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.

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!”

It used to be that women couldn’t open their own bank accounts. Depending on how far back you go, they couldn’t even own property. In this context, women really needed to get married if they wanted to do anything. For this and many other reasons, the bar was lower, men could get married with less effort. Nowadays women can do anything and the only reason for them to want a man is if they want to, so you actually have to put in effort now.

Also, gender roles are changing and there’s no clarity as to what being a man is supposed to mean in 2025. If it’s not protecting and providing, if it’s not dying in war, then the purpose of men is undefined as of now, and there’s a tendency to want to return to the older gender roles.

And late capitalism is stressful, and men aren’t going to college as much these days. There’s lots of reasons but this is what i can remember in five minutes

Further listening material

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)

• been a loner irl. Not that many friends
• most of my friends are online
• most of my friends say offensive stuff and while I don’t really mean things (at first) I want to fit in
• this can spiral pretty easily with a bunch of kids. And it did. I’ve said my fair share of atrocious things online that I wish I could take back
• as a youngster, 20+ years ago, as a loner/nerd if I’m not playing games, I’m (probably) watching YouTube or anime. Rarely hangin with friends
• now as someone who’s book smart(well, on some things, ofc), but especially at this point has absolutely 0 like street smarts & real people skills? Hooked into conspiracies.

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

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.

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.

Fyi, not just men, on tinder here i see a scary amount of women, looking for an Andrew Tate kind of guy. And i’m not saying they don’t pivk the nice guy and shit, they literally quote Andrew Tate or will only date someone following tateism. I think a lot of it has to do that they don’t want to pay for shit and not work, so they loon for that alpha male caregiver. Still weird shit.

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.

Lack of healthy father figure, lack of social exposure, lack of success with women, lack of constructive rolemodels (people like tate replace constructive rolemodeks), lack of empathy through lack of life experience/social exposure, lack of introspection, lack of proven confidence (craving for outside approval/desire to compensate for perceived own shortcomings)

All of these possibly enable, enforce, or worsen each other

Weak fathers, in the sense that the recent generations have been abandoned and ignored a lot more. Turns out that is on par with fucking beating your kids. At least the boomers got attention from their fathers.

How to deal with women and sexuality from a young male perspective is practically impossible in modern society without a good role model for how to approach the reality of certain issues revolving the truth that men and women are equal and at the same time the young males have much more strength, while the girls have other ways of being mean, that are perceived as being not regulated as harshly, and that’s glossing over so many other significant biological differences. The conflicting messages feels unfair to them, loneliness in this as well as a lack of belonging will more often than not become unbearable if they don’t find guidance.

That’s my view of the issue at least. It is redicilously easy to grift these young men, that yearns for answers surrounding sexuality and relationship with the other sex (to be clear, for hetero young males that are developing or adults with stunted development) that anyone can learn the cultures’ accumulated trigger words and key issues that appeal to their supposed inner private pain, can be predated with little effort. They don’t care or know it’s shared with so many boys and adults, that a grifter can basically trawl bountifully for men that feel this way, and once you have “vibe” by appealing to these, you can then elevate yourself to an iron man role model by lying that you get women often by being in a certain way. (Not surprisingly, the mindset is flawlessly unsuccessful with women.)

The absolute truth is that all women like different kinds of men just as men like different women, and to be anything but you leads to extreme stress and in this case potentially wasting years or decades on some testosterone fever dream that never existed. The allure for a man or boy in this state can become so strong that, not unlike with traditional “pick up artists” and other forms of grifting, conspiracies and cults, it just does not matter that most know it is a lie, or if people submit evidence to that end. It’s because these people do not connect with the young male and provide lasting guidance to replace their fears, which are very hard to uncover because of the vulnerability issues (more on this later).

If I could say something to these young or adult men suffering I would say, imagine you did succeed to become an “alpha”, hustle your ass off and become rich and get women. If they can imagine it, they must realise that at that point, you will be utterly sad. Worn, tired, bored, and the women, every single one you “caught” don’t like you. You will have no friends. Nobody enjoys your company for who you are, but for a formula sold to you as a male peak. The pinnacle of self realisation and real relationships can only come with being you, including flaws and therefore accentuating your strengths. Real strengths. Strength that is effortless. The real peak is becoming more you, and severely fuck the rest. The girls (but this also holds for all relationships, however their attachment model may not be ready yet) that like what you are, no matter anything else in the universe, will love you for it almost no matter what, because you didn’t sell a lie to them. This wonderfully includes people that aren’t attracted or even those that don’t enjoy the things you do.

