Thoughts on "bro culture"

[RJ-MacReady]

We all know what it is, toxic masuculinity and misogyny. This is just my personal opinion but I feel for too long our side has been intimidated by this "manosphere". We saw it this past election putting so much stock into a goober like Joe Rogan. Instead we need to take it apart by attacking it for what it is. An ideology spread by weak "beta" men and incels who simply hate women. Yes yes i know Rogan has one of the "most popular podcasts in the world" so what? Instead of getting outraged when he let's quacks kooks and MMA meatheads spew their nonsense we should laugh at them, diminish them. Take their power away by simply treating them as the loser children they are.

I know some here may think this is a terrible idea and that's ok, please discuss why.

[dutch777]

1. Lots of flavors to this...the tech bros, the trad bros, the hick bros....only justice is they have a hard time...

...finding women that will tolerate them, let alone date and marry them. The tech bros have a slight advantage due to money but hope they all suffer by just having their own cringey ilk to socialize with.

[maxsolomon]

2. You're suggesting using bro culture's insults (beta male) to take down the manosphere?

Where is an opportunity to laugh at their nonsense? Insult them in an online forum? I guarantee that is currently happening - to little avail.

[RJ-MacReady]

3. I used their term as a joke

And yes we need to thoroughly deconstruct it. Online in real life in work culture everywhere.

[maxsolomon]

8. "Thorough deconstructions" aren't going to resonate with "bros"

I straddle 2 worlds often: my professional world which is full of women and gay men, and the Construction world, which is full of "bros". I'm able to "code switch" pretty well.

Any persuasion has to be done with kindness and humor.

[EdmondDantes_]

4. We definitely need to engage there

I don't know if laughing is always the correct call. But we don't want or need men to cling to that backwards view of masculinity. Plus personally as someone into fitness, I really want that aspect of meathead culture to not pop up on my social media feeds as much. I've mostly got it filtered out, but every once in a while it filters back up

[RJ-MacReady]

5. agreed

What we need to do.is wrestle these things back from them. Fitness, self esteem etc etc.

[WSHazel]

6. I am more a live and let live kind of guy

1) I think that these men feel they have no power at all. Roughly 50% more women graduate from college than men now, and have been for about 10 years, and more women have been graduating college going back to the late 90's I believe. In a technological, knowledge based economy, many of these men are behind the 8 ball before they reach 25. This is not a sign of young men thinking they have power, this is a sign of many men giving up.

2) We don't need to like each other, but I don't think demonizing men, and especially young men, because they listen to Joe Rogan or don't have a girlfriend accomplishes anything. I think they have figured out they are struggling in life without libs calling them names.

3) Many young men are in crisis. Cultural and technological changes are creating dislocations and many of these men are having trouble getting started on their adult life. Attacking them just drives them to demagogues like Trump. This is a problem around the world, not just in America, and finding a place in our society for them should be something that liberals embrace.

4) The last 40 years have not been kind to the unskilled, working class men, and you are seeing that with the GenX working class in particular, which is very heavily Trump. I am not going full Fetterman and saying we should twist the country in knots to appease this group, but we need to recognize that there have been social and economic changes that have impacted them, and their families.

5) I think the corollary is true also. Democrats do much better with college-educated men, and that is a demo that Democrats should embrace rather than drive off. I don't care if they want to watch MMA or listen to Joe Rogan if they vote blue on Election Day.

[Scrivener7]

9. 1) Yes. More women do go to college. YET men STILL

outearn women by a large margin.
2) "libs" as you refer to us, also face difficulties. That never stopped the bros from demonizing us. From my observation, throwing their nonsense back in their faces is the only thing that makes them back off.
3) Women face the same cultural and technological changes. The only difference is they weren't raised with unearned advantages, thus they don't fall apart when a tenth of those unearned advantages are taken away.
4) Again, the same applies to women, yet they don't respond by wanting to take all men's rights away.

In short, spare me. This is not about "dislocation" or whatever other bullshit excuse people make for it. It's about racism and sexism and butt-hurt that a few of the many unearned advantages of white men have been taken away.

