We need to talk about the online radicalization of young men
- Thread starter UnpopularBlargh
- Start date
Websites like 4chan and Reddit are playing a pivotal role in the radicalization of young white males. They prey on the weak and distressed, and appeal to their emotions to convert them to that hateful mindset. It's incredibly distressing and needs to be addressed. Gamergate was only the beginning.
They don't have to go on a killing spree. They are also a danger to everyone because they will vote for someone like Trump just to screw everyone over because they think it's funny or that they feel they have nothing to lose.
One of the articles talks about this. People like Steve Bannon realized this as an untapped voter pool who would vote for extremist right wing policies and essentially weaponized them through social media/GG etc.
There will always be virgins that are angry at women and the internet will always let them congregate. You can’t police virginity.
1st step is to stop using these terms and stop mainstreams these millennial terms such as incel:
2ndly, it's time for the internet to get a shake down for violence groups, terrorist groups, supremacist groups, hate groups.
3rdly, isolation is real and there are many lonely people who do not commit acts of violence.
4th, the school system needs a rewiring. Extrovert cliq groups creates an unhealthy environment in school for those are shunned, I don't know what the process of fixing foes but the school system does need a serious look at itself and that includes post-secondary.
2ndly, it's time for the internet to get a shake down for violence groups, terrorist groups, supremacist groups, hate groups.
3rdly, isolation is real and there are many lonely people who do not commit acts of violence.
4th, the school system needs a rewiring. Extrovert cliq groups creates an unhealthy environment in school for those are shunned, I don't know what the process of fixing foes but the school system does need a serious look at itself and that includes post-secondary.
I honestly think some government agencies should monitor the internet agencies where these people congregate to look for unstable individuals similarly to how potential terrorists are monitored
I agree with you. I’ve never been very skilled socially, but I’ve accepted this as my own problem that I must fix. I don’t blame others for it and I channel my energy into other pursuits. I don’t hate people that are social butterflies, I know they have problems in their life too.
But at the same time, I’ve been privileged enough to go to therapy where I can have honest discussions with a medical professional about my thoughts and feelings. As you say, a lot of people don’t have access to this service.
That's like saying legalizing prostitution will cut down on rape. It's not about sex, it's about power and control.
Do you feel that women owe you sex?
If yes, you're not lumped with them, you were them all along.
If no, you're entirely fine. What is being called loser is the entitlement these men have. It's not your lack of experience. Most people lack experience at the start. That's not abnormal. Women do too, you know? Incels generally don't have issues with mental health, but entitlement over anything else.
What can even be done about this? Shitheads will be shitheads, unfortunately. The best you can do is try to keep who you can on a watchlist and try to keep an eye on 'em.
My kid is in elemetary school. One rule they have.
If you have a birthday party, and hand out invites AT SCHOOL, everyone in the class has to get an invitation. Otherwise, don't hand them out.
Such a thing absolutely didn't exist when I was growing up.
Edit:I hate typing on resetera on the phone.
Last edited:
This may not be a well received opinion and may just come across like an old man yelling at clouds but I really believe that the seeds for what we're dealing with now with angry young men began with the way schools treated competition and social structure starting around the early 90s. Once participation trophies and the like became a thing I think that it set up every kid to believe that's how life works, you show up a you get the same prize as everyone else. I never gave it much thought until I noticed the effect not competing to win had on my younger siblings. An important aspect of your education and development when you're young is understanding what you're good and bad at doing. It's when you figure out if you're a follower or a leader. It's when you learn not just how to succeed but more importantly how to take failure. Taking away that competitive aspect of youth may have seemed like a healthy idea but I really believe that it damaged the ability of young people to assess themselves and set them up with unrealistic views on success. Now we have an entire generation of kids that all believe they should be winners when the truth is much harsher than that and they've never been properly prepared for it.
IMO there are so many causes of this that need to be addressed. My fear is that if Democrats take back power that they will do nothing to address them.
Take bullying seriously for once would help.
the dumbest thing are birthdays at the office, LOL
I have found a work around when it comes to me, i just take day off or a sick day on my birthday.
I think the "everyone get's a trophy," is a bit of an exageration. Yes, maybe in elementary school it's a thing, but eventually it goes away. Not everyone can make the team. But you don't want to discourage kids trying as soon as they start walking either.
It's a balance.
Was gonna post this in the other thread, but since that was closed I'll say it here.
We know what has to be done:
The Alt-Right Needs to Be Defined as a "Terrorist Ideology"
Nothing is going to be solved about the misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, antisemitism, and other bigotries of the alt-right until those in power show the conviction to say that we will NOT tolerate the alt-right's presence.
