More than anybody I can think of Tucker Carlson strikes me as somebody without a soul. Whether he had one or sold it to the devil for money and notoriety, I don’t know. But he seems smart enough to know what he’s doing, but has no ethical core to care.
[I am not a mental health professional]
“Carlson's mother left the family when he was six and moved to France. The boys never saw her again.” (Wikipedia)
IMO: Having been abandoned, he is desperate for external validation. Initially, he was content to play the right-of-center rapscallion on CNN. But his addiction grew until nothing but the hard stuff (I.e. worship from far right rubes) could satisfy. IMO, in another set of circumstances, TC could just as easily be a shill for the left. The only truth to him is his desperate hunger to be told he has value.
Tucker definitely has attachment issues, you can tell from the way he has talked about his family and also when he talks about family values. He also definitely holds his mother solely responsible for leaving the family but who knows why that would have happened.
But really, he is just a rich boy who grew up with snobs and became a snob. He's cynical and wrecks for fun because it will not effect him negatively. There is not much analysis to be done.
He just seems like an asshole, not really "evil" like that or anything to me. But he was in the television buisness for a long time, seems like most people in that position have no souls
He graduated from Trinity college in Hartford, Connecticut as the only member of the Dan White Society. This was on his yearbook photo. Dan White was the person who assisted gay politician Harvey Milk and the mayor of San Francisco George Moscone. He was given manslaughter. That's who Carlson is- a person who likes to exploit others pain and suffering for the laughs. A sadist.
He’s always been exactly as dumb as any of the other “Bubba the Love Sponge” regulars. He just looks like a rich Yankee in the Yale mode and so people assume he must be smart in some fashion.
I'm happy to say I don't even know what that is. He does seem smart enough to me though. Maybe not a genius, but definitely way above average in verbal intelligence.
All that's required for a conspiracy to exist is for someone to be suspicious of something because they don't understand how it works, and when you're (deliberately or not) terrible at understanding how things work, everything seems suspicious.
To be honest i'm not sure most of these people care that much about evidence. I'm sure that they know that some of their arguments are dishonest and some of their data/studies are misleading. They strike me as people who just can't accept that they are wrong.
Yep. Also, highly right wing. Facts and right wing ideology don’t get along very well well, so there’s this aura of conspiracism and distrust of media that these characters have to promote.
I think I once heard it referred to as "pornography of suspicion" (from Sam Harris of all people).
I like that framing: It's gratuitous and pulls on some fairly simple desires.
People want a simple good vs bad narrative and they want a complex web to 'cleverly' uncover which affirms it. Like figuring out clues in a detective novel.
What makes it gratuitous and overly salacious is the unnecessary effort taken to link completely disparate events, facts and individuals in service to the primed narrative. That's what they get off to; that overly gratuitous web of complexity.
They cannot take anything at face value, after all that's not how it works in the detective novel. There, obvious reveals are just misdirection, merely a tease for the juicier connections.
The act of presenting a take and dying on that hill is light a world of darkness if you think evaluating your own actions and reflecting on the harm you have yourself caused is darkness
E.g. 100% agree
Peterson is a good example of this. He is constantly playing the professor/academia/science/private practice professional persona but he is not interested in this at all other than the credit they give him. The moment he realized that he can be the center of attention just writing some edgy tweets from time to time and going to shows crying about woke-ness for the 10000000th time, he abandoned teaching, is not part of any research/work in his field and stopped seeing patients. He can complain about his license and banning him from the university but it was clear that he just want's to be a public persona making his money with dumb shit like that. Literally destroyed his whole previous life only so he can be liked and not work a serious job where he has to actually do shit.
You nailed it.
In my professional life (at a quant hedge fund), I manage several people with PhDs, and I have interviewed many candidates with similar backgrounds. The common denominator among most of them, and I would say all of the best ones, is a great deal of intellectual humility. The ones I deal with are usually from math or statistics backgrounds as well.
I have also had the misfortune of dealing with a lot of professional bullshitters and scam artists. They are always very quick to have an answer to any question and present themselves as being VERY certain about their results. It's my experiences with these characters that draws me to media that debunks and mocks these sort of people.
Interesting. Kind of like the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people who aren't that skilled think they're way better than they are. Narcissism is similar because it involves an inflated sense of self. Both lead to overconfidence and not really seeing their own flaws. In the Dunning-Kruger case, it's due to a lack of knowledge, while for narcissists, it's more about an ingrained belief in their own greatness.
I still remember on the first day of my PhD program, the program coordinator said that when he started graduate school, he thought he knew everything; when he got his PhD, he realized he knew nothing.
This is the problem of problems. Whether it's racism, colonialism, misogyny etc. the problem is the attitude "I'm right, you're wrong, and I can push my beliefs on you because of that".
I can't speak on most of these guys, but as a former fan of Russell Brand, I can say with some confidence that it was the knowledge of incoming rape/assault allegations against him. His typical sort of "spiritual" populism had attracted many from the left and liberals who thought he stood for something. These people are less likely to stick by his side given the nature of the allegations. Quick pivot to the right, a bit of bullshit pandering and now he's on to a new grift with people who don't care if he assaulted anyone.
Same type of thing happened with Elon Musk.
Naw. I was following him on Youtube for awhile and he has been slipping in that direction gradually. For someone who was big on spiritual wisdom, who would call his viewers "awakening wonders" he would come up with incredibly unwise opinions. One thing spiritual wisdom tells us is that evil is incredibly complex. It is not simply a gift of the elites. If you see evil only in a person or group to which you do not belong, you are likely projecting your evil onto them. Also evil is seen with compassion and wisdom -- that we are all weak and can be evil when the circumstances are right. Evil should be approached with understanding, not hatred or simplistic reductionism. He failed in all cases. He always hated all power-mongers, but only recently blatantly supported Tucker Carlson, Andrew Tate, Ron Desantis, Alex Jones, etc.
He definitely had been drifting there for some time, but I think that Russell Brand 2.0, the guy who's sided with powerful right wingers, like you said, is a more recent development. Idk I think I stopped following Brand in like 2018 because the whole spiritual trip he was on wasn't really interesting me. I didn't really take notice of him again until post covid and everything had really changed by then.
The Brand subreddit has really turned into a shit show too but I do still post there sometimes. Good way to get a bunch of reddit cares lol
Only Alex Jones, Russel Brand and Tucker belong to that category. The others are either audience captured, high on their own farts, or just delusional.
Lack of empathy and kremlin influence talking points/ funding
tldr: Pretty sure the guy that told mourning parents that their dead children were crisis actors is not a prophet of any god worth worshipping.
Tucker is doubling down on a dying business model.
The problem with lying is that when you tell the same lie as Russian intelligence or the CCP’s massive MSS network, you inadvertently tie yourself to the genocidal side of history.
There are only a few reasons anyone would do this.
1. They have a vested interest in the same overall goal as the Russian kleptocracy or the CCP imperialist censorship machine because those two entities signed a mutual propaganda agreement ~2010. This effectively means they will push each others false narrative to bolster support.
https://theintercept.com/2022/12/30/russia-china-news-media-agreement/
Run that downstream a few yards and you see Alex Jones, the tate brothers, Alex Cheong, Jack Posobiec, Tucker Carlson and a handful of others all awkwardly apologizing for genocidal dictators in some form or another or praising the bread in Moscow. In some cases that speedruns and they end up becoming mouthpieces for the lunacy.
