Why young men join the far right

It starts ever so slowly, like a spark that causes an inferno.

• A Magic: The Gathering card is banned from official tournaments.
• A group of gamers is called racist bigots because of a minority of players being dicks.
• A college student is abused while standing in line to see a "controversial" speaker.
• An entire gender is made to feel like criminals for wanting to talk to a girl.
• A comedian is forced to apologise for a joke from the past.
• A film has to cancel a screening event because of protests.

All these "insignificant events" don't seem so insignificant when someone is staring at their blank ballot to cast their vote for the future of the country.

It's easy to blame the voters and say the onus is on them and no one else. But is that true? People are shaped by their experiences. We know this. When you call for a university professor to be fired because they said something that offended you, you didn't encourage someone to vote for a far left party. You did the opposite. When you thought that banning a Magic card that hasn't been in print for 2 decades would somehow solve racism you didn't undo slavery, you just guaranteed an even more rabid conservative party that equates this to book burning.

I know this happens because I've experienced this first hand. I've watched the social media algorithms slowly attempt to turn me into a conservative and I could very easily see how many could fall for this.

When you ban a Magic card you're not just banning a Magic card. You're sending MILLIONS of people down the conservative rabbit hole.

Let me give you an example...

You see this thing posted somewhere about this insane ban of some "racist" cards in a trading card game. You click the link, see the cards and think to yourself "what the actual fuck?". So you do a bit of Googling and come across a right leaning commentator on YouTube that explains how stupid this is and what other things far left groups have wanted to ban. On the surface, nothing here is wrong... In fact, only an idiot would disagree. You go about your day.

The next day you come across another video from the same YouTuber, recommended by YouTube because you watched their content previously. It's a similar story again. Some far left morons have decided to protest the screening of a film because it's misogynistic - Never mind the films director is a woman. Again, only an absolute idiot wouldn't agree with this.

But this is where things get interesting. Social media algorithms start suggesting related content. This content is getting more and more political and the viewer may not agree with everything these people are saying, but they seem to be the only ones standing up against the insane cancel culture. Everyone else either seems to collude with the crazy people on the far left or they enable it. Only one group is standing up against it and it's the far right.

YouTube algorithms get more and more aggressive and suggest more and more extreme commentators. If there was people on the left calling out cancel culture they'd likely fall into that camp, but those people either don't exist or are too rare.

Not all of these people become Republican voters, but many do. Enough to change the outcome of an election.

We all know about The Butterfly Effect. So maybe next time you want to solve racism by banning a card in a game you don't even play or care about, how about just shut the fuck up?