Why does it seem like so many (young) men these days flock over to types like Andrew Tate?

Because young men have problems that aren't taken seriously. Then someone like Tate comes along and (quite literally) sells the "solution."
If a cult leader can swoop in and radicalise a whole lot of people, then there is an unaddressed or ignored problem going on. This is the kind of way someone like Hitler got so much support.
People who are educated, and live secure, fulfilling lives would be able to see Tate for the twat he is.
- This is probably not the whole reason but in my opinion it is the primary one. Young men are indirectly being told their problems don't matter because when they are raised they get slapped down for trying to take attention away from women's issues, and that leaves a very sour taste in their mouths that makes it easy for charlatans like Tate to take advantage of. Especially low-status white men getting hit with the double whammy of being assumed to be just fine because everyone knows how easy it is to be a white man, right? Thanks, apex fallacy.
  The times where men have tried to form positive social support structures like the MRA/MGTOW movement, they are derided as being misogynistic, which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy as the outside attacks reinforce those assumptions. If you look at these groups today, they are absolutely infiltrated by misogynist and racist voices, but that's not how they started. Gamergate is another example of this phenomenon.
  I'm not trying to invalidate the issues women face or trying to claim that men have it worse. It seems we collectively treat this as a zero sum game instead of getting folks the help they need for the specific problems they face, and it creates a situation where people who could otherwise be saved are radicalized by assholes who are all too willing to capitalize on that and radicalize them. Worse, the continuing polarization makes it very difficult for anyone left of center to walk back and try to address men's issues without immediately being beset upon by a mercilessly vocal minority of feminists who see any attempt to help men as a distraction from their own issues.
  Remember that each person parroting Tate's rhetoric isn't some hyper-privileged fratboy who is looking for an excuse to do violence to women. Some of them certainly are, but I would bet that a majority of them are low-status men who don't see any other options.
  
  One thing that I really wonder is if things have at all improved amongst men. It's gone downhill with any Andrew Tate fans but like, if a group of 18 year olds watched Animal House or Revenge of the Nerds today, how many would be outright appalled?
  They were popular in the day. Specifically among men. I just feel like it would be a fascinating experiment that could demonstrate some progress is being made. Perhaps people can breathe a bit easier.

Because society simply has mixed standards and very little empathy for men.
Our culture has (thankfully) shifted very far from the idea of the male role as sole protector and provider for the family. While that's great for women's independence, society hasn't changed the expectation that men should still primarily fill that role.
Young men are still expected to grow up to be financially successful, physically fit, willing to sacrifice their lives and happiness for their future families all while being completely emotionally invulnerable about all of it. Society is clear (and correct) that women can do any or all of that if they so choose, but it's totally also fine if they want to be a "traditional" woman.
We're at this halfway point where (compared to our traditional/conservative past) young women can choose any path they desire and it's acceptable and celebrated (which is a great thing). We just need to have that same expectation for young men, and make it clear.
When young men have problems, they very often are told to man-up or change themselves in some way (get a job, go to the gym, buy an expensive car)in order to fix it, when they need to be told it's okay to be upset, it's okay to share your feelings, it's okay to be vulnerable.
We can't send mixed signals that women are primarily attracted to rich, ripped, emotionally invulnerable soldiers. We've got to stop only celebrating men who are billionaires or professional athletes. Boys need to see their nerdy English teachers or average looking artists as role models.
I don't know how we can get there, but until we do our young men are going to continue this regression into toxic masculinity and far right ideologies.
This ended up way longer than intended, lol.
- I don’t think our brains have caught up with our society lol…
  I remember reading somewhere that in Nordic countries where the gender equality rates are highest in the world, women tend to take on More gender stereotypical jobs and roles than they do in less gender equal countries, even though they generally have more opportunities to do whatever they want compared to other less equal countries.
  There are billions of us on this planet and none of us fit into that average cog, but I’m fairly certain that in general and among cis people men are attracted to traditionally “feminine” women and women are attracted to traditionally “masculine” men… obviously we are (hopefully) more enlightened as far as our acceptance of lgbtq and other non cis lifestyles etc, but part of what makes academic sociology so interesting is looking at stuff like this…
  The main problem we all have is income inequity and the wealth gap.
  For example, it’s a fact that when more people are covered by Medicaid and Medicare in a region, that region has lower crime, and the Medicare coverage is a better predictor of crime rates than police funding by a very large degree.

The right wing has easy answers for complex problems, so it's easier for them to recruit frustrated, average people.
- And the left is often paralyzed by the "complexity" of a solution and offers little no refuge for those in need. Sadly making those half baked ignorant simple solutions the only thing offered.

Honestly, I think because it's comfortable. Andrew Tate and the like say that there is nothing wrong with you and it's society/women's fault. It doesn't challenge anything, not even the harmful standards for men (ex: High value = certain look/body, status, income, etc.). Dating has gotten harder for men. Women have a lot more options and choices, and I don't just mean in which man to marry, but even if they will marry at all. That means men have to offer more than just being the provider, as many women also have to work. And I don't think we set men up to be good partners. Providers? Sure. But to be caring, empathetic, loving and loved members of society? I don't think so.
I think women need to be taken out of the equation all together when it comes to the male lonilness epidemic because that seems to cause the spiral. If it was focused on how men could foster good relationships, in general, I think it would be better. Focus on how to join/find/form social clubs, make it okay to talk to the boys about how you're feeling, make it okay for them to need help. A lot of articles seems to boil down to more men are single, but I think it should be more of why don't men have friends? If men are single, that means there are single women out there as well, but they don't inspire these posts because women are allowed to foster platonic, deep relationships and we kind of tell me you either get a spouse for that or you just have to deal with it.

