I suppose this is something that’s been going on forever, but it’s at the point where it’s been leaking into local affairs more.
You have people who are resigned to being lonely, without male or female friends. Guys running off of expectations for appearance set by media and intensified by targeted advertisement. Proceeding to go off the definition of masculinity given by some advertiser and force themselves to (badly) conform to it instead of finding their own value. Predictably getting rejected and bitter because you didn’t spend enough time developing your own interests and finding like minded individuals. Why isn’t lifting for the sake of being healthy and enjoyable nearly as promoted as lifting to prove yourself a man and find “high value” women.
Women have this problem too, and it forms this weird dynamic where it’s easier to blame the other gender for pushing poor values onto yours – even though it’s a deliberate conflict setup by people who just want to sell products to solve the issue they’ve created. I feel like I stepped into a time capsule disconnecting from everything to focus on myself and work for a decade and came back to a very strange reality where niche forum terms have become common language. IMO if you take care of the people you value and have the maturity to uplift your community when possible – that’s a good man. Doing that makes finding whatever kind of companionship you want easy.
Is there anyone else noticing this or am I just really conservative or something when it comes to social dynamics?
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Since you shitlords like to delete your posts, here’s an original copy of /u/Parking-Economics232’s post (if available):
I suppose this is something that’s been going on forever, but it’s at the point where it’s been leaking into local affairs more.
You have people who are resigned to being lonely, without male or female friends. Guys running off of expectations for appearance set by media and intensified by targeted advertisement. Proceeding to go off the definition of masculinity given by some advertiser and force themselves to (badly) conform to it instead of finding their own value. Predictably getting rejected and bitter because you didn’t spend enough time developing your own interests and finding like minded individuals. Why isn’t lifting for the sake of being healthy and enjoyable nearly as promoted as lifting to prove yourself a man and find “high value” women.
Women have this problem too, and it forms this weird dynamic where it’s easier to blame the other gender for pushing poor values onto yours – even though it’s a deliberate conflict setup by people who just want to sell products to solve the issue they’ve created. I feel like I stepped into a time capsule disconnecting from everything to focus on myself and work for a decade and came back to a very strange reality where niche forum terms have become common language. IMO if you take care of the people you value and have the maturity to uplift your community when possible – that’s a good man. Doing that makes finding whatever kind of companionship you want easy.
Is there anyone else noticing this or am I just really conservative or something when it comes to social dynamics?
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I don’t think it’s conditioning, so much as it is they’re not anti-fragile, and life isn’t done kicking them in the nuts, yet.
Yeah, you’re not alone in noticing this. I think a lot of young men are growing up stuck between extreme messaging, either they’re told to be hyper-masculine, chase money and women to prove worth, or they’re told to suppress anything traditionally “masculine” at all. Both paths are hollow if you don’t know who you are underneath it.
Social media and marketing make it worse, constantly feeding comparison and selling insecurity. People start lifting, dressing, or grinding not for themselves, but just to avoid feeling “behind.”
Confidence comes from doing hard things, learning from failure, and building values that actually matter to you.
It’s not flashy, it’s not viral, but it’s real. And yeah that kind of man builds better relationships, friendships, and communities too.
Respect for bringing this up. More guys need to hear it.
Been going on for a decades. Born with original sin.
It’s not necessarily anything done intentional, but it’s more that to men and boys have been left to fall off due to a heavier focus on promoting an duolifing women and girls. Combined with a sharp decline in male figures in positions of influence and authority in children’s life due to the rise and encouragement of single mothers and men being slowly pushes out as teachers and in childcare.
So you have boys raised primarily by women and beign told the things they innately enjoy and want all make them bad by default.
Demoralization.
You can do whatever you want to a society when the young men are so disenfranchised they won’t defend it.
That’s the effects of increasing popularity in Feminism. One side always has to suffer so the others can enjoy themselves.
Social media, dating apps, and the increasing difficulty to distinguish oneself from the sea of cut-throat individuals in the realm of both workplace and dating.
There’s a reason why the top red-pillers thrive on social media engagement, obsess over physical image, and yap all day about status. It’s what young men want, but struggle so hard to get.
Also this whole trend on TikTok of grown women calling average looking men/boys “chopped” “busted” or “ugly” isn’t helping.
Evolutionary Psychology really only got going in the 90s, and as is, a lot of Evolutionary Psych people have gotten into marketing and advertising
Much of what you’re shown is designed to create insecurity in key areas of life, forcing you to address them by buying a product.