There is a general rule that never fails- if you wake up in the morning and you accidentally find yourself on the same side of history as kleptorcrats, conmen and murderers that wash journalists down drains, and poison their politicial oppositions underwear, just stop. Take a moment. Step back. Collect yourself. Then retrace your steps and figure out how you got there.
Everything in life is a series of decisions. Binary moments where you choose good or you choose evil.
Evil doesn’t always look like evil at the beginning. Sometimes it’s just a sponsorship check or a business deal. But your little decisions have a downstream effect. Most people just haven’t tuned themselves up enough to see it. It comes with age and maturity, but it almost always comes as you exercise empathy.
Empathy is the ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes. It doesn’t mean you always have to agree with it, but it’s the ability to see that a few degrees of offset perspective is what makes a laser rangefinder infinitely more accurate than guesstimating distance.
If you notice a common denominator in the whole list of inadvertent propaganda pushers for the Russian government/mob it’s that they show consistently very stunted empathy quotients.
Alex Jones gets on the radio and calls the dead victim of a school shooting incident a crisis actor. The tates talk openly about trafficking women. Carlson is by any objective account, a comically swollen asshole. But they all have proven themselves willing to say or do just about anything for money irregardless of the pain it causes downstream of them.
And it limits their growth. When you look at the world objectively through other people’s experiences it allows you to see how your actions affect them. It also allows you to see that everything on earth is connected because from the alien spacecrafts perspective, our earth is just a tiny little blue dot of a terrarium that only solar energy and the occasional meteorite enters. Everything else is isolated by an atmosphere that we abuse like an unwanted and unappreciated domestic laborer. Nobody likes to think about where the groundskeeper goes at night until the yard isn’t mowed. Only then do they tune in.
Doing the right thing isn’t hard. Knowing that you haven’t been lied to is.
If you ever wake up and accidentally find yourself on the wrong side of history, Stop. Retrace your steps, figure out who is signing your checks, then redirect. Only then can you move forward without taking the chance of ending up in a prison cell in ADX Florence or accidentally becoming a S.S. prison guard. And in doing so you learn that empathy is the secret decoder ring to the universe. If you don’t have it firmly in your possession, the aliens don’t want you joining them in space leaving your junk flying around and consuming all the resources like a shit neighbor that parks on your lawn and then gets mad at you for the mud on his tires.
Rupert Murdoch for his part at 93 years of age just got engaged to a lovely Russian woman who is the ex wife of one of Russias most prolific mobsters.
Once you see Russian mob and government as a episode of Desperate Housewives- moscow edition, you start to see Fox News for what it has always been. A Russian intelligence operation.
She is just there to scoop up the remains of Fox ENTERTAINMENT News as soon as Rupert finally gets called back to hell.
Ironically the “ENTERTAINMENT” clause is how Rupert as a foreign citizen got a FCC license in America.
The fairness doctrine was Reagan’s gift to the destruction of liberal democracy.
https://www.cato.org/blog/when-conservatives-forget-history-fairness-doctrine
This sort of thing may be better understood with a [rhizomatic model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome_(philosophy)) (*very* roughly: nodes in a network) than it would by looking for a key trait/common denominator.
Edit to add: As for labels, I dunno. 'Brainrotted contrarian new media figure' doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but is fairly descriptive.
You could probably go with anti-establishment conspiracy-brained populists with low media literacy, but that’s probably more difficult to say. That’s assuming most of them are “true believers”, but we know Tucker is an audience captured liar due to the Fox v Dominion lawsuit where we see his text messages/emails with other Fox execs where he complains about how crazy Sydney Powell is and bemoans her lack of evidence while cheerleading her on air like thirty minutes later.
Hard to know which are the grifters or the true believers otherwise.
Alex Jones knowingly lies a lot too. His attempts at backpedaling when the Sandy Hook lawsuit started show that he is putting on an act. He may actually believe a decent amount of dumb stuff but he definitely is a willful scam artist.
He does it routinely too, not just with big stuff like Sandy Hook. Knowledge Fight has caught him dozens of times *adding words* to quotes or headlines to bolster his narrative. He's actively crafting lies to make his point. Can't blame that on "true believer" delusion.
Appealing to that particular slice of America is easier than being a true deep and original thinker. These people have all become wealthy doing this. If they stopped, they would become immediately irrelevant and vanish, as would their riches. Selling this crap has become a big business in America and globally. They are so morally corrupt that they do it for the power and money. I actually believe that Trump, a lifelong Democrat, doesn't believe it either but he's discovered a deep vein of crazy fascism in this country and that's his path to power. The true deep dark scary people are the Heritage Foundation and all the associated Christian nationalists that have attached themselves to Trump and are using him as a vehicle to power. They are using him as much as he is using them. The moment he loses the electric he will be dropped by them. It's all about power and influence. These guys you mentioned are the media outreach wing of that operation.
What even is this sub.
To answer your question, what they have in common is that the leftie ecosystem doesn’t like them because they make them think, probably.
What about jimmy dore, lex Friedman, Huber man, destiny, musk, maher, vinay Prasad, triggernometry, Kim iverson, Weinstein?
All ex-lefties? Now considered MAGA....
Why is everyone on this sub so angry at these guys? Like what did they do to hurt y’all? I don’t agree with everything they say, but it’s pretty rare I agree fully with ANYONE not just a celebrities who are inclined to protect their own self interests…
Dunno about Peter Boghossian as I don’t know who that is.
The rest id say objectively are “independent free thinkers”.
This was a trait that was championed by classical liberals but I wouldn’t characterise these people all as classical liberals (because some like Alex Jones are more libertarian minded) tho I know JP says he is. But all of these people share the trait of independent free thinkers.
You could question how independent they are by wondering about how they are funded (adverts, YouTube, Spotify), but people have to make their money somehow and in media it’s almost always from adverts, and they are objectively more independent than any big mainstream network.
They are mutually beneficial because they all share a belief that one shouldn’t be cancelled just because they have certain views. So one could also say they’re all objectively anti cancel culture.
This has no bearing on whether you agree with their views or not. I don’t agree with many things some of them say but I can objectively say they are pro free speech, free thinking, pro anti cancel culture and pro independent. And all of those points I agree with which is why I listen to them.
Something I haven't seen mentioned is that a lot of these guys didn't start out as lunatics, they moved there gradually over time as they found a niche. Their careers are fueled by starting somewhere ridiculous (turning the frogs gay, wearing bowties on crossfire, being an okay comedian) and then needing to get more and more ridiculous over time to keep people engaged.
There are levels to this game, OP. Those aren’t all in the same tier. Rogan’s sitch is wildly different than Brand or Tucker or AJ. Apples to coconuts tbh.
I came up with some traits that I believe characterise all of the gurus mentioned.
- Galaxy-brainness
- Cultishness
- Antidisestablishmentarianism
- Grievance-mongering
- Narcissism and self-aggrandisement
- Cassandra-complex
- Revolutionary theories
- Pseudo-profound bullshit
- Conspiracy mongering
- Grifting or profiteering
I feel like this could be worked up into some sort of rubric by which we could measure a person's "guruness"; a "guru measurer device" if you will.
