Brandon Marcus

The first time we spoke, Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez brought up a term from motorcycling. Democrats, she said, had grown so obsessed with the threat of fascism that for them, it had become an “obstacle fixation” — an intense focus that causes you to end up running right into the thing you’re afraid of hitting. “You do not save democracy by running... See more

Whether it’s a handwritten letter, a telephone call, a fax, an email, or a text, the medium through which people communicate shapes what they say and how they say it. Some mediums encourage formal speech while others encourage casual banter. Some are suited to full sentences and well-turned paragraphs; others to sentence fragments and cliches. Some... See more

The Manosphere exists because millions of young men — of every race — are asking the same question Black men were asking in 1965: what does masculinity mean when its economic foundations have been removed?

Western democracies, by contrast, with our open speech and open systems, are supposed to have a commons, a marketplace of ideas that allows for cross-cutting dialogue and eventual consensus. It has been replaced by an information ecology shaped by algorithmic selection. Content and creators optimized for engagement outcompete everything else—not... See more

constant, identity-targeted conflict that drives polarization and grievance.

Different genres, same engine: trust earned through charisma, resonance, and the steady performance of alignment, inside a media ecology built for niches.

Trust, in other words, is transferable through parasocial relationships—regardless of whether the institution has done anything to earn it.