Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, as a teenager, I watched a lot of Channel 4 shows. One of them was Queer as Folk which, despite its subject matter, was quite a compelling drama. One of the scenes that has stayed with me is near the end when Aidan Gillen’s character (the actor is probably now better known for being Littlefinger in Game of Thrones) says to his long-time friend something like ‘your world is tiny and small and safe, and my world is huge!’ Another show I watched on Channel 4 around that same time was The Harry Hill Show. One of Harry’s many little absurd catchphrases was ‘will you the pork or will you the lamb?’ Often a guest had to select either pork or lamb. The media can be best understood as 1. Keeping the horizons of your permissible thought ‘tiny and small and safe’, and 2. Constantly asking you repeatedly like a demented Harry Hill, ‘will you the pork or will you the lamb?’

The media does not invent every conflict or issue or social problem. It selects, frames, and circulates a narrow set of opposing positions. These positions are then presented as the full range of serious choice. The mechanism, like all the most effective propaganda, is simple and repeated (‘simplify, repeat it, repeat it every day’). First, the media identifies or amplifies two poles. Then it defines the terms of disagreement between them. Finally, it treats any view that falls outside those terms as irrelevant, extreme, confused, or even insane. The result is a binary that feels exhaustive while remaining safe for the existing power structure.

When I refer to ‘slop’ or the ‘clown show’, I am referring to this entire charade and merry-go-round. It is the managed spectacle in which designated faces are elevated, personalised feuds are staged, and audiences are invited to cheerlead one totem or the other while the underlying distribution of organisational power remains unexamined and therefore untouched. The endless cycle of reaction and counter-reaction is the product and you are supposed to be a consumer who chooses one side or the other. This runs through both traditional media and the raw sewage pipe of slop that is most social media, especially Twitter X, where the same pairings are amplified, clipped, and recirculated at higher speed.

The selection is not random. The poles are chosen because both can be managed because they are from known, funded and institutionalised networks. This recent video by John Sweeney outlined some of those mechanisms in a British context. Very often these people – quite literally – come from the same media agency of rent-a-gobshite. One pole may nominally be from the institutional centre, and the other may be a noisy but contained opposition, but both are permitted to speak. Both are given platforms and, more importantly, significant media amplification. Both are allowed to claim victory in limited contests. What is not permitted is any view that does not reinforce the false struggle and the sense that these really are the only two positions available. The binary therefore includes every argument that stays inside the permitted range and excludes every argument that would exit it.

If the power centre has a certain official position, which stands for one pole, the alternative pole is rarely left to form on its own. Certain figures are elevated to define it. These figures often arrive with prior institutional ties, private funding, or coordinated amplification that gives them early and sustained visibility. The media then treats them as the natural representatives of dissent. Whatever organic or bottom-up sentiment exists is now co-opted to amplify this astroturfed and elevated voice. He or she now becomes their stand-in, who shall for (and indeed in the way of) less controlled voices. It is now their language, their grievances, and their proposed remedies which become the official vocabulary of the alternative. Anyone who shares the broad dissatisfaction but rejects their framing is told they are not serious or not part of the real opposition, or told they are a ‘contrarian’, or that they are ‘being difficult’ or that they are ‘not a team player’, and so on. The astroturfed and elevated figure does not need to be invented from nothing. He or she needs only to be selected, funded, and repeated in the media until the public comes to believe that this is what opposition looks like, this is the face of the opposition. The choice is therefore always between controlled opposition A and controlled opposition B. ‘Will you the pork, or will you the lamb?’

The media loves the personalised nature of the feud. It encourages you to cheerlead one or the other. It personalises and embodies these false binaries in specific characters from the family of faces. These individuals become totems for one side or the other to support. The audience is encouraged to identify with, defend, or attack the person rather than examine the structure that produced the pairing. Often, it does not really matter who the opponent of the newly elevated face is. What matters is that they are placed in a pre-made box such as ‘woke progressive’, ‘blue-haired feminist’, ‘racist thug’, or ‘anti-woke intellectual’. Much fun and games can be had playing around with the pre-made boxes into which the media inserts various talking heads and gobshites for hire. See how many pre-made boxes you can identify and then have fun slotting all the family of faces into the boxes. When you then find people who don’t neatly fit, then ask yourself if they are amplified or not. I can almost guarantee you they won’t be.

Leftoids often operate mental checklists of ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ which are marshalled by such frippery as comedians on nauseating panel shows. People can switch from the good list to the bad list and vice versa. Rightoids develop their own counter-list of approved “based” people, which are often former leftoids who found themselves on the naughty list. Often any showdown of these personalities from the family of faces is reduced to a question of who you like more, which is largely outsourced to the aforementioned invisible lists, which do your thinking for you. This mechanism keeps people locked in a kind of mental prison in which their worldview is largely dictated to them by these various gobshites. As I said, it is ‘tiny and small and safe’. The basic frame of these sets of false binaries is then used to fuel further fever dream slop narratives such as the constant Tim Pool cry that there is going to be a civil war (now with footnotes by David Betz!), which are then breathlessly amplified by the same media and social media slop-sphere that generated the two sides in the first place, and it is all kept going by the endless voracious appetite for clicks and engagement.

There are countless examples of faces who have been ‘elevated’ for one reason or another:

· Jason Arday was elevated as the face of DEI fraud or the victim of a witch hunt, while Nathan Cofnas was elevated as the face of the critique of academic standards. The 2026 Cambridge coverage treated this pair as the exhaustive contest and invited audiences to cheerlead one against the other.

· Elon Musk was elevated as the defender of open platforms and free speech against a designated opponent such as Bob Iger, with the personalised feud over advertising, content moderation, and institutional power defining the relevant debate for large audiences.

