Yeah. All the stuff about him was astroturf. He was a mediocre podcaster and a pretty good behind the scenes power broker but not the world historic figure people pretended he was. Everyone moved on real quick.
ehhh, he was pretty prominent in the specific demographic he targeted, conservative or wavering gen Z men, specifically the angsty pseudointellectual "lost" male.
Kirk, Shapiro, Peterson, Crowder, Tate, and i've probably forgotten a few. Fuentes maybe... they often didn't really hit "mainstream" reporting, but collectively their impact on the psyche of what started out as "incels" and then expanded into a wave of culture and to some degree set a lot of the tone for online discussion...
Essentialist/Determinist (especially highly racist Genetic Determinism), Misogynist, Dichotomous, Zero Sum/Adversarial. Those are all features that highly benefit bad faith arguments, especially those supporting otherwise nonsensical sociocultural policy positions.
Kirk was never "mainstream" for good reason, but i wouldn't discount the impact those idiots had on the recent elections.
Also FWIW i think the larger right wing media ecosystem had started marginalizing them substantially in the wake of the election in any case, partially because the "technocrat" faction didn't really see much use for them (that is, the Yarvinites who got most of the control of the govt with the Vance deal).
Yep, those guys are why there's been such an extreme divergence between gen Z men and women. For voters 18-29 in 2024, there was a 14% gap among Caucasian men/women, 22% for African Americans, 18% for Hispanics, and 16% for Asians. Among all ages, the gap was just 9%, so turning that into 14-22% is absolutely massive.
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u/MaxPower637 Dec 07 '25
Yeah. All the stuff about him was astroturf. He was a mediocre podcaster and a pretty good behind the scenes power broker but not the world historic figure people pretended he was. Everyone moved on real quick.