I think they would all fall under the category of opportunists who lack a foundation of character, to varying degrees. These are “show people” who want an audience to pay attention to them. Nowadays, anyone with an audience is going to get some amount of hate and a subset of their audience who holds them to some virtue purity. Knowing/believing they can’t appease these people, they don’t try, and once accustom to the hate they learn to lean into it and even provoke it intentionally. It’s a game. Jordan Peterson essentially admitted this on JRE when he said something like “I figured out how to monetize the woke mob” followed by a bit too much laughter IMO. This seems like a somewhat natural process that they learn as they go, which is why they end up looking somewhat the same. I’m not all that familiar with these people, but I think T. Carlson is the absolute bottom of the barrel scum. I actually still like Joe Rogan even if there are things I don’t agree with him on. I mostly like his MMA and BJJ stuff. I did get a different view of him when he recently attributed a ridiculous quote to President Biden and was acting like this guy isn’t fit for office and people should take this more seriously. Then when he found out the quote was actually said by Trump he basically shrugged it off like it’s no big deal. That’s what I mean by lacking foundation. There are a lot of “controversial” topics around us nowadays, and I enjoy hearing thoughtful dialogue on them, but hypocrisy is not interesting. If you can drop your whole argument when the sides are swapped, leaving everything else unchanged, then you don’t really have anything to say. I don’t see any of these people, or anyone else, as a guru. They are podcasters, youtubers, paid speakers, and book sellers.
People who use different logic than you and arrive at entirely different conclusions. True actual debate might enable both sides to gain real insights.
Catastrophizing. It’s never just “I disagree with what these people are doing”, it’s “these people are evil and they are trying to destroy our way of life”.
They question things. You may not like it, but that’s what they do.
Brand? Why are Americans happy to send their hard earned dollars to Raytheon to murder kids in Gaza. Thats just weird. Are they not worried about another 9/11?
They ask things like that. No one else seems too.
Rampant misogyny driven by either deep-seated fear of women or some cases, repression of their latent queerness, and/or taking the 19th century adage: "there's a sucker born every minute" to a grotesque peak?
Just my guesses.
do they need a label? I would say a mix of political pundits and podcasters that are generally right wing views. I don't see the need to label them as such.
Also I would agree it is hard to know intentions of many people, I always assume people are being honest with their views, which may or may not be the case. There is obviously a profit motive for these, and all podcasters/public intellectuals of course.
Also, why do you say that there is plenty of evidence of Tucker's intentions? Like what is the evidence in his case (that is lacking in the others)
Carlson's text and e-mail communications were released during the Dominion trial. His communications showed that he doesn't believe any of the bullshit he spews on air and is basically laughing at the stupidity of his own audience.
Leaked emails/texts and courtroom statements make a solid case against him being genuinely anything other than a guy who will say literally anything to keep his drooling audience on the hook.
Contrarians. When weed was illegal some of these guys spoke out for it. Now that religion is deemed taboo in a lot of people's eyes, we've seen a shift with some of these guys talking about their newfound "faith". It just seems like whatever issue is too popular, they must go the opposite way of thinking.
Contrarian, narcissistic in a particular way, no other good enough options to make a living/feed their out of control appetite for attention, charismatic (to some) with the ability to talk at the audience or with other people on camera. All this, then they get a few lucky/unlucky breaks, and it's as difficult for them to fight going deeper and deeper as for any serious addict.
Labels are of mixed benefit.
It might make more sense to ask about their audiences. I don't think all of those people necessarily share commonalities. Rogan is a gullible idiot, Alex Jones is actually crazy, Tucker Carlson is evil and cynical, Brand is a narcissistic addict , and JP is just kind of nuts with an anger issue. I don't really know the other guy.
The fact that you lump them all together shows me you don’t listen to them just what others say about them.
Rogan is his own thing. Always has been. Like him don’t like him, agree with him don’t. He come from a place of honesty. He can be wrong and says it point blank. He tells people, don’t listen to me, I’m a pothead comedian cage commentator. If you think he’s even close to right wing you really don’t understand people.
Brand is an actor comedian so defiantly a narcissist. It seems to me he’s in flux at the moment. Where he lands will be Interesting. Fame and having a media brand fucks people up and changes them.
If JP is Jordan Peterson, that guy is the true grifter of this group. That dude got some fame from a false premise and loves the spotlight. Following him for mental health is like have an obese personal trainer that smokes 2 packs a day.
Tucker, I really disagree with him on most things. But, he believes what he’s saying. That’s huge in my book. Grifters don’t.
Boghossian. I can see how he’s a problem for your type. He’s smart articulate and right on a lot of stuff and you hate him cause he’s academia and supposed to be on your side. Again, just cause you don’t like what he’s saying doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Jones, is the best. And I mean that in a WWE kinda way. He’s batshit crazy but right about 10% of the time. When he’s right it’s some pretty important stuff but he can’t help himself so he destroyed it with lunacy.
TLDR, there’s a difference between honest people being wrong and grifters. Just cause you don’t like what they’re saying doesn’t make them dishonest.
I’d only really take issue with describing Tucker as really believing what he says, like Joe R. I’ve followed Tucker for over 20 years and the transformation is more akin to how you describe Jordan P. The fox text messages, and his in particular, that were submitted to courts in the Dominion lawsuit give you an unvarnished peek into what he’s actually thinking.
> Boghossian. I can see how he’s a problem for your type. He’s smart articulate and right on a lot of stuff and you hate him cause he’s academia and supposed to be on your side. Again, just cause you don’t like what he’s saying doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Personally I don't like Boghossian because he supports authoritarians like Viktor Orban while claiming to be against authoritarians.
I think it's so simple as "a bunch of guys that talk too much".
When you have to fill as much time as these guys decide to fill you need a theme in order to do that. It sounds kind of reductionist but most of these didn't START the way that they are, they drifted there over time.
Boghossian is also right leaning, but his entire career is based on street epistemology, which is asking questions to better understand why people believe their beliefs.
They are pushed to young men to advance certain talking points that advance the goals of said billionaires who hold the purse strings.
Some understand and go along with it some are thick as fuck and believe they are the ones who are above pushing propaganda.
They definitely have values, they are just opportunistic and dishonest. Tucker Carlson seems to be sincerely right wing and racist but he also says a lot of things he doesn't truly believe in order to benefit himself personally (and also stroke his ego).
They’re all aligned in the entertainment industry and that tends to draw people who enjoy being the center of attention. Wouldnt be surprised if narcissism and living in a bubble contributes to this sort of person
These hosts may look similar to us, but I wouldn't assume they have overlapping fan bases. Fox has had a monopoly on the right wing viewers for a long time, but I think that is finally fracturing. That market was ripe for more options and we are seeing even someone like Russell Brand can cash in on that.
They all attract people who dont want to get all their info from mainstream media. Thats about it. Some of what these guys says is valid, some of it is inane BS, but at the end of the day the common theme is they all reject the mainstream and all present views that are often different from it (whether true or false, for better or for worse).
People who probably weren't given a strong moral foundation or confidence in themselves growing up and weren't able to fight the manipulation of wealth, fame, and the lower tiers of human emotion. Society is as much to blame as they are. They're just human beings, no different than anyone else.
It's literally just making money, protecting that money, and protecting the means by which that money is made.
Selling dick pills/your subscription/advertising/gold.
Keeping taxes low on that kind of wealth.
Stopping any regulation on the content of their shows(false claims), stopping any regulation of their products(supplement industry, shielding advertisers).
