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Looking for spoiler-free NYT Connections hints or just wondering why Connections is trending today? We've got what you need to understand the clues for today's puzzle without spoiling any of the answers.

Of course, Mashable has also provided daily hints and answers for Connections, Wordle, and Strands for years, so we can help you if that's also what you need.

While we are focused more on meanings than hints in this story, sometimes learning that many of the words have completely unrelated meanings is a clue in and of itself. Connections frequently includes clues that involve words within words and other visual clues.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for November 10, 2026 Abracadabra meaning

Magic words.

Onomatopoeia meaning

The description of sound phonetically.

Apothecary meaning

A place to obtain medicine.

Foofaraw meaning

Making a fuss over a small matter.

Oxymoron meaning

A figure of speech that puts contradictory words together.

Protozoology meaning

The study of protozoa.

Haberdasher meaning

A person who sells men's clothing.

Beekeeper meaning

Someone who raises bees, likely to harvest honey and wax.

Scrivener meaning

A clerk who drafts official documents.

Hyperbole meaning

A large exageration.

Brouhaha meaning

A dispute, often physical in nature.

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Wainwright meaning

A person who makes and repairs wagons or carts.

Kerfuffle meaning

A dispute of some kind.

Invisibility meaning

Unable to be seen by the human eye.

Metonymy meaning

Referring to something by the name of something associated with it.

Hullabaloo meaning

A dispute or celebration.

Have you learned the meanings and still want the things? Check out the hints and answers for today's NYT Connections puzzle.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? Get all the Strands hints you need for today's puzzle.

Meet The Mashable 101: Our list of the content creators shaping the internet today

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Connections.

The NYT Connections puzzle today is not too difficult if you talk a good game.

Connections is the one of the most popular New York Times word games that's captured the public's attention. The game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for today's Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable What is Connections?

The NYT's latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications' Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

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Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer.

If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

SEE ALSO: NYT Pips hints, answers for November 10, 2026 Here's a hint for today's Connections categories

Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: Happenings

• Green: Writing tools

• Blue: Bygone professions

• Purple: Lots of repeated letters

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Here are today's Connections categories

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Hubbub

• Green: Literary devices

• Blue: Old-timey occupations

• Purple: Words with five of one vowel

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today's Connections #1248 is...

What is the answer to Connections today

• Hubbub: BROUHAHA, FOOFARAW, HULLABALOO, KERFUFFLE

• Literary devices: HYPERBOLE, METONYMY, ONOMATOPOEIA, OXYMORON

• Old-timey occupations: APOTHECARY, HABERDASHER, SCRIVENER, WAINWRIGHT

• Words with five of one vowel: ABRACADABRA, BEEKEEPER, INVISIBILITY, PROTOZOOLOGY

Looking for Wordle today? Here's the answer to today's Wordle.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? Get all the Strands hints you need for today's puzzle.

Meet The Mashable 101: Our list of the content creators shaping the internet today

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Connections.

Today's NYT Strands hints will be easy if you're a chatterbox.

Strands, the New York Times' elevated word-search game, requires the player to perform a twist on the classic word search. Words can be made from linked letters — up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns. Every single letter in the grid will be part of an answer. There's always a theme linking every solution, along with the "spangram," a special, word or phrase that sums up that day's theme, and spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable

By providing an opaque hint and not providing the word list, Strands creates a brain-teasing game that takes a little longer to play than its other games, like Wordle and Connections.

If you're feeling stuck or just don't have 10 or more minutes to figure out today's puzzle, we've got all the NYT Strands hints for today's puzzle you need to progress at your preferred pace.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for November 10, 2026 NYT Strands hint for today’s theme: Influentially online

The words are highly online.

Today’s NYT Strands theme plainly explained

These words involve online content.

NYT Strands spangram hint: Is it vertical or horizontal?

Today's NYT Strands spangram is horizontal.

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NYT Strands spangram answer today

Today's spangram is Content creator.

NYT Strands word list for November 10

• Content creator

• Vlog

• Reaction

• Review

• Skit

• Tutorial

• Demo

Meet The Mashable 101: Our list of the content creators shaping the internet today

Looking for other daily online games? Mashable's Games page has more hints, and if you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now!

Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Strands.

Today's Wordle answer should be easy to solve if you prefer peace.

If you just want to be told today's word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for today's Wordle solution revealed. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for November 10, 2026 Where did Wordle come from?

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

What's the best Wordle starting word?

