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Same reason people flocked to Trump to vote for him, this false idealization that he was this bold, bright and strong leader.
Same reason people worshiped Musk, thinking he was and is the future with all of the money to do it.
It's like any or all qualities of themselves that they lack or devoid of educating themselves or learning. They replace it with blind devotion.
It's a combination of them being young and dumb, but also being brought up mind-fucked by social media from the beginning of their lives.
I think the decline of misogyny is the reason. As it's not as normalized as it once was, yet still a very powerful lingering thread in our culture, men are seeking validation for it where they would have otherwise found validation for misogyny, unasked for and unconditionally, in their everyday social circles in previous eras.
Social media algos are creating this. This is why a lot of 20-38 year old young boys are turning to conservatism. This is how the rich wealthy elites are overthrowing the last few remaining democries. UK is currently their main target. They were successful with Germany and they are now expading. In 3-6 years, the world will have completely shifted to the right.
Because positive masculinity doesn't get clicks like toxic masculinity does, sadly. No shortage of examples of the latter, but there just aren't enough examples of healthy manhood out there to learn from, or at least not enough ones in the algorithms.
What's worse, in so many cases it's assumed that positive masculinity just means being receptive, sensitive, collaborative and being connected with others. These are qualities that are typically associated with women, and a lot of guys shun anything that might make them "look like a woman". Then it's assumed, more or less, that you'll need to be more like a woman in order to not be toxic.
Obviously not true, but this leaves young men in a vacuum. So they fail to live up to their potential, plus they lose out on relationships, are isolated from their peers who could steer them in a better direction, and are without a secure sense of self.
So, in come the Andrew Tates of the world to give them a seemingly easier and better way to cope. Sure, they're told they're special, but then they're fed the notions like "might is right", that there are only winners and losers in this world, and to "get the prom queen". Not wanting to miss out on this is incredibly enticing for these young men, so the manosphere sucks them right in.
It's gotta so, so much deeper than just changing the messaging. Positive male role models and helping young men understand who they are, creating healthy examples of masculinity that are both manly and positive, can make a difference. Without that, the far-right black hole that is the manosphere is going to keep getting more young men trapped in it.
Kids are being exposed early to social media, the boys watch "stuff for men" and learn "how a man should be". With that and the help of algorithms, what other out come could someone expect?
Not just the kids. The kids who were exposed to this stuff way back now have kids. It's generational now.
Were you not young before/after the start of the internet? Not trying to be snarky, it's more trying to understand perspective.
I could have been MAGA, no question. Here's my anecdote: (edit: too lazy to correct so please don't pay close attention to the tense of my words here, I was partially speaking from the perspective of being a kid again but I didn't stay consistent)
I grew up in a diverse area, so I've really never believed in racist stuff. Those kind of conspiracies I used to just handwave the racism stuff away cause it wasn't the important stuff to me that I did kind of believe in. I literally even used to watch some of Alex Jones conspiracy videos.
Really easy to get lost in this crap as a teenager alone at 4am.
Like I said I grew up in a diverse area, and in one of my first real relationships, I got a lot of pushback about certain things (I was kinda blue lives matter for a bit for example) and when that ended, one of the big things I took from it was I wanted to be a more accepting person, and I've been an increasingly-raging leftist ever since.
With the rising loneliness epidemic (which actually extends to both genders - EVERYONE is increasingly isolated) I can only imagine this sort of story is increasingly common. And not everyone comes to the same conclusions about wanting to be more accepting, etc.
I was very lucky to go through those experiences and learn what I did from it. There's probably another universe where I instead got increasingly angry & further into all those things - from the cruel & crass words to the conspiracies - and am wearing a red hat
🤮🤮 at the thought of that
It's not complicated. They're horny and frustrated that they can't get a woman to be interested in them. Tate tells them it's not their fault and that the blame lies with women and society, allowing them to not feel shitty about themselves or make any effort to improve.
Who else is talking to them?
Lack of healthy father figure, lack of social exposure, lack of success with women, lack of constructive rolemodels (people like tate replace constructive rolemodeks), lack of empathy through lack of life experience/social exposure, lack of introspection, lack of proven confidence (craving for outside approval/desire to compensate for perceived own shortcomings)
All of these possibly enable, enforce, or worsen each other
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.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I'd abstract it to "losers in a shameless culture".
Generally our society would have time to correct itself and face saving would be important enough to contain the losers in their own circles. However the current western culture is completely shameless and incredibly fast meaning that being a loser is kinda ok and easily justifiable. This leads to a bunch of losers getting together and cognitive dissonance themselves into some sort of dumb pointless ideology that's wouldn't be sustainable otherwise. Add money into the mix and you've got yourself real growth.
I lived in Japan for a while and still come back there every now and then and its such a good illustration of this concept. It's an extreme face saving culture. So you have this Tate-like world of Japanese incels hiding under internet anonymity but if you are not Japanese you will never see this because the losers are contained as they'd never dare to display themselves in public.
That being said, I'm quite optimistic and I think cancel culture and western face will come back from the current slump and restore some balance eventually.
I could be wrong but I think it's the end result of hyper-competitive free market capitalism and social media algorithms that boost outrage content. The rise of neoliberalism and globalization in the 90s led to a rise in high-paying executive positions in the corporate world. Just one problem: there's only a finite amount of those positions to go around. This creates a environment of competition and many don't make the cut. Business education is expensive and connections are hard to come by. This left many talented men unable to get not even decent paying, let alone high-paying, jobs that would allow them to advance in life.