[WSHazel]

14. How did this approach work in 2016 and 2024?

The race to be the bigger victim is a losing one for Democrats, but it is a debate that Trump and MAGA LOVE to have. And by attacking men, it means we are also attacking everyone in their families, which is why Democrats get slaughtered now with white working class women. Also, a party of college graduates telling people in some dying, working class, small city in the Midwest, where the population and inflation adjusted per capita income has been declining for 50 years, that they need to check their privilege is better advertising for Trump than anything MAGA can come up with. It should be hard for Democrats to lose Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Iowa, but amazingly we have done it multiple times in the last 10 years, and Ohio and Iowa, who both voted for a black President twice, are not even swing states anymore. We have much better policies for these states, but are getting killed in the messaging war.

Democrats are also losing ground with black working class men and especially with Latino working class men. If Democrats had held their margins with Latino men that Obama had, Hillary Clinton would have just wrapped up her second term and we would be on a 5th straight term of Democrats in the White House and have a 20+ seat advantage in the House. And to preempt any silly retorts to this, I am not blaming them for voting Republican. I am blaming the terrible messaging from a small corner of the Democratic Party, that Republicans amplify, for them voting Republican.

Most of my family is biracial, and 60% of the non-college educated males in my family vote Republican now. All of these Republican male voters in my family are under 40, so they have a lot of votes left in them. Telling them that they are the problem does not sound like a winning pitch to swing them to the Blue team.

Furthermore, Democrats are rapidly gaining ground with college educated men, particularly in the suburbs, so why is a big chunk of the party attacking them?

Attacking men for being men is just dumb politics, and is also very un-liberal. It is such a bad strategy that I question whether those high profile progressives advocating it even want Democrats to win or just want a soapbox to stand on and blame others for the party's failure. FWIW, AOC uses much more inclusive language, but I guess she is not a good progressive either.

[Scrivener7]

19. This isn't an approach, and this isn't a race to be a bigger victim. It has nothing to do

with "attacking men for being men." (But about that, seriously? Joe Rogan bro-ism is what "being men" means to you? Work on that.)

These are just facts. We lost because of racism and sexism.

Also, please do link to anywhere where a "big chunk of the party" is attacking college educated men.

If we want Democrats to do better, we need to stop insisting on provably false narratives.None of this is about "displacement" or "cultural and technological changes." If it was, it would affect women in those cohorts as much as men. And it most certainly doesn't.

This is about racism and sexism. Our mistake in 2016 and 2024 was not recognizing that the racism and sexism had infected our own party as much as the other. If Kamala OR Hillary had been white males, both would have won easily. For the moment we need to face that fact.

Racism and sexism. Nothing else. And the part we missed was the racism and sexism that exists among Democrats.

Run a white protestant middle-aged straight man in 2028, and don't change a letter of the platform, and we will win.

But for God's sake, don't buy into the "poor men are disaffected and Democrats are mean to them" bullshit the republicans insist on foisting on us.

[blubunyip]

12. Who is responsible

for the fact that some men feel powerless in this era of technological change? (The working class man's crisis is valid, but it has been distorted). I hope some of these wronged men are at least waking up and realizing their mistake in trusting the tRump thing and jumping on the MAGA wagon. Vote for an abuser, get abused. That should be sinking in. Vote for the 2025 Project, get axed.

Who is responsible? Not women or "libs." That's a really lame argument. Women and libs for the most part, have not had The Power. But they are easy groups to target and blame.

So who has The Almighty Power? (And who doesn't want to give it up?) -->> Conservative authoritarian white males who exploit others for profit, like maybe Joe Rogan, Don's gang, the Tech bros, the Billionaires, the CEOs, the honchos at Fux, ...the list goes on and on. The last 40 years have not been kind to anyone who really cares about economic justice, the working class, or democracy. And certainly it has not been kind to women.

There absolutely needs to be more emphasis on job training, for tech jobs and skilled trades. Biden initiatives on this have been seriously damaged. The Trumpian CEOS want dumb people who can be manipulated, not a stable, educated work force like for example, Germany.

At least assign blame to the guilty.

[WSHazel]

16. I think people continue to misinterpret MAGA

It is not about race or gender, as much as grievance and anger.

