Economic concerns and growing disenchantment with both parties is draining support for Trump among Gen Z young men, a key bloc of support during the 2024 election

Male Gen Z voters are breaking with Donald Trump and the Republican party at large, recent polls show, less than a year after this same cohort defied convention and made a surprise shift right, helping Trump win the 2024 election.

Taken with wider polling suggesting Democrats will lead in the midterms, the findings on young men spell serious trouble for the Republican Party in 2026.

Younger Gen Z men, those born between 2002 and 2007, may be even more anti-Trump, according to October research from YouGov and the Young Men’s Research Project, a potential sign that their time living through the social upheavals of the Covid pandemic and not being political aware during the first Trump administration may be shaping their experience.

  • GutterRat42@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    My sister (F 22) voted for Trump over taxes, Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants. She is 1st gen, born of 2 immigrants who also voted for Trump. Every time I present new evidence of how bad Trump is, she pulls ChatGPT and “debunks my lies” with nicely crafted confirmation bias prompts. If you all know how to get through to GenZers, I am listening.

      • MrVilliam@sh.itjust.works
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        17 days ago

        Considering the lack of value we’re getting in return for these taxes, nah I’m pretty sure everybody should be upset about taxes. Other, better countries may pay more in taxes, but after accounting for the healthcare and worker rights that the taxes get them, they end up with more time and more money than most Americans.

        I met a local politician who, in my red area, just seemed like he was dancing around labeling himself a Democrat. The office was for basically money management in the area, and he was talking about optimizing the use of tax funds. I made it clear that I don’t really mind paying this tax rate, and I would even pay more, but only if it starts getting used on shit that matters like building another school because ours are getting overcrowded, and the area is growing whether we prepare or not. I said that even if I only cared about my own finances, that’s an investment that supports growth which would raise my property value, and it would attract new businesses to serve that growing population. Just plan for it so that it doesn’t grow out of control and become a shit hole with stupid intersection infrastructure and urban sprawl.

      • Janx@piefed.social
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        16 days ago

        I would rather pay the exactly same amount in taxes as I do my rent that goes up every year. It sucks we get punished for existing, pricing ourselves out of shelter so the property owners can became even more rich…

    • kescusay@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      Ask her to read the links from her ChatGPT queries with you. Do it together. Show her how ChatGPT is confidently and convincingly lying to her. And each time she comes back with another result from a biased prompt, do it again. Eventually she’ll at least stop trying to convince you that ChatGPT knows all, out of embarrassment.

    • big_slap@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      have the AI cite it sources for the claims it makes, and read through those sources. ask the AI what information it used in the source to come up with its statement.

      using chatGPT in this way is like how I used Wikipedia growing up: just pull up an article on something, check out what citations an article had, and walk it backwards from there

      • tempest@lemmy.ca
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        17 days ago

        Does the paid chat gpt actually cite?

        The free one (which most people are using), when asked how much an aircraft carrier costs just links to the main page of CNBC and the department of defense.

        I further prompted and it gave me 404s

        • pigup@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          It does a mix of hallucination and self-correction once you tell it to search the web to actually find out current information. And even then, you don’t have a good chance of having truly accurate information. It really does take work.

        • big_slap@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          not sure if only the paid gpt actually cites, but anyone thats trying to show someone else how inefficient LLMs are with data should be able to come to the conclusion the output is untrustworthy if you’re getting 404 errors after asking to cite, in my opinion

          • tempest@lemmy.ca
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            17 days ago

            The problem is it “cites” things by inserting obscured hyperlinks that people see and never click but assume there is a “source”

            • big_slap@lemmy.world
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              17 days ago

              I guess we found the answer to how the original person i was replying to can validate anything thats generated by an LLM: looking up sources that an LLM claims to use

    • fizzle@quokk.au
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      17 days ago

      Ask what it would take to convince her.

      She will probably require something which is just not practically possible.

