This is absolutely a major contributing factor, but there's more to it than this. Everybody is lonely, pretty much regardless of gender. This issue hurts everyone.
And it is also caused in part because of how fucked up we've designed our society. It's nearly impossible to make friends as an adult because
we're all working too much to have the free time for it
there are (effectively) no third places where you can hang out with the expectation to meet people without the expectation of spending money
to get anywhere you generally need a car, highways and roads divide and spread everything which makes walking or biking difficult
social media is run for profit, not for the sake of actually connecting people
these above issues feed into the issue OP is pointing out. If you are lonely and your life isn't going too well, then you're gonna seek answers for this complicated issue. And fascists are all too willing to take advantage and provide simple answers. It then turns into a self feeding cycle.
I'm sure there's a bunch of other reasons too, but those are the ones of the top of my sleep deprived head. Even if all the above awful values men have disappeared, the above problems would still need to be fixed.
As third-places don't exist without paying for things, more socialisation has moved online where intimate connections are not as deep as inperson so the connections are weaker and don't last as long.
Internet socialising has a tendency to form echo chambers and social bubbles so interacting with new people with different perspectives, even online, is more difficult which is eroding socialising skills.
Dating sites and apps have capitalized on this loss of places to meet people and most of these platforms are controlled by a single entity: Match Group.
Match Group are explicitly making the dating experience worse for both men and women because it makes more money for them and they have little to no competition.
It goes like this: women get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of messages and harassed on the platform, women leave those platforms, fewer % of women on the platform, men then pay money to get more potential matches, women get overwhelmed, and therefore the cycle repeats.
At least that's my impression from the experience I have had and observed when asking my women friends about it. Not sure how the experience is for those looking for non-hetrosexual relationships, please comment below how it's similar or different for other groups.
If that were true then the number one dating app would be Bumble because it only lets the women message. I don't think anyone is being "overwhelmed" by the amount of messages they receive. No one I've spoken to has ever said anything like that.
we're all working too much to have the free time for it
there are (effectively) no third places where you can hang out with the expectation to meet people without the expectation of spending money
to get anywhere you generally need a car, highways and roads divide and spread everything which makes walking or biking difficult
social media is run for profit, not for the sake of actually connecting people
these above issues feed into the issue OP is pointing out. If you are lonely and your life isn't going too well, then you're gonna seek answers for this complicated issue. And fascists are all too willing to take advantage and provide simple answers. It then turns into a self feeding cycle.
In other words:
Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism
Surprise, it's also capitalism
Don't worry, capitalism has just the solution for you!
Because they need to sort through an unsortably large quantity of matches if using an online service, and women generally need to be reserved in public for their safety when offline.
Not really dating atm anyway. Just trying kinky stuff in Lemmy NSFW to make up for years of being AeroAce. I'm absurdly skittish, and I don't know if there's much hope for me.
Very, very dependent on where you are. You're on feddit.nl so I'll assume you live in the Nederlands. For... Most of the US, going without a car is either not really doable or you will absolutely miss out on going lots of places.
If more people go with bike and/or walk you would have more infrastructure for it.
Also keep annoying your local representatives.
Where there is a will there is a way.
Even in the US there are places that are inaccessible by car as far as I know. Then again some people in the US also have the BS abuse that wide bike lanes make it harder for fire trucks etc to get around ….
Oh we try but it's a very uphill battle. Not to mention we have the loudest car brains all shrieking that "it isn't used!" when talking about the 2 bike lanes in a city, as if they were even connected or went anywhere people needed to go (and they are still used by yours truly and others anyhow).
It's not really a surprise when people don't use it when they have to brave 40+mph car traffic to get to the bike lane right?
I keep contacting my reps but I've come to the conclusion that meaningful transit and Europe-like bike infra will just never happen in my lifetime. Sad but maybe generations after me will have it.
In our time remote work is again a thing, which may alleviate this a bit.
Parks and streets. One can just walk the streets talking to your friends or random strangers. This was even more or less normal, the primary way, a couple hundred years ago, I think.
There's a verb "слоняться" in Russian, I think it had this specific meaning (to walk around dressed up nice doing nothing on the main street of a small town at evening or at holiday, talking to whoever your age you meet) then.
That's American. I think underground crossings are a good idea, and also - in my childhood there were plenty of illegal small stores inside those in Moscow or just benches with people selling stuff, while those took space and didn't look nice, I can't help feeling nostalgic.
Later all those things were removed from inside crossings, and lots of big ugly malls were built, with kinda the same, but official and more expensive. The good old redistribution from the people to the right people.
So what I meant - such crossings and metro entrances were sort of little centers of life. To buy a couple of shawarmas and keep walking with your friend(-s).
Who's to blame for this really? Smart people gave us the Internet, and gave us World Wide Web on top of it. With personal webpages, guestbooks, forums, all navigated via links, giving the same functionality social media do, not harder to use (there were plenty of HTML editors usable even by a drunken monkey in labor, so all the complaints of the "it was hard" kind ... I was 9, I didn't understand what a computer program is, I could make a webpage and I did).
Except there were people who wanted all this to look "respectable". I think the reason people flocked to social media was because someone was in control and they wanted this. Same as with democracies and fascists.
I also remember that I wanted to find some new level, magical unity in the Web. Like some "Metaverse", but deeper, not owned by anyone, as real and living as a rarely visited park alley near a back entrance between two buildings on a normal street.
I think others might have felt similar longing, and the reason Facebook or whatever could trap them was - they didn't think about it being a service owned by one company, or even wanted that. I remember people laughing at my argument about danger of centralized control, saying something as if that was actually what they wanted, with the "screw you" emotion.
Not just fascists, everyone benefiting from that is ready to provide simple answers.
Most of the people repeating the keywords "male loneliness epidemic" are, but that doesn't mean you automatically are. You're probably suffering from the same loneliness people of all genders are.
Even if a lot of the people spamming that phrase are bad it doesn't mean that it's not a real thing that affects other non bad people. They're co-opting real problems to further their agendas.
To take this one step further: shitty memes like this one are used to essentially validate the feelings of the bad actors and the "manosphere." Especially when the non-bad people try to push back and get the response of "yes, all men," it just reinforces their stance of "people hate men" and pushes them deeper into the validation loops that the manosphere provides to them.
I have all my girlfriends on stream rn, ok so, Canonical_Warlock, so tell us, what have you done to further equity and resist fascism?
Last six months is fine if you're busy. But we really want to hear about the community organizations you're interested in or working with.
We're listening and ready to fawn and cheer. ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶
Also open to any advice for people who might be basing their esteem on meme stream concerning more nourishing options!
(i am neither sarcastic nor a cop, but the latter can still read replies, so maybe... semirhetorical.)
Yeah it's really invidating and alienating young men.
Liberals wonder why young men flock to the conservative, and then they say stuff that's just very invalidating. Like, if you want to convince somebody, you have to make an attractive offer. Instead, it feels as if today's "feminists" are just blaming everything bad in the world on men. Even though your neighbor man has exactly zero responsibility for the world at large.
