Fifth Avenue Forum

This lady is one of Tim Pool's people. She's right. The divide in Gen Z is clearly there:
The responses are interesting/terrifying and largely boil down to two things:

1. Marry them and force your will on them to become conservative.
2. Take away women's right to vote.

I'm curious as to this audience (largely left leaning folks, or at the very least, not off the deep end MAGAs). How do you get more young men to be liberal? The fall isn't nearly as sharp here as it is in South Korea, but the divide is clearly there. Or is it not something worth even thinking about?

Sex, lot's and lot's of sex.

Sex, lot's and lot's of sex.

Like... from you? to them?

That’s the Joe Rogan/Andrew Tate effect. Plus young men have been told that men are the problem all of their lives. The left has either largely ignored men or outright stated that men are the cause of a lot of societal issues while the right has been catering to male voters for… well, forever pretty much. It has created a generation of incels and angry dudes.

Still, statistically young people ages 18-29 are voting democrats.

This lady is one of Tim Pool's people. She's right. The divide in Gen Z is clearly there:

The responses are interesting/terrifying and largely boil down to two things:

1. Marry them and force your will on them to become conservative.
2. Take away women's right to vote.

I'm curious as to this audience (largely left leaning folks, or at the very least, not off the deep end MAGAs). How do you get more young men to be liberal? The fall isn't nearly as sharp here as it is in South Korea, but the divide is clearly there. Or is it not something worth even thinking about?

I wouldn’t say it’s to get them to be more liberal. The issue with young men leaning right IMO is a severe lack of internet intelligence, lack of parental oversight, and toxic masculinity. IMO this really starts around middle school, hormones are raging, and not enough kids have positive role models to deal with liking girls/boys and handling rejection.

Internet Intelligence starts with being able to pick out when someone is trying to sell you something or simply work you into an emotional state. Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, various comedians pushing people like Jordan Peterson send young boys into a world of “what does it mean to be a man?” They see the money, fame, and women. Again relationships are becoming a big part of their life so a lot of them start to buy into this bullshit. Then when it doesn’t work they become angry and search for validation on the internet. It’s easy to find, even if it’s not real.

Parental Oversight is one of two things. One, it’s just hard. I do my best and still at times found Tate or Tate adjacent things coming up in the media my now 10 year old was consuming. Cutting out YouTube curbed a lot of that, as the algorithm will create a feedback loop. Two, the parents just don’t care, don’t have the energy, or don’t realize the amount of oversight that is needed. This lets the kids run wild on the internet and it hugely influences who the kid is turning out to be.

Toxic Masculinity is an odd one. I find myself struggling with the balance at times of letting my kids know that feelings and what not are okay but that they can’t stop you from things like working hard, being brave, and putting yourself out there even though rejection sucks. Many times it would be so easy to say something like “don’t be a wuss” but it’s harder to approach it from an angle of understanding and pushing them to get outside of their boundaries. In a sense, continually driving home that it is good to be brave and it’s okay to fail. It is not okay to paralyze yourself or make excuses. I’ve heard parents at sporting events tell their son to “not be a little dodint” or to “go out there and hurt them.” While I’d like to think they want to have good intentions, I can’t help but think the impact it has on the kid long term can’t be good.

Thise three things and how they’re handled IMO play a large part in how a young person starts to slant one way or the other.

This has been my TED Talk. Thank you for coming.

Sex, lot's and lot's of sex.

Like... from you? to them?

No, I'm too old.

I think a number of things going on.

1. For contrarian/malcontents that are in that 18-21 range. Being annoying online has replaced things like punk rock, or whatever sort of sub culture that aligned with people that are upset with things.

2. Then, I think for the post college, young professional in their early the mid-late 20’s. That’s when you hit that rogan world. It’s hard to move in to the middle class from there (things like buying a house/getting married / etc). And that’s where conservatives give you things to blame. The left does that too (so horseshoe comes in to play). It’s really easy to blame things like DEI for why they haven’t promoted you / you got passed up for a job.

