Young People and Politics

[Jacob]

Yeah, if you're a mass-market brand then pissing off a significant section of your target demographics is a bad move. That's why mass-market publicity stuff tends to be bland and non-controversial.

I was thinking of the thing from a couple of days ago where that Chinese gaming company got multiples of funding after they got into it with Sweet Babies (and are getting more exposure now, because we're talking about it).

There's basically little to no downside for them for this, IMO.

Any thoughts on my actual question, by the way?

[crazy canuck]

Jacob, to your first point about youth being influenced by the right through online humour, seeing the experience of the children of my friends' male children after they started playing multiplayer shooter games (and I suppose other multiplayer games) the change in their attitudes was striking, and strikingly different from their parents.

[Jacob]

Jacob, to your first point about youth being influenced by the right through online humour, seeing the experience of the children of my friends' male children after they started playing multiplayer shooter games (and I suppose other multiplayer games) the change in their attitudes was striking, and strikingly different from their parents.

Yeah, that's a big part of what I'm talking about. Kids - and young people - are mainlining this sort of stuff in environments where they're having fun and want to fit in, and it's pretty much going only in one direction. And most of it is presented as humour; maybe it's mostly to be able to use the "I'm only joking bro" excuse if you cross the line, but it's still "funny" whether or not it's actually funny. It doesn't feel serious, but it's absolutely shaping attitudes.
'
While I was talking about things like 4chan and influencer videos related to games, it's exactly the same dynamic in the social spaces of games themselves. The memes and attitudes and talking points are generated in the social media spaces and imported straight into the gaming spaces where they are largely assimilated as part of forming adolescent group identities.

That Chapelle or Seinfeld or some other has-been big star comedian took some minor career hits for saying something stupid about trans people is neither here nor there when it comes to shaping the attitudes of young people (and explaining why there's apparently a significant shift to the reactionary right). That some up and comers in the entertainment industry may self-censor to fit prevailing mores as they aim for mass market appeal is maybe a concern, but I don't think it influences young people nearly as effectively as the seemingly complete colonization of online spaces by the reactionary right does.

[Sheilbh]

It's an interesting idea.  Perhaps precisely because youth are so saturated with online experience, live experience can have more impact.  Certainly it seems to hold in the music business where live performance has returned to being king. By the same token, they are also likely more jaded when it comes to the "air" campaigns and more likely to see through the propaganda aspect. (?)

Yeah - I think the music comparison is interesting.

I'd add that this tension maybe goes back a bit too. Obama's was the first campaign I remember reading about microtargeting and data wizzes shaping campaigns (total aside but I wonder if the negativity around that was because it became associated with Trump and Brexit, or if we'd started to turn against big tech already); it's also for a candidate defined by oratory. It was simultaneously a campaign using what was considered cutting edge at the time, for a candidate with a generational talent for the oldest political skill in the world.

I want to reiterate that my initial point was about online spaces, about meme-culture, and social media (not about stand-up comedians) and I"m still curious if folks agree that the reactionary right has dominated that space (at least in the English speaking world)?

I think, yes in the US. Ironically this could perhaps be explained by that domino effect mean from the decline of Tumblr to the rise of American fascism. (Semi-seriously - I feel like Tumblr was the left's meme industrial complex? )

I'm not so sure in the UK. I think online meme, social media, snark generally is more left-wing (which may simply be because the Tories are in power, Brexit did happen etc). In the UK I think you'd associate right-wing memes with boomers on Facebook not teen edgelords posting sonnenrads. But an awful lot of the internet is American so if you end up in those spaces you absolutely do end up seeing a reactionary right space - the Martinus theory.

The establishment has grown, the power of old money has shifted into the background a fair bit whilst a lot of new money has come in. But as a basic concept it is broadly still the same groups with the same attitudes.
Less care for titles and 'class', a lot more attention on money and materialism. Its far more 'vulgar' than it used to be. But the idea that the establishment is left wing is just madness.

I'm not sure. 

I think the establishment is politically inert - it is the social context of power and the politics reflects the people participating in those social spaces. So I think there are different establishments at different times which have different politics.

There is also the fact that there are different sorts of conservatism. You know I think the establishment of the 1950s was "moderate" and paternalist, more aristocratic etc - it was also premised on people knowing their place and not challenging that. I think they were replaced by the grammar school kids (who were the lefty comedians of the 1950s and 60s mercilessly tearing apart the establishment) with a chip on the shoulder. I think they were the establishment of the Thatcher era, 90s, 00s - I wonder if there's an analogy here with the New York Jewish intellectuals who came up through City University (and also often ended up as shock troops of Reagan and neo-conservatism). I think in part there's an angst because the establishment as social context continues to evolve and they're replaced.

I'd also argue there is a shift with globalisation and the relative decline of UK (and Western) power in the world. Establishments used to be closed and national because that was where power is - I'm not sure that's so true in a world without capital controls. I suspect there's a global level which includes, say, all the big tech bosses as well as national ones.

I'm not sure it's right to say establishment is left-wing or right. My read at the minute would be that, in the UK at least, it is culturally and socially permissive/liberal - and I think globally that's still within broadly pro-market, economically liberal, globalised context.

[DGuller]

I get the fear of cancellation, but I think that these days - in the entertainment industry at least - it's way overstated. Getting into brawls with "the woke" is a legitimate marketing strategy. Being known for "pissing off the woke police" can generate attention (and money) way beyond what those individuals or companies would otherwise have generated.

If you want to be regarded as a right-winger, sure.  I know plenty of people in my life who are decidedly left wing and always had been as long as I knew them, but are also decidedly anti-woke.  I don't think the anti-woke left is all that represented in the entertainment industry, and I don't think it's because they don't exist.

