- The battle for the bros ➶
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Andrew Marantz writing in the New Yorker about protein-head influencers of the current moment, who end up ironically doing the same thing the power-hungry people they love or loathe do: Using media to enrich themselves at the expense of their followers.
The article touches on the dissafection of men and the failure of the other side to meet them where they’re at and talk to them in their language.
In a 2022 book, “Of Boys and Men,” Richard Reeves, a social scientist and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, blasts Republicans for exploiting “male dislocation” and misogynist fury at the expense of women’s rights. But he also lambastes Democrats for “pathologizing masculinity.” He gives an example from his sons’ high school in Bethesda, Maryland, where boys passed around a spreadsheet ranking their female classmates by attractiveness—behavior that Reeves describes as “immature,” even “harmful,” but not worthy of an international incident, which is what it became. He writes that “indiscriminately slapping the label of ‘toxic masculinity’ onto this kind of behavior is a mistake,” likely to propel young men “to the online manosphere where they will be reassured that they did nothing wrong, and that liberals are out to get them.”
In politics, like in a bicycle, car, or airplane, when turning too quickly to correct a problem, one can overcorrect and go too far in the opposite direction, a maneuver which depending on the amount of fuel or rage one has onboard, can end in a fiery crash.
Extremist views, whether right or left, end up meeting and joining together, becoming the same thing, like red becoming violet and blue becoming indigo at the ends of the spectrum.
Illustrated by two pixel behemoth man-monsters made by Nick Little, these get extra points for having Meditations along with a video game controller down the middle ground.
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Possibly Related:
- Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?
- Bad ideas in tech that refuse to die
- Imgtlk Garbatella 2024
- Paradise: Tove Jansson’s public paintings
- The fresh work of those outside their fields
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