Lots of stuff. One has to do with modern feminism that has attempted to redefine the female gender role to become more independent and to adopt some traits that were traditionally masculine. This leaves some men clueless in their own identity, as traditional gender roles are a crutch for both women and men to kinda know their place in society. Now women refuse to fit their traditional role, so men have to redefine themselves too instead of relying on how it's been done in previous generations.
This cluelessness is frustrating and we've seen it pop up in different ways in the last decades. However with a more modern image of a woman manifesting, teens who have to figure out anyway who they are in society are affected more, especially young boys who are welcomed to society with no clear "default instructions" because the old gender role is demonized by a society that has largely accepted the new gender role for women, but is still clueless what men are.
Men may be the provider, but women now must be able to work too. Men could be more emotional and may take caregiver jobs, but women are considered better at them anyway and men are not trusted with kids or not taken seriously as caregivers. This is also not easy on women who now have children and need to care about a career. No wonder we have fewer children. And this also gets confusing for young men who go on dates, when they still need to pay for the bill at dates, their income still plays a role, even though women may make a lot of money (or even more than them) too now.
I hope this doesn't read as a rant, because I see feminism as a positive development even though I acknowledge the new challenges it provides.
Based on this background young, impressionable boys are sucked in by social media algorithms and confronted with the frustration and backlash of these men like Tate, that promote a return to the old gender roles. Many things he says could be something they said to your great granddad. Social media also leads to content and community bubbles, which are harder to penetrate for alternative ideas, so once you are "red pilled" you won't get off your track.
Additionally social media is not just content, it also publicizes and quantifies your social status and connections with followers and likes. Social status is hugely important for teens who are looking for their place in society. Even when you move, you don't have a chance to try again with a new group of mates: you still have your account and your status follows you everywhere. This increases the stakes and leads to more extreme behaviors.
I think that's all the reasons I can think off. Sorry it's so long.
- I love this deconstruction, it captures quite a few of my own thoughts. Thank you!
  
  I still don't think the argument has ripened fully in my head yet. I'm glad I read "The Game" in my 20s and not earlier and that nobody asked about my Insta in highschool. I had the chance to move and leave some social dynamics in the past with several fresh starts.
- Do we have a best of lemmy community yet?

Men and women basically make up 50% of the population each, more or less.
As long as we keep trying to blame society’s problem on one sex or the other, we’re never going to solve anything.
I personally think most problems in society, however, are more related to class than either gender or even race. If we can find a way to reduce income inequality (specifically between the rich and the poor) then I honestly think a lot of these issues would work themselves out naturally.
- I feel like people have known this since like the 1800s. But dividing people over race and gender doesn't threaten the rich in the way wealth distribution does, so huge amounts of money and influence are poured into preventing society from advancing by exacerbating poverty and race/gender conflicts.

In the 1950s men ruled the home, earned the money, and were kings of their castles. Since then gender rules have been torn up and rewritten. Women have carved out new spaces for themselves with the support of allies. But there hasn't really been a new consensus of what a man's role is any more. The result being that lots of men see their domination being eroded by the new order of things.
Shitstains like Tate prey on this by offering stupid but simple answers or solutions. "It's not your fault that you're a failure, it's the [random mysogenistic term]'s fault. It's them, they've done this to you. They're cheating your out of your rights." It's the same rhetoric as Hitler blaming the Jews and Trump blaming immigrants and Musk blaming the 'woke mind virus'.
It gives young men an out. "This guy's winning at life and owning the [random mysogenistic term]! I should do what he does!"

70 years ago a guy could graduate high school, get a job that allowed him to buy a car, buy a home and support a family, including college for his kids. They were too busy living a decent life. Then Reagan and the Republicans came to power.
Now, thanks to the vast economic disparity, guys have a very bleak future that makes them easy targets for hate-blaming almost any group of people except the rich who are responsible for their miserable lives.
- There is a darker secondary element to that time period, freedom of choice for women. 70 years ago if a young woman wanted to leave home and setup on her own she really needed the financial support of a husband or other male relative, even if to just cosign agreements. You were properly tied to having a husband, expected to as well. The pressure from all angles to marry meant women would settle for some pretty shitty men in much larger numbers, and for longer as it was much harder to divorce.
  As time has gradually removed this pressure, women no longer need to marry to get independence in the same numbers, so shitty men no longer luck into marriage. The rise of no fault divorce as a valid choice, and even not having to be married to have kids or live together as a socially acceptable choice further squeezes them out.
  The whole trad wives movement is founded on restoring the power back to men in relationships.
- Regan sucks and Republicans even more so, but it's not accurate to blame it all on them.
  It's the concept of neoliberalism that took hold in the 70s and has been steadily draining the working class to the point we are now where all power and wealth are concentrated on the few at the top.
  Democrats, especially the Democratic presidents since Clinton, are also neoliberals. While they hold much better social views, they are still in on the policies that keep their donors rich and the working class desperate.