You’re not wrong – most successful things target psychological vulnerabilities. Whether it’s outright saying you need X to get laid, or selling a product that allows you to pretend you’re moral (electric cars, especially when they were using child slave labor for mining – which just charged via grid fossil fuels). This is generally why heavy phone use is associated with anxiety/depression
No I just think we’re becoming more aware of the issue itself.
There is no intention. It’s just that our economic system does not care for the well being of people. And that led to people who don’t care either getting in power in our political systems.
it all comes down to bad parenting.
Gen X has been absolutely awful for kids. (millennials haven’t been much better)
they’ve been a lot of unrestricted access to social media, and the parents aren’t taking the attempt to explain to them what is an isn’t real. And why it’s bad for them.
all it takes to be a confident and happy young man is parents that encourage that behavior through action.
Feminism, MeToo, social media and the last 3-4 years of being told they’re toxic and misogynistic for being men.
its social media and it honestly applies to both genders. These kids are constantly seeing “normal” kids their age or influencers have all these fancy toys, nice clothes and everything you think you’d want at that age. I know eating disorders and body dysmorphia has always been a huge issue with young girls and I have to assume its worse nowadays because before social media, the only “hot girl” was at school and celebrities but now, you’re constantly seeing it online. With guys, I think its sort of always been the same. Young men who have strong male role models in real life are typically fine but the ones that dont have it, search for it and they land on those dumbass alpha male influencers or some business guru that tells them that their worth comes from money and materialistic things.
Put your kids in sports with great coaches and it also be actively involved. I help out at my local high schools wrestling team and the coach is a great role model for the kids and I see it firsthand. The kids who finish out all 4 years end up going into the world with confidence and a sense of self worth. They dont have the time or energy to even entertain these dumbass influencers. Theres a few kids who quit and they typically go down this weird path of living chronically online and reposting the bs alpha male content.
Because they are growing up being told contradicting things:
• You should open up more (we all know where this leads most times), which leads to them closing up
• You need to be a man and take the lead, and when you do you’re toxic and controlling
• When you try to define boundaries, you’re insecure and controlling
• You should love yourself, but if you’re not 6 feet tall you’re not even a man
• Money isn’t everything, but he should be making at least $100k or else he’s broke
How can a person be confident and happy with themselves if the rest of the population seems to nitpick every aspect of their life and criticize them?
Put that together with the “men ain’t shit” logic and you get the results we’re seeing today.
Right wing think tanks have been working for decades on a method for getting young men to vote for right wing politicians. What they came up with is eroding their opportunities for confidence and then encouraging them to blindly direct the frustration that results at women and the left, so they dont notice the left’s whole thing is to try to give everyone equal access to confidence.
I’ve seen it too, I think we are leaving young men behind in favor of moving young women forward instead of taking both.
When you think another side is favored not physically but socially it becomes a lot harder to exercise confidence in social settings out of fear that you may be socially looked down upon.
Its really a tale as old as time, its society, we are socializing men to be less confident because we have misconstrued confidence with being toxic.
This leaves a gap, and the same way people with no family can be taken by a cult is the same way that emptiness can be filled with the hyper masculine and actually toxic.
We are in a deadly world of extremes right now and the lack of role models in the middle ground is going to be detrimental to us as a society.
If no one can agree, then well fight until we all do, and that really only means one thing. Total annihilation of the other side.
Choice paralysis perhaps. Growing up in the whatever ago the world wasn’t as connected and people didn’t relocate as much, so people grew to be like the people near to them. Now there are many competing visions of who you ought to be or who you could be. You likely moved somewhere without community roots. Family, religion, institutions don’t hold as much sway. The world is uncertain and hostile. That leads to a lot of anxiety.
As guys it’s important to know that this is going on all around us whether or not people admit it. Check on your bros. Invite newcomers into your group. Give people grace. Have patience. Build your community.
It’s kind of the expected result when the most popular content format is videos under 2-minutes in length. People don’t have the attention span for personal relationships.
We’ve correctly identified the toxic elements of traditional masculinity, but we have not filled in the gaps left behind with what wholesome masculinity looks like.
The messaging young men are receiving doesn’t provide a path or healthy role models. This leaves them either listless, or leads them down Internet rabbit holes towards highly damaging content.
I don’t personally see this shit anywhere but online.
