Good question. Ian is putting on an act during TimcastIRL, if you watched earlier on during the Adam Cringler days it was made apparent. Tim wants a co-host to be dumber than him, so that he could dunk on them to prove his point. Tim is a difficult person to work with as he is a control freak, you could see on AdamcastIRL how Cringler would react whenever mentioning Tim. If you watch some of Ian's older videos, he seems like a normal person just doing Youtube as a hobby. We see Ian today as a drugged out hippie punchbag on TimcastIRL. Now, some of Ian's political takes are genuine responses, even if a few are logical fallacies. I can admit, Ian has grown on me to a degree. On the contrary, his stupidity at times made me turn off the show, as I could see through his act. If Ian went sober, Tim would absolutely boot him off the show. Bottom line, Ian is smarter than he presents himself on camera and Tim will do anything in power to provide a punching bag for his show.
The real question is, how much money is Ian getting paid to play retard for Tim?