High School Boys are Trending Conservative

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

Therapy as currently practiced struggles to show any statistically meaningful results in reducing mental illness.  People are right to have some questions, especially given that the therapist has a strong financial incentive to keep the patient coming back.

Okay, I don't know where you're getting this but you are very wrong for what it's worth. CBT has a long history of being extremely effective in reducing rates of GAD, SAD, MDD and a host of other mental health conditions, and especially in terms of alleviating those conditions even if they can't be totally eliminated. Particularly when combined with medication the success rates for CBT tend to be in the high 70-80% of people reporting significant improvement a year later in the various studies I've read on the matter. 

Please don't post this harmful and wrong info out there and while I've never been a therapist I know quite a few who 1.) Make very little actually, when the difficulty with insurance and clients flaking comes into play 2.) Genuinely care about their patients and want to help them do the best by always staying up to date on best practices and building a healthy repertoire 3.) Many who actually take on a host of low-income clients to offer services to people who can't afford it, sometimes for as low as $10 a session or even less.

Yes, there are definitely shady mental health practitioners out there of course... But the vast majority of the people in the field are there because they have their own struggles with these issues and want to help others in the ways they may have helped themselves.

[WalterWhite]

In 2022, men aged 18-24 voted for Democrats by a margin of 12%. That same year, women aged 18-24 voted for Democrats by a margin of 38%. Young women are more Democratic than young men, but that is only because Democrats align themselves with feminist causes more than Republicans. Young voters, regardless of gender, are a solid Democratic voting bloc.

[Schiff for Senate]

As a high schooler, my anecdotal experience confirms this. My school is an overwhelmingly Asian public school so one may be inclined to think that students there would be left wing. But most of my male friends actually lean conservative, whether it’s memes mocking Joe Biden or (much more substantially) pushback against wokeism (you see them mocking things like “72 genders” and complaining about reverse sexism). Of course, for obvious reasons most of them also vehemently oppose affirmative action…we had a debate in civics class on the matter last year, and pretty much everyone took a stand against it.

I'm surprised your friends are mainly conservative, given how you live in a way more Democratic place (and presumably less Christian place) than say where I live. I'm curious, do they actively support Trump or Vivek or do they just dislike Biden and dislike the GOP, and are they conservative on other issues like abortion or the other issues you debated?

First place, me too - we live in a majority-Asian, Biden+48 city, in a majority-minority, Biden+60 county. Initially when some of my friends began vocalizing their politics, I actually thought they were trolling before I realized it was part of a larger trend. But what I've seen is it's not like they're pro-Trump or pro-Vivek (I doubt most of them know who Vivek even is lmfao) - when they say that, it's usually trolling. But there is a genuine dissatisfaction with Biden mixed in with all that trolling. As for political issues mainly it's anti-woke and anti - affirmative action from what I've seen. I'm pretty sure on the whole my school is fairly pro-choice, pro-gun control, etc.

[WalterWhite]

As a high schooler, my anecdotal experience confirms this. My school is an overwhelmingly Asian public school so one may be inclined to think that students there would be left wing. But most of my male friends actually lean conservative, whether it’s memes mocking Joe Biden or (much more substantially) pushback against wokeism (you see them mocking things like “72 genders” and complaining about reverse sexism). Of course, for obvious reasons most of them also vehemently oppose affirmative action…we had a debate in civics class on the matter last year, and pretty much everyone took a stand against it.

I'm surprised your friends are mainly conservative, given how you live in a way more Democratic place (and presumably less Christian place) than say where I live. I'm curious, do they actively support Trump or Vivek or do they just dislike Biden and dislike the GOP, and are they conservative on other issues like abortion or the other issues you debated?

First place, me too - we live in a majority-Asian, Biden+48 city, in a majority-minority, Biden+60 county. Initially when some of my friends began vocalizing their politics, I actually thought they were trolling before I realized it was part of a larger trend. But what I've seen is it's not like they're pro-Trump or pro-Vivek (I doubt most of them know who Vivek even is lmfao) - when they say that, it's usually trolling. But there is a genuine dissatisfaction with Biden mixed in with all that trolling. As for political issues mainly it's anti-woke and anti - affirmative action from what I've seen. I'm pretty sure on the whole my school is fairly pro-choice, pro-gun control, etc.

