Block, block, block. You have to beat Youtube with a hammer to steer the algorithm, but it’ll catch on eventually. And one thing to avoid is hate-watching. Youtube doesn’t care if you’re only watching it because you hate it, it just cares that you’re watching it.

And right-wingers get into Star Trek for similar reasons to liberals–because it’s entertaining, and it reflects their values. Only, they don’t see the space communism, the egalitarian society, the infinite diversity in infinite combinations. They see the mighty starships roaming a war-ridden galaxy, essentially stand-ins for American Navy vessels (as every “Constitution” class ship makes clear in its name). They see simple morality plays where a majority-white-male crew consistently demonstrates the superiority of their wits and values over other races, while also hooking up with alien women. It’s a myopic view of the franchise, but it can certainly describe a lot of the original series, a fair amount of nineties trek, and the whole Abrams trilogy, too.

The bottom line is that that’s the sort of content YouTube rewards.

Youtube systematically encourages rightwing content both because rich people rely on braindead conservatism to retain their strangehold on society and also because rightwing content is junkfood optimized to cause strong reactions in people and manipulate vulnerable, afraid people.

I also think it is important to point out that if you step back from Star Trek and squint, you can see it as a scifi submarine war drama about the glory of serving your country in the navy. Nevermind that starfleet is much more than a military and comparing it to a present day military is a huge stretch, that the federation is a leftist mostly functional utopia, that Star Trek directly speaks to the dangers of blind patriotism and militarism… Conservatives don’t let the details of reality get in the way of the narratives they tell about the world.

Renegade Cut did a really good video that I think does a pretty good job of answering your question https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Tm5KxkM8A&list=PLbNseMNQjpNuh2RfoyBHTAad48PN-MZa5&index=5

There are probably a few things going on.

• First the algorithm rewards videos that drive interaction. That can be angry comments, up or down votes, subscriptions, whatever.

• The algorithm will drive you towards more content of the kind that you interact with. If you interact with conservative leaning videos that will drive what it shows you in the future.

• A lot of scifi (although forward looking) is driven by nostalgia. People remember reading heinlein, azimov, etc in their childhoods. Nostalgia often comes along with a strong dose of traditionalism. People want to hold on to the old versions of things. Old stories, old ways of doing things.

• The role of reviewer can be somewhat inherently regressive. Reviewers can respond badly to change, differences from what came before. They can hold back innovation when they don’t understand how to conceptualize something new. They can be incentivized to adopt the consensus opinion of other reviewers.

• If you love something you’re less like to have a successful channel. People love to watch cinema sins, nostalgia critic, etc. People giving bad faith angry yelling into a mic reviews that become a series of low effort jokes. If you love something there’s often less to say, fewer jokes to make, and less to engage with. Star trek is progressive, so if you’re someone who loves it, you may be less likely to make a forceful critque of the kind that’s been in vogue on youtube.

• “geekdom” in general had often had an exclusionary bent. See the sad puppies, or gamergate. At one point geek culture was a safe haven for outsiders who felt that the world didn’t or couldn’t understand their interest. It was a place to meet other smart people, and talk about the stuff you care about that not everyone will get. Unfortunately that also comes with a lot of broken people who see a place with a lot of smart people as a place to be “superior,” see discussion forums as a place to flex their might knowledge of canon and browbeat newcomers to franchises, or see geekdom as a place that they dominate from which other must be kept out-- hence the “you’re not a real nerd” stereotype. That seems to tie in with a conservative mindset about social issues.

It’s all just clickbait ragemining, that’s all it is. Loser conservos boost it no matter what it’s about so long as it confirms their biases, and that artificially inflates the profile of these channels.

A lot of this has started as a counter to the crappy reboots of favourite geeky franchises. Some call it “woke” and I’m not getting into that debate.

But it’s reality that a lot of these reboots or sequels - Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Terminator, Indiana Jones etc, do go against the nature of the originals in many respects.

So you’ll get people talk about it, and well, those who shout the loudest are heard the most.

I used to watch to some of those guys you mention, when they were still fresh and talking only about the media. But eventually they 1) kept repeating the same points over and over and over, 2) went on to only bitch without any real constructive input (e.g. even refusing to watch the shows but making 15 videos anyway), 3) keep adding their political agenda, which is exactly what they criticise the media for.

Mind you, there are left wingers reviewing geeky stuff which are just as annoying, and have just as little to say. Can’t remember who is that Trek person on YT that keeps inserting his political bits, but I also stopped watching. If I wanna hear about politics, I’ll watch a channel dedicated to that and not some random ass that watches movies.

Star Trek is nerd culture. Nerd culture is predominantly white cishet guys. White cishet guys who feel excluded from the rest of society or face issues growing up (which usually leads to them being nerds) tend to be radicalized by far-right talking points as a replacement for an identity.

Not all of them of course, but a lot of them. That’s the reason. Star Trek is different than other fandoms in that it historically has always been a lot more diverse than other fandoms. If you think the Star Trek fandom at large is bad, check out others. Way worse.

The algorithm might be targeting you. I haven’t seen any of those people/channels.

thinks Hollywood is engineering a communist Red Guards plot to kill conservatives

Every day I wish the left were as cool as the right thinks we are.

Youtube’s algorithm is really eager to guide people into the alt-right pipeline. You basically have to immediately block any channel that seems even a little bit sus to keep that shit out.

Additionally, there is a draw for conservatives to geekdom in general: antisociality and a belief in one’s own intellectual superiority.

Damn, I just saw a few random popcast videos, they were alright… But now i don’t want to support them, so I will block them.

I’ve already blocked the critical drinker because of his anti women views.

I think this is largely the same effect: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo

Basically, some techy types have this notion that, because they understand one complex thing, then they also understand all complex things. But in reality, they’ve only been trained to understand the one complex thing and are actually just a delusional idiot.

Could be because everyone can enjoy fiction. Project their own selves into the fictional world. So fiction is where you intersect with people of different political views.

Yeah who are these people?

Briahna from the bad faith podcast and Yannis Varoufakis are pretty left and avid star trek fans.

This isn’t a youtube problem, I was watching some old Star Trek episodes on a stream and everyone in the chat was using racist dog whistles and just spamming the n-word

Old fanbases are the worst and most racist and everyone should avoid them unless they secretly agree with them