Ben Shapiro says shows hosted by voices like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, and others should come with a warning. “All these shows should come with a warning label that you’re about to annihilate entire segments of your prefrontal cortex and make yourself actively dumber and in the process, by the way, make politics dumber because politicians follow incentives, and if they see that people get a lot of clicks, they tend to follow those people,” Shapiro said.

BEN SHAPIRO: The best thing about Candace Owens’ shtick is that basically she’s like, behind this curtain, I have something for you, a revelation, and then the curtain is removed and it’s another curtain, and behind that curtain, there is yet another curtain. It’s an endless series of curtains, but don’t worry, behind the next one will be the secret that solves your life. It’s probably the Jews, but it might not be the Jews, but it’s the Jews, and another curtain. Also, Candace Owens, one of the worst people in American public life, here she was ripping into Erica Kirk again, calling her a soul sucking dementor… This person has a lot of fans. Again, the attention economy leads to pretty bad results, pretty bad results, including, for example, people who are still fans of the Tates. So, sort of fascinating investigation into Andrew Tate’s little fake empire. It turns out his own defense lawyers are now claiming that he was renting all those expensive cars and all the rest. Well, according to Straight Arrow News, a leak of sensitive information from the manosphere influencer Andrew Tate’s online empire reveals his War Room program teaches men to accumulate wealth, attract and control women, and penetrate the elite, including by exploiting the sexual misbehavior of wealthy acquaintances. So apparently, he’s penetrating the elite class in his War Room program, offers espionage training for subscribers aimed at digging up secrets on wealthy individuals for leverage in business deals. So, literally running an Epstein scam, literally trying to find information to blackmail people, and this person was again touted by people who are fairly highly respected on the conservative right. The attention economy creates an incentive for retardation, and the retardation then affects your politics. Which is why you have people like Alex Jones and Sneako who are somehow part of our political conversation. Sneako, who literally took an online IQ test and got a 95, 95 isn’t good. For those who have a 95 IQ, 95 is a bad score. The average American IQ is 100. Genius level stuff from Sneako. But don’t worry, he and Alex Jones have conversations to the joy of millions. Here was Alex Jones versus Sneako recently… So, folks, here is my plea. It’s a plea, OK, really, for your, for the sake of your own brain cells, which are being wiped out at an extraordinary rate in the attention economy of today, do not follow these people. Do not do this. Do not do this to yourself. This is your warning for today. All these shows should come with a warning label that you’re about to annihilate entire segments of your prefrontal cortex and make yourself actively dumber and in the process, by the way, make politics dumber because politicians follow incentives, and if they see that people get a lot of clicks, they tend to follow those people. This happens on the left, it also happens on the right, and spending a lot of time ripping on the left for their unwillingness to divide off from, say, Hasan Piker, which of course is shocking and astonishing and indicative of where they are politically. But if the right does the same thing by embracing all of these figures, again, Milo was traveling in these circles, intern for Marjorie Taylor Greene, frequent guest on people like Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson himself, a grifter extraordinaire, very close to the vice president of the United States, people in positions of power on the right, who continue to pat on the head or hug many of the members of the grift industrial complex, of the retard-o-sphere. This is a bad and stupid way to do politics. And here’s what you can do as an American. You cannot give your attention and attention economy to these sorts of folks, because when you do, you’re creating a political incentive for people to follow them, and that would be a gigantic mistake. Republicans need to avoid the trap here. It’s a trap. All Americans really want, politically speaking, is normality. Nothing we have seen for the past 20 odd minutes is normal. If you follow this, you will not end up in a position of victory. It’s like letting Jerry Springer dictate the Republican Party platform. Don’t do it.

Watch Shapiro talk about the “grifter industrial complex” on the episode:
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