On the whole, I would still place them in the "liberal" column.

Plus, I think Democrats have the upper hand on "wokeism" at this point for a number of reasons:

- They fine-tuned their messaging on these issues over the past couple of years to be as inoffensive as possible while still pushing for the social changes they want.

- People have become more acclimated to callout culture.

- The GOP has shown its true colors regarding culture war issues. They do not simply oppose the abrasiveness of "woke" messaging; they oppose "woke" ideas as well.

I think, in a few years time, your friend group will shift strongly leftwards and start identifying as "liberal", as have many people who were annoyed by "wokeism" over the past few years.

[GeneralMacArthur]

One thing I've noticed is that conservatives dominate the "complaining about culture" space.

If you're a dude who thought Captain Marvel sucked and you want to watch a video listing all the things that suck about the movie, you're probably going to wind up on some conservative influencer's channel, who's going to list many of the things that did suck about the movie, but blame them on some liberal culture war thing.  For instance, Brie Larson is smug, snide and unlikable in the movie, coldly putting down everyone around her.  And she seems like kind of an asshole in real life too.  This is just a fact that most people who watched the movie can agree on.  But these videos will go a step further and say this is because of Disney Hollywood's brand of woke feminism trying to force us to accept that women should be like this, and calling you a sexist if you didn't like her.

So you have millions of high schoolers who live in this culture, they're surrounded by it and it's a big part of their life, and movies like Captain Marvel are a topic of conversation, and they go watch it and feel like it sucked and want to have a conversation with someone else about this, or at least feel validated and entertained by listening to someone else who agrees with them rant about the movie.  And they go watch some video about how awful the movie was, and nod along through the entire thing -- including the alt-right poison pills.  Thus they become convinced that Captain Marvel wasn't just a s--tty movie, it was part of an insidious plot by woke Hollywood to try and ruin our movies and our culture, and that it's the liberal left progressive wokists who are trying to convince us that it was actually great and that girls (including the cute girl in your class who won't respond to your texts) should be cold and snide like Brie Larson.

This is really widespread.  Like go look up "Captain Marvel sucks" on YouTube and you'll find hundreds of videos with millions of views apiece all basically saying the same thing.  And almost all of them will be alt-right.  There's basically no liberal or even apolitical voices in this space.  Everything is politicized.  Everything is polarized.  And this isn't just true of Marvel movies or whatever, it's true of almost everything in the culture wars that people can easily get caught up in when they're high schoolers especially (since so much of the culture is targeted at them).  I'm honestly pretty surprised that the alt-right hasn't tried to polarize "Vampire" since that song totally blows and I could probably make a video in five minutes saying here's ten reasons why Vampire sucks, only me and my alt-right friends are willing to tell the truth, everyone else is just lying to each other because Olivia Rodrigo is the liberal left's new feminist hero and Joe Biden invited her to the White House.  7 million views within a week, guaranteed.

[Schiff for Senate]

As a high schooler, my anecdotal experience confirms this. My school is an overwhelmingly Asian public school so one may be inclined to think that students there would be left wing. But most of my male friends actually lean conservative, whether it’s memes mocking Joe Biden or (much more substantially) pushback against wokeism (you see them mocking things like “72 genders” and complaining about reverse sexism). Of course, for obvious reasons most of them also vehemently oppose affirmative action…we had a debate in civics class on the matter last year, and pretty much everyone took a stand against it.

I'm surprised your friends are mainly conservative, given how you live in a way more Democratic place (and presumably less Christian place) than say where I live. I'm curious, do they actively support Trump or Vivek or do they just dislike Biden and dislike the GOP, and are they conservative on other issues like abortion or the other issues you debated?

First place, me too - we live in a majority-Asian, Biden+48 city, in a majority-minority, Biden+60 county. Initially when some of my friends began vocalizing their politics, I actually thought they were trolling before I realized it was part of a larger trend. But what I've seen is it's not like they're pro-Trump or pro-Vivek (I doubt most of them know who Vivek even is lmfao) - when they say that, it's usually trolling. But there is a genuine dissatisfaction with Biden mixed in with all that trolling. As for political issues mainly it's anti-woke and anti - affirmative action from what I've seen. I'm pretty sure on the whole my school is fairly pro-choice, pro-gun control, etc.

