The answer isn't Online Masculinity

this might be the end of my internet career talking about masculinity online this topic is radioactive holy hell dude so I used to be a very online person then I became an offline person much happier but in order to understand this topic I've had to go back in it is just a lot it's just a lot you know when you're scrolling and it's just competing takes and everyone's just derranged and you're like oh my gosh all this to say I'm 33 I got social media after I left school but if I had it before and I'm feeling like this after a few weeks if I could only make one conclusion it's this it must be so hard to be young right now full stop why are men and boys struggling toxic masculinity and what should we do about it the decline in masculinity is masculinity toxic most women don't like to Define traditional masculinity as toxic we need men four times as likely to kill themselves no men are in sexist rapist piece of [ __ ] you got it let's tackle this topic in two parts part one we'll be understanding the crisis and part two we'll be finding a road map to a solution all right let's give it a shot if you're the kind of person who feels like they need therapy you're useless this video is going to get pretty heavy so I thought I'd kick things off light with my top five dumb boy moments coming in at number five me and two friends got super drunk in scale of crane coming in at number four I used to be such a drugo that when I got my wisdom teeth out I learned how to pull bongs through my nose number three when I was a teenager I wanted to impress my friends while I was driving so I climbed on top of the car while I was driving number two this haircut and number one when I was 20 I broke a rib because I put a beer bottle on a sign and I tried to fly kick it off but my foot got caught on the sign and I just fell so that all right so my experience with masculinity uh sucked I never really had traditional masculinity model to me I'm not like other boys I learn to shave by like spying on my friends and then also I think probably worth mentioning uh this is where we start getting the heavy stuff um that I yeah am also a survivor of child sexual abuse wherein the rapist was male I was a child what the [ __ ] and as a result I struggled a lot with sort of like I don't know all the kind of things that you would imagine that you would struggle with after that yeah my coping mechanisms used to be terrible I was addicted to drugs for a long time not anymore I had terrible mental health sorted it baby and I loved risk I loved danger I love feeling like I was almost going to die I loved impulsivity I just enjoyed the high of adrenaline often at my own expense ah anyway now I am yeah 33 Suburban dad married to my wife we've been together 12 years and I'm not saying that that's on the other side of sort of Reckless Boyhood I'm more just saying that I know what it means to struggle with masculine identity I know what it means to struggle with typically male unhealthy coping mechanisms and I also know what it means to you be on the other side of those struggles one very big question is masculinity in crisis first question is there a crisis first answer doesn't matter to me this is like asking if there's a climate crisis Even If you deny climate change it's not going to be a bad thing to look after your planet Even If you deny that there is a masculinity crisis it's not going to be a bad thing to help young men become better the counter argument would be that by focusing on male mental health you detract from something else that needs more attention but in the words of Scott Galloway compassion is not a zero some game to understand modern masculinity I guess the first question we have to ask is what are those words even mean modern masculinity AKA how to be a man according to the internet that is how I see that sentence of course seeing that sentence isn't quite as clear as how I've written it there because the word man spot the way a word there that can mean anything and the word internet that's basically a euphemism we could be talking about any parts of the internet so let's get freaking specific [Music] Fells so let's look at the word man first masculinity can be anything depending on who you ask if you ask a biologist it's you having a why chromosome don't ask why you got the why and if you bring an anthropologist in they might say well masculinity is the three PS protect provide procreate but if you ask a postmodernist masculinity is a social construct it's like being a Scorpio it's like good for you but you know it's not real right if you wanted to figure out what masculinity was according to traditional Western values you might stumble upon something called hegemonic masculinity this is the one that often gets critiqued in like those big long think pieces the masculinity that makes this guy the bread winner makes him stoic competitive tough strong dominant and also my son can't be Gay Boys Don't Cry of course if we di the clock back even further toward dynastic China premodern China we get a different answer where masculinity was largely shaped by two concepts when and woo when is your cultural accomplishment so this might be art calligraphy how much you contribute to society and Woo is your Marshal prowess we bring things a bit more modern we have masculinity according to incels uh here you just be a Chad or no one cares and should no one care write a Manifesto