As a father of two boys under 10, this is, and has been, terrifying me. I know they are going to be exposed to it. I know they are great, caring, open-minded, loving kids, and I hope I’ve thus far raised them right…but I’ve also had a few friends fall into the incel path along the way.

Like, I already know that Trump’s 2016 popularity was almost entirely driven by through 4chan, getting him popular enough to hold through the primaries while everyone else dropped out was almost completely meme-driven and aimed at impressionable young men. And by then I had already known 4chan as being a decades-long toxic dump of the internet. Shit…remember 2016 r/the_donald? Was practically 4chan-lite.

And don’t get me started on 2008, Ron Paul, and early reddit. Holy shit, man, having fallen into his fandom then and now looking at it from the outside…2008 Ron Paul feels like it was a goddamn psyop aimed at young men. Like a proof-of-concept for leveraging social-media for 2016 Trump.