The Radical Right's Culture Capture: A Conversation with Ana Marie Cox

From AI "slop" to Joe Rogan's rise: Why conservative voices are winning the battle for attention in our algorithm-driven wasteland.

This week, I'm sharing a conversation I had with my friend Ana Marie Cox. I've known Ana for years, and she remains one of the most insightful people in media I know. Her ability to distill complex cultural shifts into accessible analysis has always impressed me, and I frequently find myself nodding along when reading her work.

Ana just published a piece in The New Republic titled "How the Radical Right Captured the Culture" that genuinely changed how I think about our current media landscape. Instead of the usual hand-wringing about "going woke" and culture wars, she digs into the structural problems — from Hollywood's labor crisis to the rise of algorithm-driven content — that have created perfect conditions for right-wing influencers to thrive.

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What makes her take so refreshing is how she connects dots I hadn't previously considered: the replacement of human-created content with "slop" (AI-generated, data-optimized digital gruel), the destruction of the creative middle class, and the appeal of figures like Joe Rogan who offer a sense of human connection in an increasingly dehumanized media landscape.

If you're wondering why podcasters like Rogan and Theo Von seem to have more cultural influence than traditional media figures these days, or why conservative voices seem to be winning the battle for young men's attention, Ana offers an explanation that goes beyond simplistic political narratives.

We also get into her new podcast "Past Due" (a collaboration with Open Mike Eagle), which tackles the economic realities facing creative workers today. The conversation gets a bit bleak at times — I won't lie — but it's the kind of honest assessment we need if we're going to find our way back to a healthier cultural landscape.

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Photo by Ismael Quintanilla/Getty Images for SXSW

PARKER MOLLOY, THE PRESENT AGE: First off, can you tell me a little bit about the piece that you wrote? What should people know about it going into it?

ANA MARIE COX: I don't wanna lead with this, but it was hard to get my arms around as a thesis. It's about how the rise of AI slop has been abetted by the disintegration of labor rights in Hollywood and how the sloppification has made Hollywood ripe for the picking — not for the kind of conservative content most people think about, like PragerU and Daily Wire, but more sneaky stuff like Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Yellowstone.

People who are used to popular culture having a vaguely liberal bent are seeing that disappear. Pop culture that offers the opportunity to see yourself in it and find messages of resistance — it wasn't always great, not perfect, but it's there — that's being hollowed out. There's this class of conservative content creators offering people a real human touch, a sensibility. Places like Joe Rogan and Theo Von and even the Tradwives and Pete Hegseth offer a kind of terrible, reactionary, but non-AI relationship. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I thought it was a pretty solid argument that you made in the piece.

There's so much more to say. It really could be like a book.

Oh yeah, it could absolutely be a book.

The first question I had was about the concept of "slop," which is a very vivid way to describe the current media ecosystem — content shaped by data, optimized for clicks, intellectually bereft and emotionally sterile. Can you break down how that's different than just regular old bad content that we've always had and why you think it's particularly corrosive?

We've always had pop culture that's disposable, offering iterative sequels and whatnot. But I think there's almost a bottom that you hit with human-created pop culture - it only can get so bad. And even with disastrous pieces of pop culture, we have the phrase "so bad it's good," but what makes something so bad it's good is usually some level of humanity - it's usually recognizably "oh my God, they fucked up."

When I think about AI and its badness, there's never gonna be a "Waterworld" made by AI. There's never gonna be something that's just a huge swing and a miss. Like, "Waterworld" and "Battlefield Earth" were made out of one person's ego, which makes them kind of beautiful disasters. Should anyone get the power and influence to make those? I don't know, but they're human movies.

My sci-fi podcast recently reviewed "The Postman," which is interesting in some ways. It's so bad it's good, but it's a really human movie. Kevin Costner wanted to make this movie, and it has his fingerprints all over it. When the fingerprints disappear, you get something that in some ways is better quality, but it doesn't have anything in it — it's just empty.

You argue that conservatives aren't necessarily dominating because their content is inherently more appealing, but because it's still trying to make an appeal while mainstream entertainment has become algorithmic and hollow. Do you think mainstream Hollywood and media companies even recognize that this is happening and they just don't care, or are they oblivious to it?

I don't think they know what the problem is. One argument I didn't get into the piece is they started jettisoning diversity initiatives almost immediately. If they hadn't, I think they'd find that their work had more purchase at the box office. There have been studies showing that more diverse films tend to actually do well. But instead, when there wasn't immediate returns on diversity initiatives, it was like, "alright, nevermind. Let's throw all those people out." It wasn't even like, "okay, that didn't work, let's try something else." It was just like, "bye-bye Black people, bye-bye queer people, we're not even gonna try."