And this means; be vulnerable. That is why all grifters focus on stigmatizing and burying any vulnerability in everyone around them, even belittling honesty. It’s partially a defence mechanism for most, but a few actively protect the communities by making sure this is simultaneously frowned upon, but also met with respect, so that none of the initiates see through the lies in the surrogate father system and realise the complete farce that they are subjected to. For adults that have matured sufficiently (and therefore also most young women) these role models in incel, red pill and alpha cultures are instantly recognised as people with deep insecurities and ridiculed. That is an easily deflected commentary by appealing to jealousy. It comes naturally because jealousy is the hook for the entire grift and the irony in this case is almost guaranteed to fall on deaf ears. These role model grifters that are elevated in the social hierarchy of these communities are usually men that have elected to not mature past this barrier, mainly because of how painful it is, and can therefore sell this scam even for free and proliferation of these ideas strengthen the bond between those caught in the more specific mind traps that flourish in these spaces.

For the people that mature in the role, often they separate immediately, or become ostritized for their ideas. For the few but continuously revolving grifters themselves, if they don’t leave at a big moment of realisation, it is certain to become very tiring to keep the mask on for work, and they are eventually exposed as betas or similar “them” keyword, and ejected for something they let slip or that was gleaned. Most of the communities are held up in a cycle of new initiates and old mentors, while a few grifters make their livelyhood on it. It has a high rate of rejects and new initiates that makes it a hydra for anyone looking to slay these ideas.

Once our society emerge with more accurate labels for these types of grifts (such as “red pill” “incel” and others), we coin vocabulary terms useful to more accurately describe and identify the phenomenon in conjunction with the concepts themselves and hopefully it leads to (as can be seen with the explosive growth and decline of “pick up artists”) the concurrent amount of trapped boys decrease over time before we can see it settle as a sub community of less importance. In earnest I don’t see it going away completely but linger and flare up periodically with new mutations of the same age old “pick up artist” young male loneliness appeal, since it is a inherent to teenage and young men loaded with testosterone and for many that also never found guidance even as adults. Yet it may with time get called out for what it is and met with compassion to finally remove it from main culture where I think many agree it have overstayed its welcome.

With education, it can be eradicated just like many many other forms of gifting. Social awareness on both general and individual levels should also be of deep benefit to the men that find themselves without belonging and holding very confusing and burdensome feelings and thoughts. If we can connect and empathise with them we can give them more genuine advice that stays with them their entire lives. The inherent tough nut with this type of rite of passage for young men is that compassion and forgiveness is both not appealing and also not exactly the first thing most feel when confronted with an insecure alpha male clocking their feathers. It becomes a self feeding loop as they are very similar to each other in this experience, especially for people that has lacking relationships with their male role models or with the other sex or peers.

It is identifiable by the traits that are the same with the mentor figures in red pill communities, acting tough, closing off relationships, hustling and adhering to early first century standards for social hierarchy. These traits are apparently for some reason inherently more attractive to adopt to a developing individual that has elevated testosterone, and when the individual choice is between asking for guidance and meet their pain and fear vs binging red pill content on YouTube and bonding with similarly outcast lost boys on discord.

The path of least resistance wins out when this category of developing man meets the need for belonging and thirst for relationship advice that resonates with their specific trials and questions which, at that point is honestly quite disturbing to most adults. I hope this message can find someone that needs it, hope you are doing great and looking forward to the future. Cheers

How do people learn how to parent teenagers these days?

When some group is trying to manipulate people, they don’t just boost content from that topic, they generate fake 2nd hand interest. Fake 3rd hand interest. They aren’t trying to boost it a little bit, they’re trying to create an artificial fad. Create the fake appearance of a whole social movement happening that you just happened to stumble upon. When people want to manipulate a whole society, manipulate their culture, in ways that sew distrust and divisions and make it self distrust, they do this to people like him. He’s probably getting boosted by Russia just as Trump removed all the protections against Russia tampering and influencing American social media. His message is hateful and harmful and pro far right, which is exactly where the interests of Russia and maga align. You could be part of a Russian farm trying to spread the message for all I know. The targeted payload of influence you’re trying to spread isn’t “Andrew Tate good” the message is “lots of people are paying attention to Andrew Tate.” The thing is i never hear shit about Andrew Tate. I hear people saying “other people are paying attention to this.” And I’m taking the bait by even responding to this when I know it’s better to just ghost and ignore things like this.