Life is hard and confusing. Many people are frustrated with the way that the social landscape has changed: relationships, jobs, and economic prospects have all shifted for the worse in developed countries. Young people are the most affected. Every time this happens, a con artist comes along and starts offering easy answers. Sometimes it's a politician, sometimes it's a religious leader. Nowadays, it's often an influencer.
Tate tells men, "it's not your fault that your life sucks," and he is right (to a point). After all, people who don't own houses can't be blamed for the state of the housing market, right? So who is to blame? According to Trump, it's brown people. According to RFK Jr., it's vaccines or food colouring or some shit. According to Tate, it's women. He tells young men that feminism is surely the reason they are unhappy: the Woke Left is trying to emasculate you! Be an alpha! Follow my simple formula for abusing women and accumulating money and your problems will go away.
Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. This is not a truth that all people can accept. We can fix some of the problems that we are facing, but it will take time, effort, and cooperation. In the meantime, many men are comforted by Tate's message: women are the reason you are unhappy, and everything can be fixed by returning them to bondage! If you are very young (or just a little stunted), this message is much more palatable than the admittedly challenging option of actually fixing things.

The USA had expansion as an escape valve for most of its existence. Now that's gone. There's no future. Our politicians don't talk about anything great ahead anymore. The rest of our existence will be capitalism crushing people. Hence, despair and cynicism.

I think the answer is obvious: Tate tells them "you're awesome". No one else is doing that. People seek validation.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
  
  I feel like the contradictions are the point. The most desirable trait of people like Tate or Trump is their impunity. They keep getting away with heinous shit, it's the one thing that makes them demonstrably powerful, despite being disgusting, unimpressive scumbags.

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
- This needs much more attention. I had the same impression, especially also about Tate. Why can google push topics without the general public feeling the threat for democracy? Who decides which topics are pushed and what is their agenda?
  
  Google and every other tech company say they keep their algorithms secret for commercial purposes, but that's a bit convenient isn't it? I certainly don't trust any capitalist to be responsible with that much unchecked power.

It’s because many young people are not very media literate.
They aren’t aware that an algorithm pipeline is funneling them into being monetized by “men’s rights alpha male” bullshit.

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.
- every time there is an issue discussed it tends to be: women, minorites, whatever have a problem, men are the problem.
  This can't be overstated. There are a lot of loud misandrists posing as feminists, broadly painting men as The Problem just for being men. Speaking up is automatically condemned as condescension, sitting comfortably is encroaching on women's space, striking up conversation is harassment, glancing at someone in the gym is sexual assault, a drunk hookup is rape.
  Of course, there are problematic men who are guilty of these accusations, but the majority are normal people being baselessly lumped in with actual offenders for no other reason than being male. Women get unwavering support for just being women, men get trashed for just being men. That by itself is demoralizing.
  Then you combine that with the fact that a large percentage of women want an assertive "manly" man. The boys who err on the side of respectfulness watch the aggressive dudebros succeed sexually and romantically where they fail.
  If respect loses to toxic masculinity so often, then it's only reasonable to think that maybe the guys pushing toxic masculinity know what they're talking about. And if they're going to be demonized for being men anyway, they might as well live up to the condemnation and at least get something out of it.
  Edit: let me specify, I don't find Tate compelling, I'm only speaking of the mental state that would bring young men into his influence.
- "women minorities whatever" ???
  did you not know that racial minorities can be men or is this a dog whistle for "white male persecution"?
  why not just say "women have a problem, men are a problem"? too on the nose, too obvious? yes misogyny is a problem. but if you're trying to speak to the importance of male issues, you gotta stay focused

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.
- 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.
- A lot of young people.
  
  I mean, yeah. Young people of both genders are doing really poorly. Some people want to really naval gaze it and throw pity parties about how men are just so put upon and lonely, but so are the gals and theys.
  It's just that the boys are being offered a solution of basically a heirarchy-cult (read: fascism) where instead of being shat on like the rest of us, they are—in this narrative—meant to be elevated above us.
  It's the same bullshit that got the white poor rednecks voting for billionaire grifters.

My guess is hating others for being different is WAY easier than looking inside yourself and learning to forgive and love yourself for all the trauma you've been carrying around.

Something I rarely see brought up is specifically the edgelord to right wing pipeline. When I was a kid, it was essentially standard for any boy online to try to be super edgy. Adolescents and teens just have a natural urge for rebellion.
The problem comes when kids think edgy and shock value humor is their favorite thing, but more mature online users reject that behavior and exclude these kids. These kids feel misunderstood and are drawn to figures and role models that accept what they like.
I’ve met a bunch of younger, “conservative”, incel types recently and they’ve all been edgelords who found their own little community instead of growing up. They largely have no ideology in the beginning but slowly absorb manosphere bullshit and over time they become less “ironic”.
The thing that got me to stop being edgy was joining the swim team and having my friend group go from edgelords to gay swimmers. I developed a ton of respect for them and they were my teammates; it completely changed my mind without me having to “conform” to the things I wanted to rebel against. I don’t really know how to get that across to some many kids that get sucked up into this madness though.
- I call this Shadow the Hedgehog darkness. When something wants to look dark and mature from the outset, but it's really a form of childishness. Same appearance takes effect for a lot of "dark" anime, where people are routinely betraying and causing pain, and "At its heart most of humanity just wants chaos" blah blah.
  I do think there's a lot of horrible stuff in the world, but it's usually far more banal than anything these edgelords envision. When put face to face, people usually want to be kind to each other. But we're not put face-to-face often enough.

On the playground kids would follow other kids who they felt were confident or charismatic, not who had the best ideas or were most concerned with fairness or equity. It's just childish, naive notions of importance that are leaking out into the broader society due to social media, culture of celebrity, etc.

