I stuck with the show for a long time past its prime, and I imagine this is why whatever portion of people who are still around keep listening. If you don't go outside the podcast itself, it's decently listenable and isn't too offensive to the ears. Dick makes some riffs, is funny about 1 in 10 times, and with an hour or two to burn at work that means I get up to two laughs per hour, more than if I wasn't listening. Of course Dick was controlling the narrative and making arguments that sounded good if you were just kinda passively listening. And I damn sure wasn't listening attentively so whenever he called some person calling with grievances a retard I was like "yeah haha". I wasn't invested, it was just enough to fill dead air. Then the fucking COVID saga starts and it's literally the same 30 minute intro of arguing about nothing with Sean, then a mildly interesting middle of the show at best, then another 30 minutes of the same argument at the end. I ended up being on the farms around this time and got to watch all the PPP shit happen, which really made me think more critically of the show right before I stopped entirely.
And that's my point: I think that even if all this drama happened, the show would have seen the same decline anyway. All the known content creators in the community disappeared, and the varied spirited discussions just turned into the 60 IQ version of pickup artist rightoid retardation. It turns out when you bog your show down with bullshit people tune out. All the other drama and despicable shit was just icing on the cake.
But honestly, as a passive listener, I think the show would *still* be fine for a podcast if they just made the show listenable again. Drop the same contrarian arguments literally every episode, stop being fucking lazy and come up with a decent bit for your show raking in thousands a month (if it's not all faked), and it would be fine, even with fucking retard chomo man or Dick's own degenerate background. I am of the opinion that no one online is real, so if they make genuinely worthwhile content I don't really care if they're a piece of shit unless I'm directly paying them money, and sometimes not even then. However, all he's done is double down on the worst aspects of the show, and I could never see myself listening to any of the new content ever again.