The Influencer-Bowl and DOGE Appeal
From Alix Earle to Jake Shane, content creators took Super Bowl 59. And John Della Volpe on why DOGE resonates with young men.
Ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl, the NFL went all in on social media, recruiting top influencers to cover the game – and it worked. Scrolling through my feeds, I felt like I was in New Orleans without leaving my apartment. Not dissimilar from how Democrats and Republicans courted influencers to cover their conventions this summer, the NFL teamed up with social platforms and brands shelled out six-figures on deals to get creators hyping up Super Bowl 59.
Beyond the constant posts from Caesars Superdome, influencers got star treatment in commercials too. Just look at the poppi ad where Alix Earle, Jake Shane, and Robert Rausch all made cameos.
That wasn’t the only spot featuring Earle. The ‘Hot Mess’ star was featured in the Carl’s Jr. bikini burger commercial too.
The DOGE Boys All In On Musk x Trump
Much ado has been made about the DOGE boys – a group of Gen Z men reportedly working with Elon Musk to analyze and slash federal spending (aka dismantle the federal government as we know it) at the Department of Government Efficiency propped up by President Donald Trump.
Naturally, their age – and some of their controversial pasts have raised eyebrows. One is said to have resigned for ties to a now-deleted social media account that was blatantly racist (but Musk said he will be brought back). But what’s more interesting, and definitely consequential, is why these young men are drawn to the Musk x Trump vision for government overhaul.
Polling shows that Gen Z is deeply skeptical of traditional institutions, especially the federal government. And in my own research, I regularly hear young men say they want elected officials who will cut spending to reduce the national debt – and who will actually follow through on their promises. At the end of last year, I spoke with Gabe Guidarini, a 20-year-old student in Ohio, who told me that he’s looking to “replace the status quo in this country with something that is much more tangible and in line with the actual views and beliefs of the American people.” As he put it, there’s a hunger for government accountability and deep desire to fix the current system.
“Right now the ruling class, the status quo, the elite class in this country is definitely at odds with what the people in this country believe, especially in middle America, where I'm from. The end goal is to create something that's more aligned with those people,” he told me.
Enter tech billionaire Elon Musk and DOGE, which at its root is meant to modernize the federal government and its technology to “maximize efficiency.” But beyond the policy jargon, it represents something else to its supporters: a challenge to the status quo. Experts warn that DOGE’s “move fast, break things” mentality threatens our national security, but for young Americans craving change, that disruption is part of the appeal.
According to Harvard IOP Pollster and CEO of Social Sphere , Musk is popular with young men. A poll he conducted just before Trump’s inauguration showed Musk with a 54% favorability rating amongst young men, nearly tied with Trump’s 56%, ahead of the Democratic Party. As Della Volpe put it, the Trump Musk appeal is “not just about ideology.” Instead, he said, “it’s about a generation looking for alternative pathways to power, influence, and impact.”
To dig deeper into this phenomenon, I caught up with John to get his take on this very real DOGE appeal. Here’s our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity.
Can you give me a lay of the land in terms of what your data revealed when it comes to young men’s perception of Elon Musk and the idea of DOGE writ-large?
JDV: Elon Musk has separated himself from the other barons of technology, from [Mark] Zuckerberg, from [Jeff] Bezos, and from others in terms of his favorability and appeal. It's much more connected to Trump than it is to, you know, the Big Tech CEOs right now. That’s part one.
The second part is why is this happening? In the initial weeks of this new administration, younger people may not be paying attention on a day to day basis to everything that's happening. But from their viewpoint, they see that progress is being made on the promises that Trump and in some cases, Elon Musk, made in the last couple of months. They look at that relative to the lack of progress, or the hesitancy they see from Democrats to have engaged on issues that they care about the last four years or so.
You wrote that this trend surpasses ideology and is more about a generational desire for alternative pathways. Talk to me more about that. What have you heard about this desire for something other than the status quo?
JDV: We need to appreciate that we could be in the beginning of a post-ideological voter, who prizes pragmatism, in some cases, over progressivism. One of the takeaways from this election is that countless young voters chose to abandon their values related to climate or to perhaps healthcare, reproductive healthcare, and instead voted for Trump because they thought it was more pragmatic. They were concerned about issues related to the cost of living, economic stability, and feeling good about themselves. That's kind of the evolution of, as you call it, Zoomer 2.0. And by the way, that pragmatism goes to younger women being intelligent enough to know that even voting for [former Vice President Kamala] Harris wouldn't necessarily make access to reproductive health legal anymore. They voted for things that could have a greater impact on their lives day to day.
What a lot of people don’t quite understand around Musk is that we can disagree or we can agree on the impact of what he’s doing, the legality of it, the morality of it, etc., but he’s getting a lot of credit for getting things done. He’s getting things done in a system that most young Americans have lost faith and trust in.
Right, and coloring within the lines can take a lot of time. There’s bureaucratic procedures and it may move at a slower pace. For a generation accustomed to instant gratification, is speed a key part here?
