By Karly Ortiz
We are looking at a new generation of bigoted, angry men— all because some streamers wanted a few more subscribers.
The alt-right pipeline is the concept of the radicalization of young people toward the alt-right movement, typically through social media.
Recently, with a new resurgence of “alpha male” podcasters and “edgy” YouTubers, young men primarily are being targeted for indoctrination and they typically don’t know it until it’s too late.
“Dark humor”, which is often just people saying the most offensive things they can think of, has been around for a long time. This form of humor is typically people punching down on oppressed groups. Because of that, the target audience for dark humor-focused content is young white men who don’t have to worry about being the punchline of an offensive joke.
The content creators pushing these problematic ideas are doing it for the engagement it gets them, not understanding or not caring about how they’re influencing their audience.
A viral video proving the implications of this content surfaced on Tiktok, showing three boys meeting streamer Sneako. Sneako is notorious for going on misogynistic and homophobic rants, most of which are written off as edgy humor that gains his viewers.
In the video, the boys immediately begin spewing misogynistic rhetoric, make transphobic comments, and even wish death on all gay people. Sneako laughs them off, arbitrarily combating their statements but still giving them the attention they wanted.
In one 30-second clip, the consequences of spewing alt-right ideology to young people for shock value becomes clear.
In the past, this rhetoric could only be found deep in Reddit threads and Discord servers, but now it is so common that we don’t even think twice about it. Society can agree that these content creators are bad, but overall we see them as jokes instead of the danger they are.
Now, we don’t even refer to it as the alt-right propaganda it is anymore. Instead, it’s been renamed as “Red Pilled” content, which is a reference to The Matrix. Essentially it means this homophobic, misogynistic, racist, and overall hateful way of thinking is the correct way to view the world.
It implies that the consensus to be accepting is a result of liberal brainwashing, and going against that ideology is free-thinking and intellectual.
These red-pilled content creators are getting away with openly teaching children to hate because they’ve decided to hide their indoctrination in plain sight.
Nearly every well-known male streamer has had controversy for saying these problematic things themselves or continuing to collaborate with other men who share these views. It seems like this content is the only kind made for male audiences anymore. Like they couldn’t even avoid it if they tried.
A good example of this is former Twitch streamer Adin Ross. To most people, he is a streamer desperate for views, and not someone to take seriously. He is only ever spoken about when a clip of him being purposely ridiculous goes viral, and he is forgotten almost immediately after.
But, Adin has a fan base of young men and boys who watch these streams daily. They hear him openly praise misogynistic criminals like Andrew Tate and former president Donald Trump daily. They listen to him spew homophobic sentiments daily. And eventually, the ridiculous statements start to make sense to them.
It doesn’t help that, despite Adin’s problematic content, he was still accepted into the homes of mainstream streamers like Kai Cenat until a few months ago. Kai Cenat who is the most subscribed streamer of all time on the Twitch platform.
We must start taking this type of content seriously. The three boys in the video with Sneako are not the only young people who believe in those damaging ideas because of social media. And it isn’t something they will grow out of if these men continue to indoctrinate them.
