>But rarely is the answer that young men have a crisis of self-selecting bad role models, putting less (or no) effort into their appearance and education, holding gross sociopolitical beliefs, and not developing the emotional and household maturity an adult woman expects. And they simply aren't willing to change that. What is anyone supposed to do about that, exactly?
- bad influences - slob - not disciplined enough for education - insane politics - emotionally stunted - slob again
This imagined incel reprobate comes up every time this discussion happens, which is fairly often now that the whiffed messaging and slipping numbers among 18-29yo men (including young black and Latino men) in 2024 somehow has the DNC and progressives scratching their heads. The fuckup you are describing is fairly rare. People imagine that man to feel better about how ineffective the current progressive messaging towards that demographic is. Log off of Discord and 4chan and you'll find plenty of young men that don't listen to manosphere shit, do take care of themselves, went through higher education, held fairly progressive political beliefs until quite recently, handle themselves emotionally exactly the way society has asked, and take care of their living situation just fine, but still feel like their three options are work, work, and blow their head smoove off.
While you're busy swinging at the air, a significantly more dangerous cohort of crypto-deathcultists is forming. They don't not have a girlfriend because they're a freak that says and thinks awful things about women. They don't have a girlfriend because they can't really afford it, can't imagine anybody would want them, and even if they did, in a hyper-atomized post-social-media world that experienced a massive overcorrection in regards to what is appropriate courtship behavior, have no idea how to get started. They just don't really think much about them at all, positive or negative, not because they hate them and want to actively disregard their needs and wants, but because it's effectively like worrying about what an astronaut in space is thinking about right now. And for them, that's all good, maybe even great! They got the little they were owed and Good Men make do with what they have, which is often a reaffirming "yeah dude this life shit sucks lmao" from their buddies, and a generous serving of either infinite distraction if they want to stick around for a bit or self-destructive risk-taking if they don't. The only delusion required is that despite society's massive investment in them that was made in hopes that they would continue society, they in particular don't strictly need to continue society because it would be a good thing that could possibly make them happy, and they're obviously not OWED good things. Nobody is.
To be clear, in some perfectly equal world, this same thing could be happening to women, or men could handle the current situation the way women do. This is not one of those worlds. With the way people in the US are currently socialized, men don't like dealing with dead weight (this unfortunately often includes displaying perfectly reasonable emotions) and women don't like dealing with overly emotional manchildren (this unfortunately often includes displaying perfectly reasonable emotions). Men nut up, women have a lot of platonic friendships that they're emotionally intimate in. Shifting this will take generations, you and your children and their children will be long dead before this ever happens.
Men who are alone and running on fumes can't be lightly brushed aside just because boogeymen like Andrew Tate exist. If you don't let off the throttle on that idea we're just going to keep getting husks of men that are entirely indifferent towards tearing at the fabric of society with a net-negative contribution.
The few academics that actually tried to characterize incel reprobates found astonishing rates of autism. This observation was broadly dismissed because their study designs (necessarily) relied on self reporting and any proposed solutions split along various ideological lines. I am not surprised to hear a broader population may be reporting similar problems 5 years after a global pandemic cancelled socially normative adolescent experiences and economic opportunities for an entire cohort.
The structural problems that contributed to the current situation are not improving. I am approaching the conclusion that they will not be addressed until the position of one or more broad socioeconomic brackets becomes entirely intolerable.
>and any proposed solutions split along various ideological lines
To massively oversimplify for the sake of brevity, the actual solution is create an economic and social environment that's conducive to the greatest number of people being able and encouraged to engage socially and in-person, instead of the endless scrolling on Instagram or having their social activity consist almost entirely of talking over Discord that became mandated during COVID. That shouldn't be controversial unless you presuppose that those who are struggling are all maladjusted incels who deserve what they got, and not generally normal people in a soulsucking environment. It's why I find comments like the one I initially responded to so gross. The reality of this situation is so obvious and so dangerous that I have to assume that those participating in the mudslinging are writing off an entire demographic for the sake of not having to back down on participating in a moralizing political trend that is losing steam.