Same thing, really. I'm completely lonely, I do think there's some sort of issue societally, so it really does feel like that meme is calling me a nazi douche for no good reason.
While I don't necessarily disagree, citing the Tate brothers for the amount of women around them isn't great because they're probably trafficking most of those women.
I'm more referring to their female social media followers, who go on about how great their (toxic) masculinity is, rather than the very real female victims of their narcissism , which you're quite right to note.
Not all douches are lonely. There's a stereotypical "rich man with a yacht that gets all the women" and the "high school football player who's an arrogant douche and still gets all the girls".
I'm not arguing with you either, i'm just writing it for the other people reading this thread.
The fascists go for a predatory numbers game, hitting up as many women as possible while hoping they find ones vulnerable enough to get roped into an abusive relationship. It's a strategy that breaks down against women who socially reinforce self respect amongst each other. Of course, this isn't unique, as fascism similarly recruits vulnerable men who struggle with self respect. It's abuse and cruelty all the way down.
There are plenty of women in far right/neo-fascist etc. groups, and often people from those groups have relationships with other people from those groups. Your comment gives very much the impression that only males are fascists, which is absolutely not my experience dealing with Forza Nuova/Casapound people (both neo-fascists parties) in my youth.
I also see the male loneliness epidemic as an orthogonal problem to males being fascists, but that's yet another topic.
There are plenty of women in far right/neo-fascist etc. groups
There are plenty of the populist Mango Mussolini type fascist women, but AFAIK there are far fewer in the out and proud neo-nazi groups. There's this interview from this guy who was a neo-nazi until the mid-90s, and he talks about how the complaints from the incels now are the same as back when he was in. There were women in the group, but at a ratio of 7 or 8 to 1.
Abuse towards women is unfortunately so normalized by society that I bet most of those women don't realize how much they have been manipulated since childhood to be against their own autonomy, especially if they grew up in a religious environment.
It's possible that women of minority demographics voted more blue because some realized how anti-(their specific minority) republicans are but, just like the white women, weren't put off by republicans' misogyny.
This is very deresponsibilizing though. I don't think you can explain mass phenomena with it.
To me it seems more reasonable to conclude that gender is not that relevant here and that social conditions, education, family upbringing etc. are.
how much they have been manipulated since childhood to be against their own autonomy
And how do you explain poor people voting against their economic interests, immigrants voting for xenophobic parties etc.?
I don't think that individual abuse can be used to explain every case, it feels as a way to rationalize something you can't justify otherwise (e.g., it's unimaginable how a woman would vote against her own autonomy). I do believe that everyone in a way is a victim of some kind of influence, marketing, societal pressure, class violence, different biases etc., but we need to draw a line at some point for people to be responsible for their shitty ideas.
To make an example, an immigrant who went through a tough immigration process, with all the anxiety and insecurity it caused, and finally managed to make it is probably going to suffer heavily of survivorship bias and it's not impossible they will be xenophobic against illegal immigrants and perhaps will even vote for whom proposes harsher immigration policies.
You can argue that society abused them etc., but they are still responsible for their ideas.
So my point is that I don't disagree with you, but we can find exogenous reasons for why people have shitty ideas in all cases. Doing so though we deresponsibilize the individual from checking with themself and reflecting on their own positions. I think it's fair to consider that some people simply have shitty ideas, are greedy, selfish, racist, classist, or whatever else, without necessarily trying to trace back those ideas to some external factor.
100% some people are genuinely shitty people and their behavior would happen even if society wasn't misogynist, classist, etc.
My goal wasn't to alleviate them from responsiblity. I do not believe it is their fault for growing up in a society that is against them, but it is their fault for not thinking crtically and choosing to perpetuate that hate once they are an adult.
Also I was thinking of abuse on a societal level, not an individual level, but that does contribute. (I probably could have used a better word. I do agree that abuse implies individual rather than societal.) I find the fact that so much misogyny and other hate exists within the overton window to be repulsive. Trump said "grab her by the pussy," (plus a bunch of other terrible things) and got into the oval office not once, but twice, which shows that society has a major problem with finding hate acceptable. Why people find that hate acceptable I imagine varies between demographics.
I still do stand by my previous comment, which is my thoughts on why specifically women voted the way they did, although I agree it has room to be expanded on more.
I think a major part of it is that people simply aren't thinking things through enough. They should be questioning society's misogyny, racism, etc, but for some reason they choose to accept it as normal.
Every time I see this meme format I'm a little frustrated and sad.
A long time ago, Cosmo did a bunch of studies on dating app users. It published a bunch of their results and people have been miscounting it ever since to serve their assumptions.
On dating apps, when one woman matches with one man, 90% of women match with 10% of men. This is largely a result of the app populations, which were and are mostly men. Unless you're okay with your girl dating ~9 men at once, dating apps will only match a small percentage of men, because that's how maths works.
When asked to judge dating app profile pictures (no other profile information), women judged men's pictures lower than men judged women's. This is as much a factor of the profile pictures we choose as anything else. In addition, men's match preferences had a strong relationship with their attraction ranks. Whereas for women the relationship was weaker, and the content of the profile was a larger deciding factor. But people hear about the judging profile photos thing and go 'women are more critical of appearance than men are -> women are shallow'.
When asked 'what age are [men/women] most atteactive', women tended to answer close to their own age (with a drop off around 50). Most men said 20-25. But most men saying still typically matched close to their own age. Much like the women with profile pictures, they were trying to answer a direct question with what they believed was a critical, scientific, 'objective' answer, rather than reflecting their own dating preferences. But now women fear (or believe) that any men will not find them attractive as they age.
There's a lot of interesting things in those findings, if you acknowledge it is specifically measuring dating app users, had nuanced findings, and was not scientifically robust in the first place. It's broad conclusions DO NOT apply to the population as a whole.
And I ache a little each time I see its conclusions reduced and misused to justify misanthropy. Much like the myth of 'the alpha wolf', it's misinformation that refuses to die.
I don't agree with this. They are a stream-lined method to meet other people who are interested in making new contacts without going out of their comfort zone. I also may be biased since I met my s/o on Bumble but we are 6 years in and this is the healthiest most loving relationship I've ever been in. I know my experience is most likely the exception rather than the norm YMMV
Also I don't know how going on a few dates with someone is "jumping right to romance"
Dating apps are quite horrible, but I would have never met my girlfriend without them. We are both very shy and agree that even if we had met by chance, nobody would have ever made a move.
None of my women friends are romantically interesting to me and I'm not the kind of person who meets a lot of new people. I'm very happy with my small circle of friends and neither my job nor my hobbies expose me to new people.
A dating app helped me to work around that. I was very lucky though and the first person I met with turned out to be the perfect match for me.
