(READ: We Now Have an Answer to Where the Defeated Legacy Media Journalists Are Running To)

But that leaves a question open about who is the new top dog in the media scene. While the people might be the media now, there are always going to be some people who are more listened to than others. Who are they? 

I've spoken about this kind of thing before when I spoke about how the definition of "celebrity" has changed. Where "celebrity" usually meant someone involved in Hollywood or a big name in the music industry, that term has shifted over the past few years. Today, people who were once considered off-beat names are celebrities today: 

Joe Rogan is one of these new celebrities. He is followed by millions of people, and millions listen to his podcast. People from comedians to heads of state sit at his microphone to talk frankly about a variety of subjects. Rogan is so influential that attacks against him are almost a guarantee of loss of public standing.

Elon Musk, likely the most influential person in the world, is also one of these celebrities. Not only does his work change the world, his purchase of Twitter and turning it into the free speech platform X further solidified his status as the new mainstream celebrity. 

The Twitch streamer Kai Cenat is so influential that his mere presence can unintentionally create riots in New York City. Hollywood celebrities go to him and appear on his stream in order to endear themselves to the public. The Harris campaign approached Cenat in hopes that his influence could truly work to drive people to vote for Kamala, but Cenat refused to work with them. 

Then, of course, there's Donald Trump, who is a celebrity when all things are considered, and whose popularity was such that he was elected president. While Trump would have been considered a classical celebrity, he shed that old form and embraced the new form of celebrity during his 2016 run, and only grew that celebrity from then on. 

Now, these names qualify as being "mainstream media," but news-wise, things have shifted as well. 

Joe Rogan, a man who pulls in 11 million listeners to his podcast every episode, gets more news and ideas out there than CNN does, who can hardly pull in 500,000 viewers on a good night.

Tim Pool pulls in millions of viewers across various platforms every week, as do Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro. On the left, Hasan Piker has thousands watching him every day for hours. 

And then there's Asmongold. 

You may not have heard of him, but I'm sure there are quite a few of my millennial readers that have. His real name is Zachariah Holt, and Holt is one of the most watched streamers in America. While he is more of a centrist, his takes often lean to the right enough that he's considered right wing by many, including Piker... of course, everything is to the right of Piker. 

As reported by Dexerto, Holt recently revealed that he doesn't really keep track of his income because he's so watched on various platforms that the money he pulls in before taxes is astronomical: 

In a March 14 stream on his Zackrawrr Twitch account, Asmon shared that he had made $40,238 from Twitch between February 12 to March 14, a figure he deemed “low” when one viewer labelled the total as “crazy.”

“If my channel was monetized and I ran ads, you could put a zero behind this number,” he continued, referring to his decision not to run ads on Zackrawrr – the streamer’s primary channel since moving away from his previous main Twitch account, Asmongold.

After one viewer suggested that his YouTube content was a bigger source of income than Twitch, Asmon explained that he hadn’t kept tabs on his earnings through the platform for some time.

“I’d have to really look at it and see, I have no idea,” he said, elaborating, “I’d have to look and see. I haven’t checked my YouTube revenue in like six months.”

“All I know is that if I go to the store and buy a taco, the card’s gonna clear,” he concluded.

YouTube's largest created, Jimmy Donaldson (aka "Mr. Beast") noted that if Holt's info is correct, then he's pulling in half a million dollars a month. 

Assuming that’s all long form views, prob making $500,000ish a month

— MrBeast (@MrBeast) March 17, 2025

To be clear here, more people are watching Asmongold's streams for news and opinions on a variety of topics than most legacy news and alphabet channels daily, and not by a small margin. 

Let's break this down. 

Holt's live streams get an average of 33,000 viewers per stream. His YouTube channel gets 136 million views monthly, with a daily average of 4.5 million views. Holt's clips get approximately 68 million views a month. 

MSNBC's prime time viewership usually hits somewhere around 1.26 million. 

More people are going to go to Asmongold to hear about a recent event than MSNBC, and by literal millions. This makes people like Rogan and Holt the new mainstream media. 

And it's very interesting how this new mainstream media is operating vs the old one. Here's a clip Holt uploaded about a mother speaking to a city council about how her young daughter was forced to change in front of female-identifying males. This clip was uploaded 14 hours ago, as of this writing. It has over half a million views. 

As you can see in this clip, Holt watches the clip, commenting throughout, responding to his chat, and attempting to essentially keep a middle ground about things while still calling out radicalism and extremist behavior for what it is. 

While Rogan's format is a bit different, both Rogan and Holt's way of discussing things is very conversational and interactive. They don't approach the subject pretending to know everything about what is happening, willing to learn as they go, but being honest about their reactions to it while discussing it with chat, or in Rogan's case, his guest. 

This is the new mainstream media, and if I'm being honest, I like this a lot better than the old one.