High school boys are trending conservative
High school boys are trending conservative
A popular narrative suggests young people are liberal and getting more liberal. Thus, social media buzzed when a chart surfaced in spring that seemed to suggest 12th-grade boys had become overwhelm…
While many believe young people are becoming more liberal, data shows that 12th grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative compared to liberal. Around 25% of high school seniors identify as conservative while only 13% identify as liberal. In contrast, the share of 12th grade girls identifying as liberal has risen to 30%. Many factors may contribute to this trend, including the rhetoric of Donald Trump which appealed to disaffected young men, and the focus of progressive movements on issues of gender and racial equality which some young men perceive as a "matriarchy." However, most high school seniors claim no political identity, and many boys in high school do not actively discuss
The rate of girls identitying as liberal is significantly higher and unlike the conservative boys, the rate hasn't started dropping off. Probably because the girls face actual threats to their freedoms, while the conservative boys' complaints are about a bunch of imaginary nonsense.
But of course it's boys who get the headline. The hill is a right wing dumpster bin.
This is definitely right-wing trash. However, we should be using headlines like this to fire up the country. Everyone knows that "republican" men think they have the last say about reproductive rights. Let's use their own "reports" to show those women that their boyfriends/husbands/fathers think they own them.
That's a little bit sexist
while the conservative boys’ complaints are about a bunch of imaginary nonsense.
Ah yes, the education gap is imaginary nonsense.
Are you hearing yourself? Because what you're saying is not only gross but grossly dismissive. Be better.
Oh shit an education gap? Better attack minorities, take away women's rights, burn a bunch of books and accelerate full speed into the brick wall of climate change.
The reality is that conservatives aren't trying to address any actual problems facing young men, they're just trying to turn their disillusionment into votes and gun sales.
Calmly approach anyone in the education sector with this study, without the "nobody cares about men anymore!" theatrics and you'll have millions of people -- mostly "leftists" -- with thoughts on how to improve things.
But of course it’s boys who get the headline. The hill is a right wing dumpster bin.
Flaming dumpster bin!
It's just journalism in general. "Girls are liberal" is pretty much a non-story, it's expected. You don't publish those.
"High school boys are becoming more conservative" can be seen as surprising by many, and thus newsworthy.
I suspect it’s less due to the rhetoric of Donald Trump & more due to the influence of Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson & Joe Rogan.
Well, think about it. Who is the most confused, scared, and angry about women not throwing themselves at their feet? Pubescent boys. The entire right wing media sphere is aimed at someone with the temperament and unleashed anger and horniness of high school boys, in a time when kids are having less sex. These perpetually online kids are being fed into the ecosystem through YouTube, then they hear it normalized on fox/literally any right wing outlet, and then they get those poisonous ideas reinforced when they go to school and don’t get laid by the hottest girl they know.
I don’t think these things were planned, by any means. But they sure did work out for them.
No, those personalities rose due to the mainstream (mainly left) not being able to discuss normal masculinity and overall only portraying masculinity as something toxic. When you go in one radical direction, you get radical response (Tate, etc).
We need normal, non-partisan discussion and stance towards masculinity.
Normal masculinity is simply existing and not giving a fuck how other people expect you to live. There's almost no point in discussing it more as the left is already very comfortable with discussing the idea that you are who you are and you can be proud of that. That message is literally everywhere.
Toxic masculinity has to be discussed because people are being made to confuse being toxic with being "strong" which is something the right is creating. Their image of a "real man" is toxic.
It's like the whole "racist right winger" or "neonazi" labels given to a politician, but then some random right winger gets all bent out of shape as if they were called a Nazi... They weren't even part of the conversation, they decided to take on that guilt. It's the same with toxic masculinity. If you're not expressing the things that are discussed within that subject then they aren't talking about you, you're more than likely "performing" normal masculinity. It's not the fault of the people having the conversation that someone else chose to feel offended by it when it wasn't about them at all.
Interesting to assume people like Tate didn't exist before. They just changed their rhetoric and added "anti-feminist" to their agenda since that's trendy in certain circles now. These people existed already in much greater numbers in the past.
