On Men, Ages 18-34 (And She-Hulk)

What to do when you're not the center of the universe anymore?

Yesterday morning, I came across a meme about the She-Hulk: Attorney-at-Law series on Disney, in which the title of the show had been replaced with "Sorry, Incels: Not All Content Is Made For You," obviously a response to the men who had been outraged by the existence of a show they don't like. We've been here before. We've been here so many times before. Thing is made that a certain segment of men don't like — very frequently a cartoon — and they go absolutely through the roof. I've written about it more times than I can count.

“"Sorry Incels" (She-Hulk) inspired by Episode 446 If this makes you feel angry, just know this isn't directed at you. It's about other people. You're expressing fascinating and very normal opinions. #weeklyplanetpod @TheWeeklyPlanet #SheHulkAttorneyAtLaw #SheHulk”

— weekly planet posters (@weekly planet posters) 1663707898 

I thought about it for a minute. It occurred to me that a pretty big part of the issue here is that yes, for a very long time, most content literally was made for them. Or, rather, it was aimed primarily at appealing to men, ages 18-34, long considered the most desirable demographic by marketers and advertising agencies, and therefore the most desirable demographic for media looking to sell ads.

One of the reasons for this was that they were considered more likely to have some disposable income and less brand loyalty than other demographics. The other reason was the belief that men, ages 18-34, were the strongest influencers in terms of determining whether things are "cool" or not and thus anything that appealed to them would also appeal to most other demographics to some degree, whereas many things meant to appeal to those other demographics would be largely skeeved by men, ages 18-34 — and aggressively so!

This isn't to say that that no one ever produced media targeted towards women before now, because of course they did. The difference was that the things meant to appeal to men, particularly white men, were considered "universal" and "for everyone," whereas things not targeted to them were "niche." Men were not expected to know anything about them and, in fact, straight men liking music, movies or television shows coded as feminine was frequently played as a joke (whereas women liking things coded as masculine — action movies, bro-y comedies, etc. was considered a sure sign of coolness). Men had books and movies, women had "chick flicks" and "chick lit."

Media coded as feminine without being explicitly "girly," however, rather than being played for laughs or denigrated as less valuable, frequently prompted strong disgust and anger reactions from men — notably anything explicitly "feminist," female comedians, female singers and musicians in certain genres, any woman who became well-known or famous without meeting a certain attractiveness threshold (ironic considering the vitriol directed at women who are supposedly "only famous" because they are "hot").

But there's been a bit of a sea change over last several years.

"Today, corporations are no longer coming to us and saying, we want to target males 18 to 34," Lucas Galen of the market research company Flamingo told NPR's  All Things Considered  in 2018, "That's very anachronistic."

It is. And it's not just because "Corporations went woke!" It's because women have gained more purchasing power, because we've just grown as a culture and because more men are not quite as scared of "girl germs" these days. At least not the "cool" ones — the ones advertisers would be most interested in targeting.

They're not quite as afraid that their dicks are going to fall off if they watch a television show centering women or listen to female singers or read books by women or regard women as something other than sexual objects or mother figures. They're a little bit more secure. They're okay with liking whatever they like and allowing other people to like whatever they like.

What this means is that it is now entirely possible for media products that would have previously been considered "niche" or "for women only," to have more significant mass appeal. This is actually extremely important. We're really starting to challenge the cultural idea that straight white men are "neutral" and everyone else is "niche," and it is very much having an impact in the real world. Books, movies, music, television shows all teach us how to empathize with other people and see them as fully human, and so having all kinds of people — not just straight white men — centered in our media will have a profound (positive) effect on our society.

At the same time, we've got this segment of men who are not quite as "with it," who are disoriented and confused by the fact that they are no longer centered, by the fact that mainstream media that everyone watches is no longer explicitly designed to conform to their personal tastes and preferences and even by the fact that women are not as afraid of displeasing them aesthetically. These are the men losing their minds over She-Hulk, the ones raging over a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model not giving them a boner, the ones who are still so, so mad about WAP. 

While I'm not making excuses for this behavior, it is worth considering that having been "the most desirable target market" for so long may have warped some brains. Becoming accustomed to being the "neutral," the "universal" has to have some effect on one's perspective. Now that things are changing (slightly), it clearly feels to them that anything not centering them is something that is being stolen from them. Sure! Straight white male protagonists are still the default in most of our media, but there are increasingly more movies and TV shows centering, well, other sorts of people as well.

Part of reason there is so much rage is not because they are so truly offended by these individual things, but because they can feel themselves no longer being centered, because they are losing their grip on "the culture." But how much of what they believed was "the culture" was just "people trying to make a lot of money?" Perhaps we will never know.

Cynically, one might point out that the men who are all het up about this shit — like incels, MRAs, MGTOWs, misogynistic Twitter trolls, Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, etc. — are, for lack of a better term, "not very cool," and marketers are realizing that agitating them is actually kind of good publicity and street cred for whatever it is they're doing. In marketing, people who are "not cool" hating your shit is almost as good as the "cool" people liking it.

For the record, I watched She-Hulk: Attorney-At-Law yesterday and enjoyed it very much.

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