Gen Z is Being Radicalized? 

just want to say I went through and read almost all these comments today and I appreciate them so much. Learned a lot and gave me other perspectives on the issue. So many of these stories I would never ever have had a chance to hear in real life. It's the best part of this "job" (in air quotes) and I feel like it helps me understand the world around me better. It does feel like the world has tossed a grenade of unique new problems onto everyone, but especially younger people, with absolutely no roadmap/guide for anyone - including their parents/role models - on how to handle them. I think people are TRYING a lot harder than is commonly thought, there's less "giving up" than people think, these problems are just tough. Hope you all aren't too hard on yourself.

Other generations: Conservatives and Librals Gen Z: revolutionary ethnonationalism

This is so relatable as a gen Z male myself. It really does feel like there really isn't a low stakes, "third space" environment to talk about deep things or have genuine platonic relationships with guys and especially not girls. Guys think they have to goof off or take themselves too seriously. And as a guy it's hard to find girls with similar interests that overlap. It's difficult for a lot of my guy friends who want to meet new people, make new friends, and talk to women without being afraid of them, my self included. It's hard to determine what an acceptable boundary for that looks like, so a lot of us pull back and don't take the risk of putting ourselves in a uncomfortable situation.

The divide is nuts. As a member of the 1% of Atrioc viewers who is a gen z girl, it’s pretty lonely. It’s not fun

I feel like growing up and especially in College “men are the problem” talk was large and it was discussed in many core curriculum classes that this was the case. It was harder to get scholarships from the financial aid center as a man and many on campus jobs hired more women than man. This for sure made me bitter because everything is expensive and I received less support because men before me had it better than women. I understand that women my age had little do with that but still “they have what I want and that makes me angry” is an easy mindset to fall into

I (18F) have struggled with social anxiety, as well as feelings of loneliness and isolation, for a large part of my life. As a strategy to cope I watched a lot of RU-vid videos, mainly for escapism. At some point I started watching left-leaning video essay content, which led me to find the “left-side” of TikTok. I need to preface that I strongly dislike TikTok as a social media platform and refuse to use it, so I am biased, which makes my main way of consuming TikTok content is through RU-vid TikTok compilations. The nice thing about the compilations is that they are curated by an actual person instead of an algorithm, but I also found that they were radicalizing me, or at least giving me stronger political opinions. A part of it is the compiler, but I also found most of the videos revolve around dunking on or arguing with the other political side, which is also common with right-leaning content. So it feels more like a game of Red vs. Blue, rather than a spectrum of political beliefs whose actions have a real world impact. This creates a community of people with a common enemy, which could help someone who feels lonely feel a part of a greater cause. So, I can imagine how someone would use a social media platform like TikTok to escape can easily end up joining a game of “who hates who more” to give themselves a feeling of community. Of course, this is just my opinion and experience on the matter. I feel like this could be a reason why Gen Z as a whole are a lot more passionate about their political beliefs. Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

I feel like that divide is created by how each gender feels about itself and the other one. Women seem to feel like men have everything the easy way while they have to fight for their basic human rights. And men seem to feel like they have to work hard and alone for everything they get while women get to have support

Regarding female on male violence, I believe it's more prevalent than you think. Most goes unreported and never mentioned to anyone because men tend to be laughed at and ridiculed if they say they were assaulted by a girl, and sometimes even assumed to be the perpetrator instead. Female aggression towards men is also just more socially accepted and men may not even realize they are the victim in many cases.

I'm 36. I grew up in a time where you could fit all the gamers at my high school at a single Cafeteria table. We had terrible social skills with anyone that wasn't another gamer, and even then, only talked about video games as a filler to going home and playing them, at which point we rarely talked. Now-a-days, that table would be half the school. I don't think the tables' social skills would be any better.

Definitely growing up I have experienced a lot of "men are the problem" from the vocal minority online and I'm honestly proud that I wasn't radicalised because of it. And I didn't use social media all that much growing up, So I honestly feel for the young gen Z (I think I grew up in the best time for social media - just after Facebook and before Instagram took off, so I never really got into it). It's so easy to think "all women this" and "all men that" and it's only with age and perspective I'm able to see the flaws of those views. I imagine it is the same on the women side just with different points

I myself did something to connect with actual Americanised Gen z (or maybe it was something else? Idk where it came from) and got radicalised within ~2 years with the whole loneliness, anxiety, lost, hate the other gender shabang. It happened right after the quarantine and when I tried open up emotionally because I was getting too NEET for my liking. What's weird is that it came veryyy naturally even though I understood the logical fallacies present. It almost feels hormonal because of how compelled I get. Im in the process of pulling the plug and reviving my personality from 3 years go to isolate and evaluate the processes going here but it's quite strange.

I've been trying to get out of my comfort zone and talking with strangers occasionally, and have been met with warm responses every time. It's really hard to make that anxiety of talking to a new person go away though, and I can't imagine how much worse it would be for someone who already has really bad anxiety, much less social/conversational skills, etc. If both you and the other person are in eternal fear of making the first step though, nothing will ever happen; you yourself have to gather the courage to be uncomfortable, start a conversation, and be willing to do so many times until you slowly get better/practice makes perfect and the anxiety isn't crippling anymore. And all of this seems obvious, and you think bad of yourself for not being able to do it, and you question how have you even made it this far in life without being able to do it. But you have to actually just do it, you are the one stopping yourself, you are the one that's in needless fear. The other person will be happy you talked with them 99% of the time and if they're rude/mean they're probably just an asshole. For the people really struggling with that initial anxiety, I highly recommend joining random discord vc's/vrchat or similar. You can be fully anonymous or dox yourself, join/leave whenever you want or just listen to other people talk, be as weird or formal as you want to be, talk about mysteries of the universe or memes or work or anime or whatever and people usually gladly talk to you (that's a reason why these games/websites are so popular). It's better to slowly expose yourself and get used to actual human interaction, even online, instead of just thinking/fantasising about it 24/7 and hoping you'll magically wake up one day and become a beautiful charismatic extroverted person. P.S. IF YOU READ THIS FAR AND RELATE, ACTUALLY GO DO IT. I PROMISE YOU ON MY LEFT NUT YOU ARE FULLY CAPABLE AND IT WILL BE OKAY. I LOVE YOU AND BELIEVE IN YOU, SO YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. DON'T KEEP MAKING YOURSELF SUFFER NEEDLESSLY. ❤

