Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up Media myFT Digest – delivered straight to your inbox.
(noun) Influencer with a podcast, always male, describes himself as an enemy of the liberal elite and the antidote
“Bro-caster is the opposite of broadcaster” is the kind of joke you might expect from a broadcaster. It's anti-woke, being overtly sexist in an old-fashioned way, and coming off more cocky than funny. While women in Media They learned to make themselves the butt of jokes, for heresy is not self-deprecating.
Joe Rogan, one of the most famous podcasters in the world, is Primal Brother. His podcast, launched in 2009, set the template. She has more than 14.5 million followers on Spotify. According to A YouGov poll Among Britons, more than four-fifths of listeners are male and the majority are aged between 18 and 34.
Although Rogan's political beliefs are difficult to categorize, he does give airtime to fringe scholars, political extremists, and conspiracy theorists. Nobody gets an easy ride, as the host uses the same petty approach to Flat Earthers as he does to Donald Trump and Elon Musk. At least part of Rogan's appeal is the feeling that if he ever gets tired of a guest, he can easily overpower him.
While Rogan is measured by his support for men's rights, broadcasters who followed in his footsteps were more willing to stoke old resentments. Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer and self-identified alpha male, is the manosphere's most notorious activist with a brand of toxic misogyny that resonates throughout… School playgrounds.
In the mainstream, broadcasters can be seen as successors to jocks like Howard Stern. Their irreverence and boundary-crossing profanity appealed to Generation X because it came wrapped in a layer of sarcastic distance.
Then the wind changed. The artificial chaos of talk radio has been replaced by the artificial authenticity of influencers. There's no hint of cynicism in Jordan Peterson's self-help psychobabble, Stephen Bartlett's fist pumps, or ex-Marine Sean Ryan's machismo. They all want to be taken seriously as seekers of truth while being admired as caricatures of masculinity. Live streaming is what happens when the audience wants answers but has heard enough from the experts.
