I appreciate that at least someone read it. I feel bad for people trying to do right and just find some decent, non-hateful place to socialize online, but we all gotta remember there’s no such thing as a safe space online. It’s all going to alter your brain in some way. It’s like how there’s no such thing as a “healthy” amount of alcohol, even nice, decent spaces online are not necessarily good for you if you’re not limited your time and not maintaining healthy distance from other people’s thoughts.

It’s hard because we all want to connect, but our brains aren’t wired to absorb the thoughts of so many other people… especially how we read them in our own voices inside our head. It confuses the many, many sub-layers of your consciousness. (Neurology is a bitch to learn about because you realize all at once how complex we are, but also how vulnerable.)

Says the link in the chain.

All you have to do, as hard as it is, is compartmentalize your mind a little better.

When you read menslib-super-academic, everyone-is-a-gender-philosopher and everyone scores points for being better and more progressive than everyone else, you need to be able to read that with an understanding that some of it is has value in terms of understanding the world and how arguments work, but you can cut it off there. You go back to outside-land and look around at your life and understand that it’s not related to two strangers online yelling at each other about different brands of socialism versus how problematic Brad Pitt’s performance is.

If you then left all that baggage BACK at menslib, and then enjoyed your movies and media and talked like a grown up to other people about the media you like, you will find that MOST people will share your interests or at least give it a shot. It’s about having some level of sovereignty and not letting the internet infect your mind with nonsense. And it is. I don’t care if there are actual protests on campuses from people screaming how evil Fight Club is, it doesn’t matter. You can still like it and not feed the chain. Have some shred of pride in yourself and the things you like.

Because the next step after feeling ashamed to like what you like, is feeling angry at the world for “not letting you” like them, and then starts the slippery slide into being hateful and angry and suspicious of everyone and everything. To say nothing of how you will want to spread how frustrated you are more and more, inflaming an already degrading situation.

Okay i’m done, I just had to address this because it sounded wrong in so many ways. We’re all getting our heads yanked up our own asses by reading the voices of too many other people.

As someone who knows far more about Menslib than I should probably say in the open, I can safely tell you that you need to get off the internet and not read gender-oriented material at all. Podcasts too. This is media, it’s meant to create conversations and most people don’t take it seriously. Or at least they shouldn’t.

The internet has this way of seeping into your head and making you think the constant barrage of sensationalism, of intrusive thoughts-turned-posts, of fake people pretending to be outraged, it makes you think all of this is any way how people actually view the world and it programs you to do the same.

I lived in the before-times, I know how people thought before. It wasn’t like this. When you’re not infected with the aimless thoughts of thousands of faceless voices in space, you can just enjoy what you enjoy and nobody cares. And if someone does care and not like a thing you like, you say “oh that’s too bad, I like it though.” And that was it. End of story. Those two people would then go on to like, get married and have a pile of kids because back then, we weren’t always looking for contention. That’s the other thing these spaces do, is make you aware of contention that doesn’t impact you and only serves to clutter up your mind.

This entire fetid mess is screwing up our minds, and then you take this screwed-up vision of the world and post it somewhere else, so the thousands hundreds of super-sensitive, sheltered Lemmy users read it and now all the tender boys here are wringing their hands over a non-issue as well and absolute nonsense spreads and spreads and spreads.

You like something? Like it. Stop trying to please people while at the same time stay respectful and kind and just get on with your day and life without excuses or hand-wringing about things that aren’t real.

Which people and where? I am dead serious, there is reason why I want to know.

what the… then, how could you possibly be attacked for liking them?

Are you just creating things in your mind to feel bad about???

He listed the highly inappropriate and unpopular movies that nobody ever heard of Full Metal Jacket and Fight Club.

I think someone spends too much time reading posts on the internet.

edit: i was right, yep, menslib subreddit reader.

Those are insanely popular movies.

I’ve only seen academic critique and of course more cerebral criticisms because of how they were reflections of their time, like many movies.

If you had actual people in real life attack you for liking these movies, either you were being weird about them and not listening to someone’s academic takes because you don’t understand them or you met a nut. Otherwise I think it’s bullshit and you just wanna be oppressed for liking [POPULAR THING]

When people online are this vague and hand-wavy, you know 99% of the time they’re downplaying some really stupid stand they took about that something a date or friend didn’t like one fucking time and they can’t let it go.

Or they don’t have friends at all, and just read all the manosphere self-victimization forums.

Edit: he got lost down the menslib rabbit hole of over analyzing everything until reality itself loses meaning and you begin to think breathing is problematic to someone, somewhere.

That sounds exactly like what someone who once faced consequences for one particular thing would say.

To bother you in particular.

China, now the leading global super-power, took drastic measures decades ago to make sure their population wasn’t getting indoctrinated by outside influences.

They also used this power to cover up genocides and such, but I feel like a healthier balance could be maintained if we could just get our population to understand that their unfettered access to literally anything is like opening up a wound to the world’s bacteria.

