We’re in a Closed Media Circuit Hellhole (Or, how Jesse Watters Got It Right)

More blue chip advertisers are heading back to Fox News, X is the unofficial official mouthpiece of the government and news source for the government, and none of this is fine

Welcome back to Halftime, Posting Nexus’ weekly links round up and mini-essay. Today, important stories from Aftermath, the Try Guys, Breaker Media, and a recommendation for a true-crime podcast that genuinely sparked a mini-obsession for a few days.

But first…

 Data!

1. I’m a sucker for when really, really, really successful creators pull the veil back a little to give us a glimpse into the machinations of a system like YouTube. Take the Try Guys, one of the most successful groups on YouTube that is now down to just a couple of the original founding members and who are playing around with new subscription models for their premium content that they host off of YouTube. Does it work? Mm…kind of. But not really. The whole video is worth a watch for anyone who’s ever wondered just how hard it is to build a business off YouTube even if you started on it. — (Try Guys)

2. Compromised data can come from any number of sources, but when one researcher looked into public obituaries from a Germany newspaper to study trends in deaths, he came across an entirely new problem — the death of print was affecting obituary submissions. Once a study into why we died gave birth to a clear image about how the newspaper went the way of the dodo. — (Reddit)

Three Important Arguments 

1. Attention —  Late Night’s New King. I was ecstatic to come across this profile on Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld, not because I’m a fan of Greg Gutfeld or Fox News by any means. But it ties perfectly into our mini essay today on the closed media circuit that everyone in the mainstream press seems content to reward with fluff pieces, advertising, and attention. Neither Fox News or Gutfeld having audiences is new, or even news worthy, but the newly welcoming embrace from many publications that have ignored these beasts for so long is. One could argue that more publications like Variety should have given attention much sooner. Thoughts?  — (Variety)

2. Identity — How COVID Pushed a Generation of People to the Right. The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson is my personal hero, which feels weird to say because he’s not much older than me, but his approach to thinking about identity, attention, and platforms, and his ability to succinctly write about these mega topics, impresses me each time. This week, Derek has a piece on the “C Generation,” those who belong to Gen Z and who went hyper conservative partially because of COVID and its effects on our society.  — (The Atlantic)

3. Platform — Rockstar Games is hosting meetings with Roblox and Fortnite creators to try and turn GTA into the next big sandbox game. A few weeks ago, I wrote about Fortnite trying to copy Roblox’s attempt to be a haven for creator generated games, opening the sandbox to developers and incentivizing players to spend even more time inside the microcosm of an individual game rather than direct attention elsewhere. This helped birth my empires and islands thesis, and it’s largely the playbook that governs YouTube. GTA, a game that has routinely seen modders create their own bootleg mini-games for GTA’s online player base, is the next game to officially move in that same direction. Remember, everything is empires and islands. — (Digiday)

Seven Must Reads of the Week 

1. The FCC is a Weapon in Trump’s War on Free Speech. Another one of my personal heroes is Nilay Patel, who I also had the good fortune to work with for several years at The Verge. Nilay is one of those rare lawyers-turned-journalists who basically approaches journalism through the lens of punk rock. That’s why his take on Brendan Carr, who is truly a scary man considering his views on media that exists outside of the new closed circuit, is a must listen. — (Decoder)

2. Trump’s Obsession with Canada’s Water. Although this story has little to do with attention, identity, and platforms, I want to plug it because a) my Canadian pride is swelling this week and b) the incoming wars over water (read: Trump’s obsession with Greenland and Canada) is only going to get much more severe as time goes on and we ignore climate crises. — (The Tyee)

3. Meta will build the world’s longest undersea cable. Related to the point above, we’re already seeing attacks on underwater pipes that connect our banking, health care, and security systems to countries around the world. Owning these “private” pathways will become a much bigger priority for companies like Meta who see themselves as this century’s East Indian Trading Company. — (Wired)

