grew up with the media depiction where they rip out a guy’s still-beating heart and eat monkey brains and we still managed to win all the spelling bees m, I think the white boys can survive the message of “don’t be a rapist”
It's a brutal time for young men, and to be raising one. The primary message they now is get is "YOU'RE BAD" without any meaningful attempt to offer healthy pathways beyond "Don't be a boy."
Absolutely perfect time for right wing monsters to sweep in with shitty answers.
“It’s a brutal time for young men” is obviously ridiculous and your point here right on, though I do often worry about the pipeline of kids to alt-right content. I don’t know if there is a competing pipeline of “men can be terrible, here’s how to be good” content that’s engaging kids?
It actually *is* a brutal time for young men, because it’s a brutal time for young people in general. And they’re being aggressively targeted by the radicalization pipeline. And there’s no counter-message. (You search for, like… info on Marvel movies and get manosphere shit.) So that’s a huge gap.
This is about the incentives & economics of media, as much as anything else. There is a huge amount of conspiracy content around Blake Lively targeted to young men, *all* of it deeply misogynist. Because there’s no money in saying “she’s normal and telling the truth” on TikTok/IG/YouTube.
And there’s also the peer/cultural aspect to socialization. Parents have a huge impact on whether these messages land with kids. A big factor in why boys are susceptible to these narratives is because they have dads who agree with them too.
May 3, 2025 21:42
