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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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We may underestimate how much gendered animosity the society contains at the margins; and the consensus about its direction is very likely wrong.

I've argued before that the cross-gender animosity is not only at the margins but is borderline mainstream (Most young guys I know follow and like Andrew Tate, social media comment sections are much more adversarial than they used to be, from both sides ). Which to me seems like a rather recent development.

Of course there's no way to quantify this, but you can tell which way the cultural/psychological wind is blowing if your eyes and ears are open enough.

Not only that but the two sexes resenting each other is mainstream. As I was growing up in the early 2000s there were 'boys vs girls' conversations. But those conversations were light-hearted and there were no hard feelings.

Nowadays browsing through social media comment sections and talking to other young guys. The tensions are much higher. I see normies spouting black pill talking points all over Instagram and TikTok. And that seems to be the majority ideology. This is in stark contrast to the early 2000s and even the 2010s were the majority consensus amongst men could have been described as 'RedPill' or 'BluePill'.

If you want an example of the above, Read the comments of this video (Videos like this are an entire genre among zoomers). You can feel the tension in the comments. To me, it's obvious this girl is joking, even if the joke isn't all that funny or whatever. The comments don't suggest most people viewed it as such, the men are on edge. I'd wager they wouldn't have reacted like this a decade ago. Another interesting phenomenon is that unattractive girls produce content like this imitating the attractive ones who can actually get away with it and just end up sinking the sanity waterline further as young naive men peers who know her think "wait I can't even this this bitch?" and the women gas up their egos without being able to back it up.

I mean Andrew Tate is actually popular FFS! I have had so many of my normie friends and acquaintances ask me about what I think of Andrew Tate, and most of them say the same thing. "He's got a point, I agree with a large part of what he says". The man is a clown, he's a comedian in my eyes. The fact his rhetoric resonates with men despite all else is a testament to the times we are living in.

On the female side of the aisle, it seems like they are doubling down too. They will just make more TikTok videos like the one I linked above.

Unfortunately, significant amounts of ink were spilled on the post defending myself of accusations of being an incel or whatever against discussing the central thrust of the post which I meant to be the worsening relations gaining enough mass to be noticeable in mainstream forums.


I'd love to hear what you have to say about this topic. Maybe consider an effort post?

I think the thing about Tate and co, is that they represent what essentially is an aspirational culture these days. Represent isn't exactly the correct word, but I'm not sure how else to put it. But I think they're reflecting a view based on a certain "Social Media Yuppie" perspective that's coming out of a few large cities, frankly, London is the biggest example here I think. Where they're wrong of course, is that the SM Yuppie mentality, isn't as common outside of these places as these people think. But that doesn't mean that it's not influential either. I do think there's reasons why people see this as pretty much the peak of attainable status right now.

And I think people do see traits of SM Yuppie culture "bleed out", and I think there's a reaction to it.

I've always argued that the manosphere as a whole (and it's a bunch of different parts and I acknowledge that) should be more focused on teaching people to avoid red flags. And I understand avoiding these red flags are tough, because again, these are relatively high-status baddies we're talking about here. But still...you don't want to deal with the narcissistic traits here. Just say no. It's not worth the headache. But educating men about potential red flags has always been seen as misogynistic by people who well...promote and sell those flags, giving them out to women to be honest.

And then there's the concern that this SM Yuppie culture will be picked up on by your partner in an existing relationship. What do you do then?

Anyway, I think largely that's what this is all about. I think you can avoid it if you want to, especially if you recognize status pressures and try your best to avoid them. But that doesn't necessarily make it easy or without cost.