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Because young men have problems that aren't taken seriously. Then someone like Tate comes along and (quite literally) sells the "solution."
If a cult leader can swoop in and radicalise a whole lot of people, then there is an unaddressed or ignored problem going on. This is the kind of way someone like Hitler got so much support.
People who are educated, and live secure, fulfilling lives would be able to see Tate for the twat he is.
This is probably not the whole reason but in my opinion it is the primary one. Young men are indirectly being told their problems don't matter because when they are raised they get slapped down for trying to take attention away from women's issues, and that leaves a very sour taste in their mouths that makes it easy for charlatans like Tate to take advantage of. Especially low-status white men getting hit with the double whammy of being assumed to be just fine because everyone knows how easy it is to be a white man, right? Thanks, apex fallacy.
The times where men have tried to form positive social support structures like the MRA/MGTOW movement, they are derided as being misogynistic, which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy as the outside attacks reinforce those assumptions. If you look at these groups today, they are absolutely infiltrated by misogynist and racist voices, but that's not how they started. Gamergate is another example of this phenomenon.
I'm not trying to invalidate the issues women face or trying to claim that men have it worse. It seems we collectively treat this as a zero sum game instead of getting folks the help they need for the specific problems they face, and it creates a situation where people who could otherwise be saved are radicalized by assholes who are all too willing to capitalize on that and radicalize them. Worse, the continuing polarization makes it very difficult for anyone left of center to walk back and try to address men's issues without immediately being beset upon by a mercilessly vocal minority of feminists who see any attempt to help men as a distraction from their own issues.
Remember that each person parroting Tate's rhetoric isn't some hyper-privileged fratboy who is looking for an excuse to do violence to women. Some of them certainly are, but I would bet that a majority of them are low-status men who don't see any other options.
Lots of stuff. One has to do with modern feminism that has attempted to redefine the female gender role to become more independent and to adopt some traits that were traditionally masculine. This leaves some men clueless in their own identity, as traditional gender roles are a crutch for both women and men to kinda know their place in society. Now women refuse to fit their traditional role, so men have to redefine themselves too instead of relying on how it's been done in previous generations.
This cluelessness is frustrating and we've seen it pop up in different ways in the last decades. However with a more modern image of a woman manifesting, teens who have to figure out anyway who they are in society are affected more, especially young boys who are welcomed to society with no clear "default instructions" because the old gender role is demonized by a society that has largely accepted the new gender role for women, but is still clueless what men are.
Men may be the provider, but women now must be able to work too. Men could be more emotional and may take caregiver jobs, but women are considered better at them anyway and men are not trusted with kids or not taken seriously as caregivers. This is also not easy on women who now have children and need to care about a career. No wonder we have fewer children. And this also gets confusing for young men who go on dates, when they still need to pay for the bill at dates, their income still plays a role, even though women may make a lot of money (or even more than them) too now.
I hope this doesn't read as a rant, because I see feminism as a positive development even though I acknowledge the new challenges it provides.
Based on this background young, impressionable boys are sucked in by social media algorithms and confronted with the frustration and backlash of these men like Tate, that promote a return to the old gender roles. Many things he says could be something they said to your great granddad. Social media also leads to content and community bubbles, which are harder to penetrate for alternative ideas, so once you are "red pilled" you won't get off your track.
Additionally social media is not just content, it also publicizes and quantifies your social status and connections with followers and likes. Social status is hugely important for teens who are looking for their place in society. Even when you move, you don't have a chance to try again with a new group of mates: you still have your account and your status follows you everywhere. This increases the stakes and leads to more extreme behaviors.
I think that's all the reasons I can think off. Sorry it's so long.
I love this deconstruction, it captures quite a few of my own thoughts. Thank you!
The right wing has easy answers for complex problems, so it's easier for them to recruit frustrated, average people.
And the left is often paralyzed by the "complexity" of a solution and offers little no refuge for those in need. Sadly making those half baked ignorant simple solutions the only thing offered.
