Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The data are clear: The boys are not all right

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 1001 posts

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#511

Post by wwweston »

etempleton wrote: post #495
uoaei wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what explains the relative stability in post-Christian Europe? Politics is the new religion insofar as it develops moral frameworks and makes people abide by them while convincing them they are making the "rational" choice. This is informed substantially by Enlightenment-era philosophies and is the major component in modern consent manufacturing. "Rational" in scare quotes because good luck converting questions of…

Americans by and large want to be believers in…something. There is nothing more frightening than someone that really and truly believes something. There is no end to what they will do.

Yep. A total lack of belief to the point of nihilism is a crisis of meaning, to be sure, but it tends to collapse towards either hedonism or depression rather than monomaniacal infliction of harm on the rest of the world. True determined harm usually requires ideological zeal.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#512

Post by tonguez »

“ Not just coincidentally, “deaths of despair” — those caused by suicide, overdose and alcoholism — have surged to unprecedented levels among middle-aged men over the past 20 years.”

The vast majority of those suicides are coming from a specific “ethnic category”. But if you say which one, it makes you a domestic terrorist. What is the motivation to live in a world where you’re not even allowed to talk about what’s happening to you? We are living in idiocracy. Up is down, the only morally righteous thing to do is to cheer on censorship and beg for Patriot Act 2.0, 3.0 etc to be passed. Agreeability wrt the decrees of big brother is the only virtue.

If you don’t have kids you are going to die by getting abused by minimum wage nursing home employees who quite possibly have been brainwashed their entire lives by every large media company to believe that you are racist and evil because of your “ethnic category”. But if you get married, your wife can take everything from you, and big brother will lock you in a cage if you don't want to pay your ex wife to fuck some other guy in the house you bought that she now lives in. So why would an intelligent person get married?

And yet what is the national conversation about? It’s only about how all straight men of a particular “ethnic category” are racist and evil and they all need to focus on giving more to people in other “ethnic categories”. It’s a complete nightmare to anyone with a brain. It has nothing to do with anything that is going to lead to a better future. Race-based ideologies are a dead end. And nothing ever gets better. Epstein gets arrested, assassinated, and you have to listen to talking heads on news say he committed suicide year after year even though everybody knows its not true.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#513

Post by buscoquadnary »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #462
_bkr9 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A note on fitness. Any pressure I've had to lose weight or whatnot has come from me . All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on. That said, they have commented favourably on other physical features, and I'm not particularly overweight. I say all this just to try and fight the idea that crops up that if you're male and don't fit some jacked or "Cha…

Forget the incel subculture, media - traditional, social, or otherwise has been feeding us that for decades as well. If you're not thin and "beautiful", your romantic prospects are zero so why even try. Admittedly, it's also partially one's own fault for buying into it, but being fed a continual stream of the best looking people from a young age seriously alters one's perspective. I spent my entire teenage and young…

Just from a fellow friend trying to lose wait that is awesome how much you have managed to lose and I think that is great. Congratulations on that, keep up the good work. You've inspired me!

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#514

Post by Glawen »

adriand wrote: post #441
skinkestek wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever the cause I fully reject the lazy conclusion this is somehow women's fault. Of course! The problem is not women! The problem is media, schools, companies, everyone buying into this in a collective delusion. Men also think this, but unlike women we are even encouraged to strengthen these insane ideas that we are somehow inferior (gets imprisoned more often, less academic success despite supposedly being ext…

Right. It’s our fault, that is, men’s. We live in a society in which we we have disproportionately had the power. And this is the result. But I don’t think it’s really a gender thing, I think it’s a power and money thing. That is, I don’t think mainly white, rich and powerful men set out to disadvantage other men. I think they were more focused on advantaging themselves to the exclusion of everyone else. What I find…

In my opinion, women have a better sense of survival than men.

I know that if I hit a rough patch in my life, I will certainly make myself miserable and would not care what happens to me. I know it by is not rational, but that would explain also probably why wars are fought by men.

Add the fact that society are blaming men for pretty much everything going wrong, it does not surprise me that men are getting loose

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#515

Post by AdrianB1 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #372
N1H1L wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of a man's life is meaning and the search for it. For years, centuries even, this meaning in a man's life was provided by being a provider. This order was enforced through society. And you can use society and religion interchangeably here because the distinction between the two is only a century or two old. And this order enforced the role of a child-bearer and nurturer to women. Obviously, such an order…

Why do you get to say what someone's purpose is? Why is being a provider necessarily the purpose in life? People might have done it before (I'm dubious of sweeping, golden-age claims like that), but for almost all of human history we lived short, brutal, illiterate lives as hunter-gatherers. I don't feel that is necessarily my purpose in life. Find a meaning that is important to you; be a provider if you like. IMHO,…

> Why do you get to say what someone's purpose is? Why is being a provider necessarily the purpose in life?

Because this was the case for the last 10,000 years and you cannot change it overnight, unless you are in Soviet Russia and send people to Gulag for re-education. It is built into men's biological nature to be provider (like most mammals in the nature), you cannot change it because society decided less than a generation ago that this is no longer needed.