Masculinity is not the centre of the discussion of the left or even feminism, though. It's just what certain people want to make out of it, which is exactly what the quote above is referring to.
Advancing rights for women in general spans a broad spectrum of intersectionality with masculinity just being one fraction of it. You can look up how many feminists are actually talking about masculinity unprompted and you'd be surprised how infrequent it is. It is a certain group of people with an often anti-feminist agenda who try to make it seem as if masculinity was somehow the main hook of feminist discussion.
Most leftists and feminists want emancipation for men as well, with that they mean the emancipation from gender roles for everyone.
I grew up in a Calvinistic worldview where every week you were reminded you were utterly disgusting in the eyes of God and simply by being born you deserved to be tortured more brutally than the English language can adequately express because you had by virtue of being human inherited original sin, and the only way you could get rid of it is if you had been predestined to be saved by Jesus (who did not come to save everyone, only a select few). Anyone can imagine the horrible effect this polar opposite of therapy has on rates of mental illness in that community. This kind of worldview was popular with the English Dissenters (those famous 'persecuted pilgrims' belong to this category) who later crossed the Atlantic in large numbers and I think I can see its unpleasant legacy in American political thought both left and right.
If there is one idea I could delete out of existence it's this notion of original sin in both its religious and secular forms. I would make it unlawful to tell a child that they were born guilty of anything simply for existing or that guilt can be inherited from anyone because of how psychologically harmful this is. While it's usually not the intention there exists a trend that de facto results in telling boys they're guilty of various things simply for existing, and then in the same breath we act surprised when scumbags like Tate are hoovering up their attention instead of everyone telling them what a piece of crap they are for being born. Manly qualities in my mind are qualities like physical and mental strength in the face of adversity, having the moral courage to make difficult decisions for the good of a group, a deep sense of good sportsmanship, being willing and able to take risks when required, that sort of thing. The left should be all over that as its history is littered with such examples!
like, there isn't a non-partisan stance towards masculinity
The left needs to own healthy masculinity and properly address very legitimate issues that disproportionally hurt boys in our society.
Otherwise we will lose a whole generation to toxic male role models in the manosphere.
I read a great WaPo article on this recently. Basically on the left, no one can define healthy masculinity and it's really opened up a spot for the right wing to swoop in and define it for us.
The left side of politics has always struggled to bring people along for the journey, they can advocate for people but building a coherent argument and inspiring people to come along for the ride will always be their downfall. They cannot achieve progressive change if they fail to recognize the concerns of the right.
John Oliver, John Iadorola from the damage report, Mike Figuredo from the Humanist report, Kyle Kulenski from secular talk, David Doel from the rational national, Sam Seder from the majority report, Lance from the Serfs, Matt Binder from the majority report. Left leaning positive male role models. I'm sure there is more but they stand out as I watch them every week.
Who is our Jordan Peterson equivalent?
Reporters and intellectuals can be role models but they are more passive than actively preaching what masculinity should mean.
We've also got Brian Tyler Cohen, Hasan Piker, David Pakman as well. Beau Of The 5th Column I know has already been listed, but I feel when it comes to instilling change in the hearts and mind of radicalized young men, he's up there with Hasan and BTC.
They do, but they are not mainstream. "Average person" probably never heard of them.
This, want it or not, it is not hard for boys to feel incredibly alienated in the left hemisphere. We gone from "girls have issues too" to "only girls can have issues". It's ridiculous, and even more ridiculous when you remember that girls reach their growth spurt sooner than boys, effectively eliminating many of the purported advantages of boys over girl, making them feel even more alienated.
I'm pretty far left and in my entire life I've never experienced "only girls can have issues" as more than an extreme fringe statement.
What I tend to see regarding men is how they, too, are victims of toxic masculinity, taught to internalize their emotions until they have literal breakdowns. The Left gives a fuck about that, and it's one of the cited reasons they have problems with toxic masculinity.
I wonder where you get the impression that "the left" is saying "only girls can have issues"? It feels to me like people have spun this reactionary tale in the backlash to feminism but no one is actually saying that.
