Roseanne Barr Accuses YouTube of ‘Throttling Views’ to Hide Her Podcast’s Popularity

Roseanne Barr really went from running the biggest show on television to claiming that YouTube stopped the count on her couch podcast.

The alt-rightification of Barr is one of contemporary comedy’s saddest career arcs – after the revival of Roseanne brought Barr storming back into the zeitgeist, her increasingly outspoken promotion of QAnon conspiracy theories came to a head in 2018 when Barr tweeted an attack on Obama Administration official Valerie Jarrett, calling her the offspring of the “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes.” Though Barr made many excuses in the fallout from the racist tweet, including claims that she thought Jarrett was a white woman and that an irresponsible dose of Ambien was behind the tweet, ABC decided to part ways with their most valuable asset and continue on with The Conners, sans Roseanne.

After half a decade in near hiding, Barr made her second comedy comeback earlier this year with an awkward, unconfident stand-up special on Fox Nation titled Cancel This! and, in recent weeks, began filming hour-long podcast episodes in her living room with appearances from her remaining allies in entertainment. While the first episode jumped out of the gate to a quarter-million view count, each successive episode has seen fewer return viewers than the last, with the lone jump in eyeballs coming when Barr’s old friend Mo’Nique appeared on the podcast.

Despite the most recent episode of The Roseanne Barr Podcast wading in the mid-five figures, Barr claims that, much like the true contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, the real viewing numbers are being deliberately hidden from the masses by the mysterious powers that be. 

To be clear, the steady decline in viewership since the pilot episode is nothing new in the world of 1990s sitcom celebrity podcasts – every comedy from over a decade ago has at least one rewatch podcast with members of the original cast giving longtime fans weekly fixes of their favorite character shooting the breeze behind the scenes. The fact is that, in most cases, the initial surge in attention is the result of a curiosity factor, and, once viewers get their first taste of what the celebrity is like when they’re speaking on their own terms, they decide they’ve had their fill and move on to watch a clip of whichever cast member from Family Matters decided they needed some Patreon money.

Barr, however, refuses to accept that her own show is simply following established viewership trends, and has fired back at users who replied with incredulity, telling one such hater, “(Sic) You do t have to watch. Maybe cuties is on Netflix.”

The Conners is on Hulu, too.