Bubble Pop with Rachel Gilmore - March 21, 2025


What came first： the right-wing podcaster or the brain worms？ (with Taylor Lorenz)


Episode Stats


Length

31 minutes

Words per minute

185.58

Word count

5,849

Sentence count

248

Harmful content

Toxicity

12

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 it's just it's crazy like if you start saying right-wing reactionary things online and you have
00:00:05.820 somewhat you know a little bit of traction or you're attractive or you fit a specific mold
00:00:10.260 in this case it's you know a woman of color saying something reactionary okay you're gonna get money
00:00:16.900 you're gonna get opportunities you're gonna get funding again because there's this entire
00:00:20.060 infrastructure whereas if you're any in any capacity on the left not only are you not going
00:00:24.200 to get the mainstream dnc funding you're not going to get it from liberal billionaires you're not
00:00:28.500 getting anything and you're algorithmically penalized. Hello, I'm Rachel Gilmore, your
00:00:37.280 least favorite person's least favorite journalist. Welcome to Bubble Pop, a weekly show where we
00:00:42.060 break down the biggest headlines so you don't have to doom scroll. Then we'll dig deeper into
00:00:46.140 something juicy that you should know about. On this episode, we've got user mags Taylor Lorenz
00:00:50.620 on the show. She's a tech and online culture journalist who wrote the book on being extremely
00:00:55.980 online. No, seriously, that's the name of her excellent book. We're going to talk about the
00:01:00.500 right-wing dominance of the online media world and what that means for, well, everything. But first,
00:01:07.180 the news. In this week's roundup, it's election time, baby. Mark Carney is expected to pull the
00:01:14.500 trigger on Sunday to plunge us into an election campaign. There's a lot to talk about there.
00:01:20.200 Israel shattered the ceasefire. It wasn't doing a great job of adhering to in the first place,
00:01:24.600 killing hundreds of Palestinians, including children, in U.S.-sanctioned violence.
00:01:29.920 Trump is launching a full-scale attack on U.S. democracy with his latest showdown against the judiciary and his cruel deportations.
00:01:38.360 China just executed four Canadian citizens, and tensions between our two countries over trade are rising.
00:01:44.840 And families are finally getting some closure after Mercedes Myron and Morgan Harris' remains were found in a Winnipeg-area landfill.
00:01:52.460 Let's dive in.
00:01:54.600 are you ready to rumble that's right mark carney is reportedly going to ask the governor general
00:02:02.360 to dissolve parliament and call an election on sunday that means you will be voting either
00:02:07.880 april 28th or may 5th the decision comes as the liberals have started running away with the polls
00:02:13.560 that's right for the first time in over two years several polls are reporting that the liberals have
00:02:19.720 pulled ahead which means the conservative party just blew the lead that they were enjoying for
00:02:23.960 a really long time. Not only that, but some of the biggest pollsters found the Liberals are
00:02:28.440 actually knocking on the door of a majority. But anything can happen in an election campaign,
00:02:33.680 even a short one, so we'll see if these numbers hold up in the weeks ahead.
00:02:37.620 Since being sworn in, Prime Minister Mark Carney has leapt into action. First, he swore in his
00:02:42.900 cabinet, which he shaved down to focus on the trade war and the economy. And he ditched a lot
00:02:48.180 of ministries that focused on things like diversity and equity. Like, we no longer have
00:02:53.260 ministers whose titles have the words women, gender equality, diversity, inclusion, and persons with
00:02:59.340 disabilities, to name a few. Carney's office assured the public that these portfolios aren't
00:03:04.000 gone, they've just been consolidated under different ministries. But still, it kind of sends a signal
00:03:08.980 from this very centrist former banker, right? Carney also immediately axed the consumer carbon
00:03:14.360 tax, which kind of sucked some of the air from beneath Polyev's wings. This led Polyev to pivot
00:03:19.620 it to an even more environmentally unfriendly policy. Not a huge surprise when you consider
00:03:24.780 that Polyev in an interview with Jordan Peterson called people who like care about climate change
00:03:29.320 quote environmental loons. Take a listen. If you want to talk to these environmental loons that
00:03:35.060 hate our energy sector. Yeah. So Polyev said he would not only repeal the consumer carbon tax
00:03:40.060 that Carney just got rid of, but would also repeal the carbon price on large industrial emitters.
