this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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Mildly Interesting
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I find it interesting - and a little concerning - that there are so many more right-leaning voices than left. I have to ask a simple question - why has the left not produced more strident voices and more people able to make popular content?
The left doesn’t need their opinions constantly validated by personalities. The left enjoys (and understands) satire more. Voices like Colbert, and Jon Stewart, and John Oliver.
Are my eyes failing me, or are they not in the chart?
Having a hard time pre-deciding who and what content I think should appear in such a chart. Vlog brothers? e-newspapers?
Josh Jonson Taylor Tomlinson hell 60% of the standup comedians easily. The picture would be much different with them in. Colbert alone would blow rogan out the water.
In that case, I think this chart is probably saying more about what kinds of media people with different leanings consume, not so much about deep pockets or a generational shift.
Late Show with Colbert has 10.1mil subscribers on Youtube, so yeah it should be on there.
If you expand to network TV for this chart — which I think you should, cuz all network TV has a digital presence too these days — it had an average of 2.42mil viewers per episode on TV through Q2.
Joe Rogan, for comparison, boasts 11mil listeners per episode.
So even just based on equating to network TV viewership, he’d probably be somewhere between MeidasTouch and The Breakfast Club.
There's probably some truth to this, but it also leans into the "MSM is lying to you" narrative that's pervasive in far right (and far left) circles. A production with [the appearance of] a low budget is associated with "genuineness" by most people. You can't be paid off by the big corpos if you're doing it out of the goodness of your heart...or so the reasoning goes.
I frequently see people on the left commenting “I don’t recognize this as a trusted source.” Or “Is this just someone’s blog?” Or, “I’m not seeing this published anywhere else.”
There is a lot of astroturfing, garbage, and propaganda that gets published online and on TV. I wish people would look into things more before believing everything they see on tv or read. People’s critical reading skills have definitely gone out the window, and it is totally being taken advantage of.
It’s not just politics either. Lots of fake product reviews, medical misinformation, etc. constantly showing up in search results, YouTube ads, TikTok videos, etc. And influencers are just the new “As Seen On TV” pitchmen of this century.
You don’t see Colbert or Stewart, or Oliver trying to sell you timeshares, or snake oil, or get rich quick schemes. Quite the opposite.
that sounds alot more like right wingers pretending to be on the left, to stok anger division, i dont pay attention to those posts.
I mean personally my beliefs are really straight forward. I don't need influencers it's only complicated when you're internally dishonest and insecure.
I'm left leaning, however the only time I've watched Brian Taylor Cohen or Midastouch was because I got click-bated into watching what became a hyperbolic video subject.
After the first 5 minutes, when the facts become opinions, I immediately switch off. I simply hate fake shit.
those are what you call RESISTANCE grifters, they depend on outrage or clickbait and pretending that they are exposing something against or criticizing the right, but offer no real solution. I get enough fill on them from reddit posts of thier SC posts, so i dont watch thier actual videos.
You can find lots of left leaning online personalities, but left leaning voters don't generally get their news from Vlogs and don't really care about meaningless statements without data or by people with no real power to affect.
Voices need an audience and leftists are shit at organizing right now
Plus what are they going to campaign on? Even more corporate welfare?
The left had a ton of progressive voices and the DNC spends a fucktonne of money making sure they never ever get an audience.
Bernie would have saved us from Trump twice and the DNC shitcanned him for fear of losing their corporate gravy train
Because most of these people make cheap potshots, even the ones with evidence to back themselves up. Just look at John Stewart, he can be incredibly insightful... but the majority of his comments during interviews are sarcastic cracks about how things aren't working as they should be.
The basis of a lot of left-leaning philosophies are abstract and complicated. That makes it hard to sum them up in convenient sound bites that are easy for mass audiences to consume. It also means that it can be very fractious, as the complicated nature of these philosophies lead to a wide variety of nearly-the-same-but-not-quite conclusions. Considering the very black and white, good versus bad, mentality that has been most prevalent at least since the WWII (if not earlier), this generally leads to people being unwilling to work with people whom they agree with 95% of the time... and that last 5% ends up being the most important to them.