The Great Dumbening

The Great Dumbening Of The 2010s

Last week, podcaster Theo Von clashed with the Department of Homeland Security after the DHS X account used one of his clips in a post about deporting immigrants. “My father immigrated here from Nicaragua. One of my prized possessions is — I have his immigration papers from when he came here. I have them in a frame,” he fired back on his show. “This was just fucked up.”

The clip of Von went viral, with most liberal users responding with some variation of, “well, what did you expect, dumbass.”

But as Rolling Stone reported, Von is not the only manosphere influencer starting to distance himself from the Trump administration. Twitch streamer Adin Ross and Joe Rogan are both also questioning their role in promoting the Trump campaign last year, now that President Donald Trump is doing all the things he said he was going to do when all these podcasters were yucking it up with him on their shows. Which, once again, begs the question: Why are these guys so fucking stupid?

But their blatant stupidity is why they’re so popular. It’s the uncomfortable truth underpinning pretty much everything that’s happened in pop culture — including politics — since the 2010s social media revolution. The online platforms that created our new world, run on likes and shares and comments and views, reshaped the marketplace of ideas into an attention economy. One that, like a real economy, is full of very popular garbage. And, also like a real economy, is now so vast and important that it’s virtually impossible to change it. If you want access to it, you better get comfortable making lowest-common-denominator bullshit in front of a camera. And, of course, it’s a lot easier to feel good about doing that if you’re an idiot.

A brief aside here, but this is the big bet that AI companies are making right now. That our tastes have grown so rotten and atrophied that we won’t even care when our feeds start filling up with slop. In fact, the Russian government, which was arguably the country quickest at embracing our new digital normal, just announced an AI-generated news satire show that will air on state television.

The Great Dumbening of the 2010s didn’t just reduce our celebrities into influencers, though. It did the same to every famous person that wanted to stay famous and every person that wanted to become famous. It untethered popularity from tastemakers — cultural, political, financial — and turned it into something nakedly transactional. If you want an audience you have to talk to people who already have an audience. Culture rewritten by the network effect of a retweet. And it’s clear that podcasters like Von, Rogan, and Ross had no larger thoughts about last year’s election beyond, “Trump seems popular and popular people on my show are good for traffic.”

This is the same calculus that Paramount CEO David Ellison, son of Trump ally Larry Ellison who is in line to own TikTok btw, made when he acquired Baris Weiss and her TERFy Free Press Substack, installing Weiss as CBS News’ editor-in-chief. But, as I said, attention is transactional now. Which means Weiss going to CBS News has to be a win for Paramount and a loss for whoever was platforming her before. In this case, it’s Substack who might feel the hurt. Reportedly, they’ll lose around 5% of their yearly revenue when/if the outlet migrates off the site.

In many ways, this is the exact logic that led the second Trump administration to fully embrace influencers — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was a Fox News host, FBI Director Kash Patel was a podcaster, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is basically a sentient Facebook page — and invest heavily in its own. DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis is posting cutesy X videos attacking Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is filming travel vlogs inside of El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT). And my suspicion is that the outpouring of extreme anger from the right following Charlie Kirk’s death last month was motivated, at least in part, by the fact that Kirk was being groomed to be the first homegrown influencer president.

But attention was never meant to be traded this way and it doesn’t always work the way you think it will. The manosphere guys, who laundered Trump to their vast audience of men in pickup trucks, lost their “cool” aloofness after they were turned into mouthpieces for an authoritarian regime. In the case of Weiss and CBS News, as Zeteo News reporter Prem Thakker pointed out on X this week, Weiss’ first big pitch had, charitably, around 1,200 viewers. Brilyn Hollyhand, a young conservative named after a CAPTCHA, flopped as a Charlie Kirk replacement, probably because he has an even weirder face than Kirk did. And the influencer-run and influencer-driven second Trump administration can’t govern, can’t communicate, and still hasn’t figured out a way to outrun the mounting public pressure House Democrats have miraculously managed to sustain about the president’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein. And that’s the punchline here.

The tech platforms that promised to transform our attention spans succeeded, but only superficially. They created a new, much worse way of creating culture. A universe of dumbasses talking to other dumbasses, measured by numbers that don’t make sense and don’t reflect anything other than passive screen time. And they managed to convince conservatives to fully buy into this completely fake new reality. Who have only become more convinced in the last five years in their belief that this new kind of attention works like a commodity. That it can be hoarded and monopolized. (It can, but only by the platforms that run it.) That you can hire the biggest idiots you can find, make them transmit your slop from the most important institutions in the world, and as long as it’s as stupid and hateful and ugly as possible, you can trust that the algorithms will do what they’re programmed to. And it will “work” up until the minute we realize it doesn’t and never did.

