Nick Fuentes, the extreme-right provocateur, has been called many things—a Nazi, a white supremacist, a misogynist, an incel—but never a ladies’ man. He’s no Luigi Mangione, whose New York court hearing in December drew dozens of women standing for hours in the freezing cold just to try and catch a glimpse of the alleged murderer. Yet in some corners of the Internet, Fuentes is as sighed over as Timothée Chalamet. Welcome to the world of the groypette—the female devotee of the man who hates women.
Fuentes, 27, became one of the original young Republican live-streamers when his show, America First, began in 2017. Typical soundbites included “Jews are running society, women need to shut up” and “Blacks need to be imprisoned.” In a video following Trump’s election victory in 2024, he announced, “Hey, bitch, we control your bodies!,” before writing on X, “It’s your body, my choice. Forever.”
While largely seen as a fringe figure in conservative circles—he often attacked the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk for his pro-Israel stance, calling him a “retarded idiot,” and has spoken of J. D. Vance’s marriage to Usha Vance as “race mixing”—Fuentes was thrust into the national spotlight after attending a dinner with Trump and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. It was a sign that the most extreme views had found a home in the MAGA Republican Party.
On 4chan and Discord, Fuentes built a devout following of male admirers who call themselves “groypers”—named after a variant of the alt-right Pepe the Frog meme. But recently, and especially since Kirk’s murder, female-fan accounts have sprouted on TikTok, X, and Instagram, many with thousands of followers.
In some corners of the Internet, Nick Fuentes is as sighed over as Timothée Chalamet.
Groypette accounts on Instagram such as @velvetgroypette and @groypergirlie often repost clips of Fuentes’s live-streams, edited with ribbons, hearts, and lace frames. They add Lana Del Rey songs to his racist rants, with lyrics like “But I love that man, like nobody can.” Some try to explain his appeal as being similar to a fan crush. “I just wanna sniff him,” reads one Instagram reel. “He’s so babygirl,” reads another.
Fuentes seems genuinely baffled by this female attention. In an interview with Piers Morgan last month, Fuentes said that while he isn’t gay, he finds women “difficult to be around.” Nevertheless, the self-described virgin and incel (a so-called “involuntary celibate”) now finds himself pursued by a growing legion of groypettes. “I’m getting all of these fangirls that are like, ‘I want him to own my body, I want him to hit me,’” he said on his live-stream. “You sound insane.”
Bradley Bond, a professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of San Diego, and an expert on parasocial relationships—emotional infatuations with media figures—believes this is largely due to Fuentes’s chosen medium: “Social media has accelerated the pace at which parasocial relationships develop and intensify,” he says. “The primary reason for that is how YouTube vloggers talk directly into the screen. We get an eye gaze as if they’re speaking directly to us. There is a sense of realism and authenticity there.” Nevertheless, even in a world in which parasocial relationships are becoming increasingly common, what explains the groypettes’ obsession with a man who seemingly hates them?
“It’s your body, my choice. Forever.”
When Air Mail reached out to one groypette (who wished to remain anonymous) to ask why she liked Fuentes, she leapt to his defense. “The narrative of groypers as disenchanted, white, uneducated incels that the media was propagating isn’t true,” she said in a text message. “He represents my best interests.”
She started her pro-Fuentes Instagram account in September, shortly after Charlie Kirk was murdered, and saw Fuentes as a rising insurgent force looking to change conservative culture. “I knew he was anti-Israel, which I liked,” she said. “I then googled who he voted for in 2024, and he didn’t vote for either party (like me!) so I decided to watch.”
Throughout our text exchange, the groypette, who is 20 years old and has several thousand followers, sent videos of Fuentes that, she said, would help explain his views condemning immigration and the Israeli government. “He looks hot here!” she said. “Sometimes we say he looks cute, sometimes we say he looks fat. We’re honest <3.”
For the groypette, Fuentes’s derogatory comments against women aren’t offensive but rather pose an example of the subservient role she thinks women should have. “I think he has valid critiques of neo-feminism,” which she says supports supposedly non-Christian practices such as abortion and no-fault divorce. “It’s not so much the legalization of these that’s the issue,” she says, “it’s the culture and women’s irresponsibility.”
When asked about Fuentes’s “Your body, my choice” comments, she was quick to defend him. “It’s called ragebait for publicity. He was canceled from all platforms and needed to get attention.” (Fuentes has been banned from YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch and now broadcasts on his own platform, Cozy.tv.)
“I just wanna sniff him,” reads one Instagram reel. “He’s so babygirl,” reads another.
Bond suggests that the groypettes’ self-abasing infatuation with Fuentes offers them a semblance of belonging: “Sometimes the desire to identify with the dominant group for your own safety and protection is so strong that you will, in turn, marginalize people who are part of your actual in-group in an attempt to be part of that dominant group.”
But for the groypette AIR MAIL spoke to, Fuentes’s incendiary views have simply made politics exciting. Seeing how Fuentes can up the ante keeps her coming back to each new episode. “It’s entertainment,” she says. “Why would I, a 20-year-old girl, want to watch a boring political stream every night?”
Maggie Turner is a student at New York University and an Editorial Intern at Air Mail