The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

What happened to the Wordle archive?

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles was originally available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it, but it was later taken down, with the website's creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times. However, the New York Times then rolled out its own Wordle Archive, available only to NYT Games subscribers.

Is Wordle getting harder?

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn't any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle's Hard Mode if you're after more of a challenge, though.

Here's a subtle hint for today's Wordle answer:

A cessation of hostilities.

Does today's Wordle answer have a double letter?

No letters appear twice.

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Today's Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with...

Today's Wordle starts with the letter T.

The Wordle answer today is...

Get your last guesses in now, because it's your final chance to solve today's Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to today's Wordle is...

TRUCE

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

Reporting by Chance Townsend, Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.

Meet The Mashable 101: Our list of the content creators shaping the internet today

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Wordle.

Booking a vacation sounds like one thing to hand off to an AI assistant, right up until it has to check the calendar, open a dozen tabs, and figure out whether the cheapest flight is still the cheapest once a carry-on is involved. Every one of those steps takes work, and when an AI agent is doing it, the cost can add up.

Meta has a new model built for that part of the job.

On Nov. 9, Meta's Superintelligence Labs introduced Muse Ember, which the company calls its smallest and most cost-efficient AI model yet. It's designed for the steps an agent might repeat dozens of times in a single assignment, like pulling details out of a document, calling another tool, or running a test after changing a line of code.

Muse is the app with the cute little avatar — named Jolly — that Meta has been promoting since September. The AI assistant can work across (some) apps with a user's permission. The app passed 5 million downloads in 22 days, and has already had many updates; last week, Meta started rolling out voice conversations and animated avatars for the assistant in the U.S.

Meta also uses the Muse name for a family of AI models. The company positions Muse Wonder as the model for its toughest problems and Muse Spark as a model for coding and other work that involves using tools. Ember is the cheaper option for repeatable tasks. Meta's pitch is that developers can use Wonder to plan a complicated job and hand off the individual steps to Ember. For now, Meta lists Ember as available through its Muse Code tool and developer API.

SEE ALSO: Meta launches Muse Wonder, catching OpenAI and Anthropic at the frontier What Muse looks like in action

In early testing shared by Meta, cloud storage company Box said it used Ember to check contracts clause by clause against a company’s negotiation rules and assign an overall risk rating. Meta says the model can take in up to a million tokens at once, enough to work through large sets of documents, and can handle images, audio, and video alongside text. That gives developers room to build an agent that can read a scanned contract or pull details from a meeting recording.

The price is what makes Ember interesting. On Artificial Analysis's benchmark, Ember and Anthropic's Claude Haiku 5.5 both rounded to a score of 36 at their highest reasoning settings. Ember cost about 14 cents per benchmark task, compared with 41 cents for Haiku, even though the two have the same standard rates of 10 cents per million input tokens and 50 cents per million output tokens. OpenAI's GPT-6 Luna scored 28 and cost about 15 cents per task at its highest setting.

In Meta's published results, Ember beat Haiku on a terminal coding test, while Haiku did better on a test that judged whether code changes were ready to merge. Meta added that it already has even cheaper models in training.

As the company continues to bet that AI assistants will take on more everyday tasks, developers will need an affordable way to handle all the little steps behind the scenes. A flight search, for example, can mean sorting through dozens of fares, each with its own rules. If Meta wants people to hand off that kind of chore every day, it has to make checking the carry-on policy cheap on its end, too.

If your Linux system breaks after an update, refuses to show the login screen, or throws another error during startup, you don't have to reinstall your entire distro. Linux provides several boot options that can help you recover a broken installation, troubleshoot startup problems, and get back into your system.

I'm usually the first person to look for a free alternative before paying for an app. Why spend money when the Play Store is full of apps that promise to do the same thing without charging a dime? But I've also learned that free doesn't always mean better. Sometimes, I end up dealing with annoying limitations or missing features that make a simple task unnecessarily complicated.

If you're looking for raw utility that takes up the least space in your pocket, you'll want to buy a good multi-tool. And while there are plenty of excellent options these days, Leatherman remains one of the best. The company has over 20 models available this year with a variety of capabilities, and if you're wondering which Leatherman has the most tools, we have you covered.

USB ports are a fact of life, as ubiquitous as power outlets and water faucets. Before USB-C, there was the bigger USB port we’re all familiar with that technically goes by the name of USB-A. In between the two, there’s USB-B — and I won’t blame you for never giving it any thought. No one ever says “plug this into your laptop’s USB-B port.”