And the left is often paralyzed by the "complexity" of a solution and offers little no refuge for those in need
Always, because they're not stupid, if they were, they'd be Conservatives ... and the answer to complex problems are not simple. That can't change.
Alas, with Tate etal,
It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.” - Franz Kafka
"I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. . - John Stuart Mill
You have missed the point entirely. It's not that complex problems can be solved by "one simple trick that conservatives hate." It's that the complexity of the problem often prevents the left from even taking the first step to any solution.
Solving complex problems often requires multiple steps towards to mitigation. But, one needs to take that first step. And there needs to be dirt under those fingernails at the end of the day as a reminder of the work actually done.
Honestly, I think because it's comfortable. Andrew Tate and the like say that there is nothing wrong with you and it's society/women's fault. It doesn't challenge anything, not even the harmful standards for men (ex: High value = certain look/body, status, income, etc.). Dating has gotten harder for men. Women have a lot more options and choices, and I don't just mean in which man to marry, but even if they will marry at all. That means men have to offer more than just being the provider, as many women also have to work. And I don't think we set men up to be good partners. Providers? Sure. But to be caring, empathetic, loving and loved members of society? I don't think so.
I think women need to be taken out of the equation all together when it comes to the male lonilness epidemic because that seems to cause the spiral. If it was focused on how men could foster good relationships, in general, I think it would be better. Focus on how to join/find/form social clubs, make it okay to talk to the boys about how you're feeling, make it okay for them to need help. A lot of articles seems to boil down to more men are single, but I think it should be more of why don't men have friends? If men are single, that means there are single women out there as well, but they don't inspire these posts because women are allowed to foster platonic, deep relationships and we kind of tell me you either get a spouse for that or you just have to deal with it.
Because society simply has mixed standards and very little empathy for men.
Our culture has (thankfully) shifted very far from the idea of the male role as sole protector and provider for the family. While that's great for women's independence, society hasn't changed the expectation that men should still primarily fill that role.
Young men are still expected to grow up to be financially successful, physically fit, willing to sacrifice their lives and happiness for their future families all while being completely emotionally invulnerable about all of it. Society is clear (and correct) that women can do any or all of that if they so choose, but it's totally also fine if they want to be a "traditional" woman.
We're at this halfway point where (compared to our traditional/conservative past) young women can choose any path they desire and it's acceptable and celebrated (which is a great thing). We just need to have that same expectation for young men, and make it clear.
When young men have problems, they very often are told to man-up or change themselves in some way (get a job, go to the gym, buy an expensive car)in order to fix it, when they need to be told it's okay to be upset, it's okay to share your feelings, it's okay to be vulnerable.
We can't send mixed signals that women are primarily attracted to rich, ripped, emotionally invulnerable soldiers. We've got to stop only celebrating men who are billionaires or professional athletes. Boys need to see their nerdy English teachers or average looking artists as role models.
I don't know how we can get there, but until we do our young men are going to continue this regression into toxic masculinity and far right ideologies.
This ended up way longer than intended, lol.
Men and women basically make up 50% of the population each, more or less.
As long as we keep trying to blame society’s problem on one sex or the other, we’re never going to solve anything.
I personally think most problems in society, however, are more related to class than either gender or even race. If we can find a way to reduce income inequality (specifically between the rich and the poor) then I honestly think a lot of these issues would work themselves out naturally.
I feel like people have known this since like the 1800s. But dividing people over race and gender doesn't threaten the rich in the way wealth distribution does, so huge amounts of money and influence are poured into preventing society from advancing by exacerbating poverty and race/gender conflicts.
70 years ago a guy could graduate high school, get a job that allowed him to buy a car, buy a home and support a family, including college for his kids.
They were too busy living a decent life. Then Reagan and the Republicans came to power.
Now, thanks to the vast economic disparity, guys have a very bleak future that makes them easy targets for hate-blaming almost any group of people except the rich who are responsible for their miserable lives.
