Dem
47
GOP
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Right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro has been an obnoxious know-it-all since he and (Z) were at UCLA together (where, as we have noted before, Z got him fired from the Daily Bruin.) Shapiro is certainly very smart (though perhaps not as smart as he thinks he is), but he figured out long ago that there was big money in pandering to right-wingers in the same way that, say, Rush Limbaugh used to do. And so, Shapiro's writing, and podcasting, and interviewing—while reflecting some amount of factual truth and honestly held belief—are mostly composed of "owning the libs" and right-wing culture-wars grievances, and trying to comport to what his audience demands of him. Most obvious, in the latter category, was Shapiro's "miraculous" transformation from NeverTrumper to MAGA Man, as Trump went from "guy walking down a golden staircase" to "Republican presidential nominee."
Shapiro kept things going for a good, long time, but now his media empire is collapsing. Although he is no longer the editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, that is nonetheless his base of operations. And this week, the Daily Wire laid off half of its staff, a total of about 100 people. This follows a previous round of layoffs, in which a quarter of the staff was cut (around 60 people). So, that's 260 to 100 employees in about a year, a drop of over 60%.
Part of the problem for the site is what is often called "mission creep." The Daily Wire was once a right-wing news and broadcasting operation. But then it got into the business of making non-woke TV and movies, projects which invariably lost lots of money. They also began selling non-woke consumer projects, most obviously a branded chocolate bar. You might wonder how chocolate can be woke and, truth be told, we're still not 100% clear on that point. What we do know is that the Daily Wire chocolate bars come in two varieties, one labeled SheHer, and one labeled HeHim. What is the difference between the two? HeHim bars have nuts. Get it? That's sure sticking it to the libs!
Another problem for the Daily Wire is that it was, to a huge extent, a creation of Facebook. There was time when Shapiro's site was the most-shared site on all of Facebook, outpacing even Fox and The New York Times. But the algorithms changed, and then changed again, such that the Daily Wire's footprint on Facebook has now shrunk to almost nothing.
That leads to a third problem for the site. It is somewhat perilously perched on a relatively small foundation of profitable products. The Shapiro podcast was the key moneymaker, followed by the other branded podcasts from folks like Michael Knowles and Andrew Klavan. But their viewer/listener base has cratered. Shapiro's videos on YouTube used to exceed 1 million views on a regular basis. Now, they rarely exceed 100,000, and they often pull in something closer to 25,000. That is a drop of 97.5% or more. Or, if you're Donald Trump, a drop of 4000% or more.
It is not probable that the Daily Wire can pull out of this kind of death spiral; some of the podcasts, including Shapiro's will survive, very likely on a different platform. But they are never going to have the reach they once did. That means far less oxygen for discourse-poisoning "own the libs" crap, not to mention far less oxygen for the bigotries that Shapiro and his colleagues regularly express, most obviously homophobia, transphobia, a general hatred for the media, and a general hatred for the academy.
But note that the headline of this item is "Be Careful What You Wish For." Any right-thinking person, regardless of their politics, should cheer the removal of this kind of poison from the national conversation. However, the vacuum left by Shapiro, et al., is being filled by people even more odious. The obvious exemplars here are Nick Fuentes and Shapiro's former colleague/underling Candace Owens. Shapiro, for all his faults, made at least some attempt to remain connected to facts, and at least some effort to remain intellectually consistent. Fuentes and Owens care nothing for those things. They will say whatever they need to say to get their audience fired up, even if it's the polar opposite of what they said yesterday. No conspiracy is too crazy, no bigotry is too toxic. Most obviously, and most distressingly, they (and several other rising "stars") are staunchly antisemitic.
In other words, it would seem we are exiting the Shapiro/Hannity era of MAGA media, and we are entering the Alex Jones era. It would seem that even a little bit of truth was just a little too truthy for the Trump cultists. Needless to say, we shudder to think what the person who eventually supplants Jones/Owens will look and sound like. (Z)