This chapter uses a Gender Role Conflict Theory (GRC) lens to analyze the ways in which three YouTube opinion-and-lifestyle influencers—with large adolescent male audiences—negotiate and amplify their ideals of masculinity and male identity development in the 21st century. Each influencer advocates a competing solution to contemporary male GRC which they frame as a crisis of masculinity. Using rhetorical analysis techniques, we unpack, compare, and contrast three clips from each influencer to closely examine the ways they define masculinity and its complexities, as well as their solutions to stressors experienced by young men. Three distinct frames emerge in each influencer’s configuration of a crisis of masculinity, each linked to different male GRC stressors. These results are situated amidst a broader landscape of gender and socio-political commentary on social media platforms. We connect the three influencers’ messages to current discourses of hegemonic, hybrid, and counterhegemonic masculinities circulating across YouTube
