A growing network of online communities known collectively as the “manosphere” is emerging as a serious threat to gender equality, as toxic digital spaces increasingly influence real-world attitudes, behaviours, and policies, the UN agency dedicated to ending gender discrimination has warned.
Pretty sure I’ve commented this on Lemmy before, but I’m gonna drop a link to this Struthless video again because I think it’s pretty good at getting the point and really reflected my experience as someone who was once a “young man on the internet”, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHHqQDKzjTg
The code section in particular is gold and exactly the type of online content we need. A big reason why chuds like Tate are successful is because they provide a code (“compass, outlets, who you’re with, how it feels”), which before the internet was something everyone built for themselves, actively picking and choosing, while nowadays the algorithms do the picking+choosing for us. Or, well, before the algorithmic internet boomers largely got that stuff from old institutions (be that church or the party), Gen X from rebellion, then come us sweet-spot millennials seeing the boomer/X conflict and having access to previously unheard of amounts of information to actively choose from, and then Gen Y and younger getting fed by the outrage machine.
So what we need is algorithm-compatible content that challenges the whippersnappers to build their own code, in an active manner. Give guidelines, give examples, but don’t decide for them (that makes you no better than the algorithm or for that matter Gen X and boomers) and definitely don’t make it a list of don’ts: They’re in the process of adapting instincts to currentyear, good living requires finding a configuration that denies none, our task is to help them not being maladaptive, steering away from both neurosis (denial of instinct) as well as asocial BS (exploiting in/outgroup instincts for power plays, oxytocin can be vile). To do that you need to point out the various fundamental drives, validate all of them, make that shit resonate as deeply as possible so they spot the drives themselves instead of some social construct painting over it, enable them to draw a map of their needs, then give examples, plural, of how it can all be integrated in a coherent fashion.