It’s not just men. My mother was pushed down the FaceTube YouBook weaponized disinformation rabbit hole.
It’s outrage porn… They LOVE being angry at ‘the system’ or ‘corporations’ or ‘the WHO’ etc. etc.
Yes, there’s a lot of stupid corrupt shit going on, but posting on social media is the most impotent thing a person could do to make a difference. (Yes, I appreciate the irony.)
Oh yeah, phonecalls with my mother would start pleasant and turn into her bullshit about ‘the great reset’ or ‘the great barrington declaration’, and when I expressed doubt in the accuracy of her information, she’d go full-on smug asshole and say shit like “Well, I guess we’ll know which one of us is right soon enough.” or “Don’t come crawling back to me when your investments all go to zero.”. It was 100% ‘escape to the future’ fallacy, all day every day.
I eventually got tired of the bullshit and went zero-contact, filtered her eMails to the spam folder, blocked her number, etc.
I anticipate that I’ll get the call one day that she’s in the hospital and nobody will come pick her up, but until then, my sanity remains intact.
Yup, we had a disagreement about the electrical grid, and she insisted that green power would result in province-wide blackouts every night or whenever the wind stopped blowing. I sent her the power generation mix from the Electricity System Operator, showing that renewables accounted for a single-digit percentage point of the generating capacity of the province… Nope, “Why can’t you just respect what I believe?” “Because you’re full of shit?” click
Ontario has a lot higher percentage than that, and we don’t have nightly blackouts
…just in case you want another data point :P
Frankly, I don’t trust anyone who’s not angry at corporations, but otherwise I tale your point.
We need to find a way against algorithms that benefit radicalization.
That does not solve anything, since people are drawn to platforms with easy accessible content they enjoy. People will use those platforms. The problem is that algorithms will recommend you radicalizing content. And it’s an extremely complex task to solve. I would have no idea where to beginn, except better education - but that’s something that will take a generation to work out.
If the system is so fucked that it’d “take a generation to work out”, maybe the system isn’t worth saving in the first place. We’re talking social media websites here, not something like hospitals or schools that are required for a functioning society.
You could outlaw for-profit participation in the sector. Facebook would suck way less if it didn’t have to increase profits for shareholders constantly.
Not using the platforms is a personal solution for any individual who wants to escape, not a general solution. For “don’t use the platforms” to work as a solution for the masses, so few people would use the platforms that the platforms would cease to exist.
so few people would use the platforms that the platforms would cease to exist
I’m genuinely failing to see the downside here of facebook, twitter, and the like ceasing to exist.
When it comes to social media … Regulate, regulate, regulate … at local, regional, national and international levels
Imagine if all newspapers, magazines, books, publications were unregulated and uncontrolled? What do you think would be published everywhere? Imagine if daily newspapers just had no regulations at all and just ran and published all kinds of nonsense every day pretending everything they said were true? Imagine if regular publications everywhere just published non stop lies and nonsense? Everyone everywhere would go crazy with all kinds of ideas pushed by whatever group to do and think terrible things.
Imagine if all TV news programs, media news shows and information TV shows all just blasted complete nonsense, conspiracy theories and broadcast it all far and wide?
When you don’t have any controls or regulation on the mass information that is being shared everywhere … it turns into the wild west and the world starts to run on rumours, lies, half truths and misinformation. Society breaks down because no one is able to trust anything any more and information becomes a poison that no one wants any more.
Imagine if all newspapers, magazines, books, publications were unregulated and uncontrolled?
You can actually write in a book pretty much what ever you want and I would appreciate if it stayed that way.
I don’t think that there is any benefit in pretending that regulating any media is not a difficult tusk. It’s a delicate balance act and with social media even trickier, since it’s an individual against the state situation.
I think the identity of men is unstable nowdays.
A lot of people don’t know what is to be a man today, so they go back to the old ways when it’s was simple for then and bad for woman.
The nuances and uncertainty of modern life is too much for some people usually need success model’s to follow to feel safe.
Why are men always obsessing about what it means to be a man? I think that was one of the most commonly asked questions on reddit. Never in my life have I asked what it means to be a woman, I find the question nonsensical. I’m a person and I can do whatever I like and being a woman isn’t the defining feature of my identity.
Since the very beginning, men are told to not to cry or man up and don’t talk about feelings, because that is gay, later he notices that he can’t express love the same way a woman do, then he learn’s people respect him more if he is logical and uncaring.
These are all stereotypes men deal with so they think being a man is being like that. To change they need help from society. So they ask how to be a man is like: how a respectful and flourished man act this day and age?
My personal opinion is to change society, the better behavior need to be motivated. If being a confident asshole is paying off men will be like that.
Guy here, we’re not obsessed. Society is, we are basically told and enforced on since birth that a man does certain things and acts a certain way. And if he doesn’t then not only is he not a man, but is also a failure.