4. SNL 50 pulled in more than 14 million viewers, beating the season’s average by more than 200%. Huzzah for SNL! I thought the 40th anniversary show was better than this half-century celebration, but I love to see an iconic program, spearheaded by a Canadian!, continue to go strong. — (Variety) 

5. GameStop is a Very 21st Century Company. I just love Luke Plunkett’s takedown of all the latest nonsense happening at GameStop.  — (Aftermath)

6. Spotify will let new tier subscribers remix their favorite artists’ songs. Ironically, this is one of the few instances where I’m less worried about copyright concerns emerging from giving users control over protected work. Remixing and sampling is a core part of today’s music industry, and those who want to do so for profitable gain already do this. So giving fans the ability to speed up or slow down a song, which is just TikTokifying the official Spotify experience, feels like an incredible smart move.  — (Bloomberg) 

7. Severance overtakes Ted Lasso to become Apple TV+’s most watched series. Apple TV+ data is rare, but Deadline has some numbers to back up the success of Severance, a show that is somehow all over my Twitter feed despite me never tweeting about it.  — (Deadline)

Three Fun Stories

1. Funny One — The AI Humane Pin: A $700 Brick of e-Waste. Lol, remember the AI Humane pin? It’s time to start a graveyard for all the useless gadgets that received way too much attention and investment because they attached the letters “AI” to their products. — (404Media)

2. Wild One — I’m all for gossiping around in-fighting at the New York Times (I say as a genuine fan of the paper), and this reporting on two health reporters getting heated over a piece that led to an anonymous account being made to comment on the article after publication is delicious. It’s also one of the first pieces from new media co Breaker Media, which is absolutely worth adding to your RSS feed. — (Breaker Media)

3. Endearing One — Polygon’s Austen Goslin defends Matt Damon’s look in The Odyssey, and I am here for it — (Polygon) 

A Movie, a TV show, a Podcast, and a Book 

1. Movie — Conclave (again, for like the fifteenth time)

2. TV show — White Lotus (D’uh)

3. Podcast — “The Collar Bomb Heist” — Stuff You Should Know 

4. Book — The Storm Before the Storm — Mike Duncan

Halftime Thesis — We’re in a Closed Media Circuit Hellhole (Or, how Jesse Watters Got It Right)

Sometimes when things are off in my friend group, when everyone is feeling a little sullen, stressed, and stretched, one of my pals will text four little words: the vibes are rancid. Vibe shifts happen all the time, or so my Gen Z counterparts tell me, and calling them out as rancid doesn’t delegitimize how people are feeling. Calling out the putridness of it all doesn’t solve the problem. It just spells out exactly what’s happening. 

To say the vibes within the Democratic Party are rancid right now would be quite the understatement. But it’s not just that the Democrats seem woefully unable to course correct from their current shipwrecked spot in the middle of the ocean; it’s more so that Democrats can’t seem to acknowledge they’re shipwrecked in the first place. 

After the election, almost every reporter who has ever blogged about the internet asked who was the left’s Joe Rogan? Although not a political influencer by any means, Rogan’s elevation of President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance seemed to result in every person with access to a newsletter arguing that the left should have figured out a counter, and much sooner.

Sure, Brat Summer arrived for Team Kamala, but as my friend Taylor Lorenz pointed out at the time, there’s a difference between a three-hour podcast with a fanbase who feels like they know the guy and a 15-second TikTok that is designed to be as ephemeral as the time it takes to flick to the next video. What I’ve come back to since our winter of Joe Rogan induced discontent is how important it was in that moment that Rogan didn’t seem like he was elevating Trump or Vance. They were just the type of guys he’d have on as guests anyway. 

Bloomberg has an incredible feature illustrating the right-wing lean of the “brocast” universe made more famous by Trump’s campaign season and, considering this has been talked about to death, I’m not going to get into it much more here. What’s more insidious than an accidental hype circuit like the brocasters and the broligarch that Trump has elevated after they praised him is how the accidental circuit infiltrates the authoritative one. Please know, from the most bottomest part of my heart and in the most sincerest tone possible, I fucking hate what I’m about to say next. Jesse Watters got it right. 

