[edit: I thank everyone for their comments and time. A lot of very interesting opinions and view points. Unfortunately also a lot of things that went away from the actual answer. So I’m thinking maybe this thread can be closed without deleting it?]
The more I hear people talk about it who aren’t cis-het men, the more I hear criticism about the concept. But so far, I’ve only heard people say that it’s stupid, that it’s not a thing, that it’s men’s own fault etc. But I’ve yet to understand where that criticism comes from. I don’t want to start a discussion on whether or not it’s real or not. I just want to understand where the critics are coming from.
A lot of people can’t see things from any perspective beyond their own limited worldview. If they don’t experience a problem, it doesn’t exist or it’s not that bad and everyone should focus on their problems instead or if they are experiencing something it must be happening to everyone. I think this is causing a lot of the conflict around this issue. There is also the fact that a lot of the men complaining about this issue come at it not so much as “I’m lonely” but as “I’m not getting laid”. Which loses them a lot of sympathy.
Or it’s more about the inability to form community/family units that are so essential for human flourishing. For men and women both. And yet we have created all these biases and expecations of each other that handicap people from connecting.
I had no issue with connecting with most people I met 10+ years ago. But now it’s a struggle to even have a polite conversation with anyone under 50 for me, because their brains are so warped and they can’t take anything as is. I’ve had so many innocuous comments blow up in my face by younger folks who just leapfrog to the worst conclusions. For example I love reading classic literature… a lot of older pre 20th century stuff. That used to be something people admire. Now I get a lecture about how it makes me racist/sexist because the authors back then were all racist and sexist and if I am reading it i’m endorsing those views.
It’s insane. All the sudden my harmless hobby is now evil. I am also into cycling and I can’t talk about that now without being lectured or told how problematic it is for me to enjoy it. 10 years ago people would go ‘oh, that’s cool’. Now everything is a ‘problem’.
It’s also an issue to have this form of generation fight. We as older men, also have an obligation to question the old ways and listen to the young people. Because yes, a lot of it is a problem. And refusing to see the problem doesn’t make it not a problem. It just makes you part of it. Doesn’t make you evil to consume certain things. But it doesn’t help if you’re not compassionate with the current views and the emotions of the younger people around you. Most people don’t even want to make anyone stop doing something, but they’d be happy to know that you’re questioning it.
Or it’s more about the inability to form community/family units that are so essential for human flourishing. For men and women both. And yet we have created all these biases and expecations of each other that handicap people from connecting.
100% that is the root of the loneliness epidemic and I agree that there is a problem. I was just trying to stick to answering OPs question about why we see opposition to the concept.
I’ve seen three sides to it.
Side 1: “boo hoo nobody will fuck me because I don’t think other people should have rights”
Side 2: not having strong friendships/relationships because our society is built around capitalism, cars, and social media (this obviously applies across genders, this side therefore is a generalized loneliness epidemic, not a male gendered one)
Side 3: men get socially punished for being vulnerable
In my mind only the second & third side is worth listening to.
Side 2 has not actual relevance to the problem itself. These societal tropes are not why men are having a hard time finding women. It’s just a societal trope posing as an explanation.
Side 3 is the only relevant issue. Men are constantly told they need to be more vulnerable or their masculinity is toxic, and yet when they express themselves vulnerably, they’re punished for it.
The issue, as I see it, is that some advocates of the “toxic masculinity” narrative often don’t fully acknowledge the ways in which women can also reinforce those same patterns.
A deeper concern is that many feminists present themselves as speaking on behalf of all women, when in reality most women don’t identify as feminists. As a result, what’s being represented is more of a particular set of progressive gender beliefs than the broader experiences of women in general.
To be clear, I actually agree with many feminist perspectives overall. However, I find that the movement’s messaging is often counterproductive—it can come across as unnecessarily divisive and, at times, dismissive of men. Because of this, even when the arguments are largely valid, they struggle to gain wider support.
feminist has never been a coherent set of beliefs of messages. it’s a clusterfuck of viewpoints. many of which are contradictory.
especially 3rd/4th wave stuff that is mostly about social norms. earlier feminist was focused on political goals.
Side 2 is very relevant. If you are lonely you get easily into very terrible sides of society and mindsets. I speak from experience. If you dont have a sense of belonging you also have no sense of self, but then come people that tell you to have a part in their group because of race, religion, nationality, or any other extremist reason.
If you dont have a sense of belonging you also have no sense of self,
Not sure I agree with that. I don’t have much sense of belonging but I know exactly who I am. If anything that’s why I usually feel like I don’t belong.
Fair enough, I should have been clearer. I recognize that social isolation has deleterious effects on people. The part I was dismissing was the attribution to capitalism. Capitalism does not cause this effect. Other factors are responsible.
Would you accept “under-regulated capitalism” or “capitalism treated as an ideal rather than a tool” as a more specific root cause?
No, because it’s just not related to capitalism at all. Lemmings love to blame capitalism for everything, and you see it in every bad thing in the world.
Capitalism does though. Atleast to an extend. Car centered city though that kills social connections a lot!
No. That is not an effect of capitalism. That is just a fact of rural living. God, Lemmings love to blame capitalism for everything.
What made the car industry big? What convinced them to tear down everything and make everything cardepended? Why does the oil and car industry lobby so hard and spread missinfo about public transport and closer living together?
Dude, seriously, calm down and connect with reality a bit more. Not everything is a conspiracy.
On a related note, I wish we would acknowledge that men socialize different and that guys doing stuff together is therapeutic. Ruminating on emotions can have a negative effect in men, while work therapy can be much effective that talk therapy.
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that would be acknowledging that men and women are different and that’s bad in 2025, apparently.
As a cis het man, the “male loneliness epidemic” is more a collection of symptoms of multiple problems without one source.
Those who claim a single source usually point to women because they’re a misogynist grifter looking chasing clout or to sell a scam course / supplement.
So without further ado, here’s my non-academic (and probably ill-informed) reckon based on conversations from online and IRL, lived experiences, and perceived societal norms. Have your large pinch of salt on standby.
