Question: How did Gen Z go Right?

[GoldenPonyboy 2,434]

1 hour ago, windzo said:

My take its the internet. 
The right wing anti sjw gamer gate boom wasnt that long ago. Doesnt suprise me there is a surge in gen Z. 
Rage sells and social media wants you to keep using their platform. 
and overtime get fed more addictive rage. 
Its how you get people like Tate being so popular 
in my short opinion

I always tell people. In 50 years when we look back, 2 events put us here. Trump asking for Obama’s birth certificate, and gamer gate. 

[Oriane 23,030]

As everyone said, social media. Look at stories from people who said they got caught up in right-wing/incel stuff. It always starts from a sense of loneliness, insecurity, trying to find comfort in videos telling them that women are bad, people of color are bad, and all that ****. And it's much easier to believe in that and start hating someone than trying to get better.

[ThisGuyTony 35,514]

The whole Tik Tok ban fiasco: banned for not even a day and “thanking Trump” tells you everything you need to know.

[Junko Enoshima 4,702]

Social media, but I also think it's because their parents are Gen X, which I think they are more right wing. 

But tbh idk.. I'm not THAT into politics 

[Bebe 17,289]

Our children are radicalised because the tech oligarchs who own the algorithms that flood our social media feeds with conspiracies and hate speech know that, love or hate the content, you will consume it and that will give them greater power when negotiating prices for ad spaces. 

We’ve exposed our youth, who have no media literacy, to social media sites and platforms that thrive on outrage, click bait and conspiracy before they have had time to learn the tools to interpret and decipher the content they are being fed.

The billionaires who own these platforms have used their massive reach, wealth and influence to befriend and lobby politicians and convince the public that they should remain unregulated and avoid being held accountable for the cesspool of hate and rage bait which their algorithm demonstrates leads to more clicks, comments and engagement (and therefore more ad revenue).

Culturally, the “Right to Free Speech” has always been such a sacred value but it has become even more ingrained. Not only do we apply it to political discourse but it’s now “demanded” of privately owned tech spaces. The value of free speech is assumed to be unquestionable and cannot be challenged. It might be more untouchable than even capitalism and religion.

We wouldn’t allow heroin to be sold in the local farmers market and defend it as a necessary evil to protect the free market. We would decry it as a poison that destroys people’s lives, kills people and we would hold that it should certainly not be exposed to children.

At the same time neo-nazis and self proclaimed “incels” spread poison through racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia while even leftists cry out for tolerance of these poisonous ideas and defend the “free market place of ideas”. We then get surprised when people who are constantly exposed to this content and engaging with this content every hour of their waking day become addicted to this poison.

Even a majority of people that reject this way of thinking have been convinced that their children being exposed to this metaphorical heroin is a necessary evil. They are convinced that, if we ban selling heroin even if we know it is bad, someone may come in the future and ban the sale of their milk, bread and butter.

[Morphine Prince 110,031]

42 minutes ago, bionic said:

No messaging will ever be effective if people don't feel wealthier

Correct, but people also need to made to feel like they are worse off under Trump just enough to tip the scale. 

[MOT 3,661]

I take issue with the question a bit. Maga is not conservative, it's the opposite, they want to tear everything down, and I think that is naturally going to atract young people. Historically that would have meant a swing to the left, but these days it's a swing to the right, or at least the right have managed to portray the situation as such, that they are the rebels trying to bring down the elites.

Social media has certainly been a vehicle for this role reversal. I think the proliferation of reality tv has been a major influence too. People genuinely have difficulty these days in distinguishing between what is real and what is not. Reality tv presents us with 'real but not real' situations, and Trump has succeeded in getting people to see politics as a sort of reality show, giving people heroes and villains. You can trace it back to 'lock her up'. That was the first real uh-oh moment for me. Then along came covid and it couldn't just be a health emergency requiring a measured response, there had to be villains, so we had the China virus and 'fire Fauci'. People have been made stupid.

[holy scheisse 23,082]

Also as a disturbing further note my 8 year old nephew got an iPad for Christmas and the first thing he googled was “Elon musk” lol 

 

mind you, my whole family votes blue. And yet him as an 8 year old somehow along the way has already grown an interest in Elon musk?? I fear for gen alpha who will never know the internet not run with malicious intent by the tech oligarchs 

[bionic 50,112]

18 minutes ago, holy scheisse said:

Also as a disturbing further note my 8 year old nephew got an iPad for Christmas and the first thing he googled was “Elon musk” lol 

 

mind you, my whole family votes blue. And yet him as an 8 year old somehow along the way has already grown an interest in Elon musk?? I fear for gen alpha who will never know the internet not run with malicious intent by the tech oligarchs 

Open YouTube in a private tab and tell me what you see

[Melania K Trump 6,303]

Like everyone else says on this thread - it's the internet. More specifically, the lack of any effective regulation on what content can be made on it thanks to our (now) tech oligarchy overlord bros. How exactly do you teach kids how to be media literate when they're still trying to figure out that 2+2=4?