In all seriousness though, I think this just shows that women are having more of a voice in society, especially in the last 10-20 years or so. And I don't care what people say, men and women typically share different views and have different feelings/emotions overall. So they probably skew more liberal.

Whereas men have always skewed more conservative. But just like anything else, when an opposing force starts getting a voice or starts to push back, people with opposing views push back harder. And I think that is where you are seeing that split.

Historically, women just followed their "man" or didn't have a voice. Now they do. And I'm sure some men don't like it.

Edit: and you guys also make a good point in the internet, this gen culture as well.

Maybe it's just a small sample size borne from living in MAGA land, but my Mom and step-Mom are both MAGA and have no problem spouting conservative rhetoric. Their motivations are different (Mom is scared of Democrat policy and is MAGA by default; whereas step-Mom has full-on adopted the MAGA culture war) but in the end it's the same.

They're Boomers, though, so maybe not relevant to this discussion. Just saying that women aren't exactly absent from the MAGA cult.

Push kids to get out of their suburban bubbles/their podcasts (now) and into the real world, and I think those trends start to dwindle.

Speaking as someone who grew up in a conservative household and was a registered Republican, a lot of it at that time boiled down to "this is what my parents/people older than me believe, so I should too". I also had a friend group that was either apolitical or shared similar views, so ideals got reinforced. Once I made it to college, I made friends who challenged those views. I distinctly remember a conversation I had with my roommate in our sophomore year about gay marriage. I told him I was against it and he asked why. I gave him a "well that's what I grew up being told" and something about being Catholic. That being said, I remember feeling... conflicted? realizing that the only reason I had this view was because I had other people telling me "this is what you should believe" without really thinking about how I felt regarding the issue, and I realized that I didn't really care about it because it wasn't something that impacted my life in anyway. This then evolved into a "well if it doesn't impact me, I should support those who are actually impacted by the laws against it".

That really got the ball rolling to start questioning pretty much everything I thought I knew regarding my politics. I know 2024 is a lot different than 2012, and echo chambers are way easier to come by on the internet with all of the algorithms that keep feeding you whatever has your attention, but if I can go from where I was politically to where I am now, almost anyone else could do it.

Personally I see nothing wrong with being liberal or conservative. Different people have different views. I know the specific question was how to get more men to lean liberal, but IMO, the real question is how to get rid of extremism, on both sides. That's where the real issue is IMO. And it seems to be growing in todays world for all the points made above.

I just think people in general need to be more open to ideas and understanding what others think, even if you dont' agree with it, and not be dug into a certain stance to an extreme.

Yeah, I don't see any problem with a person having liberal or conservative views. I'm curious if this question was posed to some "FREE PALESTINE!" folks, what their response would be. The responses on the tweet are from super right wing individuals. Likely incels and red pillers. The responses here are from mostly moderate/normal people.

normal is a stretch.

I SAID MOSTLY

Personally I see nothing wrong with being liberal or conservative. Different people have different views. I know the specific question was how to get more men to lean liberal, but IMO, the real question is how to get rid of extremism, on both sides. That's where the real issue is IMO. And it seems to be growing in todays world for all the points made above.

I just think people in general need to be more open to ideas and understanding what others think, even if you dont' agree with it, and not be dug into a certain stance to an extreme.

I see nothing wrong with the old school conservative views, even though I don’t agree with them. Having a different opinion on government spending, limited government, low taxes, you know that kind of thing. I do see something wrong with limiting women’s access to health care, doing away with the separation of church and state, election denying, calls for violence/justifying Jan 6, etc. You know, typical MAGA stuff.

Personally I see nothing wrong with being liberal or conservative. Different people have different views. I know the specific question was how to get more men to lean liberal, but IMO, the real question is how to get rid of extremism, on both sides. That's where the real issue is IMO. And it seems to be growing in todays world for all the points made above.

I just think people in general need to be more open to ideas and understanding what others think, even if you dont' agree with it, and not be dug into a certain stance to an extreme.

