This is not my personal opinion, I know Gen Z men who voted for Harris. But the voter demographics really speak for themselves, and maybe now people will look at the radicalization of young men as a serious (but solvable) issue.
There is a lot to be said here. I’ll use my own experience as an example.
I’m a millennial male who had a terrible time as a young adult through my mid 30s. I grew up in a fairly religious/conservative area of the US, and I didn’t have the ability to even start questioning that before my college years because literally everyone I knew was either a vocal supporter of or tacitly accepted that cultural status quo. Mental health issues were either not discussed or not recognized in any serious fashion. It wasn’t until my late 20s that I finally understood that I had severe depression and anxiety and sought help, despite suffering from it since my early teenage years.
Socially, I never felt like I was cool enough or good enough. I didn’t understand women, and the endless series of rejections and confusing encounters only served to erode my low self confidence further. I had no idea what a healthy relationship looked like because my parents were just going through the motions at that point, and the relationships I saw in TV shows and movies were incredibly shallow. The few people I considered friends did not support me in any positive way. I eventually kicked them to the curb, preferring solitude to being the butt of their jokes.
I was a prime target for recruitment for the alt-right: depressed, alone, disaffected, and ready to lash out. The only thing that kept me from going in that direction was a keen sense that the rhetoric was bullshit and its leaders only cared to take advantage of the rank-and-file to accumulate money and power. Many people I knew were not so perceptive and became victims of that movement.
My only saving grace was that I had a decent job with healthcare benefits, which allowed me to get the therapy I needed to overcome these challenges. Again, most people I knew did not have such resources. Nearly a decade later, I am now a family man with a wife and child. I am far happier than I have been at any other point in my life. Despite that, there is still plenty I don’t understand. I don’t have a good grasp of what positive masculinity looks like. I cannot point to anyone who has served as a good, male role-model in my life. I still don’t have any close male friends with whom I can share my feelings and challenges.
However, I do understand how easily young men can be swayed to far-right crusades. Social media warped my view of reality, and it’s far worse now than it was 10-15 years ago. Moreover, there is no alternative to far-right echo chambers for young men to commiserate and get help. Those spaces simply do not exist on the left. If you dare to complain or vent, you will immediately be told your problems don’t matter and called a misogynist. I can readily call multiple conversations I had with liberals and feminists who rejected my problems, even being told that I was “living life on easy mode” because I was a man.
For all the women who are reading this, I get it. As a man, I don’t have to worry about the government meddling in my bodily autonomy. For the most part, I don’t have to worry about walking alone at night or being accosted or raped. I don’t have to worry about being taking seriously at my job or being passed over for promotions because of my gender. However, none of that negates the challenges that young men are facing. Their gender does not save them from broken homes, abuse, mental health issues, a bad job market, degrading standards of living, student debt, double-standards, confusing and contradictory narratives surrounding dating and relationships, etc. Yes, privileged men with no right to complain do exist, but they are an extreme minority. The vast majority of young men are in a bad place, and the only people reaching out to help have ulterior motives. If you want things to change, try having some empathy. Maybe you will get empathy for your problems in return.
This. Men are more often victims of violent crime, homelessness, mental illness, suicides, do worse in school, incarceration, die in wars, work dangerous jobs. Classic male institutions, structures, and spaces don’t exist anymore like they used to.
Add to that that men showing emotions is still seen as weakness.
These issues aren’t addressed or even mentioned.
Men are more often victims of violent crime, homelessness, mental illness, suicides, do worse in school, incarceration, die in wars, work dangerous jobs.
The victims of other men. That’s the joke of it all. And the folks screaming loudest about being victimized are inevitably the ones quickest and most eager to take their own pound of flesh at the first opportunity.
Add to that that men showing emotions is still seen as weakness.
Primarily among other men. This isn’t a gendered issue nearly so much as it is a socio-economic hierarchy. The “excess males” problem is what’s driving the violence, the poverty, and the declining health. Young men are pressed into the social hierarchy by their elders, often from an extremely young age, through physical, emotional, and sexual violence. They climb the social ladder by proving their tolerance for abuse by those above, while exhibiting a sufficient capacity for sadism on those below. Anyone who cannot endure the abuse and find their own cohort to abuse in turn becomes the social excrement that the system exudes.
