The Manosphere Won | WIRED

Donald Trump will once again be the president of the United States. It wasn’t especially close. Which came as a shock, unless you watch or listen to Theo Von. Or the Nelk Boys. Or Adin Ross. Or Andrew Schulz. Or Shawn Ryan. Or sure, yes, Joe Rogan, but he’s the one you’ve definitely heard of.

You’re going to hear a lot of people attribute Trump’s win to all kinds of reasons: inflation fatigue, immigration fearmongering, President Biden’s doomed determination to have one last rodeo. But he owes at least part of his victory to the manosphere, that amorphous assortment of influencers who are mostly young, exclusively male, and increasingly the drivers of whatever monoculture remains in an online society that’s long since been fragmented all to hell.

It was on these podcasts and streams that Trump spent a disproportionate amount of time in the final weeks of his campaign, and for good reason. That list above—plus Tucker Carlson—includes the four biggest podcasters on Spotify. Trump sat with all of them, often for hours, reaching millions of conservative or apolitical people, cementing his status as one of them, a sigma, a guy with clout, and the apex of a model of masculinity that prioritizes fame as a virtue unto itself. For many young voters who weren’t paying attention in 2016 and 2020, a generation that overwhelmingly gets their news from social media feeds rather than mainstream outlets, this was also their first real exposure to Trump.

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