yeah that's the next move and then finally with could also learn from Google autocomplete that masculinity is a social construct toxic fragile and in crisis all of these different ways to sa being a [Music] man now all those different perspectives I guess there's you know usually a time and a place where they are useful or not useful But ultimately I think debating over the word man is something that people will probably be doing forever so with the idea that there are just many ways to answer that question let's tackle the slightly more tangible part of this definition according to the internet which according to Lady Gaga is a toilet the internet is a toilet truly is man how to be a man according to the Internet so earlier I mentioned that this was a euphemism when we say the internet what are we really saying we're really saying the thing that we use the internet on our smartphone uh here's a nice little article from the 1950s there'll be no Escape in future from telephones and there isn't no none at all so the reason that I think smartphones are important here is because you look at the on statistics and there's like eight hours a day and then you also look at the socializing statistics and it's going down and so you're like ah human interaction is getting replaced by media interaction at scale also none of this is a judgment on anyone by the way if you use your phone a lot and you feel bad about that I don't blame you I blame the phone dude Jen Z you guys got freaking wared I can only imagine how hard it would be to have these things in high school but that will come clear because when we talking about a smartphone we are actually talking about the way that we get the sort of more wild information social media uh here's a nice tweet be well advised world if you have a pous you probably deserve murdering it's a bit extreme but Extreme is the language because when we're talking about social media that is also a euphemism what we're really talking about is an ecosystem of media businesses fracking what's left of your attention with god tier slot machine mechanics pushing whatever content is best optimized for limic hijack and time theft in the name of maximizing shareholder growth selling you fun little comment I like this one Google really wants you to argue with Bots over social issues while they show a mobile game out every 5 minutes that's funny and that's both of those things so to come back to our definition modern masculinity how to be an amorphous idea that no one can agree on according to an outrage machine ah [ __ ] as of this year 10% of Twitter's users or X's users are responsible for 92% of its content wow with every tweet from this very vocal small group they learned that the algorithm loves it when they're provocative isn't that terrifying basically this is what it looks like so extremism equal engagement over here we have we convince two men into suicide drinks on me girls kill all men men are trash girls are better now over here this is probably the most upsetting thing I've read in a hot minute I wouldn't want a daughter if she looks like you the temptation to commit a felony would be too high that's horrible of course these are two very extreme examples and I am falling into this trap right now by presenting them what we actually have to see is not these two extreme examples but the ridiculing of extreme examples this is something called the out animosity effect and I think this is a big clue as to why modern masculinity is so murky the single biggest predictor of whether a post will get high engagement is how much it dunks on an outg group not how much it confirms the belief but how much it confirms the war so even bigger than the volume of ideas are people negating Straw Men of those ideas basically making these sock puppets and then just like bashing them down caricaturing an entire ideology into one thing and then just being like that sucks and that sucks here's what happens next what do you mean the bank is out of money in solvent you only have enough cash for the next three customers the problem isn't the gamut of opinions it's not even the people no it's What marshall mclan identified in the 1960s it's the medium is the message if your medium is one that tells people that the best way to get your message out to as many people as possible is to be extreme and tribalistic then yeah even the most benign sentences start to look like a flame war and it makes sense that the more time you spend in a medium like that the more time you will start believing that there are sides or groups you might actually even be feeling it right now we can do a quick little test is there any part of your brain that still kind of has that weird like brainwashing from social media that's trying to sort me into an abstract team is he red pill is he blue pill is he proen or Pro women which one is he is he leftist C an [Music] apologist it's funny how that happens isn't it obviously there are no tames they're just people but it doesn't always feel like that our brains are hardwired for groups yeah even something as simple as a coin flip or you know wearing a different color jersey can make us feel tribalistic so it goes to stand that probably if you are a young teenage boy looking at the internet getting most of your information from the internet these sides might feel quite tangible weird right so what do you do well do you want to hate yourself or would you prefer to