What is the Internet Doing to Young Males?
The podcast series Rabbit Hole, a podcast series published by the New York Times and hosted by columnist Kevin Roose, has several publicly known guest interviews. Throughout interviews, the eight-part series’s central thesis becomes ever-more clear by Kevin Roose: “what is the internet doing to us?”
At the time of the podcast 26-year-old male, Caleb Cain was one of the Rabbit Hole interviewees. Caleb grew up watching YouTube and spent most of his time on it for his teenage and young adult years. Kevin Roose examined Caleb’s watch history going back years. He was trying to understand how YouTube sucked Caleb into a continuous rabbit hole that occupied so much of his time and was influential in his developing ideologies. How was Caleb getting caught in these constant YouTube rabbit holes?
AI and algorithms have been developing at enormous rates, somewhat due to Guillaume Chaslot, another interviewee on the Rabbit Hole. Guillaume Chaslot worked at the AI team at YouTube starting in 2010. He significantly impacted YouTube’s recommended tab during his work there, which was the leading cause of Caleb’s constant rabbit hole effect on YouTube. As Caleb talks about during the podcast, he found most of what ended up being his favorite YouTube content creators from this page and what led him from video to video, occupying so much of his time.
Another interviewee was Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, who talks about the past algorithms at YouTube and how they have adapted to keep up with more extreme content. Susan Wojcicki refers to ‘borderline content,’ which is being employed by YouTube. ‘Borderline content’ is a trained algorithm to identify extreme content in videos and then demote them in people’s feeds and their sidebars so that they don’t get seen as often. She also mentions how misinformation regulations have been enforced dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic because it is so easy to prove what is right and wrong with scientific evidence.
So, what is the internet doing? In Caleb Cain’s case, he developed extremist views early on in life, a typical pattern of young males who absorb many internet or video game content. Increasingly on social media, there is a lot of extremism, and young males on social media are overwhelmingly affected by violent extremist content. Michael Kimmel’s book, “Healing From Hate: How Young Men Get Into and Out of Violent Extremism,” explains this unfortunate phenomenon more in-depth. Kimmel explains that gender, particularly masculinity is “‘the psychological inspiration’ that sends young men into these groups ‘and the social glue that keeps them involved.’” Usually, these are males who have endured defeat, whether that be lost jobs, difficulty in school, or family issues. Kimmel makes the case that rather than look reflect on their source of this hardship, these men find fault with the system, or immigrants, or unseen outside forces conspiring to keep them down.
In the United States, recently, main-stream media and large content creators online have discussed conspiracy theories created by extremist groups. For example, Qanon and Pizzagate conspiracy theories developed by the alt-right have received attention from the NY Times, Washington Post, Time, and influential people such as Chrissy Teigen, Hillary Clinton John Podesta. Twitter also announced that it would suspend accounts Tweeting about Qanon.
This attention has worsened the glorification of online extremism, predominantly white supremacist groups online. White young men often find a sense of unity in these groups, in a world where they feel insignificant.
In 2020 I see more young males in my area who had similar experiences to Caleb Cain. YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and others pull them into a rabbit hole of ideologies that make them feel apart of something bigger and beneficial. Men often struggle to fit into the stereotypes of men in society, maintaining an appearance of hardness or toughness, using violence as an indicator of power, and not displaying any signs of emotional/physical/financial vulnerability. Often this is known as toxic masculinity. I see young males progressively finding a haven in these extremist groups to battle the internalized frustration they have within themselves trying to meet these standards of toxic masculinity. Rabbit Hole talks about the empathy that some extremist groups towards young men battling internalized toxic masculinity. For example, a content creator could say something along the lines of “I know how you feel lonely and like you deserve more than you are given. You experienced… and it's unjust and unfair this is because of …(extremist POV).”
Overall, Kevin Roose, in the eight-part series Rabbit Hole, explores what the internet is doing to us in-depth with various interviewee’s perspectives. Caleb Cain is arguably one of the most relatable interviewees in the series; he’s not the CEO of a billion-dollar media corporation or an algorithmic coding genius. He’s an average citizen. I see his story concerning young men’s worrisome phenomena with extremism in the United States. Algorithms are influential and bring attention to extremist ideologies that weren’t previously known before seeing a recommended video. However, they’re not the entirety of the problem; young men need a more productive way to express the battles they face with their internalized toxic masculinity. Social media, television, parents, societal norms, education can be enforcers of toxic masculinity in developing young males. Reinforcement and reinvesting as a society to bring attention to this problem and help redirect frustration elsewhere rather than extremist YouTube and similar platforms worsening toxic masculinity in young males.
