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.
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.
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.
Yep…
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.
Thanks for protecting your sons from that shit
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.
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.
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.
I always have to push back against this pathologization narrative. The very obvious alternatives are:
(1) that these guys you are talking about would have easily fallen into the trap of the right wing manosphere if it had been available, because being unable to find a parter when your hormones are urging you to and when everyone else around you seems able to find one is intensely painful. But you wouldn’t hear about it, since no one talks about it, because the least attractive thing you can do is talk about how you are frustrated by your lack of romantic success.
(2) the nerdy guys might just accept their lack of partners, but these days the demographic of unpartnered young men is significantly more diverse, and more likely to contain, let’s say… less discerning thinkers…
It’s kind of like saying “back in my day, no one really cared about getting kicked in the head by a horse. Yeah, it happened, and it sucked, but it just wasn’t a big deal. There wasn’t the social stigma that getting kicked in the head by a horse was bad, or that you shouldn’t get kicked in the head by a horse.”
Lol…
Looks away
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.
Young men are struggling badly, and almost no one seems to take it seriously. A lot of them want to man up - but the message they get from much of the media is to man down. I saw a Reddit thread asking who young boys could look up to as a role model, and the top answer was Aragorn. You literally have to turn to fictional characters to find someone broadly seen as decent.
They gravitate toward people like Andrew Tate (and Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Jocko Willink, David Goggins, etc.) because those are some of the only public voices telling them it’s okay to be a man - and to embrace masculine traits - without apology.
Nick Offerman is right there!
I mean, the problem is that Nick Offerman is too wholesome. Young guys are horny. They need role models who are also horny. But the message that is sent is “it is good to be a man, but only once you are 40 with a pot belly and a wife and kids and no sex drive.” Or “it is okay to be a man, but if you want to be horny, you have to be gay”. Or “it is okay to be a horny straight man, but only if you are so dumb and mockable as to be harmless.”
Show me the man, fictional or not, who is straight, sexual, and not constantly the butt of the joke. Show me an example of where a man wanting to have sex for the sake of having sex - not to get a girlfriend or live happily ever after - is framed as a legitimate goal which should be supported by the people around him, and which is not seen as a farce.
Show me the man, fictional or not, who is straight, sexual, and not constantly the butt of the joke.
That is literally Nick Offerman. Not his character from Parks and Rec, but him personally and especially his stand up act.
Show me an example of where a man wanting to have sex for the sake of having sex - not to get a girlfriend or live happily ever after - is framed as a legitimate goal which should be supported by the people around him, and which is not seen as a farce.
Rock stars.
To add to that, men were also turned to anime male figures like Kenshiro from the Fist of North Star as a key example that it is okay for men to cry. When for a long ass time, it was frowned upon for men to cry or show emotion.
There are enough voices and role models, there are books on how bad men have it, there are podcasts (Diary of the CEO) and philosophers talking about it. I stumble upon the topic at least every week. For example there is a great video of Mathew Hussey on the dating crisis and how troublesome it is for men. He is a dating coach for women and still making good content for men. It doesn’t seem to reach those who need it most, though. Could be trough algorithms, could be because they choose the hateful content with the “easy” solution (women are bad and need to be treated so) over the complex truth… That men had a privileged life for the last few hundred years, and now that women earn their own money they probably need to offer more than finance. By the way it is crazy how the world developed. Every household basically needs to double earn to survive so… yes. Financing is not the thing most women are looking for anymore and men are not even being able to give it. There are political and social problems we all have to fight (together we could even do it but it is easier if we fight each other for those in power). Men suffer from patriarchy the same as women do. The difference is that now the privilege is gone and the gameplay changed, while some wealthy and reckless men pretend that it’s about “them not trying hard enough”. It’s like people in America still believing they could become a millionaire if they try hard enough and trump is a “financial genius” for being rich… Instead of just being a lucky son of a rich man. It seems to be a tradition to step down on others instead of facing the truth… Some wealthy idiots are ruining our world for all of us. Instead of feeling helpless about this fact it’s “the immigrants”, “the feminists”, or what else…
Just as many women are struggling badly. There is no male loneliness epidemic, there is human loneliness epidemic.
