Maybe all hell is breaking loose 🧐

An exploration of how the left is telling this week’s stories

Nov 20, 2025

Do words mean absolutely anything anymore? This is a real question.

Trump’s being stupefied by the word “affordability.” The pop culture recast of the word “giving.” My destructive, delusional description of any minor inconvenience as “the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” We’re all implicated in the willful perversion of language — and I, for one, have always fucking loved that.

They basically try to beat that impulse out of you using a copy of the AP stylebook on the first day of journalism school. That process was emotionally painful and philosophically disappointing for someone like me, but ultimately helped spit out a version of myself that understood that precise language in a time of national crisis and confusion is important.

That brief biography (that nobody asked for) sets up a fascination of mine that we’ll explore frequently here: The framing and packaging of a piece of content is usually as revealing as the content itself. To really draw this out for you, we’re gonna look at how 141 heavy-hitting YouTube channels on the left delivered the news for the past five days.

First, a really important visual cue. A majority of these channels feature the signature bold, yellow font. The history nerd in me can’t help but side-eye the parallel with the hugely popular, highly sensationalized “yellow journalism” era that peaked just before the turn of the 20th century, specifically defined by … any guesses? Exaggerated headlines.

Now, to be fair, our government has provided us news at a higher rate in the past five days than average. But I’d be lying to you if I said this week felt like a definitive arrival at the precipice of change — either in a favorable or unfavorable direction for Democrats.2 This is obviously subjective, but if you only got your news from content creators on YouTube, you’d see a very different story unfold.

Here are the numbers, forensically crunched, for your consumption. Let me know what you conclude about how creators are leveraging language to deliver a narrative and ignite their base.

THE PLAYERS

Selected without a ton of deep thought from my list of accounts I monitor every day.

THE 5-DAY STATS

“PANIC” appeared in 43 video headlines posted by 11 creators: MeidasTouch, The Young Turks, Jack Cocchiarella, Majority Report, Adam Mockler, I’ve Had It, Occupy Democrats, Pondering Politics, Keith Edwards, The Damage Report, Rebel HQ

Panicking was the focal point of eight Damage Report videos and seven Rebel HQ videos.
22 videos describe Trump as panicked, 7 for Mike Johnson, another one for them together, 6 videos about Republicans in a panic, plus one-offs like Pam Bondi, Sean Hannity, Dr. Oz, rich New Yorkers, and more.

“EXPOSE” appeared in 36 video headlines posted by 11 creators: Brian Tyler Cohen, MeidasTouch, The Young Turks, Jack Cocchiarella, Adam Mockler, I’ve Had It, Pod Save America, Occupy Democrats, Pondering Politics, The Damage Report, Rebel HQ

All-caps “EXPOSED” appeared in nine headlines published by Occupy Democrats alone. Jack Cocchiarella charts second with eight mentions, followed by Adam Mockler with six.
14 videos tease Trump being “exposed” for a multitude of things: his plan to “kill the Epstein files,” his “Epstein cover up,” an “Epstein murder secret,” a “dark rumor,” the “BJ scandal,” “lies,” a “secret criminal transcript” and more. Pam Bondi’s exposure was covered in three headlines and Elon Musk in another two.

Honorable mention:3

18 videos purportedly deliver “SHOCKING” information — ex: “Trump PANICS as JD Vance’s SHOCK BETRAYAL Goes PUBLIC” from Keith Edwards
17 allege we are witnessing complete collapse — ex: Trump CAN’T SLEEP and GOES ON RAMPAGE as TERM COLLAPSES from MeidasTouch
16 describe someone’s public humiliation — ex: Trump HUMILIATES Himself on FOX as They CALL HIM OUT!! from IHIP

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THE GAME

It’s very clear this strategy isn’t stifling growth. The channels I collected from have a total of 34,000,000 subscribers between them on YouTube alone. And I do think there’s a difference between content that actively threatens the other team and content that engages in overdramatization. Neither is journalism, but only one poses real danger.

I wonder about two things: desensitization and emotional dysregulation.4

Desensitization: The internet has provided the perfect infrastructure for allowing us to undergo involuntary exposure therapy constantly. We looooove resigning to our algorithmic fate. While it’s true that we wake up every day wondering which of Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors of Nonsense Donald Trump might stick his spoon in, that doesn’t mean that all flavors are created equal. You might not have a taste for bubblegum but that doesn’t mean it’s illegal. (It should be). Let me give you a real example outside of my ridiculous metaphor:

Jack Cocchiarella — who I like! — has used the phrase “ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE” in 48 headlines since June. On four different occasions in the past two months, he’s used it to frame two different videos published on the same day.

In my opinion, as someone who is more read-in on the news than the average person, none of the events mentioned have caused any visible hell to break loose that I’ve seen. In fact, sometimes I wish there was a little more loose hell in these streets. So obviously, I had to ask him. And he said:

Honestly I usually use that if I want to loop in some other topic of the day to a headline grabbing story. For example yesterday it was hard to get anything else out besides Epstein coverage but if I wanted to cover Texas gerrymandering at the end, I’d throw that in as well.

I don’t think any of these creators have malicious intent. But I do think it’s a great case study for the willingness to sell precision and specificity down the river in favor of speed and novelty. And as the next generation of creators on the left continues to emerge, this distribution playbook — touting regular SHOCK, PANIC, COLLAPSE — calcifies into all kinds of unwanted effects on an audience.

Fatigue is the best case scenario, psychological damage is the worst. If everything is a BOMBSHELL, how do you semantically differentiate when a bomb is actually falling out of the sky? If everyone is STUNNED multiple times a day, how does it train the nervous systems of content-consumers to behave?

BREAKING: UNHINGED Grace Weinstein Doesn’t Really Want to Find Out (MELTDOWN!!!)

LOOSE ENDS:

LOOSE ENDS:

📰 Something you should read today: The Authoritarian Stack — How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — project led by Prof. Francesca Bria … and it’s incredible

🕵️ Someone you should know today: Julie K. Brown is the reason you know the Epstein story, whether you’ve heard of her or not. She’s a longtime investigative reporter for the Miami Herald and, to me, is the best source of quality info and perspective as this story keeps moving.

🥹 Something to make you smile today: Social Host Lukas Thimm dropped this video that made me truly LOL. It’s “Who said that — Real Housewife or politician?” And he’s asking random people to identify the source of crazy quotes from either our government or Bravo. They’re way harder than you think!

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Maybe all hell *is* breaking loose 🧐