This is literally “The Patriarchy” that feminists rant about and seek to abolish. But efforts to abolish the system invoke its most violent tendencies. The result is a youth population that is selected for the most sniveling and cruel to lead it into the next generation.
This entire comment is exactly the kind of lack of empathy that the gentleman was talking about.
Primarily among other men.
The worst I ever got for showing emotions in front of other men was being called sensitive. Women on the other hand dismissed me with fury, insulting my manhood and even hitting me.
They climb the social ladder by proving their tolerance for abuse by those above, while exhibiting a sufficient capacity for sadism on those below.
Where did you learn this fucking nonsense, gender studies?
The Patriarchy
Interesting name for it given how many men will tell you it is women upholding men’s gender roles. Men are still expected to pay for dates, to be able to support families, to have a home and a car before they’re even worth attempting to date…
I agree that much of the problem is men on men and this patriarchy - men who do not want to uphold patriarchal values can often be ostracized and demonized by those who do - but I believe OP was specifically noting that then those men who get abused and ostracized cannot speak out of seek help because many people will simply snap back at them saying that they are part of the problem and resources need to be given elsewhere. They cannot endure the abuse, and their own cohort becomes abusive, and the only way to avoid the abuse from all sides (in their view) becomes joining the “social excrement” they wanted to escape in the first place.
Angry screams tend to mask sad and lonely tears. Hatred does not end hatred; hatred ends through non-hate alone. Non-hate is not inaction, though. If we do not look at them, and ourself, with empathy and kindness and understanding and patience, they will continue living in a world devoid of and therefore ignorant to empathy and kindness and understanding and patience.
The patriarchy sucks for most men, that aren’t on the top. Their grievances are still legitimate and either ignored or belittled.
Primarily among other men
Studies show that the first person to start judging emotions in man are their mothers while they are kids, and fathers have little todo with that stigma
Why is this downvoted, but not the comments its responding to; wtf? But yeah, you could not be more right on the patriarchy bit. All the things being cited here are things actual feminists have known for a century. What men need, beyond positive role models, is a rebranded classical feminism. The reason you cant just call it feminism is kinda the problem. The term has been associated with misandrists, who feminist advocates tolerate way more they tactically should. Because us vs them narratives are very appealing
As a Gen Z man who statistically should have fallen down the incel and alt-right pipeline but didn’t, this echos exactly what I see in my generation. We don’t have positive examples of Masculinity, and the left just yells at us that we’re trash, when we struggle with things and most don’t have many (or any) good friends to lean on. So of course they go to the alt right.
and the left just yells at us that we’re trash
I’m a millenial and I never got this. There must be a split somewhere when people fell into different echo chambers or algorhythms. Like 7 years go I used to frequent reddit subs like MGTOW and pussypassdenied, looking for something to connect to because of clinical single-ness. These were the only spaces I would find comments like that. On my other, left wing, socialist Internet spaces this wasn’t present. That is why those pro-men/anti-women subs never connected to me. The work on yourself, improve yourself and keep reading was great, but the insane amount of hatred and religion pushing was crazy.
Yet it feels like men in my situation these days don’t have alternatives. It’s sad when Andrew Tate is considered masculine. Terry Crews or Keanu Reeves are much better. Sure they’re not podcasters, but they give off a much better vibe.
It’s a shame that the space these men find themselves is pushing against freedom of expression for others.
I think it depends on a lot of real-life interactions, too. I had coaches and teachers and older work colleagues (including in heavily male dominated workforces, like the military) who were strong masculine role models. So when it came to media consumption I tended to gravitate towards celebrities or famous characters who already fit the worldview.
Nick Offerman played a libertarian Ron Swanson on TV, but in that fictional work the core cultural markers of manhood were explicitly presented as non-political, and seem largely shared with the left-leaning actor himself.
Terry Crews is similar, as you’ve pointed out. On Brooklyn 99 his character was presented as a loving father of young girls, who was in connection with his feelings, but also loved working out and sports and, you know, was a cop with a gun. In real life, in interviews, he seemed very much in tune with healthy masculinity and his place in the world.
Steve Kerr and Greg Popovich give off positive male leader vibes and often speak up about political and cultural issues, while largely being protective and supportive of the younger men who essentially work for them.