I see nothing wrong with the old school conservative views, even though I don’t agree with them. Having a different opinion on government spending, limited government, low taxes, you know that kind of thing. I do see something wrong with limiting women’s access to health care, doing away with the separation of church and state, election denying, calls for violence/justifying Jan 6, etc. You know, typical MAGA stuff.

Yep, agreed. The extreme stuff, which is unfortunately growing.

I wonder how much Hilary regrets calling Trump voters a basket of deplorables. That is the type of insult that the counter culture/contrarian types love to embrace.

Anyways, ill add my two cents.

A lot of modern topics have tended to diminish the important of personal agency. Critical race theory says racism is embedded in all of us. Being obese is genetic, and the only way to stop being obese is to take a shot of ozempic every few weeks. Successful white guys are perceived to be successful because they are white, not because of any individual merit. There’s probably better examples, but i can’t think of them now. My point is this: there’s a perception that being progressive means that you don’t really have control over your own life and your own outcome. I can see what that bothers a lot of people.

Plus, i think a lot of modern “conservatives” just don’t trust paternalism and information sharing at any level. They don’t want to be forced to take a vaccine, let alone disclose their vaccine status to their employer. They don’t trust google with their search results, and they don’t trust that the government to have their best interests in mind.

Think Ron Swanson here.

But Ron Swanson is a Libertarian, not conservative. What are you trying to say!?

Personally I see nothing wrong with being liberal or conservative. Different people have different views. I know the specific question was how to get more men to lean liberal, but IMO, the real question is how to get rid of extremism, on both sides. That's where the real issue is IMO. And it seems to be growing in todays world for all the points made above.

I just think people in general need to be more open to ideas and understanding what others think, even if you dont' agree with it, and not be dug into a certain stance to an extreme.

I see nothing wrong with the old school conservative views, even though I don’t agree with them. Having a different opinion on government spending, limited government, low taxes, you know that kind of thing. I do see something wrong with limiting women’s access to health care, doing away with the separation of church and state, election denying, calls for violence/justifying Jan 6, etc. You know, typical MAGA stuff.

This is my view as well. I sort of feel nostalgic for the days (which weren't that long ago) when the discussion over the Key Bridge disaster would focus more on federal-vs-state/local responsibility for footing the clean up bill, and less on the potential malign influence hiring a Black person might have had on the event.

That's why to me, these are such extraordinary and unusual times.

Think Ron Swanson here.

The real person that inspired the character Ron Swanson was a woman.

Also, I don't think the idea is that the perception is that successful white people are successful because they are white. If that's the case, I think I might not have been on that mailing list and would like to know where to address my grievance letter.

The - I assert undeniable - reality is that white people face significantly fewer barriers in their daily existence. And that is a societal/structural thing that unavoidably plays a role in how lives play out. The example I always give is there probably aren't very many of us in this group who know what it feels like to be hawked by security the moment you step into a department store. Most of us are never going to know what it's like to be redlined out of home ownership. Those things have nothing to do with 'personal agency'.

That’s the idea behind white privilege but that’s not what some people hear. They hear that they didn’t have to work for anything because they are white. Because they are morons.

So long as I'm better than the majority of white people I'll leave the rest of it to be sorted out by someone else.

Am I privileging?

Bros, lets keep in mind the topic at hand is: can the left attract more men? Not “are racism and privilege real?”

You aren’t going to attract men with a message that is loosely structured as “a lot of people have it worse than you, and you are partially to blame.” That’s reality.

The democratic presidential candidate won Washington County, PA in like 18 out of 19 elections from the depression through 2004. Unions are dead and gone in the Mon valley and in the coal fields of Washington PA. What is the modern day Democratic Party offering to that marginal white guy living in Charleroi?

Source of the post What is the modern day Democratic Party offering to that marginal white guy living in Charleroi?

AND with what they're offering, can they craft the message to make them believe it's actually beneficial to them?

How do you craft that message? I'm not sure how to do it, and I know for a fact the DNC doesn't know how to do it.