My sister became a femcel for a bit but then she started going to therapy and is better now. She use to watch TikTok’s and YT vids of women talking about their toxic relationships or how men a trash. Now she mostly watches Vampire Diaries

I guess I get the loneliness aspect. I often feel pretty lonely and isolated, because I just work too much and don't have time to get out. I can understand how that feeling can lead to frustration in those who don't want to admit they might be the reason for it. Hell, The Doors said it in the 60s, "women seem wicked when you're alone." At least for me, I realize that it's my own skills and personality that lead to me being alone, plus the weird position I'm in in terms of life right now, where I work too much to go out often and I'm hoping to move abroad in the next couple years so I'm unwilling to start a relationship with a time limit. Also though, it's tough meeting people. I can go out to a bar or something, but often people go in groups and tend to stick to them. So people go to dating apps, but then most men will hardly see any matches, and even if they get them they usually don't go anywhere. The issue mainly lies in that people aren't willing to accept that it's probably just a skill issue

hi reporting from korea this is a huge problem here. men are rapidly radicalizing (trending conservative) and i feel like the graph you showed doesn’t highlight the problem enough; it’s very real and very visible and i often feel like we’re walking a tightrope where one small thing might cause real harm to both sides. in korea we don’t really have podcasts/andrew tate but the stereotype here is forum sites (which i guess are also super rabbit-holey in the us as well) which are dedicated to radical anti-feminist rhetoric. also interesting trend here right now is unlike what you might expect (liberal youth & conservative elders) we are noticing the opposite where teens/20s/early 30s are very conservative and late 30s/40s/50s are very liberal, and back to conservative when you get to 60+. the theory being that 30/40/50 year olds had a relatively easier time getting into society so they are open to change whereas the youth feel so isolated & are in such a harsh political economic environment that leads them to want to “go back” to when it was ‘easier’. interesting i guess but sad for me :(

Decline of quality life for younger generation where there life is getting harder and harder. No one can afford a house or basic needs like healthcare and service.

Yeah, the divide is crazy. I think one of the problem lies within a lack of good influencers that align with the youth nowadays. The disparity between the number of sigma male creators and sigma female creators is so eye-opening. I'm glad you're one of the good ones 👊

I think its probably that men's issues are being handled almost exclusively by the right and women's by the left, its not a true shift in political ideology, only in who the groups choose to direct their ideology towards yaknow? somehow caring about men's rights has become anti-left and caring about women's anti-right.

Idk if I have anything to add to the table but I’ll try to add a genuine comment. I have primarily had Female friends through Middle and High School only now in college switching to becoming primarily Male friends. I wouldn’t say there was more or less emotional support towards me specifically however I can say that there was a drastic difference in how the women I was (and continue to be) friends with talk about Men vs how my male friends talk about Women. The “bros” will frequently talk about women in exaggeratedly rude ways for comedy. However very notably the ones with girlfriends don’t make those jokes. Usually after making said jokes the boys will become saddened by the fact that they haven’t felt a genuine connection with a girl and really wish they could. Honestly kinda sad. They think that those guys that degrade women (that Tate shit) get more attention from women and makes them upset cause they don’t want to be dicks to women but they still want relationships. Meanwhile I can say that the talk about men from women does get pretty intensely negative. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve spoken up a bit about how it’s making me uncomfortable and the response is always “not you of course”. I can’t really view the negative talk from an unbiased angle since I’m the target of that talk 😂. I’ve never dated a guy so I really don’t know but it seems that generally women are more vocal about negative relationships than guys are. That I CAN relate too in the sense I don’t like to talk about it and I actively attempt to let it not affect future dating endeavors, something the boys and the girlies both help me with albeit differently. Idk definitely rambling now, I have put my shit on the table

Shouldn't the take away from those graphs be why are Women being more radicalized since outside of korea the Men are within expected trends

This might sound weird, but I honestly believe social media algorithms to a certain extent can determine people’s life paths for better or for worse. It seems to me that social media for many people is becoming one of their few outlets to the outside world, both physically and mentally, and that these divides will only continue to become more severe as the trend of “iPad Babies” becomes increasingly common. Because now, young children and toddlers, who are extremely impressionable, are basically born and immediately given an algorithm at a ‘blank slate’ phase, and essentially letting the algorithm learn exactly what interests them and how, as the kid creates a unique “carving” of themselves as they search for and consume media they find interesting while they are growing in these early years and having their interests rapidly changing as they do so. Makes it so by the time the kid has gotten old enough (~ the age of adolescence to young adult), to be able to think for themselves and form their own opinions, without realizing it, find themselves in a “filter bubble”. This, combined with how these algorithms to a certain extent have ever-evolving impressions of what the average gender and age group is interested in seeing and using that as a default reference when recommending media, makes me believe that this problem is either going to get significantly worse for the foreseeable future or worse for a little while if the newer generations somehow find a way to adapt to this new “cyberscape”

Idk. Every time I see these charts for the US, the male line doesn't really surprise me. It's the female line that is generally moving a ton. Which I totally get, but it's weird people keep questioning the male line given that it's barely fluctuating in the US.