JDV: I don't think that's necessarily unique to Gen Z. That was also the story of millennials, why so many millennials chose startups – and civic minded startups – a generation ago, right? They cared deeply about these issues. They found ways outside of government to make an impact. Especially folks on this campus who cared about these issues, they went to Silicon Valley, to kind of be of that culture of greater impact. So I think that's certainly part of the appeal. But I'm not sure it's necessarily unique to this particular generation. Clearly, every generation is expecting to have more things more quickly and have greater impact. This is something that we’ve identified for decades at this point in terms of a characteristic that young people seek. But government hasn't necessarily responded, right?
Along the lines of Silicon Valley, the other thing about Musk and some of the other male-figures in Trump’s orbit and a part of his cast of Avengers characters, is that they are aspirational figures who have had a lot of success – and young people may look to them as a vision of success. Do you see that in your research?
JDV: Absolutely. That was one of the big insights from the ‘24 campaign that I feel like Democrats didn't appreciate. [Young people] appreciated [Musk’s] entrepreneurship. They appreciated his level of innovation. They appreciate how he's able to dream and do big things. That's certainly attractive. And they appreciate – like Trump – that he seems, in their eyes, to be authentic. All this stuff is for better or worse, right? He seems to treat everyone the same. Whether it's a head of state or whether it's the average voter.
There's been a significant crisis in confidence, and Trump and Musk offer up some strength and some confidence, because it's so, so desperately needed.
Ok, so what’s the big takeaway here, when it comes to DOGE and these boys?
JDV: It’s addressing the psychological and systemic barriers that are preventing a generation from being more engaged. DOGE is doing that precisely. One, is they’re building trust in the system. ‘If you engage with me, we’ll get things done.’ Number two, it’s saying, ‘I know it’s complex and I know it’s bureaucratic, but let me show you the pathway.’ It’s showing people where to start and where to make an impact. You don’t need to fill out an application, you just go directly to his DMs. The third thing. They’re just not talking about problems, they’re identifying what they’re considering to be problems, and in their own way, they’re solving them.
You and I have talked for years about the psychological and systemic barriers that young people have to voting, to civic participation, civic life. Those are all incredibly important. I don't think we spend enough time as a community on the psychological barriers that are now systemic for a generation. And DOGE is addressing each of them, extremely efficiently, as their name says. Whether this is organic or strategic, I don't know. It's probably more strategic than we think, in terms of how it's addressing each of those barriers.
Noteworthy reads
How Charlie Kirk Became the Youth Whisperer of the American Right, Robert Draper for The New York Times Magazine
Gen Zers Long for a Simpler Time They Never Knew, Grace Segers for The New Republic
Gen Z have killed the one-night stand, research says, Serena Smith for Dazed
Mewing, Beta Maxing, Gigachad, Baddie: Parents Are Drowning in New Lingo, Katherine Bindley for The Wall Street Journal
Elon Musk is breaking the law, and doing things that are in his self-interest vs. the self-interest of the country. There is also credible evidence that he is aligning his actions to Russian propaganda and the interests of the CCP.
Yes, he is appealing to young people because he is selling a vision of the social contract that you can do whatever you want without any consequences as long as you’re ironic and cynical about it.
Our society would fall apart if everyone felt like the rule of law, norms, etc. were optional. Shaking things up is certainly something the government needs to do, and this is a wake up call that the electorate will allow it to happen if we’re not careful. It’s not a validation of its effectiveness. We’ll pay the consequences down the road when it’s too late.
Remember, George W. Bush and Kanye West both used to be inspiring and popular people.
There are two reasons government moves slowly.
1) When you are trying to do complicated things that require specialized expertise, *and you are trying to do them within the requirements of accountability and transparency that our government requires,* there are a lot of moving parts, documentation, checks and balances, training, testing, backups, etc. Government has to operate within its authorized limits; agencies can't just do whatever the heck they want, and chronic underfunding has been a long-term problem for most agencies. They can't exceed their authority or their budget, and they have to be able to produce the documentation that proves they did what they were supposed to, when and how they were supposed to.
2) Special interests lobby heavily against changes that will impact them.
My fear is that we are seeing the current admin attack #1, which can be disastrous if you are talking about funds for food, medicine, emergency response; if you are talking about weather forecasting, medical research, nuclear waste containment, aviation safety, new drug research, public health alerts, protection of the water supply, and so many other essential services the government supports. People think of all this as "boring" and so it doesn't get a lot of coverage, unless something goes wrong. And just taking a hatchet to this system in the name of disruption and change is dangerous. People will get seriously hurt. We take so many of these functions for granted.
You can certainly make a case for attacking #2, but I don't really see that going on. Instead, I kind of see the opposite, with many of the disruptors having financial ties where they will personally benefit from the changes they're making. It's the oddest thing, to see powerful billionaires manage to pass themselves off as underdogs who represent the little guy.
And so I have to say, I find this article incredibly depressing! Though I appreciate your research.