>We are not quite so selectively gullible when it comes to other issues facing the same cohort. Consider the way we talk about young men’s struggles with gambling, versus how we talk about them succumbing to the likes of Tate. Last year, the UK’s National Centre for Social Research reported there were 1.3m problem gamblers in Britain — the ESRI reports that the Irish figure is broadly similar per capita, at around 279,000 — and that young men are seven and a half times more likely to enter this cohort than their female counterparts. Not once have I found a journalist stumped by what attracts all these young men to gambling in the first place. Nor have I seen them wondering if negative portrayals of gambling have pushed all these men toward the industry, or whether we could all learn something from betting companies about how to reach them better.
>Such an approach would be ludicrous, since gambling’s appeal is easily deduced via the facts at hand; economically depressed young men are aggressively targeted with the oldest, most seductive pitch there is — money for nothing — by bad faith actors with enormous wealth, whose interests are served by every branch of mainstream television and media advertising, and sitting governments.
PolyrythmicSynthJaz on
>Economically depressed young men are aggressively targeted with the oldest, most seductive pitch there is — **money for nothing** — by bad faith actors with enormous wealth
Unironically, I think it’s the “chicks for free” that’s more seductive.
RTSBasebuilder on
what I’d do if I was a Dem speaker or politician to the disaffected, confused young men vote who lean Manosphere?
“If you need to follow someone else’s podcasts or do an online course for 2 hours a day on how to be an alpha male…. by definition, you aren’t an alpha, you’re a beta. Alphas lead. They figure it out. And that’s why I’m introducing + a dozen vocational hobbyist programs. We’re bringing back a biweekly mixer, we’re bringing in beekeeping, carpentry, shipwrighting, beermaking, legos, the hobby shed to every suburb. We’re bringing back the private clubs where you can talk shit and feel intellectual without judgement with your mates, we’re restoring the public civic organisations like the Lions and the Rotary back into prominence, we’re expanding and enhancing youth mentorship organisations like the Scouts and JROTC, we’re going to make a secular monastery for every district. ”
“Masculinity and manliness isn’t something to be taught – it is simply confidence. And confidence is something to be experienced and refined until you figure out your own way with your own mates you’ve made.”
Fubby2 on
It wasn’t exactly clear to me what point this article was making. Men are attracted to right wing influencers by general societal / economic issues and the desire to get rich quick? Not super insightful.
RottenMilquetoast on
I feel like responses and this article always have a weird unspoken assumption that there was some “healthy masculinity” in the past and young men just got temporarily led astray.
It seems very possible this isn’t an anomaly at all, just a logical conclusion of all the weird gendered roles and conservatism that was common for decades past. Just, in the immediate past everyone was passive and covert about it.
Idk, it feels like part of the problem is when things are good we don’t take changing culture seriously because it’s too abstract.
LegitimateFoot3666 on
The sexual marketplace is like any other.
Demand for puss is drastically higher than demand for dick right now. Historically the value of dick was inflated by agricultural and industrial labor, industries where men held the biological advantage owning to raw physical strength. If you didn’t wanna go hungry, you often had to spread your legs for a dude you found relatively ugly or boring or lame. The value of pussy was also deflated by socioeconomic and technological realities: if you rawdogged the wrong guy you’d be left alone without secure food, shelter, and protection from less scrupulous guys, all while pregnant with an absolutely insane mortality rate. It was a losing gamble. Not to mention pressure from your family to settle immediately and minimize the odds of paternity (and more importantly, inheritance) debates.
The obvious answer here is to legalize and normalize sex work. Women in the West are no longer dependent on pairing off with a mate for survival anymore, and their labor is far more efficient being used in our service economy than at home with 12 skinny illiterate kids in a rural shack. They can actually go for the guys they really want instead of the guys they must tolerate to live another day.
A Prostitution Industry at large enough scale (well regulated of course) would sort out the men who feel left behind by their more attractive peers, or embarrassed by their lack of experience. Everybody wins.
As far as boys go? I really think that we need initiation brought back into society. Boys are **dangerous** if left to flounder adolescence and discovering manhood on their own. Treating them like defective girls won’t do them any good.
And at puberty? Forget it, they’re military aged, sexually voracious, and crazy. Just as likely to shoot each other for getting disrespected in front of a girl as they are to start randomly blasting other students because no girls smiled them since elementary school. Kids like that used to help burn and pillage the town across the river, being patted on the back for not exerting their frustrations on the in-group.
Once upon a time we’d take boys into the wilderness dressed in masks and leaves, haze them, and teach them what it means to be a functional and contributing man in society. Real intensive socialization. They’d die as boys and come back to the village as men. Now what do they have? Scouts? The baseball team? Unrestricted internet access? Teachers calling them troublemakers? Ideologues calling them future rapists and abusers?
They’re sitting ducks for chickenhawks like Andrew Tate to swoop in, say “You’re not defective, you’ve been lied to, I can make you a winner!”, and groom into brownshirts. And what’s worse is that the left-wing response is so rehearsed and fake it’s painful. Drinking a beer or holding a fish and mumbling “real men are kind and respectful” ain’t it.
