The Zynternet with Max Read

Max Read joins me to discuss "the Zynternet", a newly emergent online youth subculture. We explore the For-You-Pagification of social media, the revenge of the normies and the future of online subcultures.

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In the intro to this podcast we discuss tech’s recent pivot toward the Trumpian right and it’s national conservative agenda, alongside some new regulatory proposals that will shape our big platforms under the next administration.

The majority of this episode is spent exploring a new and somewhat distasteful subculture of young men on today’s internet. We track some of the larger cultural and economic developments that have led up to this, including the legalization of online sports betting, TikTok’s impact on American platforms and the late adoption curve of social media.

Max writes:

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 b******t 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.

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