I think one culprit could be the FYP model of social media. On fan-fiction.net, we would actively look for things that interested us and curate our own experiences. Sure, we would get some recommendations in Tumblr or YouTube, but that algorithm (especially in their infancy) has nothing on TikTok, with reels and shorts trailing behind. We would curate our experiences through our following. Now, if you interact with one 30-second manosphere TikTok from a creator you've never followed, you're increasingly fed that same content and radicalized in your own personal alt-right rabbit hole. Not to say that these spaces didn't exist before (4chan and other incel forums, obviously), but the algorithms are feeding it to young men rather than them seeking it out.
Another banger, as usual! This makes me think about how a lot of previous research on the far right discusses anomie as a driver for it, and I think it's happening again even if we're not recognizing it as anomie. People are looking for answers to their loneliness and alienation in conformity and clean girl aesthetic and looksmaxxing and when they don't find it they continue pushing until they end up in the far-right pool at the end of the slide.
Love bringing anomie into this! I feel like I’m back in school in the best way. It’s also typical right wing slide into fascism BS- blaming everything on a prototypical other/Boogeyman, the belief a strongman will fix your life, the rising nationalism… it’s scary out here.
Don't come for my no makeup makeup look! Just kidding...but you make excellent points. I think the social media rise of rage bait is also part of this. Anger, blame, rage leads to more engagement and more money for these companies. The younger crowd is even more lonely and has less human interaction, so they're more susceptible to these rage filled algorithms. It's a scary world we are living in, where everyone is looking for someone to blame and doesn't want to have the more difficult conversations that there are no easy fixes. The government is meant to be resilient, not efficient. Idk the answer either other than continue to focus on media aimed at resolving these issues rather than exacerbating them.
So much of liberal/left vs. conservative/right these days is loaded with dating angst. Policies and issues have often just functioned as ways for people to intellectualize their more primitive drives for their politics. Like in the 2000s, the general antagonistic spirit of conservative vs. liberal was that of a sexless religious right vs. a hedonistic individualistic left. No wonder we kept assuming young people (both men and women) would always get increasingly liberal; it was the side that seemed to be doing all the fucking.
Now, it's the conservatives who want to put up pin-up posters of Sydney Sweeney while the liberals oppose that. But when it comes to every other kind of sexuality, the two sides reverse their position. Consequently, young men and women seem to be gravitating towards the ideology that is most sympathetic to their sexual egos.
Oh my christ the names Pookie and Jett (esp. together) have me hoping for a meteor strike (even if the last person I slept with was named, ironically, "Jhett".)
Great read. I think the demonization of men and its influence in their political alignment is not being focused on enough. You simply can’t trash on a group of people and expect their loyalty. If you’re a politically neutral man and your options are the party that is constantly trashing on your gender or the party that puts you on a pedestal, I think we can all see what they are going to chose. The alt-right pipeline was around when I was younger (shoutout early youtube - “owning liberals”) but *usually* by your late teens you’d realize the moral implications and fall out of it or at least lose the extremeness of it all. With the current state of social norms and how prevalent and addicting these alt-right creators are, it is much much harder to make the transition and it’s time for a lot of people on both sides to come back to base.
I'm curious to hear from you... how do you think the pandemic influenced some of these aesthetic trends? Did people look at their messy buns and unmade faces on zoom and decide they wanted to look "tighter"? Or were these trends trending before we got to March 2020?
Great take, I particularly liked the suggestion that we are glamorising self-control...Exemplified by the 12 step skincare routine, bed by 9pm, "very demure, very mindful"...there's never been so much pressure to have your shit together in all aspects of life. No wonder we''re all so anxious. The messy bits of us are the most beautiful, and also they're the bits that teach us things. We can't lose them.
> I don’t really have the answer on how to pull someone out of the manosphere. I was a lonely young man myself: I’ve written about being a teenager who spent hours and hours on fanfiction.net and message boards discussing The Sims. I was online, but I didn’t fall into the rabbit holes promising me I’d be happier if I learned to blame others for my problems.
My take on modern inceldom is that it's a manifestation of scientific nihilism - everything reduced to questions of biology, metrics, genetics, and so on. It's not only women, but men who are stripped of their humanity under such conditions.
America has never had a conservative president before. This is a conservative and moderate country. The democrats ran a really shit and awful campaign, it’s too bad, but somehow blaming the voters and the country is just silly. People of all races and genders voted for trump. The democrats did their insider trading again and get f’d accordingly.
