The “intellectual dark web” first came about as a joke told by investor Eric Weinstein. He used the term to categorize a group of academics and commentators who dared to push back against the mainstream left-wing narrative through the use of alternative digital media: figures such as Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

In her 2018 article for the New York Times, “Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web,” Bari Weiss described the intellectual dark web as “a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation … that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now.”

Despite their obvious differences, Weiss wrote that members of the intellectual dark web shared “three distinct qualities”: a willingness to “disagree ferociously, but talk civilly, about nearly every meaningful subject,” a determination to “resist parroting what’s politically convenient” in an “age in which popular feelings about the way things ought to be often override facts about the way things actually are,” and a demonstrated history of flourishing after being “purged from institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought.”

However, that was back in the good ol’ days of 2018.

In recent years, a group has emerged that, while existing outside of the mainstream, represents the antithesis of the intellectual dark web. Its members make up the unintellectual dark web, where “unintellectual” doesn’t necessarily describe its members — well, not all of them — but it certainly describes its members’ output.

At the center of the unintellectual dark web, there are members pushing views that are outside of the mainstream, not because they threaten mainstream powers but because they are wrong. These members include Andrew Tate, Tristan Tate, Candace Owens, Dan Bilzerian, Jake Shields, and many others who explain their exile from civilized society not as evidence of how wrong they are but as evidence of how right they are: the very same unverifiability at the heart of the conspiracy theories on which they thrive.

Then there are those on the outer edges — the “I’m just asking questions” crowd — who busy themselves like parasites trying to feed on secondhand attention. Unlike those who explore matters with at least a hint of intellectual honesty, criticism, or challenge, they’ll happily play dumb.

Think commentator Tucker Carlson touring a Russian supermarket pretending not to understand exchange rates or plagiarist Benny Johnson drooling over Andrew Tate like a starstruck teenage girl stuck in a broken-down elevator with a member of One Direction.

Much like the intellectual dark web, its unintellectual cousin is classified by three distinct anti-qualities: a willingness to disagree ferociously without civility about subjects without meaning, a determination to parrot what is politically convenient and/or popular while overriding facts, and using a history of being purged from institutions as evidence of orthodoxy.

And what is the throbbing, cancerous vein that holds these anti-qualities together? A quenchless thirst for fame and fortune.

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This thirst explains how Carlson dismissed those caring about Oct. 7 as being obsessed with “foreign” matters before traveling to what seems like every country in the world to extol their virtues, fictional or otherwise. This thirst explains how Johnson, a Christian husband and father, embraced and emulated Andrew Tate, a Muslim pimp and self-professed abuser of women, before defending himself by misappropriating a Bible verse. This thirst explains how Candace Owens went from being an immovable supporter of Israel to one of its most enthusiastic (and spectacularly ignorant) critics seemingly overnight, regurgitating the same antisemitic Wikipedia articles that were available while she was flying to Israel to celebrate the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

Yet no matter how wrong, shameless, or moronic the unintellectual dark web becomes, it continues to gain steam. If conservatism is to survive, let alone flourish, then we have a simple choice to make. We must embrace the principles that gave rise to the intellectual dark web and dump, once and for all, the principle-free world of the unintellectual dark web that values nothing but clicks and cash.

Ian Haworth is a columnist, speaker, and podcast host. You can find him on Substack and follow him on X at @ighaworth.