The Alt Media Subculture Miners

I'm pretty sure there's an industry of internet subculture creation and mining. Hollywood people like Gwynneth Paltrow are in it and alt-media people like Alex Jones are in it. I think it was the basis of the Trump 2016 election, too.

It parallels earlier eras in the United States, like the religious revivals of the 1820's and 1830's. Those revivals coincided with the opening of the western frontier to settlement. One of the hallmarks of those eras was quack medicine and patent remedies.

The internet is similarly a bastion of quack medicine, too--internet people are taking turpentine as an old timey, good-enough-for-grandma medicine. A whole industry has sprouted up around idiopathic medical conditions, like being overloaded with certain gut bacteria versus other gut bacteria, or eliminating various dietary elements. People like Paltrow, Alex Jones, and many others cash in on it.

The cult/subculture creation industry burns through frontmen and conmen like wildfire, though. Many of the people who were promoted in the 2016 election burned all their cred in a few months.