The world is changing, and unfortunately, a large portion of the population is fed nonsense by demagogues about some nostalgia fueled fantasy of the way things used to be that those demagogues can bring back. Much of the change in society and the economy is scary, but the reality is that the 20th century was very good for most of America, and the second half was pretty good for all of the industrialized world. Some changes took longer than other, but the rapid change and innovation created opportunity for most and significantly raised the standard of living for just about all. There is a lot of room for improvement, but overall there has been a rising tide in the industrialized world, and even in many of the developing world countries. The future is pretty bright for countries like Mexico and Indonesia, which is part of the reason that immigration from Mexico had turned net negative years ago, the Trumpian screeching about immigration notwithstanding.

The things that made the U.S. the most prosperous country in human history such as Rule of Law, democracy and strong capital markets, are under attack by Trumpism, and I suspect that most CEO's and investors recognize this and are terrified of Trump. That does not justify their cowardice, but it does explain it.

Most of the large and industrialized countries in the world have faced an existential threat to their freedom and standard of living similar to what we are facing now. We must win, and that means getting allies and building coalitions.

[blubunyip]

21. Building coalitions

is going to take some new creativity. It's a brutal "us vs them," winner-take-all system. Yay team. Our whole culture is based on competition, us vs them, I Got Mine--on winning. There are no incentives for compromise and cooperation. Take, take, take is the model. Win at any cost.

In your previous post, you diss the Libs for not being kinder and gentler to young men looking for a better deal in life. Libs have been the only ones who really cared. BUT we do not have the power, as power is perceived in this culture.

If things have been so good in the 20th century, why are the working class men (and women) so angry now? Seems contradictory.

[leftstreet]

13. These are the same crybabies who won't support labor unions

Their ancestors would shake their heads over this victimized shit

Rather than come together and recognize their labor power, they lash out around them at anyone who's trying to achieve something.

They should stay in Mom's basement, ffs.

[WSHazel]

15. Some of them are in unions

No voter is all or nothing with every Blue or Red policy. Many of these young men are in unions, and still voting Red. This is often not about policy, but about messaging.

[Wicked Blue]

18. I wonder why more women are graduating from college

Why aren't men going to college or taking vocational courses to learn trade skills?

Could they be sitting around gaming instead of making time and effort to improve their financial futures?

Sorry but I think these unskilled white men must share some blame for their situations.

[Scrivener7]

20. They don't need to. When they get out into the workforce, they still make considerably more than women.

Women need the credentials to make it as far as men do without them.

[haele]

7. There's an old saying in women's circles...

Men are afraid Women will laugh at them, and Women are afraid Men will kill them.

It's pretty basic.
So long as actually confident men don't push to be role models or rather, the too clever by half privileged Peter Pans are held up as heroes in a simplistic and frankly cynical "You don't have to grow up" worldview, you're going to have a bunch of whiney little boys screaming that they deserve respect from women and other lesser beings - when in reality, they don't even respect themselves.
Rich "Conservative" Bastards never really respect themselves. They believe to their core their money is the only thing that makes them important or gives them and edge, and they're terrified of losing it, no matter how talented or smart they may actually be. They actually believe they're common shit people without all that money and they need to make sure everyone else believes it, too.

It's all too long for a bumper sticker. But technology has set time against the human brain, and it's getting more difficult for the average person to be able to take in long, complex concepts.

But back to the saying above; if any female tries to get them to grow the fuck up and own their own responsibility and self- respect like grown-ups, they're going to try to rip her to shreds for insulting their sacred veneer of manhood. And it doesn't matter if the boys are 12 or 92 years old.

They don't have enough confidence or self respect to handle criticism. And wimmin are supposed to be weaker than them, donchaknow?

[JustAnotherGen]

10. They are all just money grubbing weasels

That's ultimately what drives the Bro-Casters.

[Paladin]

11. "Bro culture" is a contradiction in terms. (nt)

[LS0999]

17. It's toxic masculinity wrapped around a cult

This is not culture. It's not surprising that it perfectly overlaps with the MAGA cult. The Turd happens to be the ultimate manifestation of the "bro". The bro cult and the bully mentality go hand in hand.

[RJ-MacReady]

22. exactly

Not surprising in the least the bullies I knew in high school are all staunch trumpers.