Listening to Josh now, he is doing a familiar shuffle people dance to try to weasel out of being totally, completely wrong. He downplays his editorial interest in the story, saying he was just a neutral platform, despite actively stating how 'normal' Rowan seemed, which leant to her credibility. He did not question them skeptically (in even obvious ways), and has been repeatedly derisive toward people who cast doubt upon their allegations. He was, I would say, almost gleeful at the veracity of these allegations at the time, and now that he is proven demonstrably wrong in this, he is retreating to sad sack moralizing over Tom's sexual decisions.
When I say sad sack moralizing, I mean a variety of crybullying, where on the one hand you make a strong moral judgement, and on the other you make a sort of whine that nobody is quite as moral as you and there for with reject your incredibly pious judgement, wrongly. An example:
I will continue to interview people and I think Tom is on track to fuck his entire life up for literally no reason. Regardless of what you believe, people will use this shit against him forever, because that's how the Internet works. What you believe is subjective to how much you like someone. That's called confirmation bias and it's the reality of the human mind. If he thinks this is bad he should consider what he's doing. I've been hearing the same shit because of blockland forum posts for 18 years. When it comes to online reputations, there is no reality, only perceptions. Turkey Tom, Sam Hyde, and Destiny will all permanently have to deal with long term consequences due to bad penis decisions in completely and totally unforced errors.
I'm objectively right. I'm so completely in the right that I don't care how many people I piss off saying I am in the right. The issue with me being so in the right is that right now there's this fucking obnoxious gender sperg bullshit that has permeated everything. There is nothing, literally nothing, that is free from "MUH WHORES" discourse. It's ruined the forum and everything I enjoy. I can't even do Jerry Springer slapfights with exes anymore without it being some politically charged gender war issue that I have to take a stance on.
But I'm right. I'd rather the entire site implode and Turkey Tom make some crybaby retaliation video calling me a gay pedophile than cuck out and be like "nah keep smashing that bpd box bro you're a king nice cock btw".
Here you see very clearly the stubborn nihilism, which many of us appreciate at times. But you must understand the underlying psychology. Though this stubbornness is often beneficial, and can be viewed as bravery in the face of adversity, in this case it is clear it comes from a place of public embarrassment, injured status. To cope with making a misstep, especially on the heels of bragging about his intellectual prowess as an interviewer, he is shifting the center of the issue to his personal moral judgement, doubling down on that, and then saying essentially "I am willing to die on this hill" to lend an air of nobility to the whole thing, and to elicit sympathy from you, the reader.
Though he presents it very clinically, Josh's response to Tom is just his subtle reframing of the issue, to continue to cast shade on Tom, while exculpating himself. As I said before, he downplays his editorial interest, which is obvious even in this comment I have quoted here, and from many comments on his podcast, that demonstrate a strong opinion on whatever gender issue you would like to call this. The effect of repeating "I am right" is essentially a verbal version of putting your fingers in your ears and squeezing your eyes shut, rather than addressing the obvious failure of his bias on this issue, and acknowledging the wisdom of his detractors who were skeptical from the beginning.
He continues to represent details of tom's response in the most sinister light possible, such as his "blackmail folder" which if one were being charitable, would be easy to pass off as a celebrity keeping records for this exact situation, proving that keeping such records was not sinister and in fact rather brilliant. Because there is no more information about this folder than what we have, it is possible to still dunk on tom indirectly, and therefor win back some face, by simply implying impropriety.
Given the two, I much prefer to listen to a Josh podcast, but one has to give credit to Tom for being extremely safe and organized in his reporting on things. The fiery temperament and constant mistakes Josh makes, are the cost of more entertainment.
Thank you for reading my essay, it feels good to relieve myself of those thoughts, and now I can forget them. That is the power of writing!