Loneliness, boys, and Andrew Tate

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My relatively unbothered, moisturized, in her lane, flourishing, offline sister (actually this describes all three of them what went wrong with me?) asked who Andrew Tate is after seeing something about him on her one social media account, TikTok.

I said he’s an influencer popular among Gen-Z boys who got kicked off YouTube for saying it’s cool to rape and traffick girls and recently got arrested for raping and trafficking girls. I’m sure there’s more to the story but I’m not following it closely and will not be convinced to do so.

She and I talked about what parents should do about toxic influencers. I gave advice despite not being a parent because it’s fun. I said you teach your kids the world is far too misogynistic, racist, homophobic, etc. but it’s our responsibility to try to make it less so. When your kids encounter countermessaging they have to choose what to believe. More should be done on a societal or policy level. But as an individual parent I think that’s a good start.

Anyway, I also sent her this helpful thread on why Tate and his ilk have such influence among young men and I thought it was very cogent on an individual level.

It’s a good thread. And it left me thinking about why so many young men are lonely, lacking social skills, etc.

There were parts and I disagreed with. For example, I disagree with the idea that men fail to see women as “intelligent, complex, insecure, and lonely” (in other words, full people) primarily or even in large part due to the fact that “women are ultra commodified as bikini models and diet pill influencers.” I do think it’s unhelpful that every female character in so many stories is incredibly flat and one-dimensional. But this sounds too much like the “social media is ruining everything” canard. As far as I can tell, the research on how social media impacts users is pretty mixed. Some studies show harm, others show benefit, and others show it’s a wash.

Which reminds me of course of the “porn is ruining young men” canard. Which I’ve already covered.

I thought Madelaine’s observation that many men misread disinterest from women as hatred was useful. As we’ve discussed, chronic loneliness actually decreases the brain’s ability to accurately interpret social cues, making the person hypervigilant to potential threats.

She also points out that these lonely boys blame women for rejecting them, which is a classic way in which loneliness can be self-reinforcing.

Madelaine writes that these men end up Googling ‘how to get a girlfriend’ and fall into a rabbit hole of fake science, dating coaches, and insular communities with other lonely, desperate men.

Some men see this mess for what it is and leave. But others are taken in. I think it’s telling that research shows that chronically lonely people are easier to con.

This is in part because loneliness and trauma (both of which feed the other) inhibit the brain’s ability to handle what researchers call “cognitive complexity.”

Men who get stuck tend to “have very low social intelligence and find comfort in routine and ‘logic’ over empathy and soft qualitative understanding,” Madelaine writes. “Understanding women as a series of bullet points makes the world less frightening.”

Diminished cognitive complexity then feeds into authoritarianism and makes men more susceptible to moral panics.

Madelaine describes how the advice from the fake science, dating coaches, and insular communities actually works to attract a certain kind of vulnerable woman.

I think we’d do well to talk more about why so many women are vulnerable to these men and tolerate this treatment.

One thing I noticed recently is that growing up in the Southern Baptist church, leaders harped on and on and on about sexual morality. I heard countless times that sex outside of marriage is a terrible sin. The only time I remember hearing leaders mention domestic violence and abuse was in the requisite “except in cases of abuse and infidelity,” after saying that marriage is for life.

Domestic violence happens in a quarter of romantic relationships. This lack of emphasis is telling.

At the end of the day, loneliness and trauma do a lot of work to put young men at risk of being taken in by the Andrew Tate’s of the world. There’s growing evidence that young men are lonelier than their fathers and grandfathers and, again, that loneliness contributes to trauma, cognitive decline, authoritarianism, etc.

So why are young men so lonely?

I think there are a few reasons. I think what Tim Carney described in Alienated America is real and important: Brain drain is eroding civic institutions. Liberalism is an issue. I think macroeconomic changes are a major contributor to male loneliness especially (men are lonelier than women on average) in that it’s contributing to male rolelessness, which fuels loneliness. Lastly, masculinity norms fuel loneliness

In sum, I think Andrew Tate and co have influence because so many young men are lonely, and that they’re lonely for a bunch of reasons, both individual and systemic. Until and unless we tackle the loneliness problem, I’m not sure we’re going to get anywhere. I was going to say we need focus less on the supply side (bad influencers) and more on the demand side (lonely boys looking for help and finding Andrew Tate). But honestly I think it’s both. Yes, we need boys and girls to start out less vulnerable to this bullshit. But for the boys especially who need help, we need more people peddling a healthy masculinity.

Header images come from me putting the headline or some body copy when the headline violates the TOS into OpenAI’s DALL-E. Today’s prompt was “surrealist painting of a lonely man playing a video game.”