Why are there so many political grifters in the online space?

[Anonymous]

To be honest, I've never understood the grifting game very well. It's where you want to espouse a certain political slant to your audience, while outwardly denying that you are affiliated with or are in agreement with that same specific slant of politics.

The classic example being someone like Tim Pool. All of his content is full-on conservative slant, conservative talking points, attacking the left every single day, never attacking or the right for any reason. At the same time, trying to claim that he's not conservative, and that his personal politics are not right-wing. Why? All of his audience is right wing, why does he insist on this pretense of not being right wing whenever he gets called out? Why does he have to grift? Why not just come out and say what he really is?

There are tons of dudes with following like this online. Why do they got to pretend like they're not what they clearly are? How does it benefit them to wear a facade of being something other than what they cater to? It's just such a weird thing to me. Just own who you are, right? What's the deal with this?

[normalice]

Because it works. Indeed, if not for the millions poured into this grifting effort by right wing billionaires, the guy who literally tried to start a civil war would be polling at like 5%; not basically even with the guy who successfully -miraculously- cleaned up most of his messes. Billionaires have no new ideas besides legislating the rerouting of more tax dollars to themselves in exchange for nothing and the republican party has shown it is eager to help them with that. So, right wing billionaires are happy to fund the grifting needed to make it possible for a party with no intention to do anything useful or even decent to stay competitive, by promoting culture war nonsense over discussion of policy.

[jahaims]

You can be against something without being for something else.

[Asker]

No, I think that's actually not possible. If there are two positions, and you are avidly against one, you are by default in favor of the other option or at least complicit in the championing of that side. You could call yourself an "enlightened centrist" or fence-sitter, but fence sitting requires not coming forward with a bias for either side. But you can't come out clearly against one side and say that you're not in favor of the other.

[jahaims]

Ah, someone who is so stupid they think they are smart. Impressive

[Asker]

Refute what I just said. Tell me how you can only criticize one side, while also having a legitimate claim of not being biased on any given issue.

[AmyHew1tt]

Money, it seems. One of the worst grifters I've seen is Justpearlythings. No better audience to take advantage of than an insecure, angry, self-hating one.

[gorydetails]

Maybe because even moderates see that the leftist ideology is batshit stupid.