On the whole, I would still place them in the "liberal" column.

Plus, I think Democrats have the upper hand on "wokeism" at this point for a number of reasons:

- They fine-tuned their messaging on these issues over the past couple of years to be as inoffensive as possible while still pushing for the social changes they want.

- People have become more acclimated to callout culture.

- The GOP has shown its true colors regarding culture war issues. They do not simply oppose the abrasiveness of "woke" messaging; they oppose "woke" ideas as well.

I think, in a few years time, your friend group will shift strongly leftwards and start identifying as "liberal", as have many people who were annoyed by "wokeism" over the past few years.

Yeah, I agree that in a few years when they start voting, even these classmates of mine will vote Democratic for the most part (not to say there aren't a few true-blue conservatives).

[All Along The Watchtower]

To the extent that high school boys—most of whom presumably can’t vote—are trending conservative, it certainly is no where near as big a trend as that of young women rejecting the Republican Party, for reasons one can only guess I’m sure! But for some reason the latter, much more substantial and obvious development isn’t the subject of this six-page thread.

[dead0man]

Meanwhile, it seems like the labor market is shifting back somewhat toward compensating physical work over degrees, especially now that AI writing happened before any significant progress on robotic construction/home repair.  The correlation between years of formal education and income is clearly taking a hit.

I think non-laborers (like the people writing AI and the non-laborers who worry about AI taking their jobs) don't understand how smart one has to be to do construction/home repair.  Construction robots can (and do) do the "labor" part, where they fail is the "figuring" part.  Educated people just assume they are smarter than the non-educated, and on average they (probably) are, but there are millions of non-educated Americans that are smarter than the average college grad.  And that is only becoming more true every year as college gets dumb downed.

[dead0man]

Just look at the state of American teacher training. It's horrible. Students who can't even do math, majoring in " education ", and then teaching the next generation of children.  And they're drastically underpaid in many states.

if they can't do math and are tasked with teaching math, they aren't underpaid, they are over paid.

[Ferguson97]

I'm honestly pretty surprised that the alt-right hasn't tried to polarize "Vampire" since that song totally blows and I could probably make a video in five minutes saying here's ten reasons why Vampire sucks, only me and my alt-right friends are willing to tell the truth, everyone else is just lying to each other because Olivia Rodrigo is the liberal left's new feminist hero and Joe Biden invited her to the White House.  7 million views within a week, guaranteed.

“Everyone who likes different music than me is lying about liking it.”

Did BRTD hack your account?

[GeneralMacArthur]

I'm honestly pretty surprised that the alt-right hasn't tried to polarize "Vampire" since that song totally blows and I could probably make a video in five minutes saying here's ten reasons why Vampire sucks, only me and my alt-right friends are willing to tell the truth, everyone else is just lying to each other because Olivia Rodrigo is the liberal left's new feminist hero and Joe Biden invited her to the White House.  7 million views within a week, guaranteed.

“Everyone who likes different music than me is lying about liking it.”

Did BRTD hack your account?

The entire second half of that paragraph is me describing a hypothetical video I could make if I wanted to be a right-wing YouTube provocateur.  Are you illiterate?  Do you also think I have a bunch of alt-right friends?

[It’s so Joever]

I'm honestly pretty surprised that the alt-right hasn't tried to polarize "Vampire" since that song totally blows and I could probably make a video in five minutes saying here's ten reasons why Vampire sucks, only me and my alt-right friends are willing to tell the truth, everyone else is just lying to each other because Olivia Rodrigo is the liberal left's new feminist hero and Joe Biden invited her to the White House.  7 million views within a week, guaranteed.

“Everyone who likes different music than me is lying about liking it.”

Did BRTD hack your account?

The entire second half of that paragraph is me describing a hypothetical video I could make if I wanted to be a right-wing YouTube provocateur.  Are you illiterate?  Do you also think I have a bunch of alt-right friends?

I think Ferguson can be off at times, but I highly doubt he is dumb enough to think you have friends.

[DaleCooper]

Meanwhile, it seems like the labor market is shifting back somewhat toward compensating physical work over degrees, especially now that AI writing happened before any significant progress on robotic construction/home repair.  The correlation between years of formal education and income is clearly taking a hit.

