mentoring
-
This post did not contain any content.
Gary's there when he sets you up and there when you get set down
-
Ironically you're getting downvoted for telling people what they don't want to hear. It's tough to compete with someone claiming "you can have all you desire". It's similar to how trump won by recognizing what his target audience wants, validating their feelings, but then putting the blame on why they can't achieve what they want based on all the wrong things.
Yeah, I feel like people think I'm, like, defending rightwing manosphere content creators, lol.
I'm saying that what these young men want is a given. So people who dont suck need to accept that and give them viable alternatives, rather than telling them that they are wrong for wanting what they want and chastising them for it.
-
Gary's there when he sets you up and there when you get set down
Gary's upside-down
-
This post did not contain any content.
We all need Gary.
-
This post did not contain any content.
I'm pushing 40 and would love a Gary in my life.
-
I mean, the problem here is that - wholesome as Gary is, young men don't want "wholesome".
I know that when I was a young man, I wanted to get the fuck out of my home town, have crazy adventures, improve the world on my own terms, and fuck every attractive women that came within 1000m of me (For the record, not much jas changed...).
And Gary is a nice guy with an unattractive wife, a steady job, and two kids. He spends his free time at the bar or mowing the lawn, getting fatter by the year. He likes to talk about the vacation he took to an all inclusive resort with his family a few years ago as if it was the great adventure of his life. Gary doesn't have the most amazing life, but he has enough, and he's happy.
And my response to Gary as a young man would have been to appreciate his encouragement, and take his advice with a smile, and then ignore all of it because fuck that nonsense, I am getting the fuck out of this shithole. I am not going to end up like Gary! I am not going to settle for a life of bullshit mediocrity, drinking myself to an early grave while every dream I ever had whithers on the vine. And I am absofuckingloutly not going to follow in his footsteps. Come hell or high water, I will die before I end up with such a piss poor excuse for a life!!!
Point being - if you want young men to take your advice rather than the advice of toxic influencers, you need to validate their desires and ambitions, rather than dismissing them and telling them to want something else. "Oh, you have goal X? Well that's wrong - you should have goal Y, and here is how I got there" is not an effective way to offer advice to anyone
You don’t gotta front, bro, we all want to dick down Gary, it doesn’t make you gay.
-
well, "wash your balls" isn't a bad advice. and "I'm having a breakdown" is just a state of being
True, but you should wash your balls simply because you should wash your balls, but it will never affirm your existence or masculinity or fix any problems in your life other than having stinky balls.
-
Judging from what I have read before, some men genuinely think being greasy, sweaty looking and not being clean is attractive. I have read some comments in Lemmy before from men who feels like they found the secret sauce to attracting women: just being hygienic. The latter, I could pass it because they seem like they are neurodivergent. But the former? I don't even know. I heard it was more like a 90s and 00s trend. Maybe looking like you have a labour intensive job by looking greasy, sweaty and haven't showered for couple of days will turn on women, which isn't really the case.
I was naught but a wee lad at the time but I think the trend back then was more about looking dirty rather than being dirty. Like the jeans coming pre-torn with bleach splotches added at the factory.
-
I've had way too few Garys in my life.
My dad is a Bill O'Reilly / Donald Trump / William Shatner kinda guy. Now in his 80s he's total MAGA.
In my twenties, I noticed I really didn't care about gender norms. Wasn't into cars or guns or football (was way into tech but this was still in the DOS age so everyone else thought tech was weird).
After Trump I turned in my man card. Real men, society tells me, look like Trump, like Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan. There are some great guys like Gary out there. But the thing that makes them great isn't their masculine representation
My hero as a young adult was the NORAD officer at the beginning of Wargames ( NORAD Officer played by John Spencer, seen here) who wouldn't proceed with a nuclear launch command and kill twenty million people. A friend of mine -- and coven mate -- talks about an uncle who was a total 60s hippy in the USAF assigned as an Air Force Missileer. He openly admitted to his superiors that he wasn't going to turn that key for them no matter how dire the circumstances were. He just refused to launch a nuclear tipped ICBM at anyone. They kept him in the position anyway.
This was my understanding of manhood in the 1980s. Restraint. The capacity to hold power without using it. Maybe Atticus Finch bears a rifle to put down a literal rabid dog, but never in circumstances any less dire, and the weapon is put away afterwards. Also taking care of business. To man up (related to pony up ) was to pay bills, to call the utility office to negotiate a late payment to align with a paycheck, to deal civilly with exes and rivals to make sure no one was without power or heat or food. -- And then in the 1990s all that became adulting. The bearing of responsibilities had no gender; we were all expected to do it.
Except then in the late aughts came the subprime mortgage crisis, and nearly a trillion dollars was spent defying capitalist theory (that failed companies are left to collapse and their investors suffer the consequences). We learned that if you're big enough or powerful enough, you don't have to be responsible. Instead the government will bail you out, even as minimum wage wasn't keeping up with living expenses, homelessness was rising, and tax cuts to the wealthy were not recinded. It was the era of OWS, who were quietly swept away by law enforcement while the cameras were turned off. It was a sign of things to come.
Now manhood is about raw power. Neitzsche was right: A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength—life itself is Will to Power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof. Manhood in 2025 is the privilege to assert force upon others without concern or consequence, to stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and not lose any voters.
The rabid dog is afflicted. It doesn't have any choice. In 2025, manly men choose violence: They discharge their power to assert their power, showing the world how masculine they are.
So I don't want anything to do with it anymore.
Excellently put, bravo
-
"Oh, you have goal X? Well that's wrong - you should have goal Y, and here is how I got there" is not an effective way to offer advice to anyone"
Where did you even get this? No one said this
I mean, just to put in basic terms, would you agree most young men should aim to be kingpin of their own casino, and have women falling over themselves to lick their jeans? And that anything less than that is a failure?
I’d imagine you don’t. And by that, you’re rejecting their goals. If your politics offers to people “Here’s how everyone can make a livable wage”, you’re pushing a much “meeker” goal on them than their ego is shooting for.
-
Judging from what I have read before, some men genuinely think being greasy, sweaty looking and not being clean is attractive. I have read some comments in Lemmy before from men who feels like they found the secret sauce to attracting women: just being hygienic. The latter, I could pass it because they seem like they are neurodivergent. But the former? I don't even know. I heard it was more like a 90s and 00s trend. Maybe looking like you have a labour intensive job by looking greasy, sweaty and haven't showered for couple of days will turn on women, which isn't really the case.
sweaty but clean is what you want, though obviously only in specific circumstances like working and doing sport.
