The Innuendo Studios series’ on YouTube Alt-Right Playbook and Why Are You So Angry especially illustrate this well and I highly recommend watching. It’s very similar to what happened during gamergate. A lot of men who are frustrated are misled by these reactionary campaigns. Just like everyone else, they face the struggles of patriarchy, toxic masculinity, capitalism, etc. But Andrew Tate tells them it’s not their fault, and reassures their insecurities that they’re good guys, and tells them that the problem is women.

Because they’re lonely, aimless and disenfranchised

Were you not young before/after the start of the internet? Not trying to be snarky, it’s more trying to understand perspective.

I could have been MAGA, no question. Here’s my anecdote: (edit: too lazy to correct so please don’t pay close attention to the tense of my words here, I was partially speaking from the perspective of being a kid again but I didn’t stay consistent)

• been a loner irl. Not that many friends
• most of my friends are online
• most of my friends say offensive stuff and while I don’t really mean things (at first) I want to fit in
• this can spiral pretty easily with a bunch of kids. And it did. I’ve said my fair share of atrocious things online that I wish I could take back
• as a youngster, 20+ years ago, as a loner/nerd if I’m not playing games, I’m (probably) watching YouTube or anime. Rarely hangin with friends
• now as someone who’s book smart(well, on some things, ofc), but especially at this point has absolutely 0 like street smarts & real people skills? Hooked into conspiracies.

I grew up in a diverse area, so I’ve really never believed in racist stuff. Those kind of conspiracies I used to just handwave the racism stuff away cause it wasn’t the important stuff to me that I did kind of believe in. I literally even used to watch some of Alex Jones conspiracy videos.

Really easy to get lost in this crap as a teenager alone at 4am.

Like I said I grew up in a diverse area, and in one of my first real relationships, I got a lot of pushback about certain things (I was kinda blue lives matter for a bit for example) and when that ended, one of the big things I took from it was I wanted to be a more accepting person, and I’ve been an increasingly-raging leftist ever since.

With the rising loneliness epidemic (which actually extends to both genders - EVERYONE is increasingly isolated) I can only imagine this sort of story is increasingly common. And not everyone comes to the same conclusions about wanting to be more accepting, etc.

I was very lucky to go through those experiences and learn what I did from it. There’s probably another universe where I instead got increasingly angry & further into all those things - from the cruel & crass words to the conspiracies - and am wearing a red hat

🤮🤮 at the thought of that

This is an opinion from someone who used to work as a children’s teacher after college in 2016:

We socialize our young men in spaces that only promote competition; sports, gaming circles, schools. The way that they interact with other children and the world in turn is one of competition and selfishness.

The way our modern families are structured give less freedom to our children to find meaningful friendships with boys and girls. social relationships have become more distanced, not just because of the internet. It’s just the rapid pace in which we live today.

They come in contact with porn at very young ages, some of them way before building meaningful friendships or relationships with girls. Pornography is a very cold and blunt product; It has a tendency to skew perceptions of what sentimental relationships are and it creates distorted expectations for sex. It gets worse for young generations that find it difficult to distinguish reality from fiction. I’ve talked to young men who only see relationships and sex from the filters of pornography and this is very concerning. To make matters worst. A lot of adults also have this optic. Middle aged men that have very little experiences with committed relationships friendly or intimate and pass down their skewed point of view to younger generations.

Our social media and political discourse promote atomization and alienation; it is easier to find things you disagree with other people than things in common. This was made by design. Division creates a passionate voters and consumers. young men and women are in the crossfire.

With this in mind; It is very profitable to become a social media grifter like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and so on. There is a large market for easy answers that take the blame elsewhere. I also feel these grifters find funding easily. I don’t think internet misogyny is at all grassroots, but there are a lot of right wing thinktanks and foundations that move money to boost voices that create this type of division. It’s not new and young men are particularly susceptible in a time with so much economical uncertainty because society tends to put a lot of expectations on them.

Countries that avoid to regulate their media are very susceptible to astroturfed political division. And when dealing with propaganda, adolescents are an ideal target. It turns out you tube and social media did not bring us a golden era of democratized education but instead an easy access to our children by malignant actors. And in countries like the US where any type of media regulation is considered “doing a comulism” attacking children with propaganda is a feature of the system, not a bug.

Unimpressive men who have exhausted all other ways to gain social status except by force, resort to forcibly gaining status.

My guess is that the internet connects them to like minded misogynists, then it’s just a big women hating circle jerk that perpetuates the reason they got into it in the first place: women dislike them, because they are misogynists.

It’s not complicated. They’re horny and frustrated that they can’t get a woman to be interested in them. Tate tells them it’s not their fault and that the blame lies with women and society, allowing them to not feel shitty about themselves or make any effort to improve.

It’s a combination of them being young and dumb, but also being brought up mind-fucked by social media from the beginning of their lives.

The algorithm pushes them that direction.

On YouTube I’m constantly one video away from “owning the woke libs” content because I turned my view history off.

I think its because, to an extent, masculinity has been villainized, and people who are masculine (in appearance, identity or desire to be traditionally masculine) naturally look for people that pretend to value them.

This combined with reduction or even removal of shop classes, reduced PE, recess and physical activities in school, female teachers now far outnumbering male teachers, and strict attitude towards typical male behavior can easily build a huge amount of resentment in young men. Most public schools now are heavily tailored towards female students.

Doing normal boy stuff, like roughing each other up and messing with your friends got me and other boys detention, and it felt extremely unfair.

The algorithms in social media, media platforms, and search engines are all designed to keep users engaged so that ad revenue can be generated and user data can be harvested.

Adding to that, a lot of these misogynistic creators leverage predatory practices that manipulate marginalized people into sycophantcy.

When this and other factors come together, we wind up with mindless drones which are easily manipulated, constantly angry, and always searching for a way to “get back” at those that who marginalized them.

Social medias thrive on engagement, and controversial content is king of engagement.

So social medias companies push content like Andrew Tate and co because it makes them money and they don’t care about anything else.

Young people are impressionable, and they get pushed that crap over and over.

If everyday of your life you get told that women are just baby factories, you will eventually start to believe it, some sooner than others.

From around 2022 until just recently YouTube Shorts was heavily pushing Tate on me (an almost 50 year old man).

No matter how many times I disliked and/or blocked the poster, the YouTube algorithm just kept throwing more Tate at me. I don’t know what I did to make YouTube think I’d be interested in that clown.

On the plus side, it made me a lot more aware of what’s going on, hence my efforts to get Google out of my life. I can spot someone trying to manipulate me, but I have young sons who might not.

That’s what happen when identity politics mark a group as less important and the enemy.

It happens when right wing do identity politics an the marginalized minorities group together against it.

Left wing for some reason decided to use exactly the same strategy as the right wing and took identity politics as a way to do politics and they are having exactly the same result. The “marginalized” identity turned against them.

Surprised Pikachu face.