Those so-called “male traits” seem to be being a violent thug and being shit to women.
ofc anytime a man talks their issues are downplayed because woman go through the same stuff or have it even harder so just be quiet or deal with it or turn to tate and feel good about yourself because that man is supplying them dopamine while yall try to make them feel bad or like their feeling dont matter lol, guess which one wins lol
“All loneliness matters!”
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.
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
To add to this: The internet has increased the reach of propaganda to heights it could only dream of. It used to be that you could just stop your kid from hanging out with the local neonazi group, now they can reach them right in their bedroom.
Not really plenty of tradwife woman still exist, id say 50/50 wanna just find someone decent and setltle down so they can pop out kids becuase god wants them to, athiesm isnt as popular as yall think ppl are still religious and get arranged marriages (or basically the equivalent) You gotta be ugly, no money, just give up on life to be alone. Or insanely picky.
Now if you’re a liberal man who wants an independent woman, your pool of potential partners is way lower and they have standards like you said, good luck finding that
It’s not just women having the choice to marry. Women are flooded with choice through dating apps. It puts men in competition, costs money, and is overall a humbling experience. The amount of effort (and money) an average looking average height man has to expend pushes men to stop trying and focus on bettering oneself. This is where the Rogans and the Tates come in. The left isn’t speaking to these boys so the right wins by default.
So are men. Flooded with choices on dating apps and otherwise. It also puts women in competition. And others. It’s not a gendered problem. It’s an attitude problem.
The amount of effort is very likely way more equal to that of those “others” have to expend than most would concede, it’s just that some of the young boys aren’t taught to have a spine and as such expect everything to be easy, then get majorly disappointed when that isn’t the case. World is tough, life is hard, you have to actually fight along the way and struggle to get to places. Just about everyone else already knows this by heart, but some men are barely starting catching up.
Patriarchy isn’t as alive as it was, though very much alive still, so their expectations just no longer match the reality. And that’s a bummer. Boo hoo. Makes them commit mass murder, school shootings, but more widely, outside of those extremes, just fall in love with toxic men with a platform that actually do speak of things that better match their expectations.
It’s simply that some young men are pampered little babies that aren’t adapting to a less powerful patriarchy and have zero idea how to actually live in this world as a normal person without an excess of privileges.
And that’s often just an upbringing thing. And a complex one at that, with not just the parents at fault. Society was, and still is, patriarchal and unequal in so many ways, but slowly gets better at least in west. It’s not the fault of the young men that get sucked into this, they never were taught better. That’s the problem more than anything.
And before anyone comes in pointing fingers, I was assigned man at birth and am still an enby in part presenting as masculine. I know the privilege, and I do also know how hard it is to accept the fact that everything’s easier for us, when your heart feels like everything is hard. That’s just a bummer, but everyone has got it hard. More hard than me. A tough thing to see and recognize, because suddenly my struggle isn’t special. But really, it isn’t though. But that’s not the expectation young men have for some reason… Not always anyway.
The toxic young men still are the minority, it’s worth recognizing that too. But they are very loud and very hurt little babies :-( we have to suffer through their incapability to adapt to reality by possibly even just dying in one of their mass shootings.
It’s fucked up, and I’m not sure if there’s anything or anyone we can easily blame. And no easy answers either. I hate this part of reality.
So much more social, educational and financial support for girls’ development and nothing for boys except for sports. If you’re not into sports, you’re out of luck.
The US government is defunding all research and programmes that include the word “female” and “women”. No more research into uterine cancer. No more including women in studies (and they were badly represented already).
When you’re used to privilege, equality feels like discrimination.
This is a stupid and shitty decision.
You seem to mistake that I meant the women’s rights should be negated. I never said that. I said that development of boys should be encouraged the same way that girls are. I’m totally against taking women’s rights away.