- Both men and women have been socialised that the only emotions men show is anger or laughter. Men have been socialised that the only emotion they can express in front of other men is anger and laughter. This means the amount of emotional support men can use from their support network is limited, they’re not practiced on how to deal with them, and either have to figure it out by themselves, be lucky enough to have a friend or partner whom they feel emotionally safe to express these feelings, can afford to seek professional help, laugh the problem off with self-depricating humour to repress the emotion, or turn it into anger usually as a result of succumbing to one of the aforementioned grifters.
Understandably, women have been socialised that if a man is showing emotion then that could turn into frustration and anger and so then they either have to risk taking on unpaid emotional labour or remove themselves from the situation. So sometimes you get this scenario where women want men to be more emotionally open but then recoil when they do because subconscious alarm bells start ringing that “you’re in danger” because there’s a decent chance that they could be.
Thankfully this is changing with younger generations, but it will take a generation or two.
- Male support socialisation is centred around problem solving, not listening. Even if a guy has friends he can lean on emotionally, the conversations are usually focused around fixing the problem rather than providing a listening space and reassurance that those emotions are valid.
This is the main reason I pass off an “I’m fine” to friends and family because they’d try and suggest solutions to the problem rather than just listen.
Again, this is changing in society but these kinds of changes are slow.
- Loss of third spaces. This affects everyone, not just men. But these third spaces where people can socialise without being forced to spend money are key for building communities. When people had disposable income or access to lines of credit it didn’t matter that there was an expectation that you had to pay for parking, food, drink, ticket(s) for the activity. Now, that’s less of an option for many people.
This hasn’t improved and will likely only get worse as late stage capitalism squeezes out anything that is unable or refuses to make more and more profit per quarter.
- The lack of third spaces has moved friendships, courtship, and dating online. Whilst this has meant many people have made connections (platonic and romantic) that would have gone missed, the big tech companies have realised that anger and loneliness are good for business.
The social networks get far more engagement from posts that make people angry and therefore their advertising revenues increase.
Similarly, the dating monopoly Match Group, has realised that having more men than women on the platform means these men will spend money on these platforms for a chance at matches. So they purposely profile men who are likely to pay for things like “super likes” etc. and do nothing to make the experience more pleasant for women.
This isn’t anything new by the way, it’s the same reason some clubs make guys pay on the door and women get in for free, and it’s the same reason why there’s more female sex workers than male sex workers.
Men are willing to pay many and women don’t have to, but women have to put up with a lot of entitlement from the men who have paid for matches / to get into the club and be constantly fending off attention from men they don’t wish to reciprocate the attention to.
Without third spaces for general socialising, the only place to interact with potential partners is paid and will therefore skew financially in favour of women at the cost of their peace-of-mind.
- This is more of a personal sentiment but others might empathise: I don’t want to feel like I’m harassing women.
I’m not cold approaching anyone when I go out because I don’t want to interrupt their precious free time they get in between the grind of life. I don’t want to interrupt them socialising with their friends or be creepy on the dancefloor by getting in their personal space, or even glancing over too much.
So I stay at arms length, avoid eye contact, and only approach or get close if I’m getting multiple very strong signals large enough to land an Airbus A380.
- This is definitely just applies to me, but I have exceedingly low self-confidence, self-esteem, and low opinion of myself from a deep rooted depression. That’s a straight-up non-starter for trying to be with anyone else because nobody, man or woman, likes an emotional anchor dragging their mood down. I’m working on it but without paying a lot of money for therapy (the NHS waiting list is a joke), I’m stuck trying to work it out myself (see points 1 & 2).
So until I’m fit for socialising in that way, I’m purposely isolating myself in that regard.
Oh and for added flavour, I don’t want to be around watching society collapse as the world continues to burn not can I distract myself (or be ignorant enough) to not pay attention to it.
To be honest, right now my mind is telling just to wait for my mother to pass away then withdraw all my money, disappear abroad, burn through it in pure hedonism then off myself once the cash has run out. At least this way I can enjoy a shorter life rather than suffer a longer one.
I’ll be your friend; you can actually discuss things well 💜
There is one source.
I recommend reading nurturing our humanity. Primates have two observable social systems. And they both exist in all societies along a spectrum.
Domination and partnership.
The more domination based a society, the more everybody suffers. Including those higher in the social hierarchy.
Working class men, they are in a strange place because they have hierarchical status based on gender but not based on economic class. This makes it difficult for them to find solidarity with women. And thus more lonely in a system of loneliness.
Communists would blame capitalism of course, and they’re not exactly wrong because capitalism is a domination-based system. Marx called this phenomena alienation.
Feminists would blame patriarchy, and again they are not wrong it is a domination-based system.
So on and so forth, but we can take a step back and look at ourselves as apes and see domination is the problem. The will to power.
Buddhism calls this energy Mara, and would call the partnership energy Buddha nature.
It’s all the same thing, it’s a strategy apes use to relate to each other and survive. Partnership is a better strategy. Assuming your goal is the health of society and the planet rather than personal gain.
I think it has to do with the death of 3rd spaces which used to be an outlet for socialization. But as a man, I’m also not lonely. I have friends and acquaintances and I get to go outside sometimes.
This right here. But even for our parents this is true.
I remember back when we could easily get some beers and sit at the local park or at the riverbed. But now? Everything’s private property and the bars are way too expensive to spend 5 hours in. I don’t know the last time I played Billard - or even have seen a pool table itself.
In the 2000s I could go out drinking for an entire night for like $20. Or I could hang out in a cafe with a sandwich and a coffee for $10.
Now two beers is $25 and that’s an hour if you nurse them slow. Wanna hang out for 2+ hours anyplace? Goign to cost you probably $50-100. Even bowling a frame is now like 75/pp in my city
I’m a very fluid person. So I think I have great inside in the differences between genders and sexualities in loneliness.
A lot of it have to do with “be approached”.
As a woman presenting person a get approached a lot, a lot of people I don’t know want to talk with me. It’s ridiculously easy to make new acquaintances and friends. Everyone wants to talk and be around you.
As a male presenting person I also get approached a lot when I’m in “gay spaces”. Again it’s impossible to be alone unless I voluntarily would want to.
Yes, these two have the handicap that a lot of approaches are “sex related” of by people wanting sex. But not all of them, among so much approaches there’s always some that doesn’t just want sex.
Then, as a male presenting person in not gay spaces and even more so in straight spaces. I don’t get approached, never, at all. Zero people talk to me just because they want to be near me. If I want to meet somebody I always have to be the one initiating the approach.