As you said, it's easy to point fingers at men, Tate, etc. and say they're to blame, which is definitely half the problem. But this is a two way street. Especially as someone who teaches high school, I have had to step in to squash a rise in overall hate towards male students for just simply being men and misandry from female students. I'm not against feminism in principle, but this 3rd and 4th wave have 1000% has played a negative role in females becoming hateful and resentful of men. And just like how its good for us to call out misogyny, there's no social pressure to stop women from hating on men. I find that a lot of men have become reactionary to that since obviously nobody likes being demonized. The only way this gets better is if we become unbiased and call out bad/hateful behaviour from all sides. Everyone needs to feel heard and like their opinion matters. No more of this, "your opinion doesn't matter because your ____". But that's just from what I have observed and believe.

I’m 35, so far from gen z, but even I have felt myself start to go down the red/black pill rabbit hole a little back before I found my girlfriend. I didn’t like it, and knew it was wrong and made attempts to ground myself, which did help a lot. The reason for all that was the constant rejection I got on dating apps. It really made me start to resent women a lot. I talked to the various women in my life, but that didn’t help as much as I would like. A big part of my problem was that I didn’t know what it was like for women on dating sites. For me it seemed like they had it easy. They got to match with anyone they wanted and had the pick of any guy they wanted. They could just sit back, and let guys do all the work while they could just be lazy and get everything handed to them. I suspect that’s what a lot of guys think, because that’s how it feels. I actively tried to find female friends and family to ask about their experiences with dating apps, but none of the women in my life, and there are many, use dating apps. My sister used to, but that was years ago. I think if more women would share their experiences with dating apps it would fix a lot of issues.

There's a youtuber named woke_karen who recently made a short where he speaks on this issue a bit in honestly the most reasonable concise way possible. He postulates that in this world young men are suffering through a crisis of identity of what it means to be a man and general loneliness. But the issue is they cant openly speak on their issues as often they will hear things like "Patriarchy" or some variation of this marginalized group has it worse so you a man have no right to speak. And what this is leading to is these young men looking for answers in the wrong places and ending up going down the right wing rabbit hole and blaming women/feminism for their issues because more often than not the ones on the left push them away under the idea that you are a man u should be able to handle this or ur not allowed to express your feelings (which leads directly into a toxic mindset). I feel like he has a point yes as a man I get it I get certain privilege's afforded to me in society. But I'm also black and in America which means every time I leave my house I fear that I won't make it back due to some trigger happy cop. I'm also fat which means I will get significantly worse health care as everything will just lead back to "lose some weight". At the end of the day your race/gender or other identifying markers like weight or age will always have its ups and downs for example women on average get lesser prison sentences than men for the same crimes, they are more likely to benefit from some kind of scholarship and on average receive higher levels of education and also work in fields that leads to very low on the job mortality rates. Yes Patriarchy can be an issue as well as capitalism but to think that every dude benefits from just being a dude is diminishing the real struggles that we go through and its simply unfair and quite frankly truly sexist to either dismiss our problems based off of gender or not being in a marginalized group or even worse when we do find/make our own safe space to violently attack such a space and claim its full of evil, I remember reading about or hearing some kind of story where there was a rally or something to talk about men's issues and they were attacked by people just for talking about this. If you want my two cents on the matter if we want a more cohesive and liberal environment that can solve the issues we are having we need to all be able to openly speak on issues that are plaguing *ANY* group in our society gender/religion/age/sexual orientation not with standing. Otherwise young men will continue to look for answers and these right ring grifters know theres alot of money in male loneliness.

As a young man 19 turning 20 this year, I always feel like I shouldn't try and tell people my problems because I don't want to bother them or have them worrying about me instead of themselves, or something important like college, I also fear them thinking of me differently if I do tell them I'm not doing good, I think this type of thought process comes from growing up being expected to just be ok and being expected to figure things out on my own cause I'm a guy, I think this could possibly come from things like in shows growing up I never saw the men being emotionally vulnerable without being seen as week or at a low point, even when I was really young in kindergarten I would get teased about my last name and get called names and I hated it, but I never brought it up to anyone it didn't even cross my mind because its something I never saw. Even in the present I have a hard time telling my close friends how I'm doing and will often lie by saying I'm ok or decent when in reality I'm not. It feels like for me to be able to tell my friends how I'm actually doing emotionally I have to be at a horrendously low point to think that I should talk to them about it.

This was a really great stream, just chatting for an hour about an important topic. Love when Atrioc gets interesting in something and has an open discussion about it with chat

I feel like some of the reason for men getting less university degrees is that we are starting to realise the value of alternatives like getting a trade. There are a plently of job oppurtunities, pretty high job satisfaction, with a low barrier and low cost to entry. I'm starting university in a fortnight but I was seriously considering becoming a mechanic or an electrician. It might not be the best pay but you can certainly live comfortably off those salaries.

I'm very confused. Concerning the US and Germany, Men on the graph have had a difference of 15 points between highest and lowest over 40 years and are generally evenly split left and right wing, but women have had a difference of 20 and 30 points between highest and lowest within the last 10 years. Why are men the issue here? Men have stagnated and plateaued, but women have dramatically shifted left.

Hey Atrioc, you should check out a book called Of boys and men by Richard V Reeves. He talks the lack of men in HEALTH related areas (treaching, nurse etc) On another note, i think the reason why its harder to make connections with people is the lack of a common topic. In school, people just talk about school and its harder to make a good friend making conversation out of it.