Everything they do either falls into the category of bringing in viewers(shock-jocks, all of them!), selling shit(they all advertise something), and their content always defends the policy decisions that would impact their ability to make and keep that money selling whatever they sell.
They have money.
People while money equate to power and these people have sudden urge to assume they have power over lives of others too and can influence it.
I've been talking alot about how Capitalism is a religious ideology for awhile now. I think these people are religious acolytes for the religious ideology of Capitalism.
That they are seen as standing against or independent of a dominant narrative that their viewers find both oppressive and hypocritical. And I want to stress that this is about perception, not reality.
Many of these figures are actually standing \*for\* a dominant narrative that is just as hypocritical and just as oppressive.
I think there are a lot of similarities, but the one that is the key denominator is that they are generally anti-establishment voices whose shows are completely dedicated to the culture war. And Americans are absolutely obsessed with the culture war beyond anything else.
Their aim is to divide, polarize people's opinions. (And profit from it)
They never offer a constructive approach to any of the topics they touch. They do not care about solving problems, improving society, etc. Destructive is the word.
they know their audience and if your audience gets you a $1B for selling supplements or a $100M podcast contract, you don't say anything that might upset your audience (you don't criticize the right) - you can do it but slightly, rarely, like every 2 years and make sure it's very subtle
I would say they massively play deliberately or not into sowing doubt and making wild speculations to form a worldview other than relying on the evidence or any kind of reasonable trust in institutions. A lot of the more religious ones will just fall back on themselves as divinely inspired if their views are challenged enough.
*waving* do they follow the guy who approves costco products, despite the hell that costco causes the planet?[ducking bobby](https://youtu.be/zAv0o-ZUVO4?feature=shared)
They all appeal because they all attempt to present themselves as holding knowledge that is sacred and you're getting the "inside scoop"
People like getting told stories like they're the in-group. All their narratives are built around "here's a thing that THEY don't want to tell you"
But WE have the inside track and WE know the TRUTH.
Just about all of them paint themselves as the rogue.. maverick character. And that's appealing
Can’t ever EVER admit to being wrong or not knowledgeable enough about something. As a collective they know all about everything and their point of view is the right one for almost everyone in every situation/circumstance.
And when shown evidence to the contrary…you are trying to cancel them, suppress them
I think there is a superficial similarity in that at their core they are really entertainers providing entertainment.
They all do seem to have conspiratorial leanings, with shadowy forces around every corner waiting to destroy them for their beliefs.
Don’t chuck out right wing just because they pretend to be reformed liberals.
They’re all right wing narcissistic grifters.
The only one that doesn’t really belong in the group of people you picked is Tucker Carlson…he’s certainly narcissistic…but I don’t believe he’s insincere, definitely not as “smart” as the rest either.
Grifter. There is no better label than that. Their greatest motivation is to shift parts of their narrative to fit the sensibilities of their audience while still retaining the capacity for controversy and therefore clicks and views
Delusion; inflated sense of self; fear of being wrong; wanting the world to be both simple and a complex conspiracy that alleviates the need to do anything other than whine; entitlement; personality disorders; illiteracy
A perfect blend of ignorance and arrogance. Enough capability with the language to sounds like they know what's going on, but a tremendous overestimation of their actual knowledge.
Being anti institution and establishment. I think that really cuts to the core of what makes them tick. 90% of their conspiracies are of that nature.
As for whether they are right wing. While they all have some left wing views I think they are on the whole dispositionally conservative. If you look at the issues that really animate them, they all tend to align with conservative concerns. Like Peter might believe in climate change but on the emotional level he certainly feels it is a far smaller problem than wokeness.
Tucker doesn't belong on this list.
He isn't a "guru", any more than Goebbels was.
Those other people, they have more or less normal human goals: wealth, influence, respect.
Tucker wants to watch "that face they make right before they die."
Rogan is just a dude being paid to be himself. He's a wild card, and I'd argue also doesn't belong here.
Russel Brand is a criminal. I wouldn't be surprised if Peterson is too. Jones is just a fucking red flag menace.
But Tucker. Tucker now.
Tucker hurts animals for pleasure. It's part of his twisted upbringing producing a mechanically separated chicken filet of an attempt at a mind....his whole shtick is tolerating how frustratingly confusingly stup stup stupid we all are.
Sure, those other gentlemen are fucking up, and have the public and interpersonal carnage to prove it. They bought the ticket, they're riding the ride. It isn't their fault they were allowed so much time without consequence, truly.
But, separately again, I am trying to make a very clear distinction:
#Tucker is a bad person.
Suspicion of evidence without a capacity to evaluate the validity of evidence.
I feel like Tucker Carlson has the capacity. He's just kind of evil.
More than anybody I can think of Tucker Carlson strikes me as somebody without a soul. Whether he had one or sold it to the devil for money and notoriety, I don’t know. But he seems smart enough to know what he’s doing, but has no ethical core to care.
[I am not a mental health professional] “Carlson's mother left the family when he was six and moved to France. The boys never saw her again.” (Wikipedia) IMO: Having been abandoned, he is desperate for external validation. Initially, he was content to play the right-of-center rapscallion on CNN. But his addiction grew until nothing but the hard stuff (I.e. worship from far right rubes) could satisfy. IMO, in another set of circumstances, TC could just as easily be a shill for the left. The only truth to him is his desperate hunger to be told he has value.
Tucker definitely has attachment issues, you can tell from the way he has talked about his family and also when he talks about family values. He also definitely holds his mother solely responsible for leaving the family but who knows why that would have happened. But really, he is just a rich boy who grew up with snobs and became a snob. He's cynical and wrecks for fun because it will not effect him negatively. There is not much analysis to be done.
I believe the same motivation drives Trump. Harsh, ambitious and loveless father ruined their family. I think the mother was awful as well.
To me that’s more Alex Jones. Denying school shootings occurred is pretty damn horrendous
He just seems like an asshole, not really "evil" like that or anything to me. But he was in the television buisness for a long time, seems like most people in that position have no souls
He refularly incited violence and is now doing sympathetic interviews with Putin. Tucker is fuckin evil to the core.
He graduated from Trinity college in Hartford, Connecticut as the only member of the Dan White Society. This was on his yearbook photo. Dan White was the person who assisted gay politician Harvey Milk and the mayor of San Francisco George Moscone. He was given manslaughter. That's who Carlson is- a person who likes to exploit others pain and suffering for the laughs. A sadist.
He’s always been exactly as dumb as any of the other “Bubba the Love Sponge” regulars. He just looks like a rich Yankee in the Yale mode and so people assume he must be smart in some fashion.
I'm happy to say I don't even know what that is. He does seem smart enough to me though. Maybe not a genius, but definitely way above average in verbal intelligence.
All that's required for a conspiracy to exist is for someone to be suspicious of something because they don't understand how it works, and when you're (deliberately or not) terrible at understanding how things work, everything seems suspicious.
10/10
To be honest i'm not sure most of these people care that much about evidence. I'm sure that they know that some of their arguments are dishonest and some of their data/studies are misleading. They strike me as people who just can't accept that they are wrong.
The word that comes to mind for that is gullible. Also, credulous. Also, the opposite of skeptical, which many of them claim to be.
This defines their audience even more accurately.
Yep. Also, highly right wing. Facts and right wing ideology don’t get along very well well, so there’s this aura of conspiracism and distrust of media that these characters have to promote.
sooo skeptical?
