I talk about this in another comment on a different post, but I’ll give you the TLDR, plus a bit more musing:
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At the highest level, this type of thinking stems from an erosion of parenting and the evolution of the digital age. It’s not that parents don’t care, but they have less time than they have historically to parent, and both parents have to work to support the family in most cases.
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Kids now socialize less due to time spent online
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The algorithms online are powerful and meant to keep you watching, even if it’s not great for you
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Because of the lack of parenting and being terminally on there is less and less interaction with positive male role model, so kids figuring themselves out latch on to anything they can find and it ends up being Tate and ilk because fear and anger sell, and they make us feel like if only we were just a bit better, we would have what the tatertots have.
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To combat this, we need to make morons afraid again
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Saying something outrageous used to cost you social capital but now everyone is too busy to care and there’s been the rise of the ideal that all opinions are equal, confrontation, unless approved by the talking heads online, is bad, and everyone need to feel safe, heard, and their opinions as valid (at least to a degree)
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We can best deal with this weaponized misogyny by calling people out - especially kids - as it crops up. If you’re a coach on a hockey team and someone starts up, shut them down. Leagues have diversity and inclusion policies - use them to back yourself up.
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Even if it’s just someone else’s kid you are around, while you may be afraid of speaking up, but chances are most parents would want to know their kid is calling women ‘holes’ or the like and will deal with it.
The only way this goes away is if we address it at every stage, and every time it comes up.
Very well said.
literally grew up in prime misogyny zone.
Listening to old Opie and Anthony clips where they called women holes. Was my 11 to 16 background noise.
You are right. My experience of what prevented me from deep ending:
Empathy. Empathy. Empathy.
I remember the look on my first girlfriends face when I was such a piece of shit to her. I was an asshole.
That internalized guilt feeling of hurting another person made me change.
Dated a man, saw the amount of trauma men can put vulnerable people in.
Allowing your worldview to change with new evidence. Admitting fault. All increibly valuable. But the act of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and really understanding it, or at least wanting to, cannot be beat.
I’m scared for the algorithm generation. I was and to an extent still am terminally online, but your interests being weaponinzed against you is another beast completely. Being too young to know you’re being pigeon holed into hate
Happy to have changed. Love is the thing
It’s not that parents don’t care, but they have less time than they have historically to parent, and both parents have to work to support the family in most cases.
I’ll spot you one deeper. Working families have been the norm for the bulk of human history. But we’ve also had large tribal communities full of extended family to provide social and economic support.
But the nuclear family, privatization of social services, and the wealth gap have closed off this network of relationships. In the modern world of commoditized labor and class politics, you either have servants or you are a servant.
Fascists translate the class politics to a social structure. For fascist men, the women become the servant gender to which men are entitled.
Further, as wealth aggregation generates a gulf between poverty and aristocracy, the aristocrats have a habit of monopolizing young people for their own personal demands. This leads to a problem of Surplus Males whose struggle for survival leads to domestic and criminal violence.
All of this degrades quality of life for the next generation.
You’re on point at least on the capitalism behind this. I didn’t want to dive into it because my comment was long enough, but I’m glad you did
Not wanting to be that guy but there is a part missing from your list (I think) where myogeny used to be much more wide spread and much less cared about than today
Slapping a woman back in her place was, shall we say, less socially awkward a hundred years ago than it is today. Especially the last twenty years a lot had changed in making misogyny visible, making
peoplelosers like Andrew Tate stand out much more.I’m not saying it’s not a problem, I’m not saying that Andrew Tate hasn’t made things worse, I’m just saying that it used to be so so much worse, still.
Having said that; we need to bring back responsible role models, everywhere. I grew up with good parents who were role models but I also grew up with Star Trek TNG which influenced me greatly and I’m proud of that. I grew up with practicing kyokushin Karate which taught me humility and respect, both for men and especially women because woman that practice that are humble but don’t take your “I’m the guy!” shit for a second.
there’s been the rise of the ideal that all opinions are equal, confrontation, unless approved by the talking heads online, is bad, and everyone need to feel safe, heard, and their opinions as valid (at least to a degree)
We can best deal with this weaponized misogyny by calling people out - especially kids - as it crops up.