Band, theater club, math club, chess club, computer club, to just name a few. Outside of school there’s Kiwanis, boyscouts, YMCA, big brother program, there is no shortage of programs directed at boys. They’re all underfunded in the inner city and rural ag counties. But the Tate heads mostly live in the safe suburbs. They’re usually white and those programs tend to be better funded in those places.
I think the answer is obvious: Tate tells them “you’re awesome”. No one else is doing that. People seek validation.
I think it’s another message. Tate says “The world is fucked up” and then proceeds to say “I have the secret, if you want to make it in this fucked up world you have to be tough, uncompromising, domineering, cheat, and act like me” and “you’re a sucker and a cuck if you don’t do what I say”. First message sets up the world, 2nd sets up a “”“”“solution”“”“” to success that only a “few” people know, and the final thing is him attempting to make anyone who believes otherwise look weak which gives any of his followers the ability to a) feel a sense of superiority and b) make fun of others for being “weak” or “cucks” or “betas” or whatever.
This is the short of it. Tate explains in no uncertain terms that society is to blame for the insecurities they feel, and provides an easy answer on how to fix it that kind of works, because it emulates self-confidence.
I mean it’s right wing politics in a nutshell
Dupe fools with simple, comforting lies over complicated, uncomfortable truth. If people don’t understand reality they can’t change it.
That was a conversation I just had with someone today. They did not appreciate my saying so.
To me his message is closer to “you’re a useless piece of shit, but i will help you become the strong man that women love. If you listen to me and work hard you will have a family and be happy. Fuck the world and society they lie about what you need to do to keep you docile and weak.”
He also has a lot of stuff about embracing all the masculine traits that society hates like aggression and psychopathy. Then just general unhinged statements that contradict his core message and no one notices because cult
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
A lot of young men frustrated with the lack of community, the fleeting chance of making good money, buying a home, etc. are looking for something/someone to blame. Misogyny and xenophobia are easy escape hatches for difficult times.
A lot of young people.
This is pretty much the most accurate response here. People like Andrew Tate are a symptom of a problem we have in society as a whole. The cure isn’t to block the symptom, because the disease is still there. The solution involves hard work & holding our own politicians accountable.
Social atomization is another huge aspect of this.
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.
And if we let this follow the path it’s on, they’ll try to put us in burqas rather than working to become better people.
Referring to men in general as “wife beaters” is exactly the kind of rhetoric that fuels Tate’s popularity.
It’s also pretty dishonest to lump his followers in with incels. Tate openly despises incels - he sees them as quitters. His whole message is about power, self-discipline, and taking control of your life. Incels, on the other hand, are rooted in despair and nihilism. They believe the game is rigged, that the problem is in their genes, and that there’s nothing they can do to change it. It’s a fundamentally different mindset.
Referring to men in general as “wife beaters” is exactly the kind of rhetoric that fuels Tate’s popularity.
They are referring to the fact that it was common in the past for society to force women to get married so strongly that at least some of them had to put up with the wife beaters just to exist. They didn’t mean men in general.
The incels
Weaponizing shaming like this is part of the issue. Young boys and men are bullied and called incels because they don’t conform to whatever BTS image girls and women fantasize about these days. They’re not given a chance to come out of their shells, and being shamed, won’t ever try to.
It’s a shame that body shaming boys is in vogue and perpetrated by those who support big models and HAES.
I think you have incel confused with something completely different.
It’s musk’s used melon, what do you expect?
I’ve heard young women call men “incels” as an insult, what are you talking about?
An incel is someone wbo claims ro be involuntarily incelibate, as in no one wants to fuck them. The incels claim it is based on looks, but it is because they have shitty, hate filled personalities where they blame women for their problems.
It doesn’t have anything to do with looks. It might have something to do with dressing like an Tate fanboy though.
Yes that is the definition.
However, it’s now being used as an insult as well. I’ve been called this even though I’ve been married 20 years with children, by a 40 year old spinster.
Calling someone a spinster in that context gives off incel vibes.
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.
