The Culture War Vibe Shift Is Happening Fast
Paramount Skydance-Warner Brothers merger quickens the pace of change
Have you noticed the dogs that are not barking, right now? Actors. Big A-name celebrities, B-listers, even the C-listers have all suddenly re-learned the lost art of shutting up about divisive political topics. Pedro Pascal and Rachel Zegler and Emma Thompson and Mark Ruffalo are all shutting up, all of a sudden. In the middle of a war with Iran.
By historical happenstance, the inevitable merger of Paramount Skydance with Warner Brothers has finally become official after months of resistance by Netflix, who could not quite explain their plan for profitability to their own stockholders. The streaming service lost a third of its stock value during the bidding war, recovering most of that value after Netflix quit. David Zaslov, Warner Brothers CEO, is the biggest financial winner in the whole mess.
Hollywood endured a relentless, years-long box office bombing campaign of its own making, styling itself as the resistance leadership in a time of national political crisis involving actual fascism, only to surrender at the first business merger. Strangely, Donald Trump did nothing, said nothing to make this happen. He calls himself a friend of Larry and David Ellison, the media empire-builders at Paramount Skydance, but he too was uncharacteristically quiet about the matter. Zaslov, who still enjoys immense powers to control the character of future content, is likewise seen as a friend of Trump and anti-woke.
After the November 2024 election result, the commentariat wrote of a ‘vibe shift’ in the corporate world, a great ideological ditching of DEI and ESG and ‘wokeness’. Hollywood remained a bastion of cultural resistance as long as the casting agents who really run the show could get away with it. They cannot get away with it anymore because all the work is coming from friends of Trump.
Which is not to say that the Ellisons are ‘right wing’. If anything, they are sensible centrists who want to make as much money as possible by drawing the largest possible audience. They are unlikely to make CNN into Fox News. Rather, the Ellisons just want CNN to do better in the ratings, which means featuring more voices like Scott Jennings, their most popular personality. Editorial control might change, indeed Bari Weiss might take over to restore both trust and ratings as she is doing at CBS. If that happens, it will be interesting to see how much resistance she encounters.
Back in December, when the merger fight was just beginning, the social justice activists of legacy media faced a stark choice. Netflix was woke, with unisex restrooms in their corporate headquarters and transgender kids’ content on their platform. But Netflix would also be a disruptive buyer, further damaging an entertainment industry that is already reeling from job losses and AI. At the time, however, Netflix still seemed preferable to the friends of the evil orange man in the eyes of Hollywood, so confident stories of imminent victory in their merger war with Paramount Skydance abounded.
Many YouTubers had a different view, the one that turned out to be correct. WDW Pro, which is focused on Disney and the broader entertainment industry, confidently stood by their assessment that Paramount Skydance would win. Now they are vindicated. WDW Pro has also reported on Disney submerging their DEI practices, and by happenstance, Bob Iger just lost his job as the CEO of Disney. Now the DEI nonsense is being torn out, root and branch.
Clownfish TV is a production of Thom ‘Kneon’ Pratt and Kambrea ‘Geeky Sparkles’ Pratt, who have the cutest family business in the world. They have made, sold, and re-built entire pop culture collections over the years, and now they chronicle the downfall of the brands they once advised along the way. Disney is just one of the companies they have worked with, contested with, and competed against during their careers.
Having listened to their channel for three years now, I am also impressed by the parallel story they tell about cancelation mobs coming for their content on social media over opinions that ran contrary to progressive orthodoxy. Thom and Kambrea in fact go out of their way to avoid expressing divisive partisan political opinions. What they acknowledge, that makes them anathema, is how the imposition of progressive orthodoxy has ruined brands and even entire industries. They said the Hollywood strikes were a mistake, that the demands of the unions would result in fewer entertainment industry jobs, and they were right.
They were hated for being right. If that sounds familiar, they also predicted that the boycott campaign against the Hogwarts Legacy video game would backfire, and they were right. Now they are saying that John Oliver, one of the most notorious and odious advocates of genderwoo in the entertainment world, is on his way out of the job. I believe them because they have an established track record of being right.
And this is what has actually happened to Hollywood, if we are honest, and give up the impulse to formulate conspiracies of influence. Streaming has trained everyone to wait at home for content that will likely not be worth the ticket price and opportunity costs of a trip to a theater. Meanwhile, on their very same screen, the most dominant ‘smart TV’ app is actually YouTube and not any of these big, legacy studios. Netflix is a dominant streaming service competing with YouTube.
On YouTube, the algorithm determines what ‘movie posters’ you see. John Oliver is put on a level playing field with The Panic Button, a YouTube channel featuring “two lesbians giving their takes on hot button topics”, including gender critical views. Bereft of his current platform, John Oliver will likely become yet another podcaster from the old media world. Few of them do very well in this algorithmic meritocracy. Megyn Kelly regularly gets more views than CNN and MSNOW combined, on YouTube. Imagine John Oliver embarrassed by lesbians with hot takes, because that is what the future looks like.
Audience share is everything in this environment. That is why you see Candace Owens stringing her audience along with fresh insane accusations every week. In yet another happenstance coincidence, during September 2025, the same month in which Charlie Kirk was assassinated, sudden algorithmic changes favored TikTok style ‘shorts’ on the platform to the detriment of the content creators. Several channels, including all of these, called out the changes immediately. They were losing audience share to a hypnotic highlight reel of AI slop.
The Midnight’s Edge channel belongs to Norwegian culture critic Andre Einherjar and is managed by an American named Tom Conners. In this video, Einherjar argues that the Ellisons are not about to make Hollywood right wing. David Ellison’s dinner party invitations would stop, and that can never happen. Instead, a “corporate Hollywood caution” will bring surprises for everyone. Einherjar warns us all that Davis is “the devil you don’t know”.
Democrats like California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Sen. Elizabeth Warren want you to believe the Ellisons are the oligarchy, that they are preparing to monopolize an economic sector and silence all the progressive voices. In fact this is the very last chance for everyone to adapt to the new technological and social realities of the entertainment economy. If prominent activist-actors on the left go silent, remember that the rule against political outspokenness has always applied to conservatives in Hollywood. Just ask Gina Carano or Rob Schneider. The first step in dominating audience share is: stop dividing the audience.
We have already seen content shifts that reduce the number of LGBTQMOUSE identities inserted into new shows. Audiences have consistently tuned out this form of ‘representation’ along with multicultural color-blind casting. It may be hard to believe while Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is dressing gay vegan Klingons in skirts, but the changes are coming now, and the content that comes out of those long production pipelines will have to change. Audiences want great entertainment. Save the altar calls for the gospel films, boys.