17:53 my younger brother used to love painting his nails with me when he was younger, but stopped because he was ridiculed. it makes me sad to see things like this happen
as a trans person outside of any binary i feel as though i am an outsider watching what is going on in the patriarchy and feel almost helpless because i am so young as to not know what to do about it
my brother had the same experience. my aunt shamed him once, very publicly, and although my mom tried to do damage control the deed was done. he never painted his nails again
I have 2 daughters and a son who is the youngest. They’re all teens now and when they were little (under 10) they used to all dress up in the same costumes (fairies or princesses for example), put on layers upon layers of gaudy plastic jewels, tiaras, feather boas & all, and they’d all dance around together to poppy taylor swift songs or whatever the flavour of the day was with beaming smiles & full of giggles & joy. I’m saying this because it’s 100% true that societal expectations and standards of what it means to be a man/masculinity do shape the way boys develop their sense of self evolve, how they act, behave, dress, express themselves, just all of it, and it broke my heart to watch the delineation in my kids as they got older, towards fitting in with society’s definitions of the gender they identified with and how that innocence and freedom that allowed them to express themselves without being externally influenced by the world around them was lost forever in the past. I think we’ve made a lot of progress so far in recognising individual differences and respecting each other as just people, but still a long way to go. Thank you Ro for sharing your insightful thoughtful commentary. You never disappoint! ❤
@@EggEnjoyer It depends because the interests she mentioned like dressing up those definitely do get programmed out of you by shame and ridicule and I’ve experienced it myself on multiple occasions. I remember people would get on my case consistently because I’d cross my legs, or sometimes it’s as simple as using the restroom sitting down. Boys technically are effectively restrained when it comes to expressions of self that deviate from traditional masculinity.
as a schizophrenic person i appreciate you bringing up the schizoposting memes, ive been seeing an increase in them lately, it feels like a modern freak show at our expense. and i can confirm almost all of them are made by nonschizophrenics. its wild to me cause any other mental illness followed by "posting" will lead you to people posting about their own experience, while schizoposting is nonschizophrenics making us the punchline. its not just degrading, its actually dangerous for people who might be prone to psychosis (which is much more people than the 1% of the population that is schizophrenic) and it perpetuates stereotypes that we are crazy, dangerous and bigoted.
@@nomad3073 thanks for realizing, yeah i just wish more people knew that schizophrenic people are part of society and the internet and we do see the memes about us
I’m a fourteen year old boy with severe ocd. Everyday I feel as though I need to fight off patriarchal ideology because of how catered “women☕️” content is to people like me. Young men that can’t help the feeling that there was never a chance.
I recommend having as little social media as possible --- just enough social media to keep in contact with your close friends but not enough to get caught in harmful loops like the one Ro talks about in her video. Personally, I deleted Twitter almost a year ago and it has helped me a lot!
I just turned 17 man, you’ll get there! Just have trust in the process and you’ll find out things about yourself that you didn’t even know up until that point. Similar to what the person in the comments said above, social media especially tiktok and twitter can really bring out a more pessimistic side of yourself that stagnates your personal progress. From personal experience social media used to give me so much stress that I’d end up physically ill so there’s considerable merit in the idea of spending time away from it or deleting it. When I’m off social media I find the best motivation to be more in tune with my mental health and my emotions is watching media involving male main characters with more positive or gender neutral examples of masculinity that are more relatable to me. Charlie Kelmeckis from The Perks of Being a Walliflower is one of the best examples because I deal with seriously bad anxiety and depression and seeing it on screen is cathartic, it feels really good to actually relate to a man or boy with mental health problems without the extra side of misogyny.
Damn dude, you're pretty damn self aware for someone so young. You're on the right track, and if other guys don't get it, don't worry because they also won't get girlfriends.
"If you are complaining about 'late stage capitalism' you are complaining about capitalism." *THANK YOU.* You can't have the rotten fruit without the root.
@@yungjoemighty879 Empathy and kindness, to as many people as you can possibly manage. Every positive action you take in this world has a good chance of encouraging other people to do the same. And I know it's hard to feel motivated to treat others with love when you yourself feel so terribly unloved, but it is something we must do to break the vicious cycle.
“when you feel so trapped by life it becomes a revolutionary mirage to circle the drain of your own death” is one of the rawest, most cutting things i’ve ever heard in a youtube video. i think this idea echoes one of the experiences i associate with cptsd, which is finding comfort in the idea that even if you’re trapped in hell with no end in sight you can still claw back some degree of control by dying. it’s at least an understandable coping mechanism for a deeply hurt and traumatized person who cannot currently escape the situation causing them so much pain, but it’s crucially also not sustainable or aspirational. so to see people posting and talking about these states as a form of enlightenment is uniquely distressing. thank you for the video
“What makes life worth living is not the absence of sorrow, or trauma, or turmoil but is the presence experience.” is such a viscerally real bar and i hope more people get to hear this
I want to acknowledge how incredible your editing choices are, especially when I realize that if the b-roll footage of snow is recent and you are still living in the greater Seattle area, you filmed and cut that all literally yesterday. Serious props to you, damn, you must have this down to a science.
this is so interesting because the stuff that i was sad about didnt get better, the person i like is still dating someone else, but i havent been seeing content about being sad about that type of thing and now i rarely even think about it.
@@luiguigino because same??? I feel like tiktok feeds off of people reveling in their depressed state, and actively wanting to stay there. And it really sucks you in. It sucked ME in. But after deleting tiktok, I got the back motivation to be better again. Deleting tiktok is the best thing someone can do imo
Yooo I’ve been telling my friend about this too, most of my tiktok has pretty feminist content and it still finds some way to just seriously depress me. I leave that app feeling so cynical and hopeless every time I open it, I had a seizure recently reasons unknown and I wasn’t on my phone specifically tiktok for a bit after and the difference was so big. I remember i’d get intense stress headaches that were identifiable by bad pain in my eyebrow area and it always coincided with me opening tiktok. It really taught me that cynical views about social interaction, politics, and just people in general were pervasive even in feminist content. I rarely ever hear “so this is what we can do better…..” it’s really just statements about how horrible things are and it just gets repeated over and over. It seems like the pessimism found in those videos where men comment about how hard it is to be a man(which is valid but only if they realize it’s patriarchy) without actually attempting to change has just leaked into everything.
Me thinking I was subverting expectations by gaining self awareness of my mental illness and having 0 clue what to do about it. At least I'm part of the club now.
Cisman here, i have a few friends who wildly still cannot express emotion or depth to their feelings. I will ask in casual conversation like "how are you doing?", Get the typical "ok" or "fine dude" and I'm like, yeah but how are you emotionally, what's up dude? And 100% of the time I get a mockery response or ackward silence. It's baffleing to me why dudes can't just say how they feel if it isn't anger
There's a certain post I often think of when this topic is brought up--how whilst the privileges of living in a patriarchy are certainly evident, there's a feeling of loneliness unique to living life as a man as well. As a trans man I've experienced both worlds; there's certainly valid reasoning behind women being uncomfortable around men and joking about them, but at the same time I myself have become more and more familiar with that lack of friendliness. I am not met with smiles as often as I used to be, nor am I greeted nearly as much. In exchange I've become far more aware of just how many men light up when given what I feel is basic decency; I've always greeted people at offices I visit or apologized when bumping into others, but when it's men on the receiving end I've noticed there's a unique kind of happiness when they're met with this kind of friendliness, almost like they're surprised. I don't even think most men are aware of the subtle lack of warmth they face, which is why they end up crowding together inside of these echo chambers to strengthen the very problem that landed everyone here. Again, this isn't me trying to defend these actions--I have been on the receiving end of this behavior throughout my life, and like almost everyone who was raised a woman I still find myself nervous around men at times. I do think this is an incredibly important topic that's discussed nowhere near enough as it should be, though, and this video is a brilliant motion to that.
I really appreciate this perspective! It reminds me of how sad I feel that it’s often so taboo for men to be platonically affectionate. I think that taboo makes it easy to misread kindness (esp from women) as romantic interest, which makes it more difficult for people to interact in warm and affectionate ways. It’s a really unfortunate feedback loop.
@@uncannedspaghetti honestly. As a man, I've always felt a deep longing for a friendship akin to how women can become friends with one and other. It's led me to develop a sense of numbness to platonic connections because the deep feeling that I'll never get to experience that kind of connection can be too much to bare.
Cis man here, I was raised in a part of southern Oregon that largely bucked gender norms, and I still ended up feeling so penned in by the way men are expected to behave. Best way I can describe it, at least via metaphor: when I was young, I was soft clay. Everyone who had these expectations pressed me into shapes I didn't understand or agree with. Now, as an adult, I'm more like dried clay, I can shrug off most of the pressure, but when it's too strong or too personal, I don't feel like I can really change my shape anymore, just hold firm or shatter entirely.
as a woman, this echoes the sentiment expressed by male friends in my life. some of them have expressed feeling envious of feminine friendships. it sucks. i cherish those friendships and those connections, but unfortunately i am scared of men due to past horrible experiences. it takes so long for me to trust guys. but i want so badly to be friends with men, which is also a sentiment shared with my girl and enby friends, even the most male averse of them. it really sucks that we’re scared to, and that men don’t know how to start these friendships. the guy friendships i do have in my life are beautiful and cherished, i hope we can get to a point where that isn’t rare.