00:03:45.060 That just happens to be the biggest plan that Canada has to reduce emissions between now and 2030,
00:03:51.980 accounting for between 20 and 48% of all reductions, according to an analysis published last year
00:03:57.580 by the Canadian Climate Institute. When pressed on this emissions target,
00:04:01.980 Pauliev said he's going to focus on helping other countries reduce their emissions. Awesome.
00:04:07.560 Since the Axe the Tax slogan is now pretty outdated, why don't he and the Conservatives
00:04:11.580 consider replacing it with something more fitting, like axe the ozone. Anyways, as Polyev tries
00:04:17.220 desperately to cling to the support that's slipping through his fingers, Carney went on a quick little
00:04:21.880 Europe trip to shore up our non-US allies. And then he hit up the Arctic, which has a lot of
00:04:27.120 eyeballs on it these days amid Russian aggression and Trump's non-stop annexation chatter. While
00:04:32.560 there, Carney announced a multi-billion dollar Australian radar purchase to shore up our far
00:04:37.280 northern defenses. Meanwhile, we're starting to see the early hints of just how dirty this electoral
00:04:42.060 campaign could get. Not only did one of Polyev's preferred outlets, one of the few he's granted a
00:04:48.000 one-on-one sit-down in recent weeks, publish a widely condemned factually incorrect hit piece
00:04:53.880 on one of Carney's children, misgendering them and misreporting on their history of gender-affirming
00:05:00.020 care. But on top of that, according to reporting from Luke Lebrun of Press Progress, Canada Proud,
00:05:05.100 which is a third-party advertising group run by right-wingers who worked for Pierre Polyev's
00:05:09.680 Conservative Party leadership campaign, has been running ads seemingly trying to link Mark Carney
00:05:14.740 to sex traffickers because of a single photo of Mark Carney and his wife standing next to Ghislaine
00:05:20.540 Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's partner, at a public event in 2013, two years before any allegations
00:05:26.700 of her role in Epstein's crimes were publicly known. Really solid stuff, guys. As the Conservatives
00:05:32.680 and their buddies ramp up the far-fetched mudslinging,
00:05:35.200 they're also trying to make sure
00:05:36.640 they won't be overly scrutinized themselves
00:05:39.020 because they just announced that they won't be allowing
00:05:41.180 any media on their campaign bus or plane
00:05:43.520 when the election is called,
00:05:45.240 which is a total break from decades of tradition
00:05:47.100 and in my opinion, a huge attack on the public's right
00:05:50.180 to know what the people who wanna run our country
00:05:52.400 are up to.
00:05:53.420 Like for decades, media have gotten seats
00:05:55.440 on leaders' election campaign tours.
00:05:57.760 They pay their own way for travel and fees
00:05:59.940 so they're not getting any free stuff from anyone here.
00:06:02.680 And this is how they can closely watch and report
00:06:05.600 on how the people vying to run our country
00:06:08.120 behave on the campaign trail.
00:06:09.960 But no, instead the conservatives
00:06:11.860 are gonna make the media scramble after them,
00:06:14.580 saying they'll give newsrooms two to three days notice
00:06:16.840 on where events will be.
00:06:18.580 And if newsrooms can't use their dwindling resources
00:06:21.180 to follow ever changing coast to coast
00:06:23.200 to coast campaign plans,
00:06:24.860 they'll have to rely on broadcast feeds
00:06:26.680 provided by the conservative party that,
00:06:28.960 as Janice McGregor put it
00:06:30.340 on CBC's World Report podcast this week,
00:06:32.980 quote, the conservatives will design and control.
00:06:36.720 Carney had his own little brush up
00:06:37.940 with journalists this week too,
00:06:39.380 when they pressed him about a conservative led push
00:06:41.820 to get him to publicly disclose details
00:06:43.740 of his personal assets
00:06:44.840 to ensure he'll avoid conflicts of interest.
00:06:47.220 Carney has put his assets in a blind trust
00:06:49.320 and says he is complying with all existing rules
00:06:52.140 under the Federal Conflict of Interest Act.
00:06:54.500 But CBC's Rosemary Barton pressed him on the issue
00:06:57.020 and said it's hard to believe
00:06:58.440 that there wouldn't be a conflict of interest here. In response, Carney told Barton to quote
00:07:03.160 look inside herself and accused her of starting from a prior assumption of quote conflict and
00:07:08.960 ill will. He also added that the line of questioning is trying to invent new rules.
