do “to” them? gimme a break already. these little brownshirts were born of prejudiced families and motivated by greed and hate. they had a choice and they chose the thing that they KNOW a wrong-the evidence is in their covered faces. proud people don’t cover their faces.
It's frightening to me to see that the definition of an "incel" was radically different 15 or more years ago than it is today. Incels back then were earnest about needing help. Now "incel" for many is a Badge of Honor™ and a "DO NOT TOUCH" sign.
When I was a teenager in the late 90s, I built a number of lasting friendships through a Star Wars chat room (then ICQ, then AIM). One of my friends was my same age, but whereas I was from a relatively agnostic family in Michigan, he was being raised Southen Baptist in Virginia. And for awhile, he was a racist, homophobic, hateful little teenage boy. But...he had the internet. And that internet told him it wasn't okay to be racist and homophobic, and he learned not to be. And he started to build himself a life.
And then he died at 24 from complications of diabetes because life is bullshit. But I'm glad the early 00s internet was a place to learn to be better, and I'm sorry that today's kids are getting the opposite experience.
There is likely enough donated sperm already in storage to allow a whole generation of young women to find love and raise families with their female companions. I do hope young men figure things out though.
Just an added thought: I think part of the harm is also the "lone wolf" stereotype--so many men I know don't have adult friendships or a social support network, and don't have any outside perspective on what thier brains are saying to them (which, especially in the current climate of the youth mental health crisis, is often harmful and negative)....it must be incredibly difficult and isolating. My heart really does go out to young people navigating all this with no resources while simultaneously being pummeled with toxic philosophy. I wish therapy was free and without stigma.
I don't think we spend enough time talking to young men. We don't spend talking to them about their feelings or mental health. Not that it's easy to go against a huge cultural bias that teachers boys and men NOT to talk about these things. But when we are able to, it works. Which is why the right haaaates social/emotional curriculum.
I think about how incredibly lucky I got with Mr. Anzu. Despite growing up in a deeply conservative household, his mother at least made him drink the Respect Women Juice (tm) and taught him basic self-care so that by the time we started dating, he was more or less a functional adult and not a man sized toddler. He was also raised with the expectation that as a man it was his duty to, at the very least, provide a roof over his wife's head, but he's been my main cheerleader in my own career parallel to his because we're in wholly different universes in regards to what we do for a living, so me making nearly as much money as he does has never been a threat to him.
Yeah, yeah. Some of us managed to grow up in the same society and worked through some of the same problems with self-esteem, gender roles, etc. without ever deciding that becoming a misogynistic, hateful, Fascist--adjacent asshole was the answer.
I am unsure about that. I poured my otherwise-incel energies into my career starting back in 2002, and have done well by it. I feel my career as a special educator has made me a better person than I would have been, and has certainly bred in me no impulse to destruction...quite the opposite.
Of the traditionally (but certainly not exclusively) "manly" virtues, I think persistence and patience, equaling strength, are among the best. When confronted with adversity, you do not explode in uncontrollable action; you grit your teeth, put your shoulder to the wheel, and do your best to serve the people it is your duty to serve, because those people cannot do it for themselves.
liberal education is not going to keep at bay the firehose of violent, racists, misogynistic content that is all around us everyday. The internet is full of addictive content and cat videos. The MSM is broken in part because the only way you can make money on the internet is by addicting viewers to your content. And the easiest way to do that is with click bait of violence, racism, and misogyny. The internet was much more manageable before social media and online streaming. Now AI is going to make liberal education and cultural experiences completely obsolete. Why go out and see an old Monet when you can ask google to create a new, better one on your laptop. It's going to get worse until we figure out how to turn off this Brave New World.
The problem is that we cannot just turn off the Brave New World. Like with all technology that has come before, we have to adapt to the new situation and make it manageable. We did that same thing with the telegraph, radio and television. The main difference now, it that the World Wide Web is, well . . . world wide. It's an exponential access to many ideas and viewpoints, good and evil.
I have no idea, yet, as to how we manage the hate filled echo chambers that some websites are. Maybe we don't have to, though we would have to understand that there will always be those who will carry out attacks on the population based upon the hate and lies they encounter on such sites. Certainly there are some groups out there that need to be watch by the government, but do we want the government to act proactively before there's a crime, or to take action once a criminal action has occurred?
And that's the very thing - that good liberal education - that scares the living shit out of right wing nut jobs, and if they have their way, education in its entirety would no longer exist as such. At best, any public schools left under a second Trump term might be described as "indoctrination camps."