George Clooney is funny because he came off as a bit of a womanizer for years, but dove right into his long term relationship with a woman whose own career would arguably overshadow his. He is unabashedly and vocally a supporter of Democrats and other causes associated with the left in the United States.
Nobody is perfect, or deserves to be put on a pedestal. But there are little nuggets of positive examples all around us, including traditionally masculine men who support ideals that are more culturally and politically associated with the cultural left.
Thanks for relating all that - lots of information but worth the read. You largely summed up my own early existence in the first few paragraphs. My therapy came in the form of getting involved in theatre, which exposed me to all kinds of people and ideas, revamped my attitudes and saved me from embracing radical ideas that are more or less based on rejecting a society that rejects you. I think that same cynicism is common in people from many different backgrounds, who share the same alienation for all kinds of reasons.
I’ll even add one - throughout my software career doing contract jobs, finding a new gig always took me 2-3 weeks and was very routine. When I turned 50 the 2-3 weeks abruptly and permanently became 2-3 months, and took a lot more effort. Apparently in that community I was suddenly too old. Only one recruiter let slip that age was the reason a potential client rejected me, but the sudden difference at 50 was stark. So I don’t know what you do for a living but you might be facing that yourself when it’s your time.
Anyway I totally agree about empathy. I don’t know what it is but people seem to be constantly on guard nowadays. Their go-to assumption is to look for evil and refuse to accept simple mistakes. That and permanently crucifying anybody who does anything morally unacceptable, or ever did in their past. If somebody Likes the wrong tweet it’s unforgivable and irredeemable. I don’t recall another time when so many people were so militant about this attitude. Forgiveness used to mean compassion, now it means you’re complicit, enabling, a shill, “just as bad,” etc. I think we need to think of the glass houses analogy and stop pretending to be morally impeccable.
That was a very thoughtfully written response. I can relate to a lot of your story and agree with your conclusions. There needs to be more outlets for men as an alternative to right wing communities. I hope you meet more liberals and feminists that are open-minded to men’s hardships. I have to believe there are more reasonable people out there on the left than not.
I have to believe there are more reasonable people out there on the left than not
There are, but online is where the psychopathic man haters feel free to let their colors fly. At union conventions and community meets, I only ever hear tame comments from the very obvious radfems.
there is no alternative to far-right echo chambers for young men to commiserate and get help
I feel like there’s an adjacent issue where any space like that without a clear political lean quickly gets pushed rightwards by shitters
ugh I remember my last straw on Facebook was my high school alumni group becoming a shit-storm of sea-lioning and a couple folks blocking people and also spamming nostalgia-posts to drown out and push down more serious discussion. A high school famous for it’s science-focus but alas, the older (but not much older) folks were openly commenting about that black-people-crime-percentage “statistic” and gay people.
half joke first. nobody’s trying to meddle in our bodily autonomy, yet.
edit: i havent looked too close at it but the mensliberation space on lemmy.ca may interest you? cancermancer down bellow has a rec for r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates that looks to have another good perspective in the topic. so im sticking it right here with the other.
I’ll try to approach the topic from my perspective as well. my gender has never really be part of my internal view of myself. but it is an inescapable part of how other people will see me, and the rules are always whatever the other person wants. so maybe not the poster child for speaking on masculinity. i’m literally the default charater generator in every videogame, but it’s just a hallucinating meat suit.
talking about gender concepts and social roles was a norm growing up because i did that growing up in the weird outside groups the christian kids chased. any reference to maculinity was done at me as an attack, even when i was doing it according to the rules. i agree, there are few places for young men to explore their way out of those strict views. especially in the early years. i’ve often seen them jump straight into spaces meant to be safe for people who’ve had not great experiances with the topic, especially women. and press other people to do all the work, explain things to them and navigate their often* harsh language. and i get it. when you’ve only ever been allowed to express 3 levels of the same emotion, it’s gonna be rough sorting that out.
it’s going to be on people who have worked their way through that mind set to make those places for kids to start the process. most importantly, people who share their experiance and perspective. yes folls like me can and really need to come in there and talk openly. but my own experiance is never going to line up in a way that will connect with those kids. even when i look exactly like our experiance should line up.
