On October 15, two British megastars took to the stage at London’s O2, their final night in a sold-out arena tour across the country. No fewer than 15,000 adoring fans surrounded a podium arranged “in the round” like a boxing ring, cheering, applauding and shouting “I love you!“Some wore official products: T-shirts with the faces of their idols on them.
Not every hero has a podcast, but many do today. The two men on stage were none other than Tony Blair’s former image specialist Alastair Campbell and former MP and Conservative leadership candidate Rory Stewart, now co-hosts of the ridiculously popular show . The rest is politicsadored by centrist fathers across Britain (and increasingly other demographicsAlso).
It was the first time the O2 had hosted a live political podcast, but not the first time the two had taken to the stage. They had to start booking arenas after selling out the Royal Albert Hall – a venue which this month hosted a live version of the only slightly less popular podcast. Press agents. Last year, Stewart described the amount he makes from podcasting as follows: “Championship footballer money“. Estimates that he and Campbell each earn more than £100,000 a month seem reasonable – and that’s before you factor in ticket sales for live shows (a mid-tier seat at the O2 costs around £100 £).
What is happening? What would motivate someone to go to a horrible, overcrowded mall and spend a lot of money to watch two middle-aged men engage in a surely somewhat predictable discussion – for listeners of their biweekly episodes – from to several hundred meters? And what is the immense success of independent and politically moderate podcasts, on both sides of the Atlantictell us about what people expect from politics and the media?
First, it proves that in a massively oversaturated information landscape, having a few knowledgeable people who can be counted on to provide fairly sensible opinions can help reduce feelings of powerlessness. perpetual overflow.
Second, it once again demonstrates the fact that many people feel stuck in the middle of a polarized landscape – alienated by the “mainstream media” which they believe is too aggressively pushing a left-liberal agenda; put off by narratives pushed to the right. There is clearly an appetite for spaces in which reasonable people can disagree in a polite and constructive manner.
And third, people are tired of being presented with an artificial, scripted, and carefully staged version of reality. They just don’t buy it anymore. Social media has made it much easier to, as the meme goes, “DYOR” (do your own research). Whether what you find is false, untrue, or lacks context is unfortunately irrelevant. Self-directed discovery can be more compelling and convincing than a carefully edited television news story or newspaper article.
TikTok, meanwhile, is both a symptom and a cause of the growing desire for low-fi, raw, and somewhat chaotic content (even though, ironically, the algorithms that feed us content are becoming more sophisticated by the day). in day).
This need for authenticity – even if it has been carefully constructed – also manifests itself in the way people vote. This is part of the reason why Nigel Farage is so popular (a recent Ipsos survey gave the British reformist leader the highest popularity rating of any British politician). And that has been a crucial factor in the wandering and freewheeling,”turn up the music» Donald Trump beat the skilled and famous Kamala Harris in the US presidential election.
However, this is not yet well understood. “Nothing that was true yesterday about how perfectly this campaign ran is true today,” MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid said of Harris during a televised discussion on the results of the November 6 elections. .” Reid also pointed out that Harris had “all the major celebrity voices…”. . . the Swifties, she had the Bee Hive” – a reference to the respective fan bases of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.
The failure to understand that the support of a large number of celebrities might not have worked in Harris’s favor was striking. But Reid was far from alone in promoting the bizarre idea that the woman who lost the presidential election by nearly 2.5 million votes ran a “flawless” campaign.
If her campaign had been impeccable, she would have won. Oddly enough, this might have required doing something that charismatic politicians and podcast hosts understand this instinctively: let your guard down a little and show people that you’re an imperfect human being, just like them.