I keep seeing posts mentioning this phenomenon more and more often.

For instance:

More and more men are being sucked into parts of the internet that circulate misogynist content, leaving their families to deal with the wreckage

‘Andrew Tate phenomena’ surges in schools - with boys refusing to talk to female teacher

Like, why? Why now? Why even? I really wish I had a time machine where I could go to the future and ask them what the general reasons were for this social development. But I feel like I’m looking for the specific thorn on a cactus that popped my balloon.

  • Waldelfe@feddit.org
    341·
    9 hours ago

    I feel like there is also a pathologization of being single. I was a teenager in the late 90s/early 2000s, so before most of social media. I’m also from a village where most people knew each other.

    There were a couple of nerdy, shy guys who never had a girlfriend by the time of graduation. I only had one boyfriend at 16 for 2 month before his friend told me he was only dating me as a dare. I was “ugly” and “not a real girl” because I didn’t wear makeup and mostly wore jeans and Tshirts. Stupid village kids.

    Anyway, similar things happened to the nerdy guys. But no one started crying about all men/women being awful and no one became an incel. Several girls and boys in my class never dated by the time we graduated and that just wasn’t a big deal. Nowadays everybody’s being told there’s something wrong with them if they’ve never had a partner by age 17.

    • blarghly@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 hours ago

      I always have to push back against this pathologization narrative. The very obvious alternatives are:

      (1) that these guys you are talking about would have easily fallen into the trap of the right wing manosphere if it had been available, because being unable to find a parter when your hormones are urging you to and when everyone else around you seems able to find one is intensely painful. But you wouldn’t hear about it, since no one talks about it, because the least attractive thing you can do is talk about how you are frustrated by your lack of romantic success.

      (2) the nerdy guys might just accept their lack of partners, but these days the demographic of unpartnered young men is significantly more diverse, and more likely to contain, let’s say… less discerning thinkers…

      It’s kind of like saying “back in my day, no one really cared about getting kicked in the head by a horse. Yeah, it happened, and it sucked, but it just wasn’t a big deal. There wasn’t the social stigma that getting kicked in the head by a horse was bad, or that you shouldn’t get kicked in the head by a horse.”