…if theres more spelling mistakes then there are more spelling mistakes. fuck it thats too much text for a phone
Have also heard people talking about giving men vasectomies at 16 (people who don’t understand they can’t actually be undone)
mensliberation space on lemmy.ca
I appreciate your otherwise quality comment but I have to say that I don’t intend to use a space that only views men’s issues through a feminist lens.
On Reddit, LeftWingMaleAdvocates is a solid lefty men’s space.
i spent all of a minute poking around. not a topic i deep dive in really. more hoping to pose the question of “hey do we maybe have a space like this?”. someplace where people having a shared perspective would have the patience for eachothers early questions they once had.
i’m not on reddit but a few minutes poking around there it doesn’t look crazypants. so i’ll add it to my comment too.
If you want things to change, try having some empathy. Maybe you will get empathy for your problems in return.
Funny a man has said this twice this week. Women have higher EQ than men in general - how do you think they developed this?
Extending empathy to men is not what helps men feel empathy, though. That’s not how empathy is developed. If it was, movie actors and kings etc who have empathy extended to them constantly, would be the most empathetic people on the planet. Yet they are the least empathetic.
The thing that gets men to feel empathy, is the man feeling empathy. It’s like a mental weight - you have to choose to lift it. I can’t make you do that by rolemodeling. You have to actually take time and do the work. Actually sit down and think and perspective take without projecting or objectifying. Just radical acceptance. You have to do that work. Your comment asking women to once again bear your emotional burden of empathy is silly. We can’t. It’s a skill you gotta develop. And the sooner you do it instead of thinking it’s women’s work (which is why you just asked us women to be empathetic - our assumed role), the sooner the world is less shit.
And only then can you be truly caring, empathetic, or a feminist - by examining your own actions as a man. It’s great to allow men to have a sense of community outside of toxic masculinity, but this isn’t how men develop empathy or Feminism and that’s weird to phrase it like that,as if it’s valid for men to punish women by removing rights, voting for Trump, removing empathy, and not being prosocial. In fact, that’s quite controlling and abusive.
I once saw a gif on Reddit of a little girl being forcibly kissed by a little boy (both about 6), and she shoved him off and he looked sad. The entire thousands of comments focused on the little boy’s first rejection. No one even noticed it was the little girl’s first sexual assault. She even wiped the kiss off, reminiscent of victims cleaning themselves after assaults.
When I pointed this out, people were angry. How dare I suggest that little boy is a monster. But I wasn’t. I was entirely focused on the little girl’s experience and I wasn’t advocating for anything relating to the boy. In fact, I think an appropriate “punishment” would be to explain to him to not touch people without asking etc. And that’s it. I just wanted to see her experience and make sure she was okay. Her situation is more important and critical in this moment than the little boy’s. But these men heard ‘sexual assault,’ and instead of empathizing with the victim, they empathized with the assaulter, so much so they started defending him from a nonexistent attack. Do you not see the clear problem here? Do you see the issue?
But men were so unable to extend empathy to a girl, to a woman, that they literally couldn’t absorb this information or perspective take as her. It was impossible for them to imagine what she felt like. This was like 3 years ago. It was astonishing. No, men do NOT empathize with women. Men empathize with themselves as an idealized version of who they would be as a woman - that’s projection by definition and is entirely how they feel entitled to control women and objectify them.
I’m a gen z male, raised in a far right Republican household. I’m a social democrat. I am progressive.
Same man. It was wild when middle school rolled around and I finally gained awareness of the world beyond myself and learned what the Republicans actually were and wanted. A friend who knew more about politics than me explained some stuff, and suddenly I had to question why my family was against progressive beliefs.
I’m also a Gen Z male, raised in an evangelical household at a Christian school that supported Christian nationalism, and was supposed to be a strong conservative Christian but ended up turning into an atheist socialist instead. It’s kind of funny to read that Gen Z is going radical right when for me it was the opposite.
It seems counter intuitive but I don’t think Gen Z is as good with technology as most people assume they are.
I think they just believe everything they see on YouTube and TikTok. Those algorithms just feed people what they want to see and don’t challenge anyone.
Who thinks they’re good with technology? They’ve never had technology that requires any more knowledge than how to swipe. They’re shit with technology.
I mean that many people just assume younger generations are better with technology.
