When men are not heard they simply seek other audiences and other avenues. It is the incentive structures that will tell them where to go.
The fact that they don't get listened to causes them to double down into extremism.
Our current levels of extremism have put us in danger of sliding into becoming a totalitarian state. That risk will not lessen unless both sides recognize that extremism itself is the danger. Underneath the anger, angry people are often hurt people. Labeling them enemies and hurting them further certainly feels good in the moment. But in the long run it is counterproductive.
It turned out not to be.
That didn't happen. I just made that up. Was that also your first instinct upon reading it - that I made it up?
But I see men saying things like this happened to them, and that is my first instinct: it didn't happen and they made it up.
Am I supposed to stop doing that? Am I supposed to believe them?
Listening to real problems is good - are you saying I should listen to obvious trolls as well? That is what "bad faith" means - it's a euphemism for "obviously trolling".
Perhaps you even think I'm lying when I say I see people saying things like this online - but if that's the case, that means you're part of the same problem you cite, since you're not listening what I'm saying. So what solution do you propose to all this?
I'd be hesitant with value judgements, but this is most certainly going to affect our society massively (from decreased reproduction rates alone if nothing else).
I feel there must have been smaller similar trends in the past with easily obtainable written entertainment (books).
If I say that somesuch social movement is causing problems, then people in that social movement will feel attacked. Even bringing up somesuch social movement is a great way to increase vitriol on social media. It just makes people angry because people already feel justified in their anger at the demons on the 'other side'
It feels there there are too many things that are 'Agree with me 100% or we have to fight'.
I feel like the true luxury good of the future is human attention, and specifically careful emotional validation.
It does mean that the economic growth that allowed most men to be a plausible marriage partner in the mid-20th century no longer obtains, which is a bad thing, despite the small comfort of consumer goods being cheap enough to alleviate some of this pain.
Marriageable men are canceled if they don't play by the women's rules.
The fact is, these men are deeply confused and push away as they pull in.
My suggestion would be to lean into monasticism and not just use the term ‘monk’ as a euphemism for not having female relationships. I don’t think anyone should be a monk long-term, but use it as a transitional period to examine and explore why they are so confused and come to terms with it.
Blaming women for their problems just makes it intractable because their problem is within themselves
Companionship is easy to find, but finding someone who respects you is not. Most women do not respect the men they are with.
Without male-only spaces and strong male leadership more men and women will grow up lost and confused.
I very much doubt this is true. Do you have any evidence for this claim?
Or, is it possible that you mean something else when you say "respect" than I do? If so, please elaborate. I'm curious.
I know at least one guy who refuses to "settle" for anything but his ideal woman - and frankly, that ideal woman is out of his reach, mostly but not entirely due to his personality.
So yes - men could absolutely find companionship. But a lot of them refuse to accept anything that's not a supermodel whose day consists of administering on-demand blowjobs.
Big ol' [citation needed] on that one.
https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/rethinking-sexism-in-...
(Gay, single, in my 30's, heh.)
Reactions to this vary. The ones described in the article have sought out addictions to escape this reality. Many others, including my son, have essentially said, "Well if this side rejects me, I'll go to the other side." The result is a rapid rise in conservatism, as documented in polls. See https://www.realclearpolling.com/stories/analysis/young-amer... for an example.
It is very easy, particularly for those who are very progressive, to blame the men themselves for these reactions. But it is a natural overreaction to the systematic rejection to a lifetime of being told that they are the problem. "You think I'm the problem? I'll show YOU what it looks like if I BECOME the problem!"
I firmly believe that these problematic behaviors and politics would be greatly softened if our society showed more empathy to these struggling men. But in our polarized society, their choices and beliefs label them as the enemy. Which causes some to double down into toxic extremism like siding with incels, or MGTOW.
Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization.
This is not me. This is not anyone I know. This is not anyone I've ever known. However, this is what I see people say online about other people who they've never met.
Did you grow up consistently being told that every single thing is your fault because you have male privilege, or are you repeating something you read online or in the media?
As a visible and ethnic minority I did not encounter such rhetoric growing up in predominantly immigrant socially conservative suburban environments.
There is a certain group of women who cannot accept that women can be at fault, for example that a woman can be an abuser, regardless of the facts.
> As a visible and ethnic minority I did not encounter such rhetoric growing up in predominantly immigrant socially conservative suburban environments.
Not even social liberal ethnic members of minorities seem to be as inclined to do it was affluent white women.
I think some people who are actually privileged play up being women (or being gay, or ethnic minority, or whatever) in order to play at belonging to an oppressed group. Its a bit like people claiming to be working class because they were as children, even if they are now living in a mansion.
I am visible ethnic minority but did not grow up in a predominately immigrant or socially conservative area in the UK. I have lived elsewhere though.
I'd love to see actual concrete examples of "they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault." Not imaginary slights conjured up by people with a persecution complex. Actual social institutions actually telling men that everything is their fault. If they are growing up "in this world" then there must be plenty of examples of this somewhere.
Tangential question: do you advocate death for all bad people, a group which according to you includes the president?
My impression is not based on something I read online or in the media. Nor is it based on my experiences back when I was growing up in the 1980s.
My impression is based on the lived experience of my children, as consistently described by them. And particularly of the opinion of my son, who has become radicalized against it.
His radicalization started with outrage that when he applied to college, his excellent SAT scores were not allowed to be submitted to most of the colleges that he wanted to go to. "Because the tests are racist and sexist." Luckily he managed to get into UC San Diego. But there he found a requirement for taking a series of courses that he saw as straight up DEI indoctrination. The content of which often outraged him.