“We are waging a 21st century information warfare campaign against the left,” Watters said on an episode of his Fox News nightly show, as reported by The Hill. “And they’re using tactics from the 1990s. What you’re seeing on the right is asymmetrical. 

“Someone says something on social media, Musk retweets it, Rogan podcasts it, Fox broadcasts it and by the time it reaches everybody, millions of people have seen it.”

Are you ready for the icing on the cake? It’s not only working in that Fox News continues to capture more attention compared to its competitors in prime time news each and every week. It’s not only working in that Musk continues to command one of the largest global communication platforms in the world. One of the more alarming new realities is that between Rogan, Musk, Watters, and Trump, what was once fringe is now supported by some of the biggest advertisers in the world.

Last week, my former Puck colleague Dylan Byers reported that more than 120 blue chip companies — the Coca Colas, McDonalds, Toyotas of the world — previously not advertisers on Fox had started advertising on the network. Fox C.E.O., Lachlan Murdoch, son of Rupert and star of two 10,000 word reports last week, told analysts on an earnings call that he expected even more to show up in the quarters ahead. 

As Dylan further notes, Fox News represents 70% of all cable news consumption in the United States at this point. But Fox News has remained lightyears ahead of the CNNs and MSNBCs of the world for years. Why do advertisers want to be on the network now? It’s the same reason that Meta C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, feels like he can stand behind Trump at the president’s inauguration and publicly eliminate D.E.I. programs at Facebook while ceasing fact checking across his platforms: they’re representatives of the country.

I mean, this is a load of bull, but that’s what they’ll say. They’re reflecting the country’s current climate yada yada yada. The point is that nothing on Fox has changed…other than a former host becoming Defense Secretary and the once left leaning elite, and they’re followers, now indoctrinated by the Church of Trump’s dogma. It’s not that Fox has changed, but permission has been granted to be cool with Fox because there’s some newfound belief that Fox is with it as opposed to being against it. 

Watters got it right — they are launching a 21st century information warfare campaign against the left. The part he left out is that it’s being funded by the same people who avoided it like the plague less than a decade ago. With all that in mind, let’s ask the most obvious question: can the left build a version of that machine? Like everything at Posting Nexus, it all comes down to incentives for where to give your attention. 

And, because it’s Posting Nexus, it wouldn’t be a proper blog without a shabbily hand drawn chart. 

The New Closed Media Circuit 

You shouldn’t be surprised by the chart below if you’ve spent any speck of time on the internet over the last several years. 

There are two big differences with this Trump administration era than in media eras past. The first is that Elon owns X and, as part of that ownership, he has worked with his teams to suppress tweets with links directing people to other websites. Not only does this allow Musk to contain attention on his app when people are using it, but it also works to softly evict journalists, academics, and other necessary parts of the Twitter ecosystem because they’re less incentivized to be in a space that isn’t friendly to their mode of operation. That’s partially why in the time that Musk has taken over Twitter, BlueSky has seen an explosion in popularity — but, and it’s an important but, BlueSky is still nowhere near the size of X (let alone the big platforms like Instagram and TikTok). 

Secondly, Musk is directly connected to the White House through his official (unofficial??) Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) position. He now has an unprecedented level of power and influence not just over his own team currently raiding nearly every department of the federal government, but over the stories that journalists tell, that podcasters pick up on, and that circulate his own social platform. Rarely has this level of media power been consolidated into such a few amount of hands and an even fewer number of outlets. 

Looking at the new media circuit also allows us to see why advertisers and big blue chip brands are seeking out time and space in areas they previously avoided. The answer is right there in the name: closed circuit. If you want to reach the audience who, by all measures, perpetuates to represent a majority of the country, and if you want to keep abreast with the most influential men in Trump’s world, you’re no longer relying on your lobbyists and New York Times subscription. You’re watching Fox, you’re using X, and you're listening to podcasts from ironically apolitical influencers. Like I said in Crossing the Rubicon, Trump’s election didn’t change the political or ideological whims of the oligarchy overnight; it simply allowed them to stop pretending like they cared. 

