Yup, real solutions usually aren’t sexy and don’t make good sound bites. Lot’s of people are unhappy with life and the idea of being able to fix it themselves with direct action is a very appealing concept. Telling someone their problems are causes by a complex mixture of cultural factors and government policy doesn’t give people the instant gratification of hearing that it’s the “others” fault.

A guy in a lambo yelling about how women and jews are the real issue is always going to get more attention than a well constructed and reasonable argument on economic policy.

I originally heard this idea about why so many big start ups end with massive fraud but I think it applies here too. The start ups that create reasonable goals and timelines don’t get funding because someone else is willing to lie and promise more. By the time it’s clear they can’t deliver on the promised results, the honest company is out of business. Same in politics, one side is honest, the other side is willing to say whatever they think will win you over no matter if it’s true. Obviously one will be more appealing because it’s designed to be, but that doesn’t mean it has any merit.

The reason left wingers don’t have the presence the right does on Facebook, YouTube, etc isn’t because of a lack of voices or audiences - it’s because of deliberate manipulation of what is put in front of people.

I recently have gotten into wasting tons of hours on YouTube shorts, and I was very surprised that after a grand total of maybe 12 hours of using the platform, Andrew Tate content was just shoehorned into the algorithm of shorts being presented to me. Up to this point in time I was watching cosmetics, baking cookies, comedy, cooking, just funny hot takes, but then completely out of the blue one day that guy's ugly ass monkey face was on my phone, and even though it was so quick that I couldn't even think of his name, my lizard braid already recognized that he is very dangerous to women, so I opened the menu to select the feature on YouTube that prevents those channels from being promoted to me ever again.

There is 0% chance that the content that I had previously been watching whatever link up in the algorithm to Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, or Andrew Tate. This leads me to believe that YouTube intentionally carves out space for these content creators and makes promises about getting their content in front of everybody's eyeballs, regardless of level of interest in that type of content.

The YouTube algo is fucking insane. You click a video or two that you didn’t know was a rightwing nutjob because it had an interesting title and you basically have to delete your account and start over. That shit never ends, it’s just bizarre.

Like I’ve watched hundreds of leftwing videos, but YouTube just does not stop throwing conservative trash my way. I have to search for political videos I agree with. Ones I don’t are just in my face, always. I really don’t understand what they’re trying to do. It never suggests new videos from channels I’m subscribed to most of the time. But Nazi woman hating shit? I always need to see more angry Nazi shit.

i can tell you that NOBODY wants me involved in anything anymore. even my own social groups have taken to being like ‘we have too many white men, they are bad, we need to attract more people of color and women and trans people because they are special and good by default and white men are bad by default’. it’s infuriating and depressing that i’m basically told to f off when I want to contribute to my community.

I don’t doubt that you find the left’s current politic alienating in and of itself (lord knows it can be bewildering), but I have SERIOUS doubts that reality is anything like what you’re describing here. I’m a gun-toting, outdoor-type leftist whose predominantly queer/non-white friends (I live in a big city) always find me more of a novelty than a threat. They look at me like through the walls of a fishbowl, unable to understand a lot of what I believe but also appreciative that I’m an ally on core issues that matter to them. Not once has anyone ever looked at me or any of my other cis white male friends and told them to fuck off unless it’s someone coming in with a chip on their shoulder who feels like they need to prove something by being a confrontational asshole. I suggest you reflect less on what you feel like people believe about you when you’re not around and more on how they treat you when you are. They’re not nearly as threatened or upset by you as you think.

and that is just like… insta banned/hated if that ever comes up from my leftist people. who are typically upper middle class people pretending to be working-class for fun.

The way you phrase this tells me you’re gleaning many of your conclusions from online spaces, rather than face-to-face real life. That’s probably why you feel the way you do. I actually have serious doubts that you have any meaningful personal relationships with leftists who aren’t cartoons or provocateurs. Perhaps the way you’re received online has to do with the fact that your stories are so over-the-top and on-the-nose as to seem deliberately hyperbolic.

so much of it is basically anti-male anti-white hate jerking where i am told that anything i may say is oppressive to those of ‘marginalized identities’.

One of the communities I found on reddit (in the waning days before I left) was stupidpol. They are leftists who do not consider themselves liberals and opposed to the ID politics popular among liberals and the Democratic Party in the US. Personally this appealed to me because I’m sick of hearing that I am an asshole for being a straight white male, and I feel like focus on racial politics is used to divide the working class, and while gender politics is very nice, it is NOT the most important issue in the country right now.