In my experience this is the root of the issue. And the experience that most people complaining about “male loneliness” are talking about.
There are other type of loneliness. As a Queer I’m quite familiar with loneliness related to being different, and people literally hating you for what you are, or not accepting you. But that’s a different thing. The male loneliness is that feeling of having the burden of all your relationships in your shoulders, knowing that if you don’t go after people people won’t ever go after you. And that can be devastating with time. Because your self worth get tanked, specially if you are introvert and have a hard time approaching people.
I suppose it won’t end until it get normalized to approach cis men the same way it’s normalized in the other situations I talked about. The reason of why people don’t approach cis men as easy can be discussed, I get that there’s a fear/danger factor in approaching a cis male, specially after being approached by so many menacing people in your life. But still, I do think the root of the issue is that. And there’s also de commodity of knowing that you don’t need to approach a cis man because some will approach to you regardless, so you don’t even need to try. I’m the first guilty of it. I don’t approach men either, I always wait for them to approach me, because I know they will, so why bother approaching? I suppose there’s a great imbalance. Maybe if men would go into strike and refuse to approach people the balance would be restored, who knows.
After reading most of these comments I’ll have to say this comment resonated the most with me. It’s exhausting to always be the one who needs to put in effort to talk to new people, and then you need to maintain it pretty much one sidedly as well, you end up just giving up on it and looking more for good friends to rely on than romantic things.
I’ve heard from female friends that there are women also dealing with this so it’s not a uniquely male thing, but social norms have sadly made it so and it really gets to you as a guy when you’re not also being pursued by people. I’ve seen some nice clips tangential to this asking women when was the last time they bought flowers for a guy and some of them couldn’t think of an instance.
It’s rough out there, and unless you’re at the top of your game (mental health wise) it’s a huge struggle, and with the economy as it is a lot of people people sadly are having a tough time dealing with it, but as you say women are usually better trained to work together on this stuff, whereas guys largely aren’t and suffer alone as a consequence.
I’m lucky to have some good male and female friends I can open up to, but I definitely feel like the exception on that.
One of my female friends bought me a cake in college for my birthday.
Only person who ever bought me a cake for my birthday my entire life (other than parents a s child). No other friend, or girlfriend, ever did that for me. Most of my girlfriends ‘gifts’ to me was usually something they wanted for themselves, like buying me fancy towels so they could use them in my bathroom.
The male loneliness is that feeling of having the burden of all your relationships in your shoulders, knowing that if you don’t go after people people won’t ever go after you. And that can be devastating with time.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it put so succinctly. Maybe this isn’t everything, but it is the root of the feeling for me. I’m constantly reaching out and checking in and it’s more rare for the reverse to happen (though it’s really important to notice when it does, which is something I’m trying to do more now).
Yep. It’s also incredibly draining to have to do all the work. Nobody will ever reach out to you first. You must always be reaching out.
I gave up on romantic relationships mostly, because I was doing 90% of the work. And if I wanted a break, I was told I was being a ‘not a real man’. I bought a house and got pets. My pets don’t demand I do all the work for them. They actually communicate and appreciate.
This is so incredibly accurate
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No, that’s not it. You are seeing your experience (and the experience of people around you, all living in the same society at the same time) and extrapolate that to the “very human nature”.
Just go back 50 years and you have all these structures making it easier for men to keep contact. You had fraternities, churches, unions, clubs, associations and so on, all designed to pick up young men, give them structure, give them contacts and help them being part of something bigger. All that failed some time in the 70s or 80s with the individualism movement that valued individualism over every kind of group.
If you go back even further, social structures were even stronger, with even things like arranged marriage being commonplace in many societies. In societies where that was common, there was no expectation at all that a young cis man would have to approach women at all.
Don’t extrapolate your experience to all of human-kind. It is almost never correct.
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Certain = most. And you might have misunderstood what survivorship bias means.
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Human nature is evolutionary.
Never say never.
Evolution is not our friend. Evolution favours reproductive fitness, not happiness. Happiness is just one of many tools in the toolbox for getting us to reproduce.
The current situation with low birth rates due to the availability of contraceptives is a temporary blip. Right now you can witness a wide range of forces arrayed against that status quo. Note that for humans, evolution operates not only at the genetic level but also at the cultural level since parents can pass their culture on to their children.
We’re witnessing a major backlash and reaction against secular liberalism, a return to authoritarianism and a revival of religious membership. Religion has always been one of the most powerful of evolution’s cultural weapons for increasing reproductive fitness.
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Hey look at this guy! He’s met every human that’s ever existed, ignored all the times that humans have been good and caring, and has decided that we’re completely cooked!
But for real, I get that misanthropes are “in” right now, but if you look for the helpers, you will generally find them. Most people in the world are not out to cause pain - actively malicious people are rare. We just focus a shit ton of our attention on them.
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Is saying “not everyone is shitty” toxic positivity? I’m not denying the presence of malicious humans, but the first step to becoming a bad person is believing that everyone else is too.
What’s your end goal here - what are you trying to communicate? Just that the world is bad and people should agree with that fact and do nothing?
I don’t really mean to say that you can’t express your feelings on the Internet or that they aren’t valid, but I do just want to kinda poke people who seem to be in this “people are awful” mindset and point out that our psychology and our information ecosystem are all heavily biased towards the negative, but it’s not the complete picture.
I can only suggest reading some of “The Way We Never Were”. It’s a look at society and how it actually was vs the manufactured versions people today use to weaponize the whitewashed past as some sort of ideal. It’s not a psychological book or a deep analysis of society at all, but one of the things that struck me about it that relate to social circles and how it applies to men in particular is the loss of “the village” and the damage “self reliance” - the isolation of the American Family Unit by making it the Family Vs The World - has done to society and the ability of people to form steady social groups outside of work. This, and the need to constantly change jobs to move ahead financially also keeps people on unsteady ground with relationships.
Good, succinct explanation. There are some people dropping their life stories in this post, which should be a barometer for just how lonely everyone really is.
But yes, this. It’s all socio-economic. It’s capitalism ruining our world by forcing us to serve the system instead of having a system that serves us. It has been like this a long time, but if unmanaged, allowed to grow and consolidate beyond just the interests of a few companies here and there and allowed to turn into an all-consuming monster that takes away our politics, our social lives, our hopes and dreams, you end up with a very miserable population.