00:07:14.280 The last thing I'll add on this topic is some juicy reporting just came out about some
00:07:18.160 conservative on conservative drama. The Toronto Star just exclusively reported that Pierre
00:07:23.120 Poliev called Ontario Premier Doug Ford to ask for help, but Ford told the Conservative Party
00:07:28.920 leader that he's too busy. That's the same Doug Ford who recently had breakfast with Mark Carney
00:07:34.160 and called him, quote, very bright. So things are already getting spicy, and as I'm filming this,
00:07:40.840 the election hasn't even been called yet. I have a feeling it's going to be a long month. In much
00:07:46.000 more difficult news, Israel has officially shattered the ceasefire. Its military killed
00:07:50.360 400 Palestinians, including children, in a series of airstrikes that some media outlets
00:07:55.880 breathlessly regurgitated were apparently against Hamas. Despite the fact that people like Rami
00:08:01.480 Abdu, who is the chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, shared with social media
00:08:06.860 that his sister and all her family who was with her, including small children, were killed in
00:08:12.080 the Israeli strikes. Or Rinad, an 11-year-old kid who lives in Gaza, who survived the bombardment,
00:08:17.560 but was posting in terror on her Instagram story that night.
00:08:20.920 Israel has also resumed its ground campaign,
00:08:23.320 killing dozens more Palestinians
00:08:24.800 since that initial bombardment,
00:08:27.100 including reportedly a UN worker
00:08:29.080 after an explosive ordinance went off
00:08:30.940 at the UN guest house in central Gaza,
00:08:33.380 a location known to the IDF in an isolated area
00:08:36.260 with no other buildings nearby.
00:08:38.600 The latest bout of horror comes
00:08:40.060 as Israel has also been denying Gaza access
00:08:42.600 to humanitarian aid and electricity,
00:08:44.680 which Medecins Sans Frontières said
00:08:46.640 amounts to collective punishment. Collective punishment violates the Geneva Conventions.
00:08:51.920 Meanwhile, according to reporting from Zeteo, Israel has asserted that this resumption of
00:08:56.140 violence was, quote, fully coordinated with the Trump administration. And Israeli Prime Minister
00:09:00.560 Benjamin Netanyahu said this was, quote, just the beginning. And that, quote, nothing will stop us
00:09:05.780 from achieving all our war aims. It's hard not to see the truth of those aims, given Amnesty
00:09:11.200 International and a UN special committee have both found Israel's actions amount to genocide.
00:09:16.160 And even family members of the hostages have accused Netanyahu of sacrificing their loved
00:09:21.760 ones with this resumption of violence. I should also note that while this is the most explicit
00:09:26.720 time Israel has shattered the ceasefire, it's hardly the first time it's been accused of
00:09:31.640 violating the agreement. In a letter sent to the UN on March 7th, the permanent observer of
00:09:37.100 Palestine to the United Nations asserted that in the 42 days that the ceasefire had by then been
00:09:41.980 in effect there had been 962 documented violations of the ceasefire by israel including quote the
00:09:49.820 killing of 116 palestinian civilians including children and wounding of 490 people i keep coming
00:09:57.100 back to the quote from author omar el-iqad one day everyone will have always been against this
00:10:03.340 but what a difference we could make if we all loudly oppose this genocide right now meanwhile
00:10:08.940 while when he's not busy fully coordinating the resumption of a genocide, Trump has also been
00:10:13.680 assaulting U.S. democracy itself. His brutal weaponization of the U.S. immigration system
00:10:19.000 has seen him detain visa and green card holders, including, as we chatted about last week, a man
00:10:24.620 who had a key role in anti-genocide protests at Columbia University. And horror stories are
00:10:29.880 emerging about those who have been detained, including a Canadian citizen who warned that
00:10:34.080 despite her privilege and access to resources, she was still detained for two weeks and subjected to
00:10:39.840 awful conditions. But things really reached a new height last weekend when Trump invoked a 227-year-old
00:10:46.340 law intended for wartime during peacetime so he could speed up his mass deportations. A federal
00:10:52.920 judge stepped in the way and barred Trump's administration from carrying out the deportations
00:10:57.640 using this law. And Trump appeared to openly defy that court order, which means he, as CBC's Alex
00:11:04.360 Panetta put it, cracked the, quote, ultimate constitutional safeguard. Enraged by this judge
00:11:09.920 getting in his way, Trump has since called for him to be impeached, which led the U.S. Supreme Court's
00:11:15.900 Chief Justice to issue an extremely timid rebuke, which doesn't name Trump, but says, quote,
00:11:21.160 impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.