A few figures tell the rest of the story: 

1. As Byers noted, Fox News maintains 70% of the cable news audience in the United States 

2. “About one-in-five Americans – including a much higher share of adults under 30 (37%) – say they regularly get news from influencers on social media” (Pew Research)

3. “News influencers are most likely to be found on the social media site X, where 85% have a presence. But many also are on other social media sites, such as Instagram (where 50% have an account) and YouTube (44%)” — (Pew Research)

4. “Slightly more news influencers explicitly identify as Republican, conservative or pro-Donald Trump (27% of news influencers) than Democratic, liberal or pro-Kamala Harris (21%).

5. A clear majority of news influencers are men (63%)” — (Pew Research)

6. “Most (77%) have no affiliation or background with a news organization “ — (Pew Research)

7. Time spent with YouTube has increased by more than 65% percent over the last four years while other streamers have remained stagnant (Nielsen)

8. Podcasts now make up a sizable part of YouTube activity, with Google C.E.O. Sundar Pichai and YouTube C.E.O Neal Mohan both recently calling out podcast activity as a core part of the service 

I could throw more at you, but you get the idea. If I had to summarize it, I’d say that more people are spending less time across multiple websites and apps. This reduces the flow of information, thereby increasing weaponization of information from influential but not correct sources — all while being bankrolled by a new swath of significant advertisers. Just to hit the point home even further, the amount of dollars flowing into Fox News from blue chip advertisers means a newly revitalized part of this closed media circuit is being funded by the very groups that turned away from or ignored “the message” not too long ago. 

Ah, the message. Again, it’s not like Fox News has suddenly changed its tune. Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are quite literally in a court dispute over shares of the family trust to ensure that some of Rupert’s children, including James and Elisabeth, don’t have the power to implode the entire thing from the inside. God forbid the American audience be told about the scientific reasons behind the natural disasters they’re seeing pulverize their towns. But I digress. If the message hasn’t changed, what has? Obviously it’s the authority — but it’s the authority governed through a closed media circuit.

Consider this very scary point: Elon Musk not only controls an information platform (X) — where his teams can ultimately suppress information, disincentivize people from leaving the site to spend time elsewhere, and disincentivize reporters, academics, and researchers from posting because they can’t promote their work — but he also wants to be a communications carrier for parts of America through Starlink. Musk is allied with Brendan Carr, Trump’s new head of the Federal Communications Commission, who has spent time on X talking about going after the so-called enemies of Musk and Trump, including news organizations like NBC and CBS. 

Finally, Fox News is also stomping grounds for those close to the Trump administration, like his daughter Lara, who recently joined the network, while others who became stars through Fox News, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, are now part of the actual administration. Hell, we’re even getting reports that the U.S. State Department is allegedly ordering its employees to unsubscribe from unfriendly Trump publications including Reuters — a global newswire service. 

So, I guess everything going into and coming out of the White House is basically found on X? Here’s a great example of Elon Musk retweeting something about Zelensky from the “Libs of TikTok” X account, which ripped a clip from an international news interview that removed critical context.

And, yes, I have to screenshot it because Substack won’t let you embed tweets…because of Musk.

What Watters got right (I really hate saying it), is that Fox News is no longer the only nexus point. It’s part of a much larger machine that the Democrats and left-wing organizations watched form in front of them. And they did so without any attempt to build their own closed media network solution. Part of that is because the Democrats largely seem to believe in the freedom of press compared to the arrogance of Republicans, who claim their freedom of speech is being stampeded to death while they call for the literal jailing of reporters. But part of it is because so much of the new closed media circuit that exists for the right seemed innocuous until it wasn’t. 

It’s Identities, Stupid  

Media is full of great diagnoses but rarely identifies the necessary steps or the best path forward to fix the problems. The same goes for politics. I imagine if you asked a bunch of right-wing or right leaning individuals about this moment, they would point you back to the popular blogs of the early ‘00 and ‘10s. Gawker, Vice, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Vox — weren’t these left-leaning publications that were favored by the Obama administration much in the same way that Drudge Report was crucial to the Bush administration? Hasn’t control over message, and funding via advertising, always flip flopped with the party in charge? 