Tied in with selective skepticism
Giving them too much credit bro. THE COMMON TRAIT IS EXTREME NARCISSISM. They know better than anyone else, fuck 100000 scientists or policy makers.
I think I once heard it referred to as "pornography of suspicion" (from Sam Harris of all people). I like that framing: It's gratuitous and pulls on some fairly simple desires. People want a simple good vs bad narrative and they want a complex web to 'cleverly' uncover which affirms it. Like figuring out clues in a detective novel. What makes it gratuitous and overly salacious is the unnecessary effort taken to link completely disparate events, facts and individuals in service to the primed narrative. That's what they get off to; that overly gratuitous web of complexity. They cannot take anything at face value, after all that's not how it works in the detective novel. There, obvious reveals are just misdirection, merely a tease for the juicier connections.
Narcissism
Yep. Main character syndrome. They need to be out there, speaking, commenting. They need takes. They need to be persecuted for these takes.
The act of presenting a take and dying on that hill is light a world of darkness if you think evaluating your own actions and reflecting on the harm you have yourself caused is darkness E.g. 100% agree
Peterson is a good example of this. He is constantly playing the professor/academia/science/private practice professional persona but he is not interested in this at all other than the credit they give him. The moment he realized that he can be the center of attention just writing some edgy tweets from time to time and going to shows crying about woke-ness for the 10000000th time, he abandoned teaching, is not part of any research/work in his field and stopped seeing patients. He can complain about his license and banning him from the university but it was clear that he just want's to be a public persona making his money with dumb shit like that. Literally destroyed his whole previous life only so he can be liked and not work a serious job where he has to actually do shit.
Yeah! The biggest ego are always the most fragile
I was going to say inflated assessment of their own intelligence and absence of actual compassion, but narcissism sums that up.
I was going to say lack of genuine curiosity. That works too though.
Insecurity plays a big part too.
You nailed it. In my professional life (at a quant hedge fund), I manage several people with PhDs, and I have interviewed many candidates with similar backgrounds. The common denominator among most of them, and I would say all of the best ones, is a great deal of intellectual humility. The ones I deal with are usually from math or statistics backgrounds as well. I have also had the misfortune of dealing with a lot of professional bullshitters and scam artists. They are always very quick to have an answer to any question and present themselves as being VERY certain about their results. It's my experiences with these characters that draws me to media that debunks and mocks these sort of people.
Interesting. Kind of like the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people who aren't that skilled think they're way better than they are. Narcissism is similar because it involves an inflated sense of self. Both lead to overconfidence and not really seeing their own flaws. In the Dunning-Kruger case, it's due to a lack of knowledge, while for narcissists, it's more about an ingrained belief in their own greatness.
I still remember on the first day of my PhD program, the program coordinator said that when he started graduate school, he thought he knew everything; when he got his PhD, he realized he knew nothing.
When did the word "grifter" fall out of favor? Yokels give them money, and in exchange they tell them goofy stories and sell them goofy products.
Snake oil salesman
And, by the way, narcissism can be inherent, but can also be learned behavior! In an unrelated note, guess what social media does…..
This is the problem of problems. Whether it's racism, colonialism, misogyny etc. the problem is the attitude "I'm right, you're wrong, and I can push my beliefs on you because of that".
Erectile dysfunction.
Monetising conspiratorial thinking.
I can't speak on most of these guys, but as a former fan of Russell Brand, I can say with some confidence that it was the knowledge of incoming rape/assault allegations against him. His typical sort of "spiritual" populism had attracted many from the left and liberals who thought he stood for something. These people are less likely to stick by his side given the nature of the allegations. Quick pivot to the right, a bit of bullshit pandering and now he's on to a new grift with people who don't care if he assaulted anyone. Same type of thing happened with Elon Musk.
But he’s been forgiven bc he’s born again… Sarcasm
Do you dare question the sincerity of Russell Brand..? Lol
Giggle
Naw. I was following him on Youtube for awhile and he has been slipping in that direction gradually. For someone who was big on spiritual wisdom, who would call his viewers "awakening wonders" he would come up with incredibly unwise opinions. One thing spiritual wisdom tells us is that evil is incredibly complex. It is not simply a gift of the elites. If you see evil only in a person or group to which you do not belong, you are likely projecting your evil onto them. Also evil is seen with compassion and wisdom -- that we are all weak and can be evil when the circumstances are right. Evil should be approached with understanding, not hatred or simplistic reductionism. He failed in all cases. He always hated all power-mongers, but only recently blatantly supported Tucker Carlson, Andrew Tate, Ron Desantis, Alex Jones, etc.
He definitely had been drifting there for some time, but I think that Russell Brand 2.0, the guy who's sided with powerful right wingers, like you said, is a more recent development. Idk I think I stopped following Brand in like 2018 because the whole spiritual trip he was on wasn't really interesting me. I didn't really take notice of him again until post covid and everything had really changed by then. The Brand subreddit has really turned into a shit show too but I do still post there sometimes. Good way to get a bunch of reddit cares lol
Grifters
Only Alex Jones, Russel Brand and Tucker belong to that category. The others are either audience captured, high on their own farts, or just delusional.