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.

The Innuendo Studios series' on YouTube Alt-Right Playbook and Why Are You So Angry especially illustrate this well and I highly recommend watching. It's very similar to what happened during gamergate. A lot of men who are frustrated are misled by these reactionary campaigns. Just like everyone else, they face the struggles of patriarchy, toxic masculinity, capitalism, etc. But Andrew Tate tells them it's not their fault, and reassures their insecurities that they're good guys, and tells them that the problem is women.
- While simultaneously saying casual sex with women means you're a gay dude.
  Edit: love how there are Tate fanboys on Lemmy! Lol, y'all are so pathetic it's funny. YourBoosMeanNothing.gif

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.
- Actual answer is too far down.
  Also innocent boys doing nothing wrong being told they are the cause of all the problems in the world while they struggle and see everyone else get help they are excluded from.
- 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.
- 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

Fyi, not just men, on tinder here i see a scary amount of women, looking for an Andrew Tate kind of guy. And i'm not saying they don't pivk the nice guy and shit, they literally quote Andrew Tate or will only date someone following tateism. I think a lot of it has to do that they don't want to pay for shit and not work, so they loon for that alpha male caregiver. Still weird shit.

The algorithm pushes them that direction.
On YouTube I'm constantly one video away from "owning the woke libs" content because I turned my view history off.
- Yo the second I turned off personalized ads I got so many ads for erectile dysfunction medication. It felt like they were trying to embarrass me into turning personalized ads back on.
  
  That's both funny and very insulting.

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."
  
  while I agree, I think there are people who ended up choosing (1) because of pathologization, because they were ridiculed and the increased stress made them decide it's easier to hate women
- Lol...
  Looks away

I feel like there's always been a culture of boys and young men who didn't respect women, there's just never been podcasters actively promoting it.
The internet allows idiots to broadcast their message worldwide and social media promotes the most controversial stuff in order to drive engagement and, more recently, to promote a culture war that keeps the populus divided.
- there’s just never been podcasters actively promoting it.
  Before podcasts, we had a bunch of AM radio, grindhouse movies, pulp fiction, skin mags, and incel blogs. Joe Rogan is an archtype that echoes through the ages.
  
  I remember when every friend group had a stoned uncle who lived in Grandma's basement and would spout alien hotep lost city of z under water bullshit.
  Some asshole at Spotify gave one a podcast and here we are.

Lack of father figures mixed with a regressive world that is admittedly going to shit, whereas millennials and genx were raised thinking they'd be something, with teen angst and rebellion also in the mix. Don't forget a heaping-helping of Hollywood and mainstream media taking a focus entirely away from men in the last 20 years and replacing it with nothing. Fill in the voids with some toxic masculinity influencers and shake vigorously...
And there you have it, a misogynist that blames everyone else for their problems, with a good chunk of those problems actually being valid.

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
Further listening material
- 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.
- it's so weird that people find life purpose in their gender... like I really dont get it...
- 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.
  
  The left isn't speaking to these boys so the right wins by default.
  probably it does, but the algorithms don't pick it up because it's not controversial
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.

Kids are being exposed early to social media, the boys watch "stuff for men" and learn "how a man should be". With that and the help of algorithms, what other out come could someone expect?
- Not just the kids. The kids who were exposed to this stuff way back now have kids. It's generational now.

Because they're lonely, aimless and disenfranchised
- Nah, they're not victims.

I think its because, to an extent, masculinity has been villainized, and people who are masculine (in appearance, identity or desire to be traditionally masculine) naturally look for people that pretend to value them.
This combined with reduction or even removal of shop classes, reduced PE, recess and physical activities in school, female teachers now far outnumbering male teachers, and strict attitude towards typical male behavior can easily build a huge amount of resentment in young men. Most public schools now are heavily tailored towards female students.
Doing normal boy stuff, like roughing each other up and messing with your friends got me and other boys detention, and it felt extremely unfair.
- What you consider masculine or feminine behavior is mostly socially constructed.
  There are these myths that only men where hunters while women where only gatherers, which turn out to be false. Women and men both hunted and gathered. Link
  IMO, the real issue is that current society places to much attention to gender roles, and for men it is done it in a way that makes it difficult and contradictory for young men to find their place: "You are a 'man', and you have to behave this specific way, however if you do that you are bad and will have trouble finding a partner. However if you do not behave like a 'man', you are weird."
  The conservative gender roles don't only hurt women, they hurt men as well. And dating and finding a good partner sucks for everyone.
- Most public schools now are heavily tailored towards female students
  Schooling has become overly feminized to the detriment of boys. Graduation rates are the very clear proof
- Doing normal boy stuff, like roughing each other up and messing with your friends got me and other boys detention, and it felt extremely unfair.
  I'm sure it did.
  Bullies always feel victimized when anyone stops them.

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...

It's a combination of them being young and dumb, but also being brought up mind-fucked by social media from the beginning of their lives.

