Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 8798845" data-attributes="member: 6799660">As I said, I am loath to do any kind of 'kids these days' kind of commentary (and honestly am beginning to regret bringing this up already), because stuff being better bitd is mostly rubbish. However, and this is strictly from experience of people in my own family, I think the term manliness was 1) more a term others got to apply to you, not a mantle you wore, and 2) at least partly more framed as men rather than boys instead of men rather than girls, etc. (whatever the not-real-men are in the minds of the toxic masculinity set these days -- something about eating soy and liking to be cuckolded or whatever bizarre thing it is this week). It's a real tough issue trying to bemoan the toxicity of today, in that most other points of comparison have similar or worse trends. Firstly, side note: Please don't treat 'well-actually' as a positive. Nerd culture needs to stop validating it (the 'technically correct, the best kind of correct' scene from Futurama was supposed to lampoon this mindset, and instead people treat it as license to continue such behavior). It treats conversation as a competition instead of a collaborative endeavor. It also assumes that, since I didn't bring something up, I clearly don't know it and you get to educate my ignorant self, boosting your nerd cred in the process. Trust me, everyone here has read most all classical myths. It is a unflattering look and I encourage you not to do it. Regardless, there are no new things under the sun, and all concepts vary between individuals and within a culture. There have been fluctuations over time and across history. The primary distinction I would draw is that, for my great grandfather, he would not have believed that he got to decide if he was manly or not, and that his conception of manliness lay in willingness to do what he might not want to do (certainly risk, sacrifice, discomfort, and the like). The LaNasa crowd seems to want to point to arbitrary metrics, and say 'this shows I am manlier than others,' and use it as validation for doing what they wanted to do in the first place. I certainly agree that modern society includes quite a lot of issues with being uncertain to whether we're doing things right, living up to expectations (out own, society, etc.), and seeking validation in all sorts of sources. It is likely a reason that the online/social media toxic masculinity subcultures have had such relatively good capacity to recruit -- someone saying that you're doing things right, on team right, and are better than all those other people (you believe are) naysaying you us a heck of a positive form of reinforcement.Super-tangentially, on various content aggregator sites and the like, I keep seeing ads for '_____ crate' services which will send people things like straight razors, whiskey in little oak barrels, grilling tools, cheap 'damascus steel' hatchets or knives, and other products I'm assuming are meant to appeal to the idea of 'I'm more a man if I have and or spend my money on these types of things.' I wonder if those are part of the same mechanic, just meant to fleece money from people instead of sway them to a particular socio-political mindset/group.</blockquote>

Verification