Like, why is it so widespread, what causes it, what solutions are available, etc. I don’t really know how to ask this question so I hope I’m making sense
Male loneliness is likely partially due to the same reason we are all here; this online outlet for social endorphins is why you were not building up a deficit over the last week and felt the motivation to finally call that person you were thinking about this whole time. That person was a passing thought, and the endorphins hit you might have received is ultimately less than you got from the austere but consistent dose you get from social engagement online.
The only problem is that you are not creating a meaningful personal social network in real life. When you really need such a network in practice, you face the reality of no one to turn to, or less depth and meaning to such connections. Real people are also complex and you must face the reality that no one fits your echo chamber bubble like a place like this. If you act like a down vote or stupid hot take comes across here to people in the real world… you find yourself back here with less options in the future.
People online can be fun and can’t hurt you
Don’t get disabled and have a place like this as your only outlet to connect with other humans. Anonymous and mob like negativity, especially from misunderstandings, can be hurtful when sharing some part of yourself or the only time you’ve said anything to anyone in a day or more from within a prison of loneliness you cannot escape.
Ah, I guess I’ll need to tell my teenage friend who never made it to adulthood after feeling trapped and ruined when an older man started an online relationship that isolated her from her family to… fucking grow a pair or something?
Healthy mature people can exist online in a positive manner. Not everyone is an adult and not every adult is mature. The internet can be a dangerous place and it’s unhelpful to try and dismiss that.
Valid. Fair point.
Male loneliness is as much a symptom of the “suck it up” toxic masculinity that pervades your comment as it is the content of your comment.
Men are taught to be stoic, to rely only on themselves, to suck it up and get on with it, and for some, they’re trying desperately to conform to something that seems frighteningly easy for others. They’re expending all their energy on that unnatural - for them - attempt to conform rather than being able to simply exist as they might otherwise be.
Your instinct might be to attack me for pointing this out. That’s toxicity at play. Look at yourself.
But I haven’t made my main point yet. It’s this same toxicity and trying to “be a man” that turns men into the monsters that women fear, and so it becomes a vicious cycle of negativity breeding loneliness and on and on.
My advice would be “Do better. And if you can’t do better, do your best. And whatever you do, minimise harm.”
I choose to abstract and never attack anyone, while you insult, and make assumptions about my disposition going as far as assigning them an ideology and framework that seems repugnant and baseless to me. I see and feel lots of projection and bias, but if causing a disabled person in social isolation harm makes you feel better, I’m glad you had a better day. The comments seem so randomly unrelated it feels like you are possibly a misinformation agent of some sort.
Yeah I agree that response was uncalled-for.
I’m genuinely confused how my advice to minimise harm has itself caused harm. And sometimes, someone’s “best” isn’t much at all. That’d be me most days.
I should probably have put a conditional on “Look at yourself” to tie it in with the “might” in the lead sentence, though, that’s on me.
This is so true. We are living in the novel “Brave New World”
Too many cars. No more third place.
I would posit that the internet and abundant screen entertainment contributed to killing third places far more than cars. The US has had a car culture for a very long time. (I’m not saying that makes it a good thing.)
Maybe. But if people had the sqme amoubt of screen time and wqlked or biked, or took public transit there would be more forced interaction than there is in car culture.
I think they go hand in hand. And right now we got both.
Others have explained it (places where social interaction is the primary intent - not home and not work) but I’ll add - old European cities (and most smaller towns) have some sort of public square. Many have lasted to this day and are still used. We can still build them, we but our chosen form of urbanization isn’t that conducive to it so we don’t. In North America in the 80 and into the 90s, malls we’re 3rd place. Then they started aggressively going after loitering in malls since simply sitting in a mall doesn’t produce economic activity. Many malls died and many are still dying. Those that survived achieved the - nobody goes there to chill anymore. Just to buy what they need, maybe eat, and then leave. Nobody plans to “meet at the mall” anymore.
Bar culture is still very much alive but I think people are less inclined to go to those places alone now.
10 dollar drinks and DUIs will do that
Funny you should phrase it like that.