00:11:26.220 Scathing. That'll stop him, I'm sure.
00:11:28.320 Meanwhile, Elon Musk is using Twitter to push the false narrative
00:11:31.700 that the last defenders of U.S. democracy, which is the judiciary,
00:11:36.220 are actually the ones violating it.
00:11:38.440 Which is a level of projection that will be studied in the history books one day.
00:11:42.280 That is if we're, you know, still allowed to read and have books.
00:11:46.200 Because now, in a new report, a global watchdog run out of a Swedish university
00:11:50.440 is warning that the U.S. could lose its democracy status.
00:11:53.880 People are still fighting back though. A lot of folks have been targeting Tesla dealerships with
00:11:58.800 peaceful protests, and some have taken it a step further. Like in Oregon, where a guy allegedly
00:12:03.620 threw Molotov cocktails at a Tesla store. Or in Seattle and Vegas, where people set Tesla cars
00:12:09.040 on fire. But even those who have resolved to keep their Cybertrucks are about to lose them anyways.
00:12:15.280 Because almost all Cybertrucks were just recalled because Tesla apparently used the wrong glue.
00:12:21.140 You know, the Washington Post told us that democracy dies in darkness, but I think it's 0.99
00:12:25.860 more apt to say that democracy dies due to dumbasses. And as if Canada didn't have enough 0.99
00:12:31.880 problems with one global superpower constantly musing about annexing us and launching a trade
00:12:36.740 war, we also just got hit with new tariffs from China, which retaliated against a levy we put on
00:12:42.180 their electric vehicles last year. Specifically, they slapped a 100% tariff on canola oil, oil
00:12:48.240 cakes and pea imports, along with a 25% surcharge on Canadian pork and seafood. Canada just can't
00:12:55.800 catch a break, huh? But we also just learned that China did something much darker earlier this year.
00:13:01.200 It executed four Canadians. Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Jolie strongly condemned China
00:13:06.360 over the move and shared that the Canadians who were killed were all dual citizens who were facing
00:13:10.820 quote, charges linked to criminal activities according to China linked to drugs. Jolie said
00:13:16.560 that she and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau both personally intervened in the cases of the
00:13:21.880 four Canadians. But she wouldn't provide any further information out of respect for the families
00:13:26.360 who have requested privacy. The last story I want to mention today is a heavy one, but hopefully
00:13:31.860 one that brings some closure to some families. Because Mercedes Myron and Morgan Harris, two
00:13:37.300 Indigenous women who were murdered by a serial killer in Manitoba, will finally be able to be
00:13:42.620 put to rest. Their remains were found in a Winnipeg area landfill earlier this month. Harris was
00:13:47.980 located on March 7th and Myron was found earlier this week. Their families had long been calling
00:13:53.460 for the landfill to be searched, but police said it wouldn't be possible. This became a provincial
00:13:58.380 election issue with the progressive conservatives running political ads opposing the landfill search
00:14:04.120 while Wob Canoes NDP pledged to search for the missing indigenous women. He won the election and
00:14:09.500 he launched the search. And now the progressive conservatives are apologizing to the families.
00:14:14.620 Speaking to reporters on Monday, Premier Wab Kanu had this to say.
00:14:18.200 Mercedes Myron and Morgan Harris are coming home. This is what we set out to do. I don't know if
00:14:24.240 many of us knew the odds of success. I certainly was always trying to keep a realistic perspective,
00:14:31.240 but it turns out bringing them home was within our grasp and something we were able to do for
00:14:37.060 these families. Those are the big headlines for this week. After the break, I'll be joined by
00:14:41.320 Taylor Lorenz, a tech and online culture reporter who literally wrote the book on content creators.
