It’s interesting to compare my dad, who’s a stereotypical old-school boomer misogynist, with modern incels. For all of his reactionary politics, he genuinely loves women and is comfortable with his boomer understanding masculinity. I don’t see this love for women and security of their masculinity in modern incels. I see his reactionary politics as a barrier to truly loving women while I see incel’s reactionary politics as a political expression of their profound hatred of women. They adopt reactionary politics because they hate women. Perhaps their attraction to combat sports is led by their hatred of women and their fantasies of injuring, maiming, and even killing women. This can even explain their attraction towards gaming streamers. Anyone who’s been gaming for a while know about freaks who go out of their way to kill every single sex worker they meet in GTA or who exclusively teabag enemy female avatars. Let’s not even talk about the mountain of H-games where you r-word women.

So why do they hate women? My belief is that online dating apps greatly cultivate this hatred. There’s this contradiction about how men can sleep around but women have to be faithful ie men are keys while women are locks. This contradiction is resolved with a small percentage of men (the chads) hoarding all the women (the beckys) with the rest of men being involuntarily celebrate (the incels). In this schema, every woman is assigned to a particular chad while every chad has multiple woman being assigned to him. In other words, all women belong to a particular harem catered towards a particular chad. The men who do not have a harem of women are the incels.

This is literally that dating app meme where all the women point to a single chad at the top with the rest being womenless incels. Online dating apps obviously don’t actually want people to be in successful relationships in order to retain users, so from the perspective of the bottom 90% of male users who constantly get rejected matches, it’s the confirmation of the chad-becky-incel schema. The fact that women get sexually harassed on those apps is not relevant to these men, and even with leftist men who have embraced feminism, there’s still a degree of bitterness and resentment. I see this bitterness and resentment whether Hexbear men talk about their lack of success with dating apps. The problem is that since most men haven’t embraced a leftist politics (and for many men who have nominally embraced a leftist politics), that bitterness and resentment is targeted towards what’s in front of them ie the women who rejected them. It will eventually become hatred, which makes them extremely susceptible to reactionary politics.

Maybe live music performance help otherwise womenless men mellow out a bit. Unlike a bar or a club setting, there’s less of an expectation that you have to hook up with women, but it’s also not like a church setting where you won’t ever hook up with women. It’s a setting where single people who are ready to mingle congregate for the stated purpose of not mingling but they’re still down for whatever.

I think music probably a part of it. Many people are pointing out that leftist commentary are ignored and just as many artists have not been lefties historically. I agree with this, but if the changes in music consumption really are a factor, then I think it boils down to how part of the music scene used to be the structural framework holding together a semi-coherent counterculture. Countreculturists are rarely well-read in theory but they do absorb and reinforce a lot of concepts if you give them enough time.

That’s the part of the industry that would have affected people, and it’s also (imo) the side of the industry that has disappeared in recent decades. I suppose the countercultural artists still exist, but it’s much harder for them to break out and develop fanbases now. Everything is streaming now and streaming numbers are highly correlated with artist/label budgets. The rumor is that you can buy top playlist placement on Spotify if you have the right connections and/or enough money. Often it’s labels dealing with placement and the trend in labels is that they want formulaic music - which imo explains why all of the playlists are so bland and soulless.

Other than that, I believe the right-wing pipelines (especially in topics young men populate) are in a very mature state at this point and are probably another factor.

I don’t expect any of this to get better without mass cultural changes. We’ve eliminated the feelings of belonging, community, and purpose. Or at least commodified them and put them behind paywalls. I think this is one reason why so many people are grasping at reactionary ideologies, to fill a sense of emptiness. And if those ideologies promote misogyny (which they usually do), then they’re going to lead to greater and greater divides and repercussions for everyone.

I like this idea. I think better cultural influences can have a positive effect. I was never a chud, but I was a young dumbass who voted Republican the first time I could vote. I gradually moved left to where I haven’t voted red or blue in more than 25 years. My love for good music and art kept me among people who radicalized me without even trying.

Modern fascism has a lot more to offer to young men than young women. The return to tradition explicitly pitches a vision of society that centers on the patriarch that provides for his brood mare(s). I don’t think there is anything special about the medium of the message (music vs sports vs video games vs other forms of influence), it’s the message itself that people respond to.

Nah I know a lot of people who are into “alternative” music subcultures that tend to be associated with liberals, and have adopted the affect of openness and tolerance that comes with it, but when you actually talk to them, they’re straight up chuds

If this were to be true, then all the millennials who grew up with Rage Against the Machine (literally one of the most popular bands throughout the 1990s and even in the 2000s) would have turned hard left revolutionaries already.

Idk why we’d assume a superstructural cause over just looking at the base. Patriarchal sex relations have been a thing for thousands of years but have been breaking down for a while. Combined with the world generally becoming more shit, of course the boys are going to gravitate towards the right.

Although people definitely used to idolise musicians more, I’m not sure they had much explicit political influence beyond either vague counter-culture ideas or alternatively reinforcing social norms. But definitely the fact that this kind of youth influence is now being replaced by expressly political and right wing influencers and narratives must be having some effect. And it’s part of a kind of anti-social shift that things like Covid and internet culture and social isolation etc are driving

I don’t really think it’s music. The most popular music when I was growing up was as misogynist as any redpill influencer is today. Eminem was one of the biggest music artists when I was a youth, and he wasn’t some shining example how to act. I think music artists are still fairly influential on young men, people like Travis Scott, 21 Savage, Post Malone, even Kanye West still draw big stadium/arena crowds of young men. I think there are bigger structural issues as play.

I think its general atomization for both genders tbh, coupled with (frankly) workplace atomization. (and maybe social spending pricing going though the roof, its not 10-20 bucks to concert its like 100-200)

Music is only a mirror to our complex capitalist societies. Obviously reactionary ideas are going to be popular during a time of capitalist economic crisis when the regimes are actively enforcing the propagation of those ideas and trying to silence progressive organizations that enlighten the working class. The reason girls tend to get less conservative must be because they understand that they are next in line if fascists take over and take away rights overnight.

Mass produced monopolized music with modern algorithms to search for it also plays a role, it’s no coincidence that some AI generated formulaic crappy song with a simple but catchy beat is extremely easier to find than Macklemore’s songs about Palestine for instance

This is an interesting point actually. The elder millennials and Xers I know are way more into music than me or my fellow Zers, never made that connection though.