Link: https://www.wired.com/story/the-manosphere-isnt-a-movement-its-a-multibillion-dollar-grievance-industry/

For many years now, a dark question has haunted parents, teachers, the internet, and media institutions: What’s wrong with young men?

Why, people ask, are boys so politically extreme, spouting misogynist rhetoric, and increasingly drawn into risky crypto schemes and online gambling? How did they become so lonely, with their depression symptoms often overlooked? The male youth vote broke for Trump in the 2024 election following a GOP campaign built on naked appeals to meathead machismo. Yet there are signs that his second term in office has done little to stem the anger of Gen Z men, whose support for the president is now plummeting.

The most common explanation of these interrelated phenomena is that younger men have banded together online under the umbrella of something known as the “manosphere,” usually conceived as an organic right-wing rebellion driving the culture wars. A new study, however, suggests that this is entirely backward: The digital ecosystem that produces red-pilled men is less of a movement than it is a pyramid scheme.

funny how the "manliest" men cry the loudest about being victimized for being manly

Forgot the archive link in case anyone hits the paywall: https://archive.is/20260810154444/https://www.wired.com/story/the-manosphere-isnt-a-movement-its-a-multibillion-dollar-grievance-industry/

Barker says that while younger kids can be kept out of this pipeline by their parents, advocacy groups, and legislatively imposed protections, men entering adulthood don’t have the same support. “If we're looking at the 18- to 29-year-olds, which is where we see the biggest traffic to these spaces, nobody's got their back,” he says. This demographic “falls through the cracks” because society expects that they “should be able to handle this by themselves” as skeptical media consumers, he adds.

However, in post-2024 focus groups, Reset Tech found that young men could demonstrate a “striking lack of self-awareness” when it came to their sources of news and perspectives on current events, considering podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience essentially unbiased. They also “believed women were trapped in echo chambers looking at makeup and lifestyle content while they themselves received information from neutral, verified sources,” the researchers write.

“We've got to reach them to basically be more critical with what they look at,” Barker says. “They do want to call out when stuff is bullshit,” he adds, it’s just that the digital ecosystem and its algorithms have, by their very nature, “narrowed” men’s opportunities to experience views that meaningfully challenge their own.

In the absence of action from the platforms, Barker says, it will be up to the users to recognize that the people selling them peptides, dating hacks, and get-rich-quick schemes are taking advantage of them—and leave the associated online communities or even mobilize others to do the same by calling out the harms they cause. Maybe a young male commentator who devotes themselves to exposing the toxic lies and scams of the grievance economy would become an influencer in their own right.

“I think it's not gonna be a tomorrow thing, that we get a group of young men who are like, ‘Yeah, I'm gonna be the warrior for calling out injustice online,’” Barker says. “But I think it's kind of where some of the action has got to come from.”

We need to teach critical thinking at all levels. We are failing our children which in turn leads to us failing our young adults. And this is by design, at least in the US. The lack of education directly leads to this kind of deception. And all of this feels reminiscent of the conversations we're having around MAGA voters being tricked essentially.

There's a vacuum here where an influencer can step in and start calling this stuff out and I love that the author concluded the article with that call to action.

For a treat, look up Gamergate. Hint, it predated the Alt-Right movement while pioneering many of those same techniques that lead to Donald Trump's election in the USA (I also note that many of these identical techniques are used by tankies here on the Threadiverse too, like whataboutism and didoing).

There is nothing new under the sun - only pre-existing concepts that cycle up and down in popularity. That said, the rise of an anonymous internet that has platformed these types of "alternative" thinking processes has emboldened trolling behaviors and helped it cross over into the mainstream and even bring it forth from hidden chatrooms into irl - e.g. voting in election polls, based on a concept such as bOtH sIdEs SaMe.

Have we considered the necessity of properly socializing men from childhood on? From my own personal experience: I don't know how to make friends. I don't know how to find a relationship. I almost went down the incel pipeline at one point, but realized I can't really blame anyone else for my own failures.

I also have no idea how to even start working to change that.

The article points to research leading us to believe young men aren't as critical of their information sources as they should be, which allows them to be algorithmically driven into the manosphere.

The article doesn't touch on socialization, so I'm wondering what that means or what it entails?

It means exactly what it means: people with access to diverse opinions tend to not uncritically accept whatever bullshit comes with someone offering an answer.

In other words, if young men were easily able to find social support outside the manosphere, maybe they would be more critical about the information they come across in the manosphere.

In other words, if young men were easily able to find social support outside the manosphere, maybe they would be more critical about the information they come across in the manosphere.