There's a lot of men deprogramming from toxic masculinity myself included. It's happening all at once and it's a confusing, even scary times. Your video got me thinking that a lot of us are collectively going through the same/similar experience and that we aren't alone. Thank you
My younger brother always asked my cousin and I to paint his nails and dress him up in our clothes bc it was one of the only ways he could hang out with us girls without us getting annoyed (sibling love). I remember my father and uncle saying things about that, performing the ritual of patriarchal indoctrination. Despite protesting their comments at the time, I was no better. He went through a phase of wearing this cheap red plastic bead necklace. I remember I found it dumb and wanted him to leave me alone so I mocked him for it. I was just a child myself, but I too upheld the patriarchal standard that today limits my rights. A while back right when the Andrew taint stuff began ramping up and the Johnny depp trial was going on I got in a really dark place about men, bordering misandry a la “all men are trash”. It affected my relationship and how I treated my partner, despite all that he’s done for me over the last 5 years. I didn’t realize at the time that my Reddit consumption both of anti men subs and lurking mra aligned subs was affecting the way I interacted with him and communicated with him. I took a step back from those spaces and additionally through ongoing therapy for my adhd my provider recommended I start antidepressant medication. She had suspected me to being clinically depressed for a while but I was not open to starting medication due to preconceived notions about ssri medication and the belief that I was depressed since I had always felt that way. Turns out I have NOT always felt that way and ssri meds are not something to be afraid of or ashamed of. I’m doing much better and so is my relationship, although it is not perfect. I do give a lot of love to my partner but at times I can demand too much of him without providing him the same grace, many times with the reasoning of gender norms. Your video is making bc me reflect on the casual way I wield gender norms, especially with disregard to how it could affect my partner and hurt him. The quotes from Bell Hooks book really spoke to me and I think I will be checking it out to read and reflect more on. Thank you for your delicate handling of this very somber and serious issue.
scrolling through the comment section as a trans man made me realize that there's many other men like me who feel the same way about this whole thing, embracing our misery is a form of masculinity and i find myself doing it often and it's easy to continue doing stuff that validates my masculinty, so i clung to it despite it deteriorating my mental health even further. i was so used to mental health struggle being seen as a femenine trait so i hid it from everyone else, i remember i was talking to my cishet male cousin and he told me that he was feeling anxiety, fear and paranoia before he went to sleep but he was scared to call it anxiety because it's looked at as a femenine trait (at least in our culture, we're from south america) and now recently i've been seeing cis men being open about their struggles, even if it's in a hopeless or sometimes mocking way in the form of these slide shows and it felt like i could finally talk about it, even if it was by those unspoken rules. i'm still trying to better myself and accept that emotions aren't gendered despite what my surroundings tell me. letting go of toxic masculinity is difficult, even more so when you're desperately trying to prove to your peers and yourself that you're "valid" in your manhood. sorry if there's any spelling mistakes or if this isn't cohesive, love your videos ro!!
i usually never comment on stuff, like ever. but this video really stuck with me tbh i know that ro may never see this but as a little sister to an older boy, now man who constantly tramples over me and says he still cares about me yet tramples over my sexuality, thoughts and beliefs this video was such an important, but painful one to get through. My brother had been my hero once, before i grew up and realized he wasn’t a good person, that he was racist, and cruel and casually awful and disheartening. And yet I always try to reach out to him, to help him somehow, to maybe magically fix him and resolve any issues boiling deep inside him. But he’s made it clear that he doesn’t want to try, and that hurts so much.
anyways!!! thank you sm to ro for making content you are one of my favourite content creators rn the parasocial relationship going crazy lmao. stay happy and healthy :)
tell me abt it. I have a similar relationship w my older brother, though our gap is likely wider. I wonder what needs to happen, what needs to be done or said to have them change. if they can- what is the answer?
@@jjody yes exactly, my age gap with my brother isn’t a lot, he’s 2.5 years older than me but i still wonder what circumstances could chance him for them better. i hope us younger siblings can heal from the constant trauma lmao, and hopefully our brothers come to our senses one day. All we can do is provide a safe environment for them to grow and change, but always prioritize yourself and your peace first. I’m beginning to learn that while I might not be able to be there for him, I can provide myself with the same kindness and love
As a gay man suffering from mental illness, I find myself getting those a lot. Whats strange, although this is gonna sound conspiratorial, I quite literally only when Im alone and late at night. I have never had one come up otherwise. It feels targeted
I assume you mean you get those sad/doomer tiktoks late at night and I feel it's not conspiratorial at all, its simply the algorithm. If other male users are consuming those videos late at night, alone, its going to show it to you too. It's like the algorithm knows us better than ourselves, and shows the content that will keep you (the user) on the app the longest amount of time (which is its number one priority); even if that content is extremely damaging to the user, if it means they watch the most videos it will keep displaying that content. On another note, I also believe this is why healthy communities are so important, as there should be other people there to support you, even late at night when those videos might harm your health.
I've been up for half an hour and you got me tearing up before I head to work. As a person raised as a man who still presents very much masculine, I still see the draw of these communities of despair. Although I've found my group of miserable friends, I'm glad the ones I love are looking to help each other and haven't been sucked into the toxic world of alpha male content and nationalism. Many of us went through the alt right pipeline but after escaping it its left many of us miserable at what people want us to think and do
This video is unfortunately very topical for me. Two weeks ago my older brother--mid 20s and very likely suffering from multiple mental illnesses although he refuses to get psychological help for any of it--had a week-long meltdown/manic episode where he was constantly shouting slurs at me and my parents. What terrifies me the most about him is the worldview that I am almost certain came from these sorts of doomer communities: that all human beings are selfish and are out to get him personally and that life is both meaningless and constant torture because everyone and everything is out to get him and love does not exist. I can't imagine how soul-crushing it must feel to live in a world devoid of any kindness. This narrative makes it especially hard to reach him during these episodes, because just when you start making a connection with him he immediately thinks that it's manipulation and it all comes crashing down... and you have to start building that bridge from scratch all over again. I really don't know what to do. How do you convince someone that people are naturally inclined to help each other and that real human connection is possible? How do you make someone want to get help, want to get better? No matter how many of these episodes he goes through, nothing ever changes. No matter what my parents and I try to do to support him, he never follows through on any of it because of his intense, all-consuming nihilism. It's hard not to be infected by his hopelessness.
Hi, I don't know you and to be entirely honest, I don't really have any advice for you. I just wanted to let you know that you are seen and you are heard and that there are likely people out there who struggle with the same questions that you are asking here. I hope you are able to answer these questions some day and that you and your brother are able to find your peace with living. John Green made a tiktok about an Emily Dickinson poem, the first verse of which reads: "Hope" is the thing with feathers - / that perches in the soul - / and sings the tune without the words - / and never stops - at all - He points out that she never mentions that the song stops playing, just that people stop hearing it. I hope you and your brother can hear the song of hope again soon. best wishes to you
this is probably not what you need to hear, but i think sometimes people just don't change, even if they can. my parents have lived in canada for the past decade(they decided to immigrate here from china), and yet slowly sunk more and more into their homophobia with each passing year, despite my every attempt to get them to change their minds. they are convinced that queer rights is a doctrine used to brainwash kids like me, and on some parts i think they hold on to that belief because they are unfathomably scared for me. i can understand their thinking but i can't forgive the ways they've hurt me because of it. i guess what i'm trying to say is that people can't change unless they try, and for me, i need to live for myself and not for my parents. there's only so much i can take without sacrificing my well-being for them, and there's only so much you can take. meanwhile, all we can do is be there for the people we love and hope they see it someday. i hope it works out for your brother, and i trust that you'll make it through no matter what happens
My older brother is the same. Thank you for sharing this, it means so much to me to know that someone else is struggling with this. I don't know what to do either. You describe so well the exact things I see in my brother. My mother tries everything, but nothing works, nothing gets better. He just continues to hurt and then hurts other people, and he never seems to find a direction in life, just fades more and more away. I'm sorry I don't have any words of advice, I just had to comment because I don't know anyone else who struggles with this. Thank you for writing this comment. I just hope that you can feel like I do, a certain warmth in knowing that someone else out here knows what it's like, and understands that it's so hard.
My younger sibling has been going though similar self-destructive and depressive episodes. They haven’t used slurs or anything however they are extremely self conscious and sensitive. It’s been really difficult to try and help when it seems they want everyone to change around them. I’m not alone it seems, this generation has gone through just a dark hole they dug
As a transman I really resonate with this. The moment people start to see you as a man, they push the according soceital beliefs and pressures on you. Sometimes, I get it even from my own community.
the way you will take time to slow down the video with a truly raw and emotional sitdown in your living room is incredible, that level of intimacy and honesty is extremely refreshing and i appreciate it more than anything in this digital landscape of fake apologies and pandering
as someone with a returning hyperfixation on incels (specifically their ideology & how a lot of it relates back to using pseudoscience to justify depressive thinking), i feel qualified to say that i enjoyed this video very much, thank you Ro
Instead of just commenting real as a joke I just want to thank you, I’m in a bit of a several months long crisis currently after realizing I couldn’t handle depression on my own and hospitalizing myself. Everyday is a struggle but this type of video is productive discussion that helps give me hope and grasp of my situation and reality. I feel I’ve had an especially rough time in this area due to ASD and a severe amount of isolation I’ve somewhat brought upon myself (probably my parents fault to a degree with how unlistening they are). Currently realizing some self hatred I’ve experienced may also stem from some degree of gender dysphoria so I have a bit of a uphill battle, but I hope the best for myself (sometimes lol). Thank you
I feel like I had an similar experience, when I was younger, though it wasn't... exactly the same. I'm transmasc, and before I knew that i'd hang around a lot of younger boys who'd talk about their misery, their home life, their dads. And I could relate to that! And relating to anyone masculine made me happy, so I... kept being miserable. I didn't try to help myself. I joked about being in therapy and I joked about my mental health, and I spoke about it so OPENLY with my friends... But never did I actually try to change.
As a trans woman, hearing how much those who I consider friends, those whom I love, complain about how much they ‘hate all men’, it hurts. Not because I am a man. Not because I was. But because I am perceived as one. Because I know that me being too dysphoric to shave makes me pass as a masculine person. To know that, purely by existing, I make those around me feel unsafe and unhappy, makes me more dysphoric, more sad, more distraught, than anything else. I fear taking up any space in public. Why? Why do I feel this way? Why is it that I cannot go on a walk in the park without feeling as if I’ll make another woman afraid because I am walking down the same path I always take, doing my best to stare down at the ground and not acknowledge my surroundings?
Ro I just want to say that from the way you talk about things to the way you film your content inspires me. You are one of my favorite content creators
10:04 "they acknowledge that not only are you hopeless you're broken." The TTRPG Wanderhome (well worth playing or just reading the rulebook to if you have the time and money) has several playbooks (which you use to create your character), all of which contain some variation of a list of attributes preceded by the instruction "choose two attributes that describe your character, and two that don't describe your character." The last two attributes are always traditionally gendered eg. masculine feminine pretty handsome. The playbook The Exile's last two options are damaged and ladylike.
My ex cheated on me and suddenly my feed was filled with these kinds of videos. Idk how but somehow it picked up on my mental situation subconsciously, it's kinda scary really
I'm not sure if this will make sense or not, but I appreciate Ro talking about her feelings of fear, and worry, or even about things like crying in her videos. I might just have low empathy, I don't know, but it's difficult for me to feel much of anything about situations and trends that should be super concerning. I, of course, know things happening in the world are awful, but I can't FEEL anything for it if that makes sense??? I don't enjoy coming across frightening trends or figures and only being able to shrug my shoulders about it. Having someone articulate their feelings the way Ro does really helps me feel the gravity of how things are. I doubt this made much sense as articulation isn't my strong suit, but TLDR : This is a good video!
I'm trans masc and have major clinical depression and I get so sucked into those slideshows. you perfectly encapsulated the issue that i'm too afraid to face.
This is so interesting to me because I’ve never seen slideshow-style posts geared towards men on my page, but my fyp is full of slide shows about the pain and trauma of being a woman and it’s honestly exhausting to see constantly. I totally empathize with men seeing these posts because like no I don’t want to think about the complexities of mother-daughter relationships and being sexualized by every man in your life and knowing you’re not listened to every ten seconds. I can hold all the grief of my gender in between videos of cats 😭😭
This is so profoundly true. I don’t even know how to verbalize how in depth this video is but it’s so raw? I don’t think Ive ever legitimately seen someone unpack and pathologize the whole situation going on right now in the wider online landscape.
