Why does it seem like so many (young) men these days flock over to types like Andrew Tate?
Why does it seem like so many (young) men these days flock over to types like Andrew Tate?
I keep seeing posts mentioning this phenomenon more and more often.
For instance:
'Andrew Tate phenomena' surges in schools - with boys refusing to talk to female teacher
Like, why? Why now? Why even? I really wish I had a time machine where I could go to the future and ask them what the general reasons were for this social development. But I feel like I'm looking for the specific thorn on a cactus that popped my balloon.
Fyi, not just men, on tinder here i see a scary amount of women, looking for an Andrew Tate kind of guy. And i'm not saying they don't pivk the nice guy and shit, they literally quote Andrew Tate or will only date someone following tateism. I think a lot of it has to do that they don't want to pay for shit and not work, so they loon for that alpha male caregiver. Still weird shit.
Honestly, I think because it's comfortable. Andrew Tate and the like say that there is nothing wrong with you and it's society/women's fault. It doesn't challenge anything, not even the harmful standards for men (ex: High value = certain look/body, status, income, etc.). Dating has gotten harder for men. Women have a lot more options and choices, and I don't just mean in which man to marry, but even if they will marry at all. That means men have to offer more than just being the provider, as many women also have to work. And I don't think we set men up to be good partners. Providers? Sure. But to be caring, empathetic, loving and loved members of society? I don't think so.
I think women need to be taken out of the equation all together when it comes to the male lonilness epidemic because that seems to cause the spiral. If it was focused on how men could foster good relationships, in general, I think it would be better. Focus on how to join/find/form social clubs, make it okay to talk to the boys about how you're feeling, make it okay for them to need help. A lot of articles seems to boil down to more men are single, but I think it should be more of why don't men have friends? If men are single, that means there are single women out there as well, but they don't inspire these posts because women are allowed to foster platonic, deep relationships and we kind of tell me you either get a spouse for that or you just have to deal with it.
Men and women basically make up 50% of the population each, more or less.
As long as we keep trying to blame society’s problem on one sex or the other, we’re never going to solve anything.
I personally think most problems in society, however, are more related to class than either gender or even race. If we can find a way to reduce income inequality (specifically between the rich and the poor) then I honestly think a lot of these issues would work themselves out naturally.
In the 1950s men ruled the home, earned the money, and were kings of their castles. Since then gender rules have been torn up and rewritten. Women have carved out new spaces for themselves with the support of allies. But there hasn't really been a new consensus of what a man's role is any more. The result being that lots of men see their domination being eroded by the new order of things.
Shitstains like Tate prey on this by offering stupid but simple answers or solutions. "It's not your fault that you're a failure, it's the [random mysogenistic term]'s fault. It's them, they've done this to you. They're cheating your out of your rights." It's the same rhetoric as Hitler blaming the Jews and Trump blaming immigrants and Musk blaming the 'woke mind virus'.
It gives young men an out. "This guy's winning at life and owning the [random mysogenistic term]! I should do what he does!"
My guess is hating others for being different is WAY easier than looking inside yourself and learning to forgive and love yourself for all the trauma you've been carrying around.
The USA had expansion as an escape valve for most of its existence. Now that's gone. There's no future. Our politicians don't talk about anything great ahead anymore. The rest of our existence will be capitalism crushing people. Hence, despair and cynicism.
70 years ago a guy could graduate high school, get a job that allowed him to buy a car, buy a home and support a family, including college for his kids. They were too busy living a decent life. Then Reagan and the Republicans came to power.
Now, thanks to the vast economic disparity, guys have a very bleak future that makes them easy targets for hate-blaming almost any group of people except the rich who are responsible for their miserable lives.Lots of stuff. One has to do with modern feminism that has attempted to redefine the female gender role to become more independent and to adopt some traits that were traditionally masculine. This leaves some men clueless in their own identity, as traditional gender roles are a crutch for both women and men to kinda know their place in society. Now women refuse to fit their traditional role, so men have to redefine themselves too instead of relying on how it's been done in previous generations.
This cluelessness is frustrating and we've seen it pop up in different ways in the last decades. However with a more modern image of a woman manifesting, teens who have to figure out anyway who they are in society are affected more, especially young boys who are welcomed to society with no clear "default instructions" because the old gender role is demonized by a society that has largely accepted the new gender role for women, but is still clueless what men are.
Men may be the provider, but women now must be able to work too. Men could be more emotional and may take caregiver jobs, but women are considered better at them anyway and men are not trusted with kids or not taken seriously as caregivers. This is also not easy on women who now have children and need to care about a career. No wonder we have fewer children. And this also gets confusing for young men who go on dates, when they still need to pay for the bill at dates, their income still plays a role, even though women may make a lot of money (or even more than them) too now.
I hope this doesn't read as a rant, because I see feminism as a positive development even though I acknowledge the new challenges it provides.
Based on this background young, impressionable boys are sucked in by social media algorithms and confronted with the frustration and backlash of these men like Tate, that promote a return to the old gender roles. Many things he says could be something they said to your great granddad. Social media also leads to content and community bubbles, which are harder to penetrate for alternative ideas, so once you are "red pilled" you won't get off your track.
Additionally social media is not just content, it also publicizes and quantifies your social status and connections with followers and likes. Social status is hugely important for teens who are looking for their place in society. Even when you move, you don't have a chance to try again with a new group of mates: you still have your account and your status follows you everywhere. This increases the stakes and leads to more extreme behaviors.
