Careful What You Click On - Konstantin Kisin

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0:34Francis Foster:Can you believe it? That is a common question around the metaphorical water-cooled trigonometry these days, and for good reason. Our journey so far is as improbable as they come. Two unknown circuit comedians start a podcast in a room above a comedy club. They borrow a camera from a photographer, buy 50-pound microphones, and launch. Within three weeks, their producer quits due to ideological differences. She's woke, they're not. At this point, their interviews average a few hundred views. The next producer lasts nearly twice as long and quits for a different reason. He likes to get paid. Soon after, the comedy club, which lets them use the room, kicks them out.

1:14Francis Foster:Again, for not being woke in the middle of the pandemic. Five years later, they're interviewing world leaders and averaging close to a million downloads an episode. As remarkable as the story is, what makes it satisfying is not actually how far we've traveled from a lowly start. After all, every success story seems unlikely in retrospect. What's special is that we've done our best to approach our newfound role as content creators in the right way and haven't been crushed by the algorithm or the competition in the process. The right way does not actually belong in quotation marks, but I use them to emphasize that in today's media climate, our incentive structures have perverted our understanding of right and wrong.

1:53Francis Foster:Today, merely claiming that there's a right way of doing things seems grandiose, arrogant, and presumptuous. The slow but inevitable decline of mainstream media is, as I've written before, partly driven by technological change. Lowering the barrier to entry was always going to end the legacy media monopolies and information. But the emergence of new media challenges coincided with the mainstream media showcasing its own corruption and inadequacy. Kathy Newman's hostile interview with the then-emerging Jordan Peterson became an internet sensation because it revealed so clearly that much of journalism had ceased to be about truth-seeking.

2:30Francis Foster:Instead, it had become a tool to exert force against those who were seeking the truth. The treatment of dissenters against government authoritarianism during COVID, the deliberate lies such as the Russia collusion hoax, and the covering up of Hunter Biden's incriminating laptop all served to further underscore the partisanship, bad faith, and corruption of the media. As people often do when faced with an extreme they dislike, we proceeded to try out the opposite extreme. The problem, it was concluded, was not human behavior, the corrupting effect of power, or the lack of competition. The problem was gatekeepers.

3:05Francis Foster:This was a partial diagnosis at best, but it was felt by many that breaking open the oligarchic cabal and democratizing the marketplace of ideas would lead to a better media environment. And in some ways, it did. The market is brilliant at two things at least, driving down prices and increasing consumer choice. Today, the array of media publications available for free is astounding. In the process, however, it was decided that the problem was curation itself. This is why much of new media is actively hostile to the idea of self-regulation, even at the level of the individual. Successful podcasters often reject the notion that they have any responsibility for the content they produce.

3:46Francis Foster:To suggest otherwise, risks being accused of calling for certain people to be no-platformed, cancelled and so on. These same people are, of course, highly selective about the guests they have on their shows, but the pretense that they're not is critical to maintaining their free speech credentials. The impact of this is easiest to see in individuals. Tucker Carlson, as a legacy media journalist at Fox News was controversial to be sure, but he had to free himself of the shackles of his gatekeepers to descend into actual lunacy like claiming he's been scratched by a demon. The power of Christ compels you!

4:22Francis Foster:Kanda Sowens spent her formative years doing excellent work at the Daily Wire, pushing back against the progressive narrative on race in America. Today, free of the oppressive gatekeeping of her former employers, she spends her time focusing on whether Brigitte Macron is in fact a man. You were born a man and you will die a man. That's the point I'm making. So give us a sample. I'll send my doctors to take your blood. We're revolting against the perverts that run the world. And I want to be very clear here. I count you among them. This may sound like a critique of Carlson and Owens, but I'm afraid I'm actually doing something much more taboo, criticizing their audience.

5:00Francis Foster:Their drift into insanity is understandable once you consider the dynamics of the new media marketplace. Born of opposition, but Kastastan cannot survive when its party is actually in power. Trump's dominant victory and swashbuckling approach to government has left the right's new media talking heads in a pickle. Beating up on the Dems is like punching a man who's been knocked out and is lying defenseless on the ground. There is no election to get the vote out for and even trans issues no longer generate the same clicks. Under this downward pressure and unable to create content that actually informs, moves, and inspires, the only way out is to crank up the crazy.

5:37Francis Foster:Over the last few months at Trigonometry, we've released episodes with historians, world leaders, and major media personalities. As best we could, we've avoided the pitfalls of both legacy and new media. On the one hand, we do not harangue our guests to impress fellow journalists, even controversial politicians like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On the other, we respectfully challenge them, whether they're on the right like Ann Coulter or the left like Deborah Francis White. This is why our growth is so satisfying. We are proving that going tonto is not actually the only way out. My point is, the power to shape the media landscape is not actually in the hands of the New York Times, Jeff Bezos, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, or Constantine Kissin.

6:19Francis Foster:It's in yours. The end of gatekeeping means that, for better or worse, you are now your own gatekeeper. What you reward with your clicks is what you create more of in the world. That is not a responsibility to be taken lightly.

6:58Francis Foster:that compares coverage from across the political spectrum and highlights which stories are being ignored entirely. See for yourself at ground.news slash trigonometry. Their blind spot feed is one of my favorite features. It surfaces around 20 stories a day that are being overlooked by either the left or the right. It's a simple but powerful way to track media bias in real time. Like this, NIH scientists recently published a declaration criticizing Trump's cuts to public health research. That's a major move. and yet only 2 % of the coverage came from right-leaning outlets. A new study found that 2024 saw the most armed conflicts globally since 1946.

7:38Francis Foster:A staggering statistic. But you would have missed it if you'd only read left-wing news sources. Ground News gives you the full picture. Headlines, ownership, bias ratings and context. So you can actually understand what's going on, not just react to what you're told. Head to ground.news.trigonometry for 40 % off their unlimited advantage plan, the same one we use, and start thinking for yourself.

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