Ask Lemmy

I'd argue there's a niche that's not being filled by standard community interactions in regards to learn how your society thinks you should act, and that's where the scum starts crawling in. These guys wouldn't have an audience without there being a pre-existing market for their bullshit.The pipeline starts really early now as well with kids being allowed on the internet, and it's just so fucking disheartening. I got a lot of bullshit fed into me when I was younger, but I can't imagine how much gets directly beamed into your brain nowadays.

The world is falling appart around us. Men don't have community, often lack education and don't see a real future anyway.

Two of the most obvious results of this are loneliness and lack of opportunity. Andrew Tate and many of the other right wing grifters flaunt having (at least superficially) both of these in spades. Its no wonder that those who are desperate or stupid (or both) would follow him.

We live in online world that normalises abusing women gamers on Twitch, DM-ing women in order to hit on them and/or attack them on Insta or whatever, that considers sites like 4chan legitimate humour and where a web search for something like a gym membership can bombard you with scum like Tate.

Add to that the hit that people's socialisation skills took during lockdown, governments around the Westernised world normalising hate and violence as legitimate ways to get what you want and then dangle in front of them the fictional lives influencers flaunt on Instagram, TikTok etc and tell them they too could have that life if they do this that and the other oh and by the way, its totally fine to abuse women to prove your masculinity because you, as a man, are owed sex by women.

All these reasons like 'men are lonely', 'gender roles are different' - yeah they play a part but lets not pretend this shit hasn't been coming for a long time and men being sad they have less role models is no excuse for the rationalisation of violent hate that's on display.

I think there's a great podcast you should listen to called Weird Little Guys. You can find it at the bottom of this site https://www.coolzonemedia.com/shows/

If you're on mobile the direct link is here

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-weird-little-guys-201395214/episode/introducing-weird-little-guys-201395485

Lonely men trying to find agency, power and meaning has a long history. It's the nucleation point that keeps the patriarchy alive and well. The fix is simple, reduce income inequality, allow for third spaces in society, allow for all citizens to have a 40 hour week (32 hours would be even better) to allow for proper child care, and finally fund schools to a level where educated professionals want to work and teach.

All of those are counter to capitalism though, so we get "a male loneliness epidemic" which is really just media profiting off of lonely, bored, maladjusted teens and those with arrested development that never evolved past age 16.

Here's a prime example of a weird little guy from the late 1700s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_de_Maistre

My guess is that the internet connects them to like minded misogynists, then it’s just a big women hating circle jerk that perpetuates the reason they got into it in the first place: women dislike them, because they are misogynists.

I really wish I had a time machine where I could go to the future and ask them what the general reasons were for this social development.

I think I had this exact thought yesterday. In the past, there's been hints that appear within just a few months if you're looking.

Most of the explanations posted aren't very convincing. If it's just a daddy figure or toxic masculinity or just personal affirmation that's not new and should have applied all along. The YouTube algorithm could be part of it, but then you just get a question about why the YouTube algorithm was pushing that.

A random theory, just based on something I read recently: looksmaxxing is becoming a big thing, which is itself a sign of equality in that the burden for being attractive is now going both ways. Paradoxically, the new cohort of men with body image issues is very vulnerable to radicalisation by the manosphere.

It'd be kind of surprising if that was the whole thing, though...

Some backward guys can't cope with women thinking for themselves, and long for the "good old times" when a wife 100% depended on her husband.

Any idiot promising to bring those "good old times" back will find interested listeners among this crowd.

If I were female, I would run for the hill if I noticed someone with interest in Tate's fairy tales.

When some group is trying to manipulate people, they don't just boost content from that topic, they generate fake 2nd hand interest. Fake 3rd hand interest. They aren't trying to boost it a little bit, they're trying to create an artificial fad. Create the fake appearance of a whole social movement happening that you just happened to stumble upon. When people want to manipulate a whole society, manipulate their culture, in ways that sew distrust and divisions and make it self distrust, they do this to people like him. He's probably getting boosted by Russia just as Trump removed all the protections against Russia tampering and influencing American social media. His message is hateful and harmful and pro far right, which is exactly where the interests of Russia and maga align. You could be part of a Russian farm trying to spread the message for all I know. The targeted payload of influence you're trying to spread isn't "Andrew Tate good" the message is "lots of people are paying attention to Andrew Tate." The thing is i never hear shit about Andrew Tate. I hear people saying "other people are paying attention to this." And I'm taking the bait by even responding to this when I know it's better to just ghost and ignore things like this.

Why? Simple. Young men now have to compete for the attention of women in a way that they never did. In times past, if there was competition for a woman's attention or time, it was with another man - someone they saw as an equal, a better, or someone to be defeated. Now the competition is with the woman herself. It's not just a matter of putting on the act of shaving, buying a suit, going to church, spending time with her instead of sporting events, and so forth - for the purpose of courtship only. Most of that could be shut off immediately after the marriage license was signed and the rest after the birth of the first child.