00:14:46.840 A new study shows that right-wingers absolutely dominate the online media space, so we're going
00:14:51.640 to talk about what this means for, well, everything. It's a bit of a shorter interview than usual
00:14:56.420 because Taylor didn't have a ton of time, but sometimes short and sweet is just right. We'll be
00:15:00.940 right back. Do you guys ever feel like something is haunting you? Like you just can't get away
00:15:10.300 from it? It gets mentioned when you're trying to watch a dumb reality TV show or when you're 0.95
00:15:14.700 watching something as boring as post-victory election speeches on the news. You hear it 0.95
00:15:20.120 blasting through the headphones of the person next to you on the metro. Just when you think
00:15:24.420 you're safe, you curl up on your couch, you're swiping on TikTok and it shows up on your screen
00:15:29.320 like something out of a horror movie. That's right, I'm talking about the right-wing podcasters we
00:15:34.580 just can't seem to ever be able to get away from. And now there's actual data to back up what we
00:15:39.340 all suspected as the world got increasingly stupid. Right-leaning content dominates the 0.99
00:15:45.040 online media landscape. Media Matters just published a study that looked at 320 online
00:15:50.360 shows that either published about news and politics or invited on related guests. These shows
00:15:55.900 have more than half a billion followers and subscribers in total. And Media Matters found
00:16:01.080 that right-wing shows account for roughly 82% of that total following, meaning they've got almost
00:16:07.420 five times the following of their left-leaning colleagues. Suddenly all the brainworms around us
00:16:12.960 are starting to make a lot more sense. But what came first? The podcaster or the brainworm? What
00:16:18.200 impact has this had on society? And how can we take the power back from the Joe Rogans and Theo
00:16:23.980 bonds of it all? To help me break down these questions, I am so thrilled to have Taylor Lorenz
00:16:28.760 on the show. She's an incredibly successful tech and online culture journalist and content creator.
00:16:33.760 She's the founder of Usermag, which you should all subscribe to, and a contributor to Zateo.
00:16:38.500 She literally wrote the book on the rise of creators who have shaped our online world with
00:16:42.620 her national bestseller, Extremely Online. She's also American, but we won't hold that against her.
00:16:47.740 Taylor, welcome to Bubble Pop. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. Thank you for being here.
00:16:51.860 So let's dive right in with the study that everyone's talking about. Right wingers are absolutely dominating our online spaces. What was your first reaction when you saw this study? Did anything about it surprise you?
00:17:04.620 Yeah, it surprised me that they put Trevor Noah on that study as, like, leftist or something.
00:17:11.180 I mean, I think the only flaw in that study is that they have a lot of people actually ascribed to the left that are not very leftist at all.
00:17:18.380 So it's, I think that, I think, I mean, in one sense, the study further confirmed a lot of what we already know.
00:17:23.820 But it also kind of, I think, actually didn't paint a bad enough picture, like a realistic enough picture, rather.
00:17:30.640 Yeah. And that's actually something I wanted to ask you about, which is that I was also struck
00:17:37.120 by some of the names that were framed as left leaning. They had the Young Turks who have been
00:17:41.200 really transphobic lately. What did you make of the shows that they included? Do you think that
00:17:46.240 it didn't actually really reflect fully the makeup of our online media ecosystem?
00:17:50.880 I think they were so desperate to try to find non-right wing reactionary voices that they
00:17:56.880 ended up putting a lot of centrist reactionary people in on the left and especially people that
00:18:02.800 are actually increasingly espousing right-wing rhetoric on the left and this is a problem right
00:18:08.000 like this is a broader problem with our media ecosystem is that if they were to do this study
00:18:12.160 again and actually only include real leftist creators it again it would paint a much bleaker
00:18:19.200 picture because there really aren't just nearly as many and they have not they have a fraction
00:18:23.760 of the audience i think this makes it seem like a lot more balanced than it is yeah and and you
00:18:29.920 know one thing that i also heard when i like i shared this study too i think we were all kind
00:18:34.880 of talking about it for a bit there um and one thing that a lot of like right-wingers or people
00:18:39.440 who maybe support the podcast that were the most popular on that list said was oh well these guys
00:18:44.800 are just popular um it's the public making their own choices about what they want to hear and i 1.00
00:18:50.560 have issues with that but i'm sure you have even more that's such a stupid ignorant comment yeah 0.99
00:18:56.800 because you'd have to literally ignore all of the entire marketing ecosystem and the amount of money 0.99
00:19:01.760 and funding that it goes into platforming certain podcasts and ideas on the internet if somebody
00:19:06.800 gave me you know 20 million dollars i could make an incredibly successful seeming website i could
00:19:13.360 be one of the top podcasts again because i'm paying for marketing and mainstreaming these
00:19:17.760 ideas this is why you also have like so much um audience inflation on the right because they want