I think it's the term "liberal" in this context that get them. They are thinking in political terms liberal/conservative, instead of liberal in the sense of wide-ranging or inclusive of several subjects instead of just one or two.
If you're dealing with a lot of people who never went to college or never finished high school, then it's easy to manipulate them on the meaning of "liberal" here. They don't know the meaning of "liberal arts", they only think they do because the right wing pundits have already told them what it means. They haven't done their own research.
Yep. Grew up in the South but had good teachers. It wasn't until I was in college that I realized my Social Studies/Government teacher was surreptitiously using Zinn's People's History.
College or any form of liberal (in the classic sense) education really is the key. Hell any kind of education tends to make people more progressive. It's why Trump/project 2025 will destroy all levels of education in this country.
I got the same thing from my dad when I dared say something critical about Saint Reagan. My liberalism started way before that, watching the Vietnam war on TV and seeing the asshole behavior of the residents of the Navy town I grew up in. The Old Man was entirely clueless about where it came from.
Just curious, what prevented you from becoming one of them? (If this is too personal a question just disregard. I don't mean to pry, I'm just wondering what might work to help keep other adolescent boys and young men on a sane and healthy path.)
Most of them won’t. They’ll live sad lives in a parent’s basement if we’re lucky, and if we aren’t they write a manifesto and take a gun to the mall, or church, or the school.
I can remember when such sad, lonely young men often turned to things like being Trekkies or playing D&D all the time. Socially awkward, maybe, but the vast majority were definitely NOT a danger to society. Many of them (met quite a few in college) were actually personable and likable, not to mention they were often very smart and high achievers in the academic world.
"There are studies showing that men of all ages are lonelier than they’ve ever been before..."
I'm getting pretty sick of hearing how I must be lonely because I am white cis male who, admittedly, is pretty "socially isolated". I am that way by choice - MY choice - and I don't feel lonely at all.
Maybe I just don't understand the concept of "loneliness"
There is a generational component. Men tend to have many, more superficial friends when younger, fewer, but deeper friendships later in life. This is a statistic, not foreordained reality for anyone. It has tracked to my own life fairly well, and can be explained by the larger aggregations we travel in when younger (for me, the Army and college) and the smaller ones later in life (largely oriented around work).
As with other aspects of primate behavior, I find these phenomena interesting.
Adding this later - The annoyance I feel at being stereotyped as "lonely" is nothing compared to the near-rage I feel about the stereotype of white males being "conservative". I realize that males do tend to be more conservative in voting and polls - but I'm not one of them. But I can't count the times I've been addressed or approached as a "fellow traveler" by people with views ( and not just political views ) that are anathema to me, just based on my appearance.
Nothing I can do about it, except occasionally complain....
When I say I'm pretty socially isolated, I don't mean I'm in a vacuum. I have people I can rely on when needed, but I don't really spend time with them. I'm not interested in joining clubs ( Here in The Villages, they make a big thing about all the various clubs on can join ) or really meeting new people. I agree with skinner, above, that many of my earlier "friends" were people I worked with - but. outside of work, we really didn't connect.
Perhaps I have a somewhat unrealisitic view of who constitutes a "friend" or what constitutes "loneliness" - and/or I feel I'm a bit "socially awkward", but I don't feel like I'm missing anything
You're fine, we all have different levels of social needs.
Personally my happiness and eventually sanity degrades if I don't get at least 80% of my time alone. I work office hours in an open plan office, so most of the time I'm socially burnt out.
On the other hand if I don't have something vaguely approaching a meaningful conversation where we're both physically and mentally present once or twice a month I slowly start losing contact with reality. I think the body language feedback I get on what I say allows me to run sanity checks. I think I could stretch that to once every two months, but why risk it?
The Hollow Man: Trump’s Sad Little Masquerade of Manhood
Behind the bluster and red hats lies a brittle brand of masculinity—a hollow charade that cloaks cowardice, denial, and failure.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-151038838?r=4d7sow&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
do “to” them? gimme a break already. these little brownshirts were born of prejudiced families and motivated by greed and hate. they had a choice and they chose the thing that they KNOW a wrong-the evidence is in their covered faces. proud people don’t cover their faces.
It's frightening to me to see that the definition of an "incel" was radically different 15 or more years ago than it is today. Incels back then were earnest about needing help. Now "incel" for many is a Badge of Honor™ and a "DO NOT TOUCH" sign.