My uncle is a machinist specializing in automotive engine repair and modification. Over dinner last month, he mentioned that he’s used to seeing middle age customers for hot rod engine builds, midlife crisis “Always wanted to do this” kind of guys, but lately he’s been seeing men in their teens and twenties come in wanting heads ported and polished and shit like that.
They’re not spending money on women because women have made themselves impossible to want, so young men are turning their attention to things like cars.
women have made themselves impossible to want
No sure what this mean… There is never lack of demand for pussy. It is always supply constrained ever since people figure how to trade
With that being said, yound adult men generally no market value since they have no status which is a key in getting with women. Status is linked to class but that’s just a part of it.
So you’re saying they want their heads polished by a man because women are unattainable? Interesting…
Hmmm
Oh, too many cars! Absolutely, makes sense…
How much time do you willingly spend in public interacting with others?
There was a lot more of it happening before society required everyone to have personal transportation.
I’m an introvert so I am at home, work, or errands. I probably would talk to a lot more strangers if I had to use public transport and it wasn’t so expensive to do anything fun in public.
You would?
I use public transit daily and hardly ever interact with anyone. Maybe there is one interaction every 100 days? I don’t frequently see two strangers interacting either, it’s unheard of except maybe for retirees with effectively infinite time.
Well, people will ask you for directions sometimes so that’s something…
The best you get in a car is road rage
A challenge for you (or anyone interested in taking it up): Once a day, while waiting for public transit, pay attention to the people around you. Does anyone have something interesting about them (hair, clothes, jewelery, weird keychain thing on their phone, etc.)? Ask one identified person about it. See someone who looks like they are on the verge of tears? Ask them “Hey, is everything ok?”
9/10 times you’ll have a brief Q-A-back off interaction, but sometimes it’ll turn into a longer conversation. Yes, it feels awkward. Yes, in some places you’ll come across as rude/uncomfortably weird (keep your dominant culture in mind - you probably wouldn’t try this in some place like Finland or something). But I’ve had some very interesting experiences doing this in the past (usually with the ones who look upset - if you’re willing to be a sympathetic ear you might just make that person’s day).
I can imagine little worse than doing what you just described although that is (in part) due to moderate social anxiety. I behave in the exact opposite way - ignoring people regardless of how much they stand out because I don’t want to stare.
Though I can imagine what you’ve been doing has helped others.
What’s “third place”?
The colloquial “third place” is, as I understand it, a (usually) public place OUTSIDE of Home or Work where people can meet, hangout, play, or just exist without the expectation of spending money or being productive in some way. Examples would be Parks, Libraries, old-timey Public Houses and Cafes, Playgrounds, Forests and Wilderness within walking distance, and more.
Car culture killed a lot of that by removing the ability to reasonably walk places outside major metro areas, as businesses relocated to cities, and because they straight up increased the fatality rate for walking substantially. Internet Culture also killed it since you can just talk to your buddies through the Demon Rectangle instead of meeting IRL.
Automotibles are not car culture. If anything car culture turns a garage into a third place, by your definition, and brings other people out of their houses and out of the workplace, to meet. Car culture is more an adaptation people have made due to the advent of the automotible and the problems you attribute to “car culture”. Everything has expanded and is cut up by streets and shit because automotibles are useful… as a side effect has made it harder to have a third place, as you have pointed out, and so people who engage in car culture actually overcome the challenge by integrating automotibles into their culture, they persevere.
I would actually make the same argument for internet culture. The internet isn’t internet culture, and if anything internet culture has allowed people to express themselves through the internet, embracing it and integrating it into their lives rather than just living beside it. For people who consider themselves part of internet culture, the internet is their third place where they play.
With that said, it’s still an interesting idea. I do think we pay a high price for the luxuries that we have today and it’s not well understood. Having infrastructure designed around automotibles, for example, fucking sucks.
Places that aren’t home or work. Social places, like bars.