I get the argument, but the internet, like always, changes everything. Three of the biggest are what I give a spotlight to in this Halftime edition of Posting Nexus each week: identity, attention, and platform. Political identity is no longer something that mattered to voters for a few months every couple of years; it’s now an endless conscious stream of influencers, posters, and creators who affirm your own identity through their videos and encourage you to express that identity in other places through videos of your own or singular comments. Debating isn’t something done in household kitchens or high school classrooms but in react videos on YouTube and Reels. All of this is viable because the platforms promise to reward participation with real dollars — something that is far more appealing to younger generations who are seeing a more traditional, middle class path disappear in front of them.

Many of these ideas come up in a new report from economist Kyla Scanlon, who writes, “When someone can make more from one viral video than their parent's monthly salary, it fundamentally reshapes how we understand value creation, especially in an era of dismantling government and changing workforces.”

Scanlon points out that these economics help to create an identity; what I’ll add is that if you’re being rewarded with followers, friends, communities and, yes, real world dollars, then you’ll lean harder into that identity. Those platforms will also show you more videos that align with that identity, and everyone winds up in a profitable echochamber for both left and right leaning groups. At a time when there are fewer flows of information and fewer portals that people seek out to get their information, suddenly the threat of the blogsphere in 2010 has nothing on the threat of the social sphere in 2025. Everything barbells.

My favorite point from Scanlon is how these identities shape technologies. Those technologies now shape and influence mainstream news, and mainstream news is still where people in power are turning their attention. Politicians are one example, yes, but also tech C.E.O.s who have CNBC on in their offices and advertisers who pull up the New York Times on their phone or CNN in their offices.

If Fox News becomes the outlet programmed through a digital-first lens, capturing the important, rapidly moving conversations happening off-platform and throwing a few talking heads so the conversation makes its way back to Musk and Trump, suddenly Fox News is more than just a network. It’s more than just a propaganda machine. It becomes one of the sole news networks people pay attention to and form their identities around. Imagine how it’ll look when the company’s streaming service, which will include sports (another identity forming community) will impact younger generations of cord cutters. 

And it’s this that the Dems haven’t picked up on. It feels like we’re living in a post-facts world, in a post-news world. We’re not. But we are clearly living in a total identity driven world, one that is crossing the internet and traditional news. Rogan and Logan Paul and Adin Ross weren’t political podcasters and creators, but they represented an “American” figure that lined up well with the current administration. They spoke to a group of people about their world without lecturing. 

Unsurprisingly, some of the answer comes in the form of the left’s most prolific creator, Hasan Piker. My pal Luke Winkie has a fantastic profile of Piker and his role in this new media world on Slate, but it was this line I found myself drawn to. Piker, who streams on Twitch to more than 50,000 paying subs and hundreds of thousands more every single day, spoke about streaming with a fitness influencer who voted for Trump. The two deadlifted and spoke about inane things on top of their fitness programs. It was that level of commitment to being a human that Hasan believes is what the Democrats need, even if the right is going in the opposite direction. Scoff at it, but it’s effectively the Joe Rogan strategy…just with less conspiracy theories. 

“I think that’s something a lot of political commentators lack in general,” Piker said. “They’re not real human beings. What I do requires a tremendous amount of charitability from the audience. I speak in opposition on a lot of issues that people take for granted.” 

So how does the left build their own machine? We’re seeing some attempts. BlueSky is continuing to grow, but even at north of 30 million users, it’s relatively small. Podcasters like the Meidas Touch have dethroned Rogan in the podcast charts. I don’t have answers for this ongoing problem, but god I wish I did. I just know that, for maybe the first time ever, Jesse Watters was right. And I found out about it from a clip on Xthat was uploaded from a right-wing influencer instead of Politico or The Hill. I don’t know how much more succinct I can get about the problem staring us in the face.