Men's Liberation
This community is first and foremost a feminist community for men and masc people, but it is also a place to talk about men’s issues with a particular focus on intersectionality.
Rules
Everybody is welcome, but this is primarily a space for men and masc people
Non-masculine perspectives are incredibly important in making sure that the lived experiences of others are present in discussions on masculinity, but please remember that this is a space to discuss issues pertaining to men and masc individuals. Be kind, open-minded, and take care that you aren't talking over men expressing their own lived experiences.
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Be proactive in forming a productive discussion. Constructive criticism of our community is fine, but if you mainly criticize feminism or other people's efforts to solve gender issues, your post/comment will be removed.
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Slurs, hate speech, and negative stereotyping towards marginalized groups will not be tolerated.
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Do not participate if you have been linked to this discussion from elsewhere. Similarly, links to elsewhere on the threadiverse must promote constructive discussion of men’s issues.
Recommended Reading
- The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, And Love by bell hooks
- Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements by Michael Messner
Related Communities
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My boyfriend occasionally watches YouTube shorts, mostly for the occasional good joke or cat video. He's told me that the shorts algorithm seemingly goes out of its way to show him Andrew Tate type content as well as general Daily Wire/Shapiro/conservative 'libs owned' clips. More or less, if he doesn't immediately close out the app or swipe to the next short when one of these videos comes up, his shorts feed is quickly dominated by them.
I think the big thing is that these algorithms are often trained on maximizing watch time/app usage, and there's something uniquely attention-catching to a lot of men and boys about the way viral manosphere content is constructed. A random poor setup to a skit is likely to get swiped past, but if the next clip comes swinging out of the gate with "here's how women are destroying the West" there's a certain morbid curiosity that gets some to watch the whole thing (even out of amusement/credulousness), or at least stay on the clip slightly longer than they would otherwise. If one lingers on that content to any degree, the algorithm sees that as a sign that the user wants more of it—or rather, that it would achieve its "more engagement" goals by serving up more of it.
Plus, it's grabbing ideas on what to recommend based on user data and clustered associations. It's very likely to test the waters with stuff it knows worked for others with similar profiles, even if it's a bit of a reach.
Edit: minor sentence structure stuff
YouTube is really bad with this. My algorithm's "vibes" is leftist/queer video essays, urbanist content, and bestofs/clips from video game streamers.
Yet YouTube unironically and regularly puts Andrew Tate's ugly-ass mug next to Alexander Avilla and I'm just like what the actual fuck. Of the young male population I'm probably in the top 1 % least likely to click on that shit.
Hanlon's razor says this is just the shorts algorithm being insanely stupid (which it also is in other ways). But this is beyond a simple mishap, it is an incredibly dangerous and damaging ideology being (accidentally or not) sanctioned and pushed by YouTube onto impressionable youths. How is no-one freaking out about this?? (It's a rhethortical question. The answer is it serves the interests of the patriarchy).
I am the same. At this point I hardly believe it's a mishap. IMO the fascists are manipulating the algorithms, or they pay to promote them, or the platform favors them.
I can see a propaganda structure working to manipulate the algorithm or pay to get them better ranked. But I can also see the platforms, Facebook, Google, etc, to favor them intently.
I'd argue that a lot of content on YouTube is much more interesting and clic worthy that the mysoginistic crap they force feed us with.