The algorithms in social media, media platforms, and search engines are all designed to keep users engaged so that ad revenue can be generated and user data can be harvested.
Adding to that, a lot of these misogynistic creators leverage predatory practices that manipulate marginalized people into sycophantcy.
When this and other factors come together, we wind up with mindless drones which are easily manipulated, constantly angry, and always searching for a way to "get back" at those that who marginalized them.
- This explains MAGA

Were you not young before/after the start of the internet? Not trying to be snarky, it's more trying to understand perspective.
I could have been MAGA, no question. Here's my anecdote: (edit: too lazy to correct so please don't pay close attention to the tense of my words here, I was partially speaking from the perspective of being a kid again but I didn't stay consistent)
been a loner irl. Not that many friends
most of my friends are online
most of my friends say offensive stuff and while I don't really mean things (at first) I want to fit in
this can spiral pretty easily with a bunch of kids. And it did. I've said my fair share of atrocious things online that I wish I could take back
as a youngster, 20+ years ago, as a loner/nerd if I'm not playing games, I'm (probably) watching YouTube or anime. Rarely hangin with friends
now as someone who's book smart(well, on some things, ofc), but especially at this point has absolutely 0 like street smarts & real people skills? Hooked into conspiracies.
I grew up in a diverse area, so I've really never believed in racist stuff. Those kind of conspiracies I used to just handwave the racism stuff away cause it wasn't the important stuff to me that I did kind of believe in. I literally even used to watch some of Alex Jones conspiracy videos.
Really easy to get lost in this crap as a teenager alone at 4am.
Like I said I grew up in a diverse area, and in one of my first real relationships, I got a lot of pushback about certain things (I was kinda blue lives matter for a bit for example) and when that ended, one of the big things I took from it was I wanted to be a more accepting person, and I've been an increasingly-raging leftist ever since.
With the rising loneliness epidemic (which actually extends to both genders - EVERYONE is increasingly isolated) I can only imagine this sort of story is increasingly common. And not everyone comes to the same conclusions about wanting to be more accepting, etc.
I was very lucky to go through those experiences and learn what I did from it. There's probably another universe where I instead got increasingly angry & further into all those things - from the cruel & crass words to the conspiracies - and am wearing a red hat
🤮🤮 at the thought of that
- I feel the same way. I find it near miraculous I didn't fall into the trap that's being sold to young men these days.
  I'm hesitant to share too much of my own story, but it makes me feel real sympathy for the guys being ridiculed for following Tate and such. I know the leaders are garbage, but its hard to not feel attacked when I hear the general internet lashing out at the followers for being ensnared.
  I know what its like to be young and dumb, to be told you have so much potential, but then to also feel direction-less and like a loser.
  I know the leaders are charlatans that are selling snake oil...but I don't know what to tell these guys to get them unhooked from that crowd.
  
  I was absolutely on a version of the alt-right pipeline a decade ago. I was raised by far-right, Mike Johnson-style "Christians," so I was already pretty far down that path before I was drawn into any pipeline.
  Luckily, I ended up on a weird libertarian branch of the pipeline (LearnLiberty rather than Prager U), and somehow the YouTube algorithm steered me into Veritasium's content on climate change, and clips from Adam Ruins Everything. It sounds a bit crazy, but those things started opening my eyes and expanding my worldview. Probably didn't hurt that my favorite TV show at the time was Leverage, which had plenty of its own anti-corporate-grifting themes.
  Eventually, I realized that the Libertarian utopia doesn't work because greed is an unlimited resource, and that makes regulation important.
  Of course, there were other things that helped me escape my upbringing and the alt-right pipeline during gamergate (I wasn't into gaming at the time, so that probably helped), but looking back and seeing how easily I could have ended up being a January 6 insurrectionist. I'm so thankful for all the little things that nudged me out of that worldview, and helped me see reality.
  I wish there was an easy way to show young guys that the people they are listening to are liars and grifters who are manipulating young men into believing that their real pain is somehow the fault of women. But if I look at my own journey, it was a thousand little nudges. I didn't change overnight, but there was a day during the 2016 election cycle that I remember realizing that even though I had spent almost 8 years despising Obama, that he had been an alright president - especially compared to the Republican nominee, Trump.
  
  Haha I tried to be.. mostly vague
  I'm not sure either. It's really hard for me to come up with things since it took a breakup for me to WANT to change, and of course I'm lucky that it's for the positive.
  I really hope it doesn't take such powerful inciting incidents for a significant portion of them to change how they feel.
- Very self-aware comment.
  I have to agree, we're very easily swayed, especially as teenagers.
  I had to suffer through a lot of rejection by girls I was interested in as a teenager, and also pondered some very misogynistic ideas, that I ultimately rejected only because I couldn't bring myself to extend that hate to the one girl that ever loved me back for a while. Otherwise I could have totally turned to a sort of incel (before I knew that term even existed), some of the ideas I came up with are shockingly close to what I later learned that they believe.
  I can only imagine how easy it would be to fall into that trap, when you're feeling frustrated and are being bombarded by Tate and the likes through the self-enforcing ideology machinery that is social media.
  We really need to teach young men a healthier way to deal with the frustrations that occur in life and lead a better example of how to deal with negative emotions other than turning to hate like that.

Who else is talking to them?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I'd abstract it to "losers in a shameless culture".
Generally our society would have time to correct itself and face saving would be important enough to contain the losers in their own circles. However the current western culture is completely shameless and incredibly fast meaning that being a loser is kinda ok and easily justifiable. This leads to a bunch of losers getting together and cognitive dissonance themselves into some sort of dumb pointless ideology that's wouldn't be sustainable otherwise. Add money into the mix and you've got yourself real growth.
I lived in Japan for a while and still come back there every now and then and its such a good illustration of this concept. It's an extreme face saving culture. So you have this Tate-like world of Japanese incels hiding under internet anonymity but if you are not Japanese you will never see this because the losers are contained as they'd never dare to display themselves in public.
That being said, I'm quite optimistic and I think cancel culture and western face will come back from the current slump and restore some balance eventually.
- But everyone says that cancel culture isn't real.
  
