by Jordan Costolo ’25

As polarization between political and social ideas online becomes more of an issue, influencers who peddle their views within their respective spheres have risen in popularity. These influencers spread their opinions through posts on multiple different platforms, such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. These influencers’ online presence often spreads quickly, with their content moving across multiple platforms through an understanding of how the algorithms of these social media sites work.

An example of one of these influencers is Andrew Tate, a masculinist and antifeminist social media personality, and founder of the Hustler’s University online course, a virtual entrepreneurship course for men. He was dubbed the “king of toxic masculinity” online, promoting many misogynistic “alpha male” ideologies, such as the idea that men are better workers than women, and that making money is the most important thing in life. When Tate was active online, his account on X (formerly Twitter), had approximately 8.5 million followers. He was the third most Googled person in the world at his pinnacle of popularity before his arrest in Romania on rape and human trafficking charges. In addition, his army of fan accounts echoed and amplified the spread of them. Through a plethora of social media platforms, some fan accounts gathered tens of thousands of followers.

There are also many influencers who use their audiences online to promote drastic political change, such as content creator “Woke Karen” on TikTok. “Woke Karen” campaigns for socialist changes to the United States, anti-government policies, and pro-Palestine organizations through talking over silent cooking videos. By including the cooking videos in the background, “Woke Karen” widens their audience to people who enjoy cooking videos, therefore spreading their message farther beyond his direct sphere of influence. Another example of an influencer using their platform to spread ideas is Hasan Piker, a left-wing political commentator on Twitch and YouTube. Piker streams to his accumulated 18,000 viewers daily, spending usually over 50 hours a week commentating on political issues.

On the other side of the political spectrum, some right-wing influences have used their influence to give an alternative view on politics. Matt Walsh, a right-wing political activist commentator, can be seen as an example of this. In his Daily Wire documentary What Is a Woman? Walsh interviewed a variety of people about different issues regarding transgender-identifying youth, sex reassignment surgery, transgender women in sports, and other related issues. Walsh spends a large portion of the documentary deriding transgender advocates in interviews, making fun of what he sees as the dangerous nature of their beliefs.

Influencers play a large role in spreading ideas and information, especially as the gap between with differing ideas becomes larger and larger. As time goes on, and more of these figures become popular, so will the ideas they are spreading.