In middle school and my freshman year of high school, I remember when a new genre of videos began popping up on my social media feed. What used to be made up of vloggers, sports highlights and gaming clips was now interrupted by strange videos — videos of feminists with blue hair, shouting and pointing fingers, calling out men for silly things. 

This was a new type of content for me. 

Due to a lack of knowledge and general interest in politics, I didn’t know too much about feminist ideology — nor did I know about current events. I was in a youthful, ignorant bubble, and somehow red pill content began to infiltrate it. 

Red pill and alt-right content consists of beliefs that reject feminism and “woke ideology,” focusing on traditional gender roles. This “movement” emphasizes that men, who are getting softer and being overtaken by women, should resort to traditional ideas of masculinity. The content also has ties to more extremist views, such as white nationalism. 

What made this content so inescapable was the algorithm. 

On YouTube, a recommended clip would lead to another — each one subtly reinforcing ideas about masculinity, gender and society. TikTok worked the same way, except with shorter and faster videos tailored to the same beliefs. 

Then came the streamers. 

I’ve always been a big YouTube user, but in middle school and the years that followed, I began to watch livestreams on the platform — and other platforms too. I became a frequent Twitch user to watch NBA 2K or Madden NFL, but the variety of the content I was consuming quickly expanded. 

The rise of Andrew Tate was incredibly memorable, as his ideas of masculinity and the roles of men and women were slightly appealing to me at one point. He flashed a lavish lifestyle of girls, cars and money, all while preaching that women no longer respected men and that men had gone soft. 

In those years, these ideas were both shocking and strangely appealing. I didn’t agree with everything, but they tapped into questions about masculinity and success that I was just starting to explore.

Part of why it was so magnetic also had to do with language. Take the word “woke,” for example. The usage of the word dates back to around the 1940s and was used by Black Americans to describe awareness of racial prejudice and discrimination. Since then, it has become an all-encompassing term for progressive politics and politicians. 

That was until the right began to use it in a derogatory manner. From politicians like President Donald Trump to Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republicans have used the word to paint progressive politics in an unkind light, abandoning the original history and tradition of its usage. 

With all these factors in play, the idea of masculinity was confusing to me. At a time when people began to explore traditionally feminine qualities or aesthetics, you had a number of people pushing back on these ideas and stating what a “real man” looked like to them.

Other streamers came on to the scene, and we still see influencers like the Nelk Boys, Jake and Logan Paul and Adin Ross supporting and pushing their beliefs to a younger audience.

It’s ironic how there is such a large push to stop indoctrination, yet it’s being exposed to our kids through a number of platforms and subtle methods. 

Looking back, I feel ashamed of what I watched and my amusement with the content. Seeing an anti-feminist video or laughing about it with a friend became so normal that it was easy to get drawn in. This phase could have shaped my worldview and my personal politics, reinforcing harmful stereotypes and limiting empathy. 

For some, this wasn’t just a phase, as it has developed into stronger beliefs. For me, it was a wake-up call to take control of what I let influence me and to build my own understanding of the world. 

In the end, it was easy to get out of this wormhole of content once I started questioning what I was watching and thinking critically about the hateful messages that were presented. I’m proud to be a woke young man, and moreover, I’m proud to care about others.