One thing about the Korea is that everything is competition. With very limited natural resources, all we have to profit from is basically human resources (hence the crazy pressure to study hard and get into high ranking universities, and also crazy centralization of everything to Seoul, the capital city). But this has been getting worse and worse recently. With the economic slowdown of Korea, job market for young people have shrunked more and more. Getting into a high ranking univerisities is not enough anymore. You need to study and get various cerfication (Master's degree or other government certifications) on top of that which can often take 3-4 years on top of that 4 year university education. What Korean men are frustrated about is that they are basically throwing away 2 years of their life to mandatory conscription. 2 years which they would have spent completing their university or studying for those certification exams. After 2 years of service (90% manual labor as conscript), all the complex concepts regarding your studies are not as familiar anymore, so you need to spend way more time catching up than you would have if you continued on with your studies as normal. Korean women, on the other hand, do not have that responsibility to serve, so they are free to finish their studies or basically prepare for their future as they please. So, they have unfair advantage in that way. On top of that, Korean leadership are mainly consists of the boomer generation who grew up with the traditional misogynistic mindset. So, in their mind, women are 100% the victims and they relatively (or completely) disregard the struggles of young men. There are other numerous aspects on this matter which makes very complicated to address 100% correctly, but one thing I can say for sure is that this does not mainly stem from loniness or Andrew Tate BS. Korean men only want respect for their service that society takes for granted and to complete with women in the job market on fairgrounds.

There is a very vocal minority of women who loudly proclaim their hatred of men. When you see this as a young man (who hasn’t done anything to deserve this reputation) it is easy to be in opposition to the political party that seems to hate you for just existing. It does not matter to those who see it what the experiences of those women are, as they lack that context and are just going to take what was said at face value. Anyone who just blatantly bashes others using generalities is not someone who is promoting change and is not being a positive role model.

No woman are paid less than me(0$) 😎Autism 😎

I'm going to start this by saying I'm a leftist/feminist; always have been, always will be. But Atrioc is patently wrong about downplaying female violence. I promise you that the statistical distributions don't look like what your intuition says they do. I recognize that men can do more damage and that's an important factor, but women commit acts of violence frequently. To all of the men out there affected by intimate partner violence: You are not alone. It was not your fault. No one should ever put their hands on you out of anger/emotion. It is not an indictment of your masculinity. I am 6'4, 220 lbs and can bench 3 plates. I still felt powerless when my partner would hit me.

Anxiety Risk: Talking to a girl to then bring her home to your parent’s house with a single bed because you can’t afford rent. Nice 👍🏼

To explain the UK graph: politics is pretty simple for the general population in the UK. One party/leader is inevitably completely unfit to run the county and doesn't understand politics in the slightest, so you pretty much have to vote for the other party. We've had a string of complete idiots running the conservative party recently so basically everyone is going to vote labour in next election.

Hey Atrioc I think you missed one major factor I think in the 2010s there have been several progressive movements (#meetoo, Fridays for Future or BLM for example) that have questioned the current capitalist and patriarchal structure of our society. With it came a shift of the male role model from the „strong“, stoic alpha male to more of an thoughtful, emotional and responsible man. Whilst this change in general is definitely positive since it promotes more cooperation and compassion between people, it also came with blaming men in general. As a young man my problem now is that not only are there few modern male role models (you are actually someone I look up to), but also some extreme progressivists tell you that the fact that you are male makes you guilty of being part of the patriarchal structure, morally wrong or inferior. These allegations are just bullshit, especially since the younger generation didn’t have anything to say in the structure of our society. This created the perfect breeding ground for bad actors like Tate, who not only tell you that you don’t actually need to change but that you are rather superior to women. The easy populist solution is just much more convenient for most people. At least that is what I observed with my little brother who follows Tate and recently started to mumble stuff about feeling unsave because of the Muslim hordes who walk through the streets like they own them (for context we are living in a medium sized town in Germany that doesn’t have any problem with criminality and both have a migration background since our mother is Chinese).

its probably because korea has mandatory service

Being terminally online yet extremely social, I’m nearly sold on the fact that people are just more isolated than before and are not talking to people outside of their communities. That ignorance allows false narratives to take control of your thoughts and make issues bigger than they actually are. If men and women talked to each other more, or if people were just more open to talking to people regardless of race, sex, or beliefs, and realizing that good people come in all forms, then we wouldnt have this alarming divide. Boys are getting played like a fiddle by youtubers/personalities like whatever self-help person or tate-like persona that says the easy things that justify avoiding the harder things like talking it out, swallowing your pride, being open to new ideas and doing food without expecting something in return. These boys and young adults are going to be more irrational, interested to see how it all plays out lol

80% plus is like banana republic levels. The idea that any group is naturally that aligned is crazy.

I think a "symptom" can be seen in the first few twitch chat comments that were "blaming men" for the cause of the split. That sort of "just blame guys" thing is driving more people to go, "okay, since you keep calling me X I guess I'll go be X"

I don't think you can say men overall have easier lives than women overall, nor vice versa. Certain parts of life are easier for men, certain parts are easier for women. In today's world, economic class affects opportunities/privileges/quality of life much more than gender does.

I also think social media made broadcasting the worst parts of people easy. Or in other words, there is an anxiety that if you make a mistake in a social interaction, the you get thrown to the social media wolves and get torn to shreds.

As someone with no friends I must agree with this video. Turns out having no outside opinions does lead to radicalisation

Z is the first generation that was entirely raised with the modern internet. Unless they had exceptional parents, it's entirely possible there was never a time in their lives where they were alone with their thoughts. They've always had the noise of the internet messing with their heads.