When I was a teenager in the late 90s, I built a number of lasting friendships through a Star Wars chat room (then ICQ, then AIM). One of my friends was my same age, but whereas I was from a relatively agnostic family in Michigan, he was being raised Southen Baptist in Virginia. And for awhile, he was a racist, homophobic, hateful little teenage boy. But...he had the internet. And that internet told him it wasn't okay to be racist and homophobic, and he learned not to be. And he started to build himself a life.
And then he died at 24 from complications of diabetes because life is bullshit. But I'm glad the early 00s internet was a place to learn to be better, and I'm sorry that today's kids are getting the opposite experience.
There is likely enough donated sperm already in storage to allow a whole generation of young women to find love and raise families with their female companions. I do hope young men figure things out though.
Just an added thought: I think part of the harm is also the "lone wolf" stereotype--so many men I know don't have adult friendships or a social support network, and don't have any outside perspective on what thier brains are saying to them (which, especially in the current climate of the youth mental health crisis, is often harmful and negative)....it must be incredibly difficult and isolating. My heart really does go out to young people navigating all this with no resources while simultaneously being pummeled with toxic philosophy. I wish therapy was free and without stigma.
I don't think we spend enough time talking to young men. We don't spend talking to them about their feelings or mental health. Not that it's easy to go against a huge cultural bias that teachers boys and men NOT to talk about these things. But when we are able to, it works. Which is why the right haaaates social/emotional curriculum.
"This is not about feeling bad for these men, it is about not creating more of them."
It sucks to be them.
It sucks to deal with them.
It just sucks.
I think about how incredibly lucky I got with Mr. Anzu. Despite growing up in a deeply conservative household, his mother at least made him drink the Respect Women Juice (tm) and taught him basic self-care so that by the time we started dating, he was more or less a functional adult and not a man sized toddler. He was also raised with the expectation that as a man it was his duty to, at the very least, provide a roof over his wife's head, but he's been my main cheerleader in my own career parallel to his because we're in wholly different universes in regards to what we do for a living, so me making nearly as much money as he does has never been a threat to him.
If Splodge IS re-elected, he will announce himself Dictator .
He will be the puppet and Vance will be the puppeteer. And no one will save us from ourselves.
If by that he means a be-penised spud, probably.
So glad I’m not a male. Our society demands too much of them without outlets for their growth as individuals.
Yeah, yeah. Some of us managed to grow up in the same society and worked through some of the same problems with self-esteem, gender roles, etc. without ever deciding that becoming a misogynistic, hateful, Fascist--adjacent asshole was the answer.
Sure, but will you resist making it easier to work through problems for the future generations or will you support their growth?
In other words: Are you the kind of person that nurtures?
I am unsure about that. I poured my otherwise-incel energies into my career starting back in 2002, and have done well by it. I feel my career as a special educator has made me a better person than I would have been, and has certainly bred in me no impulse to destruction...quite the opposite.
Of the traditionally (but certainly not exclusively) "manly" virtues, I think persistence and patience, equaling strength, are among the best. When confronted with adversity, you do not explode in uncontrollable action; you grit your teeth, put your shoulder to the wheel, and do your best to serve the people it is your duty to serve, because those people cannot do it for themselves.
That's what strength is for, IMO.
A good liberal education is the best antidote to incel/racist/misogynistic bullshit.
liberal education is not going to keep at bay the firehose of violent, racists, misogynistic content that is all around us everyday. The internet is full of addictive content and cat videos. The MSM is broken in part because the only way you can make money on the internet is by addicting viewers to your content. And the easiest way to do that is with click bait of violence, racism, and misogyny. The internet was much more manageable before social media and online streaming. Now AI is going to make liberal education and cultural experiences completely obsolete. Why go out and see an old Monet when you can ask google to create a new, better one on your laptop. It's going to get worse until we figure out how to turn off this Brave New World.
The problem is that we cannot just turn off the Brave New World. Like with all technology that has come before, we have to adapt to the new situation and make it manageable. We did that same thing with the telegraph, radio and television. The main difference now, it that the World Wide Web is, well . . . world wide. It's an exponential access to many ideas and viewpoints, good and evil.
I have no idea, yet, as to how we manage the hate filled echo chambers that some websites are. Maybe we don't have to, though we would have to understand that there will always be those who will carry out attacks on the population based upon the hate and lies they encounter on such sites. Certainly there are some groups out there that need to be watch by the government, but do we want the government to act proactively before there's a crime, or to take action once a criminal action has occurred?
And that's the very thing - that good liberal education - that scares the living shit out of right wing nut jobs, and if they have their way, education in its entirety would no longer exist as such. At best, any public schools left under a second Trump term might be described as "indoctrination camps."
