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Young conservatives' anger at women is taking a nihilistic turn
For Gen Z Republican men, sex is solitary
Young conservatives' anger at women is taking a nihilistic turn
By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published March 20, 2026 6:45AM (EDT)
(Salon) James Fishback is almost certainly not going to win the GOP nomination for governor of Florida this year, but he’s become an object of media fascination all the same. In part it’s because Fishback holds such bigoted views that he makes the frontrunner, Rep. Byron Donalds, look moderate by comparison, even though the congressman said Black families were more stable under Jim Crow. Fishback peddles antisemitic conspiracy theories and hurls racist taunts at Donalds.
But what is really drawing attention to the 31-year-old Fishback is how he, while running far behind with older Republican voters, generates real enthusiasm with young conservatives. Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times described the packed audience at a Fishback event as “very young,” writing, “several attendees told me they were in high school.” Vanity Fair’s Dan Adler wrote that the long-shot candidate “has captured the most extreme attitudinal aspects of the Gen Z online right.” Fishback is polling at 32% with GOP voters aged 18-32, and his campaign events are larger and growing.
While he is drawing huge crowds, his audience is mostly young men and boys. A key to Fishback’s appeal merits only a fleeting mention in most profiles: his proposal to pass a 50% “sin tax” on OnlyFans creators.
....(snip)....
“Say what you want about Saudi Arabia,” he added. “There are no women hoeing out on the internet in Saudi Arabia.”
....(snip)....
“Gooning” — slang for excessive masturbation — has colonized the discourse of Gen Z Republican men, and it’s a subculture so consumed by misogynist anger that their conception of sexuality has become onanistic. ................(more)
https://www.salon.com/2026/03/20/for-gen-z-republican-men-sex-is-solitary/
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617Blue
(2,496 posts)
Ocelot II
(130,609 posts)Ultra-wanking, I guess. Masturbation as a hobby where sad little men can get off and hate women at the same time?
Ray Bruns
(6,380 posts)You know, in my day as a young man, we had to work hard to get laid. Paying for dinners, movies, and acting like a gentleman seemed to work.
Doesn’t sound like these guys want to put in the effort.
Ocelot II
(130,609 posts)in front of your computer, at least you don't have to take a shower and get dressed. You probably don't do that anyhow.
IbogaProject
(5,923 posts)That is on top of there being nothing in how two people csn get to know each other via converstation. Pornography is set up to be addictive just like gambling anf alcohol and does this by playing on adverse psychology. So scary, Reich wrote about how sexual repression was a core element that feeds fascism.
CaptainTruth
(8,204 posts)
MustLoveBeagles
(16,483 posts)Now it's been appropriated by a whining incels.
BComplex
(9,919 posts)I don't get it.
Wednesdays
(22,639 posts)...is that it vastly reduces their chances to reproduce.
Dave says
(5,428 posts)
OnionPatch
(6,329 posts)😁
valleyrogue
(2,729 posts)Many if not most men think they are. THAT is the problem. They think women are their function, to be used by men.
It is a point of view by men all across the political spectrum and exacerbated by social media.
ananda
(35,192 posts)Just about every tv show these days
completely sexualizes women as though
playing out male fantasies all the time.
and all those so-called "left behind" young men are pathetic morons who just cannot handle the world not revolving around them
BlueWaveNeverEnd
(14,300 posts)Sends them into hysterics.
They can only accept the save_the_earth figure as a white male.
MustLoveBeagles
(16,483 posts)Last edited Fri Mar 20, 2026, 11:08 AM - Edit history (1)
With their neverending whining about woke. 
BlueWaveNeverEnd
(14,300 posts)
MustLoveBeagles
(16,483 posts)I've seen classic movies that they would accuse of wokeness.
yardwork
(69,373 posts)There have always been nihilistic violent resentful people. The internet lets them find one another and wallow in their resentments. Their online communities justify and reinforce their unhealthy attitudes about life.