Women also use dating apps for their own reasons, too. While its true there are a lot of socially inept men on them, I'm uncomfortable with your phrasing. It seems to be blaming men (and not women) for the apps' existence.
Dating apps are mostly a reflection of a society with poor options for socialising organically. They're trying to get people connected in a world that makes organic meeting places increasingly expensive or rare, or work hours that are particularly long and limit our energy and free time.
The world is also increasingly hostile to the 'cold approach'. Dating apps are environments where men know they are allowed to interact with women, snd both can easily disengage from bad matches.That's especially crucial for the more gentle men that don't want to make women uncomfortable in the first place, since they would likely never cold approach, or feel uncomfortable admitting interest to their friends and acquaintances.
That last paragraph speaks true to me. I'm not the kind of person to make a move. But with online dating, there is always romantic context.
"I've been seeing this person from the dating app for a few weeks now and I'm really attracted, we always have a great time, maybe I should ask if they'd like to kiss" is a lot easier than initiating intimacy without that context.
I'm always super hesitant to comment on stuff like this because I don't want to be lumped in with the fascists but I'm going to break that rule just this once. When people hear "Male Loneliness Epidemic", it means different things to different people. It appears to me as most left leaning people hear, "I don't have a woman that caters to me and my needs". For myself it means, "I don't have a Support System of friends and family to lean on." A partner would be great but I would get far greater satisfaction in gaining a group of friends or a sense of belonging. Paired with likely Autism and ADHD, things aren't super rad for me on any aspect of life. That's all my own stuff to deal with though.
The takeaway is I hope anyone reading this is doing okay, regardless of gender. I may not get the struggles of your life, but I hope you are overcoming them.
Yeah, that was my interpretation as well, although I've heard the alternative usage too. Also, same situation for me. I've got a very few people that I'm friendly with, but no close friends. Hope it gets better for you, man.
I think there is a general loneliness epidemic, but it’s particularly acute with men who were never pressured or given the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to build and maintain a community around them.
Like the systems and environments that used to facilitate this no longer exist, and it is left to individuals to do it them selves, something impossible without those skills. Those institutions and systems that used to facilitate community building have been pivoted to profit or dismantled if they couldn’t generate profit or if they were actively undermining the profitability of something else.
When you tell most men their problem is they don’t have any friends not that they don’t have a girlfriend they take that very personally and reject the idea
I really feel like this is an idea that needs to die. Plenty of abusive and hateful men seem to have no problems with getting the type of relationships they want; this just inadvertently promotes the idea that one needs to be a 'nice guy' in order to have a relationship. Not every guy who leans left succeeds in wooing a woman, and right wingers complaining about where the women are at are probably in circles with primarily left-leaning women and they need to go look in a church or country concert or something.
Yeah, i even suspect that what makes men turn a bit more to the right with age is the realization that it's more likely to find a woman-partner this way.
I.e., adapting "work hard" way of thinking to earn more money, because women are ultimately also largely attracted to wealth.
Most abusive people have no problems with anything social. It's about having skill and ability to suppress others in the society, a bit like relative power, so these things correlate, and also TBH people with relative power are naturally attractive. And the weaker you yourself are, the more likely you are to 1) project and be afraid of hurting someone, so not approaching them, 2) be impressed by such a relatively powerful person, which increases the chance of getting frustrated, 3) have wounds from #2 contributing to #1 even more.
I feel like people making such posts have nothing to be proud of rather than where their dicks landed. A bit like those posting their IQ test results.
There’s actual science on this that says women will get turned on by pretty much anything as long as they feel safe.
So like. The barest amount of cognizance of the objective danger women face, like, constantly, and a respectful effort to show by example that you’re not part of it (which doesn’t mean saying it, like: first off I swear I’m not going to rape you isn’t going to make anyone swoon) and you’re in.
I wish more people understood that the enemy way to make people think you’re a good person is to just be a good fucking person.
It's not, or rather it's not specific to men. Everyone is feeling lonelier nowadays for a bunch of reasons, but the "male loneliness epidemic" is just women having standards and not relying on men to survive like they used to
What if, hear me out because it might be a crazy thought, it’s not just the hateful men that are affected? You think nazis are the only ones experiencing male loneliness?
That's literally the context of this post. The picture implies that women prefer men who punch Nazis over the 5 symbols used by men who typically support fascism.
No, this post implies that “male loneliness” is a thing only because most men are “douches”. And that’s just a blatant misrepresentation of reality which requires a deep misandry to believe even for a second.
Plus, it implies that loneliness is just a matter of having a partner. While this is definitely an important aspect, loneliness is general intended (in the surveys etc.) as being literally alone a large percentage of time, including not having friends or acquaintances.
This post is such a stupid take on a very complex issue.
Most of the problem is related to economic-socio problem. If everyone can get a $100k/year job that solves a whole bunch of problems in itself. It's hard to convince someone to date if we are only earning like 25k/year. Some women are going no thanks I will take a chance with an old guy who maybe divorced but seems financially settled.
Then comes introverts/anxiety problems, etc. these dudes have a hard time even approaching women because they may get humiliated.
Then comes looks, only around 30-40% people are tall enough and good looking enough to get chosen with no effort instantly.
Add all these and we have like 55% dudes below the age of 30 with no partner.
I'm not very cool on most of criteria people name, but fine on the looks (sometimes ; not tall, not muscular and all that, but can look nice enough) and being well-meaning (kinda), so what this means - any possible chances end at me trying to say something and just not being able to, or getting excited or a panic attack, any combination of these, sometimes few attempts in a row over kinda long periods time.
Women are human, and forgive your faults and downsides and failures to an extent, but when you just can't say or can't decide something, then that's all. That can be forgiven too, but you just don't, and nothing happens. When nothing happens, nothing happens. A person can't wait for you to defeat yourself all their life.
Eh, I wouldn't say so. I think it's mainly because men are pushed to be more tough and much less expressive of emotions, which, for one, pushes them down those horrible alt right pipelines, but also makes it hard for them to feel intimacy and make meaningful relationships much harder.
I believe that gender norms incredibly hurt both men and women.
Damn right they do. Toxic masculinity means I can't publicly express myself without this look:
Edit: down votes. See what I mean? Fascism thrives off toxic masculinity. The Nazi beliefs were that a man's role was to make children to propagate the "correct" genes, and die in war. It's a chicken and the egg problem, and we can't address one without addressing the other.
I am a moderately liberal guy, and I cannot get any girls. I'm shorter than average and socially awkward. I've managed to get a few dates from dating apps but none of them went anywhere because I'm so awkward in person.
While I am unable to find any scientific papers on the topic- I'm pretty sure there are several sources that show online dating has skyrocketed past any other form of meeting a new potential partner. MANY people use dating apps.
If guy A meets someone irl and has a 5 year relationship and guy B has 9 hinge dates in that time that last a week then 90% of partners in this set are met via online dating, but you'd probably rather be guy A than guy B.