A personal essay, a tutorial, or an argument that's been knocking around in someone's head for weeks can all find a home on Medium. Now the platform wants to be part of what happens before those pieces are ready to publish — when a writer is still sorting through notes or sending an early draft to a friend.

On Nov. 9, Medium launched TK, a free writing and note-taking app for people with a Medium account. TK has an AI assistant built into the editor that can answer questions or give feedback as writers draft. It also lets writers share work in small groups where others can leave comments, swap notes, or contribute writing of their own.

It's goal, according to CEO of Medium Tony Stubblebine, is to "craft writing that compounds into deep thinking, which creates influence across your entire world. What shape is that influence? We’re still figuring that out, but we know it starts with humans writing more."

"We’ve designed TK for three goals: Easy to write. Easy to think. Easy to feel like your writing matters," he added.

The launch comes as the internet has changed. Medium relies on Google to send readers to its articles (44 percent of their traffic, specifically), and Stubblebine said those referrals declined "When Google started taking away all the traffic." He warned the company in an interview with The Verge that "this hurts us, but it also hurts you." Though Medium is profitable since 2024, iterating must be done to compete with both other publishing platforms (like Substack) and social media.

Stubblebine's response is to give writers a way to reach readers without relying on Google. With TK, they can share drafts directly with people in private groups. 'We’re just going to take everything underground," he told The Verge.

Beyond Medium, in an analysis of March 2025 browsing data, Pew Research Center found that users clicked a traditional search result on 8 percent of Google visits with an AI summary, compared with 15 percent of visits without one.

SEE ALSO: AI 'writers' are mostly worthless right now. But that won't last.

For those who don't see the letters everyday (like me), "TK" is used by writers and editors to mark something in their work that's still to come, like a date that needs checking or a quote that needs dropping in. In Medium’s app, typing @TK calls up an assistant that can answer a quick question or find a paragraph the writer saved the day before. Medium says the assistant can also give headline and editorial feedback, compare drafts with Medium publications' style guides, and pull related notes into summaries that link back to the originals. Writers can import their Medium archives or bring over notes from Bear and Obsidian. An optional Claude integration lets an outside agent work with the notebook, too.

The human version of that feedback happens in what TK calls Libraries. A Library can be a space for a few friends to share work in progress, and Medium is also opening groups for journaling, getting feedback on drafts, and working toward a self-published book. A draft can stay private, go to a handful of readers, or eventually make its way to Medium's publishing platform. According to Stubblebine, "TK is the gym and Medium is the stage."

That division makes for an awkward question: The company wants people to do more of their own writing while putting AI a few keystrokes away from every unfinished sentence. Looking up a date is one thing, but asking AI for feedback on a paragraph can get a lot closer to outsourcing writing abilities. Medium adds that TK lets writers disclose which material came from AI and show the prompts and source material behind it, and maintains the service is not anti-AI, but pro-human:

"Much of the AI industry is betting that machines will do our thinking for us, and some of its leaders talk as if writing no longer matters. We’re betting the other way. We’re not anti-AI, we’re pro-human—and that’s why we built TK" - Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine wrote in the announcement.

Other publishing platforms are finding uses for AI, too. Substack can turn a podcast recording into an editable transcript or suggest short clips from a video for creators to share on Notes or Instagram. And as Mashable reported in July, Substack also gives readers "Scan for AI text" option. The tool, powered by Pangram, estimates how much of a published post was written by a human, generated by AI, or written with AI assistance.

The app comes in a literary world that has been inundated with AI. In a 2026 survey Medium conducted with The Harris Poll, 71 percent of writers said they'd used AI in their writing process in the previous three months, yet 69 percent said they distrusted AI-assisted writing from others. TK brings AI closer into the writing process than ever before. Having an assistant a few keystrokes away could make it easier to churn out more AI slop...or the app could do what Stubblebine hopes and get writers sharing rough drafts and working through ideas together. As someone who reads a lot of AI slop these days, I'll be hoping for the latter.

If you're looking for a mix of classics and modern blockbusters, there are few platforms with a catalog quite as strong as Paramount+. There are some really solid new movies to choose from alongside some brilliant genre-defining films that are well worth revisiting. The list of choices keeps growing every month too, with November bringing things like Gone Girl and Twister to your TV screen.