Brown vs Board of Education wasn't enforced through "nice words and reaching out". It wasn't enforced through just "deplatforming". It was enforced by Eisenhower sending the national guard down to Alabama and implying that if that anyone tried to physically rebel to keep explicit school desegregation from happening, then they would be shot by the national guard.
You want an end to the atrocities done by the alt-right? Then ironically you have to take the "law and order" dogwhistle/attitude and apply that approach to the alt-right. That includes:
- Defining ANY public advocacy of genocide as a literal death threat under law
- Having NATO Intelligence employ surveillance operations on confirmed Alt-Right members
- In the US it would involve trying again at an Equal Rights Amendment
- A legal requirement that all alt-right individuals found guilty of ANY kind of hate crime are required to go through psychiatric rehabilitation for "Political Psychosis" IN ADDITION to other punishments
- Laws barring people who make death threats from working in certain fields such as medicine and education.
We know what has to be done:
The Alt-Right Needs to Be Defined as a "Terrorist Ideology"
Nothing is going to be solved about the misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, antisemitism, and other bigotries of the alt-right until those in power show the conviction to say that we will NOT tolerate the alt-right's presence.
Brown vs Board of Education wasn't enforced through "nice words and reaching out". It wasn't enforced through just "deplatforming". It was enforced by Eisenhower sending the national guard down to Alabama and implying that if that anyone tried to physically rebel to keep explicit school desegregation from happening, then they would be shot by the national guard.
You want an end to the atrocities done by the alt-right? Then ironically you have to take the "law and order" dogwhistle/attitude and apply that approach to the alt-right. That includes:
- Defining ANY public advocacy of genocide as a literal death threat under law
- Having NATO Intelligence employ surveillance operations on confirmed Alt-Right members
- In the US it would involve trying again at an Equal Rights Amendment
- A legal requirement that all alt-right individuals found guilty of ANY kind of hate crime are required to go through psychiatric rehabilitation for "Political Psychosis" IN ADDITION to other punishments
- Laws barring people who make death threats from working in certain fields such as medicine and education.
More like eons of toxic masculinity making young men think they're entitled to everything. It's literally Fight Club come to life, but now it's Neo Nazis instead of Anarchists.
Edit: seriously, watch this and tell me it doesn't remind you of this movement:
Hundreds of years of America not dealing with racism doesn't help either.
We've sold entire generations of people on a lie while actively screwing them over to make shareholders tons of money.
Last edited:
I agree with you 100% and I don't mind being the old man yelling at clouds. I think this has a lot to do with it.
Democrats need to focus on progressive economic policies. Even the most bitter and jaded young white man posting on reddit or 4chan can see the value in himself and his family having access to healthcare and free college tuition.
When people are prosperous they will be tolerant and kind to each other. When the well runs dry people will be monsters to each other.
When people are prosperous they will be tolerant and kind to each other. When the well runs dry people will be monsters to each other.
Media is a more likely culprit.
Take incels in particular.
Look at media, then. It is filled with stories of loser guys that do nothing, yet get sexy women throwing themselves at the loser guys, without said guy doing a thing. It is the default for stories, especially in anime. *THIS* is what many young men these days expect from life. There clearly are many women around, so where are *their* women? Are they not as much an everyman as the parade of guys in their favorite anime/game that always get their waifu? Where is their sexsla.... girlfriend?
But real women don't like that role. Real women take effort, and they can say no. You cannot reaload this, you can't just move forward four pages until the next waifu stumbles her breasts into the hero's face, there's just no free girlfriends.
But that is what life should be like. Life OWES them to give that to them. They've been conditioned since childhood to expect the girlfriend as the reward for the everyman. And if they are owed that, but don't get it, what can follow but resentment?
"Participation rewards" are a talking point, but you find incels and that kind of guy in countries that don't have these participation rewards.
More importantly: Women get them too.
Women are not inherently smarter than men, women are people, just like men, on average no better or smarter. If participation rewards are causing all of this, why don't we see a lot of radicalization for women? I'd say it is way more likely that the cause is something gendered: And if so, something that would directly feed the sense of entitlement these people are feeling.
Fucking yes.
Three separate friends have self radicalised to far right/ultra libertarian/MRA/general conspiracy bullshit in recent years.
All at a point of depression and isolation. All through YouTube.
God knows what right wingers and conspiracy nuts have cracked with YouTube, but they have cracked it, or the algorithms are seriously borked.
