Joe Rogan, 'Hawk Tuah' and the rise of conservative-leaning online spaces in 2024
Joe Rogan, ‘Hawk Tuah’ and the rise of conservative-leaning online spaces in 2024
There’s the manosphere and the Zynternet and the salt right. And then there are the Barstool conservatives and the dudebros.
These are the terms that have emerged in recent years to describe a sensibility that has taken hold online, culminating with its ascension as arguably the mainstream social media aesthetic of 2024: traditionally masculine, increasingly conservative-leaning and disapproving of (or at least uninterested in) “woke” culture.
It was a year in which podcaster Joe Rogan became a central part of the presidential election, and the biggest meme centered around a then-anonymous young woman’s off-the-cuff sex joke that turned her into a social media personality. One of the internet’s biggest platforms, X, removed many of its guardrails as its owner, Elon Musk, fully embraced Donald Trump’s run for president. And one of the most popular products this year — the nicotine-packed Zyn pouch — became the addiction of choice for many of America’s young men.
And it was a year of masculinity punctuated by Trump’s election win. Jess Maddox, an assistant professor of digital media technology at the University of Alabama, said this year’s renewed cultural focus on traditional masculinity is reminiscent of the reactionary shift that occurred after Trump’s 2016 election. Though his 2024 victory injected renewed vigor into these sentiments, she said these spaces have been burgeoning for years.
“There’s Barstool Sports, there’s Joe Rogan, but then I also think about things like tradwives and homesteading and even the ‘I’m just a girl’ jokes and trends that are funny,” Maddox said. “But all of these things are in service of kind of the same project, which is emboldening traditional masculinity.”
Rating: 5