The market for wireless over-ear headphones is crowded, but the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 4 wireless headphones remain a standout for listeners who prioritize sound quality. Right now, Amazon's got these headphones on sale for $200, down from their standard $300 price tag.

As Congress returns to Washington this week, the massive power demands of the AI boom have forced a reckoning over data center infrastructure.

The Senate is preparing for a pivotal procedural vote on legislation that would speed approvals for energy projects while requiring large data centers to shoulder more of the costs they impose on the power grid. The bipartisan bill would add much-needed regulations on data centers, but, as some politicians believe, may also encourage more data center construction.

Silicon Valley vs. a changed D.C.

In the sweeping and history-making midterm elections last week, voters didn't just elect a new generation of Democratic lawmakers. They also sent a pretty unmistakable message to Big Tech, particularly the artificial intelligence industry: Enough with the data centers already. Or, more bluntly, "get out of town."

Across the country, local communities are pushing to stop, restrict, or impose conditions on data center development. The election results reinforced that message, making clear that the AI gold rush is facing growing resistance.

For the last two years, Silicon Valley has busied itself building more, building bigger and doing it ASAP. If a tech giant wanted to drop a warehouse-sized data center into a community, local governments often offered tax breaks and other incentives, then told residents it was harmless and would mean more jobs.

Voters increasingly aren't buying it.

Democrats now find themselves in a pickle. Many campaigned on restricting data center development, responding to voters concerned about electricity costs, water consumption, and the impact these enormous facilities have on their communities. 

Now, the aforementioned pending legislation forces a stark about-face — since, as Reuters reports, some Democrats believe provisions in the proposed bill could encourage the creation of more data centers. If that comes to pass, incoming lawmakers would need to explain why those campaign promises to halt data center construction no longer apply. 

Can data centers be built responsibly?

There's a risk, too, in the new Democratic Congress pushing too forcefully for restrictions on AI, specifically on data centers. My well-seasoned brain believes AI companies will respond to restrictions not simply by complaining about the cost of doing business, but by slowing down the rollout of new technology.

Some of that slowdown will be unavoidable. Without enough data centers, electricity, and computing capacity, companies cannot expand indefinitely. But some of it could be strategic.

I suspect the message from Silicon Valley will be slightly PR-ish: If you don't want us building data centers, don't expect your ChatGPT, Claude, or Siri to keep getting faster, smarter, and more capable. That "hurry up and now" diagnosis for your sore knee might take a little longer.

SEE ALSO: Is this the only U.S. town to vote 'yes' on data centers?

Picture AI as something other than a magical cloud floating above our heads. Every time you ask an AI assistant to write an email, generate an image, or summarize a document, powerful chips in actual buildings are cranking away, consuming tremendous amounts of electricity and water and pressuring local power grids. 

And all that power costs mega cash. Utility rates, grid upgrades, and higher electricity bills have turned an abstract technology debate into something much more personal.

I don't blame communities for pushing back. Why should residents subsidize a multibillion-dollar technology company's expansion while wondering whether their electric bills will keep climbing? They're already fed up with rising gas and grocery prices and the cost of a new home.

But there's another side to this costly coin that Democrats shouldn't ignore. Data centers can bring economic benefits, too, provided technology companies invest in the communities that host them.

While data centers rarely employ local, low-skill workers directly, AI companies can bridge this gap by funding local infrastructure projects that immediately put the existing workforce to work. Furthermore, the resulting influx of permanent, high-salaried technicians injects new tax revenue into the community, triggering a powerful economic ripple effect for local restaurants and shops.

Communities shouldn't have to choose between protecting residents and benefiting from technological investment. Companies that want to build in these towns should contribute meaningfully to their economic well-being.

The risks of slowing down the AI gold rush

Government intervention, even when well-intentioned, can also produce unintended consequences that ultimately hurt consumers.

Just look at Europe. In 2024, Apple said it would hold back Apple Intelligence and other new features from EU customers, citing "regulatory uncertainties" tied to the Digital Markets Act. Regulators were trying to rein in Big Tech and protect competition. Whether you buy Apple's explanation or see it as a pressure tactic, European customers were left waiting while others got the shiny new toys.

This doesn't mean all regulation is bad. It's a reminder that lawmakers cannot promise to put a tight leash on an industry without potentially creating bottlenecks in the products and services it provides. That's precisely the dilemma Democrats now face.