Almost every topic like this that comes up can be punctured with two minutes of googling, and they often soften their stance after rejoining society and having their views challenged, but that heady mix of unchallenged bullshit and recommendations for more unchallenged bullshit is scary stuff. I can easily see how someone without a grounded social network IRL could not come back from the rabbit hole.
Three separate friends have self radicalised to far right/ultra libertarian/MRA/general conspiracy bullshit in recent years.
All at a point of depression and isolation. All through YouTube.
God knows what right wingers and conspiracy nuts have cracked with YouTube, but they have cracked it, or the algorithms are seriously borked.
Almost every topic like this that comes up can be punctured with two minutes of googling, and they often soften their stance after rejoining society and having their views challenged, but that heady mix of unchallenged bullshit and recommendations for more unchallenged bullshit is scary stuff. I can easily see how someone without a grounded social network IRL could not come back from the rabbit hole.
These types existed before, but they were lonely losers that would maybe find a handful of other losers to commiserate with. They had no power because they were effectively loners with a very small sphere of influence. The internet and social media democratized the power structure somewhat. The internet has provided these people the ability to acquire the strength of numbers, and social media allows them to broadcast their bullshit far and wide. These types aren't new. What's new is that they are no longer powerless.
Dude, as a former teacher: that’s totally not a thing.
In every school I’ve been in (including as a student in the 80s/90s) competition has been a massive thing, often bigger among the teaching staff than the students.
Even my 8 year old knows the difference between a participation prize and the real thing and you don’t change human nature like that.
You really are an old man shouting at clouds and I say that as a man pushing 40 myself.
I think the argument for and against "participation" trophies is the biggest waste of time. That shit is not important and has never been important. A lack of proper parenting and teaching of empathy, passion, and responsibility is a better diagnosis. Participation trophies, their effect and what they stand for are a giant collective red herring.
Last edited:
It goes away eventually but the damage gets done early. There's definitely a balance needed and the education system probably just needs a total revamp in how it approaches social interaction and development so it can be healthy, productive and still capable of helping kids learn about the realities of life with making them terrified of it.
I don't know, there's a lot of factors involved I think. I really feel that masculinity is less toxic now than when I was young. There's a lot of things that men can do now that wouldn't have been considered acceptable or be considered "unmanly" in the 80s/90s that are perfectly acceptable now. So what changed? I think the rise of the internet and maybe interactive entertainment contributed to making some men less able to function socially but it doesn't seem to be the answer to what went wrong for so many.
I feel that this isn't really true. Toxic masculinity existed, but what was preached to boys was different. In the past, the awards (women, because thats all women are, in the eyes of many men) were handed to victorious men, but in the last decades, that changed, to the everyman instead. Now simply being a dude doing minimum effort already counted as being great.
Is it REALLY a coincidence that videogames and especially anime are so popular among this group? It's so prevalent that on twitter, this group is called the "anime avatar brigade".
Is it REALLY a coincidence that so many of them started with a hate group screaming that evil women were taking their sexysmexy videogames away (by mildly criticizing them on youtube)?
That's what I'm saying. These people now have a way to get together to make changes, and they can seal themselves off from conflicting ideas and individuals if they so choose.
But the culture isn't new, and we can try and change the factors that enable it or we can sit by and do nothing until it's too late.
Participation trophies of all things has nothing to do with this.
If it is participation rewards doing it, why is it primarily men that get affected, but not women? You'd expect this to hit both genders equally.
Gender/sex (whichever term you wanna use, I dont wanna derail the thread with this terminology) is 100% a factor. Men and women are different. The entitlement aspect is cultural (with media playing a huge role as you suggest), but there is likely also a biological competitiveness that feeds their bitterness. That bitterness may very well be the brain's shitty way of telling a man "hey you need to find a mate". The thing is, society has changed a lot these past couple hundred years and women are more equal in society. Courting a woman requires more social intuitiveness and interaction. Not having a girlfriend in your teenage years or 20s is not exactly the end of the world socially considering we now have people having kids in their 30s and even 40s, but the human body, having been accustomed to a lifespan that was only a few decades long, may incorrectly induce a sense of violent desperation and depression.
We're also living more sedentary and isolated lives. Most of us are not working in groups outside in the sun through life's hardships. We're wired for tribalism and now find ourselves in an individualistic world. Many of us can adapt to this lifestyle but some cannot.
These are the unpopular kids from high school. Everyone went to school with this type of person. They'd form a "nerd herd" and sit apart from everyone else at lunch. They were treated like shit during their school years and are embittered misanthropes as a result. Blame whatever you will, but these are the social outcasts that have banded together to commiserate and spread their misanthropy. Every high school in the country is churning out dozens of these people a year. Come up with a solution for the social ostrazization of large groups of people during the formative school years and you probably go a long way towards slowing this problem down.
