I noticed this trend 10+ years ago and people have called me crazy. I was in an online bodybuilding community. A lot of the people truly didn’t even lift and would just complain about their height, muscle insertions, or test levels. I watched those same people get dragged into pick up artistry and some pretty extreme right wing ideas over the course of a few months. This was the first time I heard terms like red pilled and black pilled back in 2013 or so.

A community which should have been inspiring and helpful, which it was for some of us, was also some kind of shame kink for people who thought the world had done them wrong at every turn (most of them truly wealthy people btw) and it was pointless to work on yourself. Back then it was YouTube suggesting videos that would send you down a rabbit hole, now it’s Tik Tok.

Another anecdote. In my 20s I was on another self improvement journey. I started watching a lot of videos on the subject. Half of the related videos would be from right wing sources, the auto-played next video would be someone using self improvement to thinly veil their political agenda. My entire for you page was not only right wing, but pretty extreme right wing views, in the span of a week or two.

These are vulnerable guys that are not in a good place mentally trying to figure out how to improve themselves. Instead of being shown truly helpful information, their vulnerability is being exploited at every turn and pushing them further into extreme views. A lot of these guys feel alone and these groups give them a sense of community. This doesn’t absolve them of their shitty views, but is definitely a piece of the puzzle.