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Same. I said a lot of things as a teen and in my early 20s that I would deeply regret if they had been made permanent online. Thank goodness social media, and more importantly Twitter, wasn't a thing when I was most stupid.
My observation of young, confident males is that they are often disagreeable by their nature. The most hilarious thing in the world to me when I was young was watching one of my friends do or say something absurd that either straddled or blatantly crossed the line of what was considered acceptable to decent people. CKY (and then Jackass) had some of the funniest things I'd ever seen on video. I wasn't nearly as wild as some of the people I was acquainted with, but I would laugh very hard at the wild things they did. The incentive to be edgy in young male social circles is pretty high. All that being said, when you're running a political organization in the current era you cannot say the things they said and expect those logs not to be leaked. I think having some cooth goes a long way, even in today's world.
Why? This was probably the first all male inclusive space (or so they thought) that they'd ever experienced. They'd been denied any third space to be boys their entire lives.
I mean, you aren't wrong, but also, what you expect is impossible in context.
Because politics and bed fellows, and because it has gradually become common knowledge that this is a "do so at your own risk" type situation where the risk appears to be increasing almost daily.
It is no longer smart to exchange jokes of that nature in text groups with your name attached to them while being a public figure of any kind, especially if you are a political figure.
If the context is, Young males should never make obscene jokes no matter the place or setting, then yes, that is impossible. If the context is, Young males who work with the public in a political role should never make obscene jokes in text chats that could be used against them later, then I think that is possible and it will work itself out naturally. Young, smart, politically active males looking to fill these roles will either take this story as a cautionary tale or they won't.
Or you could just work to remove the stigma against making obscene jokes in private chats. Vance's comment works toward this goal. The left has already done this for their people, there's no reason for the right to keep punishing their own.
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See, but you skipped the part where I pointed out, how?! They have no third spaces to do so. None. Zero. Zilch. There is zero third space for male bonding. So of course the moment they find themselves in a remotely male third space, they begin doing the repressed male bonding rituals that are their nature. It's unfortunate that the first third space they found that fits the bill is a Young Republicans Group. But society failed them first, by denying them any other third space before that one.
Yeah, I see the predicament and agree it is a major problem for young males. To answer your "how?" question, I honestly don't know for the general population of young males, and it is a fair point. It currently serves as a natural filter to weed out those prone to edgy remarks and the occasional anti-social behavior (that is actually pro-social in context), but if the filter is applied to almost everything a young male does digitally, then the weeding out isn't just limited to bad weeds.
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