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Manosphere influencers and podcast bros may be losing favor with young men.
New data shows that Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Andrew Tate, and Joe Rogan — major influencers with massive young male followings — have recently lost considerable approval among that very group.
It’s a symptom of a broader, concerning phenomenon: many young people’s political outlook seems to be more reactionary than based in principle. They’re looking for heroes to take their problems seriously, but they’re finding out that grievance alone isn’t a grounding philosophy.
Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, podcast host Joe Rogan has lost 11 points of approval among young men, bringing him down to 42%. Elon Musk was down 14 points to just 37%, and Tucker Carlson’s net favorability went down 12 points.
And Andrew Tate, who was arrested this year for alleged sexual assault, now has a dismal -30 approval rating among young men. That’s all according to new data published by Puck from the Speaking With American Men Project (SAM), which has been tracking the political preferences of young men aged 18 to 29.
Of course these are vastly different characters within the so-called “manosphere.” And, to be honest, I think it’s a little unfair of SAM to lump Rogan, Musk, Carlson, and Tate together — but the uniform contraction in their popularity is still revealing.
Over the past several years, young men of all political stripes who are increasingly disillusioned with our political system have been desperately looking for someone to believe in and to look up to. And they’ve gravitated towards influencers who spoke to their problems, from Hasan Piker on the extreme left to Nick Fuentes on the extreme right and many others in between.
All these influencers delivered a similar pitch: I hear your problems, I won’t talk down to you, and maybe we can fix it.
In the run-up to the 2024 election, young men felt seen and heard by President Trump’s engagement with this corner of the internet. His showing up on Joe Rogan and Theo Von’s podcasts and even at UFC fights was extremely effective — to the point that researchers have looked into a “Joe Rogan effect” in recent elections.
Young men came out for Trump in record numbers — in part, I think, because they were relieved to be acknowledged but also because they saw him as someone who could help quell their dread about what it means to be an American man today.
A September Cygnal poll just found that a stunning 43% of young men felt the rules in the country were stacked against men like them and an overwhelming 63% wanted the government to do more about the problems facing young men in particular.
Young men had high hopes for a fix-all savior. Perhaps that’s why President Trump’s approval rating dropped with young men from 55% when he took office to 27% today, per Speaking With American Men’s data.
Of course, the liberal media is running with the narrative that this polling data is proof that the manosphere is dying and taking MAGA along with it, but I don’t think the story is so simple.
As a member of Gen Z myself, I think it’s part of a broader story of my peers losing faith in absolutely everything.
Let me paint the picture with a few statistics: Just 9% of Americans under 30 think the country is headed in the right direction, per a Harvard Youth Poll. Today both parties have a net negative favorability with young men. A Public Agenda study of men aged 18 to 34 found that the majority agreed that politicians don’t care what people like them think (62%) and that politicians can no longer meet the country’s challenges (56%). And a shocking 1 in 3 young male respondents to a YouGov poll agreed that a president who “tears it all down” is the only way forward.
On some level, I understand why young men are becoming so cynical. It’s hard growing up in a political moment when everyone is vying for your attention, making promises, and often delivering snake oil to your social media feeds from the time you were a kid.
Young people today grew up literally drowning in information, to the point that it’s hard to know who to have faith in or what to trust. Add on top of that the fact that cost of living is skyrocketing, as AI doomers like Musk are claiming all jobs will soon be destroyed. Very few politicians or influencers are actually able to offer a vision of the future that kids are able to buy into.
It’s true that some manosphere voices are totally toxic and kids moving away from them should be a good thing, but if the alternative is giving up on society altogether, they’re simply trading that ideology for the most toxic possible outlook: nihilism.
That doesn’t bode well for their futures or ours.