It's very difficult to turn off. I don't know what the solution is.
travelingthrulife
(5,214 posts)so we should be able to dismantle them.
Normal people are maliciously being directed in very toxic rabbit holes where they are manipulated with false information and turned into MAGA types.
Hey Joe
(632 posts)If only there was a way to do this.
Unfortunately there is waaaay too much money in mindfucking people with algorithms which degrade and destroy society to outlaw them.
chowder66
(12,257 posts)focused on studies, loved women, supported women and most importantly tried....they just tried... and had pretty good coping skills if they were rejected. Some coped better than others but they wouldn't give up trying and those that did have trouble had enough friends, both male and female that would help set them up with someone.
yardwork
(69,373 posts)
Danascot
(5,233 posts)Problem solved.
Wednesdays
(22,639 posts)"Japanese?? Ewww!"
peppertree
(23,363 posts)
travelingthrulife
(5,214 posts)Who are those women 'hoeing' out to? Men? Maybe men who visit Only Fans regularly and then feel guilty? So guilty you blame the women instead of facing your demons.
Scrivener7
(59,540 posts)And the ones who follow them are pitiful, sad cretins.
niyad
(132,563 posts)
PCIntern
(28,393 posts)For a sophisticated mechanical battery-powered male masturbation device.
1. This is troublesome
2. Says something about my Fb algorithm. 🥺
EdmondDantes_
(1,809 posts)Instagram keep giving me ads for sports bras and I don't require those being a guy. Maybe I'm supposed to buy them for my friends.
PCIntern
(28,393 posts)I gotta confess that I’m or entirely innocent of transgressions-of -purchasing over the years. 
DBoon
(25,008 posts)She kept getting ads for lesbian dating sites.
PCIntern
(28,393 posts)“You wouldn’t like her…she’s a dog.”
3catwoman3
(29,435 posts)
malthaussen
(18,577 posts)I've accidentally clicked on a video or advertisement while trying to scroll down (it only takes a slight slip of the cursor), and the algorithm on You Tube or Facebook immediately and persistently floods my feed with related content. Since some of those things on the sidebars are really marginal in more than one way, the results can be hilarious.
-- Mal
Wednesdays
(22,639 posts)I had a puppy that I was trying to housebreak. So I asked Google for "solutions for dogs that poop in the house."
Well, for weeks afterwards, Google gave me sidebar ads for "Pooping Dogs."
leftstreet
(40,764 posts)
Worth the read though
DURec
CaptainTruth
(8,204 posts)lonely bird
(2,949 posts)I certainly have no use for their nonsense but I will say that the American society has damaged plenty of people. From exceptionalism to ridiculous so-called gender roles to hyper macho bullshit spewed by “influencers” to politicians that pander to religionist nut jobs we have a cesspool of dangerous idiocy that can and has washed over many.
We have a mental healthcare crisis in this country. I would put the percentage of the population that needs help at 80% minimum. This would be for a range of different things but including young men who we see like the guy in the OP.
ToxMarz
(2,945 posts)Let's talk about what the men of Saudi Arabia are up to.
The best news here is that these losers aren't passing on their DNA.
Shipwack
(3,068 posts)… that are dominated by women.
1) Prostitution
2) Midwifery
3) Only Fans
I’m sure I’m forgetting others.
Dan
(5,191 posts)
Maru Kitteh
(31,790 posts)This really started with 4chan. That’s ancient internet history now.
Response to Maru Kitteh (Reply #56)
Dan This message was self-deleted by its author.
GenThePerservering
(3,399 posts)for this forum. Fortunately, the political news is solid.
Sane1
(217 posts)This gives a new meaning to the Goon squad that stormed DC on January 6th!
bucolic_frolic
(55,211 posts)dlk
(13,257 posts)And refuse to prosecute any of the traffickers and rapists in the Epstein files, they are a clear danger to the women of America.
