The Meme-ification of Politics & Rise of Nick Fuentes

Memes Report Volume 1

Nick Fuentes on Piers Morgan’s Show

While it’s hard for most people to remember a time before Trump dominated political headlines, he was once a longshot candidate, mocked for even running for president and given a near zero percent chance of winning by his detractors.

I wasn’t one of those people.

I had started my social media career a few years before his campaign, and I saw what most didn’t. Social media was far more powerful than the majority of the world realized. Trump was the perfect person to take advantage of these emerging platforms, which were hungry for content that kept users engaged. He had everything they needed: a recognizable name, a compelling story, and, most importantly, he was deeply polarizing.

I predicted his victory months before it happened, much to the chagrin of my “feminist” girlfriend at the time. I didn’t make that prediction because I liked the guy. I couldn’t even vote, since I’m Canadian. I made it because I understood the environment he was operating in, and I knew he was going to win.

What most people got wrong was a fundamental misunderstanding of how these platforms function, their incentive structures, and how someone could exploit them to shape public opinion. The average user spends hours a day on these platforms, yet has little understanding of how they actually work, or how much influence they exert over people’s thoughts, beliefs, and eventually their actions.

Trump, or someone on his team, clearly saw this opportunity and fully capitalized on it. He was the perfect candidate to become the first true social media president, ushering in what I’d call the meme-ification of politics.

Polarizing figures are tailor-made for social media. You either love them or you hate them. Either way, you’re thinking about them. Paradoxically, this gives people like Trump the ability to turn their biggest critics into their biggest distributors. Ironically, the people most committed to shutting him down often end up doing the most work for him.

In a six-second attention-span world, polarization is the ultimate growth engine. Nuance is dead. Everyone has an opinion, and they’re absolutely certain they’re right, completely unaware of the echo chamber they’re operating within.

Historically, during periods of economic instability, people look for a strong leader. More often than not, that leader represents the opposite of whatever people believe led them into their current situation. This cycle has repeated throughout history. The difference today isn’t human nature. It’s the media tools available.

The world has finally woken up to the impact social media has politically, economically, and socially. But awareness of a problem doesn’t mean we won’t repeat the same mistakes.

New figureheads are emerging, and they’re running an eerily similar playbook. Once again, the same people are falling for it.

Nick Fuentes is a creator who gets labeled many things. I have no interest in labeling him. I don’t know the man personally. What I can say unequivocally is that he is extremely talented at capturing attention and keeping it. He’s a well-spoken, young white man who is unapologetic about who he is and what he believes.

And it’s resonating deeply with a large number of young men who feel ostracized from society, overlooked, written off, and given no viable alternatives.

As a young white man myself, I believe the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. Over the last decade, being a male (especially a white one) has increasingly been framed as one of the worst things you can be. I don’t even need to argue that point. Your body likely had a reaction to just reading that.

As a white man, my “privilege” is often used to invalidate my opinions entirely. I experienced this repeatedly on university campuses, classroom after classroom, where I was penalized for speaking up, questioning narratives, or challenging openly biased professors. In spaces that were supposedly designed for discussion, I was labeled simply for expressing an opinion.

What you need to understand about young men is this: most of us do not talk. Most are not like me. They won’t speak up. They won’t challenge the status quo, especially when the social cost of doing so continues to rise.

So what do they do?

They look for someone who will.

And they found that in Nick Fuentes.

You can say whatever you want about his beliefs, statements, or opinions. What you cannot deny is that he’s resonating. And just like with Trump, instead of trying to understand why this is happening, the people who despise him the most are unintentionally amplifying his message and strengthening his audience.

This dynamic exists for two reasons: self-righteousness and laziness.

Many of the people with the strongest opinions about him are clearly misinformed. They’ve never watched a full stream. They form judgments based on six-second clips. The irony is hard to miss.

One key difference between Fuentes and Trump is that Fuentes is an exceptionally articulate speaker. He makes seasoned commentators look unprepared on their own platforms, which only further validates his supporters.

Before writing this piece, I spent time actually studying his content to understand why it resonates so strongly. The answer became obvious quickly.

Where else can young men go online and behave the way they want, openly and casually, without constant policing? Nearly every other group is allowed, even encouraged, to explore identity, be messy, be silly, and figure themselves out in public. When young men do the same, they’re almost universally ridiculed.

Look at comedy movies. When was the last time we had one that was genuinely funny? I grew up loving comedies, and I can’t think of a single one from the last decade that truly landed.

The process that turns boys into men has never been polished or attractive. It is built through failure, accountability, and difficulty. From the outside, it often looks crude, childish, or unnecessary. In reality, those experiences are formative. They are how restraint is learned, confidence is earned, and self-respect is developed.

When those processes are punished or removed, the outcome is predictable. Boys do not become men. They simply grow older. The result is a generation of adults who struggle with responsibility, relationships, and self-regulation, not because they are incapable, but because they were never allowed to complete the transition into manhood.

Nick Fuentes provides many young men with something they feel they have been denied: visibility, validation, and representation, often for the first time in their lives.

None of this is me saying you should like Nick Fuentes or agree with anything he says.

What I am saying is that you should be paying attention.

If you’re going to label someone as the worst thing to ever happen, you don’t get to do that with any credibility unless you understand who they are, what they represent, and why they’re gaining traction.

It’s ironic to watch people accuse younger generations of laziness while displaying that same laziness so publicly. And everyone can see it.

Unless this changes, expect Nick Fuentes to continue growing.

And in the social media era, I wouldn’t be shocked at all to see Nick Fuentes, or someone running an almost identical playbook, become President of the United States.