I guess the question comes down to where to find that social support outside the manosphere? The article concludes that young men need to help mobilize their peers to leave these manosphere echo chambers and help point out how they're being scammed. Men need to help young men by creating these more positive spaces for them.

In the absence of action from the platforms, Barker says, it will be up to the users to recognize that the people selling them peptides, dating hacks, and get-rich-quick schemes are taking advantage of them—and leave the associated online communities or even mobilize others to do the same by calling out the harms they cause. Maybe a young male commentator who devotes themselves to exposing the toxic lies and scams of the grievance economy would become an influencer in their own right.

“I think it’s not gonna be a tomorrow thing, that we get a group of young men who are like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna be the warrior for calling out injustice online,’” Barker says. “But I think it’s kind of where some of the action has got to come from.”

"It means what it means," followed by your specific interpretation. Don't be a dick, I was asking in earnest.

A while back I saw a video by...I wanna say hbomberman, but its been like 5 years, so maybe it was someone else. Their main point was that the left is generally bad at messaging with specific, actionable advice. In comparison, the manosphere is extremely good at providing actionable advice, mixed with right wing propaganda.

Edit: there was an interesting study I came across in a zoebee video recently, where they had an actor dress up like a professor and give a nonsense lecture in an academic setting. Much of the (academic) audience came away thinking they learned something, when there was no content to learn. Point is, charismatic presentation is extremely important. That's why people like Jordan peterson have huge followings.

I think in this case you can split men into three categories: the guys that get it and don't really think about guys that don't, the guys that get it and realize there's potential for grifting the guys that don't, and the guys that don't get it.

The recommendation provided by the article is a little bit of a the blind leading the blind situation. If I knew what to do I'd do it.

the guys that get it and don’t really think about guys that don’t

How do we get the guys that get it to care about the guys that don't? There's the actionable part that's needed right there.

Well, you need people who are well adjusted and happy in their lives to choose to wade into the garbage dump of inceldom and deal with the toxicity. That's a pretty big ask.

It's an ask that is demanded of women pretty often when this problem is brought up as a discussion point.

You're right though. It's a big ask.

I know, and I'm explicitly trying to avoid that. That's kinda why I point at socialization. The implication is that some base level of social skills development should probably happen at a young age, and our schooling system is very much under equipped for the task.

Personally, I went to school elsewhere, and my schooling was very much focused on science and math. This was good from a career perspective, not so much everything else.

I wasn’t accusing you of doing so, just to be clear!

It’s something I ponder and read about a lot as a mom to a boy. I see so many positives in how he interacts with the world along with his peers. So it’s a question that I come back to time and again. Where are we losing these boys?

Around age 14-15, in my case. Probably a bit earlier, now. That's when I started picking up on my relative lack of friendships and social skills, and started looking for answers to improve both. Then again, I also moved around a lot in my life, so that was almost certainly a factor.

Moving around certainly doesn’t help in that regard. Sorry that you weren’t able to put roots down at that age, so to speak.

Eh, that was before phones, too. So, I was only comparing myself to other kids in the same school, not whatever instafacechat put in front of me. That's why I assume it starts younger, now.

iMO gaming and cars.

Young teens stay inside gaming and they form their friendships with other guys there and then keep them as they age. That compounds with the stupidity of car culture and a lack of PT and cycling infra and zero cost places to "hangout" with friends.

How does a 12yr old boy get across three suburbs to see a friends for real, deal with the friends sister and family etc

Hikikomori in Japan, they stay at home, game and goon so who knows ?

solutions ? i (M 58) don't have any but this will get worse, It's also naive of girls/ women to do nothing and worse still to laugh or pearl clutch about it, sure incels, groypers etc arent their problem but it's like hungry people aren't their problem... until they are starving and come take your food and eat it all and all of a sudden...

what a fuckin' mess. I bought a home in a small rural village in the middle of no where on a hill for a reason ;) the entire way we have structured our societies, political and economic systems is wrong and won't change before it collapses and has to change.

They meant what they said. They said it'd be nice if there were good opinions outside of the BS pipeline. Why does that opinion offend you so much?

lol no. No that movement did not predate the manosphere. At all. What so ever.

I... never said that it did. In fact I think you misunderstand and have things swapped: Gamergate is much closer to representing the "manosphere" (which people say dates back to perhaps the 70s with the "pickup artist" content - although obviously toxic masculinity goes back to probably prior to the emergence of homo sapiens) than the Alt-Right movement, which itself began to supplant the prior Tea Party fiscal conservative movement in the USA (examples: Ted Cruz, Newt Gingrich), in contrast to the old guard Republicans (Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham) before that. So while populism is as old as democratic style systems (and in the more general sense significantly older than that concept even), the Alt-Right movement specifically is a relatively new one, emerging only as a result of Donald Trump's campaign when he won his first term. I remember that iconic line delivered to the news media by Kellyanne Conway where there were "facts" (e.g. names of specific places, or battles that has happened, etc.) and then there were the uh... ah... "alternative facts" that whatever Trump said simply "felt right".

