Draft:Russell Brand

.@katyperry Katy, what the hell were you thinking when you married loser Russell Brand. There is a guy who has got nothing going, a waste!

Russell Brand is an English celebrity, crank, new age hack, conspiracy theorist and general bullshit peddler who has worked as a comedian, actor and radio host. Or, as he would refer to it; "THE MEDIA doesn't want YOU to hear about MY CHANNEL (GREAT AWAKENING???)" He currently runs a massive YouTube channel, which he primarily uses to efficiently and readily spread his cult beliefs.

To say that Russell Brand is an annoying and contemptable hack would be an understatement. Almost all of his videos boil down to vague conspiracy gesturing, clickbait, woo peddling, gestures to spiritualism, "Free thinking", and so on. He made most of his modern following after falsely claiming ivermectin treated COVID. (Which he still does to this day, by the way.) He has also "questioned" COVID vaccines and spread doubt about their effectiveness. He has also associated with known dickheads such as Vandana Shiva, Jordan Peterson , Joe Rogan , and even known repugnant asshole, Jimmy Dore.

Basically, if you can think of any prominent online quack, moonbat, wingnut, crank, woo peddler, spiritualist or otherwise, Russell Brand is probably buddy-buddy with them. As a result, he is one of the greatest examples of crank magnetism currently available online. The near-6 million subscriber count speaks for itself.

Shitty content
It's difficult to tell what is more impressive, the fact that Russell Brand is so consistently wrong about everything, or that 6 million people actually enjoy his content. Crankery, conspiracy peddling, and fearmongering aside, Russell Brand's "content" is grating. Put nicely, they're a collection of Russell Brand's unstructured rants and ramblings, edited to have even a slight amount of cohesive understandability. To call them exhausting to listen to would be too charitable, it's objectively awful content. If he's trying to be a cult leader, he's doing it poorly.

Mindless clickbait
The level and extent of clickbait on his channel would make even the most seasoned Breitbart writer shed a tear. With such gems as "Covid Cover-Up: New BOMBSHELL Lab Leak Report!! #covid #wuhan #lableak", "So...Trump was RIGHT About Clinton & Russia Collusion!! #clinton #trump #russiagate", and "(PROOF) America Is In Decline #america #theend #superpower", Russell Brand goes from being a conspiratorial hack to an incredibly annoying conspiratorial hack. Surely, Brand, enlightened thinker he is, wouldn't dare insult the intelligence of his followers by mindlessly pandering to their paranoia and fear instead of opting to actually make a point, would he?

Parasocial behavior
Like every good "thought leader", Russell Brand has built a cult of personality around himself. To his followers, he's a guru, an enlightened thinker unafraid to speak truth to power, a truly brave man that seeks nothing but to wake the sheeple up. He constantly states that he "feels the energy" of his followers, and that they will win against the elites that seek to oppress them and keep them down. Don't forget the Great Reset folks. It'll happen eventually! Basically, he speaks like a cult leader. Who would have guessed?

Promotion of bullshit
Russell Brand has promoted a truly astounding amount of bullshit. GMO scaremongering ,Russian conspiracy theories about Ukraine, Globalism scaremongering , just to list a few. His rhetoric is not too dissimilar from other conspiracy theorists, vaugely gesturing towards "The Elite", "The Media", "THEY", etc. Often, this opposition to "The Elite" is shallow at best. Russell Brand is a millionare, with connections to powerful people, and with a massive platform on a website that he refers to as part of "The Media." (It's almost as if these incredibly wealthy individuals grift and gesture to persecution when people rightfully call them out on their bullshit, but what's a little bit of logical reasoning when you have some vaguely antisemitic conspiracy theories to peddle to your lower class media followers?)

Association with wingnuts
Russell Brand has openly expressed liberal beliefs in the past. Key word: past. His more recent associations with centrists members of the right such as Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan and Glenn Greenwald is notable, to say the least. Often, his association with them is in forms such as "discussions" or "debates". This is so he can have plausible deniability about being being a member of the Right. In truth, these debates and discussions are shams where Russell Brand spends an hour "respectfully disagreeing" with his opposition, never providing any pushback to their claims and often openly agreeing with some of them. Very liberal.