In the scenario I described above 50% of current partners would be from dating apps and I'd still rather be guy A. Guess we'd need to see the actual infographic and who produced it to really say anything definitive.
Yes, I think the "traditional ways" of finding a partner (or rather places) are breaking away slowly. There are more ways to stay occupied. More choices in events/clubs etc to go to. That gives more freedom in regard to finding somebody that fits greatly, but also reduces the pressure to pick from a small pool or to run into others occasionally. The pressure to form a family to just make ends meet (division of responsibilities/labor; shared resources etc) should be lower as well.
I could wish this where fact, but it fails to take into account that beyond punches you also need social grace and appearances surpassing Ralph Wiggum...
People forget that women can have like, ultraspecific preferences. Women above a certain age tend to be married, the rest not interested in relationships at all. Then there's the Lesbians having relationships with each other. This still does not account for the difficulty dating as a man. I guess most do find a partner, but it's harder, so feels like there's somehow less women available.
I don’t get it, really. Maybe I’ve just been really lucky.
I have not been single for more than about 5 months since I was 13 (aside from a short window between 18 and 20 when I worked at an office full of people in their 50s and had no contact with anyone my own age). When my ex and I split after about 13 years, I had several flings between that and meeting my wife. I didn’t go looking for them either. I never once made a pass at any woman until she first said something obvious to me. I don’t do subtlety at all.
I’m not attractive, I’m not tall. I haven’t settled and been with anyone I didn’t find attractive or intelligent (only once, directly after the split with my ex, I was a wreck. She was pretty, but dumb as a box of rocks. I was projecting things onto her that weren’t true at all because of the state that I was in).
I am a musician in a small town though, and almost every girl I ever dated was deeply into music and it usually started from there.
It could just be luck, but I really do believe it has everything to do with confidence and being sure of oneself. I have issues, and a lot of them, but I don’t hold back and I never have. The people who don’t like me have an honest reason not to and the people who do don’t have to guess with me.
I have always been unapologetically who I am wherever I go.
I also prefer the company of no one and spend most of my time in isolation and I’ve still had good luck.
I’m getting older now though, and I’m a stay at home dad these days and more isolated than I’ve ever been. I would say that if my wife were to leave me today, I’d be alone for a very long time.
I’m not bragging here either, I’m not about that kind of thing at all. I’m obviously coming from a position of privilege, be it luck or whatever I have going on here that gives me that privilege. I really do think it would be easier for other men though if they’d find confidence and become very passionate about something that women can relate to. My passion for music has definitely, definitely, definitely helped me.
I even spent many years struggling with drug addiction, would not date anyone who had that problem in common with me, and I still found sober women who were willing to tolerate me.
I don’t know. I just hope that if you feel hopelessly alone and you read this comment, it will give you some hope.
Edit:
Don’t just downvote. Discuss it you bitter twat lol. Seriously. I’d like to see your perspective on the matter.
I highly doubt that. Women have been voting Democrat in much larger percentages than men for a long time. Not that Democrats are great or anything, but they're not straight up fascist.
It depends heavily on what kind of commie you are actually.
If you're an ultra, you're likely too busy shitting on other communists from the comfort of the armchair to look for a relationship
If you're a ML or Maoist, you probably don't want a relationship to spend more time "reading theory" (watching youtube slop)
If you're a Trotskyite, you're likely already in a sex offender registry
If you're a Bordigist, you're playing hard mode when it comes to getting a relationship as you refuse to be a usufructuary traitor to the health of the species (you avoid drinking and smoking and all like the plague)
If you're a revolutionary Marxist who has read theory, then you'll drive people away with your revolutionary aura
If you're a Marxist who hasn't read theory, then you're a liberal who shouldn't have any problems finding a relationship
I think it is at least accurate to some degree - but, sadly, both romantic and sexual attraction are subject to a whole chaotic mess of both conscious and unconscious factors, often out of our own control. Otherwise toxic relationships and paraphilias (using the term in the sense of fetishisations genuinely harmful to yourself and/or others) wouldn't really be a thing.
I am actually going to be reentering the dating game after a little over 10 years. I sometimes wonder 'am i still attractive ' but then I remember this...
I'm discovering that it isn't really "am I attractive?" It's " I feel attractive."
Like I'm down 100lbs, been pumping my protein and weights, and I got muscle definition where I've never noticed muscle definition before.
Clothes that fit, glasses I feel comfortable in. I don't really want to "date" because I'm so much happier with impressing myself than trying to impress someone else.
If you see this and think "they must think all lonely men are douches", you're literally just telling on yourself. The message here is don't be a fucking Nazi and you'll be less lonely, why are y'all misinterpreting this like a bunch of whiny manosphere chuds?
I wish this was accurate. There would be a lot less fascists.
This is absolutely a major contributing factor, but there's more to it than this. Everybody is lonely, pretty much regardless of gender. This issue hurts everyone.
And it is also caused in part because of how fucked up we've designed our society. It's nearly impossible to make friends as an adult because
I'm sure there's a bunch of other reasons too, but those are the ones of the top of my sleep deprived head. Even if all the above awful values men have disappeared, the above problems would still need to be fixed.
Also to add to the list:
As third-places don't exist without paying for things, more socialisation has moved online where intimate connections are not as deep as inperson so the connections are weaker and don't last as long.
Internet socialising has a tendency to form echo chambers and social bubbles so interacting with new people with different perspectives, even online, is more difficult which is eroding socialising skills.
Dating sites and apps have capitalized on this loss of places to meet people and most of these platforms are controlled by a single entity: Match Group.
Match Group are explicitly making the dating experience worse for both men and women because it makes more money for them and they have little to no competition.
It goes like this: women get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of messages and harassed on the platform, women leave those platforms, fewer % of women on the platform, men then pay money to get more potential matches, women get overwhelmed, and therefore the cycle repeats.
At least that's my impression from the experience I have had and observed when asking my women friends about it. Not sure how the experience is for those looking for non-hetrosexual relationships, please comment below how it's similar or different for other groups.
If that were true then the number one dating app would be Bumble because it only lets the women message. I don't think anyone is being "overwhelmed" by the amount of messages they receive. No one I've spoken to has ever said anything like that.
Ding ding ding ding.
On the bright side ive had time to use dumbbells between meetings and I've never looked better?
In other words:
Yup, that's exactly it. But where would we be without the myriad of problems capitalism causes?
I'm curious if women do have as much of a problem finding a date, and why the heck don't they find the men with issues finding a date?
Because they need to sort through an unsortably large quantity of matches if using an online service, and women generally need to be reserved in public for their safety when offline.
I have never bothered with online dating ever. I just think of what an awful thing it is.
I dipped my toes. It was pretty terrible. Luckily I was able to find a partner elsewhere.
Not really dating atm anyway. Just trying kinky stuff in Lemmy NSFW to make up for years of being AeroAce. I'm absurdly skittish, and I don't know if there's much hope for me.
Best of luck o7
There are loads of area’s where you can get around without a car, which increases area’s to be outside and meet others.
