(This post is referring to tiktok, instagram reels, youtube shorts type content)
So it’s no secret that for half a decade now we’ve had short form video content get increasingly popularised. To the point where your uncle probably watches them on some platform and so does your 6 year old.
Now in terms of addictiveness, privacy falling through the roof, advertising down your throat, etc. we’ve reached new records. But that isn’t what this post is about.
I never used this format much, except in 2020 during the pandemic, but I can’t help but notice when I do. Even if I make a brand new VPN’d account for it. Every 5-10th post or so wil be some kind of culture war propaganda.
The kind of stuff that made me an edgy right wing bigot as a teenager because I got influenced by it on youtube. Luckily, I grew and changed. Unfortunately, many former friends, not so much.
On a completely new account you’ll get bombarded with videos like:
- “This is why women NEED real MEN”
- “How to piss of a cyclist”
- ”If a climate activist is blocking the road, you should be allowed to run over them”
- ”When MEN were thrown a grenade, they reacted quickly, WOMEN got confused and scared. That’s why we NEED men in the army”
- Wholesome looking video — homophobic caption: “This is why children need both a mum and a dad”
These are all examples I got today when I decided to make completely new accounts on a new device with a VPN. I tried youtube shorts and tiktok for this and scrolled 20ish videos on each without liking anything.
It scares me how much there is a strong rightward shift amongst the younger population. To the point where 18-24’s in recent german elections have voted the most for the borderline neo-nazi AFD party. I know these parties are by far the most active and very popular on tiktok.
I know to some people these examples might seem anoying but trivial. But you are forgetting how impressionable children and teenagers are. There really is this thing called the alt-right pipeline. One very specific example which impacted me at a younger age, was you start with “mad karen” type videos, then after a couple you get recommended “mad SJW” videos, I think you see where I’m going with this, after a while you’re on “feminism debunked” and watching peterson/crowder/shapiro. I know many childhood friends who went down this pipeline and became insufferably racist bigot adults.
I wonder what others think on this?
Despite me having maybe a bit too much freedom on the internet when I was younger, I never fell down that hole. Even though many openings presented themselves, I always avoided them due to reasons that I then could not describe. I doubt that many others also had the same experience.
But then again, Reddit was really the only social media that I properly interacted with. I did also have a nice and fat dose of YouTube, but I (thankfully) never watched the kinds of videos that you speak of, I found them appalling.
I’ve only ever really heard of what you describe, as I don’t really talk much with people who hate my guts. But by now I’ve heard of it so much I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration anymore. I can only hope that those affected by it eventually free themselves, even if much later in life. Mindless hatred hurts everybody, including the hater.
I’m worried that the hole is getting bigger and bigger, and it’s becoming almost normal for young kids to fall into it.
My older brother works at a middle school. Every year, they do mock elections to teach kids about voting. He told me over the past decade, it’s gone from kids choosing the green party 75% (I’m in Switzerland btw), to it being 50% the far right party and the rest split between all the others.
If they’re doing mock fuck around, they should also do mock find out, otherwise the kids won’t learn what voting does.
Atleast when I was in school, we had class representatives too. But no one ever wanted to run lol.