People only offer derision towards people who fall for this (which is absolutely reasonable), but only a few see it as the fucking tragedy it is, no one gives a fucking shit about young men and their issues or gives them support, who are then taken wholesale by THESE bastards and turned into incels and/or nazis, had young men had any support from decent people we might have less people on the side of the bastards
I’ve stopped believing that. I think there’s plenty of support for them online; people like Mark Manson have been putting out great stuff for years. (His writings helped me through a lot of stuff.)
I think the main problem is that improving yourself requires admitting that you were wrong about some things, and apparently that’s really hard to do for some people. Easier to blame it on the rest of society.
Usually if something is as easy for another person as it is for you, then they’ve been as successful in it as you have. That’s all I have to say about your readiness to judge others with that implication that you are better.
Ah, actually visited that link of yours, clicked through one article and it does look good. The only catch is that I’m confident most people with such problems haven’t ever heard about this guy and his website.
Fair enough. I didn’t mean to say it was easy. Took me about eight years to realise I needed to work on myself, and then a few more to actually do so . Back then pick-up artists were still a major thing, so I learned and then had to unlearn all that bullshit.
However, things won’t get better if we’re treating young men as poor, helpless victims of society and the YouTube algorithm, instead of treating them like, you know, men, and telling them to take responsibility for their lives and online habits. It’s just the same victim complex with a new narrative.
One of my favourite movies/books is Fight Club, because it takes this societal dissatisfaction and tells you to get over it by working on yourself. You’re not a victim, because you still have the power to change yourself. (Of course, the whole descent into violent madness isn’t something to aspire.) I feel that notion is sorely absent in this discussion.
There are PLENTY of people who cares about young men. Many of them are just in REAL LIFE not on the internet.
Teachers and social workers at schools, classmates (yes, you can make friends with real people too.), FAMILY. Even if all that fails, many, many NGOs need more hands and would welcome any young men willing to volunteer. They just need to go there IN REAL LIFE.
Some areas or fields have a difficult time reaching men, including young men, and it’s not because they are not wanted. Let’s take psychiatry, for example. Many people already believe psychiatry is nonsense; add to this the common idea that psychiatric treatment is for cowards—and that cowardice is mostly for women (because women can be many bad things, but men can’t)—, and that’s a recipe for men scoffing at the idea of visiting a psychiatrist (and a psychotherapist, by extension).
I’ve also heard people complaining about a lack of role models, but there are excellent role models. I hope I am not wrong about them, but I admire Stephen Fry, John Oliver, Keanu Reeves, Bill Nye… I also like many small influencers. Some of them talk about being a man with great insight, such as @watchfulcoyote on TikTok.
I cannot say with certainty how free these radicalized young men were to choose a better path than the one they are on, and it probably varies from case to case, but I know there were and are normal and decent people watching out for them.
