Weak Sauce
Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough
The King of New Media is Joe Rogan. His YouTube channel has 18.7 million subscribers. He is a dude who talks to dudes and is watched by dudes (71% of his audience is male). He conducts rambling, stoned conversations with his guests. Rogan is not a journalist and is mostly concerned with keeping the convivial banter flowing - which seems to be what his audience wants. I don’t really listen to Joe because I don’t smoke dope any more. 20-year-old me would probably have loved losing myself in Joe-world with a spliff in my hand and the words drifting through my ears. This cool uncle shepherding me through our cruel world. And while many of Rogan’s beliefs are exactly what you would expect from a 57-year-old UFC aficionado and professional stoner, at least he’s not Tucker Carlson - shilling for Russian dictators and barely concealing his racism. Admittedly that is a low bar to clear but these are the times that we live in.
About a month ago, he had Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster on. They run a YouTube channel and podcast with called TRIGGERnometry (did you see what they did there). The show is similar to Rogan’s but less fratboy. As they say, TRIGGERnometry is a free speech YouTube show and podcast. We believe in open, fact-based discussion of important and controversial issues. And they have over 1 million subscribers. Like Rogan, both tried their hand at comedy before moving into the podcast world. From what I have seen, neither were ever going to trouble Dave Chappelle but they are perfectly able to have civil conversations with their guests and there is obviously an audience for their work. Oddly the thumbnails for their videos are tinted orange so all their guests look like they’ve had bad spray tans. I’m sure part of being a free speech absolutist is looking like you’ve rolled around in Cheetos but I’m no expert on these matters.
Their guests tend to be right wing. They would say that these voices are suppressed by mainstream media although that case is slightly undermined by 1. some of them being journalists with national publications (being published in The Times is an odd form of suppression) and 2. the rest are regular fixtures on podcasts. Eric Weinstein recently appeared on both TRIGGERnometry and Joe Rogan and is no way a voice being denied to us. Perhaps the clearest example of their political orientation was the debate they hosted on Liberalism vs Conservatism. If I had been running that, I probably would have tried to get on Rory Stewart and Ian Dunt. Both are articulate, reasonable men who are passionate about their respective traditions. But then I am a centrist cuck. Those were not the kind of people invited on. Instead we had James Orr, the driving force behind the British wing of National Conservatism, promoting Liberalism (alright fine fine spoil my fun) Conservatism. National Conservatism can be summed up as the paradoxical “Trump but reads books”. Meanwhile in the Liberal corner we had Stephen Hicks - a hardcore libertarian, Randian Objectivist and the author of a critique of postmodernism that was so poorly researched he had to self-publish it. Their ideas are “controversial” in much the same way that serving your in-laws your own excrement for Christmas dinner would be considered “controversial”.
Kisin and Foster also have Substacks. Foster’s most recent piece shows him hard at work auditioning to be a Daily Mail Columnist. He claims: In the West, we worship weakness. Do we though, Francis? We have Donald Trump playing a reality TV show version of a caudillo. We have Andrew Tate pumping iron and shilling bitcoin and roughing up women. We have so many people - men especially - performing strength and being worshipped for it. I personally think truly strong people don’t need to be constantly seeking validation and adoration but what do I know? I’m still shilling for subs*.
While pretending otherwise allows Foster to get in some easy jabs at the wokes, I don’t think his premise is actually true. Which means the role of Richard Littlejohn, Public Intellectual is his for the taking.
What a time to be alive.
I think Andrew means heavy, clanging, and prone to corrosion
*It’s not a competition, Karl Melrose, but it is a not-competition that I intend to win.