In sociology, the third place refers to the social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. Examples of third places include churches, cafes, bars, clubs, libraries, gyms, bookstores, hackerspaces, stoops, parks, theaters, among others
This is basically it. It costs money to hang out with people IRL, everytime, all because of cars. We are all spread out so far now, except in a handful of places. Even without factoring in cars, the amount of activities that people can do for free or cheap is dwindled to basically nothing. This is simplistic, but the reality is no one can really afford real friends anymore.
Too much duplicitousness out there
This is a video about it, which I think takes a very sobering approach to it. Her humor tends to be very dark, but if you look at the comment section, she seems to be hitting it head on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQv8VuLpKN4
Now for solutions, I don’t know anyone who talks about it beyond the basics of “listen to men” and “give them a healthier and less judgy space to develop social skills”. But that’s probably because this is such a complex issue and there seems to be no simple solution.
Man I had to scroll far down for this. I know her appearance and character is a bit hard to take seriously but she makes great points in this video.
People simply just don’t like men
There ain’t never a shortage of dick!
Society has always put premium on women due to biology. Yeah it results in some weird externalities for men. Women got their own bags though.
One thing that helps loneliness is communities, especially those that meet IRL. I believe there has been a significant decline in club membership and social groups in the past decades. I think there are several factors behind this, including financial stress (and the resulting scarcity of free time).
One action that people can take is to join communities and participate in them! Even just online groups with similar interests if not IRL groups can help to make friends and feel connected. HTH
Men have been taught not to approach women in public unless it’s online in a dating app. Women have always been taught not to approach men.
So no one is having relationships except for a very small portion of people who are disproportionately physically attractive.
Pair that with the hypergamy that women are doing where they only chase men out of their league now for the most part and it makes things that used to be normal and taken for granted like getting married and having a family exceptional jewels that are hard to come by.
This isn’t true. This is what right wing loser podcasters claim to further the idea of women or libruls as the problem, and themselves as the solution. It’s a much deeper problem than that.
If you actually spend time around women you’ll find that looks are a way lower priority for them than for men. You’ll find that they value things like being understanding, doing interesting things, being trustworthy, and for physical things as long as you’re hygienic and have a semblance of style they really don’t care much even if you’re heavier. And guess what? These are ALL things you can work on to improve yourself.
Want to have more women like you? Work on yourself first. Women aren’t attracted to men who complain online about “I’m not allowed to go talk to them in public”
If you actually spend time around women you’ll find that looks are a way lower priority for them than for men. You’ll find that they value things like being understanding, doing interesting things, being trustworthy, and for physical things as long as you’re hygienic and have a semblance of style they really don’t care much even if you’re heavier.
Oddly class and status is missing from this list… I wonder why
Because that also isn’t a big deal to most women. If you’re going out trying to meet women at bars or clubs sure those are the women you’ll meet.
At least in my experience, women tend to care about looks just about the exact same amount as men, that is to say some care almost exclusively about looks and some not at all, and everywhere in between, and at about the same rates from what I’ve seen. Anecdotal tho, and the general gist of what you said still applies, I’m just being pedantic lol
Interesting that you took this post to be entirely about romantic/sexual relationships, especially since a partner should not be solely responsible for assuaging your lonliness.
Even if everyone had a partner/spouse male loneliness would still be a massive issue because men aren’t socialized in a way that equips them to have emotionally intimate platonic friendships. If my wife was my ONLY friend, I’d still be very lonely. Furthermore, even if I wasn’t in a relationship, I wouldn’t be lonely because of the friends I have.
I was about to write this exact thing and you’re already getting downvotes for it. People refuse to except reality.
There is an extremely large portion of men that are scared to put themselves out there because they are ostracized as creeps and fear the consequences of social shaming. “The worst she can say is no” is no longer true. The worst she can do is take a video of you while she publicly shames you for being a creep and trying to rape her.
Met my wife online during the pandemic.
Dated a fair few women before her, meeting online and in real life.
I’m not super attractive, and pretty awkward, but I always make the effort to be polite and actually listen instead of waiting to talk, you’d be amazed how far that actually gets you.
This is an anecdote, also having good social skills was always a clever way to make up for looks.
