Leftist Media Personalities Panic as Subscribers Flee in Droves Following Election: ‘It Terrifies Me’
It seems like you’re describing a situation where several left-leaning political commentators and influencers, particularly David Pakman and Alex Cole, are witnessing significant drops in their follower counts on platforms like YouTube and X (formerly Twitter) following the 2024 election—where Donald Trump won more decisively than they had anticipated.
Pakman expressed concern about an “algorithmic de-subscription spiral,” noting that many of his followers might be tuning out from politics, especially after he and others promoted the idea that candidates like Kamala Harris would perform well in the election. His observation highlights a division in the response from left-leaning commentators compared to their right-leaning counterparts, suggesting that when the right loses, they tend to regroup and invest in building their platforms and organizations, while the left may react by disengaging.
The decline in subscribers appears influential in shaping how algorithms on platforms manage recommendations for content creators, increasing the exposure of commentators and influencers on the right while limiting that of those on the left when subscriber count drops significantly. Pakman and Cole’s experiences indicate a deeper problem—the loss of trust among followers who likely expected a different outcome based on the narrative pushed by these influencers during the campaign.
This significant discontent among their audience may stem from feeling let down by predictions and analyses that seemingly underestimated the opposition or misread the political climate. The backlash and subscriber losses reflect a broader sentiment of disappointment within part of the progressive base, who may feel betrayed by the commentary and their unrealistic optimism leading up to the election.
Apparently, the people who told you that Vice President Kamala Harris was going to be the first woman president and that all the polls were trending her way are losing subscribers now that everyone realizes they were very, very wrong.
Take David Pakman, a lefty former talk radio host who’s switched over to being a full-time YouTube personage. He might be rethinking that decision in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory Tuesday, which was much more resounding than he would have predicted.
Instead, he says that his numbers on the platform are now in an “algorithmic de-subscription spiral.”
Just in case you weren’t paying attention to Pakman’s YouTube account, his posts on X sum up quite nicely what he was pumping the faithful full of during the home stretch of the 2024 election.
Kamala has two stadiums filled tonight at the same time, Chicago and Milwaukee, LOL. Trump’s shriveled crowds must be causing him size anxiety.
— David Pakman (@dpakman) August 21, 2024
The two major polls taken after the debate both have Kamala +5 over Scrump. Yikes.
— David Pakman (@dpakman) September 12, 2024
Well, apparently that didn’t work out swimmingly for him — or for those who put their trust in Pakman
“When I woke up this morning, we had lost 5,000 subscribers compared to where we were last night,” Pakman said, in a clip titled “I’m TERRIFIED: Is the left about to ABANDON politics?”
“Now, the first thing I thought was, is this a glitch? We’ve been on YouTube for 15 years, or something like that, and subscribers always just go up. They just never go down.”
The problem, he said, is that lefties might not put their trust in the same people who pumped Kamala up for months — and Biden for years — like he says the right does when it loses elections.
“It terrifies me because our instinct is the opposite of what the right does,” he said. “And we will get crushed if this is the way we respond to a defeat. The right wants us not to exist. The right wants to decimate independent progressive media.
“Understand that when the right loses, they get organized, they fund and they create insanely effective organizations like Turning Point USA, investing in the Daily Wire and building out this huge network of right wing idea ideas and influencers,” he continued.
“We are in an algorithmic de-subscription spiral right now, because when people start unsubscribing on YouTube, YouTube thinks oh, we probably shouldn’t recommend this content.”
NEW: Dem influencers are seeing record numbers of subscription cancelations along with a mass exodus of followers causing an “algorithmic de subscription spiral.”
The development comes after many of these influencers gaslit their followers into thinking Harris would win.
David… pic.twitter.com/cypVFxsppX
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 8, 2024
And the number of unsubscribes, by the way, keeps growing, according to Pakman:
As we speak, progressives are tuning out due to understandable despondency over last night’s results. I won’t speak about others, but I’ve lost 10,000 YouTube subscribers overnight. When the right loses, they fund operations like Turning Point, invest in media, etc. If we abandon…
— David Pakman (@dpakman) November 6, 2024
It’s not just him, either. Another data point in this follower spiral is Alex Cole, one of the lefty social media personalities who, like Harry Sisson and Chris Mowrey, did everything in their power to intellectually debase virtually every issue of the campaign on social media.
Cole before the election:
Say what you want about Kamala, but she fills her rallies.pic.twitter.com/lJwNIu3EOl
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) November 4, 2024
I trust that when the majority of Americans are alone in the voting booth, they are not going to vote for a convicted felon. We are better than that. pic.twitter.com/HWZRBaGHwK
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) November 4, 2024
During it:
From these exit polls, the Selzer poll is looking pretty accurate among women.
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) November 5, 2024
Gonna be a long night.
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) November 6, 2024
Trump is winning in all the states where marrying your sister is okay.
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) November 6, 2024
It’s just misogyny.
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) November 6, 2024
Afterward:
I lost over 8,000 followers in the last 24 hours. What’s happening?
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) November 7, 2024
My assumption is that it’s just just that leftists are tuning out from politics now; any glimpse on any social media platform will tell you that’s clearly not the case. (I wish that it were, but alas.) If anything, pundits and outlets that don’t favor the party currently in power tend to do better, if just because the faithful tune in for comfort and to hear about all of the evilness being perpetrated by the other side.
Instead, if I were to venture a guess, what’s happening is that the left is tuning out all the people who said that Kamala was a lock to win, Kamala was amazing, Kamala was “brat,” only for everyone to find out she was an empty husk of a candidate — and a dislikable empty husk at that — who might have only been able to win if the GOP ran George Santos.
These were a cadre of people who were too busy getting high on their own copium supply. Why should they be surprised when the faithful begin tuning them out, given how comprehensively wrong they were at every step of the process?
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