If you didn't know this, you haven't been paying attention. Right wing voices have gone hard at the young male demographic for years now. They've targeted kids in online games and social media, and groomed them for years all with the goal of shaping their world view and by extension, their politics. Lonely young guys looking at people who present themselves as successful, rich, and rolling in women, not giving a fuck about anyone but themselves, telling young boys that they just need to be more sexist and racist and that'll get them laid and make them feel fulfilled. Telling them that the world is wrong and they're not. It's been extremely successful, and all wide out in the open. That's why voices like Andrew Tate made it into the public zeitgeist.
Frankly, it's an absolute failing on all of the left for being completely unable or unwilling to see this or show an alternative world view. Too often, when I hear people talk about young white men's issues, I get crocodile tears from everyone who can't separate them from actual right wing provocateurs.
Don't forget Gamergate.
I think the reason the left doesn't hit back as hard is because it feels sort of strange to do so. It's difficult to acknowledge at the emotional level that we're really back to just fighting for the most fundamental basics of liberty, equality and pursuit of happiness. Especially given how the right co-opted talking about freedom in general a number of years ago. Do we really need to rewind our level of discourse all the way back to the 18th century though?
Well, if those are the principles that are under attack, perhaps we do.
All of this began with Steve Bannon and his WoW guild. I can’t believe how far they’ve taken it.
https://www.thewrap.com/how-world-of-warcraft-propelled-steve-bannon-to-the-white-house/
It doesn't help that men literally cannot complain about their issues online without being called an incel. It's so overused that it's lost all meaning. The left needs to do better for young men than "Shut up women have it worse"
*Obviously women DO have it worse, we just need to work on the messaging.
Obviously women DO have it worse
In what ways? That's important.
For example, we're WAY better at killing ourselves.
Men don't need to fight legal battles for basic bodily autonomy, for example.
That is a good example and heavily informs my voting habits.
It literally couldn't be less important. We shouldn't be fighting about what makes us different or run the Oppression Olympics. That's literally what the 'elite' want cause it stops organization against them.
Far better use of everyones' time would be find a cause that helps everyone, not just themselves.
In what ways? That’s important.
That's the wrong question, and that's why they're all turning to right wing but jobs.
Boy kid gets online and says, I have X problem...he's immediately downvoted to oblivion and a deluge of "but women have it worse."
But there's one dude in that noise that says, I have that problem too...have you heard of Andrew Tate (or whoever the hot grifter is).
We need to take these kids seriously if you want them to be well rounded adults. Otherwise they're just going to keep leaking out to the extremists.
I may get downvoted for this but I tend to downvote comments that lay everything right wing on boomers/olds. I'm nearly one myself, and most of my RL friends are boomer age lefties. Is Vance old? Is Loomer a boomer? Maga Mike, MTG, Boebert, at most Gen X, are leading the charge, and all the Patriot Front dudes are millennials and gen Z. If it were all boomers only we could just wait for them to die off, but it isn't.
I didn't know I accused boomers, or older people specifically, of anything. Did I do that? Or am I misunderstanding what you mean?
No, u/dirthawker0 is supporting your point.
I'm agreeing with you
You've identified the problem many see, but what is the solution?
This demographic is notoriously hard to reach and the nature of its age and inexperience leads to having their priorities woefully out of whack and susceptible to shit like Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate to Jordan Peterson. Asking or forcing them to watch Mr. Rogers isn't going to cut it, if you know what I mean.
forcing them to watch Mr. Rogers
Saying the world is wrong is a very easy sell because a ton of society is wrong about a ton of things. Covid, minimum wage, appropriate level of corporate dark pattern prosecution (shoutout to world famous breath of fresh air lina khan).
The normal people need to be more proactive about starting with conservative grievances and exploring them more, because the trail leads straight to the billionaires symbolically, and a captured, subjugated set of laws, protections, and institutions that allow them to ever exist.
Systems thinking with as few big words as possible is good for everybody.
I wonder how much of a role tick tock and youtube could have had on this.
I think it's just the overall tightening of the right wing echo chamber. Yes, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, all create spaces for right-wing chauvinists to capture young men when they are most impressionable and feel least seen.
But also these are dividends from Fox News slowly poisoning discourse and rural communities treating being liberal or left as an immoral betrayal of your kin and kind. For those people, being conservative is seen as being sane and the natural state of things, and no amount of facts or cognitive dissonance can influence those communities to change.
The only way to reverse it is to find a way to prevent those top-down right-wing spaces from engaging in propaganda. But not only is that difficult with the First Amendment, we haven't even politically acknowledged what is happening.
Conservatives still gaslight and play the victims while exerting excessive influence on our discourse. The left continues to treat them with kid gloves, which only emboldens them. So I expect this trend to fully continue.
The left continues to treat them with kid gloves,
This has generally been bothering me. You'll have someone on the far right say like "We should kill the jews", and I say "We should stop that guy. Like, I'm okay with someone doing violence to that nazi" and people are like "whoa whoa whoa we can't have VIOLENCE." So basically the right wing can do and say whatever, but everyone else has to hold themselves to pristine standards and just take it.