I feel like that gen z is getting exploited. Women this, men that Black this, white that Rich this, poor that Cis this, LBGTQ+ that Gen Z is fed polarizing content every day. It’s so easy to feed us identity politics so we can freak the fuck out over things that shouldn’t be that big of a problem. -Easily resolved quarrels that only have the spotlight because that identity fixation is trending. It’s so frustrating. I would like to think it would be impressive how much change we could make If we weren’t exposed to this dopamine drip feed. -Maybe we’d be happier, more social and less stressed. I only hope to see the day If you’re reading this; thanks for taking the time. I appreciate you.

Hell yeah we’re radical 😎🤙

Speaking strictly of college-aged young adults, one of the biggest changes we've seen has been in education. The chatter mentioned it earlier, women are earning more degrees but it's in the social sciences and healthcare. There's always been a strong link between education/type of education and political ideology. A lot of what's being brought up might definitely be factors at play, but there's so many other variables to look at (including whether or not the constructs of liberal and conservative are the same and maintain validity across the past decade).

I think often younger men (in my experience as a high schooler), we have very few male positive role models, and a lot of the time when someone is like trying to argue against someone being sexist they are made fun of for being a simp or called a loser, soy, gay etc

Here’s the thing guys, a chunk of young women, at least the women in my (20f) friend circles, straight up don’t want to date, myself included. It just seems like a lot of work and I barely have the time to keep up with friendships in between college classes and my job, my close friends are nowhere near the dating pool either. I think guys are a lot more concerned with the idea of a partner because it’s kind of pushed on them by wider society, but a lot of the young women I know mainly get their social fix by spending time with friends and romance is just not on their minds right now. I’ve never even kissed anyone and I’m 20 years old. I could have had the odd opportunity here and there but it’s something I’ve never pursued just because I don’t have the mental space for another person. I know it’s not overall super common, I have plenty of female friends who have dated. But just keep in mind that a good chunk of women, typically nerdy-esque less conventionally attractive women from what I’ve seen (not a diss this includes me 😂) just aren’t interested in romance in the first place.

I think with the advent of Tiktok and incredibly niche micro echo chambers, there's been a real revertion to conservative leaning beliefs amongst young men. We can look at old groupchats and videos with slurs/racism/non-politically-correct content and say "it was a different time" but I think it's important to understand that people are still the same, and it is rather society that has grown past that. Why I make this distinction is because I think a BIG PART of the shift leftward on the internet/in society since then has been due to increased awareness of what we say on the internet (more people, more mainstream, more eyes watching what you say -> more liberal). When noone cared and RU-vid was more niche, you could say whatever the hell you wanted, in the absence of moderation (or incentive from corporations to enforce decorum). Now there are (relatively) stricter content guidelines (formal moderation) and cancel culture (informal moderation). This of course drove the shift into public social media and internet culture being more politically correct. Rampant radicalization wasn't much of an issue because the mainstream and the far-right were isolated and seperate, so it was much harder to gradually move rightward. ------ But now, TikTok and the rise of algorithms have essentially split the internet off into a million splinters on the political spectrum. Everyone is force fed content that uniquely aligns with their SPECIFIC political beliefs. There's also a constant negative cycle: people browse TikTok as "slop" when they are emotionally down/vulnerable. When served with content (either ragebait, or just politically divisive/culture war) that doesn't fit this microniche, they are susceptible to anger and radicalization. Before, there was the fear of social ostracization that suppressed these thoughts, but now, every comment section is filled with like-minded radicalized men and it is easy to follow the herd and get lost in a breeding ground of anger and loneliness. If you look at IG/Twitter/Tiktok now there is a place for every type of bigoted and racist take in the comments of EVERY post and I feel like that has been a recent development since 2020. There's no need to look at other perspectives or get educated or unbiasedly look at the big picture with no emotion + intent to learn, everything is political or emotionally charged now and you will have people to back you up anyways. I think humans are built for organic social interaction with others of differing beliefs and experiences and the algorithmic social media slop is showing its heavy consequences on those who increasingly rely on it as a 1:1 substitution.

i dont think theres any 1 cause. its like chernobyl; it took a series of many things going wrong for it to explode. theres the pandemic, online school, lack of social opportunities, the rise of social media and its highly addictive algorithms, and so on. its really hard for me to watch my generation not even try, or at least thats what it feels like.

Zoomers of all countries, unite. You have nothing to lose but your skibidi!

