The fight over Big Con: Ben Shapiro's beef with Steven Crowder shows male insecurity is profitable

[marmar]

The fight over Big Con: Ben Shapiro's beef with Steven Crowder shows male insecurity is profitable
The fight is funny, but the real story is how right-wing pundits make millions appealing to the most pathetic men

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED JANUARY 23, 2023 6:00AM (EST)


(Salon) The great Achilles heel of the far-right is that fascists and other stripes of authoritarians are cantankerous people. It often takes very little to get them into ugly fights with each other over stupid stuff. So perhaps it's no surprise that two of the biggest grifters in the right-wing media ecosystem — Ben "Female Sexual Arousal Is A Myth" Shapiro and Steven "Marie Curie Was Fictional" Crowder — are in a very public, very dumb feud right now. As Nikki McCann Ramirez at Rolling Stone explains, Shapiro offered to bring the popular online show "Louder With Crowder" to Shapiro's Daily Wire network. Crowder, however, was offended that the contract "would require him to actually make content and drive revenue for the company." He griped over contract language that reduced his payout "if his show was demonetized, suspended, or removed from any major hosting and video sites," Daily Beast reporter Justin Baragona added, noting that Crowder has a history of "gleefully spewing homophobic, racial, and misogynistic slurs on his program, prompting YouTube to repeatedly pull advertisements and demonetize his content on the platform."

Crowder, for those who are lucky enough to have never heard his name, rose to fame by being especially cringeworthy in the crowded field of professional right-wing trolling. He plays heavily into the stereotype of the loudmouth ignoramus who spouts off in class about how slavery wasn't so bad or corners women at the bar to rave about how their entire sex is insufficiently grateful to men. He is, quite literally, the dude in that "debate me, bro" meme.

Link to tweet

The original photo came from a stunt where he set up shop on a campus with a sign that read "male privilege is a myth" in hopes of baiting teenage girls into arguing with him. That sums up Crowder's schtick: He appeals to dudes who are so pathetic that they resort to politicized cat-calling in order to garner female attention.

Once again, we are looking at what I've deemed the "male insecurity-to-fascism" pipeline, where right-wing grifters appeal to men by suggesting the cure for self-doubt is turning yourself into a massive asshole. Once recruited into the toxic masculinity cult, of course, their audiences are directed toward far-right politics. Becoming a fully formed fascist is the final stage in the life cycle of a right-wing troll. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/01/23/the-fight-over-big-con-ben-shapiros-beef-with-stephen-crowder-shows-male-insecurity-is-profitable/

[Scrivener7]

1. As an aside, I had not realized Ben Shapiro made public his level of prowess by

stating that "female sexual arousal is a myth." That is hilarious.

These guys! You can't make this shit up!

[Ocelot II]

2. He's probably just speaking from his own experience

because it's a phenomenon he's never seen.

[Scrivener7]

3. No question whatsoever.