Just a grift before I go
Is it possible that the same affinity for conspiracy theories on the right (yes, the left has its own) accompanies the gullibility that makes conservatives fall for grifts?
Charlie Kirk is selling Blackout Coffee, you know, for when “The world is in flames, and Bidenomics is a complete and total disaster,” and the liberal zombie apocalypse comes to turn you gay. There are some brands that cater to lefty sensibilities, writes Ali Breland at The Atlantic. But it’s the expansion of niche products for the conservative paranoid that has caught his attention:
The ads reflect the new paradigm of advertising. In previous decades, ads had to appeal to whole segments of the population—and products were made with that in mind. That some readers of Vanity Fair might want a Givenchy handbag, and some readers of Sports Illustrated might want Callaway golf clubs, was as targeted as ads could get. Now the country has fractured into partisan subgroups, and companies have access to reams of analytics that enable them to target ever more precise demographics. Through shows like Kirk’s, brands such as Blackout Coffee and Patriot Mobile can reach their relatively niche audiences more easily than ever. (Blackout Coffee and Patriot Mobile did not respond to my requests for comment.)
But something else is happening too. Kirk and the rest of the conservative-podcast ecosystem aren’t just selling wares. The ads, with some exceptions, are not like ads for beer or pickup trucks that detract from the action while one watches, say, a football game. Rather, conservative ads are constitutive. They enhance and reinforce the arguments that Kirk and others are already making on their podcasts—that Black people are prone to crime, whiteness is getting excised, abortion is murder, and the United States is unstable and on the verge of collapse. The commercial breaks are the final screws needed to construct a self-contained conservative chamber. Kirk has ensconced himself in a world in which he’ll likely never face external pressures to self-moderate in the way that, say, Rush Limbaugh occasionally did when he went too far beyond the tastes of mainstream advertisers.
I’m not sure the Spocko Method would work on these guys. The advertisers are marketing to the crazies.
When you’re listening to Kirk talk about Blackout Coffee, you can also look down and see the steam coming off your own cup of Blackout Coffee, and relax while its caffeine helps you “be awake not
woke.” You can open a new browser tab and check in on your portfolio, whose wealth managers are endorsed by Kirk, and then look at the price of gold and think about your own supply procured from a company that Kirk himself vetted “from top to bottom.” You can even stop listening to Kirk, go out to your backyard, and make a call, knowing that you’re doing so as a freedom-loving conservative with your Patriot Mobile phone plan.
It’s a world as self-contained as a megachurch or a Christian home-school cooperative.
“Rest assured knowing that you’re ready for whatever the globalists throw at us next,” Kirk said at the end of one ad for medical-emergency kits.
The fringe left has it’s share of hucksters, I know too well. But this grifting comes from the top down and become accepted as part of our culture.
Update: Fresh Grift! Right here!
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