There is a very well-oiled ecosystem for right-wing influencers: young TikTokers, YouTubers or podcasters are discovered and pushed to larger platforms, often with the financial backing of conservative millionaires and right-wing organizations.
The complex path of men who decide to ‘detoxify’ themselves from ‘manosphere’ groups: “Now it embarrasses me”
In an interview with Carles Francino in La Ventana, comedian Henar Álvarez talked about how men have taken over podcasts and leave only “a little corner” for women in the audiovisual cultural panorama. He recalled how in September 2022, the Estirando el chicle podcasters, Carolina Iglesias and Victoria Martín, brought together 12,000 people at the Wizink in Madrid and 16,000 via streaming in the largest comedy show ever held in Spain, with the assistance of Yolanda Diaz included. Two years later, that explosion of comedy directed by and for women is seen almost as a passing illusion and has not opened great avenues of financing or visibility for female talent on the platforms. Henar Álvarez is almost an exception, because he has managed to premiere his late on RTVE Play, although this time it has a lot to do with going hand in hand with Jordi Évole’s production company.
Much of the enthusiasm that arose in the pandemic and that peaked two years ago for podcasts made by women has been devastated by ‘brocasters’, as technology journalist Taylor Lorenz, author of the book, calls themExtremely Onlineand guilty of making the expression “ok, boomer” popular. Brocasters are part of the manosphere, that army of very influential podcasters, YouTubers and Twitch streamers, mostly young, white and right-wing, who are taking over the industry. on-line American and a good part of the Spanish.
Case in point: Rumble, the YouTube-like video platform funded by Peter Thiel, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2021 on far-right influencers and anti-vaccine content creators. It was the beginning of a movement that has culminated in a powerful right-wing online ecosystem. A few weeks ago, the Pew Research Center released a 122-page report that concluded that the news influencer landscape skews overwhelmingly male and far-right, creating a worrying imbalance in news bias that has profound political consequences.
This triumph of “bro” culture also includes David Broncano and his people, despite attempts at political polarization of his program by his competitors. Broncano is one of the most talented and intelligent Spanish examples of that way of making humor that is born from the complicity between university colleagues and that has little to do with the political table of his greatest television rival Pablo Motos, but a lot to do with the prevailing uncomplexed masculinity. . What is really new is that the male colleague who also breathed programs like La Hora Chanante or Muchachada Nui and which were odes to low cost, shameless humor and absurdity has turned to the most extreme right.
Minutes after Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidential elections, UFC president Dana White took the stage that the MAGA boys had set up at Mar-a-Lago, the new Versailles located in Palm Beach (Florida). From there he thanked the influencers who carried Trump to the White House, “the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, Bussin’ With The Boys and, last but not least, the powerful Joe Rogan.” That was the recognition of the alliance between Trump and the manosphere, one more step in the relationship between the populist right and the alternative media, and the support for the liberal and anti-feminist “bro” culture that triumphs in all online channels.
One of the popular topics in American media after the US elections was whether Democrats could attract male voters by cultivating a left-wing manosphere. Would the existence of a “red” Joe Rogan be possible? The debate has its merits because it expresses a belief that has already crystallized in the US, and that is that content created by women only attracts women and, in fact, repels men, while content created by men, even if it is based on codes exclusively male, it is much more transversal. Podcaster Jeremy Kaplowitz has been searching for that “influencer who will lead young Americans towards the leftist revolution” for several weeks and points to comedians like Conner O’Malley, whose characters have been laughing for years at the complexes of American masculinity and can be absurd, pathetic, unsuccessful and even repulsive but very funny, in the line of the chanante humor of Raúl Cimas, Ernesto Sevilla or Joaquín Reyes.
However, even if they are men, left-wing influencers lack the structural advantages in terms of financing, promotion and support that “independent” conservative media have in the US. In a recent article in his User Mag outlet, Taylor Lorenz claims that millionaires, political action committees (PACs) and institutions with a particular interest in expanding conservative policies invest strategically in right-wing media channels and emerging content creators.
This creates a very well-oiled ecosystem for right-wing influencers: young TikTokers, YouTubers, livestreamers or podcasters are discovered, developed and pushed to larger platforms, often with the financial backing of conservative millionaires and right-wing organizations. Renee DiResta, author ofInvisible rulers: The people who turn lies into realityassures that buying authentic influencers is a much more successful far-right strategy than investing in traditional media. In addition, the ecosystem of right-wing content creators is very collaborative, as demonstrated by the videos interviewing each other by YouTubers such as Wall Street Volverine and A Straight White Uncle, and their synergy with the general television programs preferred by the “fachosphere” such as Horizonte by Iker Jiménez or El Hormiguero by Pablo Motos.
The fact that David Broncano is called a Sanchista when he hosts a program in which current political events are barely discussed and the leaders of the different parties only appear occasionally in the context of a joke demonstrates the bias in the perception of entertainment and online content in Spain. We do not know if a left-wing manosphere will be possible, but what is already a reality is that, in this duel for the audiences that is also a duel for the voters, women have disappeared (they have disappeared again) from the stage.
#triumph #bro #culture