Most people have not been properly socialized since childhood. They need to level up but it is one of them things kinda like being poor, you are starting behind and you need to work 2x to get to mid.
If you don’t have good looks, that’s one thing, you can’t really change that.
But then if you don’t look good and you can’t try to hold a conversation, that’s your problem.
Learn to speak, it’s not hard. go talk to people and gain some confidence. All this talk about poor socialization or being unattractive and creepy just demoralizes people that I’m sure could actually make friends and meet spouses if they didn’t preemptively pull themselves out of the situation before they gave themselves the chance
I think the reason for down votes is that the comment suggests that issues with dating are the reason for male loneliness, when most people in the thread would argue that believing that ‘a romantic partner is the only acceptable source of meaningful emotional connection available to men’ is a big part of male loneliness.
As is echoed a lot in this entire post of replies: therapy isn’t really mentioned here. And that might be a key when it comes to male mental and emotional health.
So paying for a “friend” by the hour?
Someone’s never been to therapy!
Explain to me in actual words what a therapist is going to accomplish.
“Doctor doctor you’ve got to do something! Third spaces don’t exist, there’s no loitering signs everywhere you’ll be arrested for standing around talking, everyone my age had kids and their lives fell off, bars charge $9.50 for an ounce of bourbon and expect a tip and they play Nickelback loud enough to be heard from the moon so I’ve just been sitting at home alone drinking diet soda and playing Subnautica over and over again and while I utterly love this game it’s getting a little stale and Below Zero isn’t…good at all? So I guess I’m a little bored.”
“…Here’s a prescription for an SSRI, that’ll be $900.”
Explain to me in actual words what a therapist is going to accomplish.
Lots of men aren’t taught emotional intelligence and therapy is helpful for better identifying your emotions so your choices can actually have impactbon them.
I take it you didn’t read and process the rest of my comment?
I’m very aware of the strawman, you specifically asked for an answer. Those are real issues, but you asked how a therapist could help.
I was a pilot one or two careers ago, so I’m going to put it this way:
Feelings are liabilities, not assets. You launch an Airbus out of Newark and a few hundred feet up you hit more geese than your engines can take leaving you out of thrust, low on altitude and low on options, the emotional decision is to curl up on the floor and snot cry because you’re now in more danger than nature designed you to handle.
On occasion you’ll find cases where pilots do lock up like that. The kindest thing anyone will ever say about those pilots is “The primary cause of the accident was pilot error.”
Now listen to how they talk about Captain Sully. “He’s so calm. There’s no emotion in his voice, he just started working the problem.” Stopping to identify exactly which crayola crayon color exactly matched his emotional state in that moment wasn’t going to lengthen any lives; starting the APU and configuring the airplane for best glide did though. You stay in your feelings, you start doing stupid irrational things, you’re gonna die for sure. You push all of that down to your ass where it can be safely clenched out of the way and you THINK.
Having feelings is how you fuck up when your decisions matter the most. Getting rid of them is the useful skill, not giving each one a Baskin Robbins 31 flavors marketing name.
You repress your feelings and wonder why you’re lonely. You don’t realize how much they impact your life until you know how to recognize them, I myself went through that too. It wasn’t until I learned more about my emotions that I truly felt happy, wanted. Repressing feelings doesn’t work, not in a social setting, because you repress all your emotions, even the positive ones.
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Let’s put it another way:
“Why aren’t men using electrical appliances anymore?”
“Well, since the Republicans shut down Underwriter’s Labs 40 years ago they’re just too dangerous. A poll conducted by Pew Research in 2062 found only 30% of men between the ages of 20 and 40 have attempted to use a kitchen appliance and of those 30% none polled did so without being shocked, burned or lacerated. Of the men polled, none of them reported cooking indoors more than twice a year; they either exclusively seek food that requires no preparation or those who have access to the outdoors cook over wood fires. One in ten report eating canned or frozen food cold on at least a weekly basis.”
“There’s just nothing you can do to get men to seek mental health services, is there?”
How is individual talk therapy supposed to fix industry deregulation due to crony capitalism?