Just to be clear, we call it out IRL. I 100% agree there.
Calling out tatertots and such online is feeding the trolls, and counterproductive. They thrive on the discord because algorithms love it, so the best move is to pretend they’re invisible, just like with real narcissists.
I see a lot of online sentiment of “we stay to fight,” especially on Reddit and Twitter, when that’s exactly what’s feeding the machine. Finite attention is so much better elsewhere.
Calling it out in person works a lot better than online. Online it’s just mean words on a screen they have to deal with. A living, breathing person telling them they are dumb has more sting.
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We all need Gary.
I’m pushing 40 and would love a Gary in my life.
More like f-celeb
I love using “fancy” as the way to Say you like someone
Gary is the dad you wish you had
Hard pass.
Gammon are rarely so wholesome, or is that the joke?
I mean, the problem here is that - wholesome as Gary is, young men don’t want “wholesome”.
I know that when I was a young man, I wanted to get the fuck out of my home town, have crazy adventures, improve the world on my own terms, and fuck every attractive women that came within 1000m of me (For the record, not much jas changed…).
And Gary is a nice guy with an unattractive wife, a steady job, and two kids. He spends his free time at the bar or mowing the lawn, getting fatter by the year. He likes to talk about the vacation he took to an all inclusive resort with his family a few years ago as if it was the great adventure of his life. Gary doesn’t have the most amazing life, but he has enough, and he’s happy.
And my response to Gary as a young man would have been to appreciate his encouragement, and take his advice with a smile, and then ignore all of it because fuck that nonsense, I am getting the fuck out of this shithole. I am not going to end up like Gary! I am not going to settle for a life of bullshit mediocrity, drinking myself to an early grave while every dream I ever had whithers on the vine. And I am absofuckingloutly not going to follow in his footsteps. Come hell or high water, I will die before I end up with such a piss poor excuse for a life!!!
Point being - if you want young men to take your advice rather than the advice of toxic influencers, you need to validate their desires and ambitions, rather than dismissing them and telling them to want something else. “Oh, you have goal X? Well that’s wrong - you should have goal Y, and here is how I got there” is not an effective way to offer advice to anyone
tldr - Gary gives bad advice because he only offers happiness and contentment. This message doesnt work on young men because every single one wants to get rich and fuck women innately without any outside influence implanting that idea of “you are not good enough”.
I wanted to get the fuck out of my home town, have crazy adventures, improve the world on my own terms, and fuck every attractive women
And you think that’s nature, not nurture?
I’ll be honest, that’s not an experience I shared.
Idk, I guess you werent a punk kid growing up in the burbs.
I think its both, which is usually the case.
Nah, more goth leaning. My black is blacker than your black.
lol
“Oh, you have goal X? Well that’s wrong - you should have goal Y, and here is how I got there” is not an effective way to offer advice to anyone"
Where did you even get this? No one said this
I think this is copy/paste from his alpha subscription welcome kit.
He’s saying this is the good guys’ approach, it seems, which I disagree with.
I mean, just to put in basic terms, would you agree most young men should aim to be kingpin of their own casino, and have women falling over themselves to lick their jeans? And that anything less than that is a failure?
I’d imagine you don’t. And by that, you’re rejecting their goals. If your politics offers to people “Here’s how everyone can make a livable wage”, you’re pushing a much “meeker” goal on them than their ego is shooting for.
Ironically you’re getting downvoted for telling people what they don’t want to hear. It’s tough to compete with someone claiming “you can have all you desire”. It’s similar to how trump won by recognizing what his target audience wants, validating their feelings, but then putting the blame on why they can’t achieve what they want based on all the wrong things.
Yeah, I feel like people think I’m, like, defending rightwing manosphere content creators, lol.
I’m saying that what these young men want is a given. So people who dont suck need to accept that and give them viable alternatives, rather than telling them that they are wrong for wanting what they want and chastising them for it.
You don’t gotta front, bro, we all want to dick down Gary, it doesn’t make you gay.