It is like every time someone tries to talk about issues women face this is seen as an attack on men. Which I find frankly ridiculous. At the same time, in many cases when people bring up boy's or men's issues they will only do so while simultaneously attacking feminist talking points. This is especially prevalent on social media platforms like Reddit and YouTube.
It does seem like anti-feminists and sometimes straight up misogynistic people have monopolized the entire discussion surrounding men's issues. When you look up information regarding issues men face it is really hard to not end up in a hateful corner of the internet. Some of these sources do not actually have the people looking for help at heart, they are simply anti-feminist and will even go so far as to provide inaccurate information or withhold information just so that they can keep up their narrative.
I keep feeling that there's a disaster being brewed there, the only people paying attention to young boys seems to be the alt right, and there's a need for this which everybody seems to dismiss, every single one of the old style support structures for masculinity have been dismantled over decades, and while they were right to be dismantled all these boys still need the support to actually grow into decent people, and no one is giving it, and these crazies have noticed and are using it as breeding ground for soldiers for their cause. The decent people side must create something for them even if it's to avoid them falling into these dens of craziness.
Exactly. The response among the left seems to be "ha, fuck em" which is a terrible plan
You're confusing the Left with Dems. Dems are not Left. They are squarely Center.
At least give them a reach-around
That's something I have argued about with my liberal friends often. You don't make allies by telling people that their opinions don't matter, or that they're wrong based purely on their sex or color. The left has been dismissive towards men, no... It has been hostile towards men for at least a decade. Masculinity isn't inherently negative and not all masculinity is toxic. Spreading the belief that it is will only make enemies of people who otherwise would be allies. It is incredibly short sighted to reject normative people and make them feel that they're less important or that there's something wrong with them just based off their birth. Also, that is the exact same mentality that the left supposedly wants to overcome, but rather than working towards its end, they've just shifted the target. To be clear, I say "liberal" and "left" and that may cause an assumption that I'm a right-wing conservative. I am not.
This is part of the plot in American history X
You also have issues where high-school educated men have not seen any major benefits to any typical liberal or conservative ideology within the past generation.
On the conservative end, the jobs that the men would have gone into have seen wages and benefits stagnate or drop.
On the liberal end, the status of white men in society has dropped to a more level playing field with class status or wealth being a more defining factor, something which they don't have.
Alt-right conservatives are addressing the economic issues by restricting the work force (anti-immigration) and increasing the jobs in resource extraction (trashing all environmental laws). On social issues, the alt-right head of family is the man.
I was a "Fox News"-viewing turd in high school, too.
Conservativism mirrored what my parents viewed at the time. Seemed edgy. And offered simple solutions to all of life's problems.
Then I grew up. Five years later, I was voting for Barack Obama and terrified of Sarah Palin.
That is actually an easy trap to fall into because that was the environment you were raised in. I am glad you got out of that trap when many do not.
In turn, my parents are gradually escaping.
My dad was a Never Trumper who we gently led out. And Jan 6th made him an "independent" (he votes for Democrats now). My mom is a loyal Republican (somehow)... but agrees Trump is an arrogant piece of garbage and not the horse to bet on.
Then I grew up.
No one just "grows up". You had a set of experiences that allowed you to think beyond the confines of what your parents taught you.
Most never do.
It's not a natural process.
And this is why Republicans are so opposed to higher education. My dad grew up in a conservative household - like, so conservative that my grandad would respond to the question of who he was going to vote for with "I'm a Republican. I vote for the nominee," and it wasn't until he went to college and met people with life experiences that were different from his that my dad began to question the things he was told about the world when he was growing up.
It's a lot easier to convince you that your life sucks because
Jewishbrown immigrants are taking all the jobs and women won't date you because, actually, they're the sexist ones (and it definitely has nothing to do with the fact that you treat them like sex toys) if you've never been beyond 40 miles of where you were born and have never been outside of a town where everybody looks like you.
I was a card carrying Libertarian after high school, before my sense of empathy developed more fully.
