Curiousfur

You are missing the point of my original comment, there are podcasts that do get sponsored by conservative or hard right/religious right money that are filling the same niche that AM radio used to, and they are being sponsored because the right knows that it works because they already did the same thing with AM radio.

As an aside, I have never seen a handyman with an ad for a sponsor on their vehicle, ever. Maybe an ad for their own business, but that's how a service industry works, you need to advertise yourself. Podcasters are entertainers or influencers, and in our economic system, if your income isn't directly generated by the work you do (service), then it is given to you to perform or advertise (entertainment). An entertainer doesn't work for their audience. They put in work to gain and keep an audience, but no one person in the audience has the ability to tell an entertainer what to do or say, that power solely covers from the group that pays that entertainer to entertain. The owner of a venue pays a comedian or band, you pay the venue to be allowed to be entertained at that venue. The venue decides what content they put on stage because it can become associated with their brand. Patreon does allow people to directly support podcasters, yes, but if you run ads at all, you are beholden to their terms in order to continue receiving payment. It is statistically improbable that the vast majority of conservative leaning podcasters are either self funded or entirely crowd funded, just like most influencers. Those cross country Van-Lifers are largely either independently wealthy or sponsored by the brands they showcase, serving as an advertisement to their viewers, many of whom are also wealthier. Podcast hosting has a similar barrier to entry as being a SoundCloud hip-hop artist or maybe a country singer, a computer and maybe a camera, so anybody can do for extra income if there are brands or causes willing to actually make it worth the effort to do

No, if they run ads, they are sponsored. A handyman is self employed. I don't stop working to thank DeWalt or Snap-on for providing my tools, I bought them myself.

Yeah, people really don't understand how powerful a surveillance state can be when it focuses it's eye on you. It's not safe to talk about resistance around basically anything internet connected with a microphone.

And the people bankrolling these podcasts, or at least sponsoring them to push a slant to the right, are fully aware of the similarities. It's why they do it, they already did the math.

It sucks, trust me

It's a book by Ralph Nader calling out unsafe vehicle design in the 70's.

I got stuck driving through Time's Square right before the Madison Square Garden rally and I saw way too goddamn many... Didn't realize it was the rally until I got home, so I was very confused at the time.

I added a brief explanation

I added a brief explanation

~~IIRC Pushback against "Unsafe at any speed" was the literal origin of the conservative think tank as a political movement. I think Behind the Bastards did an episode on it or maybe Stuff you missed in history class?~~

Meant to post this as a response to my picture

My personal one

IIRC Pushback against "Unsafe at any speed" was the literal origin of the conservative think tank as a political movement. I think Behind the Bastards did an episode on it or maybe Stuff you missed in history class?

Trying to protect neurodivergent people unfortunately shelters bad behavior as well as benign. Yes, the antisocial guy trying to start fights and hurt animals would've been driven out of society, but so would the harmless kid who needs things to be arranged by the last letter of its name or something. I've got some idiosyncrasies that make certain aspects of "fitting in" require more effort than most, and I definitely felt the difference in attitude towards how I struggled as I got older. Another hard to control factor is that malicious people can game those same attitudes that help people who simply can't understand why they are different.