I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while cuz it has affected me so much and this trend has especially been amplified by isolation caused by the pandemic. I am slowly trying to back away from these feelings of self pity and despair but sometimes I find myself slipping back into that mentality. I literally made a playlist the other day based on this feeling 💀💀. I feel like these trends have caused a lot of bright and talented people with potential to become hopeless and apathetic and I feel like the community that has grown around the “self-pity and self-deprecating” mindset has grown because of the fact that misery loves company. But yah those are my thought awesome video it was so #REAL
My younger brother has been struggling with depression lately. Even though I’ve struggled myself, I find it hard to empathise with him because the feminine and masculine feeling of these emotions is wildly different. Even though I would consider myself pretty toxically masculine in a lot of my traits, my understanding is just so fundamentally different from his. Thank you for this video, and for shedding light into the lives of so many young boys who’s emotion is weaponised and deluded by spheres of the internet
oh my lord, you are funny as hell, came over here from the Noah Handsome Samson Crew. The 200ping Therapist bit had me spit my cereal everywhere, big love from UK
I don't know if this is the "correct" reason for liking your video or not. But I really appreciate your discussing 'feminists' who utilize misandry to the detriment of men. It helps me feel significantly less like my experience of - intentionally or otherwise - being abused by someone who could not let go of their misandry is not necessarily an experience limited to me, or one that i should feel crazy for. My now-ex could truly never get over the need to say and do misandristic things that made me feel more worthless and hopeless even as I continued to do my absolute and utmost best from day one of that relationship to be there for them and to give them as many tools as I knew and could give at the time. They did not care to hear me, my emotions, or my suggestions as I am a man, as I had my own struggles with mental health that they did not feel were their responsibility to simply listen to, and for other reasons. It hurt very much. At the end they accused me of being abusive because I said plainly to them that I would not forgive their mother or take responsibility for breaking down 4-hours away from home when their parents acted abusively toward them in my presence for the third time, and then my ex blamed m flashbacks to previous traumas (moments of powerlessness) in my life on me, offering no sympathy the next day while I was separated from my own family and support network. The bigger reason they accused me of this was that I refused to say it was acceptable that I be expected to interact with abusers given its clear negative impact on myself. I was not a perfect partner at all. And I seriously messed up in a way that causes my experience to no longer be taken seriously having fallen into an inappropriate state of codependency for the better part of this last year after they broke up with me (again, largely for refusing to say it was acceptable to be expected to continue to interact with their abusive parents, and accept blame for a defensive trauma reaction). However, I know I was abused by my ex and their family (by proxy through my ex.). I know that that was real despite my mistakes, and that I didn't deserve it, and that my mistakes were largely a fallout from it even if they can't really be washed away. It really helps to hear that yes, misandry by women is hurting men.
This comment is very impactful. There's a difference between feeling vaguely angry at the concept of men and straight up targeting a specific man who is also your partner. You absolutely experienced abuse. You yourself are able to acknowledge that you made mistakes, but your ex wasn't taking responsibility for their feelings/actions and how they affected you. Being angry at men is not an excuse for bad behavior. I'm a cis straight woman who is married to a cis straight man, and we discuss this regularly. He isn't one of the men who hurt me in life, and he does what he can to push back against patriarchy and toxic masculinity. Sometimes though, I will say or do something that is unfair to him because I'm angry at all the other men who have hurt me and other women. I have to acknowledge that I've done that and apologize. Sometimes it's just venting and he knows it's not about him and he gives me space for my anger. He also has issues with other men, so it's not like he doesn't understand the anger and frustration. The point is that it's supposed to be a partnership where both people support one another. If that's not happening, then it's not a healthy relationship.
What a fucking banger of a vid. You have a really succinct way of expressing some of the most uncomfortable emotions with so much empathy and grace. Progress isn’t linear, but we need more creators willing to talk about these nuances so folk don’t feel like they’re alone in their journeys. 💚
This video has sat in my Watch Later since its release, and I have regarded it with a nervous skepticism that comes from being let down time and time again when people try to talk about the state of manhood in the modern world. So often when people talk about the kyriarchy's effects on men, it is woven with a belief that this means there are no beneficiaries to patriarchy; that men are harmed equally or even more than women and transgressively gendered people, that women are not oppressed by men but by the nebulous concept of patriarchy that comes from nowhere and benefits no one. This video managed to discuss the suffering of men, how it is reinforced by masculinist social expectations, the emotional roots of misandry, and so much more in a way that was empathetic to everyone involved. It absolutely exceeded my expectations. Bravo, Ro!
the other day i thought "it'd be nice if i fell into a coma so i didn't have to think about all the things making me depressed" and, after watching this video, i think im maybe more well adjusted than tiktok men
This video is so emotional for me man. I relate to this in so many ways and my father was raised with these patriarchal expectations (like most men are) and it nearly ruined him. I’m so happy he’s alive and knows he can ask for the help he needs. Thank you for sharing this Ro. And I wish the best for all of y’all lads out there!
havent even made it 2min in yet and i just gotta say that youre one of the funniest people on youtube. consistently your vids make me laugh & your delivery is so spot on. thx for tackling real subjects in a way that keeps me from crying lmao 😭🤣
I really wish there was a lack content analyzing toxic masculinity and a wealth exploring wholesome masculinity. I would try to make that content, but as established, it's probably easier to just let it all wither and die. I don't feel dysphoria with my gender, I feel resentment towards it, that others can have solace and are not only expected, but even prompted for it. It is easier to abandon me in my misery, because the risk that is posed statically is not at all worth the gamble. If i were worth it, you would still believe that rolling the dice is worth the gamble?
i have good reason to believe that people are waking up to your problems. i know this is hard, but remember just because someone doesn’t value you doesn’t mean you don’t have value. just hold on, be nice to people, and be the change you wish to see in the world.
24yo American mutt here. Immense gratitude for your content. Your points were very eloquently put, and your voice is a service. Still struggling internally to assimilate some of the thoughts and feelings that have arose from what you have said, but I know that what you’ve said is good.
once again proving you are the best in the video essay world right now; another incredibly compassionate and nuanced discussion of modern issues. as a transfem person myself, its been a hard realization that our "progress" hasn't really been far enough (or at least has been all but reversed lately). however, it's like you say in the video-we need to push past those issues and feelings in a constructive way. this video gave me hope in some pretty dark times, so thank you so much.
In the video you shared that you felt as if no progress had been made. I think we have seen some progress, even if it’s not as much as we’d like. Growing up up I watched as being called gay no longer was an insult. When racist jokes went from something you could say in public to something people are reluctant to share even with close friends. I’m only in my 20’s. I feel like the hard pill to swallow is that progress is glacial. We live in a big world with a lot of people. Some of them pass hatred down through generations. It will take time to heal that. We can’t fall to despair.
your videos are always beautifully made, the perfect amount of comedy and seriousness. i’ve struggled a lot, and i’ve found it hard to help my partner through their struggles. this is an amazing video. thank you
The other day two of my guy friends were talking with myself and another female friend, and they started joking about “depression slideshows” they got on TikTok that they claimed were a universal male thing and my female friend and I were kinda shocked because we’ve never seen them before. And I asked some other male friends later and they all saw those slideshows. It’s just scary how many men see them and how that changes them
I occasionally observe a very happy positive subset of men that are very supportive of one another one another and like accepting which is pretty Baller and I love to see those boys breakin the mold
This has been an issue I’ve noticed lately. Rhetoric like this is all over my feed and you’re right, it’s scary. I just wanna say thank you for making this video and I hope it reaches the people who need to see it
well this was my introduction to your channel, must say i'm amazed! I've been trying to explain something like these to a friend of mine without much success, cause i just could not put it to words, the way these patriarchal society is making me depressed has a straight white men, where i cant fit in anywhere, and all the hope that seems to come my way is this crap of "BE A MAN" that i cant identify with, or else i've failed in life..... Honestly, amazing job with the video!
I thought this would really depress me but I actually felt good about hearing somebody else talking about this. I also really appreciated the pacing and language of this video, it felt a lot easier to follow than some of the earlier Ro videos, I'll start paying more attention to the channel to see what comes next
Thank you Ro! As a cis man, I feel that I would love to discuss topics like this, but either am told that my voice has been heard or am shrugged off by my friends that are the same. It’s just excepted by us or can’t be heard. Noticing and discussing this and the other topics you discuss are helping create dialogue.
I grew up as a cis woman and even I hated woman, because a majority of my family was female and I just had a toxic relationship with the girls in my family which made me hate being a woman. And ever since this sigma trend happened, I started to believe in it due my personal experience with and as a woman. It also made me want to become a trans man. But today I identify as Genderfluid because I started to learn to love my original gender yet also be a man in a healthier way.
I remember starting to get the slideshows on tiktok, hearing that one duster song so many times. Until I got one indomitable human spirit tiktok like a beacon of hope, made sure to like and comment on that one to convince the algorithm I'm not depressed. Now my fyp is filled with indomitable human spirit memes. Practicing self care in 2022.
I so badly want to send this to someone but I know for a fact he won’t listen to it because of your gender identity and way you choose to presentation. And he really needs to hear this.
the book 'for the love of men' (2019) about toxic masculinity has been really productive for me putting my thoughts about masculinity rn into a form of sense. being a feminist very worried about men is a strange thing at the moment, especially on the Internet. it's sometimes like really caring about a colony of feral cats who won't let you help them and actually think ur the problem and so tear you to shreds when you try to nourish them. anyway I'd recommend the book a lot
I think one of the most hurtful and aggravating truths I've come to realize over the years is that men don't actually care enough about the harm patriarchy causes them to let go of the benefits and perks it affords them. It's almost totally destroyed my ability to sympathize with them on that front because they do it to themselves and almost seem to enjoy and romanticize the suffering they inflict on themselves and other men while women and fem people they hurt as a result just suffer for no purpose other than making some dude feel manlier. They chose to wallow and complain and expect women to fix the problem for them without doing any actual work themselves.