Same. The world seemed so simple back then, until I matured. I suspect a lot of people are emotionally stuck
In many ways I still consider myself libertarian, but moreso in anti authority leaning than Republican but with a cooler label. Many of my peers in highschool and university clicked with the pro guns, pro expression sentiment, but when it came actually letting queer people and religious minorities live their lives, or allowing women control over their own bodies and healthcare, they always seemed to side with the Authoritarians in power threatening the to restrict these people. Not to mention many of them had no problem with authority as long as it came from a corporate entity or oligarch.
I still identify with the term Libertarian, but have stopped using it because it truly doesn't represent what it was supposed to mean anymore.
There is such a thing as a "Libertarian Socialist", which seems to be what you are looking for. A lot of Libertarian Socialists also just call themselves "anarchists"; and "anarchism" essentially just means something like "anti-authority" or "anti-hierarchy".
If you want to maybe explore it a bit:
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Homage to Catalonia is a book written by George Orwell where he tells of his time in Spain fighting alongside the anarchists and socialists in Spain (against the fascists supported by Hitler and Mussolini, and against the republicans backed by Stalin).
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The Dispossessed written by Ursula K. Le Guin; it's a sci-fi story about a society living on a moon, who are anti-capitalists and supposedly anarchists (whether they are anarchists or not is one of the focus points of the story).
If you just want to read theory instead, you can also search for Pyotr Kropotkin, and Emma Goldberg.
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yeah it’s a shame that libertarian basically means closeted republican these days
is there a better term?
I’d consider myself pretty libertarian-minded in the whole ‘you live your life and I live mine’ style, but not in the ‘let corporations do whatever they want to workers and the environment’ style
They’ll grow out of it when they enter the job market. I was conservative in high school too until I moved out of mom and dads and realized that our society has created nothing worth conserving for anyone under the age of 50. Nothing will make you radical like realizing you will likely never be able afford a home and children.
I don't know. I don't have any answers, but I'm not this optimistic. Our education system has been in decline, many (not all) people aren't as educated as they should be, and might not even realize they are wrong. Average people are kinda stupid.
In the 2022 Monitoring the Future survey, the largest group of senior boys, more than two-fifths, claimed no politics at all, answering the liberal-conservative question with “none of the above” or “I don’t know.” Nearly one-fifth identified as moderate. Only 36 percent selected liberal or conservative as an ideology, and only there did the trend emerge.
I'm not as sold on "trending conservative" as I am "undecided on political ideology" +/-60% didn't say liberal or conservative.
When I was in high school I was convinced I was conservative. It actually was the reason for a relationship ending at the time. But after I graduated I realized how left leaning I actually was. No one knows who the hell they are in high school.
So incredibly true
Yeah, me too. Though I was taken on by the whole "radical liberal left being oversensitive" thing. I thought of women as equal, but the "femimazis" were extreme. I thought non-heterosexual and non-binary were a bit odd, but they can do what they want, why should I care, but I was the "LGBT propaganda" was too much. I thought people fleeing from wartorn regions deserved another chance, but the "sjws are just letting anyone and everyone in, and they can do whatever they want because otherwise it would be racism".
I would call myself right wing, but practically all of my opinions were very far from it because my youtube overloaded brain thought that the "left" were just a bunch of idle people getting looking what to get offended by today. Only later at uni did I find out how overblown the whole "SJW" youtube thing was, and how much more insane and damaging the other extreme was.
And I believe that this is very much the case, people in school aren't "right wing" because they carefully thought about life and society, but because all they hear about the "left" is this comically exaggerated notion that they're touchy freaks who just want to scream how they're oppressed by everything. Ironically, what got me out of the stupid right wing youtube company was left wing youtube with hour long videos exposing how that "SJW" narrative is just manipulation. But by the time they make one long detailed video exposing some false story, 1000 more of them pop out.
Honestly, the large portion of the internet is just poisonous, especially youtube. The sooner people learn to think and examine sources (use the internet), the better off we're all be.
I partially blame the Left for not addressing mental health issues for our younger boys and men and not doing a better job at expressing what healthy, happy masculinity actually looks like. So the likes of Andrew Taint, Joe Rogan, Matt Walsh and the likes basically swooped in and took that over.