For a lot of people including me it is a choice to use the car as much as we do.
Very, very dependent on where you are. You're on feddit.nl so I'll assume you live in the Nederlands. For... Most of the US, going without a car is either not really doable or you will absolutely miss out on going lots of places.
Really wish that wasn't the case but alas.
If more people go with bike and/or walk you would have more infrastructure for it. Also keep annoying your local representatives.
Where there is a will there is a way.
Even in the US there are places that are inaccessible by car as far as I know. Then again some people in the US also have the BS abuse that wide bike lanes make it harder for fire trucks etc to get around ….
Oh we try but it's a very uphill battle. Not to mention we have the loudest car brains all shrieking that "it isn't used!" when talking about the 2 bike lanes in a city, as if they were even connected or went anywhere people needed to go (and they are still used by yours truly and others anyhow).
It's not really a surprise when people don't use it when they have to brave 40+mph car traffic to get to the bike lane right?
I keep contacting my reps but I've come to the conclusion that meaningful transit and Europe-like bike infra will just never happen in my lifetime. Sad but maybe generations after me will have it.
In our time remote work is again a thing, which may alleviate this a bit.
Parks and streets. One can just walk the streets talking to your friends or random strangers. This was even more or less normal, the primary way, a couple hundred years ago, I think.
There's a verb "слоняться" in Russian, I think it had this specific meaning (to walk around dressed up nice doing nothing on the main street of a small town at evening or at holiday, talking to whoever your age you meet) then.
Later all those things were removed from inside crossings, and lots of big ugly malls were built, with kinda the same, but official and more expensive. The good old redistribution from the people to the right people.
So what I meant - such crossings and metro entrances were sort of little centers of life. To buy a couple of shawarmas and keep walking with your friend(-s).
Except there were people who wanted all this to look "respectable". I think the reason people flocked to social media was because someone was in control and they wanted this. Same as with democracies and fascists.
I also remember that I wanted to find some new level, magical unity in the Web. Like some "Metaverse", but deeper, not owned by anyone, as real and living as a rarely visited park alley near a back entrance between two buildings on a normal street.
I think others might have felt similar longing, and the reason Facebook or whatever could trap them was - they didn't think about it being a service owned by one company, or even wanted that. I remember people laughing at my argument about danger of centralized control, saying something as if that was actually what they wanted, with the "screw you" emotion.
So if I'm a lonely guy it can only be because I'm a sack of shit. Cool cool. Love that. Great for the self esteem.
Most of the people repeating the keywords "male loneliness epidemic" are, but that doesn't mean you automatically are. You're probably suffering from the same loneliness people of all genders are.
Even if a lot of the people spamming that phrase are bad it doesn't mean that it's not a real thing that affects other non bad people. They're co-opting real problems to further their agendas.
To take this one step further: shitty memes like this one are used to essentially validate the feelings of the bad actors and the "manosphere." Especially when the non-bad people try to push back and get the response of "yes, all men," it just reinforces their stance of "people hate men" and pushes them deeper into the validation loops that the manosphere provides to them.
I have all my girlfriends on stream rn, ok so, Canonical_Warlock, so tell us, what have you done to further equity and resist fascism? Last six months is fine if you're busy. But we really want to hear about the community organizations you're interested in or working with. We're listening and ready to fawn and cheer. ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶
Also open to any advice for people who might be basing their esteem on meme stream concerning more nourishing options!
(i am neither sarcastic nor a cop, but the latter can still read replies, so maybe... semirhetorical.)
Painting all lonely men as douches is kind of fucked up, no?
Yeah it's really invidating and alienating young men.
Liberals wonder why young men flock to the conservative, and then they say stuff that's just very invalidating. Like, if you want to convince somebody, you have to make an attractive offer. Instead, it feels as if today's "feminists" are just blaming everything bad in the world on men. Even though your neighbor man has exactly zero responsibility for the world at large.
People just aren't wired to handle uncomfortable self truths. We haven't figured out a way to get around it yet as a society.
It reinforces the isolation and makes the situation worse.
That's not at all what this is suggesting, just that victims of the "male loneliness epidemic" are only lonely bc they're douches
Same thing, really. I'm completely lonely, I do think there's some sort of issue societally, so it really does feel like that meme is calling me a nazi douche for no good reason.
In my experience, the douchiest of men are surrounded by women. Look at the Tate brothers, for an example.
While I don't necessarily disagree, citing the Tate brothers for the amount of women around them isn't great because they're probably trafficking most of those women.
I'm more referring to their female social media followers, who go on about how great their (toxic) masculinity is, rather than the very real female victims of their narcissism , which you're quite right to note.
Not my experience at all. And I've met some high-quality douches.
Not all douches are lonely. There's a stereotypical "rich man with a yacht that gets all the women" and the "high school football player who's an arrogant douche and still gets all the girls".
I'm not arguing with you either, i'm just writing it for the other people reading this thread.
The fascists go for a predatory numbers game, hitting up as many women as possible while hoping they find ones vulnerable enough to get roped into an abusive relationship. It's a strategy that breaks down against women who socially reinforce self respect amongst each other. Of course, this isn't unique, as fascism similarly recruits vulnerable men who struggle with self respect. It's abuse and cruelty all the way down.
There are plenty of women in far right/neo-fascist etc. groups, and often people from those groups have relationships with other people from those groups. Your comment gives very much the impression that only males are fascists, which is absolutely not my experience dealing with Forza Nuova/Casapound people (both neo-fascists parties) in my youth.
I also see the male loneliness epidemic as an orthogonal problem to males being fascists, but that's yet another topic.
There are plenty of the populist Mango Mussolini type fascist women, but AFAIK there are far fewer in the out and proud neo-nazi groups. There's this interview from this guy who was a neo-nazi until the mid-90s, and he talks about how the complaints from the incels now are the same as back when he was in. There were women in the group, but at a ratio of 7 or 8 to 1.
https://youtu.be/d-g3Z8IWsdU?t=871
Yes, I am quite sure that in most countries the distribution of women/men within those groups are not equal and unbalanced towards men.
That said, being a member of the actual group doesn't mean not being in those people social groups, accepting or even sharing some of their ideas etc.
Not even remotely true. Reminder that Trump won white women voters in 2024.
Those are pink women
He did. But by a smaller margin than he won white men.
So, the shortage of men who aren't nazis is actually there. And I suspect that the nazi women are having little trouble dating.
Abuse towards women is unfortunately so normalized by society that I bet most of those women don't realize how much they have been manipulated since childhood to be against their own autonomy, especially if they grew up in a religious environment.
It's possible that women of minority demographics voted more blue because some realized how anti-(their specific minority) republicans are but, just like the white women, weren't put off by republicans' misogyny.
Well, that is basically what OP's meme was saying, though:
That for a man, holding "liberal" values, gets him game.
And that's just blatantly not true.
In fact, there's a whole meme around it, being the "nice guy".