worship a rapist which one just pick pick go 16-year- old boy you got to make that choice I guess neither do nothing and that's exactly what we're saying it's hard to be convincing when you say men are in trouble after all like look around us all 45 US presidents have been men and probably the next president will be one two if you look at the S&P 500 a few years ago there are actually more CEOs named Michael or James and there are women CEOs period but that said most men aren't CEOs and most men aren't president of the United States it's easy to focus in on a certain set of men that are doing well and realize that the majority of men are not hanging on so well what do you do if you are staring at what seems like a binary and you've already said I don't really want to resent masculinity or join a misogynist cult what's your next step basically do nothing which I think for a lot of young men would manifest as porn gaming and bongs neat not in education employment or training 63% of young men are single during Co the decline in enrollment was seven times higher for men 71% of males held a full-time job in 2021 down from 85% use unemployment it has risen to 15.2% in the UK that's pretty bad news and it gets worse so uh with all that spare time you are three times more likely to develop an alcohol dependency and three times more likely to report frequent drug use now just be mindful sometimes when you hear sad statistics about a group that you are part of there is a part of you that reacts not with sadness but almost with joy not because you're happy but because you feel validated because you feel seen because you've been gone through something and like any human you need empathy and if you don't feel like you deserve it stats can give you that Authority like yes I knew I wasn't going crazy I knew that there was something up but this same mechanism can be become defensive when you hear similar stats about out groups so while men had it worse in education and Healthcare women had it worse in employment and unpaid labor and much much worse in domestic violence but yeah I just want to bring that up because I don't want anyone to really feel shame about their reactions when they hear starts if you get defensive if you feel Vindicated I don't think it's anything to worry about what matters is getting your brain beyond the reactions to Solutions now if that option doesn't entice you there's always suicide fellas we are kill in it and by it I mean ourselves so uh this is uh this is one of my best mates I lost him last December to Suicide [ __ ] love I love this dude so much and I don't know man like it's it's just real you know what I mean but yeah suicide is the leading cause of death for men under 50 years old and what concerns me here is the data on how many men talk about it and how many men just speedrun it so of all sock referrals in the UK it's only a bit over a third are men but of all their suicides three supp as a man so uh efficient I suppose I don't know I tried to lighten this section by having like Nate or yate uh he'd laugh he'd find this hilarious but yeah this is uh pretty pretty freaking dark for why men don't talk about their mental health got some qualitative data here I've learned to deal with it 40% don't wish to be a burden on anyone 36 too embarrassed 29 negative stigma around that type of thing 20 the uh thing that I think combines these two neat and Yeet is let's say neat is comfort it it's the absence of Challenge and suicide is the absence of life so the less we have to overcome the more likely it'll all feel meaningless of course like so much data writers got their first doeski said deprived of meaningful Work men and women lose their reason for existence they go Stark raving mad thankfully we do have a secret fifth [Music] option so that was part one quick little recap of what we learned about understanding the crisis firstly if there is a crisis or if there isn't a crisis it does not hurt to show compassion towards young men if anything it makes life easier for everybody empathy is not a finite resource it's more like a snowball the more you give the more you get secondly we learned that human interaction is being replaced by media interaction at scale oh that's troubling uh thirdly we cover the fact that the messages that we receive online are often written by a tiny sliver of a platform's users by people who are highly incentivized to create an outg group and then dunk on it and any alleged evidence of this crazy out group you know like a really messed up post is often just evidence of one crazy person this is a Schism that we are seeing reflected politically all over the world young gen Z men are drifting towards the right young genz women are drifting towards the left this is happening in North America East Asia Africa parts of Europe even where I live here in New Zealand next we cover the fact that lots of young men are just tapping out they feel disenfranchised so a lot of young dudes are just rejecting institutions and yeah plenty of young dudes are also just rejecting life and finally we covered the fact that young men don't want to be in this predicament they want guidance they want structure they want purpose they want Clarity but lots of them feel understandably confused I mean when you're getting so many different competing messages that is a normal reaction today's teenage boys have only known a wider world that tells them that they are