Viewers are flocking to “independent” media that serves up a never-ending stream of anti-Trump content. But this stuff is intellectual poison and may even help the right.
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I listened to one episode of Meidas out of curiosity and… how would anyone even listen to that? It’s just an hourlong stream of soundbyte after soundbyte of Trump cronies followed by two or three guys mocking whatever the cronies said without any substance. Straight up waste of my time and phone storage space.
Admittedly I’ve never watched their content and was already calling them mierdas touch simply because I cannot stand the absurdly clickbait cope titles they choose.
“Trump DESTROYED by cat on the street.”
“Republicans plan SMASHED by old lady’s cookies.”
“GOP lawsuit MELTDOWN, it’s OVER”
“Trump gets DEVASTATING news from The Onion!”
Blah blah blah blah blah… And then like EVERY other video/article nothing happens. No one was stopped. No one was devastated. Nothing was gained by us. “They” got away with “it” as usual…
Admittedly I’ve never watched their content and was already calling them mierdas touch simply because I cannot stand the absurdly clickbait cope titles they choose.
A lot of the independent left-wing reporters out there have been doing this for a while as well. Bryan Tyler Cohen, David Pakman, all of the Meidas Touch, and Jesse Dollemore are also absurdly guilty of this. It actually takes away from their content because I often agree with their content, but their absurd hyperbolic clickbait just smacks of desperation and is a huge turn-off.
I stopped watching them right after the election, because a lot of people were in their channels discussing the impact of Trump winning the election and every single one of them were putting out videos begging subscribers not to leave because their subscriber numbers were dropping. Yeah. Trump just returned to power and you’re worried about your subscriber numbers. Way to show how out of touch the fucking lot of you are. All of you have resources, money, and a subscriber base that regular people could only dream of and I’m supposed to be worried about your subscriber numbers? Fuck all the way off, the lot of you.
I liked bryan because be always puts the relevant clip that he’s reacting to up front and uninterrupted, but the clickbait is so awful I can’t even click his stuff anymore. Guess I’ll have to keep listening to Sam “pause it pause it pause it” seder.
Cohen actually said he’s going to open a 2nd channel with less click baity titles literally today. Idk if that will work, but the idea is if you see something on his regular channel and want to share it with your mouth breathing brain dead uncle, you can share from that channel instead.
Thanks, I guess I’ll give him another shot. I tend to like his content but his titles drive me nuts. Although his re-uploads of the exact same interviews in slightly different videos is also annoying, so hopefully he drops that crap too.
New channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@briantylercohennews
Announcement video:
Unfortunately they have to get the attention of people who are uninterested in politics. YouTube as a platform incentivizes clickbait titles, as well as social media platforms and the news in general. There are many people just looking for a quick dopamine hit while scrolling on their phones. There is a reason they are the most viewed and at least people see an alternative to the clickbait on the other side.
I find it very annoying as well and it has turned me off from watching it, but we are probably a minority. We are on Lemmy after all because we notice and care about stuff like that.
“Newsreader DAZED & BEFUDDLED by hyperbole!“
I had not seen much of MeidasToucg before this election, as as a ‘rest of world member’ the first couple of videos I watched were OK, then it seemed to be more of the same and as you say “Newsreader DAZED & BEFUDDLED by hyperbole!”
To some extent we can also blame TYT’s inward collapse and rightwing pivot. They were the clearing house of all things resistance and progressive. Their rightwing/ MAGA pivot has to be one of the greatest betrayals in all media. To quote Mondale Robinson: “They took too damn much from the ethos!!”
Its not Meidas Touch, whom were never themselves progressives or even contending to be anything other than center right neoliberals and neoconservatives, its not their fault there is no media space to support progressive policies/ progressive news reporting.
The Majority Report (Sam Seder/ Emma) is great, but its not a “pure news” show in the way that TYT or Meidas Touch is. Its too wonky, too ‘pure politics’ in the traditional sense of political reporting. Its a politics show for people are deep into it. TYT was a daily show for people to take in, after the events of the day, but they’ve jumped the shark.