"Cops brutalize family and shoot their dog". "Maybe we should fight back." "Whoa whoa whoa violent speech is unacceptable bro." Like, ok, I guess I'll just get shot quietly.
I got permanently banned from Reddit cuz I commented on a post with “400k Americans died in WW2 to give us the right to punch nazis in the face.”
Could be just an extension of conservative indoctrination, getting in at “ground level”. They indoctrinate religion and prejudice. They are trying to make inroads at the local government level like school boards. Why not try to further that MO and go after disaffected young men. Works for jihadists and suicide bombers, it’ll work for the talibangelicals.
I have wondered a similar question… Is the trend that young men who are raised in a republican environment / family / culture aren’t leaving it at the same rate as their predecessors? Or is it that more young men raised in a liberal / apolitical environment are being captured by the right wing internet pipeline?
I would guess that in previous generations, kids are raised about 50/50 to match their parents beliefs (who are roughly 50/50 conservative or liberal) and the significant dominance of liberal youth vote was attributable to kids leaving that ideology behind as they form their own beliefs, reenforced by peer effects. But I’ve wondered if tiktok and other new social dysfunction of current generations has made it easier for kids raised in that 50/50 to just “stay” where they were raised.
Perhaps it could all be explained by the weakening of the ability of peer effects to influence young people’s political beliefs. Young men feel they have more community in online conservative spaces than they do in their more egalitarian real world social environments, so instead of ditching their parents beliefs to match their real world friends they ditch their real world friends that don’t match their beliefs.
Yeah I agree with your assessment
The day Trump flip-flopped on Tik Tok, my wife's feed started to carry humanizing Trump videos. They've since disappeared.
Incel dipshits that couldn’t get laid even if they had a 100 dollar bill sticking out of theirs pants.
Here's the results from that youth poll the Axios article doesn't mention:
The poll also finds:
A significant enthusiasm gap between young Democrats and Republicans, with 74% of young Democrats saying they will "definitely" vote, compared to 60% of young Republicans.
A widening gender gap, nearly doubling from 17 points in the Spring poll to 30 points now, with Harris leading 70% to 23% among likely female voters.
Harris outperforming Trump on key personal qualities and issues, with substantial leads in empathy (+33), relatability (+24), honesty (+22), climate change (+32), abortion (+31), health care (+26), and gun violence prevention (+25) among all young adults.
Harris's job approval as Vice President has significantly improved, increasing from 32% in the Spring poll to 44% now.
Strong support for progressive policies among young Americans, with 74% favoring capping prescription drug prices and 59% supporting a nationwide law to legalize abortion.
Overwhelming rejection of Project 2025 among young Americans, with only 6% viewing it favorably compared to 48% unfavorably. Even among Republicans, we find 14% viewing it favorably and 23% unfavorably.
The impact of social media, with 53% of young adults encountering memes about Harris online in the last month, 34% of whom say it positively influenced their opinion. Conversely, 56% have seen memes about Trump, with 26% reporting a negative impact on their perception.
Anyone curious about this trend should read this:
Got a non-paywall version?
Firefox and noscript will get you almost any wapo article.
edit: article is worth the read.
Here’s a gifted version, I think it still asks you to login but it’s not paywalled
That was a fantastic read. Thank you for sharing that
Indeed. It articulated a lot of what I've seen since I graduated high school about 20 years ago, and it helps explain the hypnotic allure of toxic shitheads like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. It also helped me understand a little more about Trumpism and why it's so weirdly intoxicating to people like my father in law and uncles, who really are just sad, old, ugly, many-times-divorced white men with limited education and very little to offer to the rest of society. They're fucking angry, and it was hard to figure out what they were so mad about until I started reading stuff like this. They're completely unmoored and irrelevant, and they're lashing out in what's really a cry for help, even if it's too deep within their subconscious to be actionable.
I’d like to know the exact definition of “conservative.” I find it hard to believe that youn people are viewing the widespread woes of late game capitalism thinking “more capitalism will fix this.”
What I’ve seen are young men feeling isolated and lonely then being angry about it. Then they are told by Rogan/petersonesque types that being authoritarian to women as policy will get them an obedient wife.
The bottom paragraph of the article states that they're just as likely to say health care is a right and governments should pay more to help lift people out of poverty. So, there's a disconnect between the identity and actual policy positions which I think is pretty key.
Whatever they believe...
They could say they want M4A, no more billionaires, and our college system to be fixed, then say they're a conservative because Dad said their family is conservative.
Wait.. so the boomers aren't the ones who'll take country to dogshit? Now I'm confused - these kids need to get their message straight.
I see this in my purple state amongst my teenage kids peers, and it’s terrifying.
This is not that unexpected. There hasn't been much excitement in the democratic party since 2016 when Sanders movement was stampled. Young voters are still progressive, but there has been no good ringbearer.
Reality check: The youngest age group still appears to favor liberal positions on some issues as much as those ages 25 to 29, Anil Cacodcar, the student chair of the Harvard Youth Poll, noted.
In a poll earlier this year, the younger group was just as likely to say basic health insurance is a human right and government should spend more to reduce poverty.
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