2mo ago

Joe Rogan, ‘Hawk Tuah’ and the rise of conservative-leaning online spaces in 2024

www.nbcnews.com Joe Rogan, ‘Hawk Tuah’ and the rise of conservative-leaning online spaces in 2024

“All of these things are in service of kind of the same project, which is emboldening traditional masculinity,” one expert said.

Summary

In 2024, conservative-leaning online spaces emphasizing traditional masculinity gained mainstream influence, driven by figures like Joe Rogan and trends like the “tradwife” movement.

Platforms like X, under Elon Musk’s ownership, became hubs for anti-“woke” sentiment, while podcasting further amplified right-wing ideas.

This cultural shift mirrored Trump’s election victory and reflected backlash against progressive gender norms.

Though some view these spaces as promoting traditional values, critics warn of growing misogyny and radicalization in the “manosphere.”

The rise of such spaces highlights deepening political polarization online.

135 comments

If they think this started in 2024 the author is wildly behind the curve...
Bannon got involved with WoW gold farming as a money making scheme 20 years ago, and he commented on how impressionable young kids in videogames are, and how they could be influenced in games to agree with conservatives.
Which led to GamerGate.
Like...
It's good they finally realized it's happening, but I doubt they have any insights since they still don't understand
- Gamergate is precisely when I noticed the start.
  Even then it was peripheral to my interests so I was slow to realize its significance.
  I was today years old when I found out Bannon was involved but am 0% surprised to find out. In fact it makes it all make more sense.
  
  Here's a decent article:
  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/steve-bannon-world-of-warcraft-gold-farming.html
  But the craziest part is what got Bannon the money to farm WoW gold, was he got a good chunk of Seinfeld syndication rights.
  He used that money for the gold grift, then after finding:
  What Bannon found was a world “populated by millions of intense young men” who may have been socially maladroit, but were “smart, focused, relatively wealthy, and highly motivated about issues that mattered to them.” While these were the same players who destroyed IGE’s business model, Bannon saw something he could use. “These guys,” said Bannon, “these rootless, white males, had monster power. It was the pre-Reddit.”
  He then took that money. And that knowledge about that group to:
  Bannon would go on to aggressively court this audience when brought on to help Andrew Breitbart build out his ultra-right-wing news-and-entertainment site. It was Bannon who hired Milo Yiannopoulos, recognizing him as someone who could whip up disaffected gamers. (Indeed, Yiannopoulos — who previously had no interest in gaming — rode Gamergate and its attendant rage to fame and page views.)
  So basically we could blame trump and everything fucked up on Larry David, and while I'm not a fan of Curb, I feel like I've seen enough that Larry would find the humor in it.
  The important part though. Is the far right are actually doing the groundwork and trying to get the youth on their side, and have been for decades. Dems just don't do that as a party.
  Bill and Obama had amazing youth outreach, and they easily served two terms despite not delivering on campaign promises.
  Biden and Hillary didn't really put effort into the youth, and we don't really have a large political machine that runs constantly, just huge pushes every four years of "vote for me or they'll win!".
  People who are surprised with recent elections are just looking at too small of a timescale.
  It's why I'm so hyped for the chance of Ben Wikler for DNC chair, he understands all that stuff and wants to turn the DNC into something that's constantly running and working instead of a mad push every four years where no matter how much is raised, the party always ends up bankrupt the day after an election.
  We need long term planning and strategy, not treating every election like nothing else matter.
  Dems focus on the battle, Republicans focus on the war. And that's why they keep winning despite most Americans disagreeing with them.
- They passively call out that it's been building for years, but give no real history. Seems to me like they were more trying to say how mainstream it's become. Gamer gate is important to how we got here, but not that widely known about, even when it happened. Everyone knows Joe Rogan.
  Either way, larger news outlets like NBC reporting on this is a good thing, even if they are a little late to the party.
  