Because of this there is a void, and despite them being maybe not the right size/ shape, people are starving for honest reporting, or anything that seems to be representing it.
I’d love to see the whole “grab bag” of leftist political shows bundle up into one show, and produce an evening news show. Its too much “political hot takes” and not enough “news of the day”. Of course, make your political hot-takes, but mostly, just tell me what happened.
I really like Some More News. They’re kinda like Last Week Tonight in style: in-depth reporting on bigger issues, with some jokes thrown in. They also make two episodes of Even More News a week, but those are more hype-of-the-day with less analysis behind them. Honestly feels like it’s just their brainstorm sessions recorded and released as a podcast.
As a Canadian I thank God every day for Steve Boots. But unfortunately for you guys he keeps his content very much focused on our political sphere.
Democracy Now has a daily news podcast I like to listen to sometimes
I like the Crooked products, specifically Pod Save America. I wouldn’t call them strictly progressive or liberal because they’re far too analytical to be a bli d cheerleader. Some of the other podcasts under their umbrella do get into the cheerleader effect a bit though.
I mean, look, you are probably going to take this the wrong way, and you should.
But Pod Save is some of the most toxic garbage there is available, and if someone tells me this is where they get their news, I’m writing them off. The are PURE neoliberal, Blue-MAGA, cultist; the culimination of why the modern Democratic party is a failure for all humanity.
They are a crew of one-off Obama era consultants whose primary job it is to manufacture consent for the extant power structures within the Democratic Party. They are incredibly pretentious and their takes are about as vapid a helium gas. They have no ability to predict what comes next in politics; the predictive capacity of their internal models is zilch. The advice they put out their is almost always the opposite of what one should do.
They aren’t just representative of whats wrong with the Democratic party, they are the thing that is wrong with the Democratic party.
Ive listened to pod save for years and after the election just couldn’t bring myself to listen to it anymore. It’s been a lot of bad takes and frustrations. Who do you recommend I go to for news?
- Democracy Now! for the morning news.
I’ll be honest, sometimes I can’t handle the full hour, because Amy puts it out there raw as it is and sometimes when the shit is real bad, I just can’t emotionally handle it. But the sanitizing of our news, thats a major part of the problem; sane washing in an insane time is a form of lying. If I don’t have time for that, then I just watch the headlines.
- Majority Report with Emma and Sam
I try and separate the politics from the news as best I can. I consider Majority to be much heavier on the Politics than the News side, which is fine. They also have complementary schedules. If its an interview I’m not interested in, I’ll turn it off. The fun half is good for getting an understanding of what MAGA is doing.
- Don Lemon Show
I do try and keep track of what the “centrists”, or better phrasing, neoliberal/ neoconservative, “raised on corpo media take” is. Don Lemon is about as safe as you get. I also feel like I owe him one because he put a project of mine on his show right after J6, and that launched us in a big way. I watch Don Lemon to get an idea for what corporate media is thinking.
- Meidas Touch
I do watch Meidas Touch, but only if there is an important trial going on. As far as courtroom news, these are the ones to follow. They have the best “judiciary”/ law takes, because, well, they are all lawyers. Their politics are drivel and not worth listening to.
- The Benjamin Dixon Show
Ben barely ever puts out content since he started preaching again but he was one of my favorite contributors in the early days of TYT. I was making bootleg Benjamin Dixon show swag almost a decade ago and was one of his first patreons. I always tune in and love his takes. He was making the clearest most consistent points about the rise of white nationalism from 2016-2024 of anyone, but just had to step back because it was grinding him down.
- ClickBaity Political Thirst Trap
Squirrelgang rise up. These guys know how to win elections and ultimately, thats what matters. They take an unapollegitically black male perspective, which imo, needs to be elevated. They stream on Tuesdays.
- CurrentAffairs (the linked article)
I like Nathan J. Robinson, even though I think he’s a Chomsky fanboy and Chomsky is mostly not worth listening to.
- LeftistMafia
Just to keep tabs on the zoomers.
- Jon Stewart
Again, too much of an apologist for the system and for power, but i’ve got a thing for Jon.