  Not sure what you mean by that. Cancel culture is absolutely real and while there are cases of it overextending and being misused it's obviously a net good for our society overall. People organizing and putting pressure on injustice is what society should be all about.

I could be wrong but I think it's the end result of hyper-competitive free market capitalism and social media algorithms that boost outrage content. The rise of neoliberalism and globalization in the 90s led to a rise in high-paying executive positions in the corporate world. Just one problem: there's only a finite amount of those positions to go around. This creates a environment of competition and many don't make the cut. Business education is expensive and connections are hard to come by. This left many talented men unable to get not even decent paying, let alone high-paying, jobs that would allow them to advance in life.
The rise of mainstream social media platforms in the 2010s also gave a voice to misogynistic and reactionary content. Men who wouldn't have been exposed to such content otherwise were now inundated with creators telling them (falsely) that the world was against them. At first, it wasn't much of a problem. Take fitness Youtube for example. It was mostly educational content about things like growing a certain muscle group and increasing one's 1RPM. Think of guys like Scooby1961 and Scott Herman. Rarely was there outrage content associated with fitness content. Guys like the Hodge Twins and the more overtly right-wing Golden One were the rare exemptions. Little did we know that the rare exemptions would be the progenitors of the 'manosphere' (i hate that term). Sometime during the late 2010s and early 2020s (I forget we're halfway into the decade), 'gym bro' content merged with reactionary content. This meant that any guy who was looking for content to help them with their physical health and physique were suddenly recommend videos by the likes of Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan. Couple this with my previous paragraph, a decrease in critical thinking skills and media literacy and you have a perfect (shit-)storm.
There were also two smaller factors: Gamergate and increased mobility of women in Western, liberal democracies.
I'm not to rehash the entire history of Gamergate here but, needless to say, it brought out a lot of ugly characters. Carl Benjamin, Rageaholic and Thunderf00t being prime example. Bogus yet widely believed conspiracy theories like Cultural Marxism were touted as being responsible for all of society's ills.
As for women's increased mobility, this actually predates the internet. Women were taking birth control, pursing education and careers, having more causal sex and thus were less focused on domestic affairs and institutions like the church or the mosque. But with the rise of misogynistic/sexist and anti-feminist voices online, women's freedoms were caught in the crosshairs.
Ultimately, you have to remember that Andrew Tate and his ilk insert themselves into otherwise innocuous content (gaming, fitness, self-improvement, etc.) and exploit a volatile time in our shared history. They want to create an environment of discontent. They want us direct our anger and disillusionment to the wrong target. Whether they're true believers of their own output and simply grifting, I don't know but it's had devastating consequences.

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.

It's not complicated. They're horny and frustrated that they can't get a woman to be interested in them. Tate tells them it's not their fault and that the blame lies with women and society, allowing them to not feel shitty about themselves or make any effort to improve.

Insecurity exacerbated by the rise of social media. It's really easy for impressionable teens (not just them, but they are the most vulnerable group) to be affected directly by the consequences of social media. Toxic masculinity allows them to fall into the andrew tate trap because it tells them that this is the easy solution to the insecurities they face. I'd argue covid also made this problem worse as well

This is an opinion from someone who used to work as a children's teacher after college in 2016:
We socialize our young men in spaces that only promote competition; sports, gaming circles, schools. The way that they interact with other children and the world in turn is one of competition and selfishness.
The way our modern families are structured give less freedom to our children to find meaningful friendships with boys and girls. social relationships have become more distanced, not just because of the internet. It's just the rapid pace in which we live today.
They come in contact with porn at very young ages, some of them way before building meaningful friendships or relationships with girls. Pornography is a very cold and blunt product; It has a tendency to skew perceptions of what sentimental relationships are and it creates distorted expectations for sex. It gets worse for young generations that find it difficult to distinguish reality from fiction. I've talked to young men who only see relationships and sex from the filters of pornography and this is very concerning. To make matters worst. A lot of adults also have this optic. Middle aged men that have very little experiences with committed relationships friendly or intimate and pass down their skewed point of view to younger generations.
Our social media and political discourse promote atomization and alienation; it is easier to find things you disagree with other people than things in common. This was made by design. Division creates a passionate voters and consumers. young men and women are in the crossfire.
With this in mind; It is very profitable to become a social media grifter like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and so on. There is a large market for easy answers that take the blame elsewhere. I also feel these grifters find funding easily. I don't think internet misogyny is at all grassroots, but there are a lot of right wing thinktanks and foundations that move money to boost voices that create this type of division. It's not new and young men are particularly susceptible in a time with so much economical uncertainty because society tends to put a lot of expectations on them.
Countries that avoid to regulate their media are very susceptible to astroturfed political division. And when dealing with propaganda, adolescents are an ideal target. It turns out you tube and social media did not bring us a golden era of democratized education but instead an easy access to our children by malignant actors. And in countries like the US where any type of media regulation is considered "doing a comulism" attacking children with propaganda is a feature of the system, not a bug.

Part of it is that propaganda works. A lot of people are trying to make fascism happen and this type of content fits right in.
But also, there's a growing issue of men not knowing how to act around women, and there isn't much non-misogynist competition for Tate. It seems like for a lot of people (both men and women) it's harder to make personal connections these days than it used to be, and apps like Tinder exarcerbate the issue.