If they make it too difficult or expensive to build data centers, AI companies will have fewer places to house the computing power necessary to expand their products. New features could take longer to arrive. More sophisticated applications could cost more.

And I wouldn't be surprised if the industry makes sure consumers understand exactly who's responsible. They'll be smug about it: "OK, you wanted restrictions. You got them. Now don't lose it when your AI assistant takes longer to answer. Or, we might have you paying a monthly fee."

It's a convenient argument for Big Tech, shifting attention away from an industry that hasn't always sought communities' permission or given much thought to ordinary consumers.

That's why Democrats need to be thoughtful about what comes next. Protecting communities, keeping electricity affordable, and demanding that tech companies pay their fair share are entirely reasonable goals. But a political victory over data centers could become a consumer defeat if lawmakers don't consider the consequences.

This article represents the opinions of its writer.

John Casey is a columnist at Raw Story, the Advocate, Daily Beast, and Outsports. He's also the author of Love: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality.

Even if you’ve never used it before, there’s a very good chance that your CPU actually has a GPU built into it. This extra hardware often goes unused because of dedicated graphics cards, but there are quite a few reasons why you might want to put that integrated GPU to work, like offloading your Plex transcodes or speeding up your video editor’s timeline.

Smart lighting often promises more than it delivers, usually resulting in a dim bulb that barely illuminates your room while demanding a dozen apps to function. Govee’s Pendant Lights break that pattern by offering genuine utility alongside millions of color options. It currently sits at $110 on Amazon, which is a $40 discount off its regular $150 price.

The iPhone Duo is an expensive grab-bag of compromises that definitely is not for everyone. But it's also the most fun iPhone I've used in years

Every week, I'd receive another Excel report that eventually had to make its way into a PowerPoint presentation. Then came the repetitive part: combining the latest figures with previous data, updating my charts, and making sure the slides reflected the changes. None of those tasks were particularly difficult, but they were easy to forget and tedious to repeat.

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On Nov. 3, left-leaning Americans felt something that had lain dormant for a long time: hope.

The U.S. midterm elections resulted in historic wins, including Democrats flipping seats in several states. After the gut-punch of Trump's second win in 2024, and the subsequent human rights abuses and skyrocketing costs in the last two years, the "blue wave" (or bluenami, bluke, however you'd like to refer to it) swept over many of us like a calming balm. 

SEE ALSO: Midterms deliver clear message: 'The AI reckoning is here'

The election results haven't just caused democratic optimism (or millennial optimism). For some women who date men, it has also bubbled over into romantic optimism.

"I'm hopeful that with a shift in politics and culture, the values of individuals and groups will start to shift too," Bailey Cummings, a 27-year-old communications and marketing specialist based in Nashville, told Mashable over Instagram DM. 

Is heteropessimism fading?

The past few years have been less than stellar for heterosexuals. In 2019, writer and researcher Asa Seresin coined "heteropessimism," or feelings of shame, regret, and hopelessness when it comes to straight romance. The feeling seems to have only gotten worse since then, paving the way for 2025's "heterofatalism." The novelty of dating apps has long worn off, the debate over whether to engage in casual sex rages on, and having a boyfriend is embarrassing.

It doesn't help that young men and women have, at least in the past decade, held diverging ideological views. Men were becoming more conservative in the U.S. and elsewhere, and women more liberal. Politics are more polarized than ever, and the polarization carries over into our love lives.

"I'm on Hinge primarily, and if it says 'not political' or 'moderate' or 'conservative' in anyone's profile, regardless of their gender, I'm not gonna meet up with that person," said Ellie Rudy, a bisexual 27-year-old freelance journalist in Brooklyn.

Men under 30 had a 23-point shift to the right in the 2024 presidential election. But last Tuesday, they swung back nearly 40 points to the Democrats, the New York Times reported.

"After being told that men were basically a lost generation and that they'd been eaten up by the manosphere and Andrew Tate and were impossible to capture, we saw the opposite happen," journalist and author Liz Plank told Mashable.

Writer Magdalene J. Taylor proposed "hetero-optimism" in a New York Times op-ed back in May, but it's looking more relevant than ever.

That being said, Plank noted that while the results were uplifting, there's still a big divide between men and women.

The political gender divide

A 2024 Financial Times article argues that the #MeToo movement, which peaked in 2017 and 2018, was the trigger for the gender divide among Gen Z. In the years since, differences of opinion have expanded beyond the issue of sexual violence and into politics (like immigration), marriage, and children. 

