For A.M. Hickman, it was reading Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto online when he was 13. Soon he was posting to survivalist message boards. By age 21, he was on Reddit, moderating one of the internet’s largest forums advocating for “liberation” from the government, capitalism and other systems members saw as oppressive.
While the two young men fell into very different internet rabbit holes—one with alt-right leanings and the other on the far left—they were both drawn by a desire to find belonging and a yearning, they say, for the hero’s journey. For both, the result was depression and loneliness.
They each sought out ideas and experiences that elude many young men in an age some see as one of helicopter parenting and so-called toxic masculinity. For decades, schools have cut shop class, as well as recess and other programs that mental-health experts say give boys an outlet for their energy. The American Psychological Association reported that boys often receive more severe punishment than girls in school for the same behaviors. And there are fewer male teachers now than in the 1980s, according to the American Institute for Boys and Men.
“Boyhood now is a void. The thrilling extremist ideas you find on the internet become your surrogate boyhood adventure,” said Hickman, now 31.
Whether it’s conspiracy theories, misogyny or political extremism, the rabbit holes—or pipelines—that lure teenage boys and young men are vast. Studies show males are disproportionately vulnerable to online extremism in one form or another. And psychologists say these pathways, for both right-wing and left-wing ideology, can end in violence.
The shooting death of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was allegedly committed by a 22-year-old man, who authorities say had spent considerable time online growing political and left-leaning over the past year.
On the same day Kirk was killed, a 16-year-old boy shot classmates at a Colorado high school before killing himself. Law-enforcement officials said the boy was immersed in online groups that expressed white supremacist ideologies.
‘Why does the world suck?’
Dangerous online forums usually appeal to young men who are already struggling, said Joni Johnston, a forensic psychologist in San Diego who evaluates adolescent and young-adult offenders in the juvenile justice system.
“These groups are meeting the needs of many young men that aren’t being met elsewhere,” she said. “They provide a sense of identity, camaraderie, power and control, and unfortunately it’s often around hate.”
Hickman’s pursuit of anticapitalist ideals was born out of a childhood in rural upstate New York spent in poverty, with exposure to drug use and abuse. His late mother, he says, was a heroin addict.
“I got mad and asked, ‘Why does the world suck?’” he said.
Researching anarchy led him to believe that the world couldn’t be fair unless protections for the wealthy classes were abolished.
“I went into Reddit to find others who had experienced things analogous to what I’d experienced,” he said. “When you find other people who understand, you go, ‘Let’s talk about it,’ and then it becomes ‘Maybe we should blow up this dam or shoplift Kenny Chesney CDs and sell them.’ It gets crazy quickly.”
A Reddit spokesperson said the company has removed thousands of hateful communities in recent years and that the platform is home to numerous communities that provide support for men on a range of topics.
“A healthy online community is core to Reddit, which is why we flatly prohibit hateful content or inciting, encouraging, glorifying and calling for violence,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve continually strengthened these policies over time and introduced new tools to enforce them across our platform.”
Hickman put his ideas into practice by dropping out of society for eight years. He led a nomadic life, hitchhiking and shoplifting to get by, and living in off-the-grid encampments like one in Slab City, Calif.
That’s when he saw that the reality of anarchy didn’t match the fantasy.
“I saw botched vigilante justice, tons of heroin and fentanyl use and sexual depravity,” he said. Living conditions were filthy, and he lost half a dozen friends to overdoses.
He was reminded of a line from “No Country for Old Men,” Cormac McCarthy’s novel: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
Hickman decided to forge a new, more disciplined path, and joined the Coast Guard in 2019. During many lonely months in Covid quarantine, he began praying. He returned to his Catholic roots and eschewed many former beliefs.
He is now a writer in upstate New York who makes a living from his Substack, “Hickman’s Hinterlands.” He and his wife recently had a baby.
‘Meaning and purpose’
Kiracofe can’t recall the video that YouTube suggested to him 10 years ago, but he says it led him to the “truther” movement. This loosely organized community discusses how official accounts of major events and disasters like 9/11 and Covid are smokescreens for hidden agendas.
“I wasn’t isolated, I wasn’t a shut-in. I played soccer and did a lot of art,” said Kiracofe, who grew up in a Christian, but not religiously strict, household in Van Wert, Ohio.
“A lot of young men are looking for meaning and purpose,” he added. “Those videos made the world seem like it was something I didn’t know it could be.”
His exposure to conspiracy culture soon left him feeling depressed. He watched videos about the coming of the Antichrist and a New World Order, and feared for doomsday.
He said his parents didn’t know what was on his mind. “It felt embarrassing to talk about,” he said.
The YouTubers he followed—and the people in the comments sections—also shared viewpoints on other social issues. They villainized transgender people, for instance.
A spokeswoman for YouTube, which is owned by Alphabet’s Google, said the platform has been working to elevate authoritative voices, such as mainstream news outlets, in search results and on YouTube’s Watch Next panels. YouTube has also worked to limit repetitive recommendations of certain content categories to teens.
The spokeswoman also cited several independent studies which found that YouTube’s algorithm has successfully steered viewers away from politically sensitive or harmful content and toward entertainment-focused videos.
When Kiracofe was 17, he met the trans brother of his then-girlfriend and began to question his assumptions. “It’s so much easier to humanize someone when you have an interaction with them,” he said.
As he got older, traveled more and met new and different kinds of people, Kiracofe shed more beliefs he had formed inside the conspiracy cocoon.
“The beliefs themselves instilled loneliness,” he said.
Extremist online communities at times encourage members to stay isolated, said Travis Jenkins, another young man who fell into a rabbit hole of misogyny and racism.
“If you ever talk about trying to improve yourself or to ask a girl out, they will lash out and tell you it’s not worth it,” Jenkins said.
‘Full of emotional suffering’
Jenkins said he was “red pilled”—a term from “The Matrix” that encompasses a range of often far-right and anti-feminist ideologies shared online—while in high school. He became argumentative.
“I thought people wouldn’t listen to me because they didn’t want to acknowledge I’m right, but it was really people just didn’t want to spend their time and energy dealing with me,” he said.
Travis Jenkins, who became engulfed in anti-feminist ideology online, is now trying to help other men emerge from internet rabbit holes.
Like Kiracofe, Jenkins’s convictions softened as he encountered more diverse people. Now 35 and living with his girlfriend in Sacramento, he spends much of his internet time on Reddit trying to help young “incels”—the “involuntarily celibate” men who blame women for their plight.
The Reddit spokesperson said the company banned incel-related communities in 2017, but allows a support community for men trying to exit incel culture.
“I know they say a lot of awful things, but their life is full of emotional suffering,” Jenkins said.
Today, Kiracofe works in a factory. He has been deconstructing his prior beliefs on his TikTok account, including a video he posted in August. After Charlie Kirk’s killing, his video surged in views to more than 850,000.
“I believe the Kirk situation has made a lot of people aware of how people engage online,” Kiracofe said. “Believing yourself immune to these types of pipelines is probably the first step to falling down something similar.”
Write to Julie Jargon at Julie.Jargon@wsj.com and Ben Fritz at ben.fritz@wsj.com