I think that's all the reasons I can think off. Sorry it's so long.
Life is hard and confusing. Many people are frustrated with the way that the social landscape has changed: relationships, jobs, and economic prospects have all shifted for the worse in developed countries. Young people are the most affected. Every time this happens, a con artist comes along and starts offering easy answers. Sometimes it's a politician, sometimes it's a religious leader. Nowadays, it's often an influencer.
Tate tells men, "it's not your fault that your life sucks," and he is right (to a point). After all, people who don't own houses can't be blamed for the state of the housing market, right? So who is to blame? According to Trump, it's brown people. According to RFK Jr., it's vaccines or food colouring or some shit. According to Tate, it's women. He tells young men that feminism is surely the reason they are unhappy: the Woke Left is trying to emasculate you! Be an alpha! Follow my simple formula for abusing women and accumulating money and your problems will go away.
Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. This is not a truth that all people can accept. We can fix some of the problems that we are facing, but it will take time, effort, and cooperation. In the meantime, many men are comforted by Tate's message: women are the reason you are unhappy, and everything can be fixed by returning them to bondage! If you are very young (or just a little stunted), this message is much more palatable than the admittedly challenging option of actually fixing things.
It’s because many young people are not very media literate.
They aren’t aware that an algorithm pipeline is funneling them into being monetized by “men’s rights alpha male” bullshit.
On the playground kids would follow other kids who they felt were confident or charismatic, not who had the best ideas or were most concerned with fairness or equity. It's just childish, naive notions of importance that are leaking out into the broader society due to social media, culture of celebrity, etc.
It's what uneducated men do when they end up making society so hostile to women that women don't want to date anymore.
A more extreme version of this happened durning the Arab Spring.
Something I rarely see brought up is specifically the edgelord to right wing pipeline. When I was a kid, it was essentially standard for any boy online to try to be super edgy. Adolescents and teens just have a natural urge for rebellion.
The problem comes when kids think edgy and shock value humor is their favorite thing, but more mature online users reject that behavior and exclude these kids. These kids feel misunderstood and are drawn to figures and role models that accept what they like.
I’ve met a bunch of younger, “conservative”, incel types recently and they’ve all been edgelords who found their own little community instead of growing up. They largely have no ideology in the beginning but slowly absorb manosphere bullshit and over time they become less “ironic”.
The thing that got me to stop being edgy was joining the swim team and having my friend group go from edgelords to gay swimmers. I developed a ton of respect for them and they were my teammates; it completely changed my mind without me having to “conform” to the things I wanted to rebel against. I don’t really know how to get that across to some many kids that get sucked up into this madness though.
Lack of father figures mixed with a regressive world that is admittedly going to shit, whereas millennials and genx were raised thinking they'd be something, with teen angst and rebellion also in the mix. Don't forget a heaping-helping of Hollywood and mainstream media taking a focus entirely away from men in the last 20 years and replacing it with nothing. Fill in the voids with some toxic masculinity influencers and shake vigorously...
And there you have it, a misogynist that blames everyone else for their problems, with a good chunk of those problems actually being valid.
Weak fathers, in the sense that the recent generations have been abandoned and ignored a lot more. Turns out that is on par with fucking beating your kids. At least the boomers got attention from their fathers.
How to deal with women and sexuality from a young male perspective is practically impossible in modern society without a good role model for how to approach the reality of certain issues revolving the truth that men and women are equal and at the same time the young males have much more strength, while the girls have other ways of being mean, that are perceived as being not regulated as harshly, and that's glossing over so many other significant biological differences. The conflicting messages feels unfair to them, loneliness in this as well as a lack of belonging will more often than not become unbearable if they don't find guidance.
That's my view of the issue at least. It is redicilously easy to grift these young men, that yearns for answers surrounding sexuality and relationship with the other sex (to be clear, for hetero young males that are developing or adults with stunted development) that anyone can learn the cultures' accumulated trigger words and key issues that appeal to their supposed inner private pain, can be predated with little effort. They don't care or know it's shared with so many boys and adults, that a grifter can basically trawl bountifully for men that feel this way, and once you have "vibe" by appealing to these, you can then elevate yourself to an iron man role model by lying that you get women often by being in a certain way. (Not surprisingly, the mindset is flawlessly unsuccessful with women.)
The absolute truth is that all women like different kinds of men just as men like different women, and to be anything but you leads to extreme stress and in this case potentially wasting years or decades on some testosterone fever dream that never existed. The allure for a man or boy in this state can become so strong that, not unlike with traditional "pick up artists" and other forms of grifting, conspiracies and cults, it just does not matter that most know it is a lie, or if people submit evidence to that end. It's because these people do not connect with the young male and provide lasting guidance to replace their fears, which are very hard to uncover because of the vulnerability issues (more on this later).
If I could say something to these young or adult men suffering I would say, imagine you did succeed to become an "alpha", hustle your ass off and become rich and get women. If they can imagine it, they must realise that at that point, you will be utterly sad. Worn, tired, bored, and the women, every single one you "caught" don't like you. You will have no friends. Nobody enjoys your company for who you are, but for a formula sold to you as a male peak. The pinnacle of self realisation and real relationships can only come with being you, including flaws and therefore accentuating your strengths. Real strengths. Strength that is effortless. The real peak is becoming more you, and severely fuck the rest. The girls (but this also holds for all relationships, however their attachment model may not be ready yet) that like what you are, no matter anything else in the universe, will love you for it almost no matter what, because you didn't sell a lie to them. This wonderfully includes people that aren't attracted or even those that don't enjoy the things you do.