I've got a 15 year old nephew who's starting his Sophomore year in like a week. I've already heard him say some rather disturbing extremist right-wing shit, and sadly his father fucking sucks at being a father so correcting him hasn't been easy for me (I'm the aunt, his mother is not currently in the picture). And he says this shit with his little sister around too.
It's not the fault of the left that the right creates propaganda.
Propaganda is really effective on everyone and they've had the help of algorithms that boost anger inducing material which leads one from "self help" alpha jerk all the way to "the left are demons that want to kill babies."
It's not the fault of anyone other than the propagandists. :/
That's not what they're saying, they're saying- very correctly- that whereas the Right has cultivated a pipeline for reaching out to young men via these propagandists, the Left has not. We're largely ceding the conversations about young male disaffection to those kinds of Right-wing assholes who tell them it's the fault of the Left.
Vaush, for example, is not a good resource for someone who's just some awkward high school kid who knows nothing about politics. He's not speaking to that kid's concerns, he's ranting (very justifiedly, but that's irrelevant) about the manosphere. If you look at the videos by the manosphere, they're trying to touch on points of interest to young men as a group. If you look at the Left-wing YTers, they're talking to people who already dislike the manosphere: "Conservatives don't understand Manga or Anime" (Tim Poole) vs "This incel video is pathetic" (Vaush).
I think a key problem is that for many of us on the Left, it's very difficult to understand (or believe) that someone could look at what right-wingers are doing and not care, so we think it's just an issue of exposure. What we forget is that they have to click on the video/ article/ podcast first, before they get exposed to the content, and right-wingers are sitting there putting out the exact opposite stuff about the Left ("Watch these crazy liberal college feminists getting owned by Ben!") To someone who is disconnected, it does look like it's just 2 equal sides ranting about each other.
So if I don't know who Andrew Tate is, I'm not going to click on a video about why he's bad.
But manga and anime? I love those! I'll click on that. "Why young men feel like no one cares?" I'm an angsty young man, I'll watch that! Then that video leads to the "Why Socialism is Destroying America!" one, and down the rabbit hole they go.
Right. While I feel for what OP has said, it's like the right can be as nasty as they want to be while it's the left that's charged with picking up the pieces. I don't know what the answer is but it can't be let the right do and say whatever.
... what's wrong with Joe Rogan? The traditional media has smeared him because they don't like that CNN plus shat the bed and they're sad about it.
He's just a 'normal' dude. The fact that you put him in with he likes of Andrew Tate, or Peppa Pig fame, says a lot about what you've been led to believe.
I'm not a big fan of Rogan, but I don't dislike either, I'm just not a podcast person very often. The guy just has conversations with all kinds of people.
I think the main issue with Rogen is that while he provides a platform for voices across the political/social spectrum (which is great), he does very little to challenge his guests and generally goes with the flow. This means that people making false claims or dog whistle statements are being taken at face value alongside people making good faith arguments, which grants those bad actors some amount of undeserved authenticity.
So no, he is not nearly as bad as Andrew Tate etc; but he has a lot of exposure and clout that he does not always bring to bear in the name of true and honest discussion. Also the whole RFK debate thing is really poignant here as it's a typical example of taking two "balanced" perspectives on vaccines and assuming that they both deserve to be at the same table, when in reality the anti vax movement largely gets by without any scientific evidence and isn't a reasonable position to hold.
Seriously? https://sopuli.xyz/post/1806608
Rogan is a dumbshit winger troll.
Lol wow.
My first election out of high school I voted for a right wing candidate because that's what my Dad voted for, but also because I was entrenched in Christian ideaology and patriarchal propoganda.
After that I started paying a bit more attention to politics and slowly moved to the left with a few leaps along the way. Nowadays I find the Labor party of Aus to be about as conservative as I can stand. I can barely hide my disgust with anything to the right of them.
Real life experience can be far more radicalising than any immature ideas you inherent in high school.
Edit: My major leaps were: Having an employer illegally underpay me, seeing my friends lose 'stable' jobs in 2008, having a close friend come out as gay, leaving the church, volunteering with unhoused people, living in the UK, living in a rental controlled by a landlord with over 100 properties, and doing disaster relief work.
Yeah living through the fifth once-in-a-generation crisis in this generation is powerful left-wing propaganda.