Do they? That’s what I’m asking, who thinks that? I don’t know anyone who thinks zoomers are good with technology.
Who thinks they’re good with technology?
Millennials, it’s the only thing we’re good at, we suck at everything else…
We killed napkins motherfucker
Also stigma about depression, no stigma when you’re the majority.
Yep. Older people (Millennial, Gen X) grew up with PCs that could be heavily modified, run any program, even repurposed to run Linux if you were brave. Later generations who grew up with phones only get to use the apps that Apple / Google approve of. There’s no hacking the system, so you get whatever the algorithm says you get.
Older people grew up on BBSes and later “Bulletin Boards”, which were mostly the same thing just with prettier graphics, also with email, and sometimes instant messengers. Communities were smaller, and there was no mediator. Younger ones are stuck in apps that are designed around engagement, with a “celebrity” vs “fan” content model where it’s all geared around followers and likes. It’s all parasocial relationships from the “fan” side, and trying to keep up with whatever the algorithm wants from the creator side.
It really fucking sucks that platforms that used to be designed to allow 2-way communication between equals have flopped so hard trying to follow the exact model you just outlined. For all its faults, Facebook used to be a really great place to keep in contact with long distance friends and family. Now it won’t even show you anything anyone in your friends list posts, and the options for interacting are completely neutered on their mobile site. It went from being a site I enjoyed, to a site I despise. And there aren’t any alternatives. The era of a platform for friends and family is over.
The only reason Facebook was at all successful is that they made it easy to migrate over from MySpace.
Before Facebook people weren’t locked into their social networks. In the early days of BBSes you were mostly on your local BBS, but you could sometimes communicate with another BBS if your BBS was part of FidoNet. When instant messengers like ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, etc. became popular, it was common to use a unified program that logged into all of them at once. But, already there was corporate consolidation. BBSes were often run by people out of their own homes, or at least by hobbyists. The early messengers were all commercial products.
Then there were the early social media websites: SixDegrees.com, Classmates.com, Friendster, (LinkedIn), MySpace, Orkut, and in 2004 Facebook. At first Facebook was closed to anybody who wasn’t a US university student. You even had to have an email address from a US university to register. But, when they wanted to grow, they made it easy to migrate from other sites, especially MySpace. They released a tool that allowed you to basically stay in touch with your MySpace friends from Facebook, but not the other way around. That slowly drained people away from MySpace until it eventually collapsed. These days, thanks to section 1201 of the DMCA, if you tried to release a tool that allowed people to migrate away from Facebook, you’d be nuked from orbit.
Now, every social media site is a walled garden protected by a moat and an electric fence. Every one is owned by companies worth more than $1b. People can’t leave because the FOMO is too strong, but they don’t want to stay because the sites are pure shit. You see that especially with Twitter. It is absolute shit since Musk took over, but many people feel like they can’t leave. And, when people do leave, do they go to Mastodon, which isn’t owned by a corporation? Nope, they mostly go to Threads, owned by Meta, or Bluesky, owned by a lot of the same people behind Twitter.
Unless the governments of the world step in and either break up the tech giants, or require that they are interoperable, I don’t know how we back out of this shitty situation.
My son is in his early 30s and hardly a day goes by that I don’t have to help him with a software issue.
I don’t know if he’ll even be able to keep the media server running when I die. Probably won’t be for about 20 years so we’ll see.
I was actually wondering how the gender gap changed in this election, and it wasn’t at all what I was expecting:
According to exit polls by CNN Trump gained +2% of the male vote, and +5% of the female vote compared to 2020 - though women were still more likely to support Harris, of course.
An analysis by the AP found similar results, with the support from men under 45 increasing +7%, and women under 45 +6%, while for older men it decreased -1%, and for older women stayed the same.
Surprisingly, Trump’s support among racial minority groups increased while white and older Americans increased support for Harris.
After thorough analysis and much thought I have ultimately concluded that I have absolutely no fucking clue what is going on with American politics.
It’s the economy. Look at the numbers for voters without a college degree, rural voters, and lower income voters. Trump won all of these groups. In the WaPo exit polls the issues are included, not just the demographics. For voters who think the economy is the most importantly issue and for voters who think the US economy is doing badly: Trump dominated.
