Not long ago the liberal media and similarly inclined institutions were preoccupied with YouTube’s influence on young men. From this vantage, YouTube was a rightwing radicalising cesspool. Bitter young men were being brainwashed by rightwing creators who were nodes in a network of hate.
There was some truth to the overall notion but it was also too convenient. The scapegoat of the washout young man is just that. The whole story catered to a concerned parent inclined to see discrete sources of rightwing fake news as the issue of the moment. YouTube has since changed what it prioritizes and no one really talks about the whole thing anymore.
There are other dodgy focal points of online information that aren’t nearly as marketable, however.
It turns out many women (who are disproportionately anti-vax) make fulsome use of Instagram to confirm each other’s fears and resistance. Anecdotally I can confirm that this is true. From The POV of the bien pensant concerned parent this must be an equivalent threat to that of YouTube’s reactionary heyday right?
You’d have to concede the point. But so where’s the wall-to-wall coverage? It’s not marketable. Women into health and wellness trading emotional affect and codewords can’t be turned into a hate worthy God Head figure in the same way. It’s all too diffuse and there isn’t a convenient stack of scapegoats. There’s no foundation money to be had.
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