Where i’m baffled though is the basic math. Younger people are having less and less sex and relationships, people are broadly staying single and not dating or having any intimacy well into adulthood and often have NO plans to date or have a family even, so how is this eruption of sweaty used-car-salesmen making traction? There are no success stories, it’s entirely manufactured. It’s no different than the flat-earth movement but for pudgy white teenage boys.
The “success story” is Andrew Tate, and probably even people like Musk or Trump. They see how extremely misogynistic people manage to get with multiple women nonetheless and get fooled into thinking being “stoic” and generally a jerk is the key to getting laid. They don’t realize that those people are just rich and are getting laid despite their personality, not thanks to it.
Then there’s also the ones who are fully aware of this and are sold on the “grind mentality”, so that they can get rich like them (again, missing the point on how all of them either did it through crimes, were born rich, or both).
Of course if you look at it with some logic it all falls apart, but you can’t expect young people to have enough knowledge to do this. They need some positive role model to tell them right from wrong, but it’s becoming increasingly hard when the negative ones keep springing up like mushrooms.
We have a huge problem which is endemic and fundamental to progressive thought, which is that good, reasonable progressive thought which includes concepts like consent, like working towards better outcomes for more than yourself, empathy and respect and caring about community… those are developed over time in most people, they’re mature concepts that come with a lot of growth. They may be particularly alien to someone who grew up in less-than-favorable environments.
So we develop these better ways of thinking, then lecture younger, dumber kids with it expecting it to land on a 17 - 22 year old boy who grew up in electronic-distractionworld, who is just fucking horny and wants to date girls but can’t reconcile that with their crushing isolation and social insecurity. To them it sounds like “blah blah blah, you’re bad, masculinity is toxic, blah blah” and they reject it just to feel strong and cool. The Tates have leveraged this and built a 2-dimensional cartoon icon around this and have ridden this grift all the way to the bank. By the time the kids realize it’s not working for them, they’ve already also swallowed every right-wing, anti-intellectual pill along with it and are just bags of hopeless hate and profound sexual insecurity.
And our so-called adults are also too fucking distracted and isolated to remotely feel like the “adults in the room” anymore.
I feel like I’m getting close to being an “old man yelling at phones” meme, but I have watched this culture of short-attention-span pandering absolutely ruin intelligence and culture in our modern world and it’s infuriating.
Yup, all of this is true and it’s sad how people with influence fail to understand this.
You talked about 17-22 yo, which definitely feel negatively about people lecturing them on what they feel is an irresistible primal instinct, but another big issue is that, in the digital era, even younger kids are exposed to that. Older teenagers may feel like something they did is seen as terribly wrong and be angry at that, but there’s younger ones that probably can only think “…what did I even do? Why is everyone angry at me just because I’m a boy?”.
And guess who comes in to give them “answers” when they’re in that confused and vulnerable state? Yup, Tate & friends. Really, they’ve figured everything about how to make as many people as possible fall in their rabbithole to profit from them, and we’re doing nothing to stop them. Even Tate was arrested only because he did some heinous shit to people “working” with him AND boasted about that, otherwise he’d still be around. We need some serious regulations on social media algorithms, but I doubt we’re ever gonna see those in our lifetimes considering who’s in power.
We need some serious regulations on social media algorithms, and I doubt we’re ever gonna see those considering who’s in power.
I remember when we looked at China’s authoritarian social controls like “holy shit that’s bad” and now I’m sighing pretty hard. I’m sure there was a better line we could have walked, but it’s too late for any of that. We are gonna have to crash and burn as a whole culture before we see the pendulum swing back in the other direction. Just poopin back and forth. Forever.
The “success story” is Andrew Tate, and probably even people like Musk or Trump. They see how extremely misogynistic people manage to get with multiple women nonetheless and get fooled into thinking being “stoic” and generally a jerk is the key to getting laid. They don’t realize that those people are just rich and are getting laid despite their personality, not thanks to it.
Then there’s also the ones who are fully aware of this and are sold on the “grind mentality”, so that they can get rich like them (again, missing the point on how all of them either did it through crimes, were born rich, or both).
Of course if you look at it with some logic it all falls apart, but you can’t expect young people to have enough knowledge to do this. They need some positive role model to tell them right from wrong, but it’s becoming increasingly hard when the negative ones keep springing up like mushrooms.
We have a huge problem which is endemic and fundamental to progressive thought, which is that good, reasonable progressive thought which includes concepts like consent, like working towards better outcomes for more than yourself, empathy and respect and caring about community… those are developed over time in most people, they’re mature concepts that come with a lot of growth. They may be particularly alien to someone who grew up in less-than-favorable environments.
So we develop these better ways of thinking, then lecture younger, dumber kids with it expecting it to land on a 17 - 22 year old boy who grew up in electronic-distractionworld, who is just fucking horny and wants to date girls but can’t reconcile that with their crushing isolation and social insecurity. To them it sounds like “blah blah blah, you’re bad, masculinity is toxic, blah blah” and they reject it just to feel strong and cool. The Tates have leveraged this and built a 2-dimensional cartoon icon around this and have ridden this grift all the way to the bank. By the time the kids realize it’s not working for them, they’ve already also swallowed every right-wing, anti-intellectual pill along with it and are just bags of hopeless hate and profound sexual insecurity.
And our so-called adults are also too fucking distracted and isolated to remotely feel like the “adults in the room” anymore.
I feel like I’m getting close to being an “old man yelling at phones” meme, but I have watched this culture of short-attention-span pandering absolutely ruin intelligence and culture in our modern world and it’s infuriating.
Yup, all of this is true and it’s sad how people with influence fail to understand this.
You talked about 17-22 yo, which definitely feel negatively about people lecturing them on what they feel is an irresistible primal instinct, but another big issue is that, in the digital era, even younger kids are exposed to that. Older teenagers may feel like something they did is seen as terribly wrong and be angry at that, but there’s younger ones that probably can only think “…what did I even do? Why is everyone angry at me just because I’m a boy?”.
And guess who comes in to give them “answers” when they’re in that confused and vulnerable state? Yup, Tate & friends. Really, they’ve figured everything about how to make as many people as possible fall in their rabbithole to profit from them, and we’re doing nothing to stop them. Even Tate was arrested only because he did some heinous shit to people “working” with him AND boasted about that, otherwise he’d still be around. We need some serious regulations on social media algorithms, but I doubt we’re ever gonna see those in our lifetimes considering who’s in power.
I remember when we looked at China’s authoritarian social controls like “holy shit that’s bad” and now I’m sighing pretty hard. I’m sure there was a better line we could have walked, but it’s too late for any of that. We are gonna have to crash and burn as a whole culture before we see the pendulum swing back in the other direction. Just poopin back and forth. Forever.