Why You Should Stop Complaining About Tucker Carlson
Do you hate Tucker Carlson? That’s understandable.
Do you complain about him on social media? That might be a little bit more problematic.
Fox News just fired Carlson from his show, which averaged 3.3 million nightly viewers. In theory, that should have drastically shrunk the amount of people paying attention to him. Social media data shows the opposite happened.
Between April 24 - May 9, 2023, Tucker Carlson added 1.11 millions followers on social media, which is 13.3% of the people now following him.
Additionally, his top performing post all-time is a Tweet on April 26, his first public comments post firing. That video got 1.2 million engagements and a jaw dropping 81 million impressions despite not directly mentioning Fox News or losing his job.
His second best performing social media post, was a video Tweeted on May 9, getting over half a million engagements, announcing he was bringing a version of his old show to Twitter.
Thematically, those videos are consistent with the subject matter that performed best for Carlson before he was fired, which is “Tucker Carlson responds to what people have been saying about him”.
It’s basically a feedback loop, where Carlson gets called out for hate speech or a lie, and that mainstream attention exposes him to a far wider audience.
That conversation keeps him relevant and helps him rally and grow his base.
Here are 4 additional examples to illustrate what I’m talking about.
Example #1. "We’re back"
Carlson’s best performing post on social media before being fired was a Tweet saying simply "We’re back" on Apr 25, 2022. He had temporarily been banned from the platform, after referring to the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, who is a trans woman, as a man.
Example #2. "American Nationalist”
His next best performing social post was a photo of him holding up a The New York Times newspaper with a headline labeled him an "American Nationalist". The subtext of his grinning expression appears to be “I can’t believe they actually took the bait.”
Example #3. “Press Secretary Smites Fox Host That Dissed Diversity in U.S. Military”
The Department of Defense issued a press release with that headline after Tucker Carlson criticized the military for making uniforms to accommodate pregnant women. The day Carlson responded to that press release, was the day he gained the most new followers on social media pre-firing.
Example #4. Tucker Carlson’s top performing post in 2019
Media Matters unearthed old clips of Carlson saying misogynistic things on the Bubba the Love Sponge radio show. Carlson refusing to apologize for his “naughty” comments was his top performing post in 2019.
Conclusion: Stop Reacting to Tucker Carlson
The larger point is outrage at Tucker Carlson is the lifeblood of his popularity. I don’t want to criticize The Daily Show or “I watch Tucker Carlson so you don’t have to” type of monitoring. That being said, it does produce diminishing returns.
In 2023, is there a single mind being changed when a new example of Carlson’s hate speech is unearthed? We know exactly who he is.
If you are offended by something Carlson says, don’t give him the oxygen of talking about it on social media. If you work in the press, take a harder look if Carlson’s comments actually qualify as news. Carlson’s best performing post ever only got that level of amplification because reporters wrote articles framing that video as his response to getting fired.
Which again, he didn’t actually address.
Despite Carlson’s short term success on social media, the odds are stacked against him remaining relevant long term. When high profile hosts break up with Fox News, the network gets the audience in the divorce. For example, Bill O’Reilly who was the first Tucker Carson, now hosts a talk show hidden behind a paywall on his website, and has disappeared from the cultural conversation.
Assuming Carlson doesn’t produce a nightly show on Twitter, and I don’t believe that’s real for a second, he’s almost inherently going to have less reach at his next hosting gig.
Carlson’s cultural influence will almost certainly diminish, and if people stop complaining about him on social media, that happens significantly faster.
The data in the post was pulled from the ListenFirst social media analytics platform, looking at Tucker Carlson posts between January 1, 2016 - May 9, 2023.