New research in the journal Evolutionary Human Sciences, from University of Kent researchers Louis Bachaud and Sarah Johns, explores how members of various manosphere communities (think Andrew Tate and his ilk) misuse research and concepts from evolutionary psychology to bolster their own misogynistic views.
The disturbing thing to me isn’t that idiots misunderstand and misquote research, it’s that people gobble their shit up. It’s stunning how popular some of this shit is
They squarely target teens and young men who don’t know anything yet.
And they overload them with smart or cool sounding bullshit at such a high rate and form networks of similar minded “influencers”, so they can cross reference each other pretending what they say has any validity.
And as this article states, they are great at warping factual information to fit their fucked up views.
Unsurprisingly, people like Tate are very high on the narcissism scale, these people tend to be dumb as dirt, but master manipulators and charismatic towards their target audience.
You and me look right through that facade, but impressionable young people don’t always.
It’s really awful how many grifters and conspiracy nuts there are out there targeting children. We try to keep my daughter internet-savvy, but she’s 13 and she doesn’t quite have the tools yet, so the other night she woke us up terrified because she heard there would be another Carrington Event in 2024 and the internet will be destroyed and I had to explain to her that is something that we can’t possibly predict.
You also have some of the older people who are bitterly divorced gobbling that up for self preservation as well.
Or the older people with APD who still have issues with how they were rejected when they were younger, focussing on the negatives and drowning in toxic thoughts already waiting to be tipped.
It confirms their bias.
I tend to think the permission structure part is more important. Not everyone who is swayed into this nonsense already thinks that women are less than them, but they can see what believes that allows them to do.