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I live in a town that is mostly a suburb of a military base. They’ve been cutting down as much forest as they can to cram in oversized McMansions to accomodate the influx of people moving out of the cities. Deer and raccoons have been running rampant in my neighborhood because their habitats out in the woods are being destroyed for subdivisions and shopping centers. The county recently failed to get the general assembly to budge on water restrictions on the two rivers the county government is authorized to pull water from, so they’re starting to pressure my town (which has its own waterworks that pulls from a different river than the county) to share ours. None of the people coming into the area are joining a community; none exists here. People here build tall opaque fences on their property lines and watch Netflix alone. There is no community, only a crowd.
And then a therapist is going to ask a stupid and unhelpful question like “How does that make you feel?”
My car doesn’t start most of the time and when it does it doesn’t run for very long, I’ve missed work three times last week alone because of car troubles, he’s threatening to fire me if I don’t get it right but I don’t have the money for a mechanic. “How does that make you feel?”
Feelings are the raw ore from which bad decisions are forged. How I fell is wrong and irrelevant. What am I supposed to DO?
I don’t think therapy can help everyone. I think it can help those who are (either knowingly or subconsciously) looking inward for solutions. For those of us that are fairly comfortable in our own skins and are frustrated by externalities, I don’t think therapy would be very productive. That said, at a personal level with the goal of self improvement I probably could be a little more introspective about some things but I’m not bothered enough to go to a therapist for it.
I’m reminded of Joe Shea. The one who was senior chief manager of something or other at NASA during the Apollo program. You can tell Joe was a good man from how he took the Apollo 1 fire: He wanted to kill himself. He struggled to live with the idea that three of his close friends, people who trusted him and his engineers, burned to death in a machine he had some responsibility for. The man who isn’t fucked up in that position doesn’t need to be in that position.
My understanding of history is he was sent to see some psychologists, and their remarks was “Joe is very smart.” I’ve been in the aviation industry myself and I’ve danced around issues of mental health. FAR 67 has some things to say about what mental health is and isn’t a federal offense to let your doctor to tell Oklahoma City. HAHAHAHAHA. Fuck.
That’s the peak of manliness right there; that’s a man who takes his responsibilities seriously, they guy who is completely wrecked by those three little words “They trusted me.” Or more to the point, the chore of adding the letters “ed” to “they trust me.” If the effort of lifting that suffix into place wouldn’t bend your soul, kindly get the fuck out of my aerospace industry.
This was in the mid 1960’s, the stigma of seeing a shrink was even louder back then. I’m not sure how it actually played out but in the docudrama From The Earth To The Moon, Joe Shea didn’t take the suggestion from Deke Slayton that he see a psychiatrist gently. According to Wikipedia he “outsmarted” them, giving the answers he knew they’d want to hear.
From my perspective it’s a perfectly good suggestion. If you’re in the shop running a tool and it throws a blue chip in your eye, you go see the ophthalmologist to get your eye fixed. If you have a heart attack you go to the cardiologist to get your heart fixed. The thing us technician types struggle with is medicine is a squishier science than we’re used to, and psychology is the squishiest among them, especially given the FAA’s idea of “Oh he’s not perfect? Kill his career forever.” HAHAHAHAHAAAAA. Fuck. “Hey, let’s make it illegal for pilots to receive treatment or be on medication for mental disorders.” “You mean let’s make it illegal to be a pilot while mentally ill?” “What’s the difference?” “Well the way you phrased it incentivizes pilots who think they have a problem to keep it to themselves and go untreated.” “pssh I guess but when is that ever going to happen.” HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA. Fuck.
I think the point I’m trauma dumping around is Joe Shea had suffered actual mental and emotional trauma and did need the attention of mental health professionals. That’s an appropriate use of therapy. And that it may be more productive to frame it as “injury” rather than “illness” in cases like this.
The average male member of the public right now, on the other hand, hasn’t had his psyche pushed in by the deaths of his friends that he’s at least partially responsible for. The average 20 something guy gained sentience in a world that said to him “We hate you, now pay for everything or else.” And to quote Rodney Dangerfield, “Fuck me? FUCK YOU!”
