The ‘Lost Boys’ of Gen Z: how Trump won the hearts of alienated young men

I'll say it again... Gen Z was dealt an awful hand by being exposed to all the toxicity of the internet before they were mature enough to deal with it.

I personally feel privileged to have been born in the late 80s so I got exposed to the internet before it was a cesspool and got to learn resilience to misinformation gradually instead of being beat around the head with it.

I'll never understand why neither Harris nor at least Walz didn't fully pierce into the echo-chamber of the manosphere.

I thought this was half the point of picking Walz who could hold his own on guns and sports with Joe Rogan and all that shit.

The closest Harris got was... Going on on Howard Stern? Gen Z men aren't listening to Stern.

Edit: I know why. They miscalculated (and I did, too). They thought women alone would turn out in a proportion greater than the historically-low turnout of young men. More than that, millions just fell for the both sides disinfo ops and sat out. But that doesn't change the point that it was low risk / high reward to go on those outlets.

Also, the extent of the campaign's outreach to young men was "vote on behalf of the women you know".

Maybe pick a better message that doesn't exclude their entire demographic and you might find better results.
- What you're saying is we should've realized how selfish and uncaring they were (speaking as a white male myself). You're right, but it's fucking sad.
My theory has been that left leaning men let other voices be heard. That came at the cost of letting the right fill the power vacuum. The left need to let their own assholes be assholes.

I think Democrats have needed more chaotic good and lawful evil parts of the chart. Everyone else on the left need to realize those guys will need to say the wrong things for the right reasons. After all the messaging is not for you. It's for the boys with a tendency to the right.

What they say will not agree with you. Lose the battle, win the war.
The walls of the echo-chamber have been built up and reinforced for over a decade. No single election cycle will ever pierce through.

These people are lost causes unless a massive culture shift happens. And it's not looking like that will happen in the next decades. You, just like other countries, will have to deal with a growing strong block of far right, young men who will grow up to be far right seniors.

The warning signs started being obvious with Gamergate but they were ignored. The only thing that can be done is preventing the growth of these echo-chambers but the damage is done. It's just like how carbon capture will not solve climate change, only stopping emitting more as soon as possible.

How are people surprised?

Humans are animals, we're not innately good, we need to be taught.

For like 20-30 years we've stripped all of that out of public education. If you have shit parents, no one is teaching you how to be a good person, or even what the benefits of being a good person are.

Steve Bannon got his finger on gaming culture like 30 years ago with WoW gold farms in China just for the money, but he immediately realized that was the in road to the youth.

Streaming incentives the worst personality traits and kids follow them religiously. They were the role models for lots of Gen Z, and a significant amount had the algorithm taken them to full blown al right bullshit.

None of this is new, we've been bitching about it for literal decades.

It's just the fascists are putting the fucking work in and plan long term, and neo liberals only care about short term donations they can grift from the wealthy.

Shit is too fucking important to keep letting them be the only other option. Shit is too fucking serious to intentionally half ass politics these days.

The "moderate" experiment started in 92 needs to be over

I'm fucking sick of it being

"Right of center wealthy elites vs angry poor men want fascism"
- It's not even that most of them want fascism, that's the fucked up part.
  
  A lot of it is just tantrum voting. They know politicians like Pelosi, Hillary, and yes even Biden are shit and bad for regular Americans. But Trump is worse. It doesn't matter tho because for some people once they hit a "shit threshold" both sides are the same.
  
  As much as people on the left are accused of being accelerationists, a significant amount of people who voted for trump are hoping one way or another the current system gets burnt down.
  
  Long term, talking like 2044?
  
  That's 16 years after trump's 2nd term. Hopefully there's an election in 2028 with a fair primary and a fair general all around. If not that's still a lot of time to bounce back.
  
  Don't listen to the doom and gloom from mainstream media, the wealthy owners are happy trump won and want everyone to stop caring so 2028 pops up before we realize and we just go along with the "it's too late to do anything except what the rich want".
  
  The next four years will suck, that's all the more reason to focus on the next shot to really fix everything that breaks, and make sure we pick someone willing to fight
The “moderate” experiment started in 92 needs to be over

It is over, one way or the other. Europe is also seeing neoliberal politics collapsing, since Pax Americana is over, and being a slow and steady parasite and passing all the hardship to the working class does not work when "other people's money", meaning the capacity of the public, runs out.

The question is whether our dear oligarchs realize that the only way to keep the current system where they are safe is to give power away and transition to something of a social democracy, like in the 50-60s West, otherwise it will be torn from them by a violent dictatorship where they might not even keep their lives.
- Good thing they're not known for being greedy and overconfident....

These young white guys may not have their finger on it, but they sense the world has been pulled out from under them. They have no notion of "privilege" but they feel something is missing their dads and grandads had.

Maybe 10-years ago I was running internet at a guy's shop. Everyone was drinking and fucking around, discussing some politics. The guy's son was about to graduate the bougie high school and was enraged that anyone was talking about free college tuition.