My goal with my media consumption is to gather a diversity of opinions, evaluate those opinions against what they say is going to happen versus what does happen, and weight them accordingly.
@[email protected] made a point below about my “strong opinions”; yes, I have conviction around what I believe to be true. But my goal with my perspective is to have opinions and takes that predict future states of the world, and I think I’ve demonstrated a strong track record for that. I’ve been following politics, in excruciating detail, since like… 1997/8/9.
I think too often people offer charity that news sources don’t deserve because they like the “tone” or manner in-which information is presented, rather than evaluating a given sources ability to predict future states. That’s the only signal of virtue to me: does your opinion of what will happen predict the future?
There is too much weight put on conventional wisdom and conventional news sources when they are trash at predicting future states of the world.
I used to watch TYT for the evening news. DN! for the morning with Sam and Emma for politics and then TYT in the evening was a great way to keep on top of pretty much everything that mattered. I also liked the more international focus DN! and MR (when it had Micheal Brookes, RIP) had.
But I’m a boat adrift for a decent evening news program now.
Thanks, and yeah I don’t dislike strong opinions. You gave an essay answer about some folks you didn’t like so much, so I figured you’d have an essay for those you did like.
Do you ever listen to On the Media? I have appreciated their more focused goal of analyzing how the news is reported.
On the Media is fine, but I have a strong and deep distaste for “manufactured consent” experience which is NPR. Its prob the take that would get me most heavily down-voted most heavily. It was January 2015, and NPR ran some segment which was basically an explainer on why no one should bother running in the DNC primary that cycle because obviously Hillary should and will be the nominee, and would just wipe the floor with any Republican. I remember how idiotic they sounded, considering that even then , Hillary was just about the worst candidate you could have ever ran.
I have a special hole in my heart just for hating on NPR. I think its been one of the most destructive forces in American politics because it creates the illusion, the sensation of understanding without anything to back it up. It makes you feel like you are smarter than you actually are, just like pod-save. Its a pro-corporate narrative (I mean just listen to who gets the sponsor spots) with a veneer of “Americanism” and centrism, as if its just L v R and we’ll still go to bed under the same sheets. The world is an existential and material fight for existence and NPR creates the sensation in people that they are doing something, that they are involved in something, when they are not. Its like the DNC. It stands in where something real should be.
I dip in and out with them. Sometimes I just need to hear some other people bitching about shit (because it’s easier than riling up my group of friends all the time). But I definitely tire of the constant outrage.
Also I’m not sure I agree with the other guy’s take on “consent for extant powers” when they were pretty fucking vocal about and critical of Biden last year… long before the catastrophic debate.
I prefer Offline and PSTW for the (usually) more even-keeled discussions and thoughtful interviews.
You’ve got a lot of very strong opinions here. What news are you yourself listening to regularly?
I mentioned you in my answer, written above.
As cringe as liberals are, I don’t know if it’s politically savvy for a progressive writer to do a long format hitpiece on an alternative to Joe Rogan and other much worse podcasts. Clickbait in general is an accepted necessary evil on YouTube and while Meidas is potent example of how bad it looks for an outsider looking in, I don’t think that should have been the crux of the article.
The author’s criticism of Palestine coverage is valid, but making that the entire personality of the left does risk chasing away people who are already heavily biased against it from Fox, for example. It’s not great to avoid it completely, but from the sound of it, they haven’t entirely removed it from their coverage. Also, they criticize the Trump focus, but that is probably what political refugees from the right are thinking when they search for new shores.
I personally prefer Humanist Report, Vaush, and Hasan’s politics, but if Meidas is more successful, it’s easier to pull liberals than fascists to the left.
I suspect these media outlets are appealing to MAGAs LOL
Tbh I’ve found a lot of it obnoxiously jingoistic. Like, it’s scratching the same endorphin itch, but for the not-conservative crowd.
The population is full of morons. This is how you steer them away from maga.
We tried rational discussion and reasonable, educated debates
This is how you get the turnips to turnip in a better direction
It’s just the left’s response to the propaganda arm of the right. Click bait? Yes. Untruthful? No. Slop? By definition.