00:19:22.960 to make their content seem more successful than it is they want to make these ideals seem more
00:19:28.560 mainstream than they are so this is also what elon is doing with twitter right he's waiting
00:19:32.640 the algorithm to force feed people right-wing propaganda and then when people start to fall for
00:19:38.640 that propaganda or spread it they're like oh look see but people organically like it it's like no
00:19:43.040 you're force feeding it to them algorithmically yeah that's what i was going to say like the
00:19:47.600 algorithms obviously have a huge finger on the scale here and you know one thing that i found
00:19:52.800 interesting was that this study was looking at 2024 and we've seen a lot of these guys really go
00:19:58.240 mask off the ceos of these companies you've got sundar prachai elon musk obviously you've got
00:20:02.560 mark zuckerberg so do you think that this is a case of them just finally going mask off with
00:20:07.920 their more right-wing shift in their public statements or has it always been like this yeah
00:20:13.120 yeah i i just want to be clear that despite what conservatives claimed throughout the 2010s they
00:20:17.680 were never censored online they always have received far more algorithmic amplification
00:20:23.520 this is part of why liberals hauled zuckerberg in front of congress in 2017 because trump received
00:20:29.440 outsized uh attention on facebook his anything for you know right-wing pages and pro-trump pages
00:20:35.440 were getting far more distribution in the feed. Right-wing reactionary rhetoric has always played
00:20:41.020 better in these algorithmic feeds. They've never made any effort to correct the algorithmic feeds
00:20:45.420 to tamp down on any of that. Right-wingers have always received outside amplification.
00:20:51.560 So now, yeah, I mean, they can receive even more manual boosting, again, because these CEOs have
00:20:59.360 been able to go mask off about it. But there's never been a time where the right was censored
00:21:04.400 in any way on the internet. Yeah, if anything, I mean, you wrote a really good piece in Usermeg
00:21:09.960 about how like the left can't have a Joe Rogan because they're just the institutional backing
00:21:15.800 doesn't exist. Because the left doesn't generally ideologically align with the people who have the
00:21:21.340 big money, right? And then there's also things like the Turning Point USA and these different
00:21:27.540 kind of pipelines towards popularity on the right. So yeah, one thing I want to say is I was
00:21:33.900 literally talking to a friend who's you know she's pretty conservative but we've been friends like
00:21:40.220 i've known her for a long time and um she started a podcast recently and has absolutely no listeners
00:21:47.580 and people are thinking of giving her investment thousands of dollars no strings attached and i
00:21:53.100 i'm trying to get her to let me write about the whole thing but like it's just it's crazy like
00:21:57.820 if you start saying right wing reactionary things online and you have somewhat you know a little bit
00:22:03.020 of traction or you're attractive or you fit a specific mold in this case it's you know a woman
00:22:08.380 of color saying something reactionary okay you're going to get money you're going to get opportunities
00:22:13.820 you're going to get funding again because there's this entire infrastructure whereas if you're any
00:22:17.900 in any capacity on the left not only are you not going to get the mainstream dnc funding you're not
00:22:22.540 going to get it from liberal billionaires you're not getting anything and you're algorithmically
00:22:26.540 penalized do you think that's somewhere that like the liberal billionaires and stuff were kind of
00:22:31.340 of missing the boat like should they be obviously yeah but they're not liberal they're billionaires
00:22:36.200 exactly yeah i mean you're not they're liberals they're not like leftist progressive kings right
00:22:41.540 like you don't become a billionaire by not exploiting people in some capacity a hundred
00:22:46.860 percent i i did want to interrogate um a little bit the the aspects of these podcasts that are
00:22:54.840 genuine about their popularity like there is something about theo vaughn and joe rogan and
00:22:59.860 stuff that people seem to enjoy um obviously they have like a huge leg up in the race um in the
00:23:06.200 numbers race but like what do you think they're doing right that people who actually care about
00:23:12.700 like facts and reality should in some ways maybe try to emulate or start podcasting in 2006 like
00:23:18.960 joe rogan is hugely popular in large part because he has been doing it for so long so he was one of
00:23:25.420 the first if you're one of the first movers in the space if you're one of the first big people
00:23:28.900 on YouTube, you're one of the first big comedians to launch a podcast, like, you're just going to
00:23:33.580 capture a level of attention that's really hard to replicate. Their leg up is institutional support,
00:23:38.980 platforms that will boost their content far better in all the feeds, they'll get the big
00:23:44.540 deals, they'll get featured on Spotify, right? Like, they're going to receive opportunities that,
00:23:48.900 like, leftist podcasters could never dream of. There's an entire advertising ecosystem. You know,
00:23:55.540 I lose advertisers because some media reporters want to call up my advertisers and say, oh, did you know Taylor's, you know, against war and all this stuff?