Yes, it’s “divide and conquer” on a grand scale. Because we don’t have groups we’re never strong enough to rebel.
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The only thing essentialist about us (and the only other explanations are essentialist) is that we’re highly social creatures, the point that we literally die without social contact like a goddamn lovebird or guinea pig.
The primary thing that’s gotten in the way of our social life of the past is the rampant increase in “luxuries” such as single-family homes, personal cars, computers that keep us inside, and the vast array of conveniences that let us survive with clicks and phone calls with strangers.
At its heart, it’s not complex. We buy things that are sold to us to give us the illusion of comfort, but comfort is not good for us, having community is what’s good for us and makes happier and have more balanced perspectives, and we’re suffering massively and experiencing national divisions because we don’t have a sense of community broadly.
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communist regimes
Already lost me there.
There hasn’t been a real “communist regime” there have just been a lot of dictators and despots using the label, and if you know history you should know this, otherwise it’s weird that you think the only alternative to life-destroying capitalism run amuck is straight up cartoonish, hollywood-invented, jump-suits and tank-parades-communism.
However I have traveled the actual REAL world and there are many, many countries where people do not prioritize throwing money at corporations and care about their communities and each other and they are much, much happier with less distractions, less luxuries, fewer stressors and more social engagement, and in many of those places they also have free healthcare and public transportation. You know, socialist policies that help people not have to struggle so hard to survive every day so they can spend time with their friends and family.
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No, that’s a dumb fucking reply. I am saying that people were not happier under dictators, that’s not exactly gymnastics. Meanwhile, there are countries here and now on earth that have higher happiness levels who are more focused on community and culture and have social safety nets to back it up. That’s my point.
the need to constantly change jobs to move ahead financially also keeps people on unsteady ground with relationships.
That’s a great point.
Men, by and large, create toxicity within their own circles. Male culture has a lot of issues and a lot of unrealistic expectations are put in men in US society. Some external, but the majority come from inside. The whole alpha male culture bullshit that permeantes it. There’s a lot, and I mean a LOT of good that can come from healthy male culture. But right now it’s like men have a branding issue where the loudest among them are also the worst (the Andrew Tates of the world).
I’d say there’s some unavoidable bias there. If we judge the dominant masculine culture by the degree to which people emphasize masculinity then of course the loud ultra masculine people will seem like the representation.
Lots of men out there just being men
Lots of men out there just being men
True. But nobody cares about them because they aren’t bothering anyone. But they do get lumped in with the controversial men.
Like I don’t have much of a clue about Tate or any of that stuff. But if I tell people that then I’m guilty of ignorance or something and I need to ‘educate’ myself about that stuff so I can… denounce it? Because apparently just not knowing or caring is complicity or something.
It’s true that men as a broad group have a duty to confront and correct that behavior within their social groups and families etc. and that might be where that sentiment is coming from, but we live in a world where people can and do live in bubbles.
No. We don’t. We don’t have a duty to do anything anymore than women do.
Other people’s ignorance isn’t my obligation to fix. It’s their own. I am not responsible for other people’s behavior and anyone who blames me for it is an asshole. Guilt by association is a fallacy.
If you’re not calling out that kind of behavior when you encounter it among your social group then you are definitely complicit. Is it a morally corrupt position? Not necessarily, but you’re complicit and you’re enabling it.
Calling out shitty behaviour gets you shitcanned from the group. It doesn’t change the behaviour. Do you socialize much? You don’t make friends or get popular by calling out bad behaviour. You get ostracized. The rest of the group calls you an asshole and circles the wagons and enables the behaviour further.
ok, keep your asshole friends and be associated with them I guess? point proven?
I think its pretty hypocritical for anyone who isnt a male to have an opinion on the validity of an experience they cant possibly have unless they transitioned.
Its like me having an opinion on have a period.
Particularly when so many trans men who have lived as women previously have come forward to validate how much more isolated men feel.
I’ll disagree a little here.
My wife’s had surgeries from men that know waaaaaay more about her period than she does.
That being said, they went to school for a decade and have another decade of experience learning specifically about a topic. They aren’t just some random business student that dropped out 2 weeks into semester one and writes their theses via comments.
Small but important caveat. Otherwise 100% agreed. I have no ideas on periods because I’m not a woman or a Dr.
Yeah I also disagreed, I’ve read some very compassionate takes on men’s situation written by academic feminists.
Bell hooks the will to change for example. Women can be experts on gender, and how systems of domination effect everyone. Men included.
On the other hand, belle hooks’, The Will to Change, is one of the most compassionate and understanding takes on the subject.
So she has an opinion on the validity of the experience, and it is that capitalism and patriarchy is alienating for men, just like it is for others. Especially working class men.
Nurturing Our Humanity, co-written by a female author, uses system science and primatology to validate what men experience in domination based societies.
I know your point was more long the lines of critics shouldn’t criticize things that they don’t understand, but there are a lot of feminists that do understand and have an informed opinion, because they study how these systems of domination affect everyone, not just women.
I’m more of a comma or interrobang kind of guy‽
And yet, your sentence ends with…
duly noted, fixed!
but I know who I am (or at least so I think) so now it just looks weird to me.
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Yet, men have dictated women’s bodies for centuries. Nah, you can shove that view up your ass.
I reject your opinion. Men shouldn’t be dictating women’s bodies and women shouldn’t be dismissing men’s feelings. Two wrongs, etc etc, I shouldn’t have to explain this to an adult.
Agreed, but as long as countries are ran by old white men, it’ll never change.
Germanys longest chancler was a woman, Merkel. The EU is lead by a woman The head of the UK and Commonwealth was a woman and lets not forget PM Thatcher or Ms Salad Truss Italys PM is a woman, so is Denmarks and latvias Germanys parliament president is a woman The leader of europes biggest fascist partys in italy, france and germany are all woman.
What gender one is doesnt matter. Its the policies. Though yes woman get the short end of the stick by old peoples preference of leadership.
Also why bring the colour of the skin into play? For europe alone: guess what ofc its mostly going to be “white” people running their nations. Same in sub saharan africa its all black people. And guess what japan is run by japanese.
Though i am guessing you are american and therefor segregation by race runs deep in your mind since childhood.
brb going to use this as my defense for being an asshole to women. It’s expected of me.
