Yeah and the reason young men are finding it hard to have real life friends and end up on uncle forums is because we lost most of our “third spaces” thanks to them not making money and shutting down or being underfunded or closed if they were publicly owned.
Ontop of this the constant algorithms that push specific topics to people over and over due to it keeping them on the platform and therefore generates income.
It does feel like 75% of this problem could be fixed by stopping corporate greed and fixing our local communities as whole.
I went to a Humans vs. Zombies Nerf war at a university campus a few weeks ago. A couple hundred people, real strong mix of men, women, and others. A healthy mingling of people who were clearly gun hobby adjacent and a lot of openly queer folk, which I think is really quite encouraging to see. Everyone had a good time, no issues the whole day. Good vibes all around.
At the end of the event, the student organizers tearfully announced that the school administration had decided to ban all blaster events on campus going forward. Fuck us all for trying to have a healthy good time, right?
No, they weren't. Class was much more important. There was no class climbing prospect. You either were born into a having family or you weren't. Even amongst peasants, men weren't suppose to "have a career" or a prospect. You inherited whatever your family had.
There was expectations of performance, of course. There was internal competition, but no peasant would ever realistically transform into nobility via merit or otherwise.
Those ignorant of history forget that our current worldviews and values weren't always universal. The notion of a linear career, of having prospects, to be successful, to grow from a low place and climb the social and financial rings, accumulating wealth enough to retire early then leave a lofty inheritance to children and grandchildren. All that is modern construction that is not present before the 19th century. Furthermore, the expectations that all the other poor people are lazy scumbags, but my poverty is merely a circumstantial setback is a very American exceptialism view.
So you are saying that a father of a girl at any class level in a feudal society cared not about the ability of a mate to provide for his daughter or grandchildren?
That kings and earls didn’t bring wealth and power into matchmaking calculations?
In general, no. It was a business transaction and whoever provided an appropriate dowry would get the girl. No matter their future prospects. The family didn't care much for whatever happened to the girl afterwards. High class and nobility might've care for prestige and title inheritance. But otherwise it didn't matter. We got so many historical novels with the plot point of a girl marrying a destitute nobleman and being abandoned by her original family that it is sort of a trope in the romantic period. Girl being sold by bankrupt father to save on food with one less mouth to feed was also a trope. You have to remember women weren't valued much beyond their capacity of bearing children. They were little more than cattle for most western feudal societies.
Capitalism probably doesn't help, but I don't think male alienation is really unique to this time or culture. Any time you have social hierarchy the lowest tier ends up eating a lot of shit. Our social hierarchy is very capitalist but you'd easily find the same kind of thing even in hunter gatherer societies. Socialism has plenty of hierarchy baked in as well. Anarchists are about the only ones who actively attempt to "flatten" society.
SOOOOOOOO…..we can all admit now that socioeconomics is real. Cuz I’d hate to think anyone would think this is a new concept and would affect only one group recently and they still sit there and think they are unique to this ’phenomenon’ whilst it’s been an effect for generations already and has gone ignored for about as long. And they've had to just ‘deal with it’.
Cuz I’m real sick of seeing this argument like it’s not been around and affecting whole swaths of groups of people for centuries.
You can admit there’s been slaves and it’s affected their families poorly? Let’s start with that. And it’s still happening. And it’s still being brushed under the carpet and there’s still flagrant racism targeting entire communities to ignore their prospects.
For generations.
Cuz that all happened way before incels in the burbs came about.