What happened to JP Sears?

The Nicole Arbor Effect is strong with this one.

Many people became familiar with JP Sears in his viral parody videos where he played a typical “crunchy” person. We all know the type. They do yoga, drive a Subaru, and make their summer plans around going to Burning Man. His videos were funny and as someone who lives on the West Coast and doesn’t quite buy into the whole “granola” based lifestyle, it was funny to lambast those sorts of people. Then the pandemic happened and JP Sears took a turn that caused quite a stir and sent some of his early fans straight to the unsubscribe button.

Left to Right

He’s described as a right-wing comedian now but that was not my experience when I saw my first J.P. Sears video. Known better as “AwakenwithJP” he got his start on YouTube poking fun at the wellness industry and people who spend far too much time doing yoga and taking various supplements and powders. His Ultra Spiritual Life series became quite popular. I found him incredibly funny but when the pandemic arrived and he took a strong anti-vaccine view, I dropped him. It also appears that I wasn’t the only one given this thread on Reddit. His drift right had been going on for a few videos. I thought it was all in good fun so I disregarded it at first but during the pandemic, it seems that his true colors have shown through.

I wasn’t the only person to notice that things with JP Sears had taken a turn. In this article the author is overt in their distaste of his new direction (warning for strong language at the link). When he arrived in conservative Spokane, mention was made of his new conservative direction and his new conservative audience. In a turn of events, what used to be a fun parody of people many of us know, it turns out that JP Sears can be problematic (a true sin of modern wokeness) and I found this medium post echoing what I had felt about JP Sears.

What Happened?

I wanted to find out what happened to JP Sears? I didn’t figure he was liberal but I didn’t understand that his politics were as they were. The joke is much less funny when it seems like the comedian is just punching down. Personally, I removed him from all my feeds but occasionally I will seek him out just to see what he is doing.

JP Sears has commented on his change in his content and in his audience. In the Spokesmen Review he said, “I was never political before, but I’m insanely behind freedom. I have conservative values. During the spring of 2020, me being pro-freedom caused some backlash. I realized if I spoke of my personal truth, I would possibly lose some of my audience, but I had to follow my heart and be true to myself. What happened is that my audience has grown exponentially since the majority of comics lean left. So few comics are conservative, and I play to a niche audience.”

Much like Nicole Arbor and how she became a darling of the right, JP Sears has found a new audience on the Right and it is supposed to be larger than his old audience. I wish him much success but I wonder what it must be like to be associated with certain people within that movement. I wonder how his politics and values aligns with his new friends?

Thoughts

I really enjoyed JP Sears’ content and I enjoyed his videos. I looked forward to his uploads. I appreciate his insanity toward freedom. If I’m picking, I’d rather have more freedom than not. I get having conservative values. I have a few myself (which is well-known and well-documented). However, it appears that he is a victim of the vaccine narratives. The whole rollout and narrative around the vaccine has been tawdry at best and I’m sad that JP Sears took the direction he took. It was shocking to me. The lesson here is that creators are real people with real opinions and we might not always like the direction they take. As much as it is his right to make what he wants, we also have the right to turn it off. In my mind, that is true freedom.