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.
- I think at the root of it all is a far broader phenomenon than that which is far from gender specific.
  In simple terms: quiet confidence doesn't stand-out in "loud" environments were people's attention is being sought by countless other people, especially for people who aren't sophisticated and lived enough to recognize and value it, and the vast majority young people are such people as are (or so it seems to me at times) a large minority or even a majority of supposedly adults.
  Putting it in another way, both quiet confident people are nowhere as invested into shaping the opinions of others as to spend most of their time "shouting" (and by "shouting" I mean all the ways people try and project and impression onto others, not just speaking loudly, so for example how some people always dress to impress rather than dress for themselves) and unsophisticated people are drawn to "loudness" rather than more subtle elements of how others talk, dress, make choices and act.
  This stuff is behind phenomenons like Influencers, Celebrity Culture, Populist Politicians and so on, which has been pushed very hard in Western Culture for decades now.
  So loud toxic masculinity posers with lots of exposure in the News Media (with the well known "Halo Effect" that people who are talked about a lot are perceived by others as important even when most of the talking about them is saying negative things) will get the attention of and influence emotional, social and/or intellectual simpletons.

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 think at some point in time, I might have been a little bit more susceptible to this. I've had a very hard time getting a girlfriend, in part because of a terrible dating sphere - ironically, very much caused by rapists like Andrew Tate. So really, the men frustrated by lack of attention should be blaming Andrew Tate, not worshipping him, but the same situation is true for, say, businesses suffering from government regulation joining lobbying groups, etc.
Loneliness combined with the requisite image of male strength kind of forces people to either admit to being a loser, or "taking charge" in a way that demonizes the rest of the world. Being turned down repeatedly denies them a lot of power, so they're eager to steal some back in any way they can, even if it's for a cause that doesn't actually help them.
As for why I never fell in there; I had good parents, and a financial cushion. If I was always starved for cash, chances are mental stress like that might've actually pushed me into very poor choices.

The world around them is collapsing. Tate promises to have the solution. For whatever reason, his solution makes sense to them. So they follow him.

One teacher said she’d had 10-year-old boys “refuse to speak to [her]…because [she is] a woman”
Does this come from Tate? This could also be a child from a family with partiarchal values. Tate is not the only source of influence. But one incident shouldn't be part of an article because it is an exception.
What is the general reason for social development? The elite is creating the cirucumstances for change. Why? Divide and conquer.
On an individual level, masculinity makes sense because going to the gym and being confident makes life much more simple than trying to feel compassion with everybody. For boys, masculinity is the common denominator among all cultures. So in a multicultural society, that's what is going to be established as the fused culture of the next generation.
Girls have the same problems, but their answer, being pretty and doing makeup, doesn't cause trouble and is thus ignored.
To change this, new forms of education must be developed because math and geography don't teach the necessary skills to deal with this complex world.

https://youtu.be/AV59O9H7-KM
This video by Jimmy The Giant explains it better than I can in words.

