From TPM Reader K …
Thanks for these reaction dispatches. This morning after reading the great discussions about the lack of a liberal or Democratic social media/current media landscape, I had a discussion with my 22-year-old son and wanted to add some commentary from a Gen Z (male) voice.
When asked why he (a Democratic Socialist who has reacted very emotionally to the election outcome) thought the younger male vote turned to Trump, he said this:
Anyone online who is interested in any subject that might be even remotely of interest to a young man is going to get fed a stream of content that is heavy bro-culture. Watch a Minecraft YouTube video and pretty quickly there will be a Joe Rogan clip offered up as the next watch. Anything remotely sports related, same thing. Then there will be “libtard roast compilations” that are funny in a middle-school way. Keep watching/clicking and it won’t take long before you are offered up Andrew Tate.
My son’s college roommate was into maps (historical maps), which the algorithm sensed meant male and away he went. He weaned himself off when he got to college and was exposed to other opinions. He said he was just a kid and didn’t really know how a guy was supposed to be or act and these videos (with their machismo and misogyny) made him feel powerful.
My son’s current job is as an after-school tutor at a middle school and he hears the young male students parroting the bro-culture all the time (especially the last two weeks when the election was a hot topic). So it isn’t just this generation of young men who wouldn’t vote for a woman, its probably going to be the next one as well.
I have no idea how this gets “fixed” or even countered. While I knew this was happening (kids getting exposed online to stuff – we had a central computer in the den so my kid’s online activity was done in front of us until high school so we tried…how naive that feels now), I don’t think I realized how our democracy would be affected by letting children on the internet.