toxic wrong broken unwanted and generally should feel shame for existing that's pretty messed up and so of course it's no surprise that they don't really feel motivated to try and of course it's no surprise that that creates a massive market demand for someone to tell them they do matter and occasionally those people are you convicted sex traffickers so uh that's probably bad progressives and the left especially seem to not want to acknowledge this or at least not acknowledge that men might be a group in need of assistance itself there's a sort of hesitant to talking about men as men uh and instead people want to say well we just need to be good people but what does that look like specifically because young men especially are asking for a specific there is a secret fifth option code before chaos what does that mean so a code Define your own sense of masculinity before getting bombarded by psychopath grifters and simulated pleasure got some very insightful words here from Jermaine gria human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves when that right is preempted it is called brainwashing now I love this because it's like yeah you can be anyone you want to be but if the chaos gets in before you set your code it's basically cult so if we know what the chaos is that's the internet what is the code well according to that staunch biology teacher from season 3 Community played by the great Michael K Williams man's got to have a Cod also according to Michael K Williams playing Omar in the wildre a man got to have a code this man has got to have an acronym C o d e yes an easy structure so I will not pretend that I have any of the answers however I'm making this video cuz I think I've got a decent shot at asking the right questions and I think that these are those where you going what you do who you with how it feels defining those before getting bombarded by all of that chaos all of that noise I think is I don't know hopefully hopefully a better approach to masculinity than whatever the hell is been served up at the moment all right Compass Outlets Dream Team earned let's go through them see Compass first question is where you going what Direction roughly do you want your life to be headed in that's one of those questions that is freakishly daunting and sometimes questions like that become useless because they're more intimidating than they are energizing what I think makes what direction do you want to go in life so freaky is the need to have a specific answer but a general answer yeah I'm roughly headed north I think kind of takes that pressure off when I think about this I sort of imagine that I am on a bicycle riding through the desert trying to follow a North star in that scenario there's no pressure to know perfectly which direction to head more just like that way kind of which sort of takes out that barrier to entry and also cuz it's a bicycle every bit of movement counts doesn't matter if you're pedaling super fast or just kind of relaxed as long as you're not doing nothing you won't fall so if you are looking for an actionable here or an example I think one helpful way to think about this would be in categories categories of life you know Health money work whatever it happens to be I'll use myself as an example here so sobriety that used to be a big North Star but when I thought about it as it's either one or the other I could never really make progress cuz if I slipped up I'm like and I'm the worst but when I started thinking about it as a compass like I'm headed towards sobriety and I'm headed away from addiction then I knew that if I slipped up it didn't mean that I had to give up it just meant that I had to course correct and keep making progress so yeah Compass oh here for Outlets uh to understand Outlets uh let's have a look at outbursts here's one of my favorite phrases Idle Hands Are The Devil's play thing if you do not give yourself a task the bad things in you will find a task and it won't be pretty for this I like to imagine that some of the less than desirable traits within me are Little Devils man and I have to be busy in order to use them otherwise they will use me so uh risk-seeking adrenaline junkie this is something very close to home this has the potential to be quite dangerous if we do nothing about this trait it'll find a way to manifest if your hands are idle then uh yeah you might find the Outburst comes in the form of Reckless drugged up driving I personally did I yeah awful but also the Idle Hands could be engaged hands so putting this trait to work might see you get into skating climbing surfing this stuff might seem kind of obvious but I think the reason that I wanted to include it was back to Christine Ember she was saying that a lot of the men that she's interviewed feel as though they are constantly bombarded by messages of what they shouldn't do like you have this trait well definitely don't do this as opposed to messages of what you can do so if for example you're a bit of a contrarian bit of a motor bit of somebody who enjoys a little bit of heated debate you might get told don't do that in social situations and that would be good advice it's only so helpful to be told what not to do what you can do with those sorts of traits is become a brilliant freaking journalist oh my God we need them we need them aggression that's one of those traits where people are like all right don't do this don't do that don't do this and justifiably