It didn't help that his very real struggles were often dismissed by the very same people who were lecturing him about his privilege. He learned that he will never be heard, and he is mad about it.
Do you have any more takes demonstrating your unwillingness to hear the lived experiences of people you disagree with? Demonstrating the dismissiveness that my son is overreacting against?
Oh no, having to take courses he didn't like. And content of which we just have to take his word for is enough to be outraged about.
Is college not a place to go to open yourself to other ideas?
We're all on top of one another, and different cross tabs feel different ways about the same thing. So there is room for empathy and antipathy to coexist
If you read the New York Times and The Atlantic there is lots of empathy for the male loneliness crisis
I am in between the age of you and your son it seems. As a man who has not missed any of the "misandry", I think the overly online conservative young men are an embarrassment and I hope they grow out of it
It may not have to. There are societies where men and women can vote, and there are societies where men can vote. If there is enough male anger at the left then men can disenfranchise women (heavily correlated with Democrats) and the left loses viability due to lack of votes. And that can be the new stable equilibrium.
But the real risk isn't an attempt to appeal the 19th amendment. It is that an authoritarian executive abolishes democracy entirely. That this is the risk has been obvious for a long time. Latin America is full of countries who adopted constitutions based on the US Constitution when they threw off Spanish rule. Those democracies consistently fell when legislative deadlock and judicial corruption created a window for an authoritarian executive to declare a state of emergency and override both.
We have the legislative deadlock, and a court system that is rapidly losing public respect. We have an authoritarian leaning President who is already teasing about an unconstitutional third term. He probably doesn't have the popular support to actually abolish democracy. But if we remain this polarized for another decade or two, we're likely to go the same way as every other democracy whose constitution was based on ours.
The advice my father gave still applies today, though few people (in this case, white males) have the stomach to hear it:
Man up. Life isn't fair. Get over it.
My personal experience is that I have not seen "You are the problem" very often, but I have seen "THEY say YOU are the problem!" coming from conservative circles, very often. It's a very blatant tactic. Make "the other" an enemy, and then the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Again, nothing I said invalidates what you are saying. Both could very well be true at the same time. I live in Europe, if it helps. In any case, I wish you good raising that son.
Hillary was exactly right when she spoke of deplorables. The mask is off these days.
The same community where I grew up biking, walking, and wandering around as a child now has police who say that they must respond if an adult calls in about unsupervised children anywhere in town.
A combination of rising costs, privatization, social media, and smart phones has made it so children can't spend time together without adults monitoring them. They literally are not engaging with each other in physical space the way that many of us engaged with each other as children up until the 2000s. We can see and feel that things are different as adults, but for children the real impact is socially and emotionally stunting. Children no longer have any low-stakes space where they can experiment and learn. And when we destroy the physical, in-person community where children can find support and comfort, should we be surprised when they latch onto the loudest people on the internet?
What it means to be progressive became so distorted, it’s almost as bad as conservative, in most cases “progressive” groups and parties are places for willing and thinking people to defuse and not actually do or contribute anything.
It's taking it way too personally for anyone to feel they're being blamed for history. That's a choice, and a convenient justification for raging against it.
I too was surprised by the author's tendency to suggest that alone time is inherently bad. If you aren't particularly interested in the society you live in, there is nothing wrong with spending time alone. I don't really suggest you take up gambling, smoking, or drinking to pass the time. But spending time alone is just fine.
When I was younger, I thought I was SUPPOSED to want to party, so I went out with friends many nights a week. Sometimes I would have fun, but I would always dread it. I hate the noise, the crowded feeling, bumping into other people, trying to make small talk with people I was not that interested in talking to. I much preferred being home by myself, playing games or working on hobby projects. I remember in college I loved when I was too young to go to the bars; we would pre-party at our apartment and I would enjoy it for an hour or two, and then they would leave for the bars and I would stay home and do my own thing. It was perfect.
I just thought I was supposed to like parties and going out.
Then I got older, and I met my now-wife at work. On one of our first dates, we were going to pick up her cousin from a bar. We get there, and it is HAPPENING. Loud music, people dancing, people waiting in line to get in. It looked miserable to me, but I was getting ready to act like I enjoyed it... and then I look over to my future wife and she sighs and says "that looks awful". I knew right there she was the woman for me.
We have been married for over 10 years now, and we still hate going out to loud events. We don't mind socializing in smaller groups, but we are comfortable that we don't like going to loud bars or clubs or big parties. We like staying home with the kids, quietly playing games or reading. We have also learned, through having our kids diagnosed and then ourselves, that we are both on the autism spectrum. We are no longer ashamed of who we are, and don't pretend we are the same as everyone else.
I think people are different, and need different things. We can't assume that what we need will work for everyone else.
Risk-aversion in the social sphere has combined with their risk-chasing in the market
The skinner box gives unpredictable rewards, but at the same time the user can be certain that a reward will come. Whereas (for those poor unfortunate souls), the expected reward for putting themselves out there is zero, zilch, nada. That's what it means to be hopeless.
pavel_lishin•2h ago
> These young men seem to me like modern ascetics who find themselves somehow trapped on the betting floor of the economy. They are like monks, yes. But more than that: They are monks in a casino. Risk-aversion in the social sphere has combined with their risk-chasing in the market, and it’s created a genuinely berserk modern life script.
This seems like a bad take. There's no preference there, these people have crippling addictions, it's a form of mental illness. It's like saying schizophrenics prefer talking to voices than having a home, or that people who are clinically depressed prefer napping over going to work.