I love me a really well-made grilled-cheese sandwich, like with all the fixings and fancy bread. Truly one of life’s pleasures.

But if gets moldy, even if it’s no fault of my own, I will probably throw that shit away and pick another option. (This also kills the spread of the mold.)

Sure, and my point is maybe we all need to put away the internet entirely a little more often, it’s literally killing us and the world.

You’re also right, something has changed. I’m old enough to have seen it on a much larger scale than most who use these sites. I remember before the internet, people were engaged and focused on issues, families gathered around the nightly news and presidential debates and then discussed them with their peers.

What we’re seeing now is the result of America (and other nations) opening up an unchecked access-point for enemies, foreign and domestic, to subvert our very identity as a people. They (being a mixture of forces who want to slice off a piece of America’s pie) used the KGB handbook word-for-word for years to amplify both sides of every discussion, every social issue and every political debate to absurd levels. Online allowed this to happen without any resistance and it’s so easy to do that with a tiny amount of funding anyone can set it in action. There is no point or goal other than making online discourse so incredibly vitriolic, absurd, unreal, and disconnected from reality that people gradually tune out and stop caring about the actual issues that impact us all.

You saw this happen slowly and ramp up in the last several years, so we now have a population who do not trust science, do not trust their political representatives, they do not trust what they see online, they don’t trust what they see on television, and they don’t trust their neighbors. While at the same time, feeling that it’s so inconsequential that there’s no point in being involved anyway. If everything is bullshit and nonsense, why not just watch the latest Netflix series, browse facebook and laugh at everyone you don’t agree with and go to bed.

The carnage is all people tune in for.

I do not see how Lemmy helps with anything other than allowing people another excuse for escapism and scrolling on the internet over actually developing life skills, seeing new sights, socializing with humans, getting better at understanding people, and actually making an effort to communicate with others, doing some small part to make the world better.

Harris would have been a strong candidate in any other epoch in American history.

What’s changed is the average median voter’s attention-span and engagement in politics. Exit polling showed most Trump voters were stuck on the price of groceries, which they blamed on Biden, and they thought Harris was just more Biden.

At other periods in history, I think voters would have understood what was at stake, who was responsible for what, and would have been just generally a little more connected and involved. 45% of eligible voters stayed home. And I honestly don’t know if it would have mattered if they voted, because people were voting almost at random this last election cycle. Lifelong dems through to Bernie supporters all voting for Trump because “what the hell, why not see what happens” because they’re so checked out, bored and disconnected from their larger community.

A good glimpse into our collective psyche can be seen in any major news outlet’s science headlines every fucking day. “Scientists baffled at HUGE discovery of ancient structures on Mars! Unknown signals from Venus confirm scientist’s worst fears! Giant eyeball planet found in space! Pyramids found to be generators for lost civilization!!!111”

These are all actual headlines from CNN, MSNBC and FOX. This is where the BULK of our society gets their information on the world around them. It doesn’t matter if you care about science or not, the fact that the sources for ANY kind of accurate reporting have thrown in the towel and no longer give a shit about journalism says as much about the state of our countrymen and women as it does about the sorry state of media and journalism. Nobody cares anymore. Nobody knows what’s real or not, so they just tune out and have been encouraged broadly to just “believe what makes you feel good.”

I think what they mean is we’re hiring an employee, but everyone doing the interviews believes themselves working at a different company.

a brotherhood of man

What in the fantasy novel is this about

All my homies dispersed after our lives became so painful and tiring that we had nothing to share anymore.

Men growing up never learn how to talk about their lives and wants and fears with each other, it’s always fake bravado, masculinity, “how can I make everyone laugh” and other increasingly desperate attempts to cling to the simple, happy days of childhood when there was less to worry about and every day was magical.

When the magic wanes, we’re left as people holding nothing. We don’t know how to laugh anymore. We don’t know how to make anyone else laugh anymore. We stop smiling. We stop going out of our way to even keep up appearances, and just fade into the background, and most of us like it that way. Because society broadly doesn’t know how to handle male emotional states that don’t follow stereotypes for cartoonish masculinity. So as men get older, we get more and more alone.

I literally have no clue what it feels like to have other men, related or not, to lean on and talk to. I’ve never had support from anyone outside of my partner, and cannot imagine how dark life is for men who don’t even have that. Yes, our world is unkind to men. It’s also unkind to women in a different way.

We can each change it, but it takes effort, emotional intelligence, and of course the time in the day that most of us don’t have once you have bills to pay and people to take care of.

And I don’t say this as some kind of whiny-ass teenage MGTOW redpill kid who is mad at women. I have studied sociology and neurology for decades, I have been a coach and trainer to young men, as well as women and families, I have taught self-defense, I’ve been in therapy, I’ve had substance abuse problems, i’ve kicked substance abuse problems. I’ve been religious and renounced it all. I’ve been a shut-in introverted gamer turned outgoing, public-speaking business leader. I’ve lived a few and speak from decades of just being and watching.

TPM cup

I googled this and now I’m enrolled in a yacht race… thanks.