right if you ignore it if you ignore the fact that you might have that freaking fire you might find you start punching people and punching walls but if in instead of ignoring it we Channel it and that excess energy might earn you a freaking black belt dude this is a specific devil but I also think it's probably one that a lot of us know self-destructive compulsive prone to getting tunnel vision around points you know number go up if it's used against you this might look like turning you into prey for the gambling industry or for crypto punts we've all seen this happen obviously you know that Robin Hood wallr best drama think there something as high as 90% of the people who got prayed upon or men now that's used against you here's used by you got freaking ice bars and Endurance Sports there is self-destruction in there there is number go up in there there's tunnel vision there's that I don't know self-respect I'm aware that these two are memes but they are definitely cliches for a reason if you want a really simple model think of about three outlets in terms of something for your body something you can master and something for your mind me for example running illustration journaling if you are looking for something slightly more complex here if you are looking to channel I don't know less than desirable trait then a simple exercise would be thinking about the last time that you you know felt shame or last time you had an outburst and then trying to understand what trait or what thing inside you might have caused that and how that fire could be turned into fuel here's a few examples just trait to outlet so yeah what you do all right let's look at the next letter D Dream Team uh here's a fun start it's not fun 49% of men feel more depressed than they admit people in their life and in 1990 year I was born roughly 3% of men said that they had no close friends now and I swear it's not my fault that number is over 15% but yeah can't do life alone you got to have people that you got to be able to talk to social interaction It's Like Oxygen man anyone that you would feel comfortable admitting at least a few problems to think about who in your life you would be emotionally honest to emotionally vulnerable to think about who wouldn't judge you and there you go in your dream team here I got my wife got my daughter got my mom uh these are are two of my best mates um I don't live in the same city as them so uh I phone call them I don't know if it's worth mentioning or not but the phone call I find to be a million times better than just messaging I believe the term is synchronous conversation like when you are both sharing the same timeline that's when you get all those social endorphins don't quote me on it now if you are doing this and it makes you feel more lonely uh here's an nice PR Brown quote to ease your mind that's kind of what she does so well social media has given us this idea that we should all have a py of friends when in reality if we have one or two really good friends we are lucky lucky man if you can't think of anybody that you would talk openly to or if there is just nobody in your life to fill that role firstly I am so sorry that's got to be so freaking isolating especially cuz most people can't you know afford talk therapy or some people find it doesn't even work so if you are in that camp I don't know what the next move would be other than like working on yourself let me think about it let me uh get back to you so if this is the people that you interact with then I think it's also important to think about your role models male role models important here's nice little Tyler creative quot humans have voids and you need to fill voids I didn't have a dad to fill that male void so when I heard Eminem or freaking scen Dave Chappelle that's where I gravitated to it's just asking yourself who do you admire and why so here I got you are what you mentally eat obviously looking at all these people not every single thing about every single one of them is something that I want to replicate in my own life but they all inspire me in some sort of way finally we get to e earned not expected yeah this is how it feels if I ever had to distill everything that I have ever learned ever into one piece of action or advice about life it would be this earn your own self-respect act in a way that does that there are plenty of metrics we can chase in life you know money followers records but underneath all that I found that the one metric that dictates how I feel about it all is how I feel about me do I like someone I would respect Life's good when making a decision like do I really want to talk about masculinity on the internet even though it's so like spicy well which answer would lead to more self-respect I am going to respect myself for making this video so here I am have a beautiful day catch you

Channel: struthless

Views: 174,306

Keywords: masculinity, male loneliness, male loneliness epidemic, manosphere, advice for young men, advice for men, men's mental health, masculinity crisis, toxic masculinity, andrew tate, masculinity podcast, best advice for young men, young men in crisis, teenage boy mental health, the anxious generation, christine emba, modern wisdom, joe rogan podcast, toxic masculinity debate, jordan peterson joe rogan, masculinity vs femininity, male loneliness crisis

Id: DHHqQDKzjTg

Length: 24min 48sec (1488 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2024