Talk:Sam Hyde

Semi-protected edit request on 20 November 2024

Sam Hyde is currently one of the Host fish tank. 24.46.13.249 (talk) 02:26, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Cannolis (talk) 03:32, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Alt-right category

Would it be an issue adding this category? Hyde is referred to as alt-right on the Million Dollar Extreme page, and there are several sources describing him as such.Firekong1 (talk) 17:49, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

I think the whole "alt-right" categorization, especially as listed in the header, needs to be updated. The terminology is essentially dead, and all the sources are from nearly 10 years ago.

The far-right has changed a lot since Charlottesville and a whole lot of articles are probably out of date because of it. Mannana308 (talk) 02:40, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Not dead, see [1]. Doug Weller talk 09:24, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

So should I remove the alt right label from this page:Million Dollar Extreme Firekong1 (talk) 15:53, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

@Firekong1 No, one of the sources is from last year[2] and there is also [3] which could be used but is also last year. Doug Weller talk 16:31, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

So should we add a mention that Hyde himself is alt right on his page? Firekong1 (talk) 19:02, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

What I want to know is, why does the label appear once in the lede, 11 times in the citations and not a single time in the body of the article itself. More importantly, there's very little on him in terms of actual analysis, and most of the article is just a record of things he's done. 46.97.170.73 (talk) 12:35, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Likely because fans of Hyde's have removed it from the body over time. Don't worry, I fixed it for you. Fred Zepelin (talk) 23:19, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

They would've removed it from the lede if that was the case. 46.97.170.73 (talk) 08:09, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

If you've read any sources that include "actual analysis" of Hyde, feel free to add to the article. Fred Zepelin (talk) 23:34, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 January 2025

him being linked to alt right, is just speculation and hysteria and is not grounded with any refutable facts. 98.115.238.231 (talk) 02:11, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: You'll need to provide reliable sources to refute the ones present in the article. —C.Fred (talk) 02:18, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Neutrality

This edit [4] is concerning. It appears to remove positive material and reinsert challenged negative framing in the lead that does not summarise the main text (and inserts a run of references - a sure sign that it is novel material). This material has been removed before and per WP:ONUS it should not have been reinserted without a consensus. There appears to be no attempt to fix the page content. This looks like an attack page, not an encyclopaedic treatment. I have thus added a neutrality banner. The main page content is also poor because it is over reliant on primary sources. I have little knowledge about Sam Hyde, have never seen any of his work, and am little more educated for reading this page. What I do get from reading it is that a certain editor doesn't like him very much. A clear NPOV violation. I'll flag it at BLP noticeboard. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:36, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Looking at the refbomb being edit warred in, we have:

1. [5] - This is an interview with an actor involved in Adult Swim's Million Dollar Extreme. It speaks of the reputation of the show but about Hyde it only says "Hyde, is also an outspoken proponent of the alt-right." To use this to support the novel information in the lead that he is known for incorporating bigoted views into his comedy is WP:SYNTH. It won't seem unreasonable to some that he is the creator of such a show and thus known for doing this, but the source does not say that. The source only suggests he is an outspoken proponent of the alt right. Also something that should be dealt with in the main text to support the lead summary.
2. [6] - This one is WP:SYNTH for the same reason. It tells us that one show he worked on (again, Adult Swim's Million Dollar Extreme) was cancelled following complaints of racist and sexist themes. But to use this to support that he is "known for..." is SYNTH. It goes beyond the source.
3. [7] - Refers to the same. It goes a little further, but now we are in a bind. This is opinion supporting the "known for" statement because that is what the writer chooses to tell us he is known for. The bind is this: if the view that he is known for x is itself an opinion (and it is) and if the opinion of a writer that he is notable for x counts as a primary source (when a writer's opinion supports a wikivoice opinion, that opinion is primary for the claim it supports), then how are we to reference such a claim? The answer (in my opinion :) ) is that we don't try to support with references in the lead at all. This is main text stuff. Opinions in wikivoice in the lead are fraught with NPOV concerns. But we can certainly discuss his reception in the main text. Secondary treatments exist, analysing how he attempts to pass off such themes as ironic, and discussing the reception to that, and its validity (the sources I have read are rather critical of it, whilst still giving air time to the argument). Those are the sources we should be writing from, not someone's opinion in Paste magazine.
   incidentally it is still arguably SYNTH too. We are supporting "he is known for" with a source that says "if you don't know who this is, he's the guy behind..." (my paraphrase). It is the writer's choice what piece he mentions there, but it goes beyond the text to say he is known for this.
4. [8] - This is an interview, which is all primary, but in the intro we have an account of his reading of a homophobic "research" piece at a Williamsburg event. A single event. Again, it is SYNTH to use this to support the statement being attempted here.

Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:32, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

The above edit also silently removed:

... before transferring to the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 2007 with a BFA in filmmaking.

This was removed before when there was just the Buzzfeed reference with edsum: unsourced. A search turns up no reliable sources that mention this school in conj. with Hyde. I located and added the EduRank source. The edsum of this removal says only information was restored and does not say that this referenced material, which is almost certainly correct, was deleted or why. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 11:01, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

I second that there is a seriously neutrality issue here. Even if some of these things are true it is written in the most weaselly and non-NPOV way imaginable. There are ways to say most of these things in an encyclopedic way but this isn't it PARAKANYAA (talk) 17:45, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

I third the concern about neutrality. The obviously value-laden language isn't nearly as offensive as the liberal use of speaking footnotes in the References section to support such language. Quotes from the source should be readily apparent within the main text of the article, not below it. Additionally, this source is complete hearsay. See MOS:LABEL; MOS:WEASEL; WP:HEARSAY. Lunaroxas (talk) 04:57, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. I will go ahead and revert out that edit. More generally I would like to make the page more informative, so yesterday I read several book sections on him. Sienkiewicz & Marx (2024) present an up to date treatment that covers his rise to fame (starting with the 2013 TED talk) and covering MDE and the Anglin donation. The book is critical of him, and says things like "Since the show’s cancellation, Hyde has embraced his role as a symbol of resistance to alleged Jewish dominance of the media industry." It needs careful handling too, but it does tell us what Hyde's comedy appears to be attempting, describing it as vitalist humour, finding comparisons with Sacha Baron Cohen (and points of departure), and saying things like:

On the other, it is an act of trolling much as Michael Malice describes it: saying foolish, often vile things in order to evoke a predictable, performative emotional response. MDE’s trollish intent is to divide its Adult Swim audience into two groups. The first group is the trolled, those who react in horror to the brutal misogyny of the sketch. The second group is the trolls, amused as they envision the performance of indignation that the show has induced in the first group. After all, it’s just kidding! ... the sketch mirrors Bronze Age Mindset’s world-historical narrative as a battle between alpha males’ vitalistic will to power and beta males’ concern for the welfare of women. In MDE’s bizarre vitalist fantasy, the alpha males do the trolling, and the trolled liberal betas overreact because they don’t get the joke.

I am still thinking how I think this should be written, but I expect the WP:PROSELINE could be replaced with prose that discusses reception to the TED talk, and builds from there. Some of the individual sketches can be removed. MDE is clearly central, and the Anglin donation is supported by this source. Another source, (Boatright et al., 2019) looks at the Sam Hyde is the shooter meme, and says that Hyde himself established that.. However, I cannot see where the case is clearly made that he did this himself. I may be just not reading it closely enough. I also expect they are right. But I am still a touch wary of saying he did do that. But the meme is also clearly due. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:57, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I understand your perspective, and I agree that the article in its current state is not neutral, but I believe you are blowing the issues out of proportion. Certainly the language needs to be edited and better references need to be added. But, it is not controversial and not non-NPOV to say that Sam Hyde makes strong use of, and is known for bigoted, offensive, and troll-ish language. He and his fans would absolutely agree with and celebrate that fact; it's his entire brand. For an example that just happened the other day, take one of his associates ("milkmoder", I believe he is part of his Fishtank series) going to a May day protest in Dallas and live stream himself harassing people and using a speaker to loudly play racial slurs and Nazi slogans.

Since you're apparently unfamiliar with Sam Hyde, I would encourage you look at this, it is obviously completely unneutral, but it contains plenty of examples of him espousing antisemitic and white-supremacist hate speech and openly supporting neo-Nazis and white-supremacists. It could help you look for good sources to use when editing this article.