00:24:03.240 You know, there's no left wing advertiser ecosystem that's there to give me money and prop me up.
00:24:08.880 Right wingers can go promote Trump stakes and all of these other this entire MAGA economy that exists that can feed them advertisers when normal advertisers don't want to work with them.
00:24:18.460 Now, normal advertisers, average consumer brands increasingly do want to work with those conservative influencers. So they have a monopolization on monetization as well. I think, I mean, what like liberals, I would say, can learn from this is that their ideas are fundamentally unpopular, that they're a complete out of touch elitist, that nobody wants to hear them pontificate on their stupid issues.
00:24:42.080 Like, their ideology is unpopular, and there's a reason they don't go into the internet, because they're faced with the unpopularity of their policies. And instead of facing that dissonance and saying, hmm, let me evolve my policies so that I'm not just going to get torn apart if I go on any sort of, like, progressive podcast, they just shut it down. They just don't want to hear from people.
00:25:00.960 And this just goes back to the fundamental problem with Democrats and liberals as a whole, is that they don't actually want to represent the people. They want to represent corporate power. They want to line their own pockets. They want to use their campaigns as a giant fundraising mechanism.
00:25:13.580 them. But ideally, I mean, what any like, I mean, leftists, I guess, quote unquote, can like learn
00:25:19.160 from them is, is, yeah, I mean, that people don't want that they're sort of broadly anti
00:25:24.440 establishment, they're broadly populist. I think actually, a lot of leftist podcasts are that way
00:25:28.960 already. But, you know, again, they don't have they don't have all those other things working
00:25:35.200 for them. It's very hard for them to get discovered. Yeah. And one thing that they shouldn't learn
00:25:40.140 is the lessons that a lot of liberals seem to be taking, which is, oh, well, if we, oh, so actually
00:25:45.980 we should just be more right wing. We should actually just throw trans people under the bus 0.98
00:25:49.520 because, you know, if we're anti-trans enough, we'll appeal to the Joe Rogan listeners. Like, 0.99
00:25:54.660 what are you talking about? No, that's the, literally the opposite lesson that you should
00:25:58.880 take. Yeah, exactly. And it kind of sometimes feels like the lesson that a lot of like mainstream
00:26:04.060 media is also taking from the popularity of these podcasters and stuff, you know, they just
00:26:07.800 become so wedded to both sides as a born of bad faith outrage to like the Gamergate style
00:26:13.880 harassment campaigns that try to convince the media that they're, you know, too biased in this
00:26:19.020 direction or that direction, or they need to be listening to this side of things. And that view
00:26:22.820 from nowhere isn't resonating, right? Absolutely. The view from nowhere, the fake, the problem with
00:26:27.780 the mainstream media is that they completely lie about the fact that they are deeply partisan.
00:26:32.500 They have a political ideology that they advocate for, which is neoliberalism.
00:26:37.740 They're capitalists, right?
00:26:39.280 Like they're pro-business.
00:26:40.840 Like they have a very explicit political ideology through which they cover everything.
00:26:46.000 And in that sense, I am sympathized with conservatives who say like, listen, stop lying to us and
00:26:52.420 acting like you're neutral.
00:26:53.360 You're not neutral.
00:26:54.080 They're correct.
00:26:54.920 They're not neutral.
00:26:55.980 And I think we should call that out.
00:26:57.180 And in a lot of cases, let's not forget that media reporters like Max Tanney, Dylan Byers, these other hacks, David Fulkenflick, they will knowingly print false information.
00:27:07.600 They will lie to the public to further these right wing reactionary hate campaigns against women, people of color and others, again, because they share those ideologies or they they don't care about, you know, tamping down on extremism.