@@soupi2105 u have indeed got a point. I always pendulum between this and like, an exhausted acknowledgement that for any hope of true equality in the future the annoying slog of dealing with men has to be done. but my god, it is hard
@@soupi2105 i dont think this is a helpful attitude tbh. all men suffer from patriarchy, and a lot of them, the majority of the ones ive known, arent like what youve describd. the thing is that the same thing that makes it hard for men to change is one of the biggest things about toxic masculinity that hurts them. men cant be vulnerable or intimate or be open about the things they struggle with to other people and get help. even as a trans woman who has no interest in performing masculinity, this stuff is so drilled in to you that it feels impossible to escape, even when you can recognize the effect its having on you. its important to recognize that the reason men are often hard to deal with when it comes to these issues isnt their fault. its the fault of a society that alienates them from their emotions. blaming men for their inability to overcome these struggles is counterproductive and just further reinforces notions that they shouldnt be struggling in the first place
I think this topic of misery in the face of masculinity really just helped me figure out how im going to write a paper on the idolization of billionaires bc becoming a billionaire is a perceived escape from the misery
I am a guy, and while I don’t have any official diagnosis doctors have thrown about potential diagnosis of schizoaffective, borderline and schizoid, bipolar, paranoia, etc. The only reason why I can’t get one diagnosis is because most doctors have dropped me before they could officially put something down on my insurance. By far one of my most constant symptoms is a constant present anger that does not go away, no matter what I do, no matter what mood stabilizer or antipsychotic I’m on. All I can do is learn to manage it. I used to hang out exclusively with people who were equally as miserable as me, people who had the exact same types of symptoms or potential (or real) diagnosis I have. In one sense it was exhilarating to be around people who could stay up for days at a time with me doing nothing but drive around until 4am, get home and drink until noon, and do it all again the next day. Over time I started to lose that sense of excitement though, and at first I tried to do anything I could chase it further. Once I realized that it was futile, and that I needed real help, I quickly stopped wanting to hang around these people because they didn’t want to get out of the cycle. I think one of the worst parts about it was that, even when I talked to friends who were on the fringes and maybe did not share the same experiences, they didn’t understand. They wanted to “fix” what was wrong, but their version of that meant pushing me back into the group of people who were so set on self destruction. What’s more, since a lot of these people weren’t “in the know,” I couldn’t really explain to them why I no longer wanted to be around these people without giving away the secrets, as if spending six months in a delusional state where I thought I was literally god’s prophet was some special club. The people who shared my symptoms encouraged my behavior, because to them it was normal and fun, and the people who didn’t never took it seriously enough so real problems were often unintentionally turned into jokes. Disorders are becoming a club, and while this problem isn’t new on the internet I feel like tiktok had pushed it further. It used to be that if I wanted to find something bad such as self-injury content, I had to actively search for it on a forum or tumblr or something. Now I get random people showing of their fresh injuries or body checking on tiktok without my control, and “not interested” button doesn’t always work, especially if you linger on something for just a second too long. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be as bad as I am now if I’d never met these people, or if I was fated to somehow develop this way no matter what. It makes me really worry for those younger than me who could potentially fall into the same traps I did, especially because now it can be fed to them without them even trying to find it. I don’t want more kids who sit in their one bedroom apartments, afraid to talk to anyone because they fucked themselves up in high school in order to “fit in” with the new idea that suffering is normal.
I love and respect your work so much. I'm new to the channel and just want to say I think you really make an impact as an individual and on this platform. I really admire the perspective you bring. I put your vids in playlists specifically to re-watch to try at better understanding the topics bc each video has a lot of layers to offer. It's great stuff.
Just a few days ago, I saw a screenshot of a woman responding to a Tate tweet. Tate said something akong the lines of "women, if you aren't submissive enough, men will never talk to you" and the woman replied "that's perfectly fine." It was not the first time I've seen an exchange like that. And it serves Tate's interest just fine when feminists openly fantasize about a world without men, where the men can hear them. The manosphere markets itself as the only welcoming voice in our lives, and it can be as stingy as it likes for it has no competition. And we, the men, if we actually care, must not react in a way that is centering our feelings over the actually oppressed. Our feelings are forfeit. We're all in therapy so we don't bother our friends.
Her saying "that's perfectly fine" is not evil feminists fantasizing about a world without men...it's saying she doesn't want those specific men's attention anyway.
Wonderful video as always and may I just add that shade of orange or burnt sienna you were working during the ad read and the shade of your graphic liner is stunning on you and really compliments your complexion ♥♥♥♥♥
Video of the year. A lot of things I've been observing, thinking about, worrying about, and even participating in at times were amongst the topics explored in this video and really appreciate and enjoyed how you tackled it. I was just having a conversation with one of my friends about this sort of thing, earlier today, about how it's worth being able to ditch the "cool mysterious loner" vibes in search of better things, and how an aesthetic appeal to hopelessness (and all the other feelings that come with it) can lead to a strange addition to self-sabotage of sorts. Thank you for this video.
Hi Ro, I recently found your videos and have been enjoying them a lot, you probably won’t look at this comment but you talked about men’s mental health and how people are taking advantage of that but what are your thoughts at the solutions for this problem? Like what do people who fall in the hole do?
Coffee is soooo my jam…but I’m on the cold brew iced coffee train, as it’s lower in acid and kinder to my tummy. Though the pod life is enticing…I was housesitting last month, and I used theirs once I ran out of cold brew. So your sponsor is in the “hmmm, noted” file in my brain!💙💙💙
3 months ago my girlfriend broke up with me. I've been through hell since, I've been angry, I've been sad, I've been so desperate that I made an attempt to get her back that ended up driving her even further away. Everything seems to be going great for her, she's a talented artist, she's surrounded by friends, and seems to be happy. I should be happy for her, but right now I'm just so fucking scared and I feel myself drowning and all the memories of what once was, the weight of college, and crippling weight of the drug that is blaming myself. Every good day seems to be followed by 3 bad ones, I don't know how much longer I can last, I'm afraid and I miss my girlfriend even though she doesn't miss me anymore.
Find something to take your mind off for the time being, these feelings need time. Feeling horrible in such a situation is fine, we all go thought it one way or another, you have to let your feelings run their course and maybe once you can accept them you can try connecting with your ex but of course as friends since its pretty clear she isnt interested in being romantically involved, although ive never really been in such a situation and if i was you i probably wouldnt do it because i doubt shed care enough but i guess i would try it if i deemed her important enough to have her in my life no matter how.
Deleuze's ontology of becoming rather than being provides lines of flight from the necrotic condition described in the video. It's his whole project. The podcast Acid Horizons has a lot of great videos introducing the concepts Deleuze uses to break free from that which harms you.
Hey Ro, this is the first video of yours I’ve ever seen. The way you wrote it, produced it, shot it, and scored it; I believe you’ve done an astounding job, and I’ve found a new amazing content creator.
i really do hate the being "boxed in" part of being a guy, i really like hatsune miku as you can tell from the pfp, and i get so many snide remarks from people about it being weird (or somehow pedophilic) and these almost solely come from women, I've completely given up trying to explain to them that it's counterproductive to say I'm invading "their" interests and i just want to have"feminine" interests in peace without being (in a subtle way) essentially called gay for it. there's a connection somewhere here to Lacan's point that "woman does not exist" men are XYZ set of attributes and women are everything else, which is also why you see non binary people and vast swathes of other queer identities being lumped together with women.
every day there has been a post near the top of reddits popular page that asks men what their struggles are. it’s heartbreaking it has been 5 years since the resurgence of #metoo. 5 years of open discussion of sexual assault against woman, boys have been through high school in that time. at this point no one is clueless. i think a lot of boys have came of age in a culture that highlights the harm men/masculinity can bring and i think that’s all they see now. i’m so happy ro made this, because, as young people, we aren’t automatically equipped with healthy coping mechanisms and end up in these destructive patterns. hopefully this sparks more conversation in this lovely youtube commentary community so we can help find solutions. i’d love to hear kuncan datsner’s take, he seems very thoughtful.
Really changed my perspective. I’ve drifted towards misandry due to personal experience and a hopelessness that men actually want to change but this made me think more about why they’re scared to. I’ll try and be less judgmental and more hopeful.
Nah don't try to help. Jessie Gender has a video on exactly why we don't help men and what happened to her when she tried to. No man is worth getting raped over. Until they can get the fuck over themselves they don't deserve help.
It’s all just so hopeless. We are all too far gone, this world is. No one person can fix this, and that is the true sadness of it. None of us can be a superhero and save the world from itself. We are powerless and indefinitely suffering. The only thing that keeps me going is the depression id bring my family and friends if I were to save myself. I wish someone could’ve lived this life for me, relegate me to a spectator of my own body, that’s how it feels sometimes anyway. There is a comment on this video mentioning hopelessness being the catalyst of inaction, but what they have failed to realize is that there is no action that can be taken. Nothing can fix this, conditions can only be marginally improved, and that will never satisfy me, nor anyone else.
I haven't transitioned yet, but my experience as a male in America isn't positive. I've tried to be open and vulnerable to many other men but I've often just been taken advantage of, manipulated, gaslit, etc. There is no space for respect brought on by kindness - only fear. fantastic video as always, ro
17:53 my younger brother used to love painting his nails with me when he was younger, but stopped because he was ridiculed. it makes me sad to see things like this happen
as a trans person outside of any binary i feel as though i am an outsider watching what is going on in the patriarchy and feel almost helpless because i am so young as to not know what to do about it
my brother had the same experience. my aunt shamed him once, very publicly, and although my mom tried to do damage control the deed was done. he never painted his nails again
I have 2 daughters and a son who is the youngest. They’re all teens now and when they were little (under 10) they used to all dress up in the same costumes (fairies or princesses for example), put on layers upon layers of gaudy plastic jewels, tiaras, feather boas & all, and they’d all dance around together to poppy taylor swift songs or whatever the flavour of the day was with beaming smiles & full of giggles & joy. I’m saying this because it’s 100% true that societal expectations and standards of what it means to be a man/masculinity do shape the way boys develop their sense of self evolve, how they act, behave, dress, express themselves, just all of it, and it broke my heart to watch the delineation in my kids as they got older, towards fitting in with society’s definitions of the gender they identified with and how that innocence and freedom that allowed them to express themselves without being externally influenced by the world around them was lost forever in the past. I think we’ve made a lot of progress so far in recognising individual differences and respecting each other as just people, but still a long way to go. Thank you Ro for sharing your insightful thoughtful commentary. You never disappoint! ❤
@@EggEnjoyer It depends because the interests she mentioned like dressing up those definitely do get programmed out of you by shame and ridicule and I’ve experienced it myself on multiple occasions. I remember people would get on my case consistently because I’d cross my legs, or sometimes it’s as simple as using the restroom sitting down. Boys technically are effectively restrained when it comes to expressions of self that deviate from traditional masculinity.
@@neo.ism.You mean gynocentric soyciety
as a schizophrenic person i appreciate you bringing up the schizoposting memes, ive been seeing an increase in them lately, it feels like a modern freak show at our expense. and i can confirm almost all of them are made by nonschizophrenics. its wild to me cause any other mental illness followed by "posting" will lead you to people posting about their own experience, while schizoposting is nonschizophrenics making us the punchline. its not just degrading, its actually dangerous for people who might be prone to psychosis (which is much more people than the 1% of the population that is schizophrenic) and it perpetuates stereotypes that we are crazy, dangerous and bigoted.
