Though as many have pointed out, nowadays any organization or whatever doesn’t need to pay someone to have a certain opinion – they can just go find the person that already has that opinion, and then pay money to get them promoted.

How much Nick’s growth is genuine vs how much is fueled by the feds or foreign agents or who knows who – that is what I’m most curious about.

The support and attention may at first be artificial, but once it reaches a certain point the attention becomes a positive feedback loop.
It’s similar to people who are famous for being famous, once they become famous enough to be KNOWN as being famous.
If you get my drift.
It’s a media recursion loop, and can spiral into ever more attention being paid to someone because they are getting more attention.

Just like Fuentes.

In years past that was accomplished by writers in the syncophantic media, today it’s just bots.

I completely agree.

But Fuentes et al may not be the big sources. I think TikTok is very much implicated. There’s also plenty on YouTube, including pro-Palestinian ads.

It wasn’t too long ago that the extreme Jew hatred expressed by Candace Owens would have made her a pariah, not one of the most popular podcasters. There is a reason why so many media figures are afraid to criticize people like Candace and Tucker, they are afraid of losing viewers.

I wish I could dismiss people like Fuentes, Candace, and Tucker as being internet creations but I believe they reflect a real and disturbing phenomenon.

I don’t we have any reason to believe, ever, that just because we’re seeing more about something online that there is any reality to it. The whole point of these bezillion-dollar industries is to show you what they think you will look at if it’s in front of you, so they can sell you something. Could be a narrative, and frequently is.

The Fuentes narrative is an old one, going back at least to the days of Father Coughlin: the Right is full of crazy, hateful people. Fuentes is happy to go along, it’s his day job; legacy media helps spread Fuentes because they think it helps Dems, SPLC and other progressive activists help spread Fuentes because then people give them money to “fight” him, and establishment Republican voices help spread it because they want their position on the Right back.

But there’s nothing there, and never has been. It’s just narrative marketing. We’ve been talking about 1984 here again recently–remember that Emmanuel Goldstein was not real in 1984 and possibly never had been.

And, Sockpuppets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EufH0T196bY