site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Trouble in conservative media? While the left has been catastrophizing over losing the war for attention, a major conservative outlet seem to be stacking a few Ls.

Daily Wire Co-Founder Jeremy Boreing To Step Into New Role Focusing On Entertainment

Boreing, who founded the company in 2015 alongside Ben Shapiro and Caleb Robinson, said that he is turning his “full attention to creative and entertainment ventures for the company.” Robinson will step in as full-time CEO and assume the day-to-day operations of the company.

“When Ben, Caleb, and I founded The Daily Wire in 2015, we set out to build an institution. I’m enormously proud of our team, of our many battles, and of the successes we’ve achieved together over the last decade. And we’re just getting started,” Boreing said. “To get us to the heights we know we can achieve, we have brought in a world-class executive team that I am confident will thrive in taking us to the next level under Caleb’s ongoing leadership while I turn my full attention to creative

My first thought was "did October 7 kill the Daily Wire?". Candace Owens was one of their big stars but they lost her over antisemitism (she's promptly become even more unhinged). Maybe this took more of a bite out of their base than I assumed at the time. The general split in the Republican party between traditional views on supporting allies and the allegedly anti-war segment that questions spending money on foreign partners ,especially (((those allies))) , could create problems for a company like DW.

And then, not long after that, they lost Brett Cooper as well for still-undisclosed reasons and utterly failed to replace her in a way that seemed to only destroy her former show and made Cooper more popular. Matt Walsh is doing great but can he and Shapiro really cover the company's costs, especially given its ambitions in media?

Which, at least, the Bulwark is suggesting is part of the problem: Boreing decided to adapt the Pendragon Cycle and may have bitten off more than he could chew. It's an action fantasy series is a far cry from a Matt Walsh documentary or sports comedy. The Bulwark is not a neutral source but it is a risk we've previously talked about here when discussing attempts to create an alternative to Hollywood.

Combine that with a bit of a downturn and dubious personnel decisions like treating modern influencers like interchangeable cogs and...someone had to take the fall.

Uh, why do you assume that this is the daily wire doing badly? They’ve been dabbling in entertainment for a while.

If there was an indie Hollywood studio head that worked for a company that had a track record of producing franchises
lost two of those in a visible, controversial way in quick succession and is in the middle of taking the mother of all swings and then stepped down as "god-king" before seeing it through I would wonder if there was a connection.

And that's basically the sort of company they're aiming to be.

Last I checked, Daily Wire was doing a victory lap after Trump's election. This doesn't seem like the result of Boreing screwing up, he's always been more interested in making movies.

Though their DailyWire+ subscriber counts are not public, they have announced numbers from time to time. They said they had 1,000,000 subscribers in 2022. According to Axios last year they had over $200 million in revenue, and in 2023 they had a capital valuation of over $1 billion (https://www.axios.com/2024/12/10/the-daily-wire-eyes-growth-investment-in-2025).

I don't see any signs of Daily Wire declining, in a business sense. They seem to be headed up and to the right.

That many people pay for news subscriptions?! Well played by them, damn

They got movies and shows and such too. I think Jordan Peterson is working on his second exclusive series for them.