Again, to clarify, I agree with you on the issue of neutrality. But just because the article is written in a non-neutral tone does not mean that it is factually incorrect, and it would be just as unneutral to assume such. Hailanpao (talk) 09:33, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Hi and welcome to Wikipedia. Happy first edit day. I am not unfamiliar with what is said about Hyde. I am only unfamiliar with any of his comedy, which I never watched. You'll note I added multople sources to the bibliography yesterday, and I discuss these above. The page should be based on what is said about Hyde, and I think a neutral framing would be more along the lines that he is known for his trolling vitalist comedy that makes use of taboo themes ...or perhaps that should be "alt right talking points" such as alleged Jewish control of the media, etc. We should also be clear about how the humour is deliberately (and thus, actually) offensive. It is just a matter of distilling what the WP:BESTSOURCES say appropriately. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:40, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't think the humor style being deliberately transgressive and offensive for the sake of it, and Hyde actually supporting the far right are mutally exclusive. Most sources that we have on him do seem to think that at some level, he does believe what he says, and we shouldn't shy away from that. That said, we shouldn't pretend that he is just a straight far right activist and downplay the deliberately transgressive nature of his comments for comedic purposes either, because that misses the point. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:18, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

As I said in previous discussions, if we can rewrite the main text, a new lead should write itself. Although I made some edits today, I haven't yet got to thinking how we deal with this

Hyde, for his part, has gone on to make it increasingly hard to believe his anti-Semitism is anything short of sincere by continuously railing against Jewish comedians whom he believes conspire to blackball him.

In 2017, Hyde said the quiet part out loud, when he publicly donated to the defense fund of Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer (Sienkiewicz & Marx, 2024:161).

It's an opinion, of course, but the opinion is backed up by some statements in that source. I think it is one that is due - just tricky to write in NPOV. It is clear, on the other hand, that no one interpreted his suggestion of killing the elderly in the 2013 TED talk as support for euthanasia, and the choice to treat his reading of homophobic research as homophobia, for instance, cannot be based simply on the event itself. Trolls do not need to believe what they bait with. Yet, as evidence mounts (as suggested in Sienkiewicz & Marx), the case is increasingly made that this is what the trolling is for. There is a case in point in that text about a sketch that, on the face of it, is just weird, but appears, on analysis, to be a shout out to the alt right belief/conspiracy theory that Jews control the media. It is in the light of Hyde's later statements that the above text can interpret that sketch in that way. Any help as to how that should be expressed in the main body would be appreciated. I doubt it is something that can be summed up in a sentence. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 16:42, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I would agree with prior assessments that Hyde is more of an Andy Kaufman-type figure who just never breaks character. If you've seen Fishtank live, there are a number of instances in which Hyde deliberately and somewhat sincerely pushes back against racist and problematic beliefs. Beaksmccoy (talk) 14:08, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

That may well be true, but if no sources are saying it, then we certainly can't either. And if he is acting and never breaks character, I don't really see how that presents a notable distinction. Many people don't really believe what they say, but we still judge them by their words and deed. Sienkiewicz & Marx do discuss this possibility, but for them, they find his later statements and actions, after the MDE cancellation, as increasingly indicative that at least the anti-semitism is sincere.

No one has argued that his belief in euthanasia or sea farming is sincere. The one I am a touch reluctant to attempt to beard is the "homophobia" accusation, which, as far as I can see, is based on a single literalist interpretation of a single event, and most secondary sources don't mention "homophobia" in descriptions of MDE or Hyde (but one does). We currently source it, per Fred Zepelin's edit [9], to an advocacy group release that claims he has a "history of ... homophobia", which I do not see supported elsewhere. What is this history? And we have a couple of primary sources for the reading event (also added by the same editor) - which, without secondary sources to support, looks like editor selection bias.