I think non-laborers (like the people writing AI and the non-laborers who worry about AI taking their jobs) don't understand how smart one has to be to do construction/home repair.  Construction robots can (and do) do the "labor" part, where they fail is the "figuring" part.  Educated people just assume they are smarter than the non-educated, and on average they (probably) are, but there are millions of non-educated Americans that are smarter than the average college grad.  And that is only becoming more true every year as college gets dumb downed.

To be fair it is the same situation with the AI stuff. Any job that involves small amounts of thought or sense will be safe from AI for the foreseeable future.

[Aurelius2]

Therapy as currently practiced struggles to show any statistically meaningful results in reducing mental illness.  People are right to have some questions, especially given that the therapist has a strong financial incentive to keep the patient coming back.

Okay, I don't know where you're getting this but you are very wrong for what it's worth. CBT has a long history of being extremely effective in reducing rates of GAD, SAD, MDD and a host of other mental health conditions, and especially in terms of alleviating those conditions even if they can't be totally eliminated. Particularly when combined with medication the success rates for CBT tend to be in the high 70-80% of people reporting significant improvement a year later in the various studies I've read on the matter. 

Please don't post this harmful and wrong info out there and while I've never been a therapist I know quite a few who 1.) Make very little actually, when the difficulty with insurance and clients flaking comes into play 2.) Genuinely care about their patients and want to help them do the best by always staying up to date on best practices and building a healthy repertoire 3.) Many who actually take on a host of low-income clients to offer services to people who can't afford it, sometimes for as low as $10 a session or even less.

Yes, there are definitely shady mental health practitioners out there of course... But the vast majority of the people in the field are there because they have their own struggles with these issues and want to help others in the ways they may have helped themselves.

CBT is extremely effective. Talk therapy... much more questionable, and I think that's what most take issue with it being pushed as some universal imperative.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Meanwhile, it seems like the labor market is shifting back somewhat toward compensating physical work over degrees, especially now that AI writing happened before any significant progress on robotic construction/home repair.  The correlation between years of formal education and income is clearly taking a hit.

I think non-laborers (like the people writing AI and the non-laborers who worry about AI taking their jobs) don't understand how smart one has to be to do construction/home repair.  Construction robots can (and do) do the "labor" part, where they fail is the "figuring" part.  Educated people just assume they are smarter than the non-educated, and on average they (probably) are, but there are millions of non-educated Americans that are smarter than the average college grad.  And that is only becoming more true every year as college gets dumb downed.

To be fair it is the same situation with the AI stuff. Any job that involves small amounts of thought or sense will be safe from AI for the foreseeable future.

Also, AI Doomerism has been heavily promoted by certain rich tech people who have a vested interest in opposing open source AI specifically, so keep that in mind as well.

[Ferguson97]

CBT is extremely effective.

I keep forgetting that this also means "cognitive behavioral therapy"...

[WalterWhite]

CBT is extremely effective.

I keep forgetting that this also means "cognitive behavioral therapy"...

CBT has another meaning I do not think I am allowed to say on this family-friendly website.

[beaver2.0]

Every day I grow gladder and gladder that I am no longer in high school.

[Mechavada]

They must not be fans of "the D".

[Arizona Iced Tea]

For many straight young men there is very little motivation because they feel the odds are stacked againt them by women and LGBTQ.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

High school boys are definitely getting more conservative. Maybe not policy-wise (they're probably aligned more with dems on policy) but they definitely are very against woke stuff, whereas high school females are very into woke stuff.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

This thread and every single post in it is Peak Atlas

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

I have to mention again that besides the idiocy of taking a poll where 65% of people don't identify as either at face value, many of these "Conservatives" aren't actually Jesus-loving SoCons people seem to think.

I personally know several people who make jokes about Joe Biden having dementia, all the genders, "I identify as an attack helicopter", and even some who think Trump is "based" who still support gay rights, healthcare, etc.

Conservative Twitter is proclaiming that these are the new Gileadean Holy Warriors of the future, and that couldn't be further from the truth.

Yeah this is exactly right, and why Trump appeals to these sorts of people more than any other Republican.
They are pro-healthcare and pro-gay rights, hell many probably supported Bernie.
But they are just really fed up with what they see as cringe wokeness, and they want to make edgy memes and troll online.

