Right-Wing YouTuber Steven Crowder Offered $50 Million. Calls It Slavery.

Right-wing media celebrities occasionally reveal their true identities as affluent kids.

This is exactly what far-right YouTuber Steven Crowder did this week when he loudly complained that a $50 million offer was actually a form of slavery and that he was bravely speaking out in the name of human rights. Crowder is also known for the “change my mind” meme and for getting beat up by pro-labor demonstrators in Lansing.

In a video posted on Tuesday, Crowder criticised an unnamed right-wing media business for making him a “immoral” offer to host his show and generate additional content, as reported by The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer.

Crowder said that the nameless corporation planned to take over his official social media accounts in order to punish him for things like missing shows and, in the event that it happens, the demonetization of his content on those platforms (as it has on YouTube), among other things.

Nobody should be forced to live in such servitude!” Crowder stated this offer was similar to “letting folks know at Big Con that you want something different, that you demand better” while encouraging viewers to sign up for his mailing list. (The Conservative Industrial Complex is Big Con in Crowder’s view.)

The guilty corporation’s identity quickly became public knowledge. The CEO of The Daily Wire, the right-wing web media organisation he co-founded with Ben Shapiro, Jeremy Boreing, acknowledged in his own video the next day that Crowder had been talking about an offer from The Daily Wire.

Boring called Crowder “not exactly a self-made man,” criticising him for having spent his career working for companies started or financed by billionaires like The Blaze and CRTV.

In the words of Boreing, “Steven, for as long as I’ve known him, has worked for someone else,” to which the latter added, “Steven’s mindset seems to be ‘I deserve to be paid millions and millions and millions of dollars whether my show creates the income or not.” He isn’t seeking a business partnership but rather a charitable donor.

Similarly, Shapiro provided a brief response to Crowder’s video, saying that the offer was “negotiable” and that “there is something rather nasty about attacking people who have been friends — colleagues, defenders — for over a decade on the basis of your own misinterpretation of a document that offers you $50 million over the course of four years.”

Data was presented by Boreing in his video. He said he anticipated Crowder to negotiate a better deal, but that the current offer would see the right-wing YouTube star make $50 million over a four-year tenure with an additional $25 million for a potential two-year extension.

Boreing explained that they made the offer since that’s what Crowder’s agent had indicated was the bare minimum to pique his client’s interest. According to Boreing, the offer also included $15,000 per day for further video shooting and additional payment for longer content.

The numbers may seem outlandish to the average person, but among the conservative media, it is an open knowledge that many people who portray themselves as working-class populists, like Sean Hannity, are actually worth millions.

Crowder had criticised “multimillion-dollar penalties” he claimed were a part of the agreements, but had not cited the topline sum in his own video. HuffPost reached out to Crowder for comment on Boreing’s video, but he has yet to provide a response.

Crowder has been fed the same conservative media pigsty that has sustained decades of conservative media stars. Being “edgy,” transphobic, homophobic, sexist, and very racist can sometimes lead to financial success. Crowder has amassed millions of fans on YouTube, but the slap war that ensued over his Daily Wire offer demonstrates just how lucrative the insult business can be.

When everything is said and done, the dispute provides an interesting look into the business practises of the right-wing outrage machine, with particular emphasis on the role of content moderation procedures in boosting revenue.

First and foremost, it’s a lighthearted distraction from the serious problems of the real world. Except for Crowder and Boreing, who seemed pained by the incident (whether they were acting or not), there are no true losers here.

This isn’t over, either. Crowder claimed at the outset of his video posted on Tuesday that he had tried to “avoid” talking about the issue, but Boreing said that Crowder’s rejection of the Daily Wire deal had actually occurred months earlier and that Crowder had called out of the blue a week before posting his video to pick at the scab.

“We got off the phone, and then I woke up yesterday, and he put out this video laying into us the way that he did,” Boreing said.