Lol
Lol
Just want to say thank you for your comment here. Sorry for the trolls in replies. Your words are important.
I be making schizo jokes:( im sorry, never meant to be degrading
@@nomad3073 thanks for realizing, yeah i just wish more people knew that schizophrenic people are part of society and the internet and we do see the memes about us
I’m a fourteen year old boy with severe ocd. Everyday I feel as though I need to fight off patriarchal ideology because of how catered “women☕️” content is to people like me. Young men that can’t help the feeling that there was never a chance.
you’ve got this. you clearly know what’s up, just hold on and be nice to people and you’ll find your community.
I recommend having as little social media as possible --- just enough social media to keep in contact with your close friends but not enough to get caught in harmful loops like the one Ro talks about in her video. Personally, I deleted Twitter almost a year ago and it has helped me a lot!
I just turned 17 man, you’ll get there! Just have trust in the process and you’ll find out things about yourself that you didn’t even know up until that point. Similar to what the person in the comments said above, social media especially tiktok and twitter can really bring out a more pessimistic side of yourself that stagnates your personal progress. From personal experience social media used to give me so much stress that I’d end up physically ill so there’s considerable merit in the idea of spending time away from it or deleting it.
When I’m off social media I find the best motivation to be more in tune with my mental health and my emotions is watching media involving male main characters with more positive or gender neutral examples of masculinity that are more relatable to me. Charlie Kelmeckis from The Perks of Being a Walliflower is one of the best examples because I deal with seriously bad anxiety and depression and seeing it on screen is cathartic, it feels really good to actually relate to a man or boy with mental health problems without the extra side of misogyny.
Damn dude, you're pretty damn self aware for someone so young. You're on the right track, and if other guys don't get it, don't worry because they also won't get girlfriends.
ro talks about tikok like i talk about my homophobic parents who i expect will disown me one day
this is nuts
Dayum I sounded like a manifestation of Zephyr I sighed so hard
@@roramdin ikr
Protip fam: Disown them first.
fr though, sorry you're dealing with that
@@roramdin it is isn’t it
"If you are complaining about 'late stage capitalism' you are complaining about capitalism."
*THANK YOU.*
You can't have the rotten fruit without the root.
We're going to be okay, lads, I promise. Thanks for this, Ro
how though
@@yungjoemighty879 I'll let you know when I sincerely figure it out
@@yungjoemighty879 Empathy and kindness, to as many people as you can possibly manage. Every positive action you take in this world has a good chance of encouraging other people to do the same. And I know it's hard to feel motivated to treat others with love when you yourself feel so terribly unloved, but it is something we must do to break the vicious cycle.
No. Society is only getting worse and there is nothing that can be done.
@@pickwick3970 I refuse to believe that
“when you feel so trapped by life it becomes a revolutionary mirage to circle the drain of your own death” is one of the rawest, most cutting things i’ve ever heard in a youtube video. i think this idea echoes one of the experiences i associate with cptsd, which is finding comfort in the idea that even if you’re trapped in hell with no end in sight you can still claw back some degree of control by dying. it’s at least an understandable coping mechanism for a deeply hurt and traumatized person who cannot currently escape the situation causing them so much pain, but it’s crucially also not sustainable or aspirational. so to see people posting and talking about these states as a form of enlightenment is uniquely distressing. thank you for the video
Ouch that hits too hard. I've said a million times that at least I can control my death. CPTSD, alcohol use... blah blah... Oof
this comment is stunningly articulated. thank you for sharing your experience. 🥰
“What makes life worth living is not the absence of sorrow, or trauma, or turmoil but is the presence experience.” is such a viscerally real bar and i hope more people get to hear this
Jesus Christ this is truly therapeutic art. You produce some of the best work I’ve ever seen on this platform.
Why use the lord’s name in vain?
@@Captaiesqueleto because Jesus Christ is a loser.
I want to acknowledge how incredible your editing choices are, especially when I realize that if the b-roll footage of snow is recent and you are still living in the greater Seattle area, you filmed and cut that all literally yesterday. Serious props to you, damn, you must have this down to a science.
hehe yes all filmed yesterday!
oh my god this just made me realize that ive felt a lot better mentally since i uninstalled tiktok
this is so interesting because the stuff that i was sad about didnt get better, the person i like is still dating someone else, but i havent been seeing content about being sad about that type of thing and now i rarely even think about it.
@@luiguigino because same???
I feel like tiktok feeds off of people reveling in their depressed state, and actively wanting to stay there. And it really sucks you in. It sucked ME in.
But after deleting tiktok, I got the back motivation to be better again.
Deleting tiktok is the best thing someone can do imo
That's great bro! Tiktok's a damn blight on society
literally me too like tiktok was too much stimulation and too much influence for me
Yooo I’ve been telling my friend about this too, most of my tiktok has pretty feminist content and it still finds some way to just seriously depress me. I leave that app feeling so cynical and hopeless every time I open it, I had a seizure recently reasons unknown and I wasn’t on my phone specifically tiktok for a bit after and the difference was so big. I remember i’d get intense stress headaches that were identifiable by bad pain in my eyebrow area and it always coincided with me opening tiktok. It really taught me that cynical views about social interaction, politics, and just people in general were pervasive even in feminist content. I rarely ever hear “so this is what we can do better…..” it’s really just statements about how horrible things are and it just gets repeated over and over. It seems like the pessimism found in those videos where men comment about how hard it is to be a man(which is valid but only if they realize it’s patriarchy) without actually attempting to change has just leaked into everything.
Me thinking I was subverting expectations by gaining self awareness of my mental illness and having 0 clue what to do about it. At least I'm part of the club now.
Welcome to the anti social social club babe. We hate it here 🥂
Cisman here, i have a few friends who wildly still cannot express emotion or depth to their feelings. I will ask in casual conversation like "how are you doing?", Get the typical "ok" or "fine dude" and I'm like, yeah but how are you emotionally, what's up dude? And 100% of the time I get a mockery response or ackward silence. It's baffleing to me why dudes can't just say how they feel if it isn't anger
It's a skill, you won't be able to do it if you aren't allowed to learn or forced to unlearn
I answer honestly and appreciate when people engage, keep doing it bro, maybe in different locations and situations but it’s appreciated
time to fuckin boogie
edit: oh this is not a boogie video mb
we can boogie too though
@@roramdin to ginger root, maybe?
There's a certain post I often think of when this topic is brought up--how whilst the privileges of living in a patriarchy are certainly evident, there's a feeling of loneliness unique to living life as a man as well. As a trans man I've experienced both worlds; there's certainly valid reasoning behind women being uncomfortable around men and joking about them, but at the same time I myself have become more and more familiar with that lack of friendliness. I am not met with smiles as often as I used to be, nor am I greeted nearly as much. In exchange I've become far more aware of just how many men light up when given what I feel is basic decency; I've always greeted people at offices I visit or apologized when bumping into others, but when it's men on the receiving end I've noticed there's a unique kind of happiness when they're met with this kind of friendliness, almost like they're surprised. I don't even think most men are aware of the subtle lack of warmth they face, which is why they end up crowding together inside of these echo chambers to strengthen the very problem that landed everyone here. Again, this isn't me trying to defend these actions--I have been on the receiving end of this behavior throughout my life, and like almost everyone who was raised a woman I still find myself nervous around men at times. I do think this is an incredibly important topic that's discussed nowhere near enough as it should be, though, and this video is a brilliant motion to that.
As a fellow trans man, I second all of this. Down to the T. (no pun intended)
I really appreciate this perspective! It reminds me of how sad I feel that it’s often so taboo for men to be platonically affectionate. I think that taboo makes it easy to misread kindness (esp from women) as romantic interest, which makes it more difficult for people to interact in warm and affectionate ways. It’s a really unfortunate feedback loop.
@@uncannedspaghetti honestly. As a man, I've always felt a deep longing for a friendship akin to how women can become friends with one and other. It's led me to develop a sense of numbness to platonic connections because the deep feeling that I'll never get to experience that kind of connection can be too much to bare.
Cis man here, I was raised in a part of southern Oregon that largely bucked gender norms, and I still ended up feeling so penned in by the way men are expected to behave. Best way I can describe it, at least via metaphor: when I was young, I was soft clay. Everyone who had these expectations pressed me into shapes I didn't understand or agree with. Now, as an adult, I'm more like dried clay, I can shrug off most of the pressure, but when it's too strong or too personal, I don't feel like I can really change my shape anymore, just hold firm or shatter entirely.
as a woman, this echoes the sentiment expressed by male friends in my life. some of them have expressed feeling envious of feminine friendships. it sucks. i cherish those friendships and those connections, but unfortunately i am scared of men due to past horrible experiences. it takes so long for me to trust guys. but i want so badly to be friends with men, which is also a sentiment shared with my girl and enby friends, even the most male averse of them. it really sucks that we’re scared to, and that men don’t know how to start these friendships. the guy friendships i do have in my life are beautiful and cherished, i hope we can get to a point where that isn’t rare.
There's a lot of men deprogramming from toxic masculinity myself included. It's happening all at once and it's a confusing, even scary times. Your video got me thinking that a lot of us are collectively going through the same/similar experience and that we aren't alone. Thank you
My younger brother always asked my cousin and I to paint his nails and dress him up in our clothes bc it was one of the only ways he could hang out with us girls without us getting annoyed (sibling love). I remember my father and uncle saying things about that, performing the ritual of patriarchal indoctrination. Despite protesting their comments at the time, I was no better. He went through a phase of wearing this cheap red plastic bead necklace. I remember I found it dumb and wanted him to leave me alone so I mocked him for it. I was just a child myself, but I too upheld the patriarchal standard that today limits my rights.