  Seems to me like they were more trying to say how mainstream it’s become.
  Why things happened is often more important than just knowing something happened.
  Doubly so when we're talking about fighting fascism.
  It's mainstream now with people in their 20s, because their entire life online, conservatives have been influencing them in minor ways to groom them.
  We can't just copy the mainstream like Rogan and expect it to work, because the reason that works is decades of prep.
  And we already have a decent amount of progressive streamers/podcasters/whatever. And progressive policy has that groundwork and its actual grassroots not AstroTurf.
  But the party refuses to embrace it, even tho it already exists and people want it.
  They want the passion and votes progressive policy gets them, but they don't want to actually follow thru.
  The issue is "moderate" policy isn't something people get excited about, but the party won't drop "moderate" policy because their hooked on corpo donations.
- Woah I forgot about the WOW stuff, good point

I honestly feel bad for that woman's journey regardless of her politics. She got famous for being open about her sexuality, and then a bunch of old men like Bill Maher slobbered all over her, and then she got suckered in to sponsoring a crypto scam that she obviously had no understanding of, and now she's facing potential legal trouble for it.
She's basically been taken advantage of every step of the way because she's apparently not especially savvy enough to figure that out and really the only reason is that she's conventionally attractive and frankly sexual. For the Bill Mahers and crypto bros, that was enough to exploit her in every way they could.
- She's a grown adult I'd be with you, but she was defending the coin pretty hard in that Coffeezilla segment, she took advantage of the 15 mins as much as possible and in a lot of ways succeeded. If she didn't know what crypto was and what happens when influencers get involved with it, she shouldn't have exposed her fans to it, but she saw the bag and went ahead.
  
  Because, like so many other Americans, she was taught to grab on to that brass ring and don't let go if people notice you. I don't blame her for that either.
  I'm not suggesting she isn't still responsible for her actions, and if she is charged in the crypto scam, so be it... but I still feel bad for her.
- At some point, you need to hold the figurehead accountable for the scam so that other potential future figureheads will know to do some research before putting their name on illegal shit.
  
  I already said if there is found reason to try her for her contribution to the crypto scam, that should happen.
- running crypto scam in fourth year of our lord covid? she should have know better, could have learned about it at any point during last eight years or so. if it's something she had no idea about maybe she shouldn't do it in the first place. she had these 5 min of cringey fame and used it all on grifting
  
  You're essentially blaming a person who isn't very bright for not being very bright. I hope you realize that.

I don’t understand what hawk tuah has to do with this but I haven’t listened to her podcast. Is she pushing right wing ideas or something?
- Wikipedia says she's from Tennessee. That's the only thing that hinted at conservatism that I've seen
  
  Yeah it seems like an unrelated thing that the author is trying to force to fit the trend their article is about.
  
  Apparently she got involved in a big crypto scam or something too. Not sure if that makes her explicitly right wing though.
- Any desperate meme shit like this circles the bowl and gathers in the gutter. The gutter is a place exclusively run by conservatives so they can catch failed actors/comedians and the latest conservative criminal clown on parade (I.e. Rittenhouse, protest gun couple, etc) She's probably fine enough, but was likely vulnerable and is now fully surrounded by a grift cocoon (hence the crypto bullshit). She's also likely drinking her own kool aid by now, getting fed coke and kept on a constant schedule to keep her on the hamster wheel. They'll milk every drop and especially "spit on that thang" as it all burns out and the grifters infrastructure drastically discounts the condoms with her face on them in the merch store as they move on to the next pray in the headlines. Conservative soccer moms will then buy graphic year with her face on then for $4 after it becomes a bargain basement licensed meme like the grumpy cat.
  We live in a cloud of shit.

"News"
- Yeah this is like the past decade.

The fact that I have no idea what "Hawk Tuah" is means I'm doing something right.
- Being unaware of popular culture isn't a badge of honor. There's nothing wrong with not knowing what Hawk Tuah is but don't pat yourself on the back for it lol
  
  I disagree. Fucking skibidi toilet living rent free in my head.
  
  Being unaware of popular culture isn't a badge of honor.
  It can be, but Hawk Tuah isn't popular culture. They are part of a political culture and they shouldn't be proud of being ignorant about.
  Not knowing about Skibidi is fine, as it's a senseless new fad that doesn't set out to change public policy and/or views. Not knowing about Hawk Tuah isn't on the same level as being ignorant of it can be a very bad thing due to its attempts at subverting public policy and views.
  