      If her assertion is not falsifiable, then its based on faith. You can’t argue with that.

      edit: I’ve thought about this a little bit more and realised that this approach won’t work with something nebulous like “my sister supports the Trump presidency”. It’s a good tactic with specific beliefs like “the Earth is flat”. Subjective statements like “Trump is the best president” are subjective statements of opinion.

      • Klear@quokk.au
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        17 days ago

        This is a bit disingenuous. Convincing me that Trump is not an idiot would also require something that is not practically possible (namely him not being a total imbecile).

        • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          I think it’s implied to ask for what it would take to convince you if it were true. If you witnessed trump in a non prepared debate making salient points, clever logic and such, you figure he wasn’t actually an idiot, right?

        • fizzle@quokk.au
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          17 days ago

          If it were true that Trump is not an idiot then evidence of that would be practically possible.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      What does she actually know about?

      Doesn’t matter what it is, literally any topic that she knows about, even if it’s the Kardashians.

      One day ask her a question about it, then ask whatever chatbot she trusts, if they’re not the same, tell her she’s wrong and if she doesn’t believe you to ask her AI.

      A big reason people think AI is smart, is they never ask it about something they know.

      That sounds basic, but it means they never notice when any of their questions get a wrong answer.

      Getting them to ask it about topics they know about, means they get to see how it can fail, and how a small initial error it makes can be extrapolated to the point everything else is bullshit.

      Once they learn it’s not always right, they’re less likely to blindly trust it. That leads to them double checking some things, seeing it’s bullshitting more, and then double checking it more.

      You need to replace the AI feedback loop with the rage loop. It ain’t hard to get a conservative there, get them to the point they’re asking chatbots questions they already know the answer too, just to see it get it wrong.

      Ethics aside, if we don’t manipulate the idiots, someone else is going to do it.

      • stringere@sh.itjust.works
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        17 days ago

        Best one I’ve found recently was the top article on DDG search for “peacock mantis shrimp cleanup crew”.

        The Peacock Mantis Shrimp is a valued clean‑up‑crew addition sold in‑store here in Columbus, Ohio. It acts as a scavenger and algae picker, keeps substrate clean, helping reduce maintenance and improve water quality. Stock 1–2 per 5 gal in a balanced reef or fish‑only system for best results. Difficulty: Easy. Offer varied empty shells. Drip‑acclimate and maintain stable salinity for long‑term health.

        There are so many problems with this but I’ll start with the one that made me search for a cleanup crew for a mantis shrimp:

        • they are aggressive and deadly to just about anything other than some damselfish
        • minimun tank size is 20 gallons, putting one in a 5 gallon would be terrible for everyone and stoclong 1-2 per 5 gallons would be a bloodbath
        • they are not scavengers or detrivores and do not eat algae
        • they do not clean the substrate other than to kick it all over the place when making a burrow
    • eli@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      You can’t help morons unfortunately.

      My father is Gen 1 of immigrant parents. His parents HATED Trump. Yet he voted for Trump all three times.

      I have a GenZ sister-in-law that uses ChatGPT for relationship advice. Like copies and pastes responses from men into ChatGPT and asks what they’re “really saying” or “what their intentions are”, instead of you know, JUST ASKING THE PERSON OUTRIGHT.

      We’re fucked

    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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      17 days ago

      tell your sister that she’s a fucking dumbass for thinking a chatbot is a source, tell her that all a chatbot does is aggregate data on the internet, and that if she doesn’t smarten the fuck up then she’s going to be a failed unhappy outcast in life that is hated by successful people and shunned by her family

      • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml
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        17 days ago

        if she doesn’t smarten the fuck up then she’s going to be a failed unhappy outcast in life that is hated by successful people and shunned by her family

        Shit, I’m already all these things. I wonder what would happen if I used AI.

    • circuscritic@lemmy.ca
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      17 days ago

      You have two choices:

      Put her down or call ICE.

      The former is more humane, but the latter would be a lot funnier.