I play in a weekly poker game that has a good number of guys in the early/mid 20s, and they are certainly not lonely nor lacking in friends.
If someone were to start talking up a “masculinity” influencer, they would get roasted to all hell.
> Does it seem as though young men are conditioned to be increasingly less confident In themselves lately?
no
Btw: why ask it as a question if you clearly arent intrested in a discussion?
I think there’s a contingent of people who think we need social change, and to a degree i think they are right. The problem is their approach to the solution. They realize it’s difficult to change the status quo especially when everyone is happy and content. Their solution is constantly point out how bad everything is, push doomerism, and sew discord so they can get the change they want.
They are probably addicted so social media and always comparing themselves to other guys who give the illusion of being better/more successful/richer/have a hot SO…..the list goes on.
Less third places and less job opportunities. Making money does have a correlative effect for confidence. Social media is our fake third place and fake dopamine. Made us lazier.
Because when white men become confident they start lynching black men.
They didn’t see a confident Dad secure with himself
Times a changing and most people didn’t have time to philosophize on what that meant back then and they certainly don’t have the time to do it now
Its very easy to sell products to insecure people, it’s been happening for centuries now, just another case of Internet making a mountain out of a mole hill. I’m a bit on the side of the loneliness epidemic being self inflicted wounds after gobbling up all the garbage online
Yes. It’s as easy as media, fashion choices, schooling.
Way too much to get into.
I have a son and a daughter, I don’t have a side. But the biggest losers of having “weak men” are their future wives.
I don’t know what caused it but it’s been noticeable in the way young ment went from seeking validation from women and rebelling against the notion of seeking male validation at all (“eff off I’m awesome I’ll prove it I don’t give a shit what you say”) to desperately seeking validation from other men and not seeking or believing they’ll get validation from women.
It does. It’s not hard to see where this is going. As soon as AI gfs become more mainstream, many will never even attempt to date or socialize.
These are weird times and as a milenial, imagining kids growing up with social median and generative AI is so foreign to me. I wish I could live another 100 years to see what happens next.
Kind of, yeah. I feel like one of the contributing factors are a misleading definition of “masculinity”, and the men who don’t feel that way or give in to that mentality feel left out or maybe even inferior, even if they’re overall much better as a human being than most other men.
Another contribution may be that innocent men are being shamed for innocent behavior because they’re mixed in with toxic men who do the same behavior but with other motives. They’re actually targets of sexism just because of the actions of other people who happen to share the same gender.
Also, some people who have issues with toxic men take it out on entirely innocent men, and that’s completely unjustifiable. So many men are terrified to ask out a woman in the most innocent way possible because he’ll fear that she’s going to completely freak out even if they haven’t really done anything wrong. It’s really no wonder awful people like Andrew Tate gained popularity when men are conditioned like this and have nobody else to tell them their worth.
It’s not just you that’s noticing this trend. My friends and I talk about it all the time. Technology and advancements have made life better and worse at the same time. The younger generations grew up with much easier access to things so they expect everything to come easily or instant gratification. If they don’t get it, they give up.
Those of us that grew up before 2000 or in the analog age had to put in work and be resourceful to figure things out. Google wasn’t mainstream, we had to go to the library and search things up in physical books. We had to get creative to entertain ourselves. If you wanted to talk or see your friends then you had pick up the house phone and call them, ride your bike to their house, or get a ride. Having to accomplish things through your own work builds confidence and grit.
It’s been a thing for decades actually, I’m 30 and this sort of attempted condition was going on when I was in pre school and kindergarten
Stuck in a paradox where no matter what men do they’re doing it wrong.
Equality in pay with women, yet can be criticized that the man doesn’t make enough. Women taking more higher paying jobs means men take more lower paying ones and are seen as insufficient yet an inevitable gender shift where if one goes up the other goes down.
Women want to be asked out yet also want to be left alone. Guys are seen as predators and creeps, while they still need to build relationships.
Men need safe space to talk and open up, yet then seen as not masculine and weak for not being able to handle or deal with it.
Men in droves are ending up playing games, on phones or in a online virtual world, so they lose a lot of real life social skills. Reinforces the pattern that virtual life is better than real life and they end up disconnecting. When in real life they just want to go back to hide in the online world. Women caught up online too losing IRL social skills but I believe fewer are stuck as hardcore addicted gamers
Embrace their uniqueness and who they are can drift towards things that aren’t stereotypical traditional masculine which is so hard pressed to be hard work, fix things, build things.