You’re cleared to grab 'em by the pussy, chief.
Agreed.
“MEN IN THE PAST DID BAD, SO ALL MEN FOREVER GUILTY”
What a well reasoned argument.
It’s original sin, just by gender. I think people underestimate the harm in painting all men with the same brush. Once the conversation morphs from “I hate this thing some males do” and changes into “I HATE MEN” you can’t have a productive conversation.
Its the classic negative feedback loop.
All you hear about is bad people, doing bad things, because normal, sane, respectful, law abiding people don’t make news because who is going to make headlines like “NORMAL PERSON RESPECTS OPINION AND DOESNT HAVE A TANTRUM OVER BEING DISAGREED WITH”
So people with low critical thinking skills and an aversion to regular thinking just leap to “ALL X ARE BAD, NO EXCEPTIONS”
people who think that all men are underdeveloped cretin sex-monsters. they don’t acknowledge that they are people/individuals.
only women get that status in their minds. Increasingly, as a man, i find it harder and harder to find people of any gender/sex who don’t want to lecture me about my maleness and how evil it is. Shit’s weird. fewer and fewer people care to see me as a person.
especially on the dating market. holy moly… the horrible hate so many people have towards men there is wild.
Current men are bad.
Fixed that for you.
Generalisation of a such large group of people. Love it.
What would you say if i say “black people are bad”? Because there are also a lot of bad black people out there
If you were to say “black people are bad” then the rebuttal typically becomes “due to established power structures, white men can’t be oppressed, therefore I can say what I want about them”.
I think it’s hard to have a reasoned discussion where you say “all men do X” because for every X, there’s probably a bunch of exceptions. There is a great amount of variance in male behavior.
Exactly
I am currently a men, am I bad?
Are you a men? Are you bad because of it?
If not, by virtue of being a not-men are you good?
And that gives them a higher position?
Taking your argumentation into another context but keeping the same intention: europeans had colonialised africa for over 100 years, means they cant critisise the africans nations politics?
“X did z to y so y can talk freely about matters that affect only X but x not about y”
I think there is definitely a male loneliness epidemic but I think there is also an equally bad female loneliness epidemic that nobody talks about enough
I think what’s happening is:
40% of men are good people
40% of women are good people
The remaining 20% are pieces of shit that demonize and demean the other sex, which has caused the 80% to become scared and reclusive.
Social media makes it seem like the percentages are flipped but they are not!
The numbers are made up but you get my point.
Modern online incel and radfem movements were created to pit them against each other and prevent them from uniting and creating positive social change.
Created by whom? I’m actually curious.
I can’t prove anything, but:
- There’s evidence that billionaires are taking much more than they earn, and that we (everyone else) would be dramatically better off without them (whether we tax them away or… Come to some other compromise.)
- Billionaires own most media outlets and social media sites, even those these don’t actually make much money compared to everything else the billionaires own. This makes some people ask why they bother…
- There’s a noticable tendency in billionaire owned media to focus daily on divisive topics. The specific topic changes, but the divisiveness continues.
- There is history of powerful authoritarians investing heavily in divisive propaganda, primarily to break apart and distract groups of people who could overthrow them.
What I have laid out is not proof that today’s billionaires are directing their staff to verbally attack minorites at any opportunity.
But it certainly is something to think about next time a vicious rumor about a minority group comes along.
Edit: Yes. I do understand that neither men nor women are minorities. But there’s still enough differences to allow pushing a divisive narrative, which I suspect is enough reason for certain motivated people.
And to the “could just be a shitty set of incentives” argument. Fair enough. It could be. It’s highly suspicious, but it could be.
Woah, I thought you were talking about a conspiracy of wealthy people that are pitting the sexes against each other. That is interesting and I want to study this some more.
Somehow you ended on wealthy people hating on minorities. Let me make this clear. This happens all the fucking time. Even our POTUS is guilty of this multiple times with instances like the Central Park Five.
I mean the whole anti-woke movement is just a bunch of rich racist assholes pushing a toxic message.
I’m not the original person you were speaking to but this is a good example of systemic issues. You don’t need individuals to be racist or sexist or conspire to do bad things if there’s a systemic trend that people in powerful positions are a homogeneous class with their own relatively aligned interests and social circles.
Billionaires don’t know poor people, billionaires are usually white men, billionaires have similar self interest. Billionaires wield a huge amount of power. BOOM. systemic racism and sexism without requiring everyone to scheme and coordinate.
This is why liberals fixate on gender and race representation in higher positions, and this is why I and other leftists just want to dismantle unbalanced power structures that give billionaires everything and allow them to exist.
Eliminating billionaires would do far more to harm fascism than all the DEI initiatives combined.
100%, liberals won’t let go of the root causes of the problems and will keep patching and reforming and patching and reforming all the while every little crisis brings fascism back from the shadows
themselves
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they both exist. but the male one makes people angry so it gets more engagement. it’s also framed as ‘men are losers who need to do better in life’
the female one is often framed as ‘women are too successful for men’.
the truth is there is a huge gender disparity emerging in certain demographics. my own included. most single women I meet in my 30s/40s are living radically different lives than the men. and frankly i haven’t had a relationship in half a decade because none of the women I meet anymore have anything in common with me, and often they view our differences in a very negative light. 10 years ago those differences were seen as positive.
there are also no common spacers for us to mingle anymore. esp not as equals.
I felt all bitter like you did but I met a girl recently who completely stole my heart, they do exist for sure
Very good point about common spaces. The best we got in north america is basically just the mall at this point
Also there are no safe spaces for men outside of wilderness and AA meetings hahaha
Some is valid. Men aren’t taught how to make and maintain emotionally open friendships, with men or women. It’s seen as weak or weird to cry on front of your bros when you’re sad. This leads to loneliness. This is real.
Some is not valid. Men claiming that they’re not getting laid and it’s women’s fault is bullshit. Or that women have impossibly high standards and are gold diggers. It’s nonsense.
The problem is that the “women hating incels” have coopted the term, and their garbage deserves to be mocked.
