Angry White Men forecast the twilight of aggrieved entitlement in 2013. By the 2017 edition, Kimmel admitted that we might be in for a longer wait, but sundown would eventually come. Don't worry, in other words. The end game hasn't changed.

Hasn't it? Aggrieved masculinity has only intensified since then. This chapter examines how it is multiplying ever more furiously when it was supposed to fizzle out. The short answer is something called the “manosphere,” but the longer version is worth our while.

You may recall (from Chapter 15) that Angry White Men recounts the “outrage media” ecology of the late 20th century through which aggrieved masculinity took off. In that era of media deregulation and convergence, the explosion of talk radio and cable news understandably commands most of Kimmel's attention. He says little about how this ecology drastically transformed in the 2000s, with the rise of user-generated content and socially curated forums like 4chan and Reddit. Missing this is how Kimmel miscalculated the trajectory of aggrieved masculinity.

You may also remember (from Chapter 7) that students of New Populism stress precisely what Kimmel does not—the role of the internet and, specifically, participatory platforms in hastening audience democracy and the worldwide populist surge. So, you might think they’d notice that manly anger mushroomed globally on these platforms, right alongside the rise of New Populisms. Few do, however. Most seem to prefer offline to online cultural politics, the real world over the virtual. The Great Recession: a more potent explanation than inane internet scuffles. Ah there it is, serious economics versus frivolous identity politics all over again. You know where this is going, hard versus soft.

Ignoring or downplaying the online culture wars is how most analysts of populism land on class-forward accounts and neglect the gender energy source of New Populism. Chapter 11 reviewed these explanations and refuted them in turn. Here's a quick review. Why New Populism?

• • Take 1: Economic inequality (not really)

• • Take 2: Class inequality includes cultural marginalization (not quite)

• • Take 3: Class inequality meets racial and religious resentment (closer, but not yet)

It's time for a new take, but please hear this caution before we get into it. This chapter does not argue that the internet itself, certain online events, and/ or the changing media landscape launched New Populism—that is, caused it in some linear sense.