Social media apps and websites like Twitch and Kik have ascended to fame and captured the attention of young people around the world. New streamers and influencers also enter these communities by introducing their political philosophies to audiences. Each year, these opinions and ideals begin to mold the minds of young people. Nico “Sneako” Kenn De Ballinthazy and Hasan “Hasanabi” Piker both hold contradicting views on women and queer people, which are highlighted within their content. 

Changing of Beliefs

Prior to falling down misogynist Andrew Tate’s pipeline, YouTube veteran, Sneako, had more moderate ideals that he expressed through his gameplay commentary videos. Andrew Tate has been known for his conservative/far right values. As Sneako began to descend further, he has exhibited extreme conservative views on his streams. Throughout his time on social media, Sneako has openly expressed a change of beliefs by saying about the LGBTQ+ community: “they are deviants who like to do wrong things.” Sneako no longer endorses progressive policies and openly denounces any support for groups that he does not deem to be a good influence. He believes that being a part of the LGBTQ+ community is inappropriate and tries to sway others away. In his eyes,  he views homosexuality as unnatural. On a stream, Sneako said that women, “still pretend like feminism is about equality. No, feminism is about taking all the power and becoming men, while men are struggling.” Sneako shows his values by showing that he believes that feminism is not about equality; they want more power over men by opting to take over mens positions within society. Overall, Sneako withholds support for minority groups and believes that the intentions of these groups are not to provide equal rights, but to inflict negative qualities upon society as a whole.

An Official Rights Famine

Sneako’s ideals shown within his streams have started to influence children that watch his streams, as the children can be seen on the stream walking up to him at a sports event saying, “we love women, but not transgenders.” Kids are malleable and tend to follow beliefs of their favorite influencer, which spreads this ideology to younger generations. Another kid says,  “all gays should die,” and Sneako replies with, “no, we love everybody,” and he looks surprised. Not even Sneako knows how far his influence can be as he can be seen and connect with internet users of all different ages. Through his streams, he can mold the opinions of young people and may encourage them to adopt extremist beliefs. This experience serves as a warning of what happens when an entire generation of children are subject to red-pill ideology, eventually adopting what could lead to a devastating future where rights are taken away from minority groups. 

Challenger #2

Hasan Piker is a left-leaning streamer that has advocated for LGBTQ+ rights, universal healthcare, and other progressive issues. Hasan had a webshow to present progressive analysis to millennials, who like Hasan, supported Bernie Sanders. Hasan switched to Twitch to cater to a younger audience as he found that there were a plethora of people with right-winged beliefs on YouTube. He wasn’t wrong for doing so as YouTube has been shown to mostly cater to a right-leaning crowd. Hasan is very anti-capitalism stating that, “we are slowly destroying the planet because we care more about the profit motive.” While Hasan does critique Republicans quite harshly he is no friend of Democrats. He says this about the politics surrounding the Democratic and Republican Parties, “…these sides are not equal. One does not have any f***ing material power whatsoever. The left does nothing; the right actually does engage.” These words show the vitriol that Hasanabi holds for our current state of government.

Can Gen Z Save The World?

Sneako’s influence isn’t the only thing to permeate to the young generations. Because of how much information is at the tips of peoples fingers, Gen Z is one of the most informed generations in history. If anything major happens, they can immediately get information on the topic, but as it is the internet information may not always be truthful, and with streamers like Hasan influencing the minds of Gen Z, the number of teens with a similar mindset grows, and as Gen Z becomes more left-winged, Gen Alpha seem to have their own epidemic of political beliefs but conservative. They like to revel in causing childish or unneeded actions that garner reactions from people.  This right-leaning Gen Alpha epidemic is causing a lot of discourse that needs to be reversed. Because of people like Hasan, who stream and talk about their opinions on things that happen in the world, more and more of Gen Z is becoming politically aware. They are starting to see the systemic problems prevalent in American society. We’re getting to a point in the world where all of the bad that has been done by previous generations, who won’t be around to feel the consequences, will be almost impossible to rectify unless Gen Z stands firm. We have contacted both streamers hoping to receive a response, but never received an answer.

The Truth

Overall, streamers have shown that they have a lot of influence over young children. While streamers like Sneako influence young Gen Z and Gen Alpha to hate or dislike other groups of people, there has been a lot of pushback by more progressive streamers. Take Hasanabi for example, his more progressive and leftist ideals show through Zoomers who are young adults and in college. They are becoming way more aware of the current state of the world and they react in ways they think can help others.