A while back right when the Andrew taint stuff began ramping up and the Johnny depp trial was going on I got in a really dark place about men, bordering misandry a la “all men are trash”. It affected my relationship and how I treated my partner, despite all that he’s done for me over the last 5 years. I didn’t realize at the time that my Reddit consumption both of anti men subs and lurking mra aligned subs was affecting the way I interacted with him and communicated with him. I took a step back from those spaces and additionally through ongoing therapy for my adhd my provider recommended I start antidepressant medication. She had suspected me to being clinically depressed for a while but I was not open to starting medication due to preconceived notions about ssri medication and the belief that I was depressed since I had always felt that way. Turns out I have NOT always felt that way and ssri meds are not something to be afraid of or ashamed of. I’m doing much better and so is my relationship, although it is not perfect. I do give a lot of love to my partner but at times I can demand too much of him without providing him the same grace, many times with the reasoning of gender norms. Your video is making bc me reflect on the casual way I wield gender norms, especially with disregard to how it could affect my partner and hurt him. The quotes from Bell Hooks book really spoke to me and I think I will be checking it out to read and reflect more on. Thank you for your delicate handling of this very somber and serious issue.
scrolling through the comment section as a trans man made me realize that there's many other men like me who feel the same way about this whole thing, embracing our misery is a form of masculinity and i find myself doing it often and it's easy to continue doing stuff that validates my masculinty, so i clung to it despite it deteriorating my mental health even further. i was so used to mental health struggle being seen as a femenine trait so i hid it from everyone else, i remember i was talking to my cishet male cousin and he told me that he was feeling anxiety, fear and paranoia before he went to sleep but he was scared to call it anxiety because it's looked at as a femenine trait (at least in our culture, we're from south america) and now recently i've been seeing cis men being open about their struggles, even if it's in a hopeless or sometimes mocking way in the form of these slide shows and it felt like i could finally talk about it, even if it was by those unspoken rules. i'm still trying to better myself and accept that emotions aren't gendered despite what my surroundings tell me. letting go of toxic masculinity is difficult, even more so when you're desperately trying to prove to your peers and yourself that you're "valid" in your manhood.
sorry if there's any spelling mistakes or if this isn't cohesive, love your videos ro!!
i usually never comment on stuff, like ever. but this video really stuck with me tbh i know that ro may never see this but as a little sister to an older boy, now man who constantly tramples over me and says he still cares about me yet tramples over my sexuality, thoughts and beliefs this video was such an important, but painful one to get through. My brother had been my hero once, before i grew up and realized he wasn’t a good person, that he was racist, and cruel and casually awful and disheartening. And yet I always try to reach out to him, to help him somehow, to maybe magically fix him and resolve any issues boiling deep inside him. But he’s made it clear that he doesn’t want to try, and that hurts so much.
anyways!!! thank you sm to ro for making content you are one of my favourite content creators rn the parasocial relationship going crazy lmao. stay happy and healthy :)
tell me abt it. I have a similar relationship w my older brother, though our gap is likely wider. I wonder what needs to happen, what needs to be done or said to have them change. if they can- what is the answer?
@@jjody yes exactly, my age gap with my brother isn’t a lot, he’s 2.5 years older than me but i still wonder what circumstances could chance him for them better. i hope us younger siblings can heal from the constant trauma lmao, and hopefully our brothers come to our senses one day. All we can do is provide a safe environment for them to grow and change, but always prioritize yourself and your peace first. I’m beginning to learn that while I might not be able to be there for him, I can provide myself with the same kindness and love
i think u and i lead same lives
As a gay man suffering from mental illness, I find myself getting those a lot. Whats strange, although this is gonna sound conspiratorial, I quite literally only when Im alone and late at night. I have never had one come up otherwise. It feels targeted
I assume you mean you get those sad/doomer tiktoks late at night and I feel it's not conspiratorial at all, its simply the algorithm. If other male users are consuming those videos late at night, alone, its going to show it to you too. It's like the algorithm knows us better than ourselves, and shows the content that will keep you (the user) on the app the longest amount of time (which is its number one priority); even if that content is extremely damaging to the user, if it means they watch the most videos it will keep displaying that content.
On another note, I also believe this is why healthy communities are so important, as there should be other people there to support you, even late at night when those videos might harm your health.
Tik Tok wants you specifically to kill yourself
I've been up for half an hour and you got me tearing up before I head to work. As a person raised as a man who still presents very much masculine, I still see the draw of these communities of despair. Although I've found my group of miserable friends, I'm glad the ones I love are looking to help each other and haven't been sucked into the toxic world of alpha male content and nationalism. Many of us went through the alt right pipeline but after escaping it its left many of us miserable at what people want us to think and do
This video is unfortunately very topical for me. Two weeks ago my older brother--mid 20s and very likely suffering from multiple mental illnesses although he refuses to get psychological help for any of it--had a week-long meltdown/manic episode where he was constantly shouting slurs at me and my parents. What terrifies me the most about him is the worldview that I am almost certain came from these sorts of doomer communities: that all human beings are selfish and are out to get him personally and that life is both meaningless and constant torture because everyone and everything is out to get him and love does not exist. I can't imagine how soul-crushing it must feel to live in a world devoid of any kindness. This narrative makes it especially hard to reach him during these episodes, because just when you start making a connection with him he immediately thinks that it's manipulation and it all comes crashing down... and you have to start building that bridge from scratch all over again.
I really don't know what to do. How do you convince someone that people are naturally inclined to help each other and that real human connection is possible? How do you make someone want to get help, want to get better? No matter how many of these episodes he goes through, nothing ever changes. No matter what my parents and I try to do to support him, he never follows through on any of it because of his intense, all-consuming nihilism. It's hard not to be infected by his hopelessness.
Hi, I don't know you and to be entirely honest, I don't really have any advice for you. I just wanted to let you know that you are seen and you are heard and that there are likely people out there who struggle with the same questions that you are asking here. I hope you are able to answer these questions some day and that you and your brother are able to find your peace with living.
John Green made a tiktok about an Emily Dickinson poem, the first verse of which reads: "Hope" is the thing with feathers - / that perches in the soul - / and sings the tune without the words - / and never stops - at all -
He points out that she never mentions that the song stops playing, just that people stop hearing it. I hope you and your brother can hear the song of hope again soon. best wishes to you
this is probably not what you need to hear, but i think sometimes people just don't change, even if they can. my parents have lived in canada for the past decade(they decided to immigrate here from china), and yet slowly sunk more and more into their homophobia with each passing year, despite my every attempt to get them to change their minds. they are convinced that queer rights is a doctrine used to brainwash kids like me, and on some parts i think they hold on to that belief because they are unfathomably scared for me. i can understand their thinking but i can't forgive the ways they've hurt me because of it. i guess what i'm trying to say is that people can't change unless they try, and for me, i need to live for myself and not for my parents. there's only so much i can take without sacrificing my well-being for them, and there's only so much you can take. meanwhile, all we can do is be there for the people we love and hope they see it someday. i hope it works out for your brother, and i trust that you'll make it through no matter what happens
My older brother is the same. Thank you for sharing this, it means so much to me to know that someone else is struggling with this. I don't know what to do either. You describe so well the exact things I see in my brother. My mother tries everything, but nothing works, nothing gets better. He just continues to hurt and then hurts other people, and he never seems to find a direction in life, just fades more and more away. I'm sorry I don't have any words of advice, I just had to comment because I don't know anyone else who struggles with this. Thank you for writing this comment. I just hope that you can feel like I do, a certain warmth in knowing that someone else out here knows what it's like, and understands that it's so hard.
My younger sibling has been going though similar self-destructive and depressive episodes. They haven’t used slurs or anything however they are extremely self conscious and sensitive. It’s been really difficult to try and help when it seems they want everyone to change around them. I’m not alone it seems, this generation has gone through just a dark hole they dug
How it feels sometimes
funny thing is that this feeling of loneliness and purposeless-ness has been a known topic since the late 1800’s. Durkheim’s anomie is alive and well
Holy shit i just went to read about that and you are correct. Wow humans really don't change much huh
Time is a flat Circle
As a transman I really resonate with this. The moment people start to see you as a man, they push the according soceital beliefs and pressures on you. Sometimes, I get it even from my own community.
the way you will take time to slow down the video with a truly raw and emotional sitdown in your living room is incredible, that level of intimacy and honesty is extremely refreshing and i appreciate it more than anything in this digital landscape of fake apologies and pandering
as someone with a returning hyperfixation on incels (specifically their ideology & how a lot of it relates back to using pseudoscience to justify depressive thinking), i feel qualified to say that i enjoyed this video very much, thank you Ro
Instead of just commenting real as a joke I just want to thank you, I’m in a bit of a several months long crisis currently after realizing I couldn’t handle depression on my own and hospitalizing myself. Everyday is a struggle but this type of video is productive discussion that helps give me hope and grasp of my situation and reality. I feel I’ve had an especially rough time in this area due to ASD and a severe amount of isolation I’ve somewhat brought upon myself (probably my parents fault to a degree with how unlistening they are). Currently realizing some self hatred I’ve experienced may also stem from some degree of gender dysphoria so I have a bit of a uphill battle, but I hope the best for myself (sometimes lol). Thank you
I feel like I had an similar experience, when I was younger, though it wasn't... exactly the same. I'm transmasc, and before I knew that i'd hang around a lot of younger boys who'd talk about their misery, their home life, their dads. And I could relate to that! And relating to anyone masculine made me happy, so I... kept being miserable. I didn't try to help myself. I joked about being in therapy and I joked about my mental health, and I spoke about it so OPENLY with my friends... But never did I actually try to change.
As a trans woman, hearing how much those who I consider friends, those whom I love, complain about how much they ‘hate all men’, it hurts. Not because I am a man. Not because I was. But because I am perceived as one. Because I know that me being too dysphoric to shave makes me pass as a masculine person. To know that, purely by existing, I make those around me feel unsafe and unhappy, makes me more dysphoric, more sad, more distraught, than anything else. I fear taking up any space in public. Why? Why do I feel this way? Why is it that I cannot go on a walk in the park without feeling as if I’ll make another woman afraid because I am walking down the same path I always take, doing my best to stare down at the ground and not acknowledge my surroundings?
Ro I just want to say that from the way you talk about things to the way you film your content inspires me. You are one of my favorite content creators
10:04 "they acknowledge that not only are you hopeless you're broken." The TTRPG Wanderhome (well worth playing or just reading the rulebook to if you have the time and money) has several playbooks (which you use to create your character), all of which contain some variation of a list of attributes preceded by the instruction "choose two attributes that describe your character, and two that don't describe your character." The last two attributes are always traditionally gendered eg. masculine feminine pretty handsome. The playbook The Exile's last two options are damaged and ladylike.
My ex cheated on me and suddenly my feed was filled with these kinds of videos. Idk how but somehow it picked up on my mental situation subconsciously, it's kinda scary really
I'm not sure if this will make sense or not, but I appreciate Ro talking about her feelings of fear, and worry, or even about things like crying in her videos. I might just have low empathy, I don't know, but it's difficult for me to feel much of anything about situations and trends that should be super concerning. I, of course, know things happening in the world are awful, but I can't FEEL anything for it if that makes sense??? I don't enjoy coming across frightening trends or figures and only being able to shrug my shoulders about it. Having someone articulate their feelings the way Ro does really helps me feel the gravity of how things are. I doubt this made much sense as articulation isn't my strong suit, but TLDR : This is a good video!
I'm trans masc and have major clinical depression and I get so sucked into those slideshows. you perfectly encapsulated the issue that i'm too afraid to face.