This is very deresponsibilizing though. I don't think you can explain mass phenomena with it. To me it seems more reasonable to conclude that gender is not that relevant here and that social conditions, education, family upbringing etc. are.
And how do you explain poor people voting against their economic interests, immigrants voting for xenophobic parties etc.? I don't think that individual abuse can be used to explain every case, it feels as a way to rationalize something you can't justify otherwise (e.g., it's unimaginable how a woman would vote against her own autonomy). I do believe that everyone in a way is a victim of some kind of influence, marketing, societal pressure, class violence, different biases etc., but we need to draw a line at some point for people to be responsible for their shitty ideas.
To make an example, an immigrant who went through a tough immigration process, with all the anxiety and insecurity it caused, and finally managed to make it is probably going to suffer heavily of survivorship bias and it's not impossible they will be xenophobic against illegal immigrants and perhaps will even vote for whom proposes harsher immigration policies. You can argue that society abused them etc., but they are still responsible for their ideas.
So my point is that I don't disagree with you, but we can find exogenous reasons for why people have shitty ideas in all cases. Doing so though we deresponsibilize the individual from checking with themself and reflecting on their own positions. I think it's fair to consider that some people simply have shitty ideas, are greedy, selfish, racist, classist, or whatever else, without necessarily trying to trace back those ideas to some external factor.
100% some people are genuinely shitty people and their behavior would happen even if society wasn't misogynist, classist, etc.
My goal wasn't to alleviate them from responsiblity. I do not believe it is their fault for growing up in a society that is against them, but it is their fault for not thinking crtically and choosing to perpetuate that hate once they are an adult.
Also I was thinking of abuse on a societal level, not an individual level, but that does contribute. (I probably could have used a better word. I do agree that abuse implies individual rather than societal.) I find the fact that so much misogyny and other hate exists within the overton window to be repulsive. Trump said "grab her by the pussy," (plus a bunch of other terrible things) and got into the oval office not once, but twice, which shows that society has a major problem with finding hate acceptable. Why people find that hate acceptable I imagine varies between demographics.
I still do stand by my previous comment, which is my thoughts on why specifically women voted the way they did, although I agree it has room to be expanded on more.
I think a major part of it is that people simply aren't thinking things through enough. They should be questioning society's misogyny, racism, etc, but for some reason they choose to accept it as normal.
Its unfortunate that kind of understanding and compassion never seems to make it to the men, normalized by the same society.
And in 2016
The Karen's of the world voted for someone too.
Trad wives who get off on being told what to do
Every time I see this meme format I'm a little frustrated and sad.
A long time ago, Cosmo did a bunch of studies on dating app users. It published a bunch of their results and people have been miscounting it ever since to serve their assumptions.
On dating apps, when one woman matches with one man, 90% of women match with 10% of men. This is largely a result of the app populations, which were and are mostly men. Unless you're okay with your girl dating ~9 men at once, dating apps will only match a small percentage of men, because that's how maths works.
When asked to judge dating app profile pictures (no other profile information), women judged men's pictures lower than men judged women's. This is as much a factor of the profile pictures we choose as anything else. In addition, men's match preferences had a strong relationship with their attraction ranks. Whereas for women the relationship was weaker, and the content of the profile was a larger deciding factor. But people hear about the judging profile photos thing and go 'women are more critical of appearance than men are -> women are shallow'.
When asked 'what age are [men/women] most atteactive', women tended to answer close to their own age (with a drop off around 50). Most men said 20-25. But most men saying still typically matched close to their own age. Much like the women with profile pictures, they were trying to answer a direct question with what they believed was a critical, scientific, 'objective' answer, rather than reflecting their own dating preferences. But now women fear (or believe) that any men will not find them attractive as they age.
There's a lot of interesting things in those findings, if you acknowledge it is specifically measuring dating app users, had nuanced findings, and was not scientifically robust in the first place. It's broad conclusions DO NOT apply to the population as a whole.
And I ache a little each time I see its conclusions reduced and misused to justify misanthropy. Much like the myth of 'the alpha wolf', it's misinformation that refuses to die.
Dating apps are social cancer
Make friends with women, jumping straight to “romance” with zero friendship is like running a relationship on insane difficulty
I don't agree with this. They are a stream-lined method to meet other people who are interested in making new contacts without going out of their comfort zone. I also may be biased since I met my s/o on Bumble but we are 6 years in and this is the healthiest most loving relationship I've ever been in. I know my experience is most likely the exception rather than the norm YMMV
Also I don't know how going on a few dates with someone is "jumping right to romance"
Dating apps are quite horrible, but I would have never met my girlfriend without them. We are both very shy and agree that even if we had met by chance, nobody would have ever made a move.
None of my women friends are romantically interesting to me and I'm not the kind of person who meets a lot of new people. I'm very happy with my small circle of friends and neither my job nor my hobbies expose me to new people.
A dating app helped me to work around that. I was very lucky though and the first person I met with turned out to be the perfect match for me.
Women also use dating apps for their own reasons, too. While its true there are a lot of socially inept men on them, I'm uncomfortable with your phrasing. It seems to be blaming men (and not women) for the apps' existence.
Dating apps are mostly a reflection of a society with poor options for socialising organically. They're trying to get people connected in a world that makes organic meeting places increasingly expensive or rare, or work hours that are particularly long and limit our energy and free time.
The world is also increasingly hostile to the 'cold approach'. Dating apps are environments where men know they are allowed to interact with women, snd both can easily disengage from bad matches.That's especially crucial for the more gentle men that don't want to make women uncomfortable in the first place, since they would likely never cold approach, or feel uncomfortable admitting interest to their friends and acquaintances.
That last paragraph speaks true to me. I'm not the kind of person to make a move. But with online dating, there is always romantic context.
"I've been seeing this person from the dating app for a few weeks now and I'm really attracted, we always have a great time, maybe I should ask if they'd like to kiss" is a lot easier than initiating intimacy without that context.
Thank you for this break down. It makes a lot more sense than the stat alone.
Great breakdown, thanks
I'm always super hesitant to comment on stuff like this because I don't want to be lumped in with the fascists but I'm going to break that rule just this once. When people hear "Male Loneliness Epidemic", it means different things to different people. It appears to me as most left leaning people hear, "I don't have a woman that caters to me and my needs". For myself it means, "I don't have a Support System of friends and family to lean on." A partner would be great but I would get far greater satisfaction in gaining a group of friends or a sense of belonging. Paired with likely Autism and ADHD, things aren't super rad for me on any aspect of life. That's all my own stuff to deal with though.
The takeaway is I hope anyone reading this is doing okay, regardless of gender. I may not get the struggles of your life, but I hope you are overcoming them.
Yeah, that was my interpretation as well, although I've heard the alternative usage too. Also, same situation for me. I've got a very few people that I'm friendly with, but no close friends. Hope it gets better for you, man.
