A Media Memoir of Faith, Fracture, and the Fight for Truth
Chapter 10: The Practice of Creation
Once Quinn’s Next Step was relaunched, I didn’t have a master plan or a five‑year strategy. What I had was a short‑term arc: simple ideas, small projects, and the desire to create consistently. I wanted to make videos I enjoyed watching, the ones that made me curious and reminded me who I was before the world got loud.
I started small. A couple of cooking videos. A few gaming clips. DIY fixes and installations around the property. Nothing fancy, nothing polished, just real life recorded and shared. I added a segment called Next Step News, where I talked about what I was watching and thinking about that week. I made a video remembering and questioning 9/11. I did a deep dive into population and election statistics. I asked whether box stores were going out of business. I questioned the public school system. I gave my German shepherd, Ellie, a bath and filmed it. I introduced myself with a look back at contracting and employment. I made Quinn’s Quick Picks with Payton Ware. I posted game‑camera footage of deer wandering through the property and a whole series tracking a couple of rats in the backyard.
It was all over the place, and yet it wasn’t. The variety reflected my life — curiosity, humor, questions, projects, and the everyday moments that made up my world.
By October, something unexpected happened. I made it onto the Tenet‑supported show called People of the Internet with Isabelle Brown and Dave Rubin. It wasn’t a viral moment or a career‑changing event, but it was something. A small confirmation that I was on the right path, that showing up mattered, that creating consistently was its own kind of momentum.
And then there was the music. The same coworker from the Studios at Fischer who witnessed my panic attack a few years earlier had created an opening track for my channel. A simple 90’s beat, asking viewers to “Take the next step with Quinn.” It felt new, yet nostalgic.
Every video, every upload, every experiment was a step. As my first‑grade teacher used to say, “Never stop learning.” And for the first time in a long time, that was enough. I began asking myself which genres felt natural, which ones I enjoyed, and which ones connected with an audience.
As I kept creating in my little corner of the Hill Country, the world outside grew heavier. On October 7th, Hamas carried out a brutal attack on Israel, and the shockwaves hit every platform I was on. Commentators I had followed for years began drawing hard lines. Some stood firmly with Israel. Others questioned the government response and U.S. involvement. Some tried to stay neutral and were attacked from both sides. The longer the conflict continued, the more obvious the dividing lines became. It felt like the entire right‑leaning media ecosystem was splitting in real time.
Even The Daily Wire, which had already been through its share of internal storms, found itself in its biggest one yet. Ben Shapiro publicly called Candace Owens “despicable,” and by the end of the year the tension inside the company was impossible to ignore. Fans chose sides. Commentators chose sides. The unity that I perceived during the cultural battles of 2020 and 2021 was deteriorating.
Debates were no longer being held. Reconciliation wasn’t on the table. The identity politics and purity tests once criticized when used by the left were now beginning to appear on the right. I saw what the late Herman Cain mentioned: “S.I.N., Switching the Subject, Ignoring the Facts, and Name‑calling.”
I watched all of this unfold while building my own small platform. I subscribed to X for verification and slowly grew to more than four thousand followers. It didn’t bother me that I had paid for it rather than earning it on merit, but it was another reminder that the ground was shifting under everyone’s feet, creators and institutions alike.
I kept making videos. Creation was the one place where the noise didn’t drown out the purpose. But what was that purpose? Why did I keep showing up?
Quinn's Next Step 