The sheer number of men who suddenly have no support in their life because their relationship has ended, that soon struggle with suicidal thoughts should really point to the first thing you said. Men and women are socialized differently as children and this is one of the most common results when we reach adulthood. It will take an enormous shift in society and ingrained values to fix that
That second point, yeah, women don’t need to get married to survive now. My grandmother couldn’t have her own bank account when she was a young adult, and banks would have laughed her out of town if she wanted a mortgage. My parents got married young because that was still kind of expected, especially in rural America. I haven’t dated in years, because it’s frustrating, and I have been able to, and lucky enough, to buy a home on my own finances. That’s not high standards, it’s just that I didn’t need to get hitched to have financial stability
The sheer number of men who suddenly have no support in their life because their relationship has ended
Do men really not have any friends? I just moved to a new country and made like 5 close friends in the first few months, so that blows my mind in a sad way
I’m not a cis man, but every man I’ve dated has had “friends”, but not people they can really talk to. Like, one guy I dated had a really big social circle and they regularly had gaming events. But he didn’t text or talk to anyone outside of planning and going to those events. Others had maybe one friend that they hung out with outside of work.
It is sad. And it was jarring when I was young, because I had lots of friends I could turn to on a bad day or for something more serious. It makes me so angry with “the patriarchy”, because it isn’t just keeping women down, it’s also hurting and sometimes killing men.
I had a cat die a very painful and sad death right in the veterinarian’s parking lot. I was completely devastated, but my poor boyfriend kept trying to hold back his tears because he “needed to be strong” for me. Bitch no, cry with me, that was super heavy. I’m going to carry that death with me until I die, and not just because my cat didn’t deserve that. It’s not fair for men to have this expectation that they need to hold back expressing emotion so they appear strong. (that particular ex also has a fear of dying, so he really needed to and should have felt free to express himself at that time)
I was completely devastated, but my poor boyfriend kept trying to hold back his tears because he “needed to be strong” for me. Bitch no, cry with me, that was super heavy.
Yes, because most cis het women in this situation would have rejected him. I have been there. I was dumped by a 5 year girlfriend over the death of my father. She was disgusted with my ‘whining’ and thought it was pathetic that I was sad/struggling with it. I’ve never met anyone in my life besides my sister/brother/parents who wasn’t disgusted by expressions of sadness, let alone tears. Almost any girlfriend I had, if I was in any kind of emotional distress, ended the relationship almost immediately thereafter because they don’t want to be with someone who is ‘weak’ and has emotions. And they always say it’s ok. They might let you cry. But they are viscerally disgusted with you afterwards.
I’m so are you went through that. I remember how surprised my then-boyfriend was when he had a bad day and I helped him out, listened to him, and did not hold it against him. He was utterly shocked, while at the same time he had been helping me deal with much heavier shit that was impacting my daily life…
This ideal that men are 100% tough sucks so much.
It makes me so angry with “the patriarchy”, because it isn’t just keeping women down, it’s also hurting and sometimes killing men.
I agree, I wish more men would realize that feminism also benefits men. Even things as small as being able to freely express yourself are hurt by the patriarchy
This is going to sound ridiculous, but I believe the perceived etymology of the word ‘feminism’ hurts the intent of the movement.
The word seems to imply that women should be put first, not as equals. Think of ‘nationalism’, those following that put their nation first, sometimes to the point of being derogatory to other nations.
So when uneducated hear the word feminism they may think it’s an ideology of putting women first to the point of being derogatory to men.
pragmatically, most men and most women, who are feminists, think women are superior to men. and you’ll notice their arguments are all about how men should be more like women, and never women should be like men.
It doesn’t help that some people misuse it that way either
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Men suffer under patriarchy, bro. It isn’t women exploiting your insecurities to sell you magic pills and creams for a bigger dick and more testerone, masculinity retreats, or super secret techniques for making them drop their panties.
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I am the exception that proves the rule in a way. I am EXTREMELY open with my mental state and emotions. If I have known you for more than a few hours/days (or even minutes if there’s a connection of some kind) I will gladly explain to you exactly how badly I crave the sweet embrace of death. How long I have felt that. Why I feel that.
Men react in strange ways to that.
Women react in what you would probably call a predictable way. They are concerned, try to ask for reasons and offer comfort.
Men are sometimes curious, but most often, they just say, “same.” There isn’t always discussion about it after that but I don’t really meet men who have not considered suicide. It’s so pervasive.
Depends. I find making new friends very difficult because I don’t have many of the same interests and the rest of the people that I naturally get exposed to via my kids, wife or life. I work from home and don’t have much time for social hobbies. I go to concerts sometimes but I really struggle to make conversation with strangers. I can see how someone like me would end up being lonely for a long time.
Social hobbies are where it’s at. I’ve never met anyone meaningful at a concert. Hobbies (and activism) though, all the people all the time.
“Don’t have much time”… I guess it it’s important to you, you should figure out how to make time for it
Having a 6 and 8 year old is very time consuming! The good news is I have 2 nights a week of D&D which gets me a bit of social time. Though not face to face.
True that.
Just getting in to TTRPGs properly. It seems like a way to really solidify friendships, rather than to find new ones. But that’s still very valuable!
Nope. Not as we age. All my friends moved away, started families, or changed to the point we have nothing in common anymore.
And once you are 30+ it’s really really hard to form close friendships. At best you get to form very tangential/shallow ones. I am 40 and I haven’t met anyone who has become my friend for well over a decade. The last friend I formed was like when I was 32.
And once you are 30+ it’s really really hard to form close friendships
I really don’t think age has much to do with it. I’m finding it easier in my 30s than my 20s since people are more adult and less likely to play stupid games
speak for yourself. my experience is it’s way harder and people are way more stupid and judgemental. nobody cared what car i drove. now people find out I ‘only’ own a Honda and they want nothing to do with me anymore because i am ‘not doing well in life’ if i don’t own luxury car.
At some point, I got quite some worried/pitiful look because i didn’t own a car but only a (non-motorized) bike. People are weird!
In the other hand, I got along with people wanting to make our own “bike gang”, aka commuting to work together.
It doesn’t sound like you’re surrounding yourself with the best people. They sound quite superficial if all they care about is perceived status
I’m having trouble making friends. There is one guy sort of near me and we do things here and there, but he and his wife are about to move. Most of my other friends live far away.
I don’t have a lot in common with the people I work with, or live near, and I don’t have much energy to do things outside of work. There is more that I’d say but I’m acutely aware / paranoid that some ai tool is reading all of our comments and building profiles on us. I’m trying to build a better life and find more communities where I feel welcome, but it’s slow going. Maybe that explains it somewhat?