[crazy canuck]

I am skeptical about claims made by people that that they have always been left wing, when they use phrases like "anti-woke"

[Valmy]

If you want to be regarded as a right-winger, sure.  I know plenty of people in my life who are decidedly left wing and always had been as long as I knew them, but are also decidedly anti-woke.  I don't think the anti-woke left is all that represented in the entertainment industry, and I don't think it's because they don't exist.

Specifically what sorts of opinions are "anti-woke"?

[Tamas]

Well I would think you can be a communist for example without lomong identity politics all that much.

[Valmy]

Well I would think you can be a communist for example without lomong identity politics all that much.

Ok well if you mean identity politics fucking say identity politics. Don't give me this "woke" bullshit. I don't know what that means.

But ok so if I were to be specifically anti-Identity politics, what sorts of positions would I have? Gays should be fine not having any rights and having to live in the closet so long as Communism prevails? Something like that?

Maybe it is something like "we shouldn't divide the classes in the face of our struggle against Capitalism, so everybody should cool it until the revolution is over"?

[crazy canuck]

Well I would think you can be a communist for example without lomong identity politics all that much.

And you can be MAGA or a fascist, or both, and be all about identity politics.  But how does the phrase "anti-woke" help with the analysis?

[Barrister]

Any thoughts on my actual question, by the way?

I mean I thought I did.

But if I have your question correct, it is:

I want to reiterate that my initial point was about online spaces, about meme-culture, and social media (not about stand-up comedians) and I"m still curious if folks agree that the reactionary right has dominated that space (at least in the English speaking world)?

So look - there is a dominant social ideology in the media that for lack of a better word we can call "woke" - pro gay rights, pro-womens-rights, pro-immigration, pro-trans - you get the idea.

If you want to question any portion of that progressive ideology - in the mainstream media - you get called out on it, and called out hard.  You might call it "cancel culture" even.

What you see in social media is not the "domination" of anti-woke voices - but rather that those voices exist at all.  Because you aren't allowed to express them in other social settings. 

Now look - I get extremely frustrated with social media.  You can make very legitimate arguments - say about whether female trans athletes should be allowed to compete in the olympics as females (just to pick a topic from the news recently).  This was a topic you barely saw discussed in the "mainstream media" until very recently, and the discussion was rightly driven by social media.

But then I also see horribly racist shit about how black people are just inferior to whites.  Also on social media.  None of which I consider remotely legitimate.  All of which I see on Twitter/X on a regular basis.

But getting back to the word "dominate" - progressive voices are still very loud on social media / "meme space".  The online space is where the whole idea of "cancel culture" comes from after all - huge online mobs demanding people be fired because they said the wrong thing.

So I'm going to make an assumption.  You probably won't agree with it, and that's fine and you can tell me why I'm wrong.  What you see as "anti-woke" voices "dominating" "online spaces" is just those voices being allowed to be expressed at all.  10-20 years ago those voices had no outlet at all outside of shitty zines.

Where I struggle is sometimes those "anti-woke" voices are important voices that should be heard - and sometimes they're the absolute worst racist / homophobe / anti-woman /anti-trans / anti-poverty pieces of shit who should rightly be driven back under the bridge where they came from.  I don't know how you can make the distinction these days.

[crazy canuck]

Interesting, women's rights are now a woke issue.

The Right is truly messed up.

[crazy canuck]

Any thoughts on my actual question, by the way?

I mean I thought I did.

But if I have your question correct, it is:

I want to reiterate that my initial point was about online spaces, about meme-culture, and social media (not about stand-up comedians) and I"m still curious if folks agree that the reactionary right has dominated that space (at least in the English speaking world)?

So look - there is a dominant social ideology in the media that for lack of a better word we can call "woke" - pro gay rights, pro-womens-rights, pro-immigration, pro-trans - you get the idea.

If you want to question any portion of that progressive ideology - in the mainstream media - you get called out on it, and called out hard.  You might call it "cancel culture" even.

What you see in social media is not the "domination" of anti-woke voices - but rather that those voices exist at all.  Because you aren't allowed to express them in other social settings. 

Now look - I get extremely frustrated with social media.  You can make very legitimate arguments - say about whether female trans athletes should be allowed to compete in the olympics as females (just to pick a topic from the news recently).  This was a topic you barely saw discussed in the "mainstream media" until very recently, and the discussion was rightly driven by social media.

But then I also see horribly racist shit about how black people are just inferior to whites.  Also on social media.  None of which I consider remotely legitimate.  All of which I see on Twitter/X on a regular basis.

But getting back to the word "dominate" - progressive voices are still very loud on social media / "meme space".  The online space is where the whole idea of "cancel culture" comes from after all - huge online mobs demanding people be fired because they said the wrong thing.

So I'm going to make an assumption.  You probably won't agree with it, and that's fine and you can tell me why I'm wrong.  What you see as "anti-woke" voices "dominating" "online spaces" is just those voices being allowed to be expressed at all.  10-20 years ago those voices had no outlet at all outside of shitty zines.

Where I struggle is sometimes those "anti-woke" voices are important voices that should be heard - and sometimes they're the absolute worst racist / homophobe / anti-woman /anti-trans / anti-poverty pieces of shit who should rightly be driven back under the bridge where they came from.  I don't know how you can make the distinction these days.

Keeping for posterity.

[Tamas]

Well I would think you can be a communist for example without lomong identity politics all that much.

And you can be MAGA or a fascist, or both, and be all about identity politics.  But how does the phrase "anti-woke" help with the analysis?

It doesn't

[Josquius]

Interesting, women's rights are now a woke issue.

The Right is truly messed up.

Anything thats different to how it was when a typical boomer was a kid is woke.
Except for things they like. Consistency isn't important.