And this means; be vulnerable. That is why all grifters focus on stigmatizing and burying any vulnerability in everyone around them, even belittling honesty. It's partially a defence mechanism for most, but a few actively protect the communities by making sure this is simultaneously frowned upon, but also met with respect, so that none of the initiates see through the lies in the surrogate father system and realise the complete farce that they are subjected to. For adults that have matured sufficiently (and therefore also most young women) these role models in incel, red pill and alpha cultures are instantly recognised as people with deep insecurities and ridiculed. That is an easily deflected commentary by appealing to jealousy. It comes naturally because jealousy is the hook for the entire grift and the irony in this case is almost guaranteed to fall on deaf ears. These role model grifters that are elevated in the social hierarchy of these communities are usually men that have elected to not mature past this barrier, mainly because of how painful it is, and can therefore sell this scam even for free and proliferation of these ideas strengthen the bond between those caught in the more specific mind traps that flourish in these spaces.
For the people that mature in the role, often they separate immediately, or become ostritized for their ideas. For the few but continuously revolving grifters themselves, if they don't leave at a big moment of realisation, it is certain to become very tiring to keep the mask on for work, and they are eventually exposed as betas or similar "them" keyword, and ejected for something they let slip or that was gleaned. Most of the communities are held up in a cycle of new initiates and old mentors, while a few grifters make their livelyhood on it. It has a high rate of rejects and new initiates that makes it a hydra for anyone looking to slay these ideas.
Once our society emerge with more accurate labels for these types of grifts (such as "red pill" "incel" and others), we coin vocabulary terms useful to more accurately describe and identify the phenomenon in conjunction with the concepts themselves and hopefully it leads to (as can be seen with the explosive growth and decline of "pick up artists") the concurrent amount of trapped boys decrease over time before we can see it settle as a sub community of less importance. In earnest I don't see it going away completely but linger and flare up periodically with new mutations of the same age old "pick up artist" young male loneliness appeal, since it is a inherent to teenage and young men loaded with testosterone and for many that also never found guidance even as adults. Yet it may with time get called out for what it is and met with compassion to finally remove it from main culture where I think many agree it have overstayed its welcome.
With education, it can be eradicated just like many many other forms of gifting. Social awareness on both general and individual levels should also be of deep benefit to the men that find themselves without belonging and holding very confusing and burdensome feelings and thoughts. If we can connect and empathise with them we can give them more genuine advice that stays with them their entire lives. The inherent tough nut with this type of rite of passage for young men is that compassion and forgiveness is both not appealing and also not exactly the first thing most feel when confronted with an insecure alpha male clocking their feathers. It becomes a self feeding loop as they are very similar to each other in this experience, especially for people that has lacking relationships with their male role models or with the other sex or peers.
It is identifiable by the traits that are the same with the mentor figures in red pill communities, acting tough, closing off relationships, hustling and adhering to early first century standards for social hierarchy. These traits are apparently for some reason inherently more attractive to adopt to a developing individual that has elevated testosterone, and when the individual choice is between asking for guidance and meet their pain and fear vs binging red pill content on YouTube and bonding with similarly outcast lost boys on discord.
The path of least resistance wins out when this category of developing man meets the need for belonging and thirst for relationship advice that resonates with their specific trials and questions which, at that point is honestly quite disturbing to most adults. I hope this message can find someone that needs it, hope you are doing great and looking forward to the future. Cheers
The Innuendo Studios series' on YouTube Alt-Right Playbook and Why Are You So Angry especially illustrate this well and I highly recommend watching. It's very similar to what happened during gamergate. A lot of men who are frustrated are misled by these reactionary campaigns. Just like everyone else, they face the struggles of patriarchy, toxic masculinity, capitalism, etc. But Andrew Tate tells them it's not their fault, and reassures their insecurities that they're good guys, and tells them that the problem is women.
How do people learn how to parent teenagers these days?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I'd abstract it to "losers in a shameless culture".
Generally our society would have time to correct itself and face saving would be important enough to contain the losers in their own circles. However the current western culture is completely shameless and incredibly fast meaning that being a loser is kinda ok and easily justifiable. This leads to a bunch of losers getting together and cognitive dissonance themselves into some sort of dumb pointless ideology that's wouldn't be sustainable otherwise. Add money into the mix and you've got yourself real growth.
I lived in Japan for a while and still come back there every now and then and its such a good illustration of this concept. It's an extreme face saving culture. So you have this Tate-like world of Japanese incels hiding under internet anonymity but if you are not Japanese you will never see this because the losers are contained as they'd never dare to display themselves in public.
That being said, I'm quite optimistic and I think cancel culture and western face will come back from the current slump and restore some balance eventually.
From around 2022 until just recently YouTube Shorts was heavily pushing Tate on me (an almost 50 year old man).
No matter how many times I disliked and/or blocked the poster, the YouTube algorithm just kept throwing more Tate at me. I don't know what I did to make YouTube think I'd be interested in that clown.
On the plus side, it made me a lot more aware of what's going on, hence my efforts to get Google out of my life. I can spot someone trying to manipulate me, but I have young sons who might not.
Young men have problems in their lives, like everyone else does, maybe less, maybe more than other groups in society but that does not matter because for them it's the most vivid problems. He talks to specifically them and their problems.