Weak fathers, in the sense that the recent generations have been abandoned and ignored a lot more. Turns out that is on par with fucking beating your kids. At least the boomers got attention from their fathers.
How to deal with women and sexuality from a young male perspective is practically impossible in modern society without a good role model for how to approach the reality of certain issues revolving the truth that men and women are equal and at the same time the young males have much more strength, while the girls have other ways of being mean, that are perceived as being not regulated as harshly, and that's glossing over so many other significant biological differences. The conflicting messages feels unfair to them, loneliness in this as well as a lack of belonging will more often than not become unbearable if they don't find guidance.
That's my view of the issue at least. It is redicilously easy to grift these young men, that yearns for answers surrounding sexuality and relationship with the other sex (to be clear, for hetero young males that are developing or adults with stunted development) that anyone can learn the cultures' accumulated trigger words and key issues that appeal to their supposed inner private pain, can be predated with little effort. They don't care or know it's shared with so many boys and adults, that a grifter can basically trawl bountifully for men that feel this way, and once you have "vibe" by appealing to these, you can then elevate yourself to an iron man role model by lying that you get women often by being in a certain way. (Not surprisingly, the mindset is flawlessly unsuccessful with women.)
The absolute truth is that all women like different kinds of men just as men like different women, and to be anything but you leads to extreme stress and in this case potentially wasting years or decades on some testosterone fever dream that never existed. The allure for a man or boy in this state can become so strong that, not unlike with traditional "pick up artists" and other forms of grifting, conspiracies and cults, it just does not matter that most know it is a lie, or if people submit evidence to that end. It's because these people do not connect with the young male and provide lasting guidance to replace their fears, which are very hard to uncover because of the vulnerability issues (more on this later).
If I could say something to these young or adult men suffering I would say, imagine you did succeed to become an "alpha", hustle your ass off and become rich and get women. If they can imagine it, they must realise that at that point, you will be utterly sad. Worn, tired, bored, and the women, every single one you "caught" don't like you. You will have no friends. Nobody enjoys your company for who you are, but for a formula sold to you as a male peak. The pinnacle of self realisation and real relationships can only come with being you, including flaws and therefore accentuating your strengths. Real strengths. Strength that is effortless. The real peak is becoming more you, and severely fuck the rest. The girls (but this also holds for all relationships, however their attachment model may not be ready yet) that like what you are, no matter anything else in the universe, will love you for it almost no matter what, because you didn't sell a lie to them. This wonderfully includes people that aren't attracted or even those that don't enjoy the things you do.
And this means; be vulnerable. That is why all grifters focus on stigmatizing and burying any vulnerability in everyone around them, even belittling honesty. It's partially a defence mechanism for most, but a few actively protect the communities by making sure this is simultaneously frowned upon, but also met with respect, so that none of the initiates see through the lies in the surrogate father system and realise the complete farce that they are subjected to. For adults that have matured sufficiently (and therefore also most young women) these role models in incel, red pill and alpha cultures are instantly recognised as people with deep insecurities and ridiculed. That is an easily deflected commentary by appealing to jealousy. It comes naturally because jealousy is the hook for the entire grift and the irony in this case is almost guaranteed to fall on deaf ears. These role model grifters that are elevated in the social hierarchy of these communities are usually men that have elected to not mature past this barrier, mainly because of how painful it is, and can therefore sell this scam even for free and proliferation of these ideas strengthen the bond between those caught in the more specific mind traps that flourish in these spaces.
For the people that mature in the role, often they separate immediately, or become ostritized for their ideas. For the few but continuously revolving grifters themselves, if they don't leave at a big moment of realisation, it is certain to become very tiring to keep the mask on for work, and they are eventually exposed as betas or similar "them" keyword, and ejected for something they let slip or that was gleaned. Most of the communities are held up in a cycle of new initiates and old mentors, while a few grifters make their livelyhood on it. It has a high rate of rejects and new initiates that makes it a hydra for anyone looking to slay these ideas.
Once our society emerge with more accurate labels for these types of grifts (such as "red pill" "incel" and others), we coin vocabulary terms useful to more accurately describe and identify the phenomenon in conjunction with the concepts themselves and hopefully it leads to (as can be seen with the explosive growth and decline of "pick up artists") the concurrent amount of trapped boys decrease over time before we can see it settle as a sub community of less importance. In earnest I don't see it going away completely but linger and flare up periodically with new mutations of the same age old "pick up artist" young male loneliness appeal, since it is a inherent to teenage and young men loaded with testosterone and for many that also never found guidance even as adults. Yet it may with time get called out for what it is and met with compassion to finally remove it from main culture where I think many agree it have overstayed its welcome.
With education, it can be eradicated just like many many other forms of gifting. Social awareness on both general and individual levels should also be of deep benefit to the men that find themselves without belonging and holding very confusing and burdensome feelings and thoughts. If we can connect and empathise with them we can give them more genuine advice that stays with them their entire lives. The inherent tough nut with this type of rite of passage for young men is that compassion and forgiveness is both not appealing and also not exactly the first thing most feel when confronted with an insecure alpha male clocking their feathers. It becomes a self feeding loop as they are very similar to each other in this experience, especially for people that has lacking relationships with their male role models or with the other sex or peers.
It is identifiable by the traits that are the same with the mentor figures in red pill communities, acting tough, closing off relationships, hustling and adhering to early first century standards for social hierarchy. These traits are apparently for some reason inherently more attractive to adopt to a developing individual that has elevated testosterone, and when the individual choice is between asking for guidance and meet their pain and fear vs binging red pill content on YouTube and bonding with similarly outcast lost boys on discord.
The path of least resistance wins out when this category of developing man meets the need for belonging and thirst for relationship advice that resonates with their specific trials and questions which, at that point is honestly quite disturbing to most adults. I hope this message can find someone that needs it, hope you are doing great and looking forward to the future. Cheers
- Weak fathers, in the sense that the recent generations have been abandoned and ignored a lot more. Turns out that is on par with fucking beating your kids. At least the boomers got attention from their fathers.
  The boomers and prior gens were the definition of absent fathers.

Because hes alpha and fucks
/s

It's what uneducated men do when they end up making society so hostile to women that women don't want to date anymore.
A more extreme version of this happened durning the Arab Spring.

I think the decline of misogyny is the reason. As it's not as normalized as it once was, yet still a very powerful lingering thread in our culture, men are seeking validation for it where they would have otherwise found validation for misogyny, unasked for and unconditionally, in their everyday social circles in previous eras.
- Tate is the very personification of misogyny. Are you saying misogyny is the default state of CIS/HET men?
  
  I'm saying misogyny is, culturally, hundreds of generations deep.

I can't help but feel that the amount of people following the likes of Tate did not change much, they just got an opportunity to get more vocal, being less afraid of a pushback.
They are a now vocal minority, similar to how there was a rise in Neo-Nazi speech, for example.

How do people learn how to parent teenagers these days?

Social media algos are creating this. This is why a lot of 20-38 year old young boys are turning to conservatism. This is how the rich wealthy elites are overthrowing the last few remaining democries. UK is currently their main target. They were successful with Germany and they are now expading. In 3-6 years, the world will have completely shifted to the right.
- This is why a lot of 20-38 year old young boys are turning to conservatism.
  As far as I know, there’s only been a slight shift toward conservatism among young men. For the most part, their political views haven’t changed all that much - it’s actually women who have shifted much more noticeably to the left and thus widening the gap between them.
  
  It differs by Western country at least as well. Australian Gen Z men for instance are shifting left, just not as quickly as women.
  To be honest, the whole narrative about Gen Z is overly focused on men, and the seismic shift of Gen Z women to the left should not be ignored. But belittling and undermining the views of young women is certainly not a new thing.