This is so interesting to me because I’ve never seen slideshow-style posts geared towards men on my page, but my fyp is full of slide shows about the pain and trauma of being a woman and it’s honestly exhausting to see constantly. I totally empathize with men seeing these posts because like no I don’t want to think about the complexities of mother-daughter relationships and being sexualized by every man in your life and knowing you’re not listened to every ten seconds. I can hold all the grief of my gender in between videos of cats 😭😭
I love how you explained that feeling of "I have no mouth and I must scream"
This is so profoundly true. I don’t even know how to verbalize how in depth this video is but it’s so raw? I don’t think Ive ever legitimately seen someone unpack and pathologize the whole situation going on right now in the wider online landscape.
I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while cuz it has affected me so much and this trend has especially been amplified by isolation caused by the pandemic. I am slowly trying to back away from these feelings of self pity and despair but sometimes I find myself slipping back into that mentality. I literally made a playlist the other day based on this feeling 💀💀. I feel like these trends have caused a lot of bright and talented people with potential to become hopeless and apathetic and I feel like the community that has grown around the “self-pity and self-deprecating” mindset has grown because of the fact that misery loves company. But yah those are my thought awesome video it was so #REAL
I’m amazed by your way of talking. You are expressing these things in a way I’ve never seen before. You are talented🙏🏻
My younger brother has been struggling with depression lately. Even though I’ve struggled myself, I find it hard to empathise with him because the feminine and masculine feeling of these emotions is wildly different. Even though I would consider myself pretty toxically masculine in a lot of my traits, my understanding is just so fundamentally different from his. Thank you for this video, and for shedding light into the lives of so many young boys who’s emotion is weaponised and deluded by spheres of the internet
oh my lord, you are funny as hell, came over here from the Noah Handsome Samson Crew. The 200ping Therapist bit had me spit my cereal everywhere, big love from UK
I don't know if this is the "correct" reason for liking your video or not. But I really appreciate your discussing 'feminists' who utilize misandry to the detriment of men.
It helps me feel significantly less like my experience of - intentionally or otherwise - being abused by someone who could not let go of their misandry is not necessarily an experience limited to me, or one that i should feel crazy for.
My now-ex could truly never get over the need to say and do misandristic things that made me feel more worthless and hopeless even as I continued to do my absolute and utmost best from day one of that relationship to be there for them and to give them as many tools as I knew and could give at the time. They did not care to hear me, my emotions, or my suggestions as I am a man, as I had my own struggles with mental health that they did not feel were their responsibility to simply listen to, and for other reasons.
It hurt very much. At the end they accused me of being abusive because I said plainly to them that I would not forgive their mother or take responsibility for breaking down 4-hours away from home when their parents acted abusively toward them in my presence for the third time, and then my ex blamed m flashbacks to previous traumas (moments of powerlessness) in my life on me, offering no sympathy the next day while I was separated from my own family and support network. The bigger reason they accused me of this was that I refused to say it was acceptable that I be expected to interact with abusers given its clear negative impact on myself.
I was not a perfect partner at all. And I seriously messed up in a way that causes my experience to no longer be taken seriously having fallen into an inappropriate state of codependency for the better part of this last year after they broke up with me (again, largely for refusing to say it was acceptable to be expected to continue to interact with their abusive parents, and accept blame for a defensive trauma reaction).
However, I know I was abused by my ex and their family (by proxy through my ex.). I know that that was real despite my mistakes, and that I didn't deserve it, and that my mistakes were largely a fallout from it even if they can't really be washed away.
It really helps to hear that yes, misandry by women is hurting men.
This comment is very impactful. There's a difference between feeling vaguely angry at the concept of men and straight up targeting a specific man who is also your partner. You absolutely experienced abuse. You yourself are able to acknowledge that you made mistakes, but your ex wasn't taking responsibility for their feelings/actions and how they affected you. Being angry at men is not an excuse for bad behavior. I'm a cis straight woman who is married to a cis straight man, and we discuss this regularly. He isn't one of the men who hurt me in life, and he does what he can to push back against patriarchy and toxic masculinity. Sometimes though, I will say or do something that is unfair to him because I'm angry at all the other men who have hurt me and other women. I have to acknowledge that I've done that and apologize. Sometimes it's just venting and he knows it's not about him and he gives me space for my anger. He also has issues with other men, so it's not like he doesn't understand the anger and frustration. The point is that it's supposed to be a partnership where both people support one another. If that's not happening, then it's not a healthy relationship.
What a fucking banger of a vid. You have a really succinct way of expressing some of the most uncomfortable emotions with so much empathy and grace. Progress isn’t linear, but we need more creators willing to talk about these nuances so folk don’t feel like they’re alone in their journeys. 💚
Ro is keeping me sane during finals with her vids
This video has sat in my Watch Later since its release, and I have regarded it with a nervous skepticism that comes from being let down time and time again when people try to talk about the state of manhood in the modern world. So often when people talk about the kyriarchy's effects on men, it is woven with a belief that this means there are no beneficiaries to patriarchy; that men are harmed equally or even more than women and transgressively gendered people, that women are not oppressed by men but by the nebulous concept of patriarchy that comes from nowhere and benefits no one. This video managed to discuss the suffering of men, how it is reinforced by masculinist social expectations, the emotional roots of misandry, and so much more in a way that was empathetic to everyone involved. It absolutely exceeded my expectations. Bravo, Ro!
This felt the quickest 24 minutes and 37 seconds of my life.
the other day i thought "it'd be nice if i fell into a coma so i didn't have to think about all the things making me depressed" and, after watching this video, i think im maybe more well adjusted than tiktok men
This video is so emotional for me man. I relate to this in so many ways and my father was raised with these patriarchal expectations (like most men are) and it nearly ruined him. I’m so happy he’s alive and knows he can ask for the help he needs. Thank you for sharing this Ro. And I wish the best for all of y’all lads out there!
havent even made it 2min in yet and i just gotta say that youre one of the funniest people on youtube. consistently your vids make me laugh & your delivery is so spot on. thx for tackling real subjects in a way that keeps me from crying lmao 😭🤣
I really wish there was a lack content analyzing toxic masculinity and a wealth exploring wholesome masculinity. I would try to make that content, but as established, it's probably easier to just let it all wither and die. I don't feel dysphoria with my gender, I feel resentment towards it, that others can have solace and are not only expected, but even prompted for it. It is easier to abandon me in my misery, because the risk that is posed statically is not at all worth the gamble. If i were worth it, you would still believe that rolling the dice is worth the gamble?
i have good reason to believe that people are waking up to your problems. i know this is hard, but remember just because someone doesn’t value you doesn’t mean you don’t have value. just hold on, be nice to people, and be the change you wish to see in the world.
24yo American mutt here. Immense gratitude for your content. Your points were very eloquently put, and your voice is a service.
Still struggling internally to assimilate some of the thoughts and feelings that have arose from what you have said, but I know that what you’ve said is good.
once again proving you are the best in the video essay world right now; another incredibly compassionate and nuanced discussion of modern issues.
as a transfem person myself, its been a hard realization that our "progress" hasn't really been far enough (or at least has been all but reversed lately). however, it's like you say in the video-we need to push past those issues and feelings in a constructive way. this video gave me hope in some pretty dark times, so thank you so much.
In the video you shared that you felt as if no progress had been made. I think we have seen some progress, even if it’s not as much as we’d like. Growing up up I watched as being called gay no longer was an insult. When racist jokes went from something you could say in public to something people are reluctant to share even with close friends. I’m only in my 20’s.
I feel like the hard pill to swallow is that progress is glacial. We live in a big world with a lot of people. Some of them pass hatred down through generations. It will take time to heal that. We can’t fall to despair.
your videos are always beautifully made, the perfect amount of comedy and seriousness. i’ve struggled a lot, and i’ve found it hard to help my partner through their struggles. this is an amazing video. thank you
The other day two of my guy friends were talking with myself and another female friend, and they started joking about “depression slideshows” they got on TikTok that they claimed were a universal male thing and my female friend and I were kinda shocked because we’ve never seen them before. And I asked some other male friends later and they all saw those slideshows. It’s just scary how many men see them and how that changes them
I occasionally observe a very happy positive subset of men that are very supportive of one another one another and like accepting which is pretty Baller and I love to see those boys breakin the mold
All the boys and I are so fucking sweet
I feel like men are going through what the girlies went through on 2014 tumblr
This has been an issue I’ve noticed lately. Rhetoric like this is all over my feed and you’re right, it’s scary. I just wanna say thank you for making this video and I hope it reaches the people who need to see it
well this was my introduction to your channel, must say i'm amazed!
I've been trying to explain something like these to a friend of mine without much success, cause i just could not put it to words, the way these patriarchal society is making me depressed has a straight white men, where i cant fit in anywhere, and all the hope that seems to come my way is this crap of "BE A MAN" that i cant identify with, or else i've failed in life.....
Honestly, amazing job with the video!
I thought this would really depress me but I actually felt good about hearing somebody else talking about this. I also really appreciated the pacing and language of this video, it felt a lot easier to follow than some of the earlier Ro videos, I'll start paying more attention to the channel to see what comes next
Thank you Ro! As a cis man, I feel that I would love to discuss topics like this, but either am told that my voice has been heard or am shrugged off by my friends that are the same. It’s just excepted by us or can’t be heard. Noticing and discussing this and the other topics you discuss are helping create dialogue.
I grew up as a cis woman and even I hated woman, because a majority of my family was female and I just had a toxic relationship with the girls in my family which made me hate being a woman. And ever since this sigma trend happened, I started to believe in it due my personal experience with and as a woman. It also made me want to become a trans man. But today I identify as Genderfluid because I started to learn to love my original gender yet also be a man in a healthier way.
I remember starting to get the slideshows on tiktok, hearing that one duster song so many times. Until I got one indomitable human spirit tiktok like a beacon of hope, made sure to like and comment on that one to convince the algorithm I'm not depressed. Now my fyp is filled with indomitable human spirit memes. Practicing self care in 2022.
I so badly want to send this to someone but I know for a fact he won’t listen to it because of your gender identity and way you choose to presentation. And he really needs to hear this.
"My therapist has 200 ping and I frankly carried that last personal revelation."
You can't just keep saying the best jokes in your videos.
the book 'for the love of men' (2019) about toxic masculinity has been really productive for me putting my thoughts about masculinity rn into a form of sense. being a feminist very worried about men is a strange thing at the moment, especially on the Internet. it's sometimes like really caring about a colony of feral cats who won't let you help them and actually think ur the problem and so tear you to shreds when you try to nourish them. anyway I'd recommend the book a lot
I think one of the most hurtful and aggravating truths I've come to realize over the years is that men don't actually care enough about the harm patriarchy causes them to let go of the benefits and perks it affords them. It's almost totally destroyed my ability to sympathize with them on that front because they do it to themselves and almost seem to enjoy and romanticize the suffering they inflict on themselves and other men while women and fem people they hurt as a result just suffer for no purpose other than making some dude feel manlier. They chose to wallow and complain and expect women to fix the problem for them without doing any actual work themselves.
