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(noun) an influencer with a podcast, always male, who styles himself as the enemy and antidote of the liberal elite.
“Bro-caster is the opposite of broad-caster” is the kind of joke you might expect from a bro-caster. It’s anti-woke, glibly sexist in an old fashioned way, and more proud than funny. While the women of media learn to make themselves in the butt of comedy, heterodoxy is not doing its own depression.
Joe Rogan, one of the most famous podcasters in the world, is the proto bro. His podcast, launched in 2009, set the template. It has more than 14.5 million followers on Spotify. According to a YouGov poll in Britain, more than four-fifths of listeners are male and most are aged between 18 and 34.
Although Rogan’s own political beliefs are hard to pin down, he gives air time to fringe scientists, political extremists and conspiracy theorists. No one is getting on board easily, with the host using the same cut-the-crap style on flat-earthers as he does on Donald Trump and Elon Musk. At least part of Rogan’s appeal is the sense that, if he tires out any guest, he can easily beat them.
And while Rogan has been measured in his support of men’s rights, the bro-casters who follow his lead are more than willing to stir up old resentments. Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer and self-proclaimed alpha male, is the manosphere’s most prominent campaigner with a brand of toxic misogyny that resonates with school playgrounds.
In the mainstream, bro-casters are seen as the successors to shock-jocks like Howard Stern. Their irreverence and borderline profanity appealed to Gen X because it was wrapped in a layer of ironic distance.
Then the wind changed. The manufactured anarchy of talk radio has been replaced by the manufactured reality of influencers. There’s no hint of irony in Jordan Peterson’s self-help psychobabble, or Steven Bartlett’s C-suite fist bumps, or ex-Navy Seal Shawn Ryan’s machismo. They all want to be taken seriously as seekers of truth while being hailed as caricatures of masculinity. Bro-casting is what happens when an audience wants answers but has had enough of hearing from experts.