I do think there's white supremacy, heteronormativity, and sexism embedded in those rejections. But also, if you look at "Sinners," it's a movie with an argument, a movie with humanity, and it's doing incredibly well. My argument isn't that all movies with humanity do well, but there's room for that.

What I want to draw a distinction between is pop culture trying to make an appeal versus algorithm-tied, forcefully palatable stuff. If you look at the decline of Marvel movies, you see a decline of trying to make an argument and a point of view. I'm a Marvel stan, but the golden age of Marvel are the movies that had a point of view. Then you get to the most recent "Captain America" — I love those actors, but it has no point of view.

Right. It was a political thriller that didn't say anything about politics.

Nope, not even a little bit.

You draw this connection between labor precarity in Hollywood and the diminishing quality of our culture. This seems like something that doesn't get discussed enough. Can you explain how the erosion of the creative middle class has contributed to our current media landscape?

There's no room for risk-taking. To me, this is such an obvious point, it's weird we don't talk about it more. The structural piece I use the most is the writers union. It used to be, if you got a job on a network show, you were set. You're not just comfortably middle-class, you're probably doing pretty well. That show has a hiatus and you could work on something else.

If you qualified for your minimum union payment as an actor, writer, or director, you would get health insurance for a while and could work on an indie project or a mid-tier movie. Everything didn't have to be hits.

When you have to make nothing but blockbusters, when you're doing just four-show seasons for Netflix, there's a whole below-the-line class of people — hair and makeup, craft services, ADAs, gaffers, foley people — that economy is disappearing. People are literally leaving Hollywood. I can't tell you how many people I talked to who are just barely hanging on.

There's also a class of working actors who you recognize from "Law & Order" episodes or "NCIS" — people who work on a regular basis. They're never gonna be super famous, but they're doing something they love and bringing their A-game every time. They have a middle-class existence. Sometimes they have huge breakouts and become incredibly important, sometimes they don't. We want those people to exist too.

You make the point that what conservatives offer isn't necessarily better content, but human connection in a dehumanized landscape. Is there something the left can learn from this approach, or is trying to compete on those specific terms a losing game?

I feel like liberals and even neoliberals have gotten complacent about being able to see ourselves or our politics mostly represented in general pop culture. We're like, "okay, there's some gay people, some Black people, some women. Great." There's still a lot of war, still a lot of privileging of capitalism, but we all just wanna get along and believe in these same basic ideals.

Part of me wonders if leftists had been pushing for stronger representations and acknowledgements of different ways of thinking about the world that wasn't just the marketplace, maybe we would be ahead today. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I think so. To see if I've got this right: you may have a show with a diverse cast, but it might still be your classic copaganda. At the surface level, you're checking off boxes of diversity, but the core message underneath could still be taken as conservative, or at least without politics.

And part of me is just asking, if people who consider themselves liberal would have taken bigger swings with what they had. I'm not asking for pure arguments for nationalized healthcare — although "Breaking Bad" was an argument for nationalized healthcare.

Yeah, it would have been a very short show in a world of nationalized healthcare.

I think I'm just asking for bigger imaginations and not to be satisfied with just "eat the rich" narratives. I guess "White Lotus" is that, but I have no interest in "White Lotus."

I'm not asking for explicit arguments for particular policies, but it would have been nice to see a wider imagination. And I think those of us left-of-center would have a better hold on the culture. And also just better labor. If we just allowed labor to exist, there would be more wide-ranging and bigger swings. You would get stuff like "Saturday Night Live" and "Chinatown," which I both cite in the piece. Can you imagine someone making "Chinatown" today?

No.

"Chinatown" is a detective story with an incest plot line, but it's about water conservation. It's the kind of thing that wouldn't get made today. "Saturday Night Live" would not get made today.

I talked to a lot of comedians, and comedy is disappearing from mainstream pop culture. It's never been a better time for standup in the sense that it's all over Instagram and TikTok. But what's interesting is it's turning into a career where you can get to a certain level of popularity and then what happens? There's no sitcoms to go to, no variety shows. And there's this very rarefied air of people who get $25 million for a special versus working comedians who can't sell. A really good deal for a standup special with one of the big four streamers is like a hundred thousand dollars, which sounds like a lot but it's not.

There's nothing more human than comedy, really.