@@soupi2105 u have indeed got a point. I always pendulum between this and like, an exhausted acknowledgement that for any hope of true equality in the future the annoying slog of dealing with men has to be done. but my god, it is hard
@@soupi2105 i dont think this is a helpful attitude tbh. all men suffer from patriarchy, and a lot of them, the majority of the ones ive known, arent like what youve describd. the thing is that the same thing that makes it hard for men to change is one of the biggest things about toxic masculinity that hurts them. men cant be vulnerable or intimate or be open about the things they struggle with to other people and get help. even as a trans woman who has no interest in performing masculinity, this stuff is so drilled in to you that it feels impossible to escape, even when you can recognize the effect its having on you.
its important to recognize that the reason men are often hard to deal with when it comes to these issues isnt their fault. its the fault of a society that alienates them from their emotions. blaming men for their inability to overcome these struggles is counterproductive and just further reinforces notions that they shouldnt be struggling in the first place
I think this topic of misery in the face of masculinity really just helped me figure out how im going to write a paper on the idolization of billionaires bc becoming a billionaire is a perceived escape from the misery
“Which is 8 days of you shaking slightly while
looking at Excel.” Every video Ro makes is a comedy-poetry extravaganza.
Oh cool I’m crying. Love this and you always
every time ro posts my life is changed
It's sad seeing my younger brothers go through these kinds of cycles.
It comes back to exposure..the patriarchy truly does hurt everybody
"my therapist has 200 ping and I frankly carried that personal revelation"
Hit the nail on the head so hard. Almost made me cry.
I am a guy, and while I don’t have any official diagnosis doctors have thrown about potential diagnosis of schizoaffective, borderline and schizoid, bipolar, paranoia, etc. The only reason why I can’t get one diagnosis is because most doctors have dropped me before they could officially put something down on my insurance. By far one of my most constant symptoms is a constant present anger that does not go away, no matter what I do, no matter what mood stabilizer or antipsychotic I’m on. All I can do is learn to manage it. I used to hang out exclusively with people who were equally as miserable as me, people who had the exact same types of symptoms or potential (or real) diagnosis I have. In one sense it was exhilarating to be around people who could stay up for days at a time with me doing nothing but drive around until 4am, get home and drink until noon, and do it all again the next day. Over time I started to lose that sense of excitement though, and at first I tried to do anything I could chase it further. Once I realized that it was futile, and that I needed real help, I quickly stopped wanting to hang around these people because they didn’t want to get out of the cycle. I think one of the worst parts about it was that, even when I talked to friends who were on the fringes and maybe did not share the same experiences, they didn’t understand. They wanted to “fix” what was wrong, but their version of that meant pushing me back into the group of people who were so set on self destruction. What’s more, since a lot of these people weren’t “in the know,” I couldn’t really explain to them why I no longer wanted to be around these people without giving away the secrets, as if spending six months in a delusional state where I thought I was literally god’s prophet was some special club. The people who shared my symptoms encouraged my behavior, because to them it was normal and fun, and the people who didn’t never took it seriously enough so real problems were often unintentionally turned into jokes. Disorders are becoming a club, and while this problem isn’t new on the internet I feel like tiktok had pushed it further. It used to be that if I wanted to find something bad such as self-injury content, I had to actively search for it on a forum or tumblr or something. Now I get random people showing of their fresh injuries or body checking on tiktok without my control, and “not interested” button doesn’t always work, especially if you linger on something for just a second too long. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be as bad as I am now if I’d never met these people, or if I was fated to somehow develop this way no matter what. It makes me really worry for those younger than me who could potentially fall into the same traps I did, especially because now it can be fed to them without them even trying to find it. I don’t want more kids who sit in their one bedroom apartments, afraid to talk to anyone because they fucked themselves up in high school in order to “fit in” with the new idea that suffering is normal.
I love and respect your work so much. I'm new to the channel and just want to say I think you really make an impact as an individual and on this platform. I really admire the perspective you bring. I put your vids in playlists specifically to re-watch to try at better understanding the topics bc each video has a lot of layers to offer. It's great stuff.
Just a few days ago, I saw a screenshot of a woman responding to a Tate tweet. Tate said something akong the lines of "women, if you aren't submissive enough, men will never talk to you" and the woman replied "that's perfectly fine." It was not the first time I've seen an exchange like that. And it serves Tate's interest just fine when feminists openly fantasize about a world without men, where the men can hear them. The manosphere markets itself as the only welcoming voice in our lives, and it can be as stingy as it likes for it has no competition. And we, the men, if we actually care, must not react in a way that is centering our feelings over the actually oppressed. Our feelings are forfeit. We're all in therapy so we don't bother our friends.
Her saying "that's perfectly fine" is not evil feminists fantasizing about a world without men...it's saying she doesn't want those specific men's attention anyway.
Wonderful video as always and may I just add that shade of orange or burnt sienna you were working during the ad read and the shade of your graphic liner is stunning on you and really compliments your complexion ♥♥♥♥♥
thank you for talking about the stigma psychotic people face especially with lately schizoidposting memes by ppl without psychosis
Video of the year. A lot of things I've been observing, thinking about, worrying about, and even participating in at times were amongst the topics explored in this video and really appreciate and enjoyed how you tackled it. I was just having a conversation with one of my friends about this sort of thing, earlier today, about how it's worth being able to ditch the "cool mysterious loner" vibes in search of better things, and how an aesthetic appeal to hopelessness (and all the other feelings that come with it) can lead to a strange addition to self-sabotage of sorts. Thank you for this video.
Hi Ro, I recently found your videos and have been enjoying them a lot, you probably won’t look at this comment but you talked about men’s mental health and how people are taking advantage of that but what are your thoughts at the solutions for this problem? Like what do people who fall in the hole do?
ain't no way you just brought up TempleOS this video is taking me places😲
Coffee is soooo my jam…but I’m on the cold brew iced coffee train, as it’s lower in acid and kinder to my tummy. Though the pod life is enticing…I was housesitting last month, and I used theirs once I ran out of cold brew. So your sponsor is in the “hmmm, noted” file in my brain!💙💙💙
3 months ago my girlfriend broke up with me. I've been through hell since, I've been angry, I've been sad, I've been so desperate that I made an attempt to get her back that ended up driving her even further away. Everything seems to be going great for her, she's a talented artist, she's surrounded by friends, and seems to be happy. I should be happy for her, but right now I'm just so fucking scared and I feel myself drowning and all the memories of what once was, the weight of college, and crippling weight of the drug that is blaming myself. Every good day seems to be followed by 3 bad ones, I don't know how much longer I can last, I'm afraid and I miss my girlfriend even though she doesn't miss me anymore.
Find something to take your mind off for the time being, these feelings need time. Feeling horrible in such a situation is fine, we all go thought it one way or another, you have to let your feelings run their course and maybe once you can accept them you can try connecting with your ex but of course as friends since its pretty clear she isnt interested in being romantically involved, although ive never really been in such a situation and if i was you i probably wouldnt do it because i doubt shed care enough but i guess i would try it if i deemed her important enough to have her in my life no matter how.
Deleuze's ontology of becoming rather than being provides lines of flight from the necrotic condition described in the video. It's his whole project.
The podcast Acid Horizons has a lot of great videos introducing the concepts Deleuze uses to break free from that which harms you.
Yay I found a new youtuber to binge
"To get indoctrinated"
@@Ed-ss1uh if this is the philosophy I'm already indoctrinated 💀 are you saying you disagree with the opinions in this vid?
You're uploading so much lately, it rlly distracts me from the imminent crushing weight of end of semester deadlines
I’m so happy to be here less than 20 mins after posting
The whole “Kill All Men” rhetoric drove me into a really deep depression when I first came out. I’d gone from a strong woman to a weak man overnight.
eloborate?
thank you so much. your works always chill me to my core and help me see clearer. this is art with meaning and power.
Hey Ro, this is the first video of yours I’ve ever seen. The way you wrote it, produced it, shot it, and scored it; I believe you’ve done an astounding job, and I’ve found a new amazing content creator.
i really do hate the being "boxed in" part of being a guy, i really like hatsune miku as you can tell from the pfp, and i get so many snide remarks from people about it being weird (or somehow pedophilic) and these almost solely come from women, I've completely given up trying to explain to them that it's counterproductive to say I'm invading "their" interests and i just want to have"feminine" interests in peace without being (in a subtle way) essentially called gay for it.
there's a connection somewhere here to Lacan's point that "woman does not exist" men are XYZ set of attributes and women are everything else, which is also why you see non binary people and vast swathes of other queer identities being lumped together with women.
Dang going to show some of this at church. So well done
every day there has been a post near the top of reddits popular page that asks men what their struggles are. it’s heartbreaking
it has been 5 years since the resurgence of #metoo. 5 years of open discussion of sexual assault against woman, boys have been through high school in that time. at this point no one is clueless. i think a lot of boys have came of age in a culture that highlights the harm men/masculinity can bring and i think that’s all they see now. i’m so happy ro made this, because, as young people, we aren’t automatically equipped with healthy coping mechanisms and end up in these destructive patterns.
hopefully this sparks more conversation in this lovely youtube commentary community so we can help find solutions. i’d love to hear kuncan datsner’s take, he seems very thoughtful.
Your words are so kind. Thank you. So much.
Really changed my perspective. I’ve drifted towards misandry due to personal experience and a hopelessness that men actually want to change but this made me think more about why they’re scared to. I’ll try and be less judgmental and more hopeful.
i do think a little misandry is ok sometimes (as a guy) especially when they did something to deserve it
Nah don't try to help. Jessie Gender has a video on exactly why we don't help men and what happened to her when she tried to.
No man is worth getting raped over. Until they can get the fuck over themselves they don't deserve help.
It’s all just so hopeless. We are all too far gone, this world is. No one person can fix this, and that is the true sadness of it. None of us can be a superhero and save the world from itself. We are powerless and indefinitely suffering. The only thing that keeps me going is the depression id bring my family and friends if I were to save myself. I wish someone could’ve lived this life for me, relegate me to a spectator of my own body, that’s how it feels sometimes anyway. There is a comment on this video mentioning hopelessness being the catalyst of inaction, but what they have failed to realize is that there is no action that can be taken. Nothing can fix this, conditions can only be marginally improved, and that will never satisfy me, nor anyone else.
Yea only Jesus Christ can fix this
your videos make me feel such comfort despite the topic itself being the opposite of comfort
I haven't transitioned yet, but my experience as a male in America isn't positive. I've tried to be open and vulnerable to many other men but I've often just been taken advantage of, manipulated, gaslit, etc. There is no space for respect brought on by kindness - only fear.
fantastic video as always, ro
Skill issue
ro freaking rock thanks for the hope