The Democrats continue to fail at shedding their reputation for being out of touch with working class Americans. The only income bracket that Harris won was the $100,000+ group. This tells us that the Democrats are an upper middle class and upper class party.
They probably feel like they’re fucked either way and have nothing going for them. That makes it easier to side with the dude spouting hate. If I was that age I’d probably be in the same boat as them because being angry and hateful feels good and it took me a while to get that under control. I certainly didn’t have any actual hope things would improve after this election but I did vote for Kamala because she at least wasn’t spouting hateful shit. Not that it helped because I live in a dark red district. If there hadn’t been an abortion amendment on the ballot I’d have probably skipped this one.
Wow, that’s crazy.
I wonder how much of that is demonization of unions. If a big piece of Democrat support for working class is support for unions, does that actually matter when so many people of all incomes are taught to hate unions?
Then there’s the student loan fiasco. By all rights the Biden administration should have gotten kudos for finding so many ways to attempt student loan forgiveness, and for focusing it on lower income people (for example, people in income based repayment with less than $10k left). However the right succeeded in making that seem elitist or not independent and the left seemed to blame Democrats for not being more successful in the face of Republican obstruction
Year to year comparisons can be viewed here.
Strangely enough, he lost educated white voters compared to before. He won white people with college degrees the previous two times, but lost them this time.
I guess that means that the shift in minority support cut across education levels.
the real metric that matters is that way way less people voted. not many people changed their votes from last time. many people are simply convinced to stay home, and as always, that results in a Republican win. the propaganda that was most effective was all of the “Kamala is no true Scotsman, so you should just not vote”. i believe this was lost by the people that “refused to vote for genocide”. i think that’s what accelerated the genocide.
I really doubt double-digit millions of voters sat out because of Gaza.
Kamala’s vote total is roughly in line with what would be expected looking at 2008, 2012, and 2016. The massive turnout in 2020 on the Dem side appears to be an abberation - it was unique circumstances with COVID and all that. On the Republican side, Trump ran slightly ahead of his 2020 performance, and well ahead of 2016.
It’s basic electoral politics: Trump has succeeded at expanding his base of support and turning them out to vote reliably. The Democrats have not. No single issue is responsible for that.
You can blame protests or Gaza or third parties or whoever else you want - the truth remains that the Dem base from the Obama years is not large enough and not appropriately distributed to win an election against Trump’s base; whatever else you think of the man, he has been very good at gaining and retaining support.
but all of the same things could be said about Biden. he won. what changed?
True but I think that’s probably more of deep red state residents seeing their vote not matter live on TV every fucking election. I’ve seen the federal turnout but I haven’t compared state to state turnout yet and I would imagine that’s probably a better metric since like 30% of the population live where their vote makes no difference.
Harris just offered little to get voters excited. Mostly ran as a status-quo candidate. Racial minorities, for the most part, are not happy with the status-quo. By being ignored, it allowed right-wing propaganda on media (social and traditional) to do its work. One thing I’ve heard is, “well, at least Trump sent me some checks.” Many people I’ve talked to weren’t happy with Biden’s involvement with the crime bill, or Harris’ being a DA that proudly prosecuted cannabis offenders. Some people I’ve talked to liked that Trump pardoned Lil Wayne, Kodak Black, and that woman who had an extremely long sentence for cannabis. One person I’ve talked to was upset about “libtards” removing black faces from grocery store products (using Aunt Jemima as an example). Some younger men I know (some racial minorities) have started going deep into the Jordan Peterson, Fresh and Fit, Andrew Tate, etc pipeline, which I’m guessing is rooted in sexual insecurity.
Yep, Trump’s popularity went down with white voters (albeit only 2-4 points depending on male or female) but gained ground in Latino and “other unidentified” minorities. He also actually lost older voters too.
But I think the biggest surprise for me is that Trump gained more of the new voters than Harris. And while I don’t have a gender breakdown from that, I wonder if a lot of those were males.
So many pundits were leaning into the gender gap so hard, I really expected a blowout landslide for Harris. This is the last time I pay any attention to commentators, forecasters or polls. My current theory of American politics is that we’ve become a full-on Idiocracy. There are always idiots in any society, but I really feel like if we can elect the Orange Sack of Shit a second time, our collective stupidity has passed a tipping point. We almost made it to 250 years too. But nothing lasts forever. Hang onto your seat, I don’t expect swirling down the drain to be fun.