We’re hosting a movie night later this month!

We’re taking over Low Cinema in Ridgewood, Queens on October 22nd for a special showing of the Slenderman-themed web series Marble Hornets. Ryan and Grant will also be doing a live recording of Panic World post-screening. Come join us!

The following is NOT a paid ad. It’s a good ol’ fashioned promo4promo. If you’re interested in promo swaps OR paid advertising, email me at [email protected] and let’s talk. Thanks!

As artificial intelligence accelerates change across economies, industries, and governments, understanding the technology, and scale of its impact has never been more vital. Semafor Technology examines the people and ideas driving this transformation — from gigawatt-scale storage and energy infrastructure to the talent and companies reshaping Silicon Valley. Delivered twice weekly, Semafor Technology is the essential briefing on how technology, money, and influence are redefining the world. Sign up to Semafor Technology for free.

Patti Harrison Wants You To Know She Isn’t Trantifa

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The Trump 2028 Talk Is Getting Real Loud All Of A Sudden

Even though Steve Bannon has effectively been kicked out of Trump’s inner circle, he’s still a pretty good barometer for how they’re thinking. In fact, to tie into what I wrote above, his transformation into a slightly more buttoned up (he wears multiple collared shirts) Alex Jones-style podcaster was pretty good forecasting for where every other conservative was headed. Which is why you should take him very seriously when he starts musing about a Trump 2028 run.

On NewsNation last night, talking to host Batya Ungar-Sargon, Bannon said, “I think there are many different alternatives we’ll roll out after the midterms to make sure President Trump is on the ballot in 2028. And if he’s on the ballot, he’ll win.” You can watch a clip of it on X if you have the stomach for it.

What are those alternatives he may be alluding to? Well, wouldn’t you know it. Scott Leiendecker, a former Republican election official, just purchased Dominion Voting Systems. The company at the center of the 2020 election conspiracy theories. And just to kill any optimism you might have about the company remaining objective going forward, Leiendecker has renamed Dominion, Liberty Vote (uh oh), and posted a note about his intentions on Dominion’s website. “Our mission is clear: every vote must be secure, fair, and verifiable,” which is exactly what you’d say if you weren’t going to do that.

Someone Made A Lot Of Money Of This Weekend’s Crypto Crash

A lot of people lost a lot of money on crypto this weekend. According to Bloomberg, about $20 billion was liquidated. It seemingly was tied to President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with China.

The TL;DR here is that China has clamped down on the exports of rare-earth minerals due to Trump’s boneheaded tariff strategy. Trump then responded on Truth Social, threatening to impose 100% tariffs on China. Then the crypto market imploded. There was also a lot of really delicious cope from shrieking finance guys on X.

Posts like this give me a lot of joy. I can’t wait to print them out and read them around the trash fire as I walk the great American wasteland in a few years.

There was one person who made a lot of money this weekend, however. An account was opened on Hyperliquid, a blockchain trading platform, and put in a short about a half hour before Trump’s Truth Social post. They made about $30 million. How serendipitous!

Will Trump Give Barron TikTok?

This is, god willing, bullshit, but, let’s face it, nothing is off the table with these people. Internally, Barron is considered Trump’s internet whisperer. He was reportedly behind the big manosphere podcast push during the election. It’s not unthinkable that he could be gifted a job at the new Trump-run US TikTok.

The idea that Barron could end up on US Tiktok’s comes from a Daily Mail interview with Trump’s TikTok producer Jack Advent, who told the tabloid, “Young people are overwhelmingly the user base of TikTok. I'm hopeful President Trump will consider appointing his son Barron and maybe other young Americans to TikTok's board to help ensure it remains an app young people want to keep using.”

So, thankfully, this isn’t official, just speculation for now. But I do think it’s a good reminder that Trump’s influence will be felt on US TikTok.

You Can Finally DDOS Cars

This is one of those I hadn’t even really considered tbh. According to the X user that posted this, no one actually got in the cars. They all showed up, waited 10 minutes, and charged everyone a $5 no-show fee and left. Waymo then disabled pickups in the area until the next morning.

Weird Google Japan Thing

Google Japan made a rotary dial keyboard. It’s unclear why they did this, but it’s sick and, frankly, I want one. Also, as eagle-eyed viewers in the comments pointed out, the team behind this is so committed to the bit, they’re all slowly rotating in the release video.

Some Stray Links

• “What happens to college towns after peak 18-year-old?”

• “There’s Now a Casino in Everyone’s Pocket. For Some Young Men, It’s a Near-Fatal Gamble”

P.S. here’s it’s Tronin’ time. (X post)

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***