"College isn't high school. Just because you get to attend free doesn't mean you get a free diploma. Besides, what are you afraid of? Might have to compete with n******?"

And that last bit was exactly what he was afraid of. (Apologies, but I put it in words him and his father would use so it would hit home.) Being white is no longer an automatic ticket to the middle class. Hell, what middle class?

You think the incels of the late 2010s were bad, boy howdy, just you wait.

Theyre the ones doing the alienating

I sometimes wonder if this is a mass psychosis of sorts that happens when you have a surplus of military age men. In history how many of these impotents would just be given a spear or a rifle and told to go die for the Emperor/King/Fatherland on some pointless military adventurism? Then they wouldn't have the time to ruminate and make up their own cause to lash out for. "Women are against you, academia is against you, society itself is against you."

Look, I'll be honest with you, I just don't want to misunderstand you, but the implication made me throw up a little in my mouth.

Did you just say that young men need to be killed off periodically because you think they are otherwise a burden to society?
- No. I'm saying that's how the issue has been handled historically, possibly deliberately in some cases, but more likely just coincidentally. Not that we need to go back to it in some exercise in eugenics. "The issue" being something to do with an outmoded view of masculinity that was never substantially replaced as the world got less violent and dire. I would rather fix that. How? I don't know.
  
  That said, your disgust with the phenomenon does not necessarily make it wholly untrue. Right now we have a bunch of maldeveloped, entitled sex pests with violent ideation who just helped vote in a thousand-year Reich. "Burden" is not the right word for them. Rejected by polite society, they have had no outward outlet for their chauvinism and rage, and so they have turned it inward on the rest of us.
  
  How many American military age men do you think are going to be killed in the next 5-10 years?

Pale bros are already the most coddled demographic in this country. It's absurd that politicians are still pandering to their historic privilege. Politicians are too ignorant and brainwashed to confront the reality of racism, patriarchy, etc. That's the actual problem.

That's so weird that someone who would do something like that was alienated.

Oh look, a complete failure of which government responsibility which everyone was saying was underfunded and neglected for years?

Rhymes with masturbation (yes, thats the first one to my head)

Hatsturbation?

I dunno, maybe 18-21 years of being told everything wrong in the world is a guy's fault has something to do with it. Putting all the blame on people that had no hand in the state of things doesn't exactly enamour them to your cause...

Y'all choose the bear over random dudes this summer. These young guys saw all that happening, right in front of them in real time. Where were they supposed to turn? One side was offering them answers, even if falsely. The other side was blaming them for everything. The shift right wasn't all because of the Trump's and Bannon's of the world.

An actual opportunity to talk about an issue, rather than reinforce my own beliefs. Dont mind if i do....

Dont you think this is more of an artifact of personalizing newsfeeds and those separated viewpointa clashing with other personalized newsfeeds?

Every opinion exists, and the internet allows opinions to be magnified without a basis in people's true opinions. We need to learn how to navigate and develop our social beliefs without fixating on who's opinion is percieved as majority or being shown the most in media... that includes overreacting to polarized opinions and validating them.

Real peoples opinions are different than the popularity of memeified opinions. When people talk to each other there is understanding. When people arm themselves with memes instead of forming their own opinions, we are parroting ideas that might be manufactored so we have no choice but to deny meme ideologies unless their merit is unavoidable.
- No I don't think personalized news feeds really factor into it. The common narrative is directly opposite the lived experience of 18-21 year olds.
  
  Women graduate highschool more, attend college more, graduate college more, and earn more. Despite all that the narrative is still women need more help because men are holding them down.
Oh woe is me?! Cry me a river. No one is blaming young men for these things. It's a call to action to dismantle a system of oppression on marginalized groups. Some of those marginalized groups include white people, white men, and young white men. This whole election just allowed the worst to flourish.
So...blame the victims for speaking up about how absolutely shit a lot of men are?
- I didn't "blame a victim." I pointed out it's pretty obvious what's happening, if you take a second and look.
  
  I once had an argument with my sister about how "all men are rapists." I said I'm not. She said "not that you'd admit." Ok, that avenue is a dead end, so i pivoted to "what about your son? He's 8. Is he a rapist?" She looked me dead in the eye and said NOT YET.
  
  This is the mentality that ALL men are forced to face nowadays, not just the rapists. How do you expect to gain any allies when you preemptively push people away? Those people you shun end up somewhere. Gee, i wonder why the Joe Rogans and Andrew Tates and Jordan Petersons are all so popular suddenly...

I blame their mothers.

Indeed, this is all the fault of women.
- I see your point. I don't mean it like that. Then again I didn't say what I meant. I just feel you wouldn't treat other women in a way you wouldn't treat your mother. A lot of sensitivity, traditionally (and therefore I may not have a great eye on things), comes from a mother. But I'm not very skilled at social engineering so I don't know what has gone wrong. A lack of manners isn't acceptable no matter where you got it from.