1) public figure with household brand
2) controversial statements
3) broad following willing to defend them
Going after personalities clearly over the line is of no value. To optimize clicks and engagement, you want the issue at hand to be as contested as possible : topics the public is deeply split on, subjective, complex, and flimsy or poorly articulated.
The more misinformation the better, because it drive more engagement as people read and post it both to support their priors or show how outrageous it is.
There is a tiny market for comprehensive reporting analyzing issues from multiple perspectives.
The only thing I can think of is the new corporate diversity/woke organizations that want to cultivate an environment where companies need to pay them to keep things from becoming a PR nightmare (that is a new type of manufactured threat). Organizations haven’t even been effective at coercing companies about global labor practices (Nike’s slave wage factories in China), but somehow this new attack vector of social propriety has been extremely effective.
It’s been iteratively effective. Pointing out Nike has 1, then 2, then 3 slave wage factories never escalated the situation. Pointing out Rogan antivax stuff, then the N-word compilation, and perhaps soon that he used steroids, has been hyper effective to reach a knock out blow. By the time we get from ‘Elon’s factories segregates black people’ to the n-th ‘and his ex said he was verbally abusive’, he could be done.
Something to keep track of, or certainly pay some people to ward something like that off. That would make the most sense.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/ford-motor-co/summary?id=D0...
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/general-motors/summary?id=D...
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toyota-motor-corp/summary?i...
Not particularly hard, as it turns out.
You would hope people in high places wouldn’t be petty or personally vindictive, but there is plenty to gain from the personal rush you get ruining someone’s life (or at least a couple of months of it).
Happens sadly more frequently than you’d hope.
So, my best theory is that it’s kinda like the paparazzi. You find the celebrities going through a train wreck life situation (divorce, drugs, etc) and cover them. This organically brings the tabloids to specific targets.
Elon is a very natural target. In this case he has taken a strong stance on workers being able to work during Covid, so in a way he put his battle flag up on that hill. That’s the hill the parasites will flock to.
Rogan took a stance on free speech. So that’s the hill they fought him on (found all the shit he has to apologize for).
The market for this is quite natural at this point, and I have no other words to describe it as repetitious as it is.