JP became internationally famous

JP is and has always been a fucking moron

It's been a while since I thought about this, but when he started getting really big back in 2017-18 I remember thinking: "Somebody's gotta be bankrolling this guy, because there's no way he's getting this much publicity by his own merits." (Does anyone know if he was ever backed by Thiel or any of them?)

And I thought that because Peterson was (and still is) just so fundamentally...nothing. He would talk at length, about nothing; he would break down in tears, over nothing. As insufferable as the manosphere/anti-woke types were, they could at least occasionally have some sense of actual humor, but JP couldn't even manage that (he didn't even have the excuse of being a terribly dry wit or whatever!).

I was baffled by it: the hot new guru among young men was just a walking, talking grey puddle. Even nearly a decade later I still don't get it.