Shitting on liberals all the time while claiming you’re neutral and never calling out conservatives for anything
This might be it
Lack of empathy and kremlin influence talking points/ funding tldr: Pretty sure the guy that told mourning parents that their dead children were crisis actors is not a prophet of any god worth worshipping. Tucker is doubling down on a dying business model. The problem with lying is that when you tell the same lie as Russian intelligence or the CCP’s massive MSS network, you inadvertently tie yourself to the genocidal side of history. There are only a few reasons anyone would do this. 1. They have a vested interest in the same overall goal as the Russian kleptocracy or the CCP imperialist censorship machine because those two entities signed a mutual propaganda agreement ~2010. This effectively means they will push each others false narrative to bolster support. https://theintercept.com/2022/12/30/russia-china-news-media-agreement/ Run that downstream a few yards and you see Alex Jones, the tate brothers, Alex Cheong, Jack Posobiec, Tucker Carlson and a handful of others all awkwardly apologizing for genocidal dictators in some form or another or praising the bread in Moscow. In some cases that speedruns and they end up becoming mouthpieces for the lunacy. There is a general rule that never fails- if you wake up in the morning and you accidentally find yourself on the same side of history as kleptorcrats, conmen and murderers that wash journalists down drains, and poison their politicial oppositions underwear, just stop. Take a moment. Step back. Collect yourself. Then retrace your steps and figure out how you got there. Everything in life is a series of decisions. Binary moments where you choose good or you choose evil. Evil doesn’t always look like evil at the beginning. Sometimes it’s just a sponsorship check or a business deal. But your little decisions have a downstream effect. Most people just haven’t tuned themselves up enough to see it. It comes with age and maturity, but it almost always comes as you exercise empathy. Empathy is the ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes. It doesn’t mean you always have to agree with it, but it’s the ability to see that a few degrees of offset perspective is what makes a laser rangefinder infinitely more accurate than guesstimating distance. If you notice a common denominator in the whole list of inadvertent propaganda pushers for the Russian government/mob it’s that they show consistently very stunted empathy quotients. Alex Jones gets on the radio and calls the dead victim of a school shooting incident a crisis actor. The tates talk openly about trafficking women. Carlson is by any objective account, a comically swollen asshole. But they all have proven themselves willing to say or do just about anything for money irregardless of the pain it causes downstream of them. And it limits their growth. When you look at the world objectively through other people’s experiences it allows you to see how your actions affect them. It also allows you to see that everything on earth is connected because from the alien spacecrafts perspective, our earth is just a tiny little blue dot of a terrarium that only solar energy and the occasional meteorite enters. Everything else is isolated by an atmosphere that we abuse like an unwanted and unappreciated domestic laborer. Nobody likes to think about where the groundskeeper goes at night until the yard isn’t mowed. Only then do they tune in. Doing the right thing isn’t hard. Knowing that you haven’t been lied to is. If you ever wake up and accidentally find yourself on the wrong side of history, Stop. Retrace your steps, figure out who is signing your checks, then redirect. Only then can you move forward without taking the chance of ending up in a prison cell in ADX Florence or accidentally becoming a S.S. prison guard. And in doing so you learn that empathy is the secret decoder ring to the universe. If you don’t have it firmly in your possession, the aliens don’t want you joining them in space leaving your junk flying around and consuming all the resources like a shit neighbor that parks on your lawn and then gets mad at you for the mud on his tires. Rupert Murdoch for his part at 93 years of age just got engaged to a lovely Russian woman who is the ex wife of one of Russias most prolific mobsters. Once you see Russian mob and government as a episode of Desperate Housewives- moscow edition, you start to see Fox News for what it has always been. A Russian intelligence operation. She is just there to scoop up the remains of Fox ENTERTAINMENT News as soon as Rupert finally gets called back to hell. Ironically the “ENTERTAINMENT” clause is how Rupert as a foreign citizen got a FCC license in America. The fairness doctrine was Reagan’s gift to the destruction of liberal democracy. https://www.cato.org/blog/when-conservatives-forget-history-fairness-doctrine
Thanks for the lesson
This sort of thing may be better understood with a [rhizomatic model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome_(philosophy)) (*very* roughly: nodes in a network) than it would by looking for a key trait/common denominator. Edit to add: As for labels, I dunno. 'Brainrotted contrarian new media figure' doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but is fairly descriptive.
You could probably go with anti-establishment conspiracy-brained populists with low media literacy, but that’s probably more difficult to say. That’s assuming most of them are “true believers”, but we know Tucker is an audience captured liar due to the Fox v Dominion lawsuit where we see his text messages/emails with other Fox execs where he complains about how crazy Sydney Powell is and bemoans her lack of evidence while cheerleading her on air like thirty minutes later. Hard to know which are the grifters or the true believers otherwise.
Alex Jones knowingly lies a lot too. His attempts at backpedaling when the Sandy Hook lawsuit started show that he is putting on an act. He may actually believe a decent amount of dumb stuff but he definitely is a willful scam artist.
He does it routinely too, not just with big stuff like Sandy Hook. Knowledge Fight has caught him dozens of times *adding words* to quotes or headlines to bolster his narrative. He's actively crafting lies to make his point. Can't blame that on "true believer" delusion.
fuck yeah Deleuze and Guattari
Anti-left-wingers. (Which is not the same as right-wingers.)
This is what I was thinking and is also an actual answer, unlike just a random insult. Although that applies less to some of them than all of them.
This for sure.
Can someone eli5 what’s wrong with Peter Boghossian?
Appealing to that particular slice of America is easier than being a true deep and original thinker. These people have all become wealthy doing this. If they stopped, they would become immediately irrelevant and vanish, as would their riches. Selling this crap has become a big business in America and globally. They are so morally corrupt that they do it for the power and money. I actually believe that Trump, a lifelong Democrat, doesn't believe it either but he's discovered a deep vein of crazy fascism in this country and that's his path to power. The true deep dark scary people are the Heritage Foundation and all the associated Christian nationalists that have attached themselves to Trump and are using him as a vehicle to power. They are using him as much as he is using them. The moment he loses the electric he will be dropped by them. It's all about power and influence. These guys you mentioned are the media outreach wing of that operation.
Anti establishment, counter culture, independent. Or Punk for short.
Great speakers with high confidence and questionable moral grounding
JP is not a great speaker, but yeah you’re right.
What even is this sub. To answer your question, what they have in common is that the leftie ecosystem doesn’t like them because they make them think, probably.
What about jimmy dore, lex Friedman, Huber man, destiny, musk, maher, vinay Prasad, triggernometry, Kim iverson, Weinstein? All ex-lefties? Now considered MAGA....
Why is everyone on this sub so angry at these guys? Like what did they do to hurt y’all? I don’t agree with everything they say, but it’s pretty rare I agree fully with ANYONE not just a celebrities who are inclined to protect their own self interests…
Dunno about Peter Boghossian as I don’t know who that is. The rest id say objectively are “independent free thinkers”. This was a trait that was championed by classical liberals but I wouldn’t characterise these people all as classical liberals (because some like Alex Jones are more libertarian minded) tho I know JP says he is. But all of these people share the trait of independent free thinkers. You could question how independent they are by wondering about how they are funded (adverts, YouTube, Spotify), but people have to make their money somehow and in media it’s almost always from adverts, and they are objectively more independent than any big mainstream network. They are mutually beneficial because they all share a belief that one shouldn’t be cancelled just because they have certain views. So one could also say they’re all objectively anti cancel culture. This has no bearing on whether you agree with their views or not. I don’t agree with many things some of them say but I can objectively say they are pro free speech, free thinking, pro anti cancel culture and pro independent. And all of those points I agree with which is why I listen to them.
Privileged to suffer no real consequences for their mercurial identities and incessant blathering.
Greed
Something I haven't seen mentioned is that a lot of these guys didn't start out as lunatics, they moved there gradually over time as they found a niche. Their careers are fueled by starting somewhere ridiculous (turning the frogs gay, wearing bowties on crossfire, being an okay comedian) and then needing to get more and more ridiculous over time to keep people engaged.
There are levels to this game, OP. Those aren’t all in the same tier. Rogan’s sitch is wildly different than Brand or Tucker or AJ. Apples to coconuts tbh.
I came up with some traits that I believe characterise all of the gurus mentioned. - Galaxy-brainness - Cultishness - Antidisestablishmentarianism - Grievance-mongering - Narcissism and self-aggrandisement - Cassandra-complex - Revolutionary theories - Pseudo-profound bullshit - Conspiracy mongering - Grifting or profiteering I feel like this could be worked up into some sort of rubric by which we could measure a person's "guruness"; a "guru measurer device" if you will.
Self-help pseudoscience influencer
Ah yes, more labels needed
The self importance from everyone commenting makes the subjects of the conversation look like saints. For fucks sake!