I think therapy helps as a remediation, but it’s not preventive nor does it fully solve the problem because ultimately it’s transactional and paying someone to listen is fully different from finding someone who listens to you that you also want to listen to.
That’s the thing though: if you’re having trouble finding someone who wants to listen to you, the problem might possibly be you. let’s just say it’s not out of the realm of possibility. But if you are happy to sit there refusing therapy with circular logic: you’re your own problem and all this is is you’ve found a way to self sustain that cover and you’ve convinced yourself. Fair enough. That’s your decision,
therapy is really for those who are ready to admit they are unhappy with how things are(and willing to realize they play a part in their unhappiness) and more open to tearing down those old toxic behaviours to build something more engaging that might do better at relationships .
If you don’t see yourself in that description, then you’re right. Therapy would do nothing for you.
If people are lonely it’s because they cause it themselves.
I’m in an activity group and it’s mostly the women of the group who are organizing the events. The men sign up to attend. The women are the ones who make plans and the men just go along.
Why don’t the men take initiative?
Even playing a board game, the guys just sit there playing a game. The women are the ones who introduce themselves, ask other people their names, what they do for a living, engage in conversation. This is all stuff men could be doing themselves but choose not to.
Some men isolate themselves using video games and didn’t join any social groups then complain that they are lonely. It’s like complaining you’re hungry when the food is right in front of you but you just won’t eat it – you’re expecting someone else to literally feed you.
-plenty of men out there do planning
-going along with someone is not a lack of socializing it can be their way of supporting.
-In fact it’s probably better that a dude doesn’t take over on a woman doing it because that has been taught to be all sorts of sexist now. I know if it were me in the middle of organizing and some dude took over I’d be all sorts of pissed off.
-There is social aspect in video games too. In fact there is a large amount of social presence online. You also have wallflowers online but just saying, if someone is looking at their screen it doesn’t necessarily mean they are incapable of social ability. there’s actually a skill in online presence.
A lot of men were never taught to do this. We raise young girls to be incredibly social, but boys are not socialized to nearly the same extent. You can see this in Autism diagnoses. Girls are diagnosed as a much lower rate and the ones that do receive the diagnosis tend to be really severe cases. The leading theory as to why is that society places so many social expectations on girls that the more mild cases quickly learn to mask and pass themselves off as neurotypical.
Hell, I’m 35 and I just started a group chat with some of my bros in order to help with motivation to get things done (it’s basically a stand up meeting but for our personal lives/goals). NONE of them even know each other, they were just doing this to help me out because I’m burned out. 2 weeks in and they had all thanked me privately for giving them a social outlet and improving their mood. None of us usually text people unless we need to, and now we’ll routinely get roped into conversations because someone shares an interesting update.
Meanwhile my wife is juggling 3 different group chats in addition to half a dozen friends she keeps in touch with 1-1.
There might be some biological mechanism too, but I think a lot of it boils down to boys have “productive labor” modelled for them as ideal behavior while girls are taught how to be considerate friends.
This makes it seem like men can’t learn. There’s nothing biological about organizing an event or talking to people.
We absolutely can, but it’s still a lot harder to pick these skills up as adults vs internalizing them as a kid, and a lot of men don’t even realize the cause of their suffering.
Like, I’m not trying to give men an excuse not to change-- you asked why men are bad at planning and I’m just giving you an answer.
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What i really want to see is how the rise of ai companions will affect all this. Nomi, replika, and the others are already doing good, and i forsee that it will keep growing as the technology improves, for better or for worse
They are not doing good. People are becoming dependent on chatbots produced by for-profit companies to get their fix of human socialisation. That’s absolutely awful, very unfortunate, and most assuredly unhealthy.
What i meant by good was financially, not as “good for society”. Maybe i should have made that clear
Oh, I see. Yeah, they’ve definitely taken advantage of the situation.
This is one thing i have wanted to point out. But it good to see how sensitive the whole issue is. That -10 downvote on the original comment tells me people are really sensitive to the whole phenomenon
I think you meant “doing well” 🙃
Society died but people kept having children anyway.