From my point of view, which may not represent others within my generation, I believe this divide comes down to the changing of roles. I think that as young boys grow up they have so much conflicting messaging coming at them. From the men in their life who raise them in a more traditional sense, they go outdoors, play sports, tough it out. I think that they really like doing those things, being close with other men, doing things they're good at and getting exercise. If the boys themselves aren't getting those experiences, then they see them online. However, on the flip side of that, there is so much being thrown at them in school and from the women in their lives that contradicts this. I'm not sure I would be able to put a finger on a particular incident, but it feels like there is a constant criminalisation of the classic male life coming from the women in our lives. With the crack-down on a lot of "dum shit" at schools, which is primarily carried out by boys, it further separates them while creating a sense of resentment for the institutions and the women who put a stop to it. While these messages collide, I think young boys coming into adulthood are feeling lost as to where they fit into today's society. While they don't want to do any harm to the women in their lives, and they know that women have it harder, they can't help but feel like men have it harder. Boys now grow up in schools that are filled with female supports such as Women in STEM, Women in The Trades, teachers putting a lot of focus into solving issues they have, etc. These are all good things, and boys are in support of it all, however when they try and look for support themselves, they are met with a brick wall. They are told that women are the ones who need the support and that men have a leg up just for being men. While this may be true in the world outside of school, boys only see it from inside those walls. For them, they see their female peers getting all this extra treatment, and all this support, while they get told to man up, stop complaining, and get on with it. I think this, along with the dismantling and criminalisation of the traditional male relationship, leads to feelings of resentment. I believe that this sense of resentment being built over their formative years, carries into their adulthood as they keep trying to find community and a sense of self. From their point of view, the only place where they've felt that belonging, has been with other men, doing typical man stuff. This is why young men around the world are starting to trend more towards the centre of the political scale. I don't believe that the men of my generation wish to hinder any of the progress women are achieving, I just think they just want the space to think for themselves and allow themselves to be men, and not feel bad about it. This feeling and this trend of wanting progress, but needing some sense of belonging, leads them to push back on certain topics to preserve their image of manhood. This is what Andrew Tate and others like him are exacerbating and taking advantage of. Telling young men that the only way they will feel like a man or belong, is to do this.and that, treat women like that, etc. Overall, I think young boys and men in my generation need support, they need people who understand their thought process and will give more help than "man up."

Although Atrioc does a really good job not showing this opinion, I do feel like the general vibe of this concept is "why are men getting worse!?!?" And not "why are men and women getting more different" or even "why are women getting worse" that just makes the situation worse on all accounts. I feel like society at large alienating what is becoming the average guy is just going to make the divide worse.

As Gen z girl that started college this years, its terrible. It's fucking lonely and I feel like approaching anyone is hard, especially when there was already established groups of friends there. As a outsider (I went to hs in another town), it feels impossible to look for a group or people to talk to.

As a 18 year old I think the point that you made at 12:07 is so true. Maybe it’s not that the romance is different, It may be intimate connections in general. Honestly there’s not anyone who knows me better than my therapist. I have best friends from elementary school to senior year of high-school I’ve only talked about surface level things with like video games/substances. I think talking about it with others my age is really the best way for us to heal.

I also had a lot of struggles with sharing real and deep conversations with my friends but recently I developed friendships with some girls and I like those friendships so much more just because I feel like I won’t get judged and those topics come more naturally somehow.

23 y/o male here. IMO a contributor to the rise in “man-o-sphere” influencers that I don’t see talked about too often is actual the data talking about men’s loneliness and lack of mental health care itself. Often times there’s a huge amount of focus on the discrepancy between male mental health “access” (feeling like you’re able to be vulnerable with others) to female mental health which absolutely can create a deepening rift due to underlying resentment. Media dedicated to talking about these differences always acknowledge that there men are lonelier than women but rarely open a productive dialogue about it. As an impressionable young male, it can absolutely be disheartening to constantly see these things that are felt, based in (mostly) truth, and algorithmically served. There’s been such a large focus on the data that it really seems to be creating a source of anger and resentment for young men. The pseudo discussions that take place regarding these facts (think Andrew Tate) always point out the issue but never give productive conversation about how we should be working to solve them. It really changes the perspective on these issues from “how do we fix this” to a paradoxical “every man for himself but we also are unified under the solidarity of being lonely”. Really makes it into a sort of gender war. Sad to see but it does seem there is an anti-internet / social media wave on the rise recently, at least among the older Gen Z crowd.

I'm anxious to talk to new people. Especially in environments I don't know. Hell, it took me 6 months to start to talk to my colleagues outside my team. Imagine the difficulty to talk to someone out of the blue, somewhere, anywhere. I just don't know if I know how to do it. If there even is a "how to" when connecting with people Whatever, I guess But! The crazy thing is the language I use. When I'm speaking my mother tongue I'm super anxious, but damn, I switch to English and I could sell ice to an Eskimo. What the fuck is that?

As a middle age bartender, the "third place" argument falls so within the purview of young men's tendency today, as well as chances of boys finding themselves hookups We use to see career women, 20-30, go for men that was about 5-10 years older, often because of stability and maturity. And strong preference for over-indulgent females to search of short-term relations with men at the same age. Today the over-indulgent women goes for people way beyond their age and career women going for even older men. It's not uncommon in today's bar to see 25 year old's going home with 45-50 year old, much higher rate than before. Men are becoming mentally younger and more conservative. But I'll give you this as an encouragement for anyone searching for relationship with the opposite sex. People with some reasonable social skill and intelligence, even if they are average looking guy, has a higher chance of getting something today than 10 years ago. Women in generally are looking for anything satiate the hunger and especially with people their own age. So go out and socialize

Look at the graph, outside of Korea it's pretty much just women being radicalized.

Some great discussions going on here in the comments. Not seeing much hate. Very refreshing

I used to have friends but that all changed when I got myself into drunk driving accident.

affordability issues = radicalization to the far left and far right

I think there are tons of factors here, most of which others are touching on. I think for a lot of young people, the Tate-esque narrative is a simpler, easier sell given the rhetoric in politics related to men today, compared to more nuanced feminist takes. In college, I went to a few sessions of a male discussion group at a religious club (despite not loving the idea and not being religious) because a friend invited me. It was really striking how many of the young dudes there - who, if it helps to picture, were the Patagonia-wearing outdoorsy kinds for the most part - expressed never discussing their feelings or self-doubt because they feared being judged, but they were comfortable speaking in a dedicated all-Male space. I think the podcast example was funny, but it accidentally touched on one of many possibilities: that there aren't that many dedicated male spaces in society, especially compared to female-dedicated spaces. This isn't talking about distribution of wealth or power, genuinely just small-scale social spaces. When I describe this male discussion group, I feel like I have to couch it in small disclaimers, because I think your average person sees that as cringe and possibly very conservative. I think this is one area that could be improved on

