I have this category of people that I refer to as public narrators (Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, Mathew Sibson, Tim Pool, Brent Pella, JP Sears, etc). So they don't gather news, invent news, or find news. They, more or less, talk about the topics of things which 90-percent of the time.....the CNN idiots, the Fox trolls, or the political hacks just simply refuse to discuss.
Last year, I sat for two hours and heard a great discussion over the Aztec Indian empire. I also have heard at least thirty JP Sears sarcastic commentaries over Covid and the US government. I probably spent a full hour hearing a discussion from a young woman who lived for two or three years with a boyfriend who was max on the paranoid schizophrenic problems.
What makes these people special? People like Fridman and Rogan ask a lot of stupid questions, and guests explain things in more detail than what you'd ever get via the BBC or CNN.
Are Fridman or Sears controlled by sponsors? NO.
Does Joe Rogan care if it's 50,000 people listening or 5-million people? NO.
Are they becoming more significant than news organizations? I would offer these four observations:
1. Newspaper and magazines were always developed to give you a limited bit of knowledge and information on a topic. If you asked Pella about his content....he'd just respond that he picked the topic out of thin air, and thought of twenty funny things to discuss.....with no limit.
2. Who listens to podcasts? Well....it used to be mostly 18-to-25 year old folks, and in the past decade....there are 12-year-old kids sitting there and listening to Doctor Todd Grande discuss weird people. There are 75-year olds listening to Scott Adams. It's across the spectrum.
3. Do they need Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube? No. Most have found other vehicles, and it puts the Silicon Valley crowd in a 'pickle' on controlling people.
4. Some 'facts' being displaced and replaced? Well....yeah, this issue has popped up and the narrators are putting some journalists in a tough position. Everyday, Tim Pool talks about stuff....that makes someone at the WaPo/NY Times look stupid.
So we should ask this question....will we reach a point where our nightly hours that was reserved for Gunsmoke, MSNBC political chatter, Clint Eastwood movies, or fake Amish mafia.....are dumped for three hours of just narrators? I added up the past week, and shocked myself by admitting I put almost twenty hours into narrator chatter.
