YouTube’s “Super Chats and Super Stickers” function enables viewers to pay money in order push their comments into a more visible position on the site during each livestream. ISD’s study demonstrated that across 100 videos on the Timcast IRL channel from October 2020 to November 2021, the channel pulled in $219,416.22 through super chats, sending $65,824.86 to YouTube itself. Timcast IRL averages over $2,000 in Super Chat money per broadcast, the report found. ISD also discovered that YouTube has taken profit from Timcast IRL Super Chat comments that advocate violence.
Social media performer Tim Pool, 36, hosts Timcast IRL. Known for wearing a knit winter cap year-round during his broadcasts and portraying himself as a “disaffected liberal” who came to support Donald Trump, Pool has pushed his commentary in an extreme hard-right direction in recent years. Former President Donald Trump invited Pool and other loyalists, including disinformation peddler Ali Alexander and Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft, to a “social media summit” at the White House in July 2019. The non-partisan Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), which is composed of researchers from Stanford University and the University of Washington, included Pool in a group of verified Twitter “superspreaders” who pushed disinformation about the 2020 election prior to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Timcast IRL currently claims over 1 million subscribers on YouTube.
Hatewatch reached out to YouTube twice for a comment on this story, but the company did not respond. Hatewatch reached out to Pool but also did not receive a reply.
ISD also found examples of Timcast IRL viewers paying money to advocate for violence on YouTube’s platform. On Jan. 5, 2021, the day before Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, a Timcast IRL user paid $6.66 to write, “Prepare yourselves – the wicked and immoral will be annihilated – this is the only way,” according to ISD’s research. Another user paid $4.99 to publish: “The time of war is here. Only a fool still has faith in the courts.”
In the aftermath of the violence that took place on Jan. 6, 2021, which left five people dead, Timcast IRL users paid to amplify comments celebrating the attack, ISD found.
“For those saying it did nothing, the most powerful people in the world were laying on the ground and hiding behind chairs because, for a moment, their bubble that made them untouchable was popped,” a Timcast IRL viewer paid $20 to publish on Jan. 7, 2021, referring to politicians who described fearing for their lives.
Pool’s commentary sometimes frames the U.S. as being divided beyond repair and destined for a second civil war, as Hatewatch has previously reported. Former QAnon personality and current congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared on Timcast IRL in Feruary 2022 to complain about Twitter suspending one of her accounts. She made similar comments, suggesting that if Democrats and Republicans could not agree they needed to consider separating.