So yeah, perhaps there is insufficient evidence for that label, but we would be going against the sources and common sense if we said he did not have a history of making bigoted and anti-semitic statements (even if it is an act, he does this. Asked why he thought his show was cancelled, he drew a star of David with his fingers. That is an antisemitic statement, as one for instance - a reference to an antisemitic conspiracy theory). And likewise, we should be clear that MDE had bigoted, misogynistic, anti-semitic and racist content. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 14:36, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

I think we're heading towards a more neutral article for sure. I think whoever keeps re-adding the "American alt-right comedian" to the short text is off the mark. Going back to what has been said before of comparisons to Andy Kaufman: I own several books about Kaufman and not once do any dispute or bring into question some of the things Andy has said about how women are genetically inferior to men, many of which I would argue are easily on par with Hyde's statements.

Food for thought at the end of the day, but personally I think the opener is way too much of a run-on sentence that just wreaks of "I don't like this guy and here's why" rather than a genuine attempt to educate an uninformed reader. In the Getting Away with It Documentary footage Hyde posted (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn52d_vTtSk) Hyde claims that a major element of his comedic style is "punishing the audience", which is an aspect of his comedic career I think is far too frequently glossed over.

I'd summarize "Hyde has been involved in several public pranks and internet hoaxes. His transgressive style, including its use of homophobic, antisemitic and racist themes and his public support of far right figures has garnered significant public controversy, and he has been heavily linked with the alt-right." down to something like "Due to his transgressive style and focus on tabu themes, Hyde has been associated with a number of internet hoaxes, typically linked to the alt-right.", but I feel like it's getting to a much better place now. Crockpure (talk) 04:13, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I have left the lead alone as I have been concentrating on the main text. I have said before that once the main text is about right, the lead will write itself. I would intend to boldly replace the lead with a brand new summary which is likely to be about 3 paragraphs long. Until then, I am not much interested in tinkering with it. Why lock in text that freezes in a past edit conflict? I have removed almost all the WP:PROSELINE from the main text now, but I am going to give it another pass, attempting to bring in more from the WP:BESTSOURCES and reduce reliance on primary sources, and to make sure that it reads clearly as an information article. I'll look at the lead after that.

Regarding Hyde's own statement about punishing the audience, I think your earlier comments show the problem with using that. If Hyde never breaks character, and it is all an act, then we cannot trust any comment he makes about himself. His comments about himself are a kind of primary source. When we write the biography of someone, the subject's expression of their own views is clearly primary sourced information. As the subject's comedy is deliberately controversial, I don't think we can lend credence to the expressed opinion. At most we can report it. "When asked, Hyde stated that his comedic style..." or similar. Note that after his TED talk, he was asked a question by an audience member as to what they should take from his piece. His reply was they couldn't take anything from it, because it was "just a piece of ****". That seems obviously false. The piece had a polemic, and Hyde's statement was in character for the piece he'd delivered (as was his facial expression when someone started explaining it)(and yes, I've now watched that piece). So again, we can't rely on his own statements.

Finally, on the alt-right thing - what was first noted was that he had a following amongst the alt-right. The argument in some of the sources, and it's well made, is that his comedy is written to appeal to the alt-right. He is doing it deliberately. Does that mean he is an alt-right comedian? Does he believe he own rhetoric? The point seems to be moot. He is not trolling the alt-right, he is taking their coin. Is he sincere or just doing it because it is lucrative? That doesn't matter. That is what he is doing, and so an informative article will say as much (neutrally). Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:25, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

It seems there's consensus against the content as it was originally worded. Are we good to say that the dispute has concluded and the tag can be removed? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 17:19, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

I'm happy to remove the tag now. Does anyone object to changes I have made to the main, and think that it should therefore remain? Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 18:28, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

References

Maybe a Controversy Section

There aren't good sources that are up to Wikipedia's standards, but allegations of sexual abuse have been made against Sam Hyde by a purported victim named Marky (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ui9pjFNkues). If better 3rd party sourcing appears, this should be considered for addition. 2601:1C2:1600:DE0:7EE4:7044:6B18:38EF (talk) 11:34, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Absolutely oppose such a section. In all cases such sections should be avoided, per WP:CRITS. Neither is Wikipedia a newspaper, per WP:NOT. Also, this would be a major breach of WP:BLP. We would need secondary sourcing to cover any such thing (which does not mean news reporting, per WP:PRIMARYNEWS). Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:14, 21 May 2025 (UTC)