Philosophy Tube

Abigail Thorn (1993–), known by her YouTube channel name Philosophy Tube, is a British philosopher, actress and YouTuber.

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Her videos discuss political issues through a leftist perspective informed by philosophy, using the Socratic method and, since 2018, theatricality. Philosophy Tube has been met with positive critical reception and has over 680,000 subscribers and 41.4 million views.

Thorn came out as bisexual in October 2019,[1] and as a trans woman in January 2021 (to her online followers-she'd been out with her loved ones prior already).[2]

Philosophy

Abigail Thorn started her career writing articles for publications such as HuffPo under her birth name, Oliver Lennard.[3] She created Philosophy Tube in 2013 with the intention of sharing her philosophy degree on YouTube for free, after the Cameron government tripled university tuition fees. She originally intended to record her college lectures,[4] but ultimately decided to use a standard "talking head" format with Thorn speaking directly to the camera about philosophy (duh),[5][6][7][8] philosophers,[9][10] political philosophy,[11][12] political theory,[13] overanalyses of popular culture,[14][15][16] and ethics,[17][18][19] and also discussing interesting comments from past videos.

Politics

After the world lost its sanity and a stupid orange-skinned fascist con man ran for president of the United States and won, Philosophy Tube became more focused on socio-political issues and social justice, with longer, more in-depth video essays. In 2018, Thorn abandoned the old format and adopted a more theatrical style akin to ContraPoints, utilising studio sets, comedic/dramatic sketches, costumes, makeup, artificial lighting, and music by Nina Richards.

She has criticised reactionary topics and personalities such as Brexit,[20] Steve Bannon,[21] Jordan Peterson[22] and Ben Shapiro,[23] often by tying them to another topic (democracy, abortion, etc). She also discusses gender and sexuality from a feminist perspective.[24][25][26]

Mental health

As a survivor of an abusive relationship, Thorn's content also deals with mental health issues like trauma and depression.[27][28] She has been open about her struggle with suicide and self harm, represented by her "Cosmonaut" character,[29] and credits the UK mental health charity Samaritans for saving her life.

On August 2019, inspired by her friend Hbomberguy's Mermaids stream (which featured Thorn), she hosted a five day charity stream where she read the complete works of William Shakespeare for the Samaritans,[30] with special guests such as ContraPoints, Jim Sterling, Mara Wilson, Kyle Kallgren, Dan Olson (Foldable Human), Maggie Mae Fish and SonicFox, among others, voicing characters from the plays.[31] The stream helped raise around $130,000 (£109,440), about 26 times more than what Thorn expected.

On January 30th 2021, Thorn came out as transgender via Twitter citing her new name as Abigail and she/her pronouns.[32]

gollark: <@!319753218592866315> Do you fear my infrastructure?
gollark: CSS is annoying because it's incredibly powerful at many complex layout tasks and then entirely falls down on other simple ones.
gollark: https://tenor.com/view/rotating-banana-meme-rotating-banana-banana-faster-faster-and-faster-gif-18265963
gollark: How the apiocryoforms does this work?!
gollark: That seems plausible.

See also

References
  1. Queer✨| Philosophy Tube YouTube. October 28, 2019.
  2. Identity: A Trans Coming Out Story | Philosophy Tube Youtube. January 30, 2021
  3. Olly Lennard on Huffington Post UK
  4. "Giving away a philosophy degree online", BBC
  5. "Why We Need Philosophy"
  6. "Meaning of Life!"
  7. "Do We Have Free Will?"
  8. "How to Pass Philosophy Exams"
  9. "Cartesian Dualism"
  10. "The Republic: Internationally Friendly Version"
  11. "Is Democracy a Human Right?"
  12. Should the Government Be Secular?
  13. Including a four-part series on Marx: part I, part II, part III, part IV
  14. "Is Rick and Morty an Argument Against Scientism?"
  15. "Pokémon Philosophy: Is Mewtwo MARXIST?"
  16. "Are YouTube Poops Art?"
  17. "Is it Wrong to Watch Pornography?"
  18. "Is it Ever Okay to Lie?"
  19. "Should You Save the Planet?"
  20. "Brexit: What Is Democracy?"
  21. "Steve Bannon"
  22. "Jordan Peterson & The Meaning of Life"
  23. "Abortion & Ben Shapiro"
  24. "Transphobia: An Analysis"
  25. "Witchcraft, Gender & Marxism"
  26. "Sex Work"
  27. "Why Do I Hate My Self?"
  28. "Men. Abuse. Trauma."
  29. "Suic!de and Ment@l He@lth"
  30. "Reading Shakespeare's Complete Works for Charity"
  31. Part 1 of the stream on Twitch
  32. "I’m a trans woman!"
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