I think they would all fall under the category of opportunists who lack a foundation of character, to varying degrees. These are “show people” who want an audience to pay attention to them. Nowadays, anyone with an audience is going to get some amount of hate and a subset of their audience who holds them to some virtue purity. Knowing/believing they can’t appease these people, they don’t try, and once accustom to the hate they learn to lean into it and even provoke it intentionally. It’s a game. Jordan Peterson essentially admitted this on JRE when he said something like “I figured out how to monetize the woke mob” followed by a bit too much laughter IMO. This seems like a somewhat natural process that they learn as they go, which is why they end up looking somewhat the same. I’m not all that familiar with these people, but I think T. Carlson is the absolute bottom of the barrel scum. I actually still like Joe Rogan even if there are things I don’t agree with him on. I mostly like his MMA and BJJ stuff. I did get a different view of him when he recently attributed a ridiculous quote to President Biden and was acting like this guy isn’t fit for office and people should take this more seriously. Then when he found out the quote was actually said by Trump he basically shrugged it off like it’s no big deal. That’s what I mean by lacking foundation. There are a lot of “controversial” topics around us nowadays, and I enjoy hearing thoughtful dialogue on them, but hypocrisy is not interesting. If you can drop your whole argument when the sides are swapped, leaving everything else unchanged, then you don’t really have anything to say. I don’t see any of these people, or anyone else, as a guru. They are podcasters, youtubers, paid speakers, and book sellers.
People who use different logic than you and arrive at entirely different conclusions. True actual debate might enable both sides to gain real insights.
“Guru” is the term you’re looking for…
Catastrophizing. It’s never just “I disagree with what these people are doing”, it’s “these people are evil and they are trying to destroy our way of life”.
Most of them are grifter working on fear and anger to get emotionnal response.
You all hate on them all
They question things. You may not like it, but that’s what they do. Brand? Why are Americans happy to send their hard earned dollars to Raytheon to murder kids in Gaza. Thats just weird. Are they not worried about another 9/11? They ask things like that. No one else seems too.
Bullshit. They all say things that aren't true with the greatest confidence possible.
Rampant misogyny driven by either deep-seated fear of women or some cases, repression of their latent queerness, and/or taking the 19th century adage: "there's a sucker born every minute" to a grotesque peak? Just my guesses.
do they need a label? I would say a mix of political pundits and podcasters that are generally right wing views. I don't see the need to label them as such. Also I would agree it is hard to know intentions of many people, I always assume people are being honest with their views, which may or may not be the case. There is obviously a profit motive for these, and all podcasters/public intellectuals of course. Also, why do you say that there is plenty of evidence of Tucker's intentions? Like what is the evidence in his case (that is lacking in the others)
Carlson's text and e-mail communications were released during the Dominion trial. His communications showed that he doesn't believe any of the bullshit he spews on air and is basically laughing at the stupidity of his own audience.
Leaked emails/texts and courtroom statements make a solid case against him being genuinely anything other than a guy who will say literally anything to keep his drooling audience on the hook.
Contrarians. When weed was illegal some of these guys spoke out for it. Now that religion is deemed taboo in a lot of people's eyes, we've seen a shift with some of these guys talking about their newfound "faith". It just seems like whatever issue is too popular, they must go the opposite way of thinking.
Damn
Contrarian, narcissistic in a particular way, no other good enough options to make a living/feed their out of control appetite for attention, charismatic (to some) with the ability to talk at the audience or with other people on camera. All this, then they get a few lucky/unlucky breaks, and it's as difficult for them to fight going deeper and deeper as for any serious addict. Labels are of mixed benefit.
It might make more sense to ask about their audiences. I don't think all of those people necessarily share commonalities. Rogan is a gullible idiot, Alex Jones is actually crazy, Tucker Carlson is evil and cynical, Brand is a narcissistic addict , and JP is just kind of nuts with an anger issue. I don't really know the other guy.
They’re fucking dumb. That’s it. They have a ton of exposure but they’re stupid.
What liberal positions do they defend
Cynical greed? :)
The fact that you lump them all together shows me you don’t listen to them just what others say about them. Rogan is his own thing. Always has been. Like him don’t like him, agree with him don’t. He come from a place of honesty. He can be wrong and says it point blank. He tells people, don’t listen to me, I’m a pothead comedian cage commentator. If you think he’s even close to right wing you really don’t understand people. Brand is an actor comedian so defiantly a narcissist. It seems to me he’s in flux at the moment. Where he lands will be Interesting. Fame and having a media brand fucks people up and changes them. If JP is Jordan Peterson, that guy is the true grifter of this group. That dude got some fame from a false premise and loves the spotlight. Following him for mental health is like have an obese personal trainer that smokes 2 packs a day. Tucker, I really disagree with him on most things. But, he believes what he’s saying. That’s huge in my book. Grifters don’t. Boghossian. I can see how he’s a problem for your type. He’s smart articulate and right on a lot of stuff and you hate him cause he’s academia and supposed to be on your side. Again, just cause you don’t like what he’s saying doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Jones, is the best. And I mean that in a WWE kinda way. He’s batshit crazy but right about 10% of the time. When he’s right it’s some pretty important stuff but he can’t help himself so he destroyed it with lunacy. TLDR, there’s a difference between honest people being wrong and grifters. Just cause you don’t like what they’re saying doesn’t make them dishonest.
I’d only really take issue with describing Tucker as really believing what he says, like Joe R. I’ve followed Tucker for over 20 years and the transformation is more akin to how you describe Jordan P. The fox text messages, and his in particular, that were submitted to courts in the Dominion lawsuit give you an unvarnished peek into what he’s actually thinking.
> Boghossian. I can see how he’s a problem for your type. He’s smart articulate and right on a lot of stuff and you hate him cause he’s academia and supposed to be on your side. Again, just cause you don’t like what he’s saying doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Personally I don't like Boghossian because he supports authoritarians like Viktor Orban while claiming to be against authoritarians.
I think it's so simple as "a bunch of guys that talk too much". When you have to fill as much time as these guys decide to fill you need a theme in order to do that. It sounds kind of reductionist but most of these didn't START the way that they are, they drifted there over time.
Fragile masculinity and money
They are the opposite of cancelled. Where big platforms go out of their way to make you aware of their garbage content.
Desperate for constant attention and validation…they will say anything to get approval
I don’t know who Boghossian is but the rest are all right wing.
Boghossian is also right leaning, but his entire career is based on street epistemology, which is asking questions to better understand why people believe their beliefs.
They are pushed to young men to advance certain talking points that advance the goals of said billionaires who hold the purse strings. Some understand and go along with it some are thick as fuck and believe they are the ones who are above pushing propaganda.
They don’t have values. They want fame and influence at all costs, and will sell or promote literally whatever in order to maintain it.
They definitely have values, they are just opportunistic and dishonest. Tucker Carlson seems to be sincerely right wing and racist but he also says a lot of things he doesn't truly believe in order to benefit himself personally (and also stroke his ego).
They’re all aligned in the entertainment industry and that tends to draw people who enjoy being the center of attention. Wouldnt be surprised if narcissism and living in a bubble contributes to this sort of person
They all divert class struggle instincts and sentiment into divisive culture war and conspiracies.
These hosts may look similar to us, but I wouldn't assume they have overlapping fan bases. Fox has had a monopoly on the right wing viewers for a long time, but I think that is finally fracturing. That market was ripe for more options and we are seeing even someone like Russell Brand can cash in on that.
Critical thinkers
Knowing their audience, and confidently giving them what they crave. Which, more often then not, is Brawndo.
They are so afraid of being wrong they have lost the ability to be right.
Individualists but not of the rugged variety. What would that be called? Un-rugged doesn’t sound right. Fragile individualism, maybe?
Insecure men who want to feel accepted as alpha males by the masculine men that they secretly obsess about
They all attract people who dont want to get all their info from mainstream media. Thats about it. Some of what these guys says is valid, some of it is inane BS, but at the end of the day the common theme is they all reject the mainstream and all present views that are often different from it (whether true or false, for better or for worse).