6 Comments
>We are not quite so selectively gullible when it comes to other issues facing the same cohort. Consider the way we talk about young men’s struggles with gambling, versus how we talk about them succumbing to the likes of Tate. Last year, the UK’s National Centre for Social Research reported there were 1.3m problem gamblers in Britain — the ESRI reports that the Irish figure is broadly similar per capita, at around 279,000 — and that young men are seven and a half times more likely to enter this cohort than their female counterparts. Not once have I found a journalist stumped by what attracts all these young men to gambling in the first place. Nor have I seen them wondering if negative portrayals of gambling have pushed all these men toward the industry, or whether we could all learn something from betting companies about how to reach them better.
>Such an approach would be ludicrous, since gambling’s appeal is easily deduced via the facts at hand; economically depressed young men are aggressively targeted with the oldest, most seductive pitch there is — money for nothing — by bad faith actors with enormous wealth, whose interests are served by every branch of mainstream television and media advertising, and sitting governments.
>Economically depressed young men are aggressively targeted with the oldest, most seductive pitch there is — **money for nothing** — by bad faith actors with enormous wealth
Unironically, I think it’s the “chicks for free” that’s more seductive.
what I’d do if I was a Dem speaker or politician to the disaffected, confused young men vote who lean Manosphere?
“If you need to follow someone else’s podcasts or do an online course for 2 hours a day on how to be an alpha male…. by definition, you aren’t an alpha, you’re a beta. Alphas lead. They figure it out. And that’s why I’m introducing + a dozen vocational hobbyist programs. We’re bringing back a biweekly mixer, we’re bringing in beekeeping, carpentry, shipwrighting, beermaking, legos, the hobby shed to every suburb. We’re bringing back the private clubs where you can talk shit and feel intellectual without judgement with your mates, we’re restoring the public civic organisations like the Lions and the Rotary back into prominence, we’re expanding and enhancing youth mentorship organisations like the Scouts and JROTC, we’re going to make a secular monastery for every district. ”
“Masculinity and manliness isn’t something to be taught – it is simply confidence. And confidence is something to be experienced and refined until you figure out your own way with your own mates you’ve made.”
It wasn’t exactly clear to me what point this article was making. Men are attracted to right wing influencers by general societal / economic issues and the desire to get rich quick? Not super insightful.
I feel like responses and this article always have a weird unspoken assumption that there was some “healthy masculinity” in the past and young men just got temporarily led astray.
It seems very possible this isn’t an anomaly at all, just a logical conclusion of all the weird gendered roles and conservatism that was common for decades past. Just, in the immediate past everyone was passive and covert about it.
Idk, it feels like part of the problem is when things are good we don’t take changing culture seriously because it’s too abstract.
The sexual marketplace is like any other.
Demand for puss is drastically higher than demand for dick right now. Historically the value of dick was inflated by agricultural and industrial labor, industries where men held the biological advantage owning to raw physical strength. If you didn’t wanna go hungry, you often had to spread your legs for a dude you found relatively ugly or boring or lame. The value of pussy was also deflated by socioeconomic and technological realities: if you rawdogged the wrong guy you’d be left alone without secure food, shelter, and protection from less scrupulous guys, all while pregnant with an absolutely insane mortality rate. It was a losing gamble. Not to mention pressure from your family to settle immediately and minimize the odds of paternity (and more importantly, inheritance) debates.
The obvious answer here is to legalize and normalize sex work. Women in the West are no longer dependent on pairing off with a mate for survival anymore, and their labor is far more efficient being used in our service economy than at home with 12 skinny illiterate kids in a rural shack. They can actually go for the guys they really want instead of the guys they must tolerate to live another day.
A Prostitution Industry at large enough scale (well regulated of course) would sort out the men who feel left behind by their more attractive peers, or embarrassed by their lack of experience. Everybody wins.
As far as boys go? I really think that we need initiation brought back into society. Boys are **dangerous** if left to flounder adolescence and discovering manhood on their own. Treating them like defective girls won’t do them any good.
And at puberty? Forget it, they’re military aged, sexually voracious, and crazy. Just as likely to shoot each other for getting disrespected in front of a girl as they are to start randomly blasting other students because no girls smiled them since elementary school. Kids like that used to help burn and pillage the town across the river, being patted on the back for not exerting their frustrations on the in-group.
Once upon a time we’d take boys into the wilderness dressed in masks and leaves, haze them, and teach them what it means to be a functional and contributing man in society. Real intensive socialization. They’d die as boys and come back to the village as men. Now what do they have? Scouts? The baseball team? Unrestricted internet access? Teachers calling them troublemakers? Ideologues calling them future rapists and abusers?
They’re sitting ducks for chickenhawks like Andrew Tate to swoop in, say “You’re not defective, you’ve been lied to, I can make you a winner!”, and groom into brownshirts. And what’s worse is that the left-wing response is so rehearsed and fake it’s painful. Drinking a beer or holding a fish and mumbling “real men are kind and respectful” ain’t it.