Ask Lemmy

I feel like there is also a pathologization of being single. I was a teenager in the late 90s/early 2000s, so before most of social media. I'm also from a village where most people knew each other.

There were a couple of nerdy, shy guys who never had a girlfriend by the time of graduation. I only had one boyfriend at 16 for 2 month before his friend told me he was only dating me as a dare. I was "ugly" and "not a real girl" because I didn't wear makeup and mostly wore jeans and Tshirts. Stupid village kids.

Anyway, similar things happened to the nerdy guys. But no one started crying about all men/women being awful and no one became an incel. Several girls and boys in my class never dated by the time we graduated and that just wasn't a big deal. Nowadays everybody's being told there's something wrong with them if they've never had a partner by age 17.

I've never met any who do

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.

Young men are struggling badly, and almost no one seems to take it seriously. A lot of them want to man up - but the message they get from much of the media is to man down. I saw a Reddit thread asking who young boys could look up to as a role model, and the top answer was Aragorn. You literally have to turn to fictional characters to find someone broadly seen as decent.

They gravitate toward people like Andrew Tate (and Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Jocko Willink, David Goggins, etc.) because those are some of the only public voices telling them it’s okay to be a man - and to embrace masculine traits - without apology.

Who else are they going to turn to? It's rare for boys and young men to have positive male role models.

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

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

It used to be that women couldn't open their own bank accounts. Depending on how far back you go, they couldn't even own property. In this context, women really needed to get married if they wanted to do anything. For this and many other reasons, the bar was lower, men could get married with less effort. Nowadays women can do anything and the only reason for them to want a man is if they want to, so you actually have to put in effort now.

Also, gender roles are changing and there's no clarity as to what being a man is supposed to mean in 2025. If it's not protecting and providing, if it's not dying in war, then the purpose of men is undefined as of now, and there's a tendency to want to return to the older gender roles.

And late capitalism is stressful, and men aren't going to college as much these days. There's lots of reasons but this is what i can remember in five minutes

Further listening material

A lot of young men are lacking role models and community these days.

More kids are growing up without fathers around now (single parenthood is up from 9% in the 1960s to about 25% today).

Most people's source of community used to be church, but since the advent of the internet, people are rapidly moving away from organized religion. I think this has disproportionately impacted men, who tend to be less social on average.

And I think in general, a lot of young men feel like nobody cares about their personal struggles.

So, even some toxic dude like Andrew Tate can show up and say "Hey, you're great. Here are the reasons why things are bad for you and what you should do, and here's a community of like-minded people to interact with." and these guys are going to dive in head first.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

A lot of young men frustrated with the lack of community, the fleeting chance of making good money, buying a home, etc. are looking for something/someone to blame. Misogyny and xenophobia are easy escape hatches for difficult times.

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

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

The world around them is collapsing. Tate promises to have the solution. For whatever reason, his solution makes sense to them. So they follow him.

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.

I feel like there's always been a culture of boys and young men who didn't respect women, there's just never been podcasters actively promoting it.

The internet allows idiots to broadcast their message worldwide and social media promotes the most controversial stuff in order to drive engagement and, more recently, to promote a culture war that keeps the populus divided.