The rise of mainstream social media platforms in the 2010s also gave a voice to misogynistic and reactionary content. Men who wouldn't have been exposed to such content otherwise were now inundated with creators telling them (falsely) that the world was against them. At first, it wasn't much of a problem. Take fitness Youtube for example. It was mostly educational content about things like growing a certain muscle group and increasing one's 1RPM. Think of guys like Scooby1961 and Scott Herman. Rarely was there outrage content associated with fitness content. Guys like the Hodge Twins and the more overtly right-wing Golden One were the rare exemptions. Little did we know that the rare exemptions would be the progenitors of the 'manosphere' (i hate that term). Sometime during the late 2010s and early 2020s (I forget we're halfway into the decade), 'gym bro' content merged with reactionary content. This meant that any guy who was looking for content to help them with their physical health and physique were suddenly recommend videos by the likes of Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan. Couple this with my previous paragraph, a decrease in critical thinking skills and media literacy and you have a perfect (shit-)storm.
There were also two smaller factors: Gamergate and increased mobility of women in Western, liberal democracies.
I'm not going to rehash the entire history of Gamergate here but, needless to say, it brought out a lot of ugly characters. Carl Benjamin, Rageaholic and Thunderf00t being prime example. Bogus yet widely believed conspiracy theories like Cultural Marxism were touted as being responsible for all of society's ills.
As for women's increased mobility, this actually predates the internet. Women were taking birth control, pursing education and careers, having more causal sex and thus were less focused on domestic affairs and institutions like the church or the mosque. But with the rise of misogynistic/sexist and anti-feminist voices online, women's freedoms were caught in the crosshairs.
Ultimately, you have to remember that Andrew Tate and his ilk insert themselves into otherwise innocuous content (gaming, fitness, self-improvement, etc.) and exploit a volatile time in our shared history. They want to create an environment of discontent. They want us direct our anger and disillusionment to the wrong target. Whether they're true believers of their own output or simply grifting, I don't know but it's had devastating consequences.
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
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
This is an opinion from someone who used to work as a children's teacher after college in 2016:
We socialize our young men in spaces that only promote competition; sports, gaming circles, schools. The way that they interact with other children and the world in turn is one of competition and selfishness.
The way our modern families are structured give less freedom to our children to find meaningful friendships with boys and girls. social relationships have become more distanced, not just because of the internet. It's just the rapid pace in which we live today.
They come in contact with porn at very young ages, some of them way before building meaningful friendships or relationships with girls. Pornography is a very cold and blunt product; It has a tendency to skew perceptions of what sentimental relationships are and it creates distorted expectations for sex. It gets worse for young generations that find it difficult to distinguish reality from fiction. I've talked to young men who only see relationships and sex from the filters of pornography and this is very concerning. To make matters worst. A lot of adults also have this optic. Middle aged men that have very little experiences with committed relationships friendly or intimate and pass down their skewed point of view to younger generations.
Our social media and political discourse promote atomization and alienation; it is easier to find things you disagree with other people than things in common. This was made by design. Division creates a passionate voters and consumers. young men and women are in the crossfire.
With this in mind; It is very profitable to become a social media grifter like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and so on. There is a large market for easy answers that take the blame elsewhere. I also feel these grifters find funding easily. I don't think internet misogyny is at all grassroots, but there are a lot of right wing thinktanks and foundations that move money to boost voices that create this type of division. It's not new and young men are particularly susceptible in a time with so much economical uncertainty because society tends to put a lot of expectations on them.
Countries that avoid to regulate their media are very susceptible to astroturfed political division. And when dealing with propaganda, adolescents are an ideal target. It turns out you tube and social media did not bring us a golden era of democratized education but instead an easy access to our children by malignant actors. And in countries like the US where any type of media regulation is considered "doing a comulism" attacking children with propaganda is a feature of the system, not a bug.
Insecurity exacerbated by the rise of social media. It's really easy for impressionable teens (not just them, but they are the most vulnerable group) to be affected directly by the consequences of social media. Toxic masculinity allows them to fall into the andrew tate trap because it tells them that this is the easy solution to the insecurities they face. I'd argue covid also made this problem worse as well
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.
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.
You're not wrong BUT this is only one side of the issue. Patriarchal norms undercut men's ability to form meaningful relationships and capitalism is making us wage slaves. The behaviors you're pointing to are symptoms of a larger problem.
And you're not wrong either - they're still shit excuses for treating people like sexual commodities and thinking its OK to beat/rape/kill them if they don't give you sex. At some level personal responsibility kicks in.
I'm going to disagree with a few things here.
I don't really see why people continue to blame the lockdown for why it has impacted socializing. There has been socially inept people before a pandemic took over so I really can't see how this in anyway has had a strict and exclusive cause. Men in general, for years and years, have always had an awkward approach when it comes to females and it has only worsened.
I wouldn't just put the magnifying glass on 4chan when Reddit and Kiwi Farms are just as bad if not worse.
The one key thing also to add is that, there had been fictional and even non-fictional mediums where women were seen as superior over and than that of men. It didn't really help matters and only just fueled the opposition to behave, think and act the way men do today.
Social medias thrive on engagement, and controversial content is king of engagement.
So social medias companies push content like Andrew Tate and co because it makes them money and they don't care about anything else.
Young people are impressionable, and they get pushed that crap over and over.
If everyday of your life you get told that women are just baby factories, you will eventually start to believe it, some sooner than others.
Because hes alpha and fucks
/s
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.