There is a darker secondary element to that time period, freedom of choice for women. 70 years ago if a young woman wanted to leave home and setup on her own she really needed the financial support of a husband or other male relative, even if to just cosign agreements. You were properly tied to having a husband, expected to as well. The pressure from all angles to marry meant women would settle for some pretty shitty men in much larger numbers, and for longer as it was much harder to divorce.
As time has gradually removed this pressure, women no longer need to marry to get independence in the same numbers, so shitty men no longer luck into marriage. The rise of no fault divorce as a valid choice, and even not having to be married to have kids or live together as a socially acceptable choice further squeezes them out.
The whole trad wives movement is founded on restoring the power back to men in relationships.
Life is hard and confusing. Many people are frustrated with the way that the social landscape has changed: relationships, jobs, and economic prospects have all shifted for the worse in developed countries. Young people are the most affected. Every time this happens, a con artist comes along and starts offering easy answers. Sometimes it's a politician, sometimes it's a religious leader. Nowadays, it's often an influencer.
Tate tells men, "it's not your fault that your life sucks," and he is right (to a point). After all, people who don't own houses can't be blamed for the state of the housing market, right? So who is to blame? According to Trump, it's brown people. According to RFK Jr., it's vaccines or food colouring or some shit. According to Tate, it's women. He tells young men that feminism is surely the reason they are unhappy: the Woke Left is trying to emasculate you! Be an alpha! Follow my simple formula for abusing women and accumulating money and your problems will go away.
Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. This is not a truth that all people can accept. We can fix some of the problems that we are facing, but it will take time, effort, and cooperation. In the meantime, many men are comforted by Tate's message: women are the reason you are unhappy, and everything can be fixed by returning them to bondage! If you are very young (or just a little stunted), this message is much more palatable than the admittedly challenging option of actually fixing things.
In the 1950s men ruled the home, earned the money, and were kings of their castles. Since then gender rules have been torn up and rewritten. Women have carved out new spaces for themselves with the support of allies. But there hasn't really been a new consensus of what a man's role is any more. The result being that lots of men see their domination being eroded by the new order of things.
Shitstains like Tate prey on this by offering stupid but simple answers or solutions. "It's not your fault that you're a failure, it's the [random mysogenistic term]'s fault. It's them, they've done this to you. They're cheating your out of your rights." It's the same rhetoric as Hitler blaming the Jews and Trump blaming immigrants and Musk blaming the 'woke mind virus'.
It gives young men an out. "This guy's winning at life and owning the [random mysogenistic term]! I should do what he does!"
The USA had expansion as an escape valve for most of its existence. Now that's gone. There's no future. Our politicians don't talk about anything great ahead anymore. The rest of our existence will be capitalism crushing people. Hence, despair and cynicism.
The algorithm pushes them that direction.
On YouTube I'm constantly one video away from "owning the woke libs" content because I turned my view history off.
Yo the second I turned off personalized ads I got so many ads for erectile dysfunction medication. It felt like they were trying to embarrass me into turning personalized ads back on.
The Innuendo Studios series' on YouTube Alt-Right Playbook and Why Are You So Angry especially illustrate this well and I highly recommend watching. It's very similar to what happened during gamergate. A lot of men who are frustrated are misled by these reactionary campaigns. Just like everyone else, they face the struggles of patriarchy, toxic masculinity, capitalism, etc. But Andrew Tate tells them it's not their fault, and reassures their insecurities that they're good guys, and tells them that the problem is women.
While simultaneously saying casual sex with women means you're a gay dude.
Edit: love how there are Tate fanboys on Lemmy! Lol, y'all are so pathetic it's funny. YourBoosMeanNothing.gif
That's what happen when identity politics mark a group as less important and the enemy.
It happens when right wing do identity politics an the marginalized minorities group together against it.
Left wing for some reason decided to use exactly the same strategy as the right wing and took identity politics as a way to do politics and they are having exactly the same result. The "marginalized" identity turned against them.
