Young Bulwarker here - I was born in 1994 and my first vote was for Obama in 2012. I think I'm a small minority within this community in this respect. I also own a Discord server populated by Gen Zers which is mostly based around classical music, but we do discuss current events from time to time. My server is overwhelmingly Dem-leaning,…
Young Bulwarker here - I was born in 1994 and my first vote was for Obama in 2012. I think I'm a small minority within this community in this respect. I also own a Discord server populated by Gen Zers which is mostly based around classical music, but we do discuss current events from time to time. My server is overwhelmingly Dem-leaning, with roughly a 50-50 gender ratio and half the server being LGBTQ+ (I've done demographic surveys).
Now for this podcast episode: Maybe this is just me and my experiences, but I can't identify with Dylan at all (which of course makes sense given that I'm here). That said, pretty much everything he and Cameron said are all things I've heard before regarding the "masculinity crisis". What I don't get is - why was I different? Why did I avoid both the far-right *and* the woke left, the latter of which was the predominant type I dealt with when I was in school? And why wasn't I driven towards MAGA by annoying woke types among my peers, who are cited as a huge reason for the redpilling of young men here? I'll admit, I was much more focused on being anti-woke in the mid-late 2010s, but I had never once considered supporting Trump. In fact, I saw being anti-woke and being anti-Trump as going hand-in-hand - my thesis has always been that we got Trump in the first place in part because of excessive wokeness in the late Obama years, and they are both part of the increasing insanity of politics.
Maybe this is a combination of being an immigrant who was taught to take responsibility for himself from a very young age (a bit too much in fact), work hard, advance yourself, etc. and being autistic. I also didn't have a father in the home. I also was shamed and bullied, at first for being a weird nerdy autistic kid and later for being skeptical of wokeness. I was arguably one of the prime demographics for being radicalized, and I probably would have been if not for my scientific training. I think for me, it was my ability to think through issues and do deep dives that saved me.
Now, for what I think is the general solution, and something that really would have helped guys in my situation? I think the key is to flood the zone with relatable content. Memes, short TikTok-style videos, etc. mocking MAGA, but also mocking the people who aggrieved these young men, such as these moralizing wokescolds. They need a place to land that is firmly opposed to the toxic woke rhetoric which also is opposed to MAGA. If MAGA is the only opposition to wokeness, that's where they'll be.
Interestingly, people like Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, and the rest of the IDW were this - they were places where aggrieved young men could land and find community that is hostile to wokeness that weren't uniformly MAGA at the time. The problem is that these people gained a lot of following from MAGAs too, and sort of led their followers into MAGA to chase those profits. But what got the attention of MAGAs in the first place was that they were being attacked even back then by progressives like the very ones in this community, and MAGAs saw an opportunity to recruit.
I think the moral of the story is that purity tests absolutely kill us politically. Progressives attacked so many non-MAGA content creators for being insufficiently progressive or “problematic” that they led their followers into MAGA out of spite. We have to understand that fundamentally, MAGA was built out of spite against woke moralizing - and they would have lost their power a long time ago if it weren't for woke activists fanning the flames. We have to court people opposed to and frustrated with woke moralizing and let them know they can be anti-woke and still be a liberal or at least not a MAGA, and more importantly, both MAGA and wokes/leftists are a bunch of losers who are uncool, full of beta cucks, etc. and that it's cool to be a liberal who strives for better in his life instead of being a whiny bitch like those wokes/leftists and MAGAs. We have to also stop language policing and allow a bit of “insensitive” language as well. We have to have that space and add to our coalition, instead of do what we've been doing and subtract from our coalition by casting large swathes of people as morally inferior because they're not the picture-perfect progressive.
Young Bulwarker here - I was born in 1994 and my first vote was for Obama in 2012. I think I'm a small minority within this community in this respect. I also own a Discord server populated by Gen Zers which is mostly based around classical music, but we do discuss current events from time to time. My server is overwhelmingly Dem-leaning, with roughly a 50-50 gender ratio and half the server being LGBTQ+ (I've done demographic surveys).
Now for this podcast episode: Maybe this is just me and my experiences, but I can't identify with Dylan at all (which of course makes sense given that I'm here). That said, pretty much everything he and Cameron said are all things I've heard before regarding the "masculinity crisis". What I don't get is - why was I different? Why did I avoid both the far-right *and* the woke left, the latter of which was the predominant type I dealt with when I was in school? And why wasn't I driven towards MAGA by annoying woke types among my peers, who are cited as a huge reason for the redpilling of young men here? I'll admit, I was much more focused on being anti-woke in the mid-late 2010s, but I had never once considered supporting Trump. In fact, I saw being anti-woke and being anti-Trump as going hand-in-hand - my thesis has always been that we got Trump in the first place in part because of excessive wokeness in the late Obama years, and they are both part of the increasing insanity of politics.
Maybe this is a combination of being an immigrant who was taught to take responsibility for himself from a very young age (a bit too much in fact), work hard, advance yourself, etc. and being autistic. I also didn't have a father in the home. I also was shamed and bullied, at first for being a weird nerdy autistic kid and later for being skeptical of wokeness. I was arguably one of the prime demographics for being radicalized, and I probably would have been if not for my scientific training. I think for me, it was my ability to think through issues and do deep dives that saved me.
Now, for what I think is the general solution, and something that really would have helped guys in my situation? I think the key is to flood the zone with relatable content. Memes, short TikTok-style videos, etc. mocking MAGA, but also mocking the people who aggrieved these young men, such as these moralizing wokescolds. They need a place to land that is firmly opposed to the toxic woke rhetoric which also is opposed to MAGA. If MAGA is the only opposition to wokeness, that's where they'll be.
Interestingly, people like Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, and the rest of the IDW were this - they were places where aggrieved young men could land and find community that is hostile to wokeness that weren't uniformly MAGA at the time. The problem is that these people gained a lot of following from MAGAs too, and sort of led their followers into MAGA to chase those profits. But what got the attention of MAGAs in the first place was that they were being attacked even back then by progressives like the very ones in this community, and MAGAs saw an opportunity to recruit.
I think the moral of the story is that purity tests absolutely kill us politically. Progressives attacked so many non-MAGA content creators for being insufficiently progressive or “problematic” that they led their followers into MAGA out of spite. We have to understand that fundamentally, MAGA was built out of spite against woke moralizing - and they would have lost their power a long time ago if it weren't for woke activists fanning the flames. We have to court people opposed to and frustrated with woke moralizing and let them know they can be anti-woke and still be a liberal or at least not a MAGA, and more importantly, both MAGA and wokes/leftists are a bunch of losers who are uncool, full of beta cucks, etc. and that it's cool to be a liberal who strives for better in his life instead of being a whiny bitch like those wokes/leftists and MAGAs. We have to also stop language policing and allow a bit of “insensitive” language as well. We have to have that space and add to our coalition, instead of do what we've been doing and subtract from our coalition by casting large swathes of people as morally inferior because they're not the picture-perfect progressive.