She continued: “Most cultures have rites of passage for growing up. It’s not an easy thing to do, and in America we don’t have them. And we’ve lost, for a generation, a lot of traditional role models… What we got instead were these influencers and internet celebrities that a lot of people aspire to become now.”
Democrats are attempting to create their own contrasting vision of masculinity in light of Trump’s embrace of these creators. Last week, Mike Nellis, a Democratic digital strategist, helped organize the White Dudes for Harris rally, where dozens of white politicians and celebrities spoke to thousands of their white counterparts about voting for Harris. Throughout the rally, many of the speakers, including Harris’s vice presidential nominee, Tim Walz, advocated for these same disaffected young men to leave the Republican Party.
“I think there are millions and millions of white men in this country who are fed up with MAGA politics and who reject Project 2025 and need a model and a permitting structure for something else, and that’s what we’re doing with White Dudes for Harris,” Nellis says.
Nellis saw Harris’s decision to include Walz on her ticket as another strategy to appeal to white male voters. “The guy is a father and in theory he would be like a ‘real man,’ but here he is supporting and defending women’s rights. He is campaigning for a woman of color for president. He is talking about ending gun violence,” Nellis says. “There are new role models out there, and so I think there is a struggle over what it means to be a man.”
“We’ve had a cultural problem with young people for several years that is now becoming a political problem, and both parties are recognizing that,” Kleinfeld says.
In 2019, I profiled A YouTuber named Joey Salads who was running for a Staten Island House seat against Nicole Malliotakis. He never had a chance to win, but his Instagram model girlfriend, nice cars and 10 million followers convinced him he had a chance. Salads admired Trump, seeing him as someone for whom the rules didn’t apply in the pursuit of money and success either.
4chan’s incels and YouTube’s hyper-masculine pranksters had seen Trump as a role model even before the former president was elected. In 2024, those rotten-brained influencers and forum commentators have more influence than ever, and they’re giving it back to the man who made it all possible.
“In some ways, they’re like post-incels, who have gotten over some of their incel phase with fame and followers, but who still have resentments and insecurities that are expressed in strange ways,” Jack Z. Bratich, a communications expert and professor at Rutgers University, tells me. “It’s possible that the Trump campaign is trying to broaden its reach with these types of people, or that they’re simply looking to increase the number of young voters and have stumbled upon this new mutation of online youth.”
About 49 percent of young white men voted in the 2020 election, According to data from the Center for Women and American PoliticsThis represents an increase of nine points compared to 2016.
The chat room
Thank you to everyone who wrote to give me such thoughtful responses to my last newsletter. I really appreciate the questions and being able to speak directly with some of you.
This week, I want to know what you think about how Republicans and Democrats are reaching out to young people in this election cycle. Have you had any conversations with people in your life who have convinced you that it’s working? Is there something else they should be doing?