  It is though. There's a finite amount of things you can know in life. Knowing anything else will be more useful.
  
  Please, tell me more about my values.

The far right has been there from the jump. The ~~KKK~~ Order used to pull armored truck heists and use the proceeds to buy computers so they could collaborate on the early internet.
- I haven't heard this before. Source?
  
  They were called The Order, and I misremembered their constituency: more neo-nazi than KKK, although one of their goals was to be a bridge between the two groups.
  Apparently they made a movie about them recently, of the same name, so I’m finding it hard to search for info about the group itself, but I recall hearing the computer-buying tidbit from Behind The Bastards and being able to find a source for it online.
  In case you wanna continue the hunt: I believe it had a sepia-tone picture or illustration at the top of the article and it was a long-form story not a current event piece. I also recall they were specifically Apple II computers, but searching podcast transcripts for the word “apple” yields a flood of results for “apple podcasts”, so not much help there.
  This tool seemed promising, but didn’t quite get me there: https://podscripts.co/podcasts/behind-the-bastards/
  Wikipedia can at least corroborate the armored car bit:
  Their later robberies were more effective, including a bank robbery, followed by a series of three armored car robberies. In the armored car robberies, they took a total of $4.1 million, including their final armored car robbery near Ukiah, California that netted them $3.8 million.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_(white_supremacist_group)
  Edit: Part of the problem with the podscripts approach may be that the transcripts are far from perfect:
  Beam admitted that he had set up computer billet and boards for different fascist groups around the country,but denied that these boards were used for any illicit communication.
  “Billet and boards” instead of “bulletin boards”
  Edit 2: Ooh, I think I posted the source on Reddit at one point, and I haven’t scorched-earth’d my comments. I wasn’t able to find it doing site:reddit.com “kibiz0r” armored trucks but you might find it that way if you experiment a bit.

Rise? How long ago did they write this? Were a solid decade past rise. It rose.

What a scoop NBC!
Hey have you checked out this whole hydroxychloriquine thing? I think there's something to that! Check it out NBC!

I thought Hawk Tuah was a nick name. Nope.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haliey_Welch

Tf is hawk tuah?
- Hawk tuah (/ˌhɔːk ˈtuːə/ ⓘ HAWK TOO-ə)[a] is an internet meme originating from a viral YouTube video posted in 2024. During a street interview, Haliey Welch used the catchphrase hawk tuah, an onomatopoeia for spitting or expectoration on a penis during oral sex, specifically, fellatio.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawk_tuah
  
  Haliey Welch
  Did her parents spell her name wrong on the birth certificate and then just run with it?

I'd let her hawk my tua

Joe rogan the conservative who was and is a strong supporter of bernie sanders? That joe?
- Joe rogan the conservative who ~~was and~~ is a strong supporter of ~~bernie sanders~~ Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Alex Jones, and Jordan Peterson? That joe?
  Fixed it for you.
  His "support" for Bernie was only ever performative and opportunistic.
  He's VERY far from the "Not me, us" mindset that is the basis on which Bernie has built his entire political ideology.
  
  Literally every celebrity, news anchor, commentator is performative and opportunistic. That's how you get ahead in that world.
  I can already see the responses:
  "But not the ones that I agree with tho!!"
  
  Son his support for bernie is performative but its not performative for trump?
  That seems like an extremely biased way to judge?
- Saying you support someone but then going on to act in many ways that that person finds detestable doesn't seem like the best support. Maybe someone's politics and throwing their support only has to be about helping other people better their situation by way of them also supporting the same person, making use of your endorsement. But, to be Joe Rogan and also say you support Bernie seems like a wild contradiction! I'll admit I'm not really a Rogan follower, so maybe somebody will correct me, but he doesn't seem like he walks the walk.
  
  He turned the whole "whoa dude" stoner stereotype into a career. He's amused by any idea that sounds good on the surface. He's not that deep.
- Broken clocks, and all that.
- Looks like Bernie last ran in 2020. How is your statement even remotely relevant now?
  
  Im so glad to hear nothing that happened in 2020 is relevent. I tend to judge people by more than one action but i guess ur metrics arent that deep.

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