I think there is a general loneliness epidemic, but it’s particularly acute with men who were never pressured or given the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to build and maintain a community around them.
Like the systems and environments that used to facilitate this no longer exist, and it is left to individuals to do it them selves, something impossible without those skills. Those institutions and systems that used to facilitate community building have been pivoted to profit or dismantled if they couldn’t generate profit or if they were actively undermining the profitability of something else.
When you tell most men their problem is they don’t have any friends not that they don’t have a girlfriend they take that very personally and reject the idea
I really feel like this is an idea that needs to die. Plenty of abusive and hateful men seem to have no problems with getting the type of relationships they want; this just inadvertently promotes the idea that one needs to be a 'nice guy' in order to have a relationship. Not every guy who leans left succeeds in wooing a woman, and right wingers complaining about where the women are at are probably in circles with primarily left-leaning women and they need to go look in a church or country concert or something.
Yeah, i even suspect that what makes men turn a bit more to the right with age is the realization that it's more likely to find a woman-partner this way.
I.e., adapting "work hard" way of thinking to earn more money, because women are ultimately also largely attracted to wealth.
Most abusive people have no problems with anything social. It's about having skill and ability to suppress others in the society, a bit like relative power, so these things correlate, and also TBH people with relative power are naturally attractive. And the weaker you yourself are, the more likely you are to 1) project and be afraid of hurting someone, so not approaching them, 2) be impressed by such a relatively powerful person, which increases the chance of getting frustrated, 3) have wounds from #2 contributing to #1 even more.
I feel like people making such posts have nothing to be proud of rather than where their dicks landed. A bit like those posting their IQ test results.
Instructions unclear, turned into an insufferable Marxist and now I don't have anyone to talk to
So. Counterpoint to this, in that I think those guys should just keep doing what they’re doing.
The bar is so low all I need to do is show up on a date and not say anything racist and I’m in.
In fact: y’all should go even harder with the douchebaggery.
Agreed, I'm currently living in Trumpistan and all it takes is putting a filter on the dating apps to get interest
Step 1 and Step 2 are real, they just aren't as shallow as the lonely dudes think they are.
There’s actual science on this that says women will get turned on by pretty much anything as long as they feel safe.
So like. The barest amount of cognizance of the objective danger women face, like, constantly, and a respectful effort to show by example that you’re not part of it (which doesn’t mean saying it, like: first off I swear I’m not going to rape you isn’t going to make anyone swoon) and you’re in.
I wish more people understood that the enemy way to make people think you’re a good person is to just be a good fucking person.
Please, don't be dismissive of a real problem just because people you (rightfully) hate are disproportionately more affected.
Some things can't be trained. Some things are a result of the outside environment and not the controlled portion. Can we be logical please?
The 'real problem' you're referencing is that hateful young men are having trouble finding young women who share their values?
The obvious solution is for those men to reassess their values. If they can't do that, then they deserve to be alone.
The loneliness epidemic is a real thing. Refusing to acknowledge it helps nobody.
It's not, or rather it's not specific to men. Everyone is feeling lonelier nowadays for a bunch of reasons, but the "male loneliness epidemic" is just women having standards and not relying on men to survive like they used to
We can acknowledge it, sure, but that doesn't solve it. What is your solution? Force young women to marry men they don't love or respect?
The real solution is far simpler: let these hateful men remain lonely until they are desperate enough to affect a change in themselves.
What if, hear me out because it might be a crazy thought, it’s not just the hateful men that are affected? You think nazis are the only ones experiencing male loneliness?
That's literally the context of this post. The picture implies that women prefer men who punch Nazis over the 5 symbols used by men who typically support fascism.
No, this post implies that “male loneliness” is a thing only because most men are “douches”. And that’s just a blatant misrepresentation of reality which requires a deep misandry to believe even for a second.
Plus, it implies that loneliness is just a matter of having a partner. While this is definitely an important aspect, loneliness is general intended (in the surveys etc.) as being literally alone a large percentage of time, including not having friends or acquaintances.
I've noticed that there are a surprising number of hateful or broken young women that these dudes are not that lonely.
Unfortunately there are a lot of similarly awful women, especially in more rural and suburban areas.
True. Never forget that conservative women exist and they can be highly unpleasant.
And that some of them end up being elected to congress
That's kinda fine, what's worse is that some of them can camouflage themselves as left-leaning for social advantage in hurting those they don't like.
OK, that's my own experience meaning nothing.
But you have no meme for that, so how can we believe you?
Southern confederate states and rural states love white christianity more than their country.
Don’t date them either!
Yeah you're right, I'm only alone because Im garbage, thanks for that reassurance.
This post is such a stupid take on a very complex issue. Most of the problem is related to economic-socio problem. If everyone can get a $100k/year job that solves a whole bunch of problems in itself. It's hard to convince someone to date if we are only earning like 25k/year. Some women are going no thanks I will take a chance with an old guy who maybe divorced but seems financially settled. Then comes introverts/anxiety problems, etc. these dudes have a hard time even approaching women because they may get humiliated. Then comes looks, only around 30-40% people are tall enough and good looking enough to get chosen with no effort instantly.
Add all these and we have like 55% dudes below the age of 30 with no partner.
I'm not very cool on most of criteria people name, but fine on the looks (sometimes ; not tall, not muscular and all that, but can look nice enough) and being well-meaning (kinda), so what this means - any possible chances end at me trying to say something and just not being able to, or getting excited or a panic attack, any combination of these, sometimes few attempts in a row over kinda long periods time.
Women are human, and forgive your faults and downsides and failures to an extent, but when you just can't say or can't decide something, then that's all. That can be forgiven too, but you just don't, and nothing happens. When nothing happens, nothing happens. A person can't wait for you to defeat yourself all their life.
Can I ask how old you are?
Mid 30s
You're welcome!
Eh, I wouldn't say so. I think it's mainly because men are pushed to be more tough and much less expressive of emotions, which, for one, pushes them down those horrible alt right pipelines, but also makes it hard for them to feel intimacy and make meaningful relationships much harder.
I believe that gender norms incredibly hurt both men and women.
Damn right they do. Toxic masculinity means I can't publicly express myself without this look:
Edit: down votes. See what I mean? Fascism thrives off toxic masculinity. The Nazi beliefs were that a man's role was to make children to propagate the "correct" genes, and die in war. It's a chicken and the egg problem, and we can't address one without addressing the other.
I am a moderately liberal guy, and I cannot get any girls. I'm shorter than average and socially awkward. I've managed to get a few dates from dating apps but none of them went anywhere because I'm so awkward in person.
Most people don't use dating apps.
While I am unable to find any scientific papers on the topic- I'm pretty sure there are several sources that show online dating has skyrocketed past any other form of meeting a new potential partner. MANY people use dating apps.
https://www.theknot.com/content/online-dating-most-popular-way-to-meet-spouse#ei-1748607854655
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/18h7k9g/how_heterosexual_couples_met_oc/
Yeah I remember seeing an infographic that basically said that 50% of partners are met through online dating today.