I can personally vouch for the fact as well that it’s not just “toxic masculinity” but it’s partners and friends that are women as well that if you show any amount of “non-men” attributes or emotions they will drop you or ridicule you and tell you to “man up”
Women claim they want men to be more open and exposed among many other things. But I’ve then seen the exact same women act disgusted by a guy or look down on them for doing exactly that.
Thankfully I didn’t get caught in that trash red pill community cause their ideas are awful and won’t fix anything, it’s all a grift… But to a young guy that doesn’t know any better it is frankly very obvious why they would choose to believe in that sort of thing.
Men have no positive support networks that won’t have the chance to just put us down anyways. We have no identity besides the trash society brainwashed us with at birth. Unlike women we don’t have nearly the same amount of positive reinforcement from anyone to break the traditionalist molds we were born into which also reinforces the ideas that men shouldn’t talk about our feelings.
And to top it off we are constantly portraited and made to feel like monsters everywhere we go because of the fearmongering media. Seriously I’m not horribly ugly, about average, but the looks and body language women give me just for walking and passing by them on the sidewalk (if they don’t cross the street and walk on the other side) is… Dehumanizing and there’s nothing I can do about it.
None of this is isolated to me either, this is a constant throughline of common experience from every guy I’ve ever meet.
Society needs to be more supportive of men that want to break traditionalist roles as well as stop being dismissive to mens issues. We need more good role models for young men, or else we will continue to see an uptick in this red pill trash. But that won’t happen if we keep isolating men and brushing off their issues as is so common.
Everyone is different. There are many millions of non-man-identifying folks trying really hard to figure out what it means to be whatever they are.
Men are no different, just so happens we get pretty toxic when we are unfocused and unsure. Not an excuse, but that’s what we’re seeing.
Also these articles make it seem like all men struggle with this. Most folks just wake up and get on with their day, much as you describe your experience is.
This is a good point with the additional wrinkle that traditional male identity has always been threatened and unstable. By women, by gays, by peace… a core component of the traditional male identity is being under attack (and thus being defensive).
Nothing modern has changed this. The problem is the traditional male identity itself.
It’s not the identity of males that is the problem … it’s the loss of power, privilege and status and the idea that males, especially white males are supposed to be equals to every other human on the planet.
The fact that this is changing is what is very upsetting to males … especially white males.
Most humans wants to be privileged and fulfilled.
The question is how to get there.
The male privilege can vary drastically.Let’s say you’re talking about a poor white man or a wealthy one. Wealthy white man still has patriarchal families and tradicional values.
The poor and middle class man are the most affected, they don’t know how to progress to get the milestones of life, so they search for answers on how to behave, how to get a job, how to create a family, how to be respected.
So they build a identity of a man to be portrayed in society, this can lead to integration of toxic masculinity traits, it will also get worse with isolation, but a stable and reasonable person can help listening and speaking about the challenges.
but men’s groups that tried to form in my town had police called on them and the fire alarms pulled, and people with megaphones would yell over them and they got doxxed and harassed.
Where did this happen? Why would people prevent men from forming groups? That sound completely surreal to me (Germany).
So a bunch of guys want to meet up and people just show up with megaphones, call police and trigger fire alarm? Canada is wild.
I’ll just leave this here https://youtu.be/rQv8VuLpKN4
I fixed it for you: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=rQv8VuLpKN4
Trump did the same with white American males.
What are the steps are to undo toxic radicalization?
Meaningful connection. A lot of these people are in these places because that’s what they lack and think they’ve found.
Similarly to cults, few people escape these mindsets without somebody reaching out to help them.
The truly terrifying thing is, as the article shows, a lot of them are already retreating from their loved ones. After that, who is left to be able to help them out?
Conversely de-radicalization may not be needed.
I think people sometimes over-invest in the concept of redeeming these people. But actually focusing on them and their problems is doubling down on the validity and importance of their positions.
I advocate ignoring them and focusing on creating political power that we can actually use to advance our causes. If they come along, great. If not, consign them to the dustbin of history.
This is complicated when the people involved are emotionally close to you. But in general this is my philosophy.
I mean that’s great and all, except these people that you’ve consigned to the dustbin of history are now going to actively fight against your causes.
I think that some of them are too far gone but really this toxic environment needs to be fixed or else worse things will come from it. When you say “they should be ignored”, that’s part of the environment that causes these men to become the next shooter, or maybe just jump off a bridge because they have a conscience.
Whether you like it or not, you need these people to make the right choices, and part of that starts by fostering a more inclusive environment.
They were always actively fighting against any sensible cause though. Ignoring them won’t change that at all.
Also we definitely don’t need these people. We won 2020 and 2022 without them.
If our collectively ignoring them results in bad outcomes, that is their responsibility, not ours. They are fully-functioning adults and if they want to be taken seriously they must start acting like it. Because I (and I think most Americans) are done being threatened or cajoled by brittle men who think their opinions matter when, both practically and ideologically, they actually don’t.
No more think pieces about why Americans in rural towns are being left behind. If they can’t figure out that they’re leaving themselves behind, at this point, that is entirely on them.