Maybe you could tell us how you made 5 close friends in a new country.
I knew of one person here prior to moving though we never actually met beforehand. Also met up with an internet friend at some point.
Aside from those two, my partner and I searched for community events and went to quite a few. Met a lot of people there. Community events are honestly a fantastic jumping off point. Ideally things where you actually get a chance to talk to people, check out local bars’ socials to see if there’s anything.
Also made one or two friends randomly just hanging at a park.
The trick is that after you meet someone, you have to make an effort to see them again. Once you have a few close friends it’s easier to get invited to other things.
Tbh, while I could start drinking more again just to meet people, bars are expensive these days. I can’t afford friends nor dates. Unless maybe I only eat ramen forever.
Finding someone romantic/friends is difficult when you haven’t fully AA quit drinking, but you’re also disillusioned with hammered bar culture and driving drunk and don’t want to do that anymore, and also would rather spend your money on not $10 Evan Williams and gingers all night when they don’t even have the good Evan which only costs like $30 for a giant bottle.
That follow up is brutal and crucial.
Not her but I am a woman who moved across my country and made friends within a few months. It’s social hobbies and active participation in subcultural events. I love bicycles, years back I got into volunteering at a bicycle repair cooperative, it made me some casual friends with whom I hung out working on bikes every other week. When I moved I found one to volunteer at again, though I haven’t started yet. Similar social hobbies/volunteering are great. And for subculture stuff, its just that that’s a really great way to find casual hang out events if you have a subculture you’re interested in. I know goths all over have bar nights, as do plenty of other communities. It just serves as a really quick and easy “hey we have this in common” starter.
When in doubt, look up events happening in your area and check out any that interest you. Chat with folks when you’re at them.
I don’t have much energy to do things outside of work
Nothing else you said matters apart from this. You can’t really make friends when you refuse to do anything where you would meet people or turn colleagues into friends.
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Men aren’t taught how to make and maintain emotionally open friendships,
If this was true… Why is this an issue only now?
Or all these men were lonely in the closet?
I would guess it has something to do with the loss of third places.
That’s definitely a factor… Suburban experiment is objective failure on many levels but it has also to do with cost of being out.
Can’t go to bars or restaurants anymore. Shit is too expensive for normal income person to sustain in any meaningful way.
Also, DUIs but that ties into first point.
A lot of social organizations that men had used started dying. I have a friend who runs a freemason lodge and he struggles to get people to join. Other similar social clubs have also fallen by the wayside. Similarly the decline of long term geographic community has been brutal and people are less likely to get to know their neighbors or become regulars at the local bar.
I see a lot of talk about how women’s liberation and the power to leave a bad marriage has been a component, but I suspect otherwise, having grown up with parents in a failing marriage. I strongly suspect that what a lot of these lonely men need is friends and community in a way that even a loving wife won’t cut it, much less a cold and distant wife and resentful children.
It’s easier to not care about a guy’s mental health when he’s married, even if it’s a shitty marriage. How can he be lonely if he has a wife, after all?
I’m happy for divorces. I’m happy for the increase in male loneliness BEING NOTICED. It used to just be the guy would work all day, or drink himself to death silently, to avoid the issue.
But the next step has to be for guys to be open to make emotional friendships.
Yeah as a woman I see a certain portion of men who seem to want to push resolving male loneliness onto women. But like, we genuinely can only help here. If men want advice from women on how to make friends and find community, we can do that, but like, even if the friends a man makes are women we didnt fix his loneliness, he went out and made friends and was vulnerable and supportive and got supported in kind.
And that’s why the incel culture is so popular. Anytime you have a hard problem, and pitch that it’s someone else’s responsibility to fix, people will love that.
Poor people " just need to work harder", immigrants " just need to come in the right way", women " just need to be less picky", and I don’t have to change or help.
It’s not an issue only now. But we’re more isolated than before because we lost our third spaces and communities. Bunch of lonely wolves.
Yep. Robert Putnam’s book “Bowling Alone” turns 25 this year, and it’s as relevant as ever.
Its gotten worse because women are no longer forced to stay in or get into shitty, unfulfilling marriages. Men before had guaranteed companionship in the sense that it was societally and financially expected for a woman to stay in a relationship and provide emotional (and physical) companionship. With women becoming more independent, they’re able to leave abusive situations or to avoid getting into them in the first place.
Therefore, if men are not socialized to maintain friendships and no one is being forced to emotionally support them anymore, then they are lonely.
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When people have created a narrative that “white x y z men” are responsible for all the evil in the world (I’m exagerating, but you get my drift), it creates a very difficult situation when those people are facing some serious difficulties. The intellectually lazy thing to do in that case is to brush it off or minimize it, like in the ways you’ve described. And unfortunately, that’s the route those same people will take, since identity politics are intellectually lazy (and lacking compassion, but that’s another story).
The unfortunate part of it is that the right has taken advantage of that wide open flank, which is one main reasons we’re in this current clusterfuck.
The comment section here speaks for itself.
These idiots are still doing the culture war when we should be fighting the class war.
Blaming a bunch of 20s something losers for “patriarchy” is peak useful idiot behaviour.
That flank. Sigh. I remember the turn after Occupy. It went from economics to being cool to just broadly bash men. I specifically remember outspoken, angry women at marches and protests and was like wait, where did the economics go? Like 60% of Republicans wanted wealth reform during occupy. It unfortunately coincided with really great–though apparently transitory–improvements in lgbtq rights. It was so weird to me that self-labeling “feminists” were suddenly talking like it was a zero sum game; for women to rise and improve and build and grow, men had to be put down. That is of course the language of someone seeking power, a charlatan, but it became quite normal. Even questioning the broad criticism of men wasn’t appropriate in “liberal” press or circles for a good decade. The whole "yeah but bashing men isn’t right/fair or clumsy” finally started working into the Atlantic, NYT and other large publications in 2023 but the damage had been done.
It of course drove lots of men right to the tall radio, podcasters–and those were young adults then–i can’t imagine what it was like growing up since then as a young person with the normalization of some of this stuff.
