You’re right, and what you need to understand is that the reason half of our idiots voted for an idiot is because we allowed corporations to atomize society so people didn’t mix anymore, we don’t have shared perspectives of the world anymore, everyone gets their information about literally everything algorithmically. This atomization of society is what took down the USA and it’s coming for you next if it’s not already happening wherever you are.
Almost every American just wants to stay home and play video games, we didn’t want any of this. We wanted healthcare.
Social identity is one of those things we never talk about, it’s something most people don’t even believe exists. But it’s so fundamental to who we are as a species that when it’s taken away, people will lose the will to live entirely even if they’re not depressed or have any mental illness. This has been researched to a great degree and we’ve made laws pertaining to how we treat prisoners because we’ve collectively determined that to take someone’s social identity away is tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment.
Meanwhile, we have all built an interconnected palace to finding ways to dismantle our own social identities online. It doesn’t matter how “introverted” you think you are or how reclusive you feel, you need a social identity to survive, you need other people, you need to define yourself in relation to others. It’s hardwired.
And scrolling on the internet doesn’t fill this gap. You can’t get that self-inflection from reading other people’s thoughts in your own head. You have to engage with others to find yourself, and if you don’t, you slowly become more and more withdrawn and distant and you start to blame these dark feelings on everything else, because how do you even identify a cause or a syndrome that we don’t even have language for in most cases? How many 18-year-old boys who don’t know how to talk to girls are thinking “I need to exercise my social capacity to better find my own values”? When it’s so much easier to find a forum that says you’re the one who’s right and true and honest, and the world is against you.
There’s an old adage that you should never make life policy decisions based on how you feel in the moment. The MGTOW guys, even the “best” of them are stuck in a perpetual reaction state and thus their policy and mission statement are less actual tactics for finding comfort and peace, and more a reaction designed to elicit a response from other people.
It’s a tantrum. They’re all throwing a tantrum.
If you’re actually making your own decisions about if you want to date or not, you just do it, you don’t need to wear it like a uniform, you don’t actually need community support outside of whatever actual social circle you [should] already have in life. The MGTOW movement, even in the most charitable possible light, is massively performative and expecting some kind of attention. This is why they get increasingly vocal and toxic, they’re like the 11-year-old kid who packed all his favorite belongings in a checkerboard bindle over his shoulder and is at the front door shouting “I’M REALLY RUNNING AWAY NOW! FOR REAL! YOU’RE ALL GONNA BE SORRY!”
Ideally, you have these “arguments” well ahead of time before you marry someone who has fucked up attitudes about anyone, anywhere.
People can absolutely change and “wake up” to realize that the shit they’re holding onto is going to cost them their future and they will absolutely change for the better when they care for someone else and want a better future. But not everyone is willing or capable of self-examination, and many are also not willing or capable of making changes.
Find out before you both have your names on a mortgage or carton of eggs together.
I love just saying “toxic masculinity” anywhere online, even if you’re deep in the bowels of Lemmy, you will get a few reactionary turds who just see the term and lose all cognitive ability to think and mash the downvote button between heated breaths and tears streaming down their faces.
edit: and it continues, very predictable. Seriously guys, just be honest if the term makes you feel shit, you will find truth by pursuing those feelings and the questions around them, literally you will figure out why you’re actually unhappy. Don’t pull back, push through. Yes, I am provoking, and if it’s provocation that has an effect on you, that’s a HUGE sign that you can figure out a big truth about yourself and the world if you spend like, 30 minutes in uncomfortable silence asking yourself “why” about things and being painfully honest in your replies until you hit bedrock.
When the corporations start dividing your population and guaranteeing their own interests over democracy, look at what happened to us and learn from it. It doesn’t stop here.