It's definitely playing into this type of audience.

I'm not sure if Vaush fell into the grift or if he's just the product of an organic process where the largest audience accumulated via accretion because he was the most palatable (or I guess there's always astroturfing too but that seems a bit more farfetched) and the less palatable streamers just don't find traction because it's too challenging and thus less palatable.

From my engagement with his fans, it's not about wanting to do anything it's just about wanting to feel correct and to have claim over a sense of moral high ground.

I can't remember any times where I've had a discussion with a Vaush fan where they've used disclaimer terms like "I think" or "my suspicion is" or "my opinion is". They seem convinced that their opinion is always correct and they never seem to say that they don't know about a topic or that they only have a superficial understanding of something. I think that the Dunning-Kruger effect comes into play in a big way here.

The epitome of this was when Vaush made the argument about voting Biden in and then pushing him left (once your bargaining chips as "the vooter" have already been surrendered to the DNC.) I pressed Vaushites on what the strategy was for pushing Biden left around the time of the vote and in the months after, saying stuff like "He spends hours streaming most days right? Has he devoted a single hour to detailing what strategy you're all going to take to push Biden left yet? What's the plan?" and I'd inevitably get downvoted and ignored for being so impertinent.

Nobody ever got back to me with any activism or organising strategies from Vaush, naturally.

Vaushism is where any aspirations for becoming more educated or more active go to die.

I think they actively want half-measures and they want to be reassured that their half-measures are adequate, and that they're doing a radicalism simply by sitting back and watching his streams.