The Work of Content Conversion Therapy
Let me tell you about my PR firm for cancelled creators, where the only way out is through
The content machine never dies, it just changes direction. That's what you learn after years of watching the big names rise and fall. They come and go like summer storms, these influencers and thought leaders and content kings. But the audience stays hungry, stays frosty.1
Take Neil Gaiman, fantasy's new-fallen prince. His young readers won't forgive the bathtub stories. This isn't like J.K. Rowling posting spicy "TERF wars" takes about gender — this is vintage #MeToo material, career-killing stuff when you’ve spent years selling to the audience he has cultivated. But there's always another move. My Guaranteed Conversions PR firm would have "ya boi" here typing out 10,000 words on left-wing cancel culture by Monday. Once those pieces go out to my various editorial contcts under Gaiman’s name, he'd be bigger than half of Substack by Tuesday. David Horowitz, long one of America’s most infaomous ex-leftists, knew the score: the right loves a convert more than a true believer.
You think Gaiman’s Sandman readers are done with him? Watch how fast a new crop of based fanboys encircles him once he’s got me churning out paint-by-numbers pieces about the decay of due process in the public sphere.2 The content consumers don't care about consistency. They just want their prejudices confirmed in the right order, by the right voice, at the right moment. Correctly guess what they guess they want to skim or vibe with and you’ll strike paydirt.
Or flip it around. Say those Andrew Tate groin rumors turn out to be true.3 Suddenly the masculinity merchant needs a new market. We'd have him in Jacobin before the ink dried on the medical records. Rachel Maddow would book him for a full hour. "Why I Left the Right" writes itself: "The masks of toxic masculinity finally fell away, and I embraced my true flesh, in the flesh..."4 Pure content gold.
That's what "ya boi’s" Guaranteed Conversions5 service provides: one more move when you think you’re in checkmate. We've got the podcaster rolodex, the editorial contacts, the publisher pipeline. Need a custom redemption arc? We workshop those. Want the perfect ratio of apology to righteous anger? We've got the formula down to science.
The secret is in the timing. Hit them with the conversion narrative while the scandal's still hot. Their old audience is done with them anyway — but there's always another audience hungry for defectors. The right will platform anyone who bashes those left wimps hard enough. The left will embrace anyone willing to denounce their former moronic right-wing colleagues with sufficient vigor.
These content consumers are eager marks in a game they understand but dimly. Even if they have a sense they’re being played, they’re willing to maintain the pretenses of kayfabe because they're desperate to see the magic words in the right order, desperate to believe the latest conversion narrative. Left to right, right to left — it's all kayfabe, all performance. The trick is knowing which audience wants which show.
Look at the playbook: First, you write the piece explaining why you had to leave. Then you do the podcast circuit — friendly hosts only, softball questions.6 You publish the wafer-thin book expanding on the already-lightweight original piece. You start the Substack and began busking for those $5 paydays. You join the speaking circuit and show up at the right conferences, the right parties, the right groupchats. Before long, you're the go-to expert on your former tribe's pathologies — and you’ll stay that way until you start drinking the new tribe’s ideological Kool-Aid.7
Of course, the ravenous, amoral algorithm doesn't care about your politics. It just wants engagement. Every cancellation is an opportunity. Every scandal is a chance to switch teams. The tide goes out on one coast, comes in on another.
Take it from me: The real money's not in holding positions — it's in changing them. Ask any preacher turned atheist YouTuber. Ask any ex-leftist Substacker outlining the Marxist or ZOGist world conspiracy. For canny funhouse operators, the conversion industrial complex pays better than consistency ever did.
We're living in the golden age of ideological arbitrage. Every morning some content creator wakes up, gets pissy in a groupchat when they’re not getting enough attention or the most subscription income, and chooses rhetorical violence against their former allies. Every afternoon another one drafts their coming out essay. And the content consumers gladly watch the same MCU movie over and over, as long as you change the names and faces to suit their evolving tastes.
That's what Guaranteed Conversions promises: content resurrection for the digital age. Because in a world of endless posting, it's only over if you let them tell you it is and it’s not true unless it’s true for you. We'll customize your truth to match your target audience. We'll line up the right amplifiers. We'll build the perfect hero’s journey from sinner to saint, from darkness to light, from cancelled to redeemed.8
The beautiful part? It works both ways. Got caught in a right-wing scandal? We'll have you bashing the fash by breakfast. Left-wing cancel mob coming for you? We'll have you exposing woke orthodoxy by dinner. The content must flow. The engagement must continue. We do what we must because we can.
For all those whose likes have built our brands, the work of posting goes on, the cause of RTing endures, the hope of a viral banger still lives, and the dream of monetization shall never die. Remember: The marks aren’t paying for truth. They're paying for a story they can feel in their hearts. We're just here to help tell it.
Sign the contract. Make the switch. There's always room for one more convert on the haphazard highway that takes your from undesirable to undeniable. After all, in the marketplace of ideas, the only real sin is being ignored.
Welcome to Guaranteed Conversions. Where your next chapter always already unveils the real you.
They “stand back and stand by,” as Trump told the Proud Boys years ago.
Or perhaps — and here’s a truly loathsome one, but a few folks work this beat — “the decline of flirting” and the “end of fun.” “Mere horseplay, my dear Watson. Locker room talk.”
“A new photo shows him sporting tight, pink swimwear. He appears to have little in the way of a bulge in his crotch. This has prompted a conspiracy theory among some right-wingers that Tate, son of chess legend Emory Tate, is possibly trans.”
Or fur. I might push for fur. Perhaps the general public isn’t ready for that, but I bet I could generate some intense niche demand with a few faux-heartfelt posts.
After you’ve shit the bed, “we do the work for you” as far as ensuring you can still put bread on the timeline.
I remember What’s Left? guests getting entire shows out of banal lines like “lie, lie like a leftist” and right-wingers who got a dose of leftist religion in the 00s spouting platitudes like “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
This is the real trick: You can’t get high on your supply of ideological content, even though it’s tempting. You mustn’t become an even zanier left- or right-winger than the most extreme people you’re now allied with. You have to have a bit of distance, because you’re the one telling those crazies they’re normal. If you start talking about how rap music can open demonic portals to hell or outlining assorted Tumblr identities like you’re writing the latest D&D Monstrous Compendium, your market value as a voice of reason will decrease. Given that the best-networked content producers among the true believers have long ago secured market supremacy in those niches, you’ll risk becoming just another face in the madding crowd.
This is a humorous “modest proposal”-style article, but let me spill some tea, sis: I’ve done this work for years, done it for both sides (quite often at the same time!). My “How I Left the Left” / “Why the Right Is Wrong” stories and associated content are everywhere. A few of you skimming this know exactly how I’ve hooked you up with editors, takes, gigs, and more. I do the work.