I don't know how the media in your country sounds*, but here every time there is an issue discussed it tends to be: women, minorites, whatever have a problem, men are the problem.
If the mainstream does not talk about young men's issues, you will hand over the attention of young men to someone who does.
*In a news article, or a political speech try switching the word man/woman black/white immigrant etc for their opposite. Some of them sound absolutely absurd when you do.
Hasn't this always been the case? Men flocking to an idolized image of masculinity with a sense of superiority over women?
Who else is talking to them?
I think at some point in time, I might have been a little bit more susceptible to this. I've had a very hard time getting a girlfriend, in part because of a terrible dating sphere - ironically, very much caused by rapists like Andrew Tate. So really, the men frustrated by lack of attention should be blaming Andrew Tate, not worshipping him, but the same situation is true for, say, businesses suffering from government regulation joining lobbying groups, etc.
Loneliness combined with the requisite image of male strength kind of forces people to either admit to being a loser, or "taking charge" in a way that demonizes the rest of the world. Being turned down repeatedly denies them a lot of power, so they're eager to steal some back in any way they can, even if it's for a cause that doesn't actually help them.
As for why I never fell in there; I had good parents, and a financial cushion. If I was always starved for cash, chances are mental stress like that might've actually pushed me into very poor choices.
I think its because, to an extent, masculinity has been villainized, and people who are masculine (in appearance, identity or desire to be traditionally masculine) naturally look for people that pretend to value them.
This combined with reduction or even removal of shop classes, reduced PE, recess and physical activities in school, female teachers now far outnumbering male teachers, and strict attitude towards typical male behavior can easily build a huge amount of resentment in young men. Most public schools now are heavily tailored towards female students.
Doing normal boy stuff, like roughing each other up and messing with your friends got me and other boys detention, and it felt extremely unfair.
I could be wrong but I think it's the end result of hyper-competitive free market capitalism and social media algorithms that boost outrage content. The rise of neoliberalism and globalization in the 90s led to a rise in high-paying executive positions in the corporate world. Just one problem: there's only a finite amount of those positions to go around. This creates a environment of competition and many don't make the cut. Business education is expensive and connections are hard to come by. This left many talented men unable to get not even decent paying, let alone high-paying, jobs that would allow them to advance in life.
The rise of mainstream social media platforms in the 2010s also gave a voice to misogynistic and reactionary content. Men who wouldn't have been exposed to such content otherwise were now inundated with creators telling them (falsely) that the world was against them. At first, it wasn't much of a problem. Take fitness Youtube for example. It was mostly educational content about things like growing a certain muscle group and increasing one's 1RPM. Think of guys like Scooby1961 and Scott Herman. Rarely was there outrage content associated with fitness content. Guys like the Hodge Twins and the more overtly right-wing Golden One were the rare exemptions. Little did we know that the rare exemptions would be the progenitors of the 'manosphere' (i hate that term). Sometime during the late 2010s and early 2020s (I forget we're halfway into the decade), 'gym bro' content merged with reactionary content. This meant that any guy who was looking for content to help them with their physical health and physique were suddenly recommend videos by the likes of Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan. Couple this with my previous paragraph, a decrease in critical thinking skills and media literacy and you have a perfect (shit-)storm.
There were also two smaller factors: Gamergate and increased mobility of women in Western, liberal democracies.
I'm not to rehash the entire history of Gamergate here but, needless to say, it brought out a lot of ugly characters. Carl Benjamin, Rageaholic and Thunderf00t being prime example. Bogus yet widely believed conspiracy theories like Cultural Marxism were touted as being responsible for all of society's ills.
As for women's increased mobility, this actually predates the internet. Women were taking birth control, pursing education and careers, having more causal sex and thus were less focused on domestic affairs and institutions like the church or the mosque. But with the rise of misogynistic/sexist and anti-feminist voices online, women's freedoms were caught in the crosshairs.
Ultimately, you have to remember that Andrew Tate and his ilk insert themselves into otherwise innocuous content (gaming, fitness, self-improvement, etc.) and exploit a volatile time in our shared history. They want to create an environment of discontent. They want us direct our anger and disillusionment to the wrong target. Whether they're true believers of their own output and simply grifting, I don't know but it's had devastating consequences.
It's a combination of them being young and dumb, but also being brought up mind-fucked by social media from the beginning of their lives.
Were you not young before/after the start of the internet? Not trying to be snarky, it's more trying to understand perspective.
I could have been MAGA, no question. Here's my anecdote: (edit: too lazy to correct so please don't pay close attention to the tense of my words here, I was partially speaking from the perspective of being a kid again but I didn't stay consistent)
- been a loner irl. Not that many friends
- most of my friends are online
- most of my friends say offensive stuff and while I don't really mean things (at first) I want to fit in
- this can spiral pretty easily with a bunch of kids. And it did. I've said my fair share of atrocious things online that I wish I could take back
- as a youngster, 20+ years ago, as a loner/nerd if I'm not playing games, I'm (probably) watching YouTube or anime. Rarely hangin with friends
- now as someone who's book smart(well, on some things, ofc), but especially at this point has absolutely 0 like street smarts & real people skills? Hooked into conspiracies.
I grew up in a diverse area, so I've really never believed in racist stuff. Those kind of conspiracies I used to just handwave the racism stuff away cause it wasn't the important stuff to me that I did kind of believe in. I literally even used to watch some of Alex Jones conspiracy videos.