Maybe lay off the Internet for a while, mate
There’s a multitude of reasons, my personal favourite is that men are highly aggressive sexual creatures and the stigma against homosexuality is hindering our ability to form fulfilling relationships with our male peers.
Just crack open a history book, looks like a lot of the masculine activities came with a considerable amount of gay sex. Like, it seems like the main draw of joining an army to go to war is that you can fuck a bunch of dudes the whole time you’re away on campaign.
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Deranged take
Bro has never met another man before SMH.
Dude… what the fuck???
I know Jordan Peterson has a lot of followers. He says it’s the women’s fault men are lonely. He says men are their victim, pictures women as evil while men should be on top. This creates an even bigger isolation and creates sex offenders.
In Japan and South Korea there are many men who are isolated because of videogames and it’s online culture. They have a relationship with a Nintendo character of AI on their phone (no joke).
Because a lot of lonely men are on the internet, it’s not a correct representation of the real world. Doesn’t change the fact there are many non the less.
Just because there are many different cultures accessable for anyone through the internet, it’s easier to isolate yourself in such a culture. Whether it’s on reddit, 4chan, through games, forums or other social media groups. But it keeps you off the streets, away from real socializing, learning to behave, how to talk to a girl, find a hobby which isn’t on your computer, meet real friends.
I know Jordan Peterson has a lot of followers. He says it’s the women’s fault men are lonely
Peterson has a habit of saying things that might technically be true in isolation but will then disagree with you when you try and make a conclusion from it. In this case he has also said it’s men’s fault for not making women a good enough ‘offer’.
He’s a racist, misogynist, narcicist, piece of shit who sexually objectified his own daughter (if not more than that)
piece of shit who sexually objectified his own daughter (if not more than that)
Was aware of the rest but not this, what is this referring to?
Comments he made about her and putting a photo of her being of questionable age in a bikini on the cover of one of his works.
There’s a few factors working together to cause it. There’s really two main ones: pressure to have sex and romantic connection, and an inability to be able to make those connections.
There’s tons and tons of pressure out there about being in a relationship and having sex. In modern day, a good example is Andrew Tate and the like, directly linking your self worth to having sex. Back when I was a male teenager during the days of rage comics and advice animals, it was memes about the friend zone. The core idea is the same, being alone is something to be ashamed and upset about. Being rejected is something that reflects badly upon you as a person. Young men are constantly being bombarded with messaging about how being a man revolves around sex and romance, and lacking these things makes you less of a man. In addition, so much media portrays sex both as this amazing thing on a pedestal and as something that’s not just commonplace but as something that everyone’s expected to be doing.
So young men are believing that everyone except them are all in relationships and/or fucking all the time, and believing that them not doing those things makes worth less as a human being.
The other problem is actually making romantic or otherwise meaningful connections. So much more socializing is online these days, and there are a lot fewer women on the internet than men. It’s difficult to make organic connections with single women online, as random social media is by far mostly male and more direct closer friend groups tend to be made of single men and people in relationships (this is very arbitrary and circumstancial, it’s just what I’ve noticed). So, your odds of finding a single and compatible friend of a friend of a friend online aren’t great, and dating apps are complete trash for pretty much anything other than gay hookups. So, there’s not really a way for many young men to find romantic partners. Straight up hookups are easier, especially if your standards aren’t too high, but it’s an area a lot of young men aren’t socially comfortable with because it’s not something they’ve done a lot of, which makes everything much harder.
In the end, if there wasn’t so much pressure to be dating and having sex, then the difficulty of doing so in the modern day wouldn’t matter so much.
Personally, I’ve basically only had sex with men, because it’s so much more straightforward and the dating pool isn’t crazy lopsided. Though that’s at an end now too, because I’ve transitioned too much to be appealing to gay men anymore and haven’t transitioned nearly enough to be appealing to straight men or gay women.