Stephen Colbert, as a joke, used to call that "Truthiness", like factually speaking it doesn't have to be accurate, so long as you "feel it in your gut". So now everything - what wars we get into, tariffs applied, our entire economy, whether people get vaccinated and other overall health concerns, etc. - are all based on vibe checks, primarily of rural people. Which I suppose is what fueled the manosphere too? Like a guy can't get a girl to go out with him - maybe he isn't negging her enough!? Try a hair gel product, or buy whatever other bullshit the angry yelling man suggests, rather than e.g. getting a job for gainful employment and taking a shower.

It didn't? Why did you get so upset you needed to jump in?

When my husband was in his 20s he went through a lot. What saved him was having his father still there to support him. Hes now almost 40 and his father still supports him emotionally, whenever.

When I was 20 and asked my mom for support of anykind, "youre an adult, no, figure it out, your actions have consequences". She literally slammed the door in my face.

The difference of having a supporting role in ones life.
Fathers, mothers, fucking love your children always. it does more than anything a program or law could.

the entire way we have structured our societies, political and economic systems is wrong and won’t change before it collapses and has to change.

Very helpful comment

It’s also naive of girls/ women to do nothing and worse still to laugh or pearl clutch about it, sure incels, groypers etc arent their problem but it’s like hungry people aren’t their problem… until they are starving and come take your food and eat it all and all of a sudden…

Yeah it's on women to teach men not to rape us. You're right, women are so silly, why didn't we think of that earlier? /s

It's pretty fucking telling that you compared the desire to rape to being hungry.

But we still must account for those of us who don't have them, whether because of lack of will like you experienced or inability.

I was very fortunate, despite not having parents anymore after by early 20s, I found community who were able to help me continue to grow and mature. We need to build community and partake in it so we can be people like I had. In my 30s I know I'm looking for opportunities to pay it forward as I see it in similar communities.

the fuck you mean lack of will? my mothers lack of will? My mom didnt raise me. I knew her, and after 18 saught out her support, but I was orphaned at 4 and turned 18 as a ward of the state

Never found a crowd for support. Never liked putting that shit on my friends anyway. Two my siblings and I grew up close, and even tried, subconsciously, to parent eachother, or support one another in the way a parent would. Its not the same.

The trauma of having your parents not give a fuck about you, is the worst of it. No friend can fix that. Best parents love thier kids right.

Pay it forward is a good value. I try n do the same, first and foremost, by loving my kid properly.

I'm not attempting to make light of your situation, but the answer is counseling. A good one can help you figure things out and come to terms with your feelings and help you process them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counseling_psychology

Eh, over a decade of counseling would disagree.

Tbh I probably shouldn't have spoken up.

I apologize if I wasn't clear that I meant the parents' lack of will. It's never a child's fault that they don't have support. And even when the child is an adult, so long as they ask they should receive it.

I'm very sorry your parents did all that to you.

Yes, you should have and it's good that you did.

It's the first step to being heard and we can't improve this for anyone without it.

Everyone involved has to speak, listen, think, and act, and do those things in proper proportion and direction in order for us as a species to address the problems that make the manosphere look appealing to anyone.

Individual work is important, but there's group work, too.

Part of the problem is that it's more difficult to do the latter part when so many if us are barely keeping our daily lives in order due to the rising cost of everything necessitating more work and fewer outings, and the elimination of third spaces for most, but we still need to:

1: Try

And

2: Keep hope alive

Gaming is a symptom. Not the cause.

Gaming can be used as a coping mechanism for a larger problem.

Yeah, it's a sensitive subject, Im sorry too. Only the first sentence was with fire in my heart, but I def spiked there, Im sorry.

I think there is value in knowing when to walk away from something that clearly isn't working.

I wasted a lot of time and energy in my teens and twenties trying to find or form that group. That's when, in retrospect, I was most susceptible to manosphere content. It was much less interactive back then, which I think is one of the reasons I was able to get myself out. It didn't yet have the discord servers, and what communities they formed had not yet coalesced into single-subject forums. I imagine it's a lot harder to get out of that.

lol I jump in often... Just look at my comment history... Most of the time I'm bored or procrastinating, so it's interesting that you view it as anger..., Is that why you engage with topics, angry boi?

What.