I bet this happens to a lot of people unless they get sucked into a YouTube/truthsocial echochamber rabbit hole.
I totally could have gone down that route if I were younger. I spent a good amount of time reading conspiracy theories online before YouTube existed.
What effect did the UK change your political views?
I spent nearly every dollar I had saved to live in London, and don't think I'd ever seen such visible displays of wealth disparity once I got there. I got a good paying job but often struggled to save and pay all my bills.
I got to live through the Brexit debate while living behind a chip shop in a poorer, multicultural neighbourhood and heard all the bullshit about immigration being directed at brown people while I worked there as an immigrant myself but because I was white I was largely accepted.
I learned a new level of contempt for the pointless wealth of the monarchy and had to deal with a boss who was plainly bad at his job but because he had an OBE everyone around me worshipped him like he could do no wrong.
I also worked for some very large companies and realised they aren't anything special, just willing to exploit more people.
Right but 62% are neither which is more important because both parties are ass and the kids know it.
This doesn't make mention of a party, only political leanings. Sure, the parties sometimes represent those sides, but that's not what's asked. It probably did play a role in the answers though.
Yeah ok, but highschool boys are fucking dumb as shit too. It's probably the same bunch of idiots that followed Andrew Taint
I mean that's the problem, isn't it? What is it about these assholes like Tate that appeals to young men?
The same thing fascism seemingly has to offer: easy solutions to complex problems.
I'm not saying (especially white) young men are treated unfair but as one myself it's easy to come to the conclusion as you do feel a rift between fulfilling conservative societal norms you grew up with and learned from your elders for which isn't really a space left anymore except of conservative circles so you do kinda feel like being privileged is a burden because you think you have to fulfill more expectations than other groups and I think there's a lack of addressing this in public discourse without simply demonizing young males for trying to find their identity in a way that also includes a healthy relationship with one's own masculinity. If you discuss this I feel like you're quickly drifting into incel and alpha bullshit territory because they're the only ones addressing those problems but of course they don't offer actual solutions because that's not really part of their business model.
Power fantasies.
I've been a pubescent young man once and we have all been idiots laughing at stupid shit, trying to be edgy. I guess that number will change once they'll get more mature.
College (if they go), is when these boys pulled out of their comfort zone and thrown into a huge mixer with a huge variety of new people and ideas. I imagine there's a reason they only see this trend in "high school boys".
Colleges are also seeing less men succeed in the environment. Men are struggling in the classroom and with mental health.
I think we all agree young people are getting a shitty deal with today's society. It's hard to think positively for them.
@Kata1yst @trashhalo @VanillaGorilla Yep. Hence why conservatives keep calling college "woke" and "liberal indoctrination." Funny how reality and not living in denial makes people more left.
That’s when I went from being conservative to liberal, for sure. Still moving further left, 10 years later.
I understand that self identification is more convenient than a list of policy questions, but I kind of wonder how many of them count as conservative by the standards of twenty years ago, or even by the standards of people twenty years older than themselves
Do these conservative teenagers believe that gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry? That a war against Islam is a good idea? That wives should submit to their husbands?
I had a young woman, maybe 17 last semester, turn in a paper --it was a 12 page research/argumentative paper about why gender complementarianism (ie woman and men have different, distinct roles with men at the top). She's a good student, a good writer, but literally she's heard this set of morals from the pulpit her whole life... So like... Yeah. I read another young man's paper where his takeaway from 12 Years a Slave was "wow, not all slave owners were abusive monsters--some were pretty kind and treated their slaves like family." The kids are as alright as the rest of us are.
The conservative platform in the US doesn't exist. At this point, conservative is a bucket term for, "not progressive." Most conservatives are on the right, but not all. Most conservatives are Republican leaning, but not all. Most conservatives are opposed to socially progressive change (e.g. expanded LGBT rights) but not all.
Basically any policy position you could point to will fail to capture a significant number of modern conservatives.
The trend shows identification to either label is falling. Really reads as a way to spin what is likely a move even more left by many high schoolers as a move right by pretending no other axis exist than conservative/liberal. Only 35% said either label. The overwhelming majority didnt pick a label.