I think one culprit could be the FYP model of social media. On fan-fiction.net, we would actively look for things that interested us and curate our own experiences. Sure, we would get some recommendations in Tumblr or YouTube, but that algorithm (especially in their infancy) has nothing on TikTok, with reels and shorts trailing behind. We would curate our experiences through our following. Now, if you interact with one 30-second manosphere TikTok from a creator you've never followed, you're increasingly fed that same content and radicalized in your own personal alt-right rabbit hole. Not to say that these spaces didn't exist before (4chan and other incel forums, obviously), but the algorithms are feeding it to young men rather than them seeking it out.
One trillion percent! You’re spot on and the algorithms are increasingly part of this.
Another banger, as usual! This makes me think about how a lot of previous research on the far right discusses anomie as a driver for it, and I think it's happening again even if we're not recognizing it as anomie. People are looking for answers to their loneliness and alienation in conformity and clean girl aesthetic and looksmaxxing and when they don't find it they continue pushing until they end up in the far-right pool at the end of the slide.
Love bringing anomie into this! I feel like I’m back in school in the best way. It’s also typical right wing slide into fascism BS- blaming everything on a prototypical other/Boogeyman, the belief a strongman will fix your life, the rising nationalism… it’s scary out here.
Don't come for my no makeup makeup look! Just kidding...but you make excellent points. I think the social media rise of rage bait is also part of this. Anger, blame, rage leads to more engagement and more money for these companies. The younger crowd is even more lonely and has less human interaction, so they're more susceptible to these rage filled algorithms. It's a scary world we are living in, where everyone is looking for someone to blame and doesn't want to have the more difficult conversations that there are no easy fixes. The government is meant to be resilient, not efficient. Idk the answer either other than continue to focus on media aimed at resolving these issues rather than exacerbating them.
So much of liberal/left vs. conservative/right these days is loaded with dating angst. Policies and issues have often just functioned as ways for people to intellectualize their more primitive drives for their politics. Like in the 2000s, the general antagonistic spirit of conservative vs. liberal was that of a sexless religious right vs. a hedonistic individualistic left. No wonder we kept assuming young people (both men and women) would always get increasingly liberal; it was the side that seemed to be doing all the fucking.
Now, it's the conservatives who want to put up pin-up posters of Sydney Sweeney while the liberals oppose that. But when it comes to every other kind of sexuality, the two sides reverse their position. Consequently, young men and women seem to be gravitating towards the ideology that is most sympathetic to their sexual egos.
“we’re very tidy that way” 😂
Oh my christ the names Pookie and Jett (esp. together) have me hoping for a meteor strike (even if the last person I slept with was named, ironically, "Jhett".)
Great read. I think the demonization of men and its influence in their political alignment is not being focused on enough. You simply can’t trash on a group of people and expect their loyalty. If you’re a politically neutral man and your options are the party that is constantly trashing on your gender or the party that puts you on a pedestal, I think we can all see what they are going to chose. The alt-right pipeline was around when I was younger (shoutout early youtube - “owning liberals”) but *usually* by your late teens you’d realize the moral implications and fall out of it or at least lose the extremeness of it all. With the current state of social norms and how prevalent and addicting these alt-right creators are, it is much much harder to make the transition and it’s time for a lot of people on both sides to come back to base.
I'm curious to hear from you... how do you think the pandemic influenced some of these aesthetic trends? Did people look at their messy buns and unmade faces on zoom and decide they wanted to look "tighter"? Or were these trends trending before we got to March 2020?
Great take, I particularly liked the suggestion that we are glamorising self-control...Exemplified by the 12 step skincare routine, bed by 9pm, "very demure, very mindful"...there's never been so much pressure to have your shit together in all aspects of life. No wonder we''re all so anxious. The messy bits of us are the most beautiful, and also they're the bits that teach us things. We can't lose them.
> I don’t really have the answer on how to pull someone out of the manosphere. I was a lonely young man myself: I’ve written about being a teenager who spent hours and hours on fanfiction.net and message boards discussing The Sims. I was online, but I didn’t fall into the rabbit holes promising me I’d be happier if I learned to blame others for my problems.
My take on modern inceldom is that it's a manifestation of scientific nihilism - everything reduced to questions of biology, metrics, genetics, and so on. It's not only women, but men who are stripped of their humanity under such conditions.
You might enjoy my novel, INCEL, in which I explored this from a philosophical perspective: (reviewed here) https://marsreview.org/p/where-have-all-the-rude-boys-gone
America has never had a conservative president before. This is a conservative and moderate country. The democrats ran a really shit and awful campaign, it’s too bad, but somehow blaming the voters and the country is just silly. People of all races and genders voted for trump. The democrats did their insider trading again and get f’d accordingly.
i may not agree with everything you say (in regards to young people and partying) but i must admit, you really know how to make a blog pop.