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
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.