That's not surprising since high school boys think they have it all figured out and think they're special. Plus they still believe the lies they've been taught in school. I was conservative around that age. When you think that the world is fair, the government benevolent, and failure a result of laziness, then conservative makes a lot of sense. When you grow up and get some real world experience, you learn just how high the chips are stacked against average people. You learn some empathy.
It's absurd, yes, but nothing new. Many of the kids at my own school are leaning to the far right, without ever stopping and wondering if it even profits them. All they see are a couple of Instagram reels and hear "global leader" and "country's decade" and decide they'll follow the government blindly even if the most harm will be done to them. Worshipping your political idols is a way of life, and anyone who doesn't see the very same line as yours is an anti-nationalist. You might have guessed by now, alas, I speak of India.
relevant video: The Alt-Right Playbook: How to Radicalize a Normie
Theory: Entertainment propaganda - like Fox News and (for the non-elderly) performative alt-right influencers/male-rights-douchebags - succeeds for the same reasons as addictive drugs. They introduce a quick dopamine rush of easy answers, validation, and a feeling of euphoric purpose.
This is very sad. I was in high school in the 1990s and I was hugely big mouthed left-wing boy with friends who were hugely big mouthed left-wing boys and girls. This in a small town. My graduating class was 100 or so. "most high school seniors claim no political identity" looks promising. They are looking at the landscape and saying "this makes no sense, I'm not signing up for any of this crap." So, you know, perhaps a silver lining?
Lack of political involvement is never a silver lining. Apathy doesn't bring about progress it brings about regression. Which is why the right is rising in numbers.
I don't know about that. You can't really say what the future holds unless you have a magical crystal ball or something. I take that type of answer as legitimately confused on the part of the respondent. I didn't exactly say it was a good thing, just that there is hope. They could eventually wind up one way or the other. Time will only tell. I like to be optimistic and hopeful. It keeps me alive.
Zoomer MAGAs with gay friends/relatives feel like a blister just waiting to burst.
Funny, people are mostly blaming the left for not adressing young boys mental health, but not the right for manipulating them into becoming sexist and violent.
Because we've done a bad job of reconciling everything popular culture tells you it means to be a man or manly or sexually attractive with everything popular culture also says is outdated or wrong or cringe or even which you'll be ostracized or even punished. Also the latter is a moving target while the former is not. It's not surprising they choose to listen to non-conflicting voices, and it's lazy to just blame Republicans as if there's nothing for the left to learn from and improve on other than ways to beat Republicans.
This frightening. We are starting to see more boys becoming incels?
Anecdotally I want to say boys have always felt more conservative around that age, especially when I was in highschool in the early 2000s. Granted I lived my teen years in the south, and this probably more of a cope than an actual explanation. There definitely seems to be a lot more active targeting of young men by right wing influencers now. In the past right wing media seemed to always be the domain of old people.
I went through a really weird phase in my life when I was kind of somewhere between conservative and neoliberal. And that was when I lived for 5 years in Arizona of all places. Now I am so far to the left that there isn't really much more room for me to head. Recruiting conservatives at young ages apparently seems to be the key move for fundamentalists of all brands. This has been time-tested by the likes Al Qaida, ISIS, and the Taliban.
Makes sense to me. Treat whole groups of people as your enemy and find out that people don't like you very much.
Makes sense to me too: a bunch of self-absorbed, uneducated, man-children lashing out with impotent rage as contrarians just to feel important and relevant. Source: me. It was me. I was one of those man-children.
Are you saying that teenage boys are actually being targeted by "other" groups? Is this happening outside social media? Is this actually happening at all or is it just rhetoric the manosphere is spewing?
stop sending them to school
While I was in high school in the US, I wanted to pursue stem for humanitarian purposes and thought I needed more advance classes for that. That was not an idea that supported by the administration or guidance department. The admin was filled with authoritarians and guidance filled with "Cs get degrees" types. Teachers could be supportive, but they're ability to help was limited.
The athletes? Yeah, the got all the support they wanted.
I agree with the majority and think both sides suck.
I just think we should fix all the problems. Hot takes like this are why you should elect me!