This is a bit of a deflection from issues.
What about patriarchy and how it makes men entitled as well as cause various issues of toxic masculinity.
It's still mega toxic as various LGBTQ communities can attest to various effects of its toxicity. I think metoo, MRA and gamergate show that entitled men who go beyond rational lines of disagreement are a real problem. Sorry we have governments in europe asking families to kill gay people or they will I've been alive since the 80s and nothing from that era comes close to what i mentioned.
The problem is far worse now that people who weren't connected and online in those times have acces to each other in echo chambers that basically none of us can stop and those that can are quick to appease them under garbage notions of freedom of speech.
Do not automatically attribute victimhood to misanthropy. People have every ability to temper their reactions, and if they so practice, to control it.
A visit to your local frat house will show you that it is not exclusive to nerds.
OP
OP
Or even other races at the same rate. But it's also predominantly "white" men.
That's why I think it's better to call it neomasculinity rather than toxic masculinity.
To talk about radicalization of men (white men or otherwise), we have to have a fundamental discussion about what issues are effecting men. Thats usually a VERY uncomfortable discussion for everyone involved.
The last 50 years has seen a societal shift in how women are perceived (which is great); however, to continue on the path of equality and freedom for all of us, there also (re-read...ALSO) must be a discussion about what is effecting men, and what role a man now has in a post-industrialized society.
These conversations are difficult to have across the board really.
The last 50 years has seen a societal shift in how women are perceived (which is great); however, to continue on the path of equality and freedom for all of us, there also (re-read...ALSO) must be a discussion about what is effecting men, and what role a man now has in a post-industrialized society.
These conversations are difficult to have across the board really.
Genuinely curious, which parts of Reddit are involved here? I use Reddit a lot and I've never seen this, so I guess this kind of thing hasn't invaded any of my regular subreddits. Would be nice to know what to avoid!
Who says they are victims? My job recently hired one of these types and he's an arrogant shithead. The last thing I'd call him is a victim. Talk to him about his high school years and you get a good idea why he is the way he is. Before the internet these people just went through life being snide assholes, but now they band together online. Treating people like shit seems to create shitty individuals is my take away.
Undoubtedly there are people outside the demographic I'm talking about, but these embittered high school rejects are the bread and butter of the movement.
You make some excellent points and I did consider the fact that this issue seems to effect one group significantly more than the others. I can only speak to the impact that I saw in my own family where there's practically a generational split between me and my older siblings and my younger siblings in terms of what we've been able to achieve. Same parents, same upbringing but my younger brothers and sister are seemingly lost trying to figure out what to do with themselves. Their not killing people but maybe being lost has a greater impact on some more than others.
Maybe where you live/work but some school districts are lazier than others. I went back to visit my junior high school and they no longer had sports or gym at all, said it cost too much. I can't imagine going through four grades with no sports or phys ed. There's obviously other and better ways to teach these social skills but don't assume that every school is doing it just because yours are.
Fair point, I'm just trying to figure this out honestly, something is wrong and I feel like things are going to get worse if solutions aren't found. So many parents have to work now compared to the olden days that I can't even fault many for not having the time to be good parents.
For the worst cases? It won't do anything.
However I've seen it with friends who drifted too close to these scumbag groups. Eventually in both cases each person finally managed to find someone to have sex with them and next thing I know "yeah I was stupid about thing X, no I don't really go on 4chan anymore" etc etc.
It's not that everyone incel is a borderline murderer, it's the the echo chambers lonely young men find themselves in only makes everything so much worse.
You said they were treated like shit through their school years. But i think it's important to believe that failure and rejection are not suffering, no matter how many. But to be ripped away by violence against your agency.
honestly cell phones and social media have made things even worse for these people. many kids grow up not knowing how to interact with others. for sure this happened when i was younger but you were kinda forced to talk to others and make friends because there wasn't anything else to do.
Incels had a great number of subscribers (was banned, but alternatives are allowed to thrive), the_donald (open white supremacy/nazism), Red Pill, and many other toxic subreddits that fly under the radar.
Winners and losers is still a thing. Never went away. But the parcipitation deal does get brought up often, usually by grumpy people I know.
There is more to it in "encouraging kids to succeed," and how you go about doing it. But as a single entity of something that happens, it doesn't even phase me. "Ribbons destroying our youth!"
This.
I know a lot of people that never had a relationship and they never spoke bad about women. Most of them have rather liberal views. On the other hand there are people like Trump who have relationships and still speak bad about women.
People still interact with each other. It's not like kids are on their phones 24/7