This goes far beyond being a party of women-haters.
Mblaze
(1,049 posts)
Exp
(961 posts)peppertree
(23,363 posts)The irony, however, is no doubt lost on young James.
New Breed Leader
(928 posts)that's why this incel wants to dismantle it
genxlib
(6,138 posts)But the COVID lock down was not kind to some people.
Most of GenZ was somewhere between 10-20 years old when they went into the bubble.
Social media and modern politics are to blame for this. But Covid made them sitting ducks for the manipulation that comes from algorithms praying on loneliness.
I offer no excuses or sympathy because plenty of people went through it without becoming assholes. But it certainly had to be a factor. There is just too much symmetry that self-isolation is the preferred outcome for somebody who's pathology was baked in isolation.
pat_k
(13,393 posts)Back in November, Scott Galloway wrote a piece with some truly frighting numbers.
Five years ago my advocacy for young men sparked a hostile response. Today society is ready to have a productive dialogue, rejecting the far right’s attempts to send non-white people and all women back to the 1950s and the left’s belief that young men don’t have problems but are the problem. This isn’t a zero-sum game. We can build on the gains women have registered over the past three decades and ensure there’s room for boys and young men in the conversation. Democrats are starting to tackle the crisis, but we can’t rely on prominent party leaders to drive the change. We can count on the tech industry, however, to keep supporting their massive valuations by connecting profits with the sequestration and enragement of young men. Men ages 20 to 30 now spend less time outside than prison inmates.
...
. I wondered why what was happening to boys and young men was in fact happening and how I could raise my sons in a world where they — and males of any age — thrive.
...
The data around boys and young men is overwhelming. Seldom in recent memory has there been a cohort that’s fallen farther, faster. Why? First, boys face an educational system biased against them — with brains that mature later than girls’, they almost immediately fall behind their female classmates. Many grow up without male role models, including teachers — fewer men teach K–12 than there are women working in STEM fields — with Black and Hispanic school instructors especially underrepresented.
...
People under the age of forty are 24% less wealthy. The deliberate transfer of wealth from the young to the old in the United States over the past century has led to unaffordable and indefensible costs for education and housing and skyrocketing student debt, all of which directly affect young men. It’s why twenty-five-year-olds today make less than their parents and grandparents did at the same age, while carrying debt loads unimaginable to earlier generations. Neither the minimum nor the median wage has kept pace with inflation or productivity gains, while housing costs have outpaced both. As the costs of college have soared beyond the reach of most families, many of the manufacturing jobs that didn’t require a college degree and were often a ticket to the middle class for (mostly) men have been offshored. A prohibitive real estate market is a contributing factor to why 60% of young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four live with their parents and 1 in 5 still live with their parents at age thirty. Stuck and unable to afford greater economic opportunities in nearby cities, they find the same crush and collision of density, stimulation, humanity, creativity, eroticism, and conversation that urban areas offer on their phones instead. In Manhattan, a four-hundred-square-foot apartment costs $3,000 a month. In its stead is a seventeen-square-inch mobile studio apartment costing roughly $42 a month, served up by AT&T, T- Mobile, or Verizon
Meanwhile, algorithmically generated content on social media contributes to—and profits from—young men’s growing social isolation, boredom, and ignorance. With the deepest-pocketed firms on the planet trying to convince young men they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen, many grow up without acquiring the skills to build social capital or create wealth. The percentage of young men aged twenty to twenty-four who are neither in school nor working has tripled since 1980. Workforce participation among men has fallen below 90%, caused by a lack of well-paying jobs, wage stagnation, disabilities, a mismatch of skills and/or training, and falling demand for jobs traditionally held by prime-age men.
...
Here’s a terrifying stat: 45% of men ages eighteen to twenty-five have never approached a woman in person. And without the guardrails of a relationship, young men behave as if they have … no guardrails.