And also because many, if not most women are still expecting men to be the provider. Biology dictates that women need a provider (resources and security) to bring a child to this world and that provider should not be the government (which destroys the idea of family and the society with it).

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#516

Post by lariati »

bradlys wrote: post #440
thrway99 wrote: post #61

My observation is that we are going to have a radical rebalancing of who reproduces and who doesn’t. Lot of men and women who are generally not too motivated to seek out a companion, lose weight, put in the work to make it happen just…won’t pass on genetics. Children are a lot of work and energy. I’m highly introverted and high earning. My wife was the aggressor in my case. She pretty much made it all happen. I think…

> My observation is that we are going to have a radical rebalancing of who reproduces and who doesn’t. I think the idea that everyone has the option to settle down and have kids is a relatively recent phenomenon. It used to be that most men never had kids. Nowadays most men do have kids. That said - 25%+ of men will never have children. Kinda wild when you think about that. 1/4 of all men will never have children. Wh…

No doubt. It is so counter intuitive on the surface that the broad family tree has more women than men.

I think it is that we have a bias when having this discussion that children are the product of this Hollywood love story lifelong marriage.

Google says 28 percent of all U.S. women with two or more children have children by more than one man. It is an incredible statistic.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#517

Post by eropple »

symlinkk wrote: post #496
chrisseaton wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lot of men and women who are generally not too motivated to seek out a companion, lose weight, put in the work to make it happen I don't think you need these things to find a partner and have children. Just go to a maternity ward. It sounds like you think everyone there is highly motivated, physically fit, and dedicated to working on relationships. They aren't. They're just normal people with a range of human flaws…

The selection process is on Tinder, not the maternity ward, and the bar is brutally high there for men.

I used to think that. I genuinely did. I thought that the bar was all the way up in space and that it’s impossible to reach it. I was pretty lonely.

Of course, I used to also think that my value was in my net worth and you could have seen all the way from space the “I’m an asshole and I don’t know why nobody will date me” vibes radiating off of me.

Then I grew up, I chilled out, and I put conscious effort into things other than my career and being Good At Tech Stuff. Stuff like listening, and exercising my capacity for empathy, and trying to be pleasant to be around. You can project being likeable or interesting for a bit, but I found that it’s easier to be likeable and interesting instead. And suddenly I stopped finding it so difficult at all to find matches and find dates.

I met my previous SO of three years on OKCupid and my current SO on Tinder, and it wasn’t until we’d been dating for quite a while that what I did for a living, all that Is This Man A Provider nonsense, even came up.

The difficulty is between the ears of one party in this selection process. It’s a mix of getting over oneself and understanding that it’s all a numbers game besides, but one of those things doesn’t work without the other.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#518

Post by AdrianB1 »

ytwombly wrote: post #150

US-based cis-hetero white man here. The data reinforce the impression you get glancing at the headlines or spending a day out anywhere in America observing other men. Dare I say it even reinforces what I know from painful firsthand experience as a man, at the lowest points in my life. I was lucky though, with a supportive family who helped me through the confusing years of early adulthood. You can point to the declin…

Not 100% sure, but the fact that you specified cis and hetero is part of the problem. These 2 terms are a strong indication of some recent changes that are probably having a big influence in this problem.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#519

Post by rdtwo »

bluecalm wrote: post #316
irrational wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who wouldn’t prefer to stay home if they had the choice? I could spend my days traveling, hiking, going to the beach, reading, working on hobbies, learning new skills, cooking, etc.

Homemaker role doesn't mean spending your days travelling, hiking or going to the beach.

Can confirm had to do homemaker job on top of paid job I’d prefer to be at my normal job

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#520

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

_ktx2 wrote: post #500
adriand wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. It’s our fault, that is, men’s. We live in a society in which we we have disproportionately had the power. And this is the result. But I don’t think it’s really a gender thing, I think it’s a power and money thing. That is, I don’t think mainly white, rich and powerful men set out to disadvantage other men. I think they were more focused on advantaging themselves to the exclusion of everyone else. What I find…

> Right. It’s our fault, that is, men’s. We live in a society in which we we have disproportionately had the power. And this is the result. I find gender blaming conversation to be reductive. The decline of men and boys is not men's fault nor is it women's fault. Dare I say there's little data to show either way, nor is it really helpful in healing from a dysfunctional society that has failed you on a systemic and in…

Women as an "interest group" have been incredible at PR this last century. Men, on the other hand, have yet to realize that they can't coast on the existing historic momentum and have to start speaking up.

It doesn't help that folks who attempt to represent men's rights are instantly smeared as either pathetic incel losers, or as alt-right oppressor misogynists. There's no in-between that I'm aware of. From what I can tell, shame is the main weapon used against men who claim that men's rights have a justifiable place in society.

No healthy "meninism" exists as of today the same way it does for women, and I suspect this is causing all sorts of problems.

Post reply on HN