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.
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
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.
Not new. Biotruth bros have been an idiotic scourge on the internet since Usenet I’m sure. They were widespread when I was on somethingawful I know.
Most definitely. The difference is the massive uptick in connectivity for nearly everyone around the globe. These monsters can reach farther and faster than ever before relatively speaking
Found the Omicron Male! /s
Their recommendations include, first, removing sexist language from academic writing. They cite reputable, published academic work still using terms such as “cuckold,” and argue that “The standards of scientific writing should dictate the abandonment of a term which has traditionally been gender-biased and morally loaded, and is now increasingly politically charged.” Other morally-loaded terms they suggest that academics should abandon include “genetically superior men,” “infidelity,” and “promiscuity.”
“Genetically superior men”? I can’t imagine how that could be taken out of context.
lol and I’m here trying to imagine how there could ever be a valid context for that.
This is only one example, but a lot of people are interested in studying top performers like Olympians etc. and what things are different about them. In studies like those, genes are relevant, as are performance results.
I see what you mean and I’m not trying to stir shit, but that’s not superior genes those are specialized genetic traits. Superior is such a loaded word, why even use it in an academic sense when there are plenty of near synonyms that don’t have that eugenics baggage?
Because they are likely talking in context of that one activity, and it is indeed accurate to describe certain people as genetically superior in that context. Not everyone thinks about every implication of every word choice and which effect that would have on the larger society.
I’d bet most people can probably think of three words for superior. If you’re in the same field that shares some unfortunate history with eugenics then it’s definitely better to be a little more intentional with specifically words like that. I’m just surprised that’s still vernacular in genetics research still is all I’m saying.
Exactly, michael Phelps is genetically superior by dolphin standards, but for the standards of calorie limited pursuit predators with high plant consumption relying on high intelligence and social skills on land, meh he’s not impressing me.
I don’t understand your point.
Certain things that may be considered “genetically superior” in contexts of extreme outliers, especially of athletics are more optimization for certain tasks and can contain drawbacks for other tasks that our species actually evolved for.
I’m not surprised. There are few ideas more nebulous and malleable than “evolutionary psychology”. You can derive any justification for any behavior by saying that it aids your survival…
Help me justify why I spend 8 hours a day in excel. Please I need it.
If you want to do it right, the conclusions in evolutionary psychology are: -hard to get to (because just making up shit is not proper evidence, Santa Barbara church of evolutionary psychology…) -not as news sexy as that shit
Like, you can do stuff where you use phylogenetic history to make predictions about the prepotency of phobic stimuli, and that’ll be solid enough, but just screaming how your sexism is science is so much easier!
I’m glad that when I was the age these sick jackasses tend to target, I was listening to batshit insane David Icke and pre-far right yet still clearly nuts Alex Jones.
How fucked is that. Having to be glad you were “only” exposed to those two when you were exiting teenhood.
this headline does not read like news.
Which one is that? If that’s Andrew Tate it looks like he’s going full radical Islamic cleric.
I mean he literally got into Islam for the misogyny so not that surprising.
They use articles like this to victimize their followers as if it was am attack on all men. In their heads they’re peak males and calling them out as bullshit artists and such just emboldens their base
Fuck evolutionary psychology, they have the Bible…
The guy looks violent and arrogant. Maybe it is not only the look (?).
That’s part of what makes them attractive to some of their audience.
People like Tate are the embodiment of toxic masculinity, in Tates case, a sex trafficking jackass who beats woman for fun.
But they also tend to be truebred narcissists, so their arrogance and violent rhetoric are all just that, noise and bravado, when push comes to shove and they have to stand up to someone their own size, they scurry away like rats.
They mentally and physically assault vulnerable woman because they can’t handle anything else.
Because they are such weak little asswipes, they overcompensate by being horrible to the few people weaker than them.
Tate is, in fact, both violent and arrogant. So that is why.
I was expecting to read how it was being misused by Andrew Tate et al, but they don’t actually discuss it. The headline does not match the content as far as I’m concerned. (There’s links to more, but geez.)
I hate how common this form of outrage peddling has become in the so-called news but I guess it sells clicks.