...
valleyrogue
(2,729 posts)Last edited Sat Mar 21, 2026, 10:03 AM - Edit history (4)
He is very misogynistic.
He is peddling the same bullshit George Gilder was ranting about fifty years ago.
Nothing new here. Same bullshit, different century.
We women aren't put on this earth to "serve" men, and we aren't put on this earth to "civilize" or "ground" or "fix" them.
pat_k
(13,393 posts)... the feedback loop of social isolation and online radicalization by profiteers who are exploiting, and reinforcing, that isolation is.
The numbers are what they are, and should be incredibly troubling to any human being who has in interest in living in a functional society.
Of course it is not up to "women" to fix men, but real relationships in the REAL world are essential for mental health.
The fact is that a growing number of young people -- particularly young men -- have no such relationships and are essentially living their lives in an increasingly bizarre and extremist virtual world. It is literally driving them mad. And I, for one, am very interested in exploring the question of WHY and how to intervene. Just writing off these young men as defective, is not the answer.
It is a societal problem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/opinion/charlie-kirk-shooting-internet.html?unlocked_article_code=1.U1A.sOXZ.5ZQDi-f94XOD&smid=nytcore-android-share
....
It’s rapidly driving a generation mad. ...
Or as Elle Reeve, an investigative reporter known for her work covering Charlottesville and her book Black Pill, points out "Be careful trying to decipher the true political beliefs of people wrapped in so many layers of irony they're not sure of their own true beliefs."
This is a madness that I believe we must seek to come to grips with, perhaps starting with the developmental disadvantages boys start out with and the fact they have fewer role models as teachers. There is nothing "misogynist" about exploring such questions.
The thing is, the brand of extremism flourishing in male-dominated spaces on the internet is translating into real world violence that will undoubtedly be directed with greater frequency against women. That makes it a concern to all of us.
valleyrogue
(2,729 posts)He thinks it is women's job to "fix" men. If men are screwed up, it isn't up to WOMEN to fix them.
It isn't our "job" or our "role" as women to "civilize" men, to "fix" men, to "serve" men. It is ALL on them.
He is regurgitating the same old horseshit George Gilder did in the 1970s with his b.s. books, Sexual Suicide and Naked Nomads. There is nothing new in what he peddles.
I don't care what "problems" men are having. THEY are the privileged sex class, and they can full well "fix" themselves. They don't want to because they BENEFIT from patriarchy.
It isn't my job or any other woman's job.
He is MRA through and through like Jordan Peterson, like George Gilder, like MRA founder Warren Farrell. Same attitude of thinking they are entitled to women, and they don't fool anybody.
https://thespeechprof.substack.com/p/scott-galloway-three-manospheres
pat_k
(13,393 posts)That does NOT address any point I made, or help anyone come to grips with the questions Galloway, and others, raise.
The statistics are what they are.
If discussion and trying to figure out societal, regulatory, and economic interventions to address the serious crisis of isolated young men (and women in their orbit) being driven mad by their retreat into a virtual world that exploits and promotes their isolation is dismissed, what is your solution? Just say to hell with them all and the forces at work and write them off?
John1956PA
(4,977 posts)Our military personnel were exposed to such public stonings during the First Gulf War.
Such a barbaric world.
sop
(18,677 posts)Put simply, a bunch of pathetic angry little boys enjoying a circle jerk because no woman will have anything to do with them.
MorbidButterflyTat
(4,529 posts)Sin tax, how quaint.
3catwoman3
(29,435 posts)…kind they can hope for.
GenThePerservering
(3,399 posts)and the educational 'bias' because girls mature earlier is not really an excuse - don't blame us, blame late stage capitalism which is a root cause of social dislocation.
Also not being 'speshul' because you're a guy - gotta muck in with the rest of us now.
But the horrible financial system is the worst.
roamer65
(37,962 posts)There is a lot of depraved crap that happens there behind closed doors.