Since reading this, I’ve been tracing the zyntranet, for at least the reason that it’s a demographic that a) Trump seems very interested in and b) almost certainly won’t vote. It’s a movement without a personality, a subculture without an identity. The superficial output of a flattening of culture. The next wave of boomers.
Over the last ten years or so, a broad community of fratty, horndog, boorishly provocative 20- and sometimes (embarrassingly) 30-somethings–mostly but by no means entirely male–has emerged to form a newly prominent online subculture. This network is adjacent to the “sports internet” of 40something dads and the “hustle internet” of Miami crypto bullshit and the “reactionary internet” of trad influencers, but is its own distinct community with its own distinct cultural referents–college sports, gambling, light domestic beers, Zyn nicotine pouches–and influential personalities and media outlets, among them Dave Portnoy, Pat McAfee, Antonio Brown, and Call Her Daddy, in addition to dozens of minor podcasters and hey-fellow-kids content creators who nearly all work for sports-betting concerns.
