Seen as you've rebuffed my attempted explanation of why kids are following Tate, with all the consequences that entails, I'd be interested to see what your opinion on why, and more importantly how do we solve it?
I'm genuinely interested because though I don't care for the way Tate goes about things I'm concerned about the increased objectification of young people and its negative impact on their lives.
Are you saying 20 years ago, had social media been the same then as it is now, people wouldn't have followed tate? And what about 40 years ago, 60 years ago, social media exactly as it is today, tate wouldn't have been followed by young men?
This^^
Some posters are adding 2+2 and getting woke.
Bowden you ask for my explanation. In some ways its fairly simple, the internet has changed our lives to such a degree that it isn't recognisable to what it was before. Though in other ways nothing has changed. You think some boys in the 60/70/80/90s didn't feel like they lacked something, you are calling it male role models, I think that is just being used as a convenient tag. Plenty of young men felt this way in the past. Its why they joined gangs, became football hooligans, became skin heads or joined other such groups. If Tate had been around then and the internet had been it would be just the same. Some young men are drawn to such characters, they always have been and always will be. Tate as others have said is just a grifter and criminal, he has discovered like all those before him that there is a market for his wares. If you tell people they are lacking something and you have it you can make a killing if you are a good salesman.
How we tackle it, Well now there is the problem. How do you stop such people reaching these young people on the internet? And now its become fashionable to tell these young people that they lack something, that they aren't men, they are beta men and then we wonder why they go looking for the likes of Tate
The people complaining that boys/young men don't have male role models and aren't masculine enough are pushing these same young men towards Tate. They are helping to create Tate's market for him.
I also think sometimes people forget that every generation is different. When I was a teenager my parents/grandparents generations looked at us and sighed that it wasn't like that when they were kids. Then we grew up and now those same people who weren't like their parents are now looking at this generation and saying exactly the same things. The world isn't coming to an end though, just as it wasn't when David Bowie wore a catsuit, dyed his hair orange and wore makeup. Though my parents and grandparents thought it was.
Tate and is like are a problem though. Like with every generation young people are impressionable, its why religions want to get children while they are young, they are easily manipulated and indoctrinated. How we deal with that I'm honestly not sure. We have to somehow let them know that Tate's views are healthy. Society has changed as it does with every generation. When I was young you might see a women getting a right hander every night on the TV. That now isn't seen as acceptable and that is a good thing. Society evolves, older generation rarely like how it is evolving and Tate in some ways is appealing to that, his views of women are those of the 70s and 80s. Men should be the dominant ones, women should know their place in life. My god we have enough posters on here that think like that.
It is a problem that young people aren't spending as much time out with their friends as we did. We had no choice though, if we wanted to see out friends we went out, they can just log on to their PCs or unlock their phones and see their friends. Again I've no idea how we solve that or if it really needs to be solved, maybe its just the way it is now. What I don't think though is that there is some huge crisis of masculinity, though it has now become very political and is being used in left vs right arguments for political power/influence. The sad thing is that its just the younger generation being used as a political football and its only going to get worse.