Almost ten years ago, if I was looking to see what the fringe left were up to I’d travel to the once-popular website Tumblr, which began losing a lot of its luster once they banned pornography off the site. It was a social media platform that dominated by the fringe left — much of them were high school and college-aged — where you’d see incredibly radicalized kids spouting off some of the most inane nonsense you’d ever seen.
Transgenderism, gender fluidity, otherkin, and feminist radicals were a dime a dozen on that site. It was rife with posts of people literally bragging about all the mental illnesses they suffered from. Users were constantly in some sort of competition to be the most victimized, and they were constantly lashing out at something, someone, and each other in an attempt to win some sort of victim hierarchy.
Tumblr was highly amusing. Like going to the freak tent at the circus, you went there to check out the absolute lunacy the young were engaging in. Many, including myself, didn’t think much of it at the time except for the harmful effects it had on these kids. In the back of our minds, we were always comforted by the constant rule that once they grew up and entered the real world, then a lot of these fantasies and weird trends would get wrecked by paying taxes, keeping jobs, and finding stability.
Boy was I wrong.
I knew these kids were being trained to be this way by activist college professors but what I didn’t see coming is the influence these kids would have on the real world once they entered it. They didn’t get slapped across the head by reality, they began to guilt, manipulate, and intimidate everyone from individuals to companies through the use of social media.
In just a few short years, what would become known as “woke culture” became mainstream, and it almost ten years later it feels like we’re only beginning to untangle ourselves from it.
The lesson here is pretty important; the left’s effect on the youth cannot be understated.
As RedState covered previously, the Biden White House attempted to pass the blame for the energy crisis off on everything but themselves. Putin, oil and gas companies, and the COVID-19 virus are all something that the Democrats pointed at, completely missing the main culprit for the crisis; themselves. Their main vessel of getting that message out was TikTok, the most widely trafficked video app in the world at the moment.
Thankfully, it’s not going so well and people are calling out the TikTok influencers carrying the White House’s water for spreading obvious lies. Still, we shouldn’t relax.
The left isn’t known for giving up on a strategy because it failed. They’re long-game players. To them, this won’t be looked at as a failure, but a learning experience. They’ll likely learn that their manipulations need to be a lot more subtle and entertaining. Their messages need to be couched in a way that doesn’t put the message in one’s face but lets the receivers arrive at the conclusion they want to on their own.
It’s a strategy that won’t work on those paying attention, but it absolutely will work on those that aren’t. A lot of those people not really paying attention are the young, and there are a lot of young people on TikTok.
The Democrats are doing exactly what they should be doing if they want to influence people. The youth are impressionable and the Democrats want to take advantage of that fact. But the solution isn’t to advocate for the deletion of TikTok or ban the youth from accessing it. That will only create a Streisand effect and activate the rebelliousness that comes naturally to the young.
As per the usual, the winning strategy is showing up to the battle, not advocating for the elimination of the battlefield. Influencers for the right exist on the platform and they should be supported and echoed. If you have the gumption, add your own voice. The more of us there are on the platform the weaker their message becomes.
But in the meantime, don’t ever underestimate the left’s ability to influence. They may fail today, but it doesn’t mean they’ll fail tomorrow.