Meanwhile, manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate sold a gender essentialist, traditional worldview to young men in which they are victims of feminism. Men, to Tate and others, should dominate women and be "alphas." 

These misogynistic talking points align with the online incel (involuntary celibate) community, which rose from a fringe movement into the mainstream consciousness, especially since 2020. Incel forums fostered the looksmaxxing trend and its totem, the influencer Clavicular, who was recently charged with rape. As Mashable's deputy digital culture editor Olivia Tauber wrote in Sept., Clavicular built a following by humiliating women.

Far-right influencers aligned themselves with Donald Trump, and it's easy to see why women reject this outlook.

"What we've seen lately is this dominant political model of, 'This is what it means to be a man, and you have to behave this way, and we don't necessarily believe that women have the same rights or the same freedom to different roles,'" Sarah Ketay, a social and health psychologist at the University of Hartford, told Mashable. "My personal take is that a lot of women don't appreciate that."

And, regardless of age, the Pew Research Center found in a 2024 report that men are more likely than women to associate with the Republican Party.

But despite whatever far-right influencers spew, men and women aren't actually that different, Ketay argued.

"What we found in social psychology is that men and women often want exactly the same thing. They want partners who are kind to each other, who pay attention to them, who care about them," Ketay said. 

The issues lie in how men are socialized, she continued. Generally, men are socialized to suppress their emotions except anger, and they're not taught to pay attention to how other people feel. This doesn't help heterosexual relationships. And these aren't inherent differences, Ketay said, but instead differences in how men and women are raised.

"Heterosexual relationships are actually at a disadvantage, not because of anything like biological, but because of how we're socialized," she said.

But there is good news: Positive qualities, like communication and awareness of other people's feelings, can be learned. And they don't have to be learned to be ready for a relationship, Ketay said; they can be learned while you're in one. 

"I hope people can be a little bit more optimistic," she said, and some are.

A cautious optimism

Rudy told Mashable that she's cautiously optimistic. While she is disappointed in men she personally interacts with and men as a larger group, she feels hopeful. Though, she did point out that she's encountered leftist men who vote Democrat but act misogynistic and homophobic behind closed doors.

"There's something that's particularly frightening about liberal men who initially can make women feel safe, and then once you get to know them better, you realize it's all just a facade," she said. She's also dating more women than men right now.

Another bi woman, 31-year-old New Jersey resident Kaitlyn Porter, told Mashable over DM she doesn't feel more hopeful, because this is just the beginning. "We are leaps and bounds before men treat women as equals. I think it's nice to see them voting for the collective, but there's so much more that needs to be done," said Porter, a State Judiciary staff member.

Plank said there's a pessimistic view of the election that men thought gas prices were too high and decided to vote left, and it's not an ideological shift. But there's also a more optimistic view: That white men have realized that what Black women and other women have been organizing for decades to achieve can benefit them as well (as Plank wrote on her Substack).

A bluer America is better for daters

While Plank believes men and women are in very different places, elections can give us a different understanding of a demographic we thought was unchangeable, or dynamics believed to be set in stone.

The 2026 midterms were a single election, and we don't know how it will impact us. But, given the policy platforms of the winners, there might be truth behind the "baby boom in 9 months" jokes.

"I think single straight women should feel more hopeful about all this!" Steffi Cao, a 28-year-old dating advice columnist and culture writer in New York City, told Mashable over Instagram DM.

Cao believes that the political divide between young, straight men and women is fueled by limited access to resources. These developments give her hope that change is possible. "Think about how the happiest countries are ones with strong social programs, and there's a correlation between marriage satisfaction and healthcare access," she said. Some Democrats, especially Michigan's Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, campaigned on Medicare for All this election cycle.

"I'm not saying that things will change overnight," she said, "but I am more hopeful that with these incoming structural changes, culture has more potential to shift as young men can realize it was never immigrants or women or trans athletes that were preventing them from their own success, but rather [the] system that promised them things and never delivered."

Ketay also mentioned that politicians and their social programs can help improve relationships and families. She cited New York City's free babysitting program, which provides childcare for a "parents' night out."

In recent years, singles have said that the rising cost of living is just another reason dating is harder. They can't afford dinner and drinks, let alone move out of their parents' home and buy their own. 

But maybe politicians who want to get money out of politics, provide free healthcare, and tax billionaires could balance the economic scales somewhat and make every aspect of American life — including finding a partner — that much easier.