      But seriously, I would just disconnect, or at most, I would ask her to have the chatbot provides sources and then ask her to pull them up.

      If her learning that it’s making up sources doesn’t get through to her, I wouldn’t try anymore. Just accept that she’s either going to have to come through it on her own, or she’ll just progressively get worse and worse, and you’ll have to decide if you want to stick around for that, I wouldn’t.

        • shawn1122@sh.itjust.works
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          16 days ago

          Some liberals enjoy the idea of ICE being called on an immigrant that supported Trump or MAGA. America is such a police state that having a paramilitary presence in its cities is not consistently a problem for either side of the political spectrum there.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      17 days ago

      Ghost her, go no contact, on moral grounds.

      Sorry, you support a criminal fascist pedophile warmonger.

      Thats bad.

      You’re bad.

      Bye!

      … Its really not that complicated.

      You can make it complicated and go into ostracization as a means of effectint social change, of cutting someone off being a very costly form of socially signalling how serious you are about this…

      But its really not that complicated.

        • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          16 days ago

          Hah, well, given how frequently mine has directly ruined my life, betrayed me, and more recently, attempted to kill me, I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.

          Yeah, it would be a terrible weakness if I still loved or attempted to have any contact with a bunch of dysfunctional, violent, abusive narcissists.

          There’s a difference between ‘haters’ and ‘have directly tried to destroy you, multiple times’.

          And thats just how fascists ultimately act, the behavior they ultimately enable against their outgroup, or, as in this and every other ‘leopards ate my face’ type story… themselves, their ingroup, their own family.

          But hey I guess if your family is just ‘fascist-lite’, then I’m sure they’d never do anything to hurt you, right?

          Because theae morally bankrupt people, well, they love you, so its fine.

          Spoiler: If they’re actually fascists, they hate you and they want you to die.

          If they got into it as a fad, they’re too stupid to be trusted with any complex task, and will be that stupid again.

      • GutterRat42@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        I feel like that would do more harm than good. It would just validate her views that leftists and liberals are intolerant of other viewpoints. I want bridges.

        • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          15 days ago

          Leftists are intolerant of fascists who want to kill and harm innocent people for no good reason.

          Please go actually read the wiki page on the Paradox of Tolerance.

          Its a bit of a misnomer, its not actually a paradox. The solution is do not tolerate the intolerant, otherwise the intolerant win.

          Liberals are tolerant of fascists, which is why fascists are able to thrive, liberals attempt to take them seriously, defeat them in the battle of ‘ideas’, do battle with them in conventional ways which they essentially always fail out, because facists don’t abide by the norms or civility politics that liberals build their entire political identity out of.

          Their whole thing is breaking from all the liberal norms and standards, and liberals basically just continuously act ‘shocked pikachu face’ and aghast at every horrific thing a fascist says or does… while not resisting them in any actually meaningful way.

          You can’t make a bridge to a fascist. Doing that makes you either not a leftist, or a very very stupid one.

          Just go look into the history of fascist movements, this same pattern plays out every time. Liberals make concessions to fascists and move to the right, increasing overall societal harm.

          Leftists either vehemently oppose the fascists, or, in some instances, they attempt some kind of anti centrist alliance with the fascists out of expediancy, and then they nearly all get literally hunted down in the streets by the fascists if they do succeed at knocking out the center.

          You can’t logic a fascist into not being a fascist.

          They’re delusional cult members, they have ‘alternative facts’, and when they tire with those, they’ll wrap around to some other avenue of discussion, lies you already debunked.

          The only thing that can stop them is either ‘impolite’ means of resisting them, or just hoping the internal contradictions of their movement lead to its eventual implosion… without causing too much damage.

          And they usually cause a very significant amount of damage by the time they metastasize, and afterward.

      • GutterRat42@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        I asked ger how she would feel if ICE took our family members. She said that it would be sad, but that’s why we have laws. 😮‍💨