If guy A meets someone irl and has a 5 year relationship and guy B has 9 hinge dates in that time that last a week then 90% of partners in this set are met via online dating, but you'd probably rather be guy A than guy B.
oh, yeah, but i think the infographic meant "where did you meet your current partner?"
that invalidates your argument, then.
In the scenario I described above 50% of current partners would be from dating apps and I'd still rather be guy A. Guess we'd need to see the actual infographic and who produced it to really say anything definitive.
That leaves plenty of room for OP to find a partner in different areas of life
I agree, it does- but the idea of "Most people don't use dating apps" just doesn't track with what I have read, or seen anecdotally.
Seriously. Physical third places have been dying for years. Of course people are going to meet their partners primarily online.
Yes, I think the "traditional ways" of finding a partner (or rather places) are breaking away slowly. There are more ways to stay occupied. More choices in events/clubs etc to go to. That gives more freedom in regard to finding somebody that fits greatly, but also reduces the pressure to pick from a small pool or to run into others occasionally. The pressure to form a family to just make ends meet (division of responsibilities/labor; shared resources etc) should be lower as well.
I could wish this where fact, but it fails to take into account that beyond punches you also need social grace and appearances surpassing Ralph Wiggum...
People forget that women can have like, ultraspecific preferences. Women above a certain age tend to be married, the rest not interested in relationships at all. Then there's the Lesbians having relationships with each other. This still does not account for the difficulty dating as a man. I guess most do find a partner, but it's harder, so feels like there's somehow less women available.
I don’t get it, really. Maybe I’ve just been really lucky.
I have not been single for more than about 5 months since I was 13 (aside from a short window between 18 and 20 when I worked at an office full of people in their 50s and had no contact with anyone my own age). When my ex and I split after about 13 years, I had several flings between that and meeting my wife. I didn’t go looking for them either. I never once made a pass at any woman until she first said something obvious to me. I don’t do subtlety at all.
I’m not attractive, I’m not tall. I haven’t settled and been with anyone I didn’t find attractive or intelligent (only once, directly after the split with my ex, I was a wreck. She was pretty, but dumb as a box of rocks. I was projecting things onto her that weren’t true at all because of the state that I was in).
I am a musician in a small town though, and almost every girl I ever dated was deeply into music and it usually started from there.
It could just be luck, but I really do believe it has everything to do with confidence and being sure of oneself. I have issues, and a lot of them, but I don’t hold back and I never have. The people who don’t like me have an honest reason not to and the people who do don’t have to guess with me.
I have always been unapologetically who I am wherever I go.
I also prefer the company of no one and spend most of my time in isolation and I’ve still had good luck.
I’m getting older now though, and I’m a stay at home dad these days and more isolated than I’ve ever been. I would say that if my wife were to leave me today, I’d be alone for a very long time.
I’m not bragging here either, I’m not about that kind of thing at all. I’m obviously coming from a position of privilege, be it luck or whatever I have going on here that gives me that privilege. I really do think it would be easier for other men though if they’d find confidence and become very passionate about something that women can relate to. My passion for music has definitely, definitely, definitely helped me.
I even spent many years struggling with drug addiction, would not date anyone who had that problem in common with me, and I still found sober women who were willing to tolerate me.
I don’t know. I just hope that if you feel hopelessly alone and you read this comment, it will give you some hope.
Edit:
Don’t just downvote. Discuss it you bitter twat lol. Seriously. I’d like to see your perspective on the matter.
This is the secret btw.
It has a lot to do with it, but I’ve only ever been with one fellow musician. None of the other women played music. They just liked music.
I know a woman who prefers "dad bods"
Sadly, there are as many right wingnut women as there are men.
I highly doubt that. Women have been voting Democrat in much larger percentages than men for a long time. Not that Democrats are great or anything, but they're not straight up fascist.
I'm lonely, I wonder what's wrong with me
Well, I've been a filthy commie since middle school and I still have no bitches. How do you explain that?
Maybe it's time to try not calling us bitches?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-bitches
I was quoting memes, but sure! Assume every man using the word "bitch" is secretly a misogynist fascist and they actually deserve it!
And people wonder why communism has such a low following among cis straight white males.
.... you want to put that shovel down, or keep digging?
No one is wondering where cis men are. Either they show up at the potluck and pitch in, or not.
Yes, I have overreacted.
I'll go touch grass.
Have a good day
I hope your grass visit is really nice. We'll still be here when you get back, and out at the potlucks if you come around.
You're not helping your case here
The meme didn't say "be a filthy commie;" the meme said "punch Nazis." Less theory, more praxis.
It depends heavily on what kind of commie you are actually.
If you're an ultra, you're likely too busy shitting on other communists from the comfort of the armchair to look for a relationship
If you're a ML or Maoist, you probably don't want a relationship to spend more time "reading theory" (watching youtube slop)
If you're a Trotskyite, you're likely already in a sex offender registry
If you're a Bordigist, you're playing hard mode when it comes to getting a relationship as you refuse to be a usufructuary traitor to the health of the species (you avoid drinking and smoking and all like the plague)
If you're a revolutionary Marxist who has read theory, then you'll drive people away with your revolutionary aura
If you're a Marxist who hasn't read theory, then you're a liberal who shouldn't have any problems finding a relationship
And if you're a leftist on Lemmy, you probably like femboys instead.
Porque no los dos
Fascism is a desiccant more powerful than silica gel.
I think it is at least accurate to some degree - but, sadly, both romantic and sexual attraction are subject to a whole chaotic mess of both conscious and unconscious factors, often out of our own control. Otherwise toxic relationships and paraphilias (using the term in the sense of fetishisations genuinely harmful to yourself and/or others) wouldn't really be a thing.
Ya, we see so many lib men drowning in pussy, and hot vapid women in no way voted for this.....
Right wing men aren't lonely. They have community. They have validation. They have support. Thats why lonely men go to the right.
What if this one nazi-puncher is gay? /s
Gogo nazi-puncher, also kick them too!
I am actually going to be reentering the dating game after a little over 10 years. I sometimes wonder 'am i still attractive ' but then I remember this...
I'm discovering that it isn't really "am I attractive?" It's " I feel attractive."
Like I'm down 100lbs, been pumping my protein and weights, and I got muscle definition where I've never noticed muscle definition before.
Clothes that fit, glasses I feel comfortable in. I don't really want to "date" because I'm so much happier with impressing myself than trying to impress someone else.
not to be sapphic but that type is women
do agree, bt i thinks is alsuu cuz if other factors
EDIT: edited "u" to "i"
If you see this and think "they must think all lonely men are douches", you're literally just telling on yourself. The message here is don't be a fucking Nazi and you'll be less lonely, why are y'all misinterpreting this like a bunch of whiny manosphere chuds?
Besides the stupidity of this post, you guys do realize that male loneliness is, in part, just how we organize as primates, right?