[WalterWhite]

I have to mention again that besides the idiocy of taking a poll where 65% of people don't identify as either at face value, many of these "Conservatives" aren't actually Jesus-loving SoCons people seem to think.

I personally know several people who make jokes about Joe Biden having dementia, all the genders, "I identify as an attack helicopter", and even some who think Trump is "based" who still support gay rights, healthcare, etc.

Conservative Twitter is proclaiming that these are the new Gileadean Holy Warriors of the future, and that couldn't be further from the truth.

Yeah this is exactly right, and why Trump appeals to these sorts of people more than any other Republican.
They are pro-healthcare and pro-gay rights, hell many probably supported Bernie.
But they are just really fed up with what they see as cringe wokeness, and they want to make edgy memes and troll online.

Political correctness seems to have calmed down somewhat since the 2014-2019 period (roughly). For reference, this was the time period when Pepe the Frog and the OK Hand Sign were tarnished as "racist", and some seriously considered "mansplitting" a real issue.

That movement has definitely died down, as evident by the fact that significantly fewer people are rage Googling about political correctness than they were a few years ago; fewer people are also rage Googling about manspeading and SJWs, too. Consequently, the "anti-SJW" craze is also dying down.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=political%20correctness,manspreading,social%20justice%20warrior&hl=en

Additionally, I believe a rise in "edgier" left-wing content creators, such as V***h and H******i, will force and already has forced progressives to acclimate themselves to "edgier" content. H******i, for instance, is known for making 9/11 jokes.

I also think that once conservatives start adopting their own form of "political correctness", many of these people who self-identity as conservative purely in opposition to "PC" culture will bolt into the undecided or perhaps even liberal column, given that they probably agree with liberals on the vast majority of issues.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

I have to mention again that besides the idiocy of taking a poll where 65% of people don't identify as either at face value, many of these "Conservatives" aren't actually Jesus-loving SoCons people seem to think.

I personally know several people who make jokes about Joe Biden having dementia, all the genders, "I identify as an attack helicopter", and even some who think Trump is "based" who still support gay rights, healthcare, etc.

Conservative Twitter is proclaiming that these are the new Gileadean Holy Warriors of the future, and that couldn't be further from the truth.

Yeah this is exactly right, and why Trump appeals to these sorts of people more than any other Republican.
They are pro-healthcare and pro-gay rights, hell many probably supported Bernie.
But they are just really fed up with what they see as cringe wokeness, and they want to make edgy memes and troll online.

Political correctness seems to have calmed down somewhat since the 2014-2019 period (roughly). For reference, this was the time period when Pepe the Frog and the OK Hand Sign were tarnished as "racist", and some seriously considered "mansplitting" a real issue.

That movement has definitely died down, as evident by the fact that significantly fewer people are rage Googling about political correctness than they were a few years ago; fewer people are also rage Googling about manspeading and SJWs, too. Consequently, the "anti-SJW" craze is also dying down.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=political%20correctness,manspreading,social%20justice%20warrior&hl=en

Additionally, I believe a rise in "edgier" left-wing content creators, such as V***h and H******i, will force and already has forced progressives to acclimate themselves to "edgier" content. H******i, for instance, is known for making 9/11 jokes.

I also think that once conservatives start adopting their own form of "political correctness", many of these people who self-identity as conservative purely in opposition to "PC" culture will bolt into the undecided or perhaps even liberal column, given that they probably agree with liberals on the vast majority of issues.

Lmao Vaush and Hasan are not edgy at all, they're "safe edgy" and still get offended over jokes pretty often.

Since the Republican Party seems to be embracing anti-PC culture qa their main focus while downplaying their actual policies (I think DeSantis is going too far but that's a fad more than anything), I actually think that this might be a real part of the future Republican coalition.

I think in 20 years there'll be a large number of Republicans who are generally liberal of many issues but are just extremely opposed to anything PC and are very hostile to the left.

Assuming that they'll go left because Hasan made a 9/11 joke or Vaush calls people retards is absurd, especially because if anyone says anything actually edgy those streamers would advocate for them to be banned. I remember Vaush going over an edgy reddit meme sub a few years ago and getting outraged that it wasn't banned by aite admits. How is that going to single-handedly end the huge notion that high schooners have nowadays that leftists hate edginess?