HOW AMERICA LOST ITS MIND, AND DO WE EVEN WANT IT BACK?
Episode 2: The Long Con
In 2009, Ashton Kutcher beat CNN to a million Twitter followers. CNN had reporters around the world. Ashton had Punk'd. Somehow, we'd found a way to compare them.
Azi follows The Gong Show, The Real World, and American Idol into a culture that sells humiliation and mistakes watchability for authority. The Apprentice gave Trump a carefully edited business reputation, and being good at television could get you taken seriously in a completely different job. Political loyalty can start to look a lot like attachment to a TV character. Paris Hilton didn't cause fascism. We're not putting that on the woman who gave us "that's hot."
We wanted celebrity access, then found ourselves expected to post our breakfast, our divorce, and our opinion on a controversy eleven minutes old. Even silence needed an explanation.
Aaron traces slavery and Reconstruction through Obama's presidency and the racial backlash that came with it. Obama organized online; Trump promoted birtherism. Aaron also looks at the political decisions behind neglected schools and out-of-reach healthcare. Anger about those failures doesn't become imaginary because a grifter exploits it. We follow how it gets turned into money and political authority.
Inna asks how well anyone can know a person through curated posts, even honest ones. Platforms respond to what users choose, and companies learn what keeps us clicking. Filter bubbles aren't inevitable; they depend on how that loop is built.
Julian explains Michael Barkun's stigmatized knowledge: when institutions reject a claim, believers can find it more persuasive. We get into QAnon, wellness conspiracies, and the habit of borrowing Tuskegee's documented abuses to make unrelated vaccine allegations sound credible.
We connect just-world beliefs to manifestation's convenient defense: when correct thinking doesn't deliver, blame the customer. The seller stays an expert.
IN THIS EPISODE
- Reality TV, The Apprentice, and Trump's business image
- Kutcher's million-follower race against CNN
- Bush, 9/11, Iraq, and damaged public trust
- Obama's digital campaign and Trump's birtherism
- Reconstruction, citizenship, and voting rights
- QAnon and conspiracy psychology next to New Age conspirituality
- Stigmatized knowledge and real institutional misconduct at Tuskegee
- Just-world beliefs and victim-blaming, plus manifestation
- Online identity and mental-health communities, and algorithms, user choices, and filter bubbles
- Hospitality in The Odyssey and community beyond online connections
THE THREE GRIFTY QUESTIONS
Who's making money?
Who's gaining power?
Who benefits if I stay angry?
They do not explain everything.
They explain an alarming amount.
FURTHER READING HORSESHOES, DIAGONALS & STRANGE POLITICAL BEDFELLOWS
The Emergence of Conspirituality. Charlotte Ward and David Voas linked New Age spirituality and conspiracism in 2011, years before QAnon. It doesn't describe everyone into alternative spirituality.
OUTRAGE, ALGORITHMS & INTERNET BRAIN
Curation Algorithms and Filter Bubbles in Social Networks. Ron Berman and Zsolt Katona model algorithms alongside users' own connections and choices. Design changes the outcome, and personalization doesn't automatically build an echo chamber.
"I See Me Here": Mental Health Content, Community, and Algorithmic Curation on TikTok. Sixteen interviewees describe support, doubts about credibility, and harmful content they struggled to escape. Relatable isn't the same as accurate. These are qualitative findings, not population estimates.
The Internet's Role in Campaign 2008. Pew documents online political participation, including organizing and donations.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES, MISINFORMATION & WHY OUR BRAINS LOVE THIS STUFF
A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. Michael Barkun traces stigmatized knowledge through beliefs about secret political control, aliens, religion, and coming catastrophe.
The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion. Melvin Lerner on how believing people get what they deserve can encourage victim-blaming. It also saves you the trouble of asking why someone was treated unfairly.
"The Secret" to Success? The Psychology of Belief in Manifestation. Lucas Dixon and colleagues associate manifestation with confidence about success and with financial risk, but not with higher income. The findings don't establish causation. Confidence and results remain inconveniently different measurements.
About the Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. The CDC documents how Black men were deceived and denied available treatment. Accountability requires evidence, and this history can't substantiate unrelated allegations.
POLARIZATION, DEMOCRACY & THE OTHER TEAM
Are Republicans and Conservatives More Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories?. Adam Enders and colleagues found no consistent partisan asymmetry across the claims and contexts they examined. Which conspiracies people accepted depended partly on content and political context. That doesn't mean equal institutional power or equal consequences.
Laws and Court Cases: African American Voting Rights. National Archives records on constitutional changes, Black citizenship, and the fight to make voting rights enforceable.
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Robert Putnam on declining civic participation and the organizations where people once met and worked together. That history predates social media.
The Odyssey, Book XIV. Eumaeus welcomes Odysseus as a stranger in need, before knowing whom he's helping.
WATCH
President Trump. PBS FRONTLINE traces real estate, celebrity branding, The Apprentice, and birtherism. Transcript available; video currently unavailable.
America After 9/11. FRONTLINE examines the government's response, the wars that followed, and damaged public trust.
ABOUT GRIFTY POD
Grifty is a late-stage capitalism podcast by and about false idols, hosted by Azi, Aaron, Inna, and Julian. We get into the strange, seductive overlap of politics, media, pop psychology, wellness, conspiracy culture, technology, celebrity, branding, and disinformation.
We're interested in how charismatic personalities, political movements, corporations, influencers, and institutions use the language of truth, freedom, justice, identity, and community to build audiences, sell certainty, and gain power. You come looking for an explanation, or somewhere to belong, and somebody discovers a business opportunity. Grifty is a little snarky, a little scholarly, deeply historical, definitely political, and always asking who benefits.
Come find us
Listen on Apple Podcasts and email us at griftypod@gmail.com.
Find us at grifty.org and follow @griftypod on Instagram. We're also @griftypod on Threads and @GriftyPodcast on Twitter.
If you'd like to keep up with the people having these arguments, follow us individually on Instagram: Azi Ghafari at @the.wellness.therapist, Aaron McCall at @mrneuropolitan, Inna Kanevsky at @_dr_inna, and Julian Walker at @realityandmeaning.
We spend a lot of this newsletter asking who's making money, so you already know where this is going: we'd like some. Go paid on Substack and you get the full archive and bonus material. Not ready? Subscribe free and the next piece lands in your inbox at no cost to you and a small cost to our dignity. Either way, share this with the friend who keeps forwarding you wellness influencers, and tell us in the comments what we got wrong. We read the comments, including the ones that call us grifters. Thanks for being here, and for helping us keep going.