Absolutely. On that topic, there's this interesting dynamic where controversial bro podcasters like Joe Rogan and Andrew Schulz aren't originally political figures. Their appeal seems to be more about the parasocial relationship they build with their audience. How did they become such influential political kingmakers?

I think there's a real crisis of masculinity — not in the sense that men need to be more masculine, but in terms of "what does that mean?" How can cisgender straight men still be men if there are all these other kinds of men? The crisis is an unwillingness to expand the definition of what it means to be a man.

All those dudes help men feel better about being men. And it's an appeal to a certain kind of woman as well, who also feels threatened in this world. Trans and non-binary people have been with us since the beginning of time — that's not new. And it's not like everybody's gotten full rights and recognition. But there are people who feel like things are different and crave the old definitions of gender and identity that are more comfortable and less threatening.

Those bro-y comedians put that forward in a way that rings more true than Matt Walsh, who's a total dweeb. No 20-something guy who feels angry about pronouns is gonna find Matt Walsh his guy.

It's too heavy-handed. Joe Rogan kind of sidesteps that because if you listen to his shows, they'll be like, "Hey, do you think the moon landing was fake?" and then slip in something about Trump. It'll be completely unrelated, with just sprinklings of political content, but it's so consistent that it's clear what side he's on.

Or you're talking about leg day and creatine, and then "I heard vaccines make you gay."

Yeah. People are tuning in for talk about appropriate hormone levels, but then someone throws in a conspiracy theory about soy, and that becomes part of their worldview.

Exactly.

You end your piece with a provocative question: "Will we eventually miss conservative entertainment too?" What did you mean by that?

I guess I meant, will left-of-center people miss having an opposition, someone in the mirror? What would be good is not someone to directly argue with Joe Rogan — that's not a successful strategy — but people like Stephen Colbert or Seth Meyers who are just casually woke, that's who they are. We need more of that, but in everyone.

Rogan and Theo Von represent something that exists, and we need to do something different than that. Do I want no Joe Rogan? I mean, I can say I want no Ben Shapiro and no Matt Walsh — the world would be a better place. Not that I want them personally gone, but I wish they weren't so appealing.

Your article seems to warn that we're losing something more fundamental than just liberally-leaning content — we're losing storytelling itself. What do you think a healthier cultural landscape would look like, and is there any path back?

Unions, unions, unions. Nationalized healthcare, universal basic income. People are gonna tell stories no matter what, period. It's what stories get amplified that we can make a difference with through policy. What we're seeing now is only a select few stories getting amplified because access to platforms and being able to make something is limited.

I talk a lot about YouTube in the piece. YouTube has no budget for content creation — none. People just give their content to YouTube, and I'm one of them. But it takes time, effort, and energy to make something people will watch on YouTube.

Some people have the bandwidth or single-mindedness to throw resources into what they're doing. And then there's accidental viral stuff. People do make independent films, people do go viral on a shoestring. But what we need for vibrant storytelling and to elevate diverse voices is not stunt casting (although I love gender-neutral and race-blind casting). We need a social safety net that allows people from those communities to make art without having to worry about surviving.

That’s the way we get by. Like the Spoon song.

This is how we get by.

The last thing I wanted to ask you about was for you to tell me a bit about your new podcast.

So "Past Due" — I'm doing it with my friend Open Mike Eagle, and it came about because I realized that I lost financial stability in my life through both personal changes and structural changes — personal crises and widespread economic crises. I've spent the past two years getting into some debt and having to really look at how to make money in an environment increasingly hostile to independent creators.

I was finding myself in conversation with people about it constantly, and everyone has a story. My experience revealed people are really afraid to share beyond whispered conversations. We have a big taboo in our culture about talking about how much money you make, whether too much or too little. And we have a big taboo for people who are public-facing to admit they're having trouble finding work.

I personally felt humiliated and like a failure for being economically precarious. The idea I had was that talking about finances is the new talking about mental health. They're related — both really stigmatized. Systemic change only happens when we're able to talk about things in a way that creates community and momentum to put political pressure on those who represent us.

The podcast is kind of two things: One is me and Mike talking to people who are trying to do what they love in an economy that makes it really hard. It's not a financial advice podcast, but there's some actionable stuff — talking about mistakes people made, the smartest things they've done. And there's some uplifting stuff about why people keep going.

The pieces about precarity are necessary to realize you're not alone in your struggle and that solutions exist. Some solutions are far up the food chain and have to do with voting for people, which seems impossible right now. Some are closer down the food chain, which means supporting independent creators wherever you can.