· Andrew Tate was elevated as the face of male discontent and traditional masculinity against a designated feminist commentator such as Jessica Valenti, with the pair defining the relevant gender discourse and encouraging support for one totem or the other.

· Tommy Robinson was elevated as the face of immigration opposition against Ash Sarkar as a high-visibility progressive commentator and media face in UK coverage of protests and related issues, with the pair treated as the defining contest.

· Chris Rufo was elevated as the face of critiques of critical race theory and education policy against Ibram X. Kendi as the elevated progressive counterpart, with the personalised contest treated as exhaustive.

· Jordan Peterson was elevated as the face of psychological and cultural critique against Cathy Newman in the well-known Channel 4 interview, with audiences invited to cheerlead one against the other inside the pre-made boxes of “anti-woke intellectual” and “woke progressive.”

· Joe Rogan was elevated as the face of open, long-form discussion against Mehdi Hasan as a designated progressive media voice defining the opposing pole on free speech, platform issues, and related controversies.

· Candace Owens has been elevated as the loudest anti-neocon voice against figures such as Mark Levin, with the personalised feud reducing broader or more serious engagement with any of the topics.

More absurd iterations appear as well. The cartoonish showdown between Cenk Uygur and Alex Jones, and other such spectacles, which all serve to reduce complex questions to theatrical personal combat between designated faces. Audiences are repeatedly invited to cheerlead one against the other while the underlying organisational questions remain completely untouched. In each case the media reduced the issue to support for one totem or the other. This is the clown show.

The frame is everything. Once the two poles are selected and the alternative face is installed, the media supplies the language, the history, and the moral weight that make the choice between them appear natural. Viewers are shown two gobshites typically shouting at each other, one sides stands for this, the other side stands for whatever. The viewer is never told that both sides have already been funded and filtered so that neither will alter the basic distribution of organisational power. The audience is left to choose which filtered option it prefers, the pork or the lamb.

Alternatives to the controlled opposition are aggressively gatekept out. The methods are consistent. First, independent voices that refuse the designated framing are simply not booked, not quoted, and not amplified. Their absence is treated as proof that they have no following. Second, when they do gain traction, they are reframed as belonging to one of the existing poles or else as too extreme, confused, or even insane to be taken seriously. Third, coordinated pressure is applied to platforms, funders, and institutions so that access to money, venues, and distribution is restricted. Fourth, the elevated faces of the alternative themselves often join the attack, insisting that any competitor is a distraction, a grifter, or an enemy of the cause. The result is that the discourse never has to confront a position that lies outside the binary. The binary is maintained because everything else is starved, ridiculed, or forced back inside it.

Circulation then locks the arrangement in place. The same faces, the same clips, and the same grievances reappear across outlets and through the raw sewage pipe of social media slop. Each appearance reinforces the sense that the real contest is between these two camps. People who try to introduce a third position find that it is either ignored or forced back into one of the existing poles. The mechanism does not require every journalist to coordinate. It requires only that the incentives of attention, professional reputation, and institutional continuity all reward the same pattern: amplify the designated poles, elevate the designated faces of the alternative, gatekeep everything else, and treat the resulting argument as the full political reality.

This process explains why certain pairings dominate. The culture-war binary persists because each side’s grievances can be aired without producing durable organisations that could challenge the managerial class directly. In each case the media does not create the underlying tensions, it selects the version of those tensions that can be staged without threatening the people who already organise, installs the faces that will define the permitted version of dissent, and gatekeeps the rest.

The mechanism also explains the exclusion of what many people might prefer. Most people want some form of economic security together with social order. Most people are not ‘woke’ but also don’t particularly care for the rest of the baggage that comes with ‘the right’ such as free-market fundamentalism. Most people are not that up for foreign wars, but this comes packaged now with being ‘woke’ like Owen Jones. Most people are not that up for mass immigration, but this comes packaged now with said foreign wars as well as head-banging racism of the grug variety like Tommy Robinson. Every effort is made to keep a coherent worldview forming along lines other than the false and pre-packaged binaries. Those combinations rarely appear because they would require changes in both economic policy and cultural authority. The media therefore offers the separate halves. Great effort is put into defining both ends of the spectrum as being quite literally repulsive, such that on the left you get someone fannying about in a rainbow onesie with Palestine flag on their face, and, on the right, you get every manner of pre-packaged bigoted stereotype imaginable.

By offering only binaries that have already been rendered safe, and by elevating the figures who will define the alternative pole, by personalising those poles in specific family-of-faces totems that invite cheerleading, by inserting talking heads into pre-made boxes, and by aggressively gatekeeping everything else, the media converts potential opposition into managed contestation. People feel as if they are choosing. They are in fact choosing among options that leave the organised minority in place. The precise mechanism is selection, framing, circulation, elevation, personalisation, and gatekeeping that release energy without moving levers. That is the slop.

Until such time that the majority of politically-engaged people come to see what I am saying and completely free themselves of the mind-prison the system makes every effort to keep you trapped in, we will remain in a gridlock. People will continue to be led around by their noses like cows because the terms of what is even imaginable are dictated to them. Now, when presented with one of the false binaries of elevated faces, most people’s instincts are still to pick a side. When the mind-prison is finally broken, their instinct will be to ask ‘why are these the choices being presented to me?’, ‘Why does the media want me to know this guy’s name?’, ‘Why is this being pushed?’, ‘Who funds both parties and what is their overall agenda?’ Until we get to a point where people can entertain this systemic rejection of hyperreal confetti, we remain in a kind of political purgatory being led up the same cul-de-sacs by the same charlatans.