I don't think Alex Jones et al. have some large following. Folks note Joe Rogan or whatever his name is, does, but it's still 15 million or whatever. One percent of the country is still 3.3 million people (fewer if you count only adults of course).
I've known personally neighbors etc. with very odd views before the Internet, they just are more obvious now, and louder.
And I think the bast majority of "us" rely on major "MSM" news outlets for "the news", even if we prefer Fox or MSNBC to give us our daily slant.
Alex Jones doesn't have a large following. he never really did. he was only ever just something for the woke mob dickless social justice warrior freak pussies to whine and complain over and try to cancel. anyone with a functioning brain could see the guy was off his rocker. we're living in ridiculous fake outrage times- where everyone has a right to be offended by everything and then demand that person who offended them and said something they don't like it's....cancel time! #staywoke
And you're conflating a few things in regards to Joe Rogan's audience. Firstly he has 17.5 million YouTube subscribers and roughly 15 million Spotify followers. His podcasts however have over
several hundreds of millions monthly downloads. And all his podcasts on YouTube have several millions of views- some with as many as 60+ million views- and they are all like
2-3 hours f*cking long. Between his YouTube and Spotify channels his live streaming podcasts get millions and millions of views/listens in real time. CNN's prime time nightly 1 hour show for example can't even crack 580k viewers....that is...
truly pathetic. And as far as podcasts on Spotify goes, the next closest podcast on Spotify in terms of followers is TED Talks Daily with 5 million followers. His audience is- whatever way you want to slice it-
massive. It's a far bigger, vast, robust audience than just about anything in corporate legacy media. CNN would swallow a bucket of horse cum like Tim Walz does in his spare time for fun to have the kind of audience Joe Rogan has.
And I believe that you mean the majority of
old farts rely on legacy corporate media for their news consumption- and it's not even really correct to call it the mainstream media because they are no longer the mainstream anymore. The average viewer of the cable tv channels are basically in their 70s. Across the board. And their viewership numbers are
dying. As I said before CNN averages barely 580k viewers on their prime-time lineup. That is....a joke. Much like CNN has become...a joke. Cable news channels are dying a slow death. Newspaper/print magazine went through this- as they are all basically dead and will be officially dead within 10 years.
Joe Rogan's podcast isn't a news program either to be honest- it's a 3 hour podcast in which he has on all kinds of guests from all different backgrounds and views of the world from actors, comedians, businessmen, professors/academics, doctors, athletes, and then
very rarely he'll have on a political figure here or there.