Really easy to get lost in this crap as a teenager alone at 4am.
Like I said I grew up in a diverse area, and in one of my first real relationships, I got a lot of pushback about certain things (I was kinda blue lives matter for a bit for example) and when that ended, one of the big things I took from it was I wanted to be a more accepting person, and I've been an increasingly-raging leftist ever since.
With the rising loneliness epidemic (which actually extends to both genders - EVERYONE is increasingly isolated) I can only imagine this sort of story is increasingly common. And not everyone comes to the same conclusions about wanting to be more accepting, etc.
I was very lucky to go through those experiences and learn what I did from it. There's probably another universe where I instead got increasingly angry & further into all those things - from the cruel & crass words to the conspiracies - and am wearing a red hat
🤮🤮 at the thought of that
Part of it is that women have achieved an educational level as a group that allows them to make better choices. They no longer have to choose which is the nicer wife beater in their town.
The incels seem to have a problem with this. The idea of having to compete based upon personality, likability and in general the ability to treat another person as a human being bothers them.
It's not complicated. They're horny and frustrated that they can't get a woman to be interested in them. Tate tells them it's not their fault and that the blame lies with women and society, allowing them to not feel shitty about themselves or make any effort to improve.
This is an opinion from someone who used to work as a children's teacher after college in 2016:
We socialize our young men in spaces that only promote competition; sports, gaming circles, schools. The way that they interact with other children and the world in turn is one of competition and selfishness.
The way our modern families are structured give less freedom to our children to find meaningful friendships with boys and girls. social relationships have become more distanced, not just because of the internet. It's just the rapid pace in which we live today.
They come in contact with porn at very young ages, some of them way before building meaningful friendships or relationships with girls. Pornography is a very cold and blunt product; It has a tendency to skew perceptions of what sentimental relationships are and it creates distorted expectations for sex. It gets worse for young generations that find it difficult to distinguish reality from fiction. I've talked to young men who only see relationships and sex from the filters of pornography and this is very concerning. To make matters worst. A lot of adults also have this optic. Middle aged men that have very little experiences with committed relationships friendly or intimate and pass down their skewed point of view to younger generations.
Our social media and political discourse promote atomization and alienation; it is easier to find things you disagree with other people than things in common. This was made by design. Division creates a passionate voters and consumers. young men and women are in the crossfire.
With this in mind; It is very profitable to become a social media grifter like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and so on. There is a large market for easy answers that take the blame elsewhere. I also feel these grifters find funding easily. I don't think internet misogyny is at all grassroots, but there are a lot of right wing thinktanks and foundations that move money to boost voices that create this type of division. It's not new and young men are particularly susceptible in a time with so much economical uncertainty because society tends to put a lot of expectations on them.
Countries that avoid to regulate their media are very susceptible to astroturfed political division. And when dealing with propaganda, adolescents are an ideal target. It turns out you tube and social media did not bring us a golden era of democratized education but instead an easy access to our children by malignant actors. And in countries like the US where any type of media regulation is considered "doing a comulism" attacking children with propaganda is a feature of the system, not a bug.
That's what happen when identity politics mark a group as less important and the enemy.
It happens when right wing do identity politics an the marginalized minorities group together against it.
Left wing for some reason decided to use exactly the same strategy as the right wing and took identity politics as a way to do politics and they are having exactly the same result. The "marginalized" identity turned against them.
Surprised Pikachu face.
The algorithms in social media, media platforms, and search engines are all designed to keep users engaged so that ad revenue can be generated and user data can be harvested.
Adding to that, a lot of these misogynistic creators leverage predatory practices that manipulate marginalized people into sycophantcy.
When this and other factors come together, we wind up with mindless drones which are easily manipulated, constantly angry, and always searching for a way to "get back" at those that who marginalized them.
I feel like there is also a pathologization of being single. I was a teenager in the late 90s/early 2000s, so before most of social media. I'm also from a village where most people knew each other.
There were a couple of nerdy, shy guys who never had a girlfriend by the time of graduation. I only had one boyfriend at 16 for 2 month before his friend told me he was only dating me as a dare. I was "ugly" and "not a real girl" because I didn't wear makeup and mostly wore jeans and Tshirts. Stupid village kids.
Anyway, similar things happened to the nerdy guys. But no one started crying about all men/women being awful and no one became an incel. Several girls and boys in my class never dated by the time we graduated and that just wasn't a big deal. Nowadays everybody's being told there's something wrong with them if they've never had a partner by age 17.
It used to be that women couldn't open their own bank accounts. Depending on how far back you go, they couldn't even own property. In this context, women really needed to get married if they wanted to do anything. For this and many other reasons, the bar was lower, men could get married with less effort. Nowadays women can do anything and the only reason for them to want a man is if they want to, so you actually have to put in effort now.
Also, gender roles are changing and there's no clarity as to what being a man is supposed to mean in 2025. If it's not protecting and providing, if it's not dying in war, then the purpose of men is undefined as of now, and there's a tendency to want to return to the older gender roles.
And late capitalism is stressful, and men aren't going to college as much these days. There's lots of reasons but this is what i can remember in five minutes
Insecurity exacerbated by the rise of social media. It's really easy for impressionable teens (not just them, but they are the most vulnerable group) to be affected directly by the consequences of social media. Toxic masculinity allows them to fall into the andrew tate trap because it tells them that this is the easy solution to the insecurities they face. I'd argue covid also made this problem worse as well
I feel like there's always been a culture of boys and young men who didn't respect women, there's just never been podcasters actively promoting it.
