Podcasting evolved from left-leaning to a ‘Zynternet’ male subculture

Evidence

Welch’s fame was largely confined to the “barstool conservative” corners of the internet—what critic Max Read dubbed the “Zynternet,” after the Zyn nicotine pouches favored by its denizens. The Zynternet wasn’t explicitly ideological or anti-liberal, but its biggest personalities were “ ‘edgy,’ trollish, hedonistic, attention-seeking”—or, as Read put it more bluntly, “dipshits.” Podcasting had started as a left-leaning medium, but in an increasingly subliterate society, it became the perfect delivery system for dudes talking to dudes about dude stuff. The audience, as internet critic Ryan Broderick put it, was full of “stinky guys” who spent their days vaping in sparsely decorated apartments, gambling on sports, playing Call of Duty, and funneling cash into parasocial bonds with OnlyFans models. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 816

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘Zynternet’ — the barstool-conservative male podcast subculture — a useful term for the reader’s omnivore-monoculture argument.
• XREF: This subcultural pocket (Zynternet) is an important counter-example to Marx’s omnivore-monoculture collapse — a distinct, named subculture that DOES still signal identity, which the reader could use to argue the era has a signature Marx misidentified.
• SEED: Essay angle: the Zynternet as the one subculture that still signals — proof the ‘omnivore monoculture’ thesis is incomplete because explicit subcultural identity survived in male podcasting.