Just as a note the graphs don't suggest that men are being significantly radicalized (at least in 3/4 nations). The graphs seem to suggest that men are more widely distributed across the political spectrum, while women are more predominantly liberal. Why this trend primarily affects GenZ, I'm not entirely sure. My guess is that scapegoating in previous generations was enough to convince enough women to unite against a common enemy even if they weren't given full equality on a number of issues leading to more conservative women but that's honestly just a guess with no backing. It could also be that women's rights weren't as heavily contented (one way or the other) until more recently leading to a spike in liberal opinions among women. I think it's also possible that we are seeing significant radicalization on both sides of the aisle with significantly more communist and fascist content. Given some assumptions I think it could be fair to suggest that fascist content is more likely to be accepted by men than women due to how strongly fascism pushes traditional gender roles which then leads to both men and women getting radicalized by online content but allows for men to be radicalized in either direction in contrast to women who are far more likely to be radicalized in one direction over the other. Algorithms would then compound this further (since if a large enough group of women reject certain content it will be less likely to be shown to other women) I think this could be a possible theory to explain what we are seeing in the graphs. I think without significantly more data we can't really make any clear conclusions. Ideally we would get a survey of political beliefs, and potentially a personal political alignment given by survey participants (liberal, neolib, conversative, neocon, regressive, fascist, white nationalist, communist, libertarian, anarchist, authoritarian, etc.), which could help to elucidate things a bit more because honestly (at least from the graphs) this isn't particularly surprising and doesn't deviate from my understanding of previous generations, gender and political alignment. In general men are more likely to be conservative than women and if anything the graph suggests that men are spread across the political spectrum while women lean liberal (at least for the elections that I have actively been engaged in for the US 2016, & 2020 we saw a large divide across genders that I doubt would be fully explained by Gen Z voters especially in the case of 2016) edit: Actually upon reviewing the graphs I guess the trends are far more pronounced outside of the USA, and I am not privy to that due to the fact that I mostly follow Canadian and US politics. The US had a similar divide in 1990 and the overall effect isn't as pronounced as other nations.

If I can throw my hat into the ring of possible reasons; I think it's a combination of a lot of complex factors but what really stuck out to me as a possible reason for why men are trending more conservative or just not liberal is because the left tends to sort of ignore men's problems. As a leftist, you rarely see people talk about men's issues to the point where some people will even basically say men's issues aren't real or don't matter because they are in a position of power. Meanwhile more conservative sources do give advice for men's issues (albeit bad advice), in the form of people like Tate or even Jordan Peterson. I think that it makes sense that women are drawn more towards the left because the left does talk about their problems, whereas men are being drawn towards the right because the right talks about theirs. Really, I think what we need are more positive male role models and good advice about men's problems on the left.

Gen Z is very isolated and a lot of it is because of the lack of matching interests. I like a specific 4 games and 2 TV shows out of the 4 billion and literally cannot relate to people who don't feel the same way about the same entertainment.

I don’t think this affects my life. My friends and I have known each other since grade school (as far back as first grade for some) and we are generally pretty open to each other. Of course we still meme dunk on each other but we all know it’s just jokes. I recently went through a pretty bad breakup and my friends all supported me and let me talk openly. I also think our bond as a gaming group plays a role. We will say the most vile horrendous shit to each other when someone makes a bad play, but the next game or next day it’s like it didn’t happen. Just my experience but I’d say just stay tight with your day ones

4:19 - i relate to this a little hard. i wasn’t born into wealth yet im grinding away at many different things and trying to stay afloat. not easy.

I had to check multiple times that my playback speed is normal

Speaking from experience, COVID really fucked my social skills having to just live with my own thoughts for 2 years especially during college where I was supposed to in a new environment meeting people

0:16 Its odd that the FT chose to cut the graph at the inversion. I find that to be such an important point. That historical women have tended conservative and men liberal. So this inversion is just grander.

Good to see that most people men and women want things to change, whenever we realise that we aren’t each other’s ennemies and manage to work through our differences, I hope we all find someone good to connect with. Intimacy and romantic relationships are essential to mature emotionally. If you’re a guy, work on yourself enough to be presentable and try to meet people, most girls won’t like you but be open to the ones that do. If your a girl understand that mistakes are inevitable and we (men) will definitely fuck up. Most of us just want somebody to love, don’t look down on our mistakes, don’t assume we’re creeps, assume we are inexperienced (within reason) and we will be infinitely grateful.

As a person who was too young to vote when brexit was happening I support the statement “brexit was dumb” to me it just seams like not being so close with Europe is just going to be a pain in the ass

I really think it was the sjws and the anti-sjws. Kids raised on tumblr furry porn went out into the internet with a strong presence up until they were met with a strong backlash in 2014~2017. It was a pick one of 2 sides issue that was omnipresent in the lives of people raised on the internet such as gen z.

The answer is almost certainly social media in some way or another. It’s the only thing that really makes sense.

I went to an interview just a young guy who just turned 20. Went to mercurys coffee for the interview. It was deeply uncomfortable I walk in and theres a coffee bar for employees leather couches no problem. EVERY single person in the building was a woman. Just kinda surrounded. They sat me down across from them and had an interview but i was just sitting there for 15 minutes before interview with younger age women probably no older then 30. I didnt get the job but prior to this i usually thought guys had it harder and this only felt like it confirmed it. Like no guys. 😊

bit hard to talk to your friends when you're still so far in the closset that you're sitting on christmas

It’s the way gen z is (and everyone) is putting themselves in echo chambers knowingly and unknowingly dangerous combo that will not bode well

8:20 isn’t it obvious that these days more kids are public schooled than ever before, cities suck and aren’t walkable, the school day doesn’t end until 3 or 4 and there is nowhere people can go socialize for free for the few hours left to the day. There was always a problem with people being isolated, the internet was just the last nail in the coffin. If kids had places and time to hang out they would and we wouldn’t have any of these problems.

