Sometimes it feels like Vice President Kamala Harris is everywhere on the internet. The viral posts are stacking up: the catchy coconut tree track; the TikTok of rapper Megan Thee Stallion twerking at a rally; the screenshot of Harris’s coronation as “brat” by popstar Charli XCX. But if Harris is slaying the social media game on mainstream apps like TikTok and Instagram, does that mean team Donald Trump is falling behind?
Though Harris is having a viral moment, her opponent isn’t exactly slacking with young scrollers. Harris might be the queen of the brats, but in the testosterone-fueled corners of the internet, Trump has become king of the bros.
“Can’t be sober on Air Force One, right?!” asked one of the Nelk Boys, a group of Canadian and American podcasters and YouTubers in their 20s and 30s known for shotgunning beers and pranking boomers, right before meeting Trump in 2020. You might wonder why dudes who make videos like “Nelk Boys Trapped in a Deadly Tornado!” or “We Corrupted an Amish Person!” met with the president of the United States.
But with a reach of 8.17 million YouTube subscribers, who cares? Their fraternity-brother antics have evolved into right-wing political punditry. Just minutes before boarding Air Force One, the boys downed some beers to shake off the nerves. Buzz or no, it wasn’t a problem given that Trump is just “one of the boys.”
And he still is. The Nelk Boys have hosted Trump and more recently his running mate, JD Vance, on their popular “Full Send” podcast. Ahead of this month’s episode featuring Vance, the boys announced a “pro-America, pro-freedom” nonpartisan Send the Vote PAC, meant to target the young male audience that is their fan base.
In the manosphere, Trump seems to be everywhere. He has become a friend of Ultimate Fighting Championship, a Barstool Sports sweetheart, and recently appeared on the Break 50 challenge with golfer Bryson DeChambeau. In June, he appeared on influencer-turned-wrestler Logan Paul’s “Impaulsive” podcast. On Aug. 5, controversial livestreamer Adin Ross, who gained prominence as a gaming streamer, told his viewers to “vote for the right person, which is him,” indicating Trump, who was seated beside him. The livestream interview reached a record-breaking 580,000 views on the platform Kick. Thousands of young, voting-age men tune into Ross’s daily streams, including the former president’s 18-year-old son, Barron, who encouraged his dad to speak with Ross.
While the dudes geek out with Trump over golfing, Harris’s social media outreach is more targeted to young women and the issues many of them care about. At an Atlanta rally, Megan Thee Stallion performed her hit single “Body” and said, “I know my ladies in the crowd love they body, and if you want to keep loving your body, you know who to vote for,” referring to Harris’s proabortion policies. Harris’s brat status is a nod to Charli XCX’s album of the summer — which the singer describes as being about “me, my flaws, my f*** ups, my ego all rolled into one.” Harris is brat simply because she’s a woman doing her thing.
But even though women vote more than men and make up a bigger part of the Democratic Party, the Trump campaign is hoping that years of heavy you-go-girling might be pushing young men toward the right. Polls show that young women increasingly identify as liberal, but the number of young men identifying with Trump and the Republican Party is rising. And Trump’s appeal among young men has been rising since his initial run in 2016.
Some young men share Trump’s views on issues like tax cuts and transgender policies. Like older Trump supporters, many seem to feel vilified by mainstream media. According to an American Enterprise Institute study, young men are more likely than their older counterparts to report facing “gender-based discrimination,” with 23 percent of Gen Z identifying with this feeling compared to 14 percent of male baby boomers. But while young men are disgruntled — creating an opportunity for Trump to gain new voters — they’re also historically bad voters. According to a Rutgers study looking at turnout from 1994 to 2022, women between the ages of 18 and 24 vote at just under 30 percent while men in the same age bracket vote at only 25.3 percent.
But Trump has turned out unlikely voters before, framing his policies as common-sense solutions to elite politicians’ failures. He told Ross, “People don’t want crime, they don’t wanna go to wars, they want to be able to make money, they want to be able to have a good life, they want a great education, all the things that you want, just the basic things.” Vance, at 39, told the Nelk crew that he went from being a Trump hater to his running mate after taking a closer look at the media narrative. “He’s not the scary person the media makes him out to be,” Vance said.
While the Nelk Boys might not be top of your feed, don’t underestimate the reach of young male streamers and podcasters in this election. And don’t overestimate the ability of newspapers, TV, and radio to reach that demographic. From the rise of Truth Social to the Nelk-Trump alliance, the former president has proven that many Americans, including young men, have an appetite for information outside of the mainstream.
The question is: Will they full send it for him in November?
This column first appeared in The Primary Source, Globe Opinion’s free weekly newsletter about local and national politics. If you’d like to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
Carine Hajjar is a Globe Opinion columnist. She can be reached at carine.hajjar@globe.com.