Last week, I rebooted an interview from last year with Hoosier author Jared Yates Sexton. I thought it important to take another look at the crisis of masculinity in the wake of last month’s election, in which men overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump.
Among other things, Jared and I talked about the manosphere - a loose network of websites, blogs, forums, and podcasts nominally dedicated to topics of male interest like sports, video games, gambling, and ogling women, but practically dedicated to cultivating grievance and misogyny in lonely young men. Trump and his surrogates spent a lot of time in these spaces in the lead-up to Election Day, and their investment paid off - young men moved toward the right by almost 30 points more than 2020.
More and more and young men’s political views are being shaped by influencers like Andrew Tate, Adin Ross, Theo Von, The Nelk Boys, Tony Hinchcliffe, Jake and Logan Paul, and especially Joe Rogan. Today, I turn to one Gen-Z Hoosier to ask about his generation’s media diet and why those manosphere personalities appeal to guys his age.
Dylan Noble is a Junior at Butler University in Indianapolis. From Fishers, he served as campaign manager for friend of the pod Katrina Owens’ State Senate campaign. In this conversation, we’ll talk about all of that, as well as what young men want to see from their leaders, how the left can appeal to this group, and who’s doing a good job of communicating a positive, progressive vision that Gen-Z guys can get behind.
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Cited in the Interview
Katrina Owens: https://www.owens4in.com/
Breaking Points: https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints
Social Media Top News Source for Gen-Z: https://www.axios.com/2024/02/16/tiktok-news-gen-z-social-media
Young Men Break For Trump: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/youth-vote-in-2024-young-men-trump-women-of-color-harris
Young Men’s Economic Outlook: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/young-mens-economic-prospects-are-shifting-politics-rcna174384
Obama Scolds Young Black Men: https://thehill.com/homenews/race-politics/4929604-obama-backlash-black-men/
Most Young People Didn’t Vote: https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/overall-youth-turnout-down-2020-strong-battleground-states
Bernie Sanders on Joe Rogan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O-iLk1G_ng
Should Kamala Have Gone on Rogan: https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-joe-rogan-podcast-interview-called-off-reason-1985461
Rogan’s UFC Boss Dana White’s Political Agenda: https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/ufc-dana-white-conservative-politics-rcna138009
Kyle Kulinski: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCldfgbzNILYZA4dmDt4Cd6A
Hasan Piker: https://www.youtube.com/hasanabi
Democrats as Language Police: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/13/democrats-2024-defeat-identity-politics-message-column-00189118
Hustle Bro Culture: https://www.admdnewsletter.com/hustle-bro-culture-is-making-our/
Toxic Crypto Bro Culture: https://www.theswaddle.com/how-crypto-bro-culture-around-finance-is-the-new-toxic-masculinity
Gen-Z Losing Faith in American Dream: https://www.newsweek.com/gen-z-losing-faith-american-dream-july-4th-poll-1920497
Trump Certainly Speaks on a Young Person’s Level: https://www.marieclaire.com.au/news/politics/donald-trump-vocabulary-president-language-analysis/
Men Want to Fix Things (Often to a Fault): https://www.yourtango.com/love/why-do-men-try-to-fix-things
Democrats Play on Republicans’ Turf: https://inthesetimes.com/article/biden-letting-republicans-set-terms-immigration
Dems Have Turned Away from Economic Populism: https://jacobin.com/2024/11/harris-campaign-economic-populism-democracy
Shawn Fain’s Working-Class Politics: https://jacobin.com/2023/09/shawn-fain-uaw-strike-leadership-class-struggle
Dan Osborn Shows A Potential Path Forward: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/11/02/dan-osborn-shows-some-democratic-ideas-can-outperform-the-party
The Ownership Class Keeps Us Divided: https://youtu.be/-54c0IdxZWc
Once again, that was Fishers native and Butler University student Dylan Noble.
About halfway through our discussion, I tried to make a point about white male privilege - and I don’t think I did a great job, so I’d like to clarify and develop the thought further here.