As a gen z man, the life ive lived has changed my view of social progressivism. Myself personally, ive began following a path of traditional liberalism. Being with my wife and my children in a more stable "conservative" lifestyle feels safer than the future we have to look forward to. From an economic standpoint things do not look good for us, nor do they look good for our children.

The assumed risk thing seems both equally insane and true. Living near the PCH in LA I see kids riding E-bikes (no helmet, 3 to a bike) all the time. Which seems trivial but is way more dangerous than anything I ever did statistically. At the same time in my shop we have a high school kid that’s a junior and his insight of highschool life makes it seem like kids don’t do anything at all. Granted anecdotal evidence but it all seems like maybe “risk” is assuming a different definition. It used to be “risky” to put your legal name in your email address. It used to be “risky” to put a picture of your face online. Things change

I come from the generation that migrated into playing games more then going outside. Until 12 years of age I was playing soccer on multiple teams and was involved with our local league. So everyone in the community knew me. So I have always been super social. Seeing the change for kids always playing out side to video games has had a huge effect imo. Yes you are still talking but it about games. Your not at the field with your friends in person talking about life or girls anymore.

In every other scenario, having a society/country with different politics will at worst, lead to civil war, and then secession, resulting in two societies/countries. They exist in equilibrium by having a physical border drawn where opposing ideas dont cross, in the form of politically legislated laws. you cant do this if your two political factions are split down gender lines. a country of only men and a country of only women isnt going to exist for very long, one side will eventually subjugate the other or come crawling to the other side (watch the show Survival: Men vs Women)

Wearing a „Put your money where your ❤ is“ sweater while simultaneously wearing an Enron had is another Big A Classic

Part of the reason that dating is harder for men is that men used to be able to get away with the bare minimum because women couldn’t provide for themselves since they weren’t able to enter the workforce. Now that women are actually able to make income and provide for themselves, men need to provide more than just having a paycheck isn’t enough unless you are absurdly wealthy, so men need to put a lot more effort into other aspects that men of the past didn’t need to. I think the most prevalent example of this is the increase in male beauty products. Before men didn’t need to put as much effort into their appearance, but now it’s more necessary

This was a good and thought provoking video, thanks big a

I think the main cause of this is the "eternity" of the internet, every error ir set in stone forever, which drives people to not try, and/or double down

I think a large part of it is where men get there media from. I also was shocked seeing how serious the divide was. Personally I attribute this to something you mentioned on stream. Once people start to show interest in something, our socials will continue that path. Since 2016 I think more young men have been curious about right wing ideas and it’s since pushed us here. I’m sure it’s lots of things but I think we seriously underestimate the power algorithms have over our thought processes. I just think about the kids growing up with tiktok on for hours a day. Kids are getting access to tech at ages where we don’t have the skills to separate BS from good ideas

Can anyone share the original news article link Atrioc was mentioning.

I’m so fucking lonely, man. I have an incredibly hard time talking to new people. I’m just so awkward. I don’t know what to say or how to act. It stresses me out really badly, so I just don’t do it. I kinda feel like I’m going to be alone for the rest of my life.

Ill pitch un here too why not lol (24M) For me personally with the rise of social media I've been wary of the consequences of practicing interacting with women since high school because being weird or creepy can follow you around nowadays. I'm fine about it now since i dont use any social media, but the risk feels astronomical so for a long time I'd mostly avoided talking to women. Ive also felt myself gliding towards being more conservative already, and some of it is because once again i dont feel like i can talk about my opinions or views on many issues because I'll be seen as amoral or evil in some way.

just a thought. there r so many things that play a part in it (mental health, loneliness, other points atrioc touched on), but i think that r generation is the most easily-influenced that we’ve ever seen before. with social media and the accessibility to scroll thru hours of content of other ppl living ‘better’ lives than you, i think it’s become normal for ppl to try to be someone they’re not. the ‘hive mind’ that this causes just turns a lot of ppl who were neutral, into ppl who r strongly conservative or strongly liberal and widens the divide.

Thankfully I've been politically concious before the alt right pipeline and manosphere/redpill rabbit hole became prominent so it's not something I think I could fall down but I can definitely understand how that could grab some people because especially dating is fucking rough. I've never been in a relationship despite wanting one for years. I have no clue how to meet people outside of dating apps, I rarely ever get matches on them (and most of the time I never get replies). I've only ever gotten one date off of them and while it was alright I never heard back from her. The loneliness is suffocating, it eats at your self worth, and it snowballs into a feeling that it might just never happen. I don't think I have any reason to think it will, though my therapist wants me to try and get rid of that mindset. But it doesn't feel like there is anything I can do to help my odds there because I have fucking tried and tried again to no avail.

Thanks Atrioc, this video is necessary at least for me.

It’s actually wild how painfully accurate everything said in this video is like shit is rough outchere

Both men and women don't empathize as well with men as they do with women, this has been documented in multiple studies over decades.

Through my involvement in competitive gaming I've had the opportunity to talk with the younger generation more and what I've noticed is that their self-esteem was generally very low. The number of self-deprecating comments I've heard boys and young men make about their competency, their intelligence, their looks, their personality, and even value as a person has me worried for them.