Podcast Movement 2022 claims Ben Shapiro's mere presence harms patrons.
Daily Wire Co-Founder made an appearance at his booth, meltdown ensues
The Podcast Movement Expo faced a terrifying moment two days ago when Ben Shapiro… You know, that fast talking, 5”9, skinny, Conservative Podcaster… showed up at the Podcasting event. He hung around the Daily Wire booth, which is the media organization that he co-founded, took pictures with and spoke to fans. He had the audacity to show his presence at an event that his organization paid to be at!
His presence in this dimension is already a constant terrifying aura for the perpetually outraged, an apparition ready to strike facts into the hearts of feelings everywhere. However making his presence known at an event that wasn’t just a Conservative echo chamber was enough to have the mob diving for cover in the nearest safe space. The harm caused? They really don’t say except that there is “pain”.
The Podcast Movement responded in stereotypical fashion. The online apologia in a series of carefully crafted tweets, meant to appeal to an extremely certain group of people, the leftist cultists. What continues to astound me is that they give so much institutional power and credit to this extremely vocal but small faction of ideologues.
As you can see above, the comment to like ratio is something to behold. I give them credit though, they haven’t deleted the tweet. Reading through the Comment section you can easily see that even the more left leaning political commentators are queasy at this gratuitous display of groveling. A good number of Podcasters actually thought this was a joke, it certainly comes across as so blatantly stereotypical on the first read through. I cannot get over how the mere presence of someone was enough to send the organizers into such disarray.
No one likes the list guy and this reeks of serious gatekeeping. What is even worse is that they were more then willing to take Daily Wire’s money, that wasn’t a bridge too far. They acknowledge that there is a real presence in Podcasting for Conservatives, but they shun it like it’s a sickness. It’s some type of necessary evil that has to be tolerated but not accepted. They were willing to dip their toes into the waters of Conservative media if it meant filling their wallets.
The apologia comes to it’s cult-like and predictable conclusion with an affirmation to do better. It follows such a tried, true and tested formula for the appeal to the far left and their flying monkeys. Mediocrity is our lives now, a constant readjustment and policing of Institutional power towards leftist ideology. Although, I am left to wonder if this was done on purpose. A floundering organization looking for fresh sets of eyes appeals to a tried and true political messaging to divert your eight second attention span onto them for just long enough to collect in on the advertisement revenue.
The end of Right Leaning Podcasting?
There’s a storm brewing in the world of Podcasting and Pod Movement 2022 may have been the revealing moment. Censorship appears to be on the horizon. Until recently Podcasting has generally been the wild west of media mediums. A sort of last bastion where the good, the bad and the ugly of entertainment could go. You can find a Podcast about pretty much anything, yet if you look at most shows they still police themselves along certain ideological lines. Step beyond the top 100 charts on Apple or Spotify and you can enter into quite the interesting realm of entertainment. A key idea to remember is that Podcasting is entertainment. You have to judge for yourself, as a responsible human being about what you choose to consume. That still isn’t good enough for the legacy media, political figures and cultural commentators. They want to gatekeep what you can listen to online, that’s why Conservative Media has to band together. One only need look at Gab, who has had to literally build a parallel infrastructure system to remain on the internet successfully. The Daily Wire is following a softer model of the same.
I can’t remember where I heard about it, but in a Podcast I had listened to about censorship there was an acknowledgement that there was a will to censor RSS feeds. However, the number of Podcasts in the system and being created made it near impossible for the targeting of certain ones for the memory hole. That won’t last forever though, Podcasting as a medium is getting tighter and the barrier for entry is easier now but the every persistent censors will create more and more gates for people to have to enter through. Most worrying is the increase in the cost associated with this as companies monetize people’s ability to enter the market.
The legacy media has certainly noticed and their longing gaze, much like the eye of Sauron is beginning to shift in the direction of the Podcast industry. They’ve already been highly successful market cornering You Tube to limit the disruptive competition on that platform. However in response You Tube competition has grown with Rumble and Odysee. Podcasting remains largely unregulated in Canada outside of the Slander, Libel and Hate laws already in place. That has not stopped our Liberal Government from trying to open the door however with legislation like Bill C-11 which will regulate much of the media content produced by Canadians and distributed over the internet instead of legacy mediums.
In the end, the cultural gatekeepers want to moderate all of the content on the internet and fact check everything according to their largely left leaning standards. The idea of a free market of ideas, where you are empowered to choose the ideas that you believe and encouraged to challenge them is dead. They think that you are too stupid, that you need them to provide you with the correct viewpoints and facts to follow. What has been ensuing has been probably the largest astroturfing campaign ever conceived online and it will be the end of Podcasting for the right. Podcast Movement has drawn their line in the sand.
The truth exposed
Podcast Movement 2022 has shown that the Podcasting marketplace is not a friendly sphere for right leaning cultural and political commentary. It exposed a fundamental truth that we have to grapple with; they will take our money for entry but on the condition that we don’t actually enter the space. What this further re-enforces is that we have to support each other. We need a space for Conservative cultural commentary that isn’t just an expose for the well established right leaning titans. This is especially true in Canada. If we don’t support each other and assert ourselves then the left will gate keep us and eventually will eliminate our voices all together. Ben Shapiro will be fine, this is a warning for the rest of us.