Surprised Pikachu face.
I think its because, to an extent, masculinity has been villainized, and people who are masculine (in appearance, identity or desire to be traditionally masculine) naturally look for people that pretend to value them.
This combined with reduction or even removal of shop classes, reduced PE, recess and physical activities in school, female teachers now far outnumbering male teachers, and strict attitude towards typical male behavior can easily build a huge amount of resentment in young men. Most public schools now are heavily tailored towards female students.
Doing normal boy stuff, like roughing each other up and messing with your friends got me and other boys detention, and it felt extremely unfair.
What you consider masculine or feminine behavior is mostly socially constructed.
There are these myths that only men where hunters while women where only gatherers, which turn out to be false. Women and men both hunted and gathered. Link
IMO, the real issue is that current society places to much attention to gender roles, and for men it is done it in a way that makes it difficult and contradictory for young men to find their place: "You are a 'man', and you have to behave this specific way, however if you do that you are bad and will have trouble finding a partner. However if you do not behave like a 'man', you are weird."
The conservative gender roles don't only hurt women, they hurt men as well. And dating and finding a good partner sucks for everyone.
Something I rarely see brought up is specifically the edgelord to right wing pipeline. When I was a kid, it was essentially standard for any boy online to try to be super edgy. Adolescents and teens just have a natural urge for rebellion.
The problem comes when kids think edgy and shock value humor is their favorite thing, but more mature online users reject that behavior and exclude these kids. These kids feel misunderstood and are drawn to figures and role models that accept what they like.
I’ve met a bunch of younger, “conservative”, incel types recently and they’ve all been edgelords who found their own little community instead of growing up. They largely have no ideology in the beginning but slowly absorb manosphere bullshit and over time they become less “ironic”.
The thing that got me to stop being edgy was joining the swim team and having my friend group go from edgelords to gay swimmers. I developed a ton of respect for them and they were my teammates; it completely changed my mind without me having to “conform” to the things I wanted to rebel against. I don’t really know how to get that across to some many kids that get sucked up into this madness though.
I call this Shadow the Hedgehog darkness. When something wants to look dark and mature from the outset, but it's really a form of childishness. Same appearance takes effect for a lot of "dark" anime, where people are routinely betraying and causing pain, and "At its heart most of humanity just wants chaos" blah blah.
I do think there's a lot of horrible stuff in the world, but it's usually far more banal than anything these edgelords envision. When put face to face, people usually want to be kind to each other. But we're not put face-to-face often enough.
It’s because many young people are not very media literate.
They aren’t aware that an algorithm pipeline is funneling them into being monetized by “men’s rights alpha male” bullshit.
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.
The algorithms in social media, media platforms, and search engines are all designed to keep users engaged so that ad revenue can be generated and user data can be harvested.
Adding to that, a lot of these misogynistic creators leverage predatory practices that manipulate marginalized people into sycophantcy.
When this and other factors come together, we wind up with mindless drones which are easily manipulated, constantly angry, and always searching for a way to "get back" at those that who marginalized them.
On the playground kids would follow other kids who they felt were confident or charismatic, not who had the best ideas or were most concerned with fairness or equity. It's just childish, naive notions of importance that are leaking out into the broader society due to social media, culture of celebrity, etc.
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?
My guess is hating others for being different is WAY easier than looking inside yourself and learning to forgive and love yourself for all the trauma you've been carrying around.
Lack of father figures mixed with a regressive world that is admittedly going to shit, whereas millennials and genx were raised thinking they'd be something, with teen angst and rebellion also in the mix. Don't forget a heaping-helping of Hollywood and mainstream media taking a focus entirely away from men in the last 20 years and replacing it with nothing. Fill in the voids with some toxic masculinity influencers and shake vigorously...
And there you have it, a misogynist that blames everyone else for their problems, with a good chunk of those problems actually being valid.
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
Who else is talking to them?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