The terms were first coined by Peggy McIntosh, a professor at Wellesley College, in a 1988 essay with the clunky title, WHITE PRIVILEGE AND MALE PRIVILEGE: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women's Studies. It’s only nine pages, a quick read, and absolutely worth your time. In her essay, McIntosh looks to identify and name “invisible systems conferring dominance on [one] group,” likening privilege to an unseeable, weightless backpack of unearned assets you can always cash in, even though you’re conditioned to remain oblivious to it.
The key words there are INVISIBLE and SYSTEMS.
A lot of young white men are struggling after 40+ years of neoliberal economics, so they say, “what privilege? What has it done for me?” Now we know, from an academic standpoint, white and male privilege don’t guarantee success, only that you don’t face hurdles because of your race and/or gender. This is little consolation to a guy with little opportunity for economic mobility and limited romantic prospects. If you can’t see it, and you’re not benefitting from it, is it even there?
In the meantime, while working class men’s economic outlook has stagnated, they have seen women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community make significant strides toward social equality over the decades. Again, WE know these marginalized populations still lag behind white men economically. But if you’re stagnating or moving backward while other groups are moving forward, and you extrapolate that trend out over time - and you don’t understand the larger systemic forces at work - it’s easy to see how you could fear being overtaken. This is how pundits like Tucker Carlson have introduced the Great Replacement Theory - a 21st century version of the same antisemitic conspiracy theory that fueled Nazism - into the popular discourse. The manosphere is full of this garbage.
Americans are deep in debt, and just about maxed out. As billionaires and corporations continue to hoover all of the country’s wealth toward themselves, they’re extracting from the one place that hasn’t already been sucked dry. White men are not being overtaken, they’re beginning to experience what it’s been like for everyone else. And, as has been said, "when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels Like oppression.”
Thinkers and philosophers from Thomas Aquinas to the Dalai Lama have noted that anger is a response to the perception of injustice. So, in the face of all this perceived oppression, indignation, outrage, and resentment are to be expected. And it doesn’t hurt that rage elicits a dopamine response - it’s addictive.
The anger, however righteous, is intentionally misdirected at other vulnerable people. Right wing billionaires and hostile foreign governments, like dealers keeping junkies hooked, spend enormous sums propping up the manosphere, convincing disillusioned young men that they are the victims of a feminized, liberal society. By doing so, they keep us divided against ourselves - the powerless fighting each other while they accrue profit and power.
The 20th century American motivational writer William Arthur Ward said, “It is wise to direct your anger towards problems -- not people; to focus your energies on answers -- not excuses.” The right-wing bro influencers, and their masters, offer lots of excuses for young men’s sorry station in life, and plenty of people to blame - again, women, racial minorities, queer people, and the Jews. They keep the focus off of the real systemic problems - patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism and real, systemic solutions.
Men’s anger is such a powerful weapon, if only it could be used toward good. I mentioned the Dalai Lama a couple paragraphs ago, and he said this, “hatred expressed as anger will lead to destructive action, compassion expressed as anger leads to positive change.” The problem, as I see it, is getting young men to move from I’ve been wronged, to we’ve all been wronged by the same powerful few.
Young boys frequently engage in destructive play - demolishing Lego towers, knocking down sandcastles, disemboweling stuffed toys. This is normal, age appropriate behavior for toddlers. This is also about the time in boys’ lives we’re conditioned to suppress our emotions. Do we get stuck there? Our winner-takes-all capitalist system certainly rewards creative destruction.
But at heart, I think most men are fixers (often to a fault). As boys we destroy so as men we can build. I think acts of service is our native love language. Only when we begin to see we’re all in this together can we start to destroy systems of injustice and build something better.
Thanks for listening, and thanks again to my guest Dylan Noble. You can find him on Instagram at dylanznoble. Please consider supporting this project with a paid subscription at scottaaronrogers.substack.com. Thats’s where you’ll find everything I publish, but you can also find me on Facebook, Bluesky, YouTube and TikTok at hoosleft and on most other social media sites at scottrog78. My DMs are open for feedback, tips, ideas, and concerns. You can also email me at scottrog78@gmail.com. Forward the show to a friend and have them to forward it to another friend. Let’s keep building this project - and more democratic Hoosier State. Until next time, this has been the HoosLeft podcast. I’m Scott Aaron Rogers. Love each other, Indiana
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