this, Crowder actually obeyed

the protestor’s wishes by not including their names in the video. This shows the danger of

the stacked evidence fallacy; the author can make any claim he chooses by only giving half

of the facts to support his argument.

The only thing more egregious than stacking evidence to prove your point is doing so

without any evidence. This is often called the begging the question fallacy. Begging the question

is an attempt to pass off false claims or accusations to the reader as factual statements, which the

author of this article is guilty of. He states: “When I walked onto the Plinth, my friend was
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scared, surrounded and being harassed by the crowd while Crowder himself shoved a

microphone and camera in their face” (Provenghi par. 2). This villainizes Crowder and

victimizes the author’s friend; without supporting evidence, it appears to be true. First of all,

Provenghi’s friend was protesting Steven Crowder’s “Change My Mind” segment while holding

a counter-argumentative sign that also said, “Change My Mind.” As this segment is meant to

promote healthy conversations, Crowder walked over and asked her to elaborate on her

viewpoint. He also tried defended himself by shedding light to an earlier implication that he was

racist (PROTESTER SCREAMS 00:00:22-00:00:38). Crowder asked the author’s friend to clarify

if she thought he was racist, to which she replied: “I said I wouldn’t engage with racists and I

don’t feel comfortable engaging with you” (PROTESTER SCREAMS 00:03:48-00:06:45).

Naturally, Crowder presented his case, stated definitively that he was not racist, and attempted to

end the discussion like Provenghi’s friend wanted. Crowder never “shoved a microphone and

camera in [her] face,” she was never “harassed by the crowd,” and she was never forced to

engage in any conversation. The fact is, she was there on her own free will. The begging the

question fallacy relies on all of this information sneaking by the original claim that Crowder

harassed a defenseless individual.

Throughout the paper, Nicholas Provenghi provided blurry accounts of the events that

took place during Steven Crowder’s “CHANGE MY MIND” video recounting how he and his

friends were treated most. The details are not very clear, but he ends up using hasty

generalizations with his poorly sited evidence to make numerous claims about Mr. Crowder. The

author states “his description of the video — ‘Let the triggering commence!’ — proves the

emotions of his interview partners are the focus rather than any kind of fact” (Provenghi par. 4).

This is an example of hasty generalization because the author is ignoring the facts discussed by
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Steven in person, which is the content of the video, and everything else in the description to pull

one quote and make a claim off that one quote. This small part of the description is his base for

the claim that his video has nothing to do with facts and debate and revolves around making the

people he is debating get emotional, so his twisted fan base can get a laugh off their “emotional

exploitation” (Provenghi par. 3). Provenghi also says “During our own conversation, short,

choppy, derailing questions peppered the discussion from his end” (Provenghi par. 5). When he

states this, he is not using any evidence or discussing the things that were actually said rather just

assigning an intention to Crowder with nothing to back it up with. He claims the questions were

intentionally choppy and derailing to help control the conversation in a way that would help him

win the argument and get the desired emotional response out of his victims. Provenghi paints

the scene as chaotic and disorienting but describes himself as heading into the “fray” to

save his friends from the “harassment” of crowders fans. He describes the actions of the

crowd as forceful and uncouth saying that “I engaged and unwittingly sealed my fate as the

newest throwaway face of ‘snowflake triggering!!!’” This statement is categorizing all the

people who agree with trump as bullies and internet trolls (Upon searching for the meme

he is referring to nothing could be found). These hasty generalizations are used to force the

viewer, who may know nothing about crowder, to see his as a manipulative conservative simply

there to mock liberals.

As we can see throughout the article the author uses carefully worded claims to get into

the subconscious of the reader to plant false claims about Steven Crowder. He does this through

the numerous fallacies used throughout his article. The numerous claims made throughout the

article were presented with no intention other than painting Crowder in a bad light while

making the author appear to be a hero for coming to the aid of his friend who “was scared,
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surrounded and being harassed by the crowd” (Provenghi par. 2). The article is clearly a morale

booster after he felt that he was emotionally exploited and humiliated on the YouTube video. If

the author had taken the time to think through what he said on camera he may not have needed to

write an article attacking the character of YouTube star Steven Crowder. Provenghi’s

reaction was purely reflexive after feeling attacked by Crowder’s 3.6 million subscribers.

The debate between the wall continues to rage between both sides of the political spectrum

with but if the discussion could revolve around facts and realistic consequences for our

actions would we be able to find common ground on this world-altering issue.

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Works Cited

Crowder, Steven. “Ep 423 | PROTESTOR SCREAMS Then Rethinks: Change My Mind |

Louder with Crowder.” BlazeTV, 22, Jan. 2019. Web.

https://www.blazetv.com/video/protestor-screams-then-rethinks--change-my-mind--

louder-with-crowder

McFadyen, Jennifer. “Weighing the Pros and Cons of U.S.-Mexico Border Barrier.”

ThoughtCo., updated by Robert Longley, 20, Jan. 2019. Web.

https://www.thoughtco.com/mexico-border-fence-pros-and-cons-1951541

Provenghi, Nicholas. “STEVEN CROWDER HARMS DEBATE.” The Mercury, graphic by

Chiamaka Mgboji, 28, Jan. 2019. Web.

https://utdmercury.com/steve-crowder-harms-debate/

Van Zandt, David. “Louder with Crowder” Media Bias/Fact Check, 3, Mar. 2017. Web.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/louder-with-crowder/

Wood, Nancy. Essentials of Argument. Upper Saddle River: Pearson / Prentice Hall, 2006.

Print.