Some commentators were even publishing absolutely ridiculous cope to explain why the polls were 50/50. The media was working overtime to stick their heads in the sand for some reason.
As a zoomer that’s old enough to be working class now. Man, my childhood was fucked. At school, being a right wing troll was the norm, at least for boys. I was too.
The worst part is no-one cared, fucking “they’ll grow out of it” and now everyone is suddenly in shock. When I talk about it to my friend today he’s even in fucking denial about it, “Oh they didn’t actually mean that, it was all jokes”.
And our education system doesn’t do anything to combat this shit either. Quite the opposite, the dogmatic authoritarian approach schools take coupled with zero-tolerance policies pretty much ensures people shouting this hateful shit get away with it.
After all saying “Hitler did nothing wrong” only gets annoyed looks, gets completely brushed off as “edgy” or something. But then when someone points out that person’s shit, suddenly that’s an attack???
I graduated from a Christian high school a few years ago, and now they have a Discord server that’s basically their own version of 4chan and they post a bunch of edgy racist/queerphobic/etc stuff. Then the person running it went to MIT. It still exists and I’m pretty sure the staff knows about it and doesn’t give a shit. Of course the school itself promotes racist and queerphobic political ideologies as well so that’s not exactly helpful either.
The worst part is no-one cared, fucking “they’ll grow out of it” and now everyone is suddenly in shock. When I talk about it to my friend today he’s even in fucking denial about it, “Oh they didn’t actually mean that, it was all jokes”.
Most edgy teens do grow out of it. I roll my eyes at embarrassment at some of the stuff I wrote in college, and high school me was even stupider.
But one difference in my high school years (in the 90’s), edginess wasn’t inherently politically coded. Some of it was racist, sexist, or homophobic, but plenty of the targets were also Republican constituencies: rural/small town people, Christians, fat people, old people, prudes, etc. In a conservative suburban area, jokes about abortion, sex, drugs, etc. were often designed to elicit shock and disgust.
I think we’ve seen a cultural shift in which edginess is seen as right wing in itself, in part because the right, which used to get offended at things like Harry Potter and Howard Stern and Disney movies, has fallen in line with edgy Gen X comedians who somehow didn’t grow out of it, and made room for people who smoke weed and mock the Bible.
in the 90s you attacked whatever was around cause you were a piece of shit, now you got the internet so pieces of shit worldwide can band together and hate a specific cause.
band together and hate a specific cause.
The thing with Gen X teenage nihilism was that the only cardinal sin was actually having a strong opinion. There wasn’t much room to hate on anything, because actually hating something showed that you cared too much, and that wasn’t what we were about.
Gen Z seems to be much more willing to embrace negative emotions and acknowledge that they care enough to hate. Whether that’s a better or a worse thing, I’m not sure.
“Oh they didn’t actually mean that, it was all jokes”.
Because those were jokes.
The problem we have today is not that it was socially acceptable to be a psychopath online in 2014. The problems are, in my opinion:
- Rapidly decreasing standards of living
- Social media making people more stupid
- Governments being too large and intransparent
- Pointless governmental spending without explaining the why to the population
The right-wing shift is part of a global failure of established governments.
The right-wing shift is part of a global failure of established governments.
Yes! Thank you.
Just as the next left-wing shift won’t be a result of humanity getting smarter somehow, it will be a result of right-wing policies failing. And that shift won’t lead to any improvement either.
It’s a pendulum.
People are willing to tolerate a failing system longer, when it aligns on surface with their own views. This is similar to people on the right defending Pinochet and death squadrons.
And people on the left 20 years ago would defend a lot of things about USSR or Che Gevara or stuff like this, even not being tankies.
Tribalism leads to degeneracy.
I have seen teachers say that hitler was right, that walls were invented by aliens and that giants existed and were romanian
giants existed and were romanian
Wait, what? I didn’t see any giants in my high school. Are they invisible giants or something?
Also, where were those giants during the 2nd Dacian war? Romans must have been superheroes or something to take on giants and win.
We were told that there were only bones on romanian territory, not alive ones
Also, why do you think there were multiple Dacian wars?