On the other hand, Pink Slime "Journalism" sites are springing up like weeds in battleground states... whackamole (or should that be whackagrifter?) www.axios.com/2024/06/11/p...
Weird that he doesn't report the numbers for The Atlantic in the text of the article. Seems like something that would be disclosed in a previous era of reporting.
Itās wild because ordinarily āhated enemy is in powerā is great for a politics websiteāliberal sites did great 2001-8, conservatives 2009-16.
Itās just now, the committed righties are mainlining tweets and substacks and the soft ones arenāt seeing Facebook referrals any more.
I think āreadershipā is a bit of a stretch. A lot of those sites are 70% ads for buying gold & reverse mortgages, 20% video clips from Alex Jones & Steve Bannon & 10% actual written words crammed haphazardly around all the ads & videos
I suspect this is related to Republican underperformance in recent elections. All the frothing extremism is causing people to ditch these media sources and the conservative bubble is shrinking as a consequence. Will probably set off a vicious cycle on the right unless something changes soon.
There was a period in there where ācheck me out, Iām a huge piece of shitā was a full-blown career path. It felt really long but it probably was only a few years.
My conservative FB friend comes up with new right wing sites all the time.
HotAir is the new favorite.
The guy knows heāll get chastised among long time friends for Daily Caller or Breitbart posts but glad to hear these are measured down in views.
Hopefully, this means that people are wising up to the fact that these sites are bad for marginalized people and have no useful solutions to real-world problems. Not sure how true that is, but a guy can hope, right?
...Right?
Random theory to toss into the ether: Musk making X a right-wing site is bad (for the right).
It's sapping all of the energy from right-wing sites, making it harder for conservative institutions to control the narrative.
Normies on Twitter who were annoyed at libs are now disgusted by racists.
This may be wishcasting on my part, but I think there are a lot of signs that, outside of all the hot air they blow, conservatism is actually rotting out before our eyes, and I think that's largely being underreported.
Despite the doomerism on here, I can the sense there is some element of the right that is realizing there's an uncomfortable chance Trump doesn't skate by on these indictments, and doesn't win the election. If Trump is gone or put out of action, there's going to be a big nihilist void left behind.
Definitely seems to be in line with what we've seen in the midterm and special election results. Trumps cult of diehard supporters create an impression of outsized enthusiasm and momentum for Republicans and papers how many people have been driven off to quietly vote Democrat.
You know what the federalist should do is take a page out of, like every big news organization, but in reverse, and start hiring some center left columnist types to "balance their coverage."
Big contrast with the enraged, engaged conservative base during the Obama admin
The conspiracy theories and "trust the plan" have a demobilizing effect
Much of this is from changes to Facebook and other social media sites; people using Twitter less. Many left of center outlets have also faced a downturn as well. This isn't to say air hasn't been let out of the MAGA bag or the echo chamber hasn't gotten smaller, but it's a factor.
Rageclick reserves are both more finite and less renewable than supposed.
Every minute I spend on Twitter watching Tucker Just Ask Questions about the flat earth is one I canāt spend watching Candace Owens tell me dinosaurs are fake.
Every time they get wilder to top the other, they shed normies.
Given that each one is a fascism laundry backed by a petrogarch, this unfortunately won't impact their existence and we still have to suffer through articles like "beating your children is patriotic, actually"
I mean, how many right wing extremist sites can anyone actually consume though? twitter, truth social, tik tok, telegram - all those sites are bursting with right wing conspiracy ideology shit. The problem is how many people consume this trash, not where they consume it.
I imagine there's a non-zero PERCENTAGE of conservatives (maybe voters in general) who don't know it's a Presidential election year, cause none of the normal things have happened. Also I imagine there's a cohort who think Trump literally remains the President.
I used to look at AmConMag for early warning about whatever dross UK conservatives would be copying soon after. But after the last 2 weeks of the election campaign... who cares?
Dreher was always a silly pseud but had moments of noticing interesting issues even if he had nothing to say about them.
Trump killed his golden goose when he decided to attack Fox news and even the more fringey sites. Now his base only want to hear the news straight from him on TS.
November is going to be a LANDSLIDE like Clinton vs Dole, but much more satisfying.