It was all intentional. It sounds like a conspiracy theory but these elites have access to how many decades of psychological research (or their employees do at any rate) to be used in marketing to make people think and feel WHATEVER THE POWERFUL WANT to an extent. that’s what marketing is:manipulations. Most of it is used to drive capital upwards. But it can be easily subverted to distract and deflect attention from those at the top. Media would spin pieces about male aggression, algorithms would make sure they get into the right feeds.
It’s all absolutely psychopathic. When done on an entire population, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work very well or works great (people are amazingly easy to manipulate) the average will be a noticeable shift in the direction they intend. Over years, we get fascism. Yaaaayyy…
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Good dog
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Ouch you got me
Hell yeah fight that culture war!
Can we please leave gender war slop back at the old site please?
I think part of it also depends on were you live. Just as a personal experience I live in a very rural part of northern Nevada, I’m born a raised here. The population is about 4k and honestly I would say 90% of the population are hardcore conservatives. Even as a kid I knew that I didn’t fit in with anyone else. I would usually just keep to myself all throughout school and even now as a 42 year old man I barely speak to anyone. It is lonely but the alternative is a no go for me especially now with politics being such a big part of peoples identity.
Cis man here.
It’s an issue. It comes in lots of different colors and flavors but it all stems from social issues.
There’s lots of reasons, some men were never taught about social relationships, men tend to generally be less interested in social interaction thus giving them less experience, some men are ostracized when talking about their social struggles, and these are on top of preexisting environmental factors and preexisting mental conditions.
At this point it’s important to say: it’s not a contest for genders. Trans people have it hard, nb people have it hard women have it hard. It’s just that this is one of the rare times men’s struggles are not addressed properly.
I can tell you I probably have about 50 men in my life that I ko and wo are nice but if I had to talk to a man about my struggles socially, there are 2 men.
Now couple this with the fact 90% of men I had deeper conversations with told me they are struggling with depression and some of them having suicidal ideations, it is fair to assume we have a problem.
For me, the depression is always exacerbated by social isolation. It makes sense - not getting some feedback from other people can get you into crazy headspaces and there are thinking patterms that literally make you hurt yourself just to make it stop.
There’s another aspect: we are social creatures and as soon as you don’t get enough “social exposure” it’s harder to learn social cues and “get the vibe”, and other people notice. So the more you isolate, the harder preceding social interaction become and the harder it is, which in turn incentivizes isolating. A vicious cycle.
Now not everyone has these issues and I would never say that it’s the most important issue in our current society but every time I hear suicide statistics by gender it really puts into perspective that we should get to know those people who we have failed.
One thing I also wanna address is the idea that “men are never taught how to socialize”, because I think it implies a lot of things. First, I’m sure a lot of men are not, but a good number of men are. I was for example. It didn’t help, but that was never the issue for me. Second, it implies men want to be taught. I spoke to a group of 2 men and 2 women with mental disabilities about if they ever considered complete social isolation. The men said yes and the women said no. I think this is really significant and can give insight into why this is affecting men more than other genders. I would infer from this that women always see the benefit in social interaction, and men pursue social interactions rather as a means to an end. This might be a stretch but this supported by other observations of friends and family.
This topic is really important and I hope it gets talked about more - for the benefit of everyone who wants to see people become happier. The men affected by loneliness, as well as the people who deal with them.
men can be very social and still get nothing but negative feedback from others.
a big part of this is that men are rarely given positive feedback in life from anyone. with maybe the exception of your work where your ‘feedback’ is your pay raises/promotions.
personally in my life, when good stuff happens… people arne’t happy for me. They are often jealous or hostile. Most of my exes would downplay my successes. “oh you got a $5000 raise, why wasn’t it 10,000” etc. It really sucks the joy out of life to be around that type of thing. it’s also why i’m way happier being single and limiting my socialization… because i’ve stopped getting constantly negative feedback from other people even when it should be positive. i’ve also had so much more success the past few years due to that.
and frankly, most of the ‘social cues’ and ‘vibe’ that i’ve dealt with in my social groups is all negative crap. i’d rather remain ignorant of it than join some group where we circlejerk how great we are and complain about how awful everyone else is. i used to do a lot of volunteering and a lot of that stuff just devolves into people who want to do nothing and virtue signal.
men tend to generally be less interested in social interaction
Is that the case, because they are men, or because they are afraid?
Piggybacking on this comment: it’s incredibly rare for men to get approached, it’s incredibly common for women to get approached.
Both of these situations have downsides, but right now we are talking about men, so let’s ignore the downsides for women right now.
If you are the one who has to approach somebody if you want to start up any kind of relationship (from casual acquaintance to friend, to romantic relationship), that means you will be on the receiving end of rejection, by definition. If you are in the “approaching” role, and you’d reject somebody, you just don’t approach them. So by definition, it’s quite rare when being approached that you are rejected by the person who approached you.
So while women have to reject a lot of approaches they don’t want, men get rejected quite often. A socially inept woman is a wallflower, a socially inept man is a creep.
If you have been rejected too often (and maybe too harshly), this might easily turn into a sour grapes situation (“I can’t do social interaction, so I don’t want social interaction”) due to fear of rejection.
What you are raising is a very delicate subject but let’s call it what it is: dating sucks. No matter your gender, there’s hurdles, it’s just really hard to find someone who’s putting effort in. If you’re a woman, it’s because lots of people matching you will be absolute garbage. A friend showed me who was writing her and most of it was weird and creepy. If you’re a man, it’s hard to find someone who wants to write with you period. And any other genders deal with an equally limited dating pool.
It makes sense, it’s statistics, mathematically plausible, but damn it sucks. Unfortunately I think we are at the point where these conversation are bound to get eroded by inflammatory rhetoric. So these nuanced discussions are things for the future.
Totally, dating sucks for all genders, no question about that. The issues are just different and pretty much mirrored.
A friend showed me who was writing her and most of it was weird and creepy. If you’re a man, it’s hard to find someone who wants to write with you period.
Yeah, that’s exactly it.
Unfortunately I think we are at the point where these conversation are bound to get eroded by inflammatory rhetoric.
That’s also not wrong.
Tbh, I think the most important thing (not only in regards to dating but in regards to society at large) is to counter the individualization trend. It just makes people very lonely in general. It separates young men from resources needed to develop into more socially acceptable people, it separates people from their support groups in general and it just makes things really hard for everyone who’s not perfectly well adjusted for the individualist life style.