It's really weird, my parents who pretty much believe everything they see on the internet have the same media literacy skills as my teen/early 20's cousins. They absolutely cannot tell apart what is just manufactured rage bait from what is actually happening in the real world. So me and my friends in our mid to late 20's to about 45 ish are weirdly sandwiched between two generations that see an entirely different reality.

The only silver lining I can point out is that at least I can try and have a conversation with my younger cousins and convince them that what they're hearing isn't 100% true.

And I cannot stress this enough, one of the biggest mistakes the left made is cutting people off that don't agree with your world view. Yes, when you are gay/POC/minority and your life is at risk I'm not expecting you to start hugging people that want to kill you, but we NEED to take back the ability to have conversations with our families friends and communities, we NEED to engage more IN REAL LIFE, not just virtue signaling online.

 

[Bronco 28,216]

12 minutes ago, bionic said:

Open YouTube in a private tab and tell me what you see

Dont even need a private tab.

Since Nov all FB's algorithm puts in my feed is random posts by low effort fake news right wing pages that i dont follow or have ever engaged with. 

Its so blatant.

[27monster27 16,175]

1. Bad parenting.

2. Misinformation and disinformation being considered free speech.

3. Social media.

4. The rise of podcast-bro culture.*

4a. The rise of internet pick-me culture alongside this.

5. etc. These are some major points I can think of off the top of my head, but there are more.

Spoiler

*Thankfully Meidas Touch outdid Joe Rogan in viewship recently, so hopefully a path for change here exists.

 

[banjosnap 368]

It's actually very simple. The human impulse to defeat those who aren't like you, combined with the image of the left being so jarring to the right wing, pushing everybody further right.

Also, religion and isolation.

A good example of doing it right is the uk. Labour do things that the left HATE but will ultimately need to be done to prevent a lurch into extreme right wing politics. That puts them as inoffensive to centre-right voters and they'll get the left vote regardless to keep out the far right.

In America, you only have right wing. Only. The culture of "believe what isn't real" is rife, but it's taught from birth.

[Hydrangea 8,329]

6 hours ago, Bronco said:

Simple. 
The left has never understood how to communicate in the digital age. And has had 40 years to combat the rampant neoliberalist focus on individualism and failed to do so. 

Look at the podcast sphere - almost all non-news agent based political podcasts that are popular are right leaning or fully alt right. 
Look at influencer culture - that's inherently right wing because of the values its based on and promotes. The grifter mindset. The clean girl aesthetic. 
Look at how left wing figures behave vs right wing - Right wingers latch onto right wing figures, even if they dislike them, because it advances the agenda in the long term. Left wingers demand purity and devote their content to complaining about how bad the alternative to the far right is and then complain when the alternative to the far right doesn't win. 

Look at the focus of left vs right in the last decade + - The period since 2008 has been defined by massive gaps opening up in wealth, growing poverty and instability for working people, the complete collapse of regional industry through which entire areas built their community and sense of identity and future around. 
In this time, the right has consistently positioned all policies around this economic pain being felt by the working class even though we all know a lot of it is manipulated lying. In the same time period, parties like the Democrats & Labour in the UK have increasingly ran away from talking about economic issues and solutions and trying to run up a core vote strategy based purely on social issues. Which the right have exploited and successfully painted their opposition as parties ignoring the economic pain many people are feeling - all while without offering them a future. 

Gen Z is the first generation entirely failed from the first to turn 18 to the last of them to turn 18 by the generations prior. It started showing with millenials, but Gen Z is the first generation to come to maturity where the social contract has entirely broken down. They inherit a worse future than that of those who came before them. And right now, the only political groups offering radical changes to this (whether we think they would work or not) is typically those on the right. 

On the other hand though look what happens when “the left” gets a bit too prevalent or “powerful”. there’s a reason the black panthers were dismantled but the KKK is still around. There’s a reason police go “undercover” at left protests and yet somehow the people who tried to overthrow the government are walking free. 

[Bronco 28,216]

3 minutes ago, Hydrangea said:

On the other hand though look what happens when “the left” gets a bit too prevalent or “powerful”. there’s a reason the black panthers were dismantled but the KKK is still around. There’s a reason police go “undercover” at left protests and yet somehow the people who tried to overthrow the government are walking free. 

There's a major gulf between "the left are bad at messaging" and the blank panthers. 

No denial the establishment is stacked against us. But the current left wing environment of fragmentation and infighting alongside abject laziness borne from online only activism isn't because the police state exists.

The police state are in every right wing militia etc as well. Not just as willing contributors, but because they need to know who to kill as and when they overstep or lose their value. Which if the night of long knives teaches us anything, will be soon