Culture war people are the ones keeping this shit above water. They know they are doing something they perceive as important, but they're sure as shit aren't going to read or follow national/world news or anything, so they'll have a BASED ally sum up the latest controversies for them in easy to digested ten minute videos. I don't think many of their audiences even necessarily like the content or feel any entertainment from them, like the previously mentioned Metokur videos, but they feel like they need to "stay informed" through them.
It had it's evolution from the debunking videos and then fell into a niche whereby a lot of the different skeptics started doing this form of arm chair journalism, by critiquing different events and news articles.
Most of them watched each other and a lot of the outer sphere started to take queues from the bigger players and report on fringe articles.
The creators sort of incubated each other, as what works on one channel would undoubtedly inspire the work on another, and as the field became wider more niche subjects have turned up.
Hambly is essentially gaming and entertainment news, and became the successor to Sargon in that respect. He only really covers those hobby interest spheres.
The nice thing about this content is that you can have three or four different creators giving critiques on articles, and it will often be the same talking points, but since they have a captive audience that watches this content there will be a lot of carry through from other channels and subscribers. At this point the response is almost formulaic.
Do they enjoy it? Probably to a certain extent, though I can't say what fuels the egos of these people enough to chase after the viewing numbers. There is certainly some competition between some of the bigger swinging dicks but others are happy to have an almost parasitic relationships because they will get views, they just have to produce content.
Metokur is only different in the fact that he is spontaneous and clearly does it because he enjoys it, but does the stuff he wants to do. There is a random element of fun, and Jim is great at finding or at least highlighting internet oddities to people.
Not to forget little old Brooks in all of this. The reason he really is a huge piece of shit is because his entire channel is predicated on getting views from the pool of other viewers, and he only reports on stories others have reported on and got good viewership on. So not only is he not able to source his own material. (though a lot do this admittedly) but he's unable to put any other kind of spin on it, than the safe this is what people want me to say on this subject, which is why his content is so milquetoast and easily forgettable.
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Also the people following these figures know they oppose the dominant leftist order but are still too scared of the "alt righters" and actually having to put something on the line for their views, so they optics-cuck and support people who seem radical but have no actual risk of doing anything useful or dangerous.
Brooks has admitted in streams that he is alt-lite leaning alt right because he wanted to be including in the skeptosphere tm but considered himself to be some gateway conduit to people joining the alt-right.
Again you kind of need to actually produce content that is interesting to get that sort of attention or traction.