I can’t really answer/reply to most of your comment but there is something about the last paragraph that I can respond to:
What about bi-/pansexual men? They exist [1][2] and there will be many that are attracted to people in between gender( expression)s.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisexuality
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PansexualityIf I’ve met any/interacted with any/they’ve run across my profile on dating/hookup apps and they’ve been interested in me, they haven’t expressed it. Certainly not saying people who might be interested in me don’t exist, just that I haven’t come across any who are. Lol I know bi and pan people exist, I’m one of them
You make very good points also to add women in online spaces have incentives to pretend to be male or be ambiguous and not bring attention that they are women online to reduce the harassment they get. I’m pulling numbers out of the air but I feel 10% the internet that is male are assholes or children that don’t have any social skills yet and the other 90% get lumped in with them because we don’t reach out at all as to not come off as creeps like the other 10%. So you don’t hear about the polite respectful ones.
My hypothesis for this comes from the fact that most men I meet in real life are polite social people that respect women with about 10% being weird assholes. I also don’t blame women being guarded of all men as that 10% are true nightmare. I mean if there was a 10% chance a strange man you meet out in public was going to be Jason Voorhees. I would mace every man that came up to me as well. That’s how those assholes ruin it for everyone. Well except the grifrers that make it worse that is.
Also I’m married but we met online before tinder broke dating sites. So take what I say with a grain of salt just from an old man that sees the struggle of young people of all genders go through and I have empathy for them.
Seeing Lemmy’s reaction to the bear made me want to crawl under a rock to be honest, so many people demonstrating that they’re exactly the reason why women don’t feel safe. A lot more than 10% of men on the internet are weird assholes, they just mask it well until they feel insulted. I’ve had a cis woman friend have to change her screen name because she’d occasionally get clocked and harassed, and a trans friend is really split on the progress she’s making with her voice, because now she’s also getting harassed when using voice chat in games.
Sorry mostly unrelated tangent, it just feels like gender relations have been backsliding
Seeing Lemmy’s reaction to the bear made me want to crawl under a rock to be honest, so many people demonstrating that they’re exactly the reason why women don’t feel safe.
That was definitely hard to witness
Like, I get it, it’s upsetting to be judged a predator based off of your gender alone. That’s something I struggle with being trans, seeing how seemingly half the country thinks trans people are just perverts and child predators. But with the whole bear situation, men need to realize that it’s not a reflection of them as individuals but a reflection of society. Being upset about it is normal and rational, but you should be upset at the society that allows women to be treated in such a way that women have to be suspicious and fearful, instead of being upset at the women making them confront this ugly truth.
Discussing gender relations like this should be done carefully with empathy, telling a bunch of male teens and young men that they’re all predators can be quite damaging in and of itself, both to the men directly and to the greater discussion and understanding of the problems we face as a society. God knows being on reddit as a teenager and hearing that really hurt me and contributed to mental issues I haven’t and probably will never fully resolve.
I’m out of the loop, what bear situation are you referring to?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_or_bear
Basically women expressing they’d be more comfortable in the woods knowing that there’s a bear roaming around than knowing there’s a random man roaming around
it was something like, there was a viral tweet asking if women would rather be alone in the woods with a bear or with a man, and most women said they’d pick the bear, and many many many men were very gross about this in response
So young men are believing that everyone except them are all in relationships and/or fucking all the time, and believing that them not doing those things makes worth less as a human being.
I just want to add that, in virtually every online discussion I’ve seen about the dynamic between men and women, if a man says something incel-ish, or otherwise not popular, there will be somebody (almost always a woman) who will fire back a retort like, “yeah, but no woman wants to be with you anyway,” (I haven’t seen it on Lemmy, which is wonderful.)
There it is: Your opinion, and by extension your worth as a person, is based on your ability to have sex. Is it any wonder that men think that, after being explicitly informed so?
yeah, but no woman wants to be with you anyway,
They would rather be with a bear in the woods!
There’s been a concerted effort over the last several decades to push a men vs women dynamic online, and most men don’t buy into it, so it’s really just been people shitting all over men without consequence. Just look at the other answers here focusing exclusively on how men can be blamed (edit: many better replies have been posted since I made this comment).
Quite likely pushed excessively by foreign propaganda.
