Trump spoke directly to young men online. Young men spoke back

In a video posted in October, the 30-year-old YouTuber Kyle Forgeard bestowed Donald Trump with an unexpected gift. The pair were chilling on the now president-elect’s private jet. Forgeard wore a plain black tee and baseball cap; Trump slouched back in the jet’s white leather seat, his button-up shirt lax with creases. ​“I know you don’t like her, but here are Kamala’s greatest achievements,” Forgeard said, handing over a book. Bemused at first, Trump’s face lit up as he flicked through its pages, all of which were blank. ​“That’s good, I love that,” he laughed.

The rest of the video was similarly off the cuff. Trump and Forgeard giggled about the plane’s bumpy landing and got a surprise call from UFC CEO Dana White, a staunch ally who’s brought Trump to matches and spoken at his rallies. The clip has racked up more than 6.5 million views and drawn hundreds of comments praising Trump’s relaxed demeanour. ​“This is the most I’ve seen Trump be himself,” one person wrote. ​“Damn, y’all really turned him into grandpa Trump,” another added.

​“Never voted,” one top comment said. ​“But I’m voting this year, fellas.”

Trump’s successful courtship of young men, of all backgrounds, undoubtedly helped him win the election this week. Years ago, Forgeard and his fratty influencer crew, NELK, didn’t care about politics – their YouTube videos featured them hitting bongs in university lectures and pranking car salesmen. Forgeard is Canadian and can’t even vote in America. But this election, spurred on by Trump’s pandering to jockish male creators, NELK became full-on sycophants. They featured him and vice president-elect JD Vance in multiple videos and podcasts, and launched a get-out-the-vote initiative, Send The Vote, which was co-founded by Taylor Budowich, a former Trump aide who now runs MAGA Inc. – one of the biggest pro-Trump super PACs. Harnessing all their bro‑y clout and 8 million young, mostly male followers, NELK had one mission: make Trump seem like the guy.

According to the Wall Street Journal, young men decisively voted for him. In 2020, men aged 18 – 29 went for Joe Biden by 15 points; in 2024, that same group was up +13 for Trump. Meanwhile, 18 – 29-year-old women were +32 for Biden in 2020 and only +18 for Kamala Harris in 2024. This gender divide has ignited intense outcry: one X user called Gen Z men ​“the fucking Hitler youth” (he amassed 332,000 likes). A worrying picture has emerged: that this brand of bigoted alpha manhood has won out as the dominant form of Gen Z masculinity.

During Trump’s victory speech, he called Dana White to the stage. He shouted out the biggest influencers who helped boost the president-elect’s chances of making it, once again, into the White House. ​“I want to thank the NELK Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, Bussin’ With The Boys,” White said. ​“And last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan.”

During the 2016 election, we witnessed the Great Meme War, in which edgy pundits flooded the web with far-right shitposts and leftists returned fire with quips and anti-Trump memes. In 2024, this battle took on an entirely new shape. Enter the Great Streaming War.

Trump blitzed through a web of both right-wing influencers and more typical comedians, such as Andrew Schulz and Theo Von. Some of the creators that went full-support – like lifestyle streamer Adin Ross and Jake Paul, who made a long video just before the election singing Trump’s praises – had previously shied away from discussing electoral politics, but he managed to corral them to his side.

Trump danced and drove around in a Tesla Cybertruck with Ross, who has 7 million Instagram followers and had previously featured guests such as 21 Savage and Playboi Carti; Ross urged Trump to speak sympathetically about Young Thug and his trial (despite Thug calling Trump a ​“fucking punk” back in 2015). He discussed cocaine and addiction with comedian and podcast host Theo Von, who has more than 10 million followers across Instagram and YouTube. He chatted with Joe Rogan, the most popular podcaster in the world (18 million subscribers on YouTube, plus 19 million on Insta) for hours. The list goes on: Lex Fridman, TV host Tucker Carlson, Barstool Sports, Logan Paul. Trump also gave a two-hour livestreamed interview with Elon Musk, who has become one of the president-elect’s most die-hard fans, funnelling more than $119 million (£91 million) into a PAC set up to help his campaign.

Harris did a few internet-media appearances (Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy being the most high profile) but her big endorsements came from celebrities such as Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Oprah and Charli xcx. Their sway doesn’t cut through because they aren’t culturally relevant to this male voting demographic, who Harris never resonated with in the first place.

These appearances helped soften Trump’s image. They made him palatable and positioned him as a benevolent, inspiring elder; the type of relative you’d gather around at Christmas who’d tell war stories about fearlessly draining the swamp. Never mind that he’s a convicted felon, has been accused of sexual assault by 26 women (with one judge declaring a rape allegation was ​“substantially true”) and is an aspiring dictator. Young men were willing to vote for him because they liked his vibes. They enjoyed how he talked tough about the economy. They looked back on his last presidency nostalgically, as a simpler time when Fortnite was in a golden age and they bopped to Travis Scott’s Sicko Mode at their middle-school prom. Trump, now, has taken over the Barstool Extended Universe, or the ​“Zynternet” – journalist Max Read’s riff on the way many young conservatives love the nicotine pouch Zyn. He’s been cultivating this pop cultural image for years by attending UFC fights and college sports; he even visited an Iowa State University frat house in 2023.

Now his influencer base includes all the ones from the 2010s’ ​‘Intellectual Dark Web’, the network of commentators who lashed out against PC culture and identity politics (the Ben Shapiros and Joe Rogans) and a new guard of popular radicals like Sneako, the white supremacist Nick Fuentes and, of course, Andrew Tate, who has been given credit for helping to radicalise so many young men. These creators thrive on poorly regulated social media – live streaming sites such as Rumble and Kick, and Telegram — that silo viewers and flood them with provocative clips. The hypercharged algorithms of X and TikTok, meanwhile, fuel far-right rage-bait content, whether it’s ridiculing Harris’s laugh or man-on-the-street clips with ardent Trump fans.

The day after the election, Democrats began desperately trying to figure out what went wrong for Harris, speculating on her unwillingness to court this demographic. Unlike Trump, she mostly failed to meet Zoomers where they are: listening to podcasts, watching streams and consuming short-form media online. But an appearance on Rogan’s podcast probably wouldn’t have won them over. Much of Trump’s manner and messaging already resonates with young guys who watch Jake Paul and who’ve spent years being primed with misogynistic content by people such as Andrew Tate. What cultural overlap could Harris possibly find with the Paul brothers?

Pundits also stressed the need to build a ​“Joe Rogan of the Left”, since many of the top progressive streamers pull very low numbers compared to their far-right counterparts. That would help, but young men went for Trump because they felt like he was aligned with their core interests and needs. He managed to brand MAGA as counterculture, like a defiant source of masculine pride, a rebellion for young dudes who already felt discarded, disenfranchised and resentful of women in their lives.

I used to enjoy NELK’s prank clips; they felt innocuously doofy, like surreal reprieves on a site increasingly filled with hate. It’s been depressing watching them morph into what’s basically a Trump propaganda outlet, and even sadder seeing them take so many young guys with them. Obviously, Trump’s grand streaming tour is only one reason he won. There is inflation, Biden’s late exit and his administration’s abysmal response to the atrocities in Gaza. But the rightward shift of young men is alarming and worthy of attention – both because of what it tells us about the next generation and because, in an online hellscape inundated by podcast slop and hypermasculine drivel, it’s hard to imagine how the hell the left can start winning them back.