The internet allows idiots to broadcast their message worldwide and social media promotes the most controversial stuff in order to drive engagement and, more recently, to promote a culture war that keeps the populus divided.
One teacher said she’d had 10-year-old boys “refuse to speak to [her]…because [she is] a woman”
Does this come from Tate? This could also be a child from a family with partiarchal values. Tate is not the only source of influence. But one incident shouldn't be part of an article because it is an exception.
What is the general reason for social development? The elite is creating the cirucumstances for change. Why? Divide and conquer.
On an individual level, masculinity makes sense because going to the gym and being confident makes life much more simple than trying to feel compassion with everybody. For boys, masculinity is the common denominator among all cultures. So in a multicultural society, that's what is going to be established as the fused culture of the next generation.
Girls have the same problems, but their answer, being pretty and doing makeup, doesn't cause trouble and is thus ignored.
To change this, new forms of education must be developed because math and geography don't teach the necessary skills to deal with this complex world.
This video by Jimmy The Giant explains it better than I can in words.
I can't help but feel that the amount of people following the likes of Tate did not change much, they just got an opportunity to get more vocal, being less afraid of a pushback.
They are a now vocal minority, similar to how there was a rise in Neo-Nazi speech, for example.
A lot of young men are lacking role models and community these days.
More kids are growing up without fathers around now (single parenthood is up from 9% in the 1960s to about 25% today).
Most people's source of community used to be church, but since the advent of the internet, people are rapidly moving away from organized religion. I think this has disproportionately impacted men, who tend to be less social on average.
And I think in general, a lot of young men feel like nobody cares about their personal struggles.
So, even some toxic dude like Andrew Tate can show up and say "Hey, you're great. Here are the reasons why things are bad for you and what you should do, and here's a community of like-minded people to interact with." and these guys are going to dive in head first.
Same reason people flocked to Trump to vote for him, this false idealization that he was this bold, bright and strong leader.
Same reason people worshiped Musk, thinking he was and is the future with all of the money to do it.
It's like any or all qualities of themselves that they lack or devoid of educating themselves or learning. They replace it with blind devotion.
Because positive masculinity doesn't get clicks like toxic masculinity does, sadly. No shortage of examples of the latter, but there just aren't enough examples of healthy manhood out there to learn from, or at least not enough ones in the algorithms.
What's worse, in so many cases it's assumed that positive masculinity just means being receptive, sensitive, collaborative and being connected with others. These are qualities that are typically associated with women, and a lot of guys shun anything that might make them "look like a woman". Then it's assumed, more or less, that you'll need to be more like a woman in order to not be toxic.
Obviously not true, but this leaves young men in a vacuum. So they fail to live up to their potential, plus they lose out on relationships, are isolated from their peers who could steer them in a better direction, and are without a secure sense of self.
So, in come the Andrew Tates of the world to give them a seemingly easier and better way to cope. Sure, they're told they're special, but then they're fed the notions like "might is right", that there are only winners and losers in this world, and to "get the prom queen". Not wanting to miss out on this is incredibly enticing for these young men, so the manosphere sucks them right in.
It's gotta so, so much deeper than just changing the messaging. Positive male role models and helping young men understand who they are, creating healthy examples of masculinity that are both manly and positive, can make a difference. Without that, the far-right black hole that is the manosphere is going to keep getting more young men trapped in it.
Part of it is that propaganda works. A lot of people are trying to make fascism happen and this type of content fits right in.
But also, there's a growing issue of men not knowing how to act around women, and there isn't much non-misogynist competition for Tate. It seems like for a lot of people (both men and women) it's harder to make personal connections these days than it used to be, and apps like Tinder exarcerbate the issue.
My guess is that the internet connects them to like minded misogynists, then it’s just a big women hating circle jerk that perpetuates the reason they got into it in the first place: women dislike them, because they are misogynists.
Social medias thrive on engagement, and controversial content is king of engagement.
So social medias companies push content like Andrew Tate and co because it makes them money and they don't care about anything else.
Young people are impressionable, and they get pushed that crap over and over.
If everyday of your life you get told that women are just baby factories, you will eventually start to believe it, some sooner than others.
Some backward guys can't cope with women thinking for themselves, and long for the "good old times" when a wife 100% depended on her husband.
Any idiot promising to bring those "good old times" back will find interested listeners among this crowd.
If I were female, I would run for the hill if I noticed someone with interest in Tate's fairy tales.
The world around them is collapsing. Tate promises to have the solution. For whatever reason, his solution makes sense to them. So they follow him.
Unimpressive men who have exhausted all other ways to gain social status except by force, resort to forcibly gaining status.
I'm a 50+ dude, married for 25+years and I have no idea who this Andrew Tate is nor who young men identify to nowadays (I wanted to be Michel Strogoff and an astronaut and Maria Callas too, as a little boy) but I would say that it was enough for me to read some of the comments (way too many of them) in this discussion to get a pretty good glimpse of what may be causing such a split. At least partly.
Could it be that young men and teens are growing tired of being told they're a threat (to women, when it's not to the whole society) or, when they're not a threat that they still are a nuisance, just because they have a dick and because that dick may sometimes grow bigger and harder when they feel attracted to another person?