Generally speaking, society is applauding women for competing with men like that, and telling men that they have to 'be better' - while not giving clear objectives on what "better" is. Add to that ongoing social friction (especially now after the lockdowns), and the situation for many young men is looking rather bleak.

Along comes Andrew Tate (and a slew of other MR activists), who tell these disappointed, depressed guys that what they're experiencing is not their fault (which is what they already believe, but are afraid to say). They provide clear, simple answers - do this, achieve that. And it works, especially the basic things. Why wouldn't they listen to people who tell them that they're not the problem? Or who tells them what they can do to solve the problem? Of course young men listen to it and heed it. But because they're so caught up in a cult of personality, they don't know how to speak a new, less toxic voice into existence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnmRYRRDbuw

Stupidity

Because they are insecure and he makes them feel valued. It's as simple as that. He tells them they're worth more than the next brown person or female person because they are a man.

Men need a daddy figure.

Issue one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQv8VuLpKN4

political outcome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSw04BwQy4M

I blame the algorithms. This shit is oushed in front of impressionable young men's faces by most social media algorithms because it drives (toxic) engagement. Others have already described why it's appealing.

This shit has always existed but it's given a soap box because corporate wants number to go up, and sadly parents these days leave parenting up to social media so they don't teach them that these views are abhorrent.

https://mediachomp.com/teenage-boys-being-indoctrinated-online/

Edit: I'd imagine the issue is exacerbated by the ease with which every flavor and speed of pornography over broadband internet is available to auto-objectify women, misdirect post-auto-orgasm oxytocin, and misrepresent intimacy.

I'm a 50+ dude, married for 25+years and I have no idea who this Andrew Tate is nor who young men identify to nowadays (I wanted to be Michel Strogoff and an astronaut and Maria Callas too, as a little boy) but I would say that it was enough for me to read some of the comments (way too many of them) in this discussion to get a pretty good glimpse of what may be causing such a split. At least partly.

Could it be that young men and teens are growing tired of being told they're a threat (to women, when it's not to the whole society) or, when they're not a threat that they still are a nuisance, just because they have a dick and because that dick may sometimes grow bigger and harder when they feel attracted to another person?

My childhood was what today's press would call 'traumatizing' (and not just once, mind you) but at the very least I did not grew up afraid of my dick getting hard because I was attracted to someone. And I was never too afraid to ask that person if they felt the same interest and if they would be willing in exploring it further together (more often than not, I was being told 'no').

For the rest, one simply needs to add a lot of partisanship, militant certainties and self-proclaimed righteousness with hordes of so-called experts and journalists that have no clue what their job is supposed to be about (hint: it's not about making the buzz and not about collecting page views, or Likes) and then, on top of that, add a handful of smart-ass people (some real assholes too) that want to profit from all that stupidity that is raging-on everywhere, in every 'camp'.

It's easy to tell people, boys and girls alike, what they want to hear and nothing but what they want to hear. That they're right, that they're great and that the other group is just assholes that hate them. And to profit out of that.

It's so easy that I'm seriously starting to wonder if the next generation or maybe the one after them will still be able and willing to make love or even just to enjoy some intimate good time together, and to make babies by themselves? Maybe I should invest a few cents in whatever startup will undoubtedly show-up and try to profit from that situation. Pretty sure I would make a fortune...

Sad times, indeed. I will go make some coffee and pour a cup for both my spouse and I.

Edit 1h later: you're welcome to downvote till the end of times if that helps you feel any 'righter' in your opinions, or if it helps you think you're punishing me (really?) but may I remind you that without any explanation no amount of downvote will help me understand any better why you disagree with what I wrote. Also, I won't be able to read or contribute any further to this very interesting exchange we've had so far as I'll leave for a long walk to and back from a tiny bookshop that is set nearby the Seine. A real nice shop and a real nice and long walk which means that, taking into account the fact I will probably spend some time there chatting with the lady owner (there are much are closer bookshops to our place, like a lot closer, but I really like how she works and how she really cares to help customers find the right book for them and not just try to shove them whatever the latest trendy book is and be done with them. So, I shop at her place). Considering all of that, I shouldn't be back before at least 3 hours. PS: our cup of coffee was great.

Because we are in a culture war and most people are dumb as fuck mass-produced NPCs in a rotten society but think they're low-key geniuses.

Lack of education (and a university degree changes nothing) which ends in a lack of critical thinking. The causes are deeper than "it's the economy", "they are delusional", "social media", even if social media is bad for critical thinking. You still have to educate yourself in many fields to develop your cognitive capabilities, and this from a young age.

Going outside, playing with a stick and a rock, develops your brain. You're the actor of your life. A smartphone screen puts the kid in a passive state.

But it would be too easy to blame just this. It's more than one factor. This politics of doom scrolling serves an economical purpose. The economy is over wellbeing. More and more norms are put on the human being, alienating them.

Masculinism is a simple theory, solution, to a more complex issue. Humans like these simple answers.

We have to address these multiple dots connected to each other's. It's not just masculinity, it's the society in which we want to live.