A Media Memoir of Faith, Fracture, and the Fight for Truth
Chapter 3: The Independent Shift
I uploaded the first nine episodes of Quinn’s Next Step on YouTube before health and safety concerns had me pause. I was building something and then life shifted around me. I upgraded the house to sell, found a place to buy, and made a move. 2018 and 2019 weren’t just a shift in watching habits. It was a shift in location for me and my family as we moved from New Mexico to the Texas Hill Country going into 2020. A blessing from God, as we would soon find out.
FOX had become the home for many patriotic veterans and Christ‑like‑minded Americans like me, but YouTube was becoming my gateway into more thoughtful insights, longer conversations, deeper analysis, and creators who didn’t fit neatly into leftist or far‑right, never‑Trumpers or MAGA, liberals or libertarians, neocons or isolationists, conservatives or progressives. The shift was intentional.
Scott Adams began breaking through with his persuasion analysis. His framing of “systems vs. goals,” “master persuader,” and “two movies on one screen,” along with his book Win Bigly, gave me new tools for understanding media narratives, perceptions, and heuristics. He wasn’t telling me what to think. He was showing me how to think about thinking.
Shootings and media‑framed events were sensationalized from Ferguson to Covington. A church in Charleston. A Christmas office party in San Bernardino. A gay nightclub in Orlando. Police executions in Dallas and Baton Rouge. A Las Vegas massacre that left as many questions as 9/11. Even the El Paso Walmart my wife and I used to shop at when I was stationed at Fort Bliss. All being narrated by mainstream propagandists and I needed independent thought.
#MeToo peaked with Rose McGowan accusations against Harvey Weinstein, and “believe all women” reached its unbelievable height with Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, Alyssa Milano creepily sitting in the background. It felt like every institution was being exposed at once, Hollywood, politics, media, and the rules of public judgment were changing overnight.
FOX had tapped into the online world for commentary from Steven Crowder’s Louder with Crowder to Dave Rubin’s Rubin Report. They had Jordan Peterson and Charlie Kirk on, who would later meet on YouTube, May 13, 2018, to discuss conservative students on campus.
Eric Weinstein described the Internet Dark Web on the Joe Rogan Experience as a group of independent thinkers opposed to “the gated institutional narrative” of the mainstream media and political elites. These would include new atheists Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, and Steven Pinker. Bari Weiss of the New York Times identified Bret Weinstein, Douglas Murray, Maajid Nawaz, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Heather Heying, and Christina Hoff Sommers as members, too.
FOX gave me headlines. YouTube gave me frameworks. The individuals I began listening to had found each other.
The Daily Wire was emerging as a powerhouse from Los Angeles. The Joe Rogan Experience gained traction in LA as well. Louder with Crowder began its Change My Mind segments. Candace Owens and Brandon Tatum merged the Black Lives Matter countermovement they created, the BLEXIT foundation, with Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA.
Glenn Beck’s The Blaze and Mark Levin’s CRTV merged into Blaze Media. Dennis Prager, through PragerU, put out five‑minute lectures on history, religion, and politics. Dave Rubin had his red‑pill moment with Larry Elder. John Stossel started short segments with Stossel TV. The Babylon Bee emerged as a new force in parody under Seth Dillon.
Tom MacDonald released Dear Rappers, crashing through the music industry with Nova Rockefeller, later collaborating with influencers such as Ben Shapiro and Roseanne Barr, among others.
Roseanne Barr’s cancellation in 2018 hit differently. I considered Roseanne to be my TV mom, as did millions of others. Her show had shaped generations and watching her get cancelled and replaced by The Connors, was bullshit.
Nick Fuentes was somewhere in the background, having launched America First, though I had no idea at the time. Kanye “Ye” West had his first Sunday Service. Alex Jones, for all his predictions, insight, and chaos, represented the outer edge of anti‑institutional media and being deplatformed on social media, a reminder that the ecosystem was much larger than I’d previously known.
Twitter, the virtual town square, began showing signs of becoming a gatekeeper of free speech. Trump was facing impeachment. By then, the old media map no longer made sense. It felt like God was nudging me toward voices that valued honesty over authority.
I was beginning to engage with what I considered “independent” voices over the mainstream. Not because they were perfect, but because they were honest about their imperfections. They didn’t pretend. They didn’t hide their biases. They didn’t claim to be authorities. We didn’t have to agree, but we had to agree to speak freely. They were in it — and they owned it.
Quinn's Next Step 