Yeah I’m not going to back up church attendance as a solution but I think the point is they’re missing a real community to hold them accountable and even instill them with positive values in the first place, leaving online male echo chambers of despair to fill that void.
I think there is a real male loneliness epidemic and a crisis of identity among younger males, it seems.
Few people/institutions seem to be offering men an off-ramp from this confusion and stress…except for this toxic brosphere stuff, sadly. It really explains a lot about things like the Proud Boys.
Like you - I would not suggest a church as the solution. I really don’t know what the answer is for healthy outlets and support structures for men truly is, though. People yelling “men suck” at them is likely to only push them deeper into the worst behaviors.
Historically, this kind of discontent has never ended well.
I agree. Everybody agrees young men need to learn to be decent, but seemingly nobody wants to teach them “positive masculinity” without first beating them over the head about their inherant badness and the sins of their bloodline.
…Then these kids run to these disgusting “manosphere” cults that welcome them for being young men and offer the facade of fellowship and community, and everyone’s all surprise_pikachu.jpg that they start to internalize that poison.
Yep. I don’t really see any positive organizations/groups love-bombing young men.
Honestly, my generation also heard rather dire messages of a bleak future for us - literally, one of my first memories of punk was listening to “No Future” by the Sex Pistols. We were watching our parents grinding it out as economic hardship and new ideas about how to run corporations hit our parents. Ronnie Raygunism and Thatcherism seemed to result into young men falling into groups like the neo-Nazi skinheads in some areas, but that was at the margins and there were no “influencers” and there was no way for people like to “find the others” like this.
Back then, if someone bitched like these incels or these douchebros wanting a trad wife - they’d be told they are just too chickenshit and lazy to clean themselves up and learn to talk to women. They were not able to all find each other, en masse, have a few of them profit off of it, and then tell each other it is all the fault of the womenfolk. That’s not to say all of us were in a healthy place, but at least there was no multiplier effect like there is now.
I was one of the biggest fans and boosters of the 'net in the early days. These days, it seems to have so many negative effects, especially on the impressionable.
Yeah I’m not going to back up church attendance as a solution but I think the point is they’re missing a real community to hold them accountable and even instill them with positive values in the first place, leaving online male echo chambers of despair to fill that void.
I think there is a real male loneliness epidemic and a crisis of identity among younger males, it seems.
Few people/institutions seem to be offering men an off-ramp from this confusion and stress…except for this toxic brosphere stuff, sadly. It really explains a lot about things like the Proud Boys.
Like you - I would not suggest a church as the solution. I really don’t know what the answer is for healthy outlets and support structures for men truly is, though. People yelling “men suck” at them is likely to only push them deeper into the worst behaviors.
Historically, this kind of discontent has never ended well.
I agree. Everybody agrees young men need to learn to be decent, but seemingly nobody wants to teach them “positive masculinity” without first beating them over the head about their inherant badness and the sins of their bloodline.
…Then these kids run to these disgusting “manosphere” cults that welcome them for being young men and offer the facade of fellowship and community, and everyone’s all surprise_pikachu.jpg that they start to internalize that poison.
Yep. I don’t really see any positive organizations/groups love-bombing young men.
Honestly, my generation also heard rather dire messages of a bleak future for us - literally, one of my first memories of punk was listening to “No Future” by the Sex Pistols. We were watching our parents grinding it out as economic hardship and new ideas about how to run corporations hit our parents. Ronnie Raygunism and Thatcherism seemed to result into young men falling into groups like the neo-Nazi skinheads in some areas, but that was at the margins and there were no “influencers” and there was no way for people like to “find the others” like this.
Back then, if someone bitched like these incels or these douchebros wanting a trad wife - they’d be told they are just too chickenshit and lazy to clean themselves up and learn to talk to women. They were not able to all find each other, en masse, have a few of them profit off of it, and then tell each other it is all the fault of the womenfolk. That’s not to say all of us were in a healthy place, but at least there was no multiplier effect like there is now.
I was one of the biggest fans and boosters of the 'net in the early days. These days, it seems to have so many negative effects, especially on the impressionable.