My childhood was what today's press would call 'traumatizing' (and not just once, mind you) but at the very least I did not grew up afraid of my dick getting hard because I was attracted to someone. And I was never too afraid to ask that person if they felt the same interest and if they would be willing in exploring it further together (more often than not, I was being told 'no').
For the rest, one simply needs to add a lot of partisanship, militant certainties and self-proclaimed righteousness with hordes of so-called experts and journalists that have no clue what their job is supposed to be about (hint: it's not about making the buzz and not about collecting page views, or Likes) and then, on top of that, add a handful of smart-ass people (some real assholes too) that want to profit from all that stupidity that is raging-on everywhere, in every 'camp'.
It's easy to tell people, boys and girls alike, what they want to hear and nothing but what they want to hear. That they're right, that they're great and that the other group is just assholes that hate them. And to profit out of that.
It's so easy that I'm seriously starting to wonder if the next generation or maybe the one after them will still be able and willing to make love or even just to enjoy some intimate good time together, and to make babies by themselves? Maybe I should invest a few cents in whatever startup will undoubtedly show-up and try to profit from that situation. Pretty sure I would make a fortune...
Sad times, indeed. I will go make some coffee and pour a cup for both my spouse and I.
Edit 1h later: you're welcome to downvote till the end of times if that helps you feel any 'righter' in your opinions, or if it helps you think you're punishing me (really?) but may I remind you that without any explanation no amount of downvote will help me understand any better why you disagree with what I wrote. Also, I won't be able to read or contribute any further to this very interesting exchange we've had so far as I'll leave for a long walk to and back from a tiny bookshop that is set nearby the Seine. A real nice shop and a real nice and long walk which means that, taking into account the fact I will probably spend some time there chatting with the lady owner (there are much are closer bookshops to our place, like a lot closer, but I really like how she works and how she really cares to help customers find the right book for them and not just try to shove them whatever the latest trendy book is and be done with them. So, I shop at her place). Considering all of that, I shouldn't be back before at least 3 hours. PS: our cup of coffee was great.
Why? Simple. Young men now have to compete for the attention of women in a way that they never did. In times past, if there was competition for a woman's attention or time, it was with another man - someone they saw as an equal, a better, or someone to be defeated. Now the competition is with the woman herself. It's not just a matter of putting on the act of shaving, buying a suit, going to church, spending time with her instead of sporting events, and so forth - for the purpose of courtship only. Most of that could be shut off immediately after the marriage license was signed and the rest after the birth of the first child.
Generally speaking, society is applauding women for competing with men like that, and telling men that they have to 'be better' - while not giving clear objectives on what "better" is. Add to that ongoing social friction (especially now after the lockdowns), and the situation for many young men is looking rather bleak.
Along comes Andrew Tate (and a slew of other MR activists), who tell these disappointed, depressed guys that what they're experiencing is not their fault (which is what they already believe, but are afraid to say). They provide clear, simple answers - do this, achieve that. And it works, especially the basic things. Why wouldn't they listen to people who tell them that they're not the problem? Or who tells them what they can do to solve the problem? Of course young men listen to it and heed it. But because they're so caught up in a cult of personality, they don't know how to speak a new, less toxic voice into existence.
We live in online world that normalises abusing women gamers on Twitch, DM-ing women in order to hit on them and/or attack them on Insta or whatever, that considers sites like 4chan legitimate humour and where a web search for something like a gym membership can bombard you with scum like Tate.
Add to that the hit that people's socialisation skills took during lockdown, governments around the Westernised world normalising hate and violence as legitimate ways to get what you want and then dangle in front of them the fictional lives influencers flaunt on Instagram, TikTok etc and tell them they too could have that life if they do this that and the other oh and by the way, its totally fine to abuse women to prove your masculinity because you, as a man, are owed sex by women.
All these reasons like 'men are lonely', 'gender roles are different' - yeah they play a part but lets not pretend this shit hasn't been coming for a long time and men being sad they have less role models is no excuse for the rationalisation of violent hate that's on display.
Social media algos are creating this. This is why a lot of 20-38 year old young boys are turning to conservatism. This is how the rich wealthy elites are overthrowing the last few remaining democries. UK is currently their main target. They were successful with Germany and they are now expading. In 3-6 years, the world will have completely shifted to the right.
Lack of healthy father figure, lack of social exposure, lack of success with women, lack of constructive rolemodels (people like tate replace constructive rolemodeks), lack of empathy through lack of life experience/social exposure, lack of introspection, lack of proven confidence (craving for outside approval/desire to compensate for perceived own shortcomings)
All of these possibly enable, enforce, or worsen each other
I'd argue there's a niche that's not being filled by standard community interactions in regards to learn how your society thinks you should act, and that's where the scum starts crawling in. These guys wouldn't have an audience without there being a pre-existing market for their bullshit.The pipeline starts really early now as well with kids being allowed on the internet, and it's just so fucking disheartening. I got a lot of bullshit fed into me when I was younger, but I can't imagine how much gets directly beamed into your brain nowadays.
Another possible reason may be online dating.
Most people use online dating. Average looking men have very low chances to get a match because of : The much lower number of women on these platforms compared to men; which leads to the logical consequence of men lowering standards to increase their chances of getting a match; which of course leads to women being more selective causing a feedback loop that compounds on itself. So only the highly attractive men get a lot of likes and this leads to them being promiscuous which makes women think all men are assholes. And because finding a date is easy for women it's also very easy to ghost men for the smallest things.