I think it's the term "liberal" in this context that get them. They are thinking in political terms liberal/conservative, instead of liberal in the sense of wide-ranging or inclusive of several subjects instead of just one or two.
If you're dealing with a lot of people who never went to college or never finished high school, then it's easy to manipulate them on the meaning of "liberal" here. They don't know the meaning of "liberal arts", they only think they do because the right wing pundits have already told them what it means. They haven't done their own research.
Yep. Grew up in the South but had good teachers. It wasn't until I was in college that I realized my Social Studies/Government teacher was surreptitiously using Zinn's People's History.
I'd do a lot to get hands on that syllabus
College or any form of liberal (in the classic sense) education really is the key. Hell any kind of education tends to make people more progressive. It's why Trump/project 2025 will destroy all levels of education in this country.
I got the same thing from my dad when I dared say something critical about Saint Reagan. My liberalism started way before that, watching the Vietnam war on TV and seeing the asshole behavior of the residents of the Navy town I grew up in. The Old Man was entirely clueless about where it came from.
I almost became one of the Tate generation, don't let anyone else fall for his evil.
My kiddo told me that their (male) friends laugh at Tate. I hope so.
Just curious, what prevented you from becoming one of them? (If this is too personal a question just disregard. I don't mean to pry, I'm just wondering what might work to help keep other adolescent boys and young men on a sane and healthy path.)
Glad you made it through!
Never forget:
Trump is dangerous enough, but people who think his election will give them permission to do anything they want to anyone are even more dangerous.
Many of them already think that. Stochastic terrorism at its best. Or worst, depending on your POV.
Some of these sad, lonely, frustrated and unemployable man-children will find "jobs" with T-rump or take handouts from the Heritage Foundation.
Most of them won’t. They’ll live sad lives in a parent’s basement if we’re lucky, and if we aren’t they write a manifesto and take a gun to the mall, or church, or the school.
and they will be told to keep blaming women and gays and asylum seekers.
I can remember when such sad, lonely young men often turned to things like being Trekkies or playing D&D all the time. Socially awkward, maybe, but the vast majority were definitely NOT a danger to society. Many of them (met quite a few in college) were actually personable and likable, not to mention they were often very smart and high achievers in the academic world.
"There are studies showing that men of all ages are lonelier than they’ve ever been before..."
I'm getting pretty sick of hearing how I must be lonely because I am white cis male who, admittedly, is pretty "socially isolated". I am that way by choice - MY choice - and I don't feel lonely at all.
Maybe I just don't understand the concept of "loneliness"
There is a generational component. Men tend to have many, more superficial friends when younger, fewer, but deeper friendships later in life. This is a statistic, not foreordained reality for anyone. It has tracked to my own life fairly well, and can be explained by the larger aggregations we travel in when younger (for me, the Army and college) and the smaller ones later in life (largely oriented around work).
As with other aspects of primate behavior, I find these phenomena interesting.
Or maybe you just know who you are, and that is cool.
Adding this later - The annoyance I feel at being stereotyped as "lonely" is nothing compared to the near-rage I feel about the stereotype of white males being "conservative". I realize that males do tend to be more conservative in voting and polls - but I'm not one of them. But I can't count the times I've been addressed or approached as a "fellow traveler" by people with views ( and not just political views ) that are anathema to me, just based on my appearance.
Nothing I can do about it, except occasionally complain....
One can be socially isolated by choice and still be lonely. Sometimes that choice comes back to bite you when you need more social interaction.
When I say I'm pretty socially isolated, I don't mean I'm in a vacuum. I have people I can rely on when needed, but I don't really spend time with them. I'm not interested in joining clubs ( Here in The Villages, they make a big thing about all the various clubs on can join ) or really meeting new people. I agree with skinner, above, that many of my earlier "friends" were people I worked with - but. outside of work, we really didn't connect.
Perhaps I have a somewhat unrealisitic view of who constitutes a "friend" or what constitutes "loneliness" - and/or I feel I'm a bit "socially awkward", but I don't feel like I'm missing anything
You're fine, we all have different levels of social needs.
Personally my happiness and eventually sanity degrades if I don't get at least 80% of my time alone. I work office hours in an open plan office, so most of the time I'm socially burnt out.
On the other hand if I don't have something vaguely approaching a meaningful conversation where we're both physically and mentally present once or twice a month I slowly start losing contact with reality. I think the body language feedback I get on what I say allows me to run sanity checks. I think I could stretch that to once every two months, but why risk it?