00:27:21.440 they just want to profit they want to get clicks at the expense of women or marginalized people
00:27:25.680 they want to further these narratives because they know that the far right will eat them up
00:27:29.680 yeah so i think that um the the takeaway here is that there's a really big uphill battle for people
00:27:38.320 who care about other people and care about facts and reality and i i guess i wanted to ask you like
00:27:44.400 you know obviously you're one of the people who's sort of trying to swim against the current and
00:27:48.480 actually make a difference in that space and i i wanted to ask what you think that we can do
00:27:54.480 to try to rebalance the imbalance that is exposed by this study and that i think we all just sense
00:28:01.360 in our day-to-day oh my god rachel um i mean i think we need more education and media literacy
00:28:11.360 desperately the right has so successfully seized control over these platforms in our online
00:28:17.040 discourse that it's really hard. But I think we should start by having solidarity with with other
00:28:22.880 people that are being exploited by these systems. And I think there is this idea, you know, among
00:28:28.800 liberals and increasingly leftists, that we should just throw vulnerable people under the bus, we 0.92
00:28:33.760 should throw disabled people under the bus, right, we should throw trans people under the bus. And 0.98
00:28:37.440 that's, that's really not going to get us anywhere. So you should stop seeing people that are more
00:28:41.360 marginalized as enemies of your movement and enemies of you know your fight um you should
00:28:48.000 like recognize that a rising tide lifts all ships and we should work together and that you have to
00:28:52.240 have solidarity with each other because if you sell out those other groups then you've already
00:28:57.680 made that bargain where you're just gonna like you know you're basically someone's gonna make
00:29:02.000 that bargain about you at some point where you're gonna be the group getting sold out and you're
00:29:06.160 not going to like that right so that's not where we get ahead in any capacity and i i do think
00:29:11.680 that like i mean ideally people in positions of power that say that they don't want trump in power
00:29:16.560 the democrats continue to say that they don't want trump in power although it seems to be very
00:29:20.080 lucrative for them to have him in power um they should actually yeah they should engage with the
00:29:25.200 more progressive wing of their party they should actually engage with their base the right engages
00:29:29.520 with their base they don't disrespect their base and the democrats constantly disrespect their base
00:29:36.160 Well, I know you don't have a ton more time, so we can kind of wrap things up.
00:29:40.180 Also, I don't think Democrats exist in Canada.
00:29:42.080 I don't know what the Canadian version of all of it is.
00:29:44.440 We're literally, they're called liberals.
00:29:47.560 It's the liberal party.
00:29:49.180 So yeah, and we're all totally into US politics.
00:29:52.640 So we know exactly what you mean, because we have to pay attention.
00:29:55.800 At least you guys have health care.
00:29:57.540 I know.
00:29:58.300 That is a huge plus.
00:29:59.840 So we will never be the 51st state, because then we will lose all of that.
00:30:03.660 Taylor, was there anything that I didn't ask you on this topic that you want to share
00:30:08.760 before I kind of wrap things up?
00:30:11.200 I don't think so.
00:30:12.100 Well, just subscribe to my newsletter.
00:30:13.960 Yes, I did want to give you the opportunity before I let you go.
00:30:17.040 Could you tell people where they can find you?
00:30:19.240 Yeah.
00:30:19.740 So speaking of supporting independent media, please subscribe to my newsletter, usermag.co.
00:30:26.060 It's a tech and online culture sub-tech newsletter.
00:30:28.240 It comes two to three times a week.
00:30:29.580 I'm also on YouTube.
00:30:30.460 So subscribe to my YouTube channel where I talk about all this.
00:30:33.100 I'm just Taylor Lorenz on YouTube. Awesome. Well, Taylor, thank you so much for your time. I know
00:30:37.060 you have a crazy week, so I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for having me.
00:30:41.300 Of course. It's always fun to chat.
00:30:45.140 Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Bubble Pop. I'm Rachel Gilmore, your least
00:30:49.800 favorite person's least favorite journalist. If you enjoyed this episode, consider subscribing
00:30:53.820 to Bubble Pop on YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and wherever you like to listen. You can also find me
00:30:59.040 on TikTok, Instagram, and Blue Sky. I'd like to say a special thank you to Hans Vivian Wenzel for
00:31:04.040 making the incredibly groovy music for Bubble Pop. You can find more of his stuff on Spotify
00:31:08.340 under the artist name Hans, lowercase h with an exclamation mark. Thanks again for spending this
00:31:14.100 time with me. Doing this is literally a dream and I could not do it without you. So thank you
00:31:20.320 and I'll see you next time.
00:31:29.040 You