And this whole system is also propped up by the Match group which owns all major dating apps in order to squeeze out as much as they can out of desperate people, basically monetizing loneliness.
When you swipe and swipe for months and only get one date and get ghosted right after, you start to devalue yourself, what other explanation can there be except that as a man you are horrible. And you spiral into depression and blame yourself (when in fact the whole system is wrong and is bad for both men and women).
Then suddenly comes a macho man who tells you that women are the problem, that it's not you (and that they also have courses to sell that will make you finally get women), of course you're gonna believe him, finally a way out of depression. A wrong way, a shitty way, but a way nonetheless.
These people are hurt and are acting out in the wrong way, leading to more hurting. And people like Andrew Tate are getting rich off of it.
PS: A long time ago OkCupid had you answering between 20 and a few hundreds of questions, plus answers you'd expect from your potential partner, plus how important that question is for you; and then it would show you a list of matched in order of compatibility. It was amazing. (but it got bought out by Match and turned into a tinder clone).
Because it's all too easy to abdicate responsibility, let other people look after you and be a shit. If we empower any sort of crappy behaviour, that behaviour grows.
The world is falling appart around us. Men don't have community, often lack education and don't see a real future anyway.
Two of the most obvious results of this are loneliness and lack of opportunity. Andrew Tate and many of the other right wing grifters flaunt having (at least superficially) both of these in spades. Its no wonder that those who are desperate or stupid (or both) would follow him.
Stupidity
I think there's a great podcast you should listen to called Weird Little Guys. You can find it at the bottom of this site https://www.coolzonemedia.com/shows/
If you're on mobile the direct link is here
Lonely men trying to find agency, power and meaning has a long history. It's the nucleation point that keeps the patriarchy alive and well. The fix is simple, reduce income inequality, allow for third spaces in society, allow for all citizens to have a 40 hour week (32 hours would be even better) to allow for proper child care, and finally fund schools to a level where educated professionals want to work and teach.
All of those are counter to capitalism though, so we get "a male loneliness epidemic" which is really just media profiting off of lonely, bored, maladjusted teens and those with arrested development that never evolved past age 16.
Here's a prime example of a weird little guy from the late 1700s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_de_Maistre
When some group is trying to manipulate people, they don't just boost content from that topic, they generate fake 2nd hand interest. Fake 3rd hand interest. They aren't trying to boost it a little bit, they're trying to create an artificial fad. Create the fake appearance of a whole social movement happening that you just happened to stumble upon. When people want to manipulate a whole society, manipulate their culture, in ways that sew distrust and divisions and make it self distrust, they do this to people like him. He's probably getting boosted by Russia just as Trump removed all the protections against Russia tampering and influencing American social media. His message is hateful and harmful and pro far right, which is exactly where the interests of Russia and maga align. You could be part of a Russian farm trying to spread the message for all I know. The targeted payload of influence you're trying to spread isn't "Andrew Tate good" the message is "lots of people are paying attention to Andrew Tate." The thing is i never hear shit about Andrew Tate. I hear people saying "other people are paying attention to this." And I'm taking the bait by even responding to this when I know it's better to just ghost and ignore things like this.
I really wish I had a time machine where I could go to the future and ask them what the general reasons were for this social development.
I think I had this exact thought yesterday. In the past, there's been hints that appear within just a few months if you're looking.
Most of the explanations posted aren't very convincing. If it's just a daddy figure or toxic masculinity or just personal affirmation that's not new and should have applied all along. The YouTube algorithm could be part of it, but then you just get a question about why the YouTube algorithm was pushing that.
A random theory, just based on something I read recently: looksmaxxing is becoming a big thing, which is itself a sign of equality in that the burden for being attractive is now going both ways. Paradoxically, the new cohort of men with body image issues is very vulnerable to radicalisation by the manosphere.
It'd be kind of surprising if that was the whole thing, though...
https://mediachomp.com/teenage-boys-being-indoctrinated-online/
Edit: I'd imagine the issue is exacerbated by the ease with which every flavor and speed of pornography over broadband internet is available to auto-objectify women, misdirect post-auto-orgasm oxytocin, and misrepresent intimacy.
Men need a daddy figure.
I blame the algorithms. This shit is oushed in front of impressionable young men's faces by most social media algorithms because it drives (toxic) engagement. Others have already described why it's appealing.
This shit has always existed but it's given a soap box because corporate wants number to go up, and sadly parents these days leave parenting up to social media so they don't teach them that these views are abhorrent.
Because we are in a culture war and most people are dumb as fuck mass-produced NPCs in a rotten society but think they're low-key geniuses.
Lack of education (and a university degree changes nothing) which ends in a lack of critical thinking. The causes are deeper than "it's the economy", "they are delusional", "social media", even if social media is bad for critical thinking. You still have to educate yourself in many fields to develop your cognitive capabilities, and this from a young age.
Going outside, playing with a stick and a rock, develops your brain. You're the actor of your life. A smartphone screen puts the kid in a passive state.
But it would be too easy to blame just this. It's more than one factor. This politics of doom scrolling serves an economical purpose. The economy is over wellbeing. More and more norms are put on the human being, alienating them.
Masculinism is a simple theory, solution, to a more complex issue. Humans like these simple answers.
We have to address these multiple dots connected to each other's. It's not just masculinity, it's the society in which we want to live.
I've never met any who do