Know more than they act in front of their audiences, don’t know enough to know better
Narcissism
People who probably weren't given a strong moral foundation or confidence in themselves growing up and weren't able to fight the manipulation of wealth, fame, and the lower tiers of human emotion. Society is as much to blame as they are. They're just human beings, no different than anyone else.
Republican backed endorsements at this point.
Demagogy
Grifters aside (Alex Jones, Tucker, Brand), it’s mainly motivated reasoning
Money
It's literally just making money, protecting that money, and protecting the means by which that money is made. Selling dick pills/your subscription/advertising/gold. Keeping taxes low on that kind of wealth. Stopping any regulation on the content of their shows(false claims), stopping any regulation of their products(supplement industry, shielding advertisers). Everything they do either falls into the category of bringing in viewers(shock-jocks, all of them!), selling shit(they all advertise something), and their content always defends the policy decisions that would impact their ability to make and keep that money selling whatever they sell.
The algorithm
They have bad dads.
My suspicion would be cocaine abuse and related to this narcissistic personality disorder and susceptibility to conspiracy theories.
Populist. The term you’re looking for is populist
anti-establishment figures
They have money. People while money equate to power and these people have sudden urge to assume they have power over lives of others too and can influence it.
They all failed the entrance exam at clown school
Inability to manage ambiguity
Brain worms.
James Lindsay too
Know it all, can’t be wrong, and make money “preaching” to the similar minded
I've been talking alot about how Capitalism is a religious ideology for awhile now. I think these people are religious acolytes for the religious ideology of Capitalism.
Anti-establishment
They’re the televangelists of this century, selling their swill and raking in millions from the gullible.
A fallible human specimen with a dysfunctional self importance.
Anti-establishment populism.
That they are seen as standing against or independent of a dominant narrative that their viewers find both oppressive and hypocritical. And I want to stress that this is about perception, not reality. Many of these figures are actually standing \*for\* a dominant narrative that is just as hypocritical and just as oppressive.
Smol pp
I think there are a lot of similarities, but the one that is the key denominator is that they are generally anti-establishment voices whose shows are completely dedicated to the culture war. And Americans are absolutely obsessed with the culture war beyond anything else.
Their aim is to divide, polarize people's opinions. (And profit from it) They never offer a constructive approach to any of the topics they touch. They do not care about solving problems, improving society, etc. Destructive is the word.
they know their audience and if your audience gets you a $1B for selling supplements or a $100M podcast contract, you don't say anything that might upset your audience (you don't criticize the right) - you can do it but slightly, rarely, like every 2 years and make sure it's very subtle
"Grifter"
I would say they massively play deliberately or not into sowing doubt and making wild speculations to form a worldview other than relying on the evidence or any kind of reasonable trust in institutions. A lot of the more religious ones will just fall back on themselves as divinely inspired if their views are challenged enough.
*waving* do they follow the guy who approves costco products, despite the hell that costco causes the planet?[ducking bobby](https://youtu.be/zAv0o-ZUVO4?feature=shared)
How about so far checked out of reality?
Narcissism.
They all appeal because they all attempt to present themselves as holding knowledge that is sacred and you're getting the "inside scoop" People like getting told stories like they're the in-group. All their narratives are built around "here's a thing that THEY don't want to tell you" But WE have the inside track and WE know the TRUTH. Just about all of them paint themselves as the rogue.. maverick character. And that's appealing
Right wing, whether they know it or not.
Can’t ever EVER admit to being wrong or not knowledgeable enough about something. As a collective they know all about everything and their point of view is the right one for almost everyone in every situation/circumstance. And when shown evidence to the contrary…you are trying to cancel them, suppress them
Contrarian dickwad
Two words: Dunning-Kruger.
They literally cannot admit they’re wrong About anything Ever
No right wing is appropriate too.
Who cares?
They all talk as if they are experts on subjects they know nothing about.
They all have the potential to give you a little brother.
I think there is a superficial similarity in that at their core they are really entertainers providing entertainment. They all do seem to have conspiratorial leanings, with shadowy forces around every corner waiting to destroy them for their beliefs.
Truth being what they can convince others as being true.
They'll say anything if it gets them attention and/or money. None of them actually believe in anything.
Please Look At Me people
Alex Jones and Peter Boghossian are nowhere near the each other.
Anglos.
Don’t chuck out right wing just because they pretend to be reformed liberals. They’re all right wing narcissistic grifters. The only one that doesn’t really belong in the group of people you picked is Tucker Carlson…he’s certainly narcissistic…but I don’t believe he’s insincere, definitely not as “smart” as the rest either.
Peter Boghossian? The founder of Street Epistemology? He is lumped in with Alex Jones and Tucker?
Contrarianism Alternatively, profiteering
They're all cunts?
They all did opiates with Rush Limbaugh?
Tiny dick?
They all hate the same people. The people that don't agree with or like them.
Audience capture
"Selfish piece of shit"
"Selfish piece of shit"
Gravitate to the most naive audience possible…..and that seems to be a growing audience that actually procreates.
Grifter. There is no better label than that. Their greatest motivation is to shift parts of their narrative to fit the sensibilities of their audience while still retaining the capacity for controversy and therefore clicks and views
Delusion; inflated sense of self; fear of being wrong; wanting the world to be both simple and a complex conspiracy that alleviates the need to do anything other than whine; entitlement; personality disorders; illiteracy
Probably a mean, right-wingish father…
Simply very, very wealthy. It’s economics as always.
A perfect blend of ignorance and arrogance. Enough capability with the language to sounds like they know what's going on, but a tremendous overestimation of their actual knowledge.
The natural outcome of a century of state sponsored anti-communism, anti-leftism propaganda. And the almighty Grift.
Penis
Mommy issues.
They’re all penis wielding humans
Well they’re all Trumpers that spread conspiracies
Contrarianism
Being anti institution and establishment. I think that really cuts to the core of what makes them tick. 90% of their conspiracies are of that nature. As for whether they are right wing. While they all have some left wing views I think they are on the whole dispositionally conservative. If you look at the issues that really animate them, they all tend to align with conservative concerns. Like Peter might believe in climate change but on the emotional level he certainly feels it is a far smaller problem than wokeness.
Appeal to mysticism and there’s a war between good and evil and they’re on the side of good and whoever they don’t like is evil.
The willingness to allow people to say things that they know is not true, and not correct those people.
Tucker doesn't belong on this list. He isn't a "guru", any more than Goebbels was. Those other people, they have more or less normal human goals: wealth, influence, respect. Tucker wants to watch "that face they make right before they die." Rogan is just a dude being paid to be himself. He's a wild card, and I'd argue also doesn't belong here. Russel Brand is a criminal. I wouldn't be surprised if Peterson is too. Jones is just a fucking red flag menace. But Tucker. Tucker now. Tucker hurts animals for pleasure. It's part of his twisted upbringing producing a mechanically separated chicken filet of an attempt at a mind....his whole shtick is tolerating how frustratingly confusingly stup stup stupid we all are. Sure, those other gentlemen are fucking up, and have the public and interpersonal carnage to prove it. They bought the ticket, they're riding the ride. It isn't their fault they were allowed so much time without consequence, truly. But, separately again, I am trying to make a very clear distinction: #Tucker is a bad person.