this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 4 points 6 days ago

Right wing men aren't lonely. They have community. They have validation. They have support. Thats why lonely men go to the right.

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 117 points 1 week ago

I wish this was accurate. There would be a lot less fascists.

[–] Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net 94 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (11 children)

This is absolutely a major contributing factor, but there's more to it than this. Everybody is lonely, pretty much regardless of gender. This issue hurts everyone.

And it is also caused in part because of how fucked up we've designed our society. It's nearly impossible to make friends as an adult because

  • we're all working too much to have the free time for it
  • there are (effectively) no third places where you can hang out with the expectation to meet people without the expectation of spending money
  • to get anywhere you generally need a car, highways and roads divide and spread everything which makes walking or biking difficult
  • social media is run for profit, not for the sake of actually connecting people
  • these above issues feed into the issue OP is pointing out. If you are lonely and your life isn't going too well, then you're gonna seek answers for this complicated issue. And fascists are all too willing to take advantage and provide simple answers. It then turns into a self feeding cycle.

I'm sure there's a bunch of other reasons too, but those are the ones of the top of my sleep deprived head. Even if all the above awful values men have disappeared, the above problems would still need to be fixed.

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

There are loads of area’s where you can get around without a car, which increases area’s to be outside and meet others.

For a lot of people including me it is a choice to use the car as much as we do.

[–] timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Very, very dependent on where you are. You're on feddit.nl so I'll assume you live in the Nederlands. For... Most of the US, going without a car is either not really doable or you will absolutely miss out on going lots of places.

Really wish that wasn't the case but alas.

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

If more people go with bike and/or walk you would have more infrastructure for it. Also keep annoying your local representatives.

Where there is a will there is a way.

Even in the US there are places that are inaccessible by car as far as I know. Then again some people in the US also have the BS abuse that wide bike lanes make it harder for fire trucks etc to get around ….

[–] timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Oh we try but it's a very uphill battle. Not to mention we have the loudest car brains all shrieking that "it isn't used!" when talking about the 2 bike lanes in a city, as if they were even connected or went anywhere people needed to go (and they are still used by yours truly and others anyhow).

It's not really a surprise when people don't use it when they have to brave 40+mph car traffic to get to the bike lane right?

I keep contacting my reps but I've come to the conclusion that meaningful transit and Europe-like bike infra will just never happen in my lifetime. Sad but maybe generations after me will have it.

[–] ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 43 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Also to add to the list:

  • As third-places don't exist without paying for things, more socialisation has moved online where intimate connections are not as deep as inperson so the connections are weaker and don't last as long.

  • Internet socialising has a tendency to form echo chambers and social bubbles so interacting with new people with different perspectives, even online, is more difficult which is eroding socialising skills.

  • Dating sites and apps have capitalized on this loss of places to meet people and most of these platforms are controlled by a single entity: Match Group.

  • Match Group are explicitly making the dating experience worse for both men and women because it makes more money for them and they have little to no competition.

It goes like this: women get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of messages and harassed on the platform, women leave those platforms, fewer % of women on the platform, men then pay money to get more potential matches, women get overwhelmed, and therefore the cycle repeats.

At least that's my impression from the experience I have had and observed when asking my women friends about it. Not sure how the experience is for those looking for non-hetrosexual relationships, please comment below how it's similar or different for other groups.

[–] CMonster@discuss.online 1 points 6 days ago

If that were true then the number one dating app would be Bumble because it only lets the women message. I don't think anyone is being "overwhelmed" by the amount of messages they receive. No one I've spoken to has ever said anything like that.

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[–] Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.com 80 points 1 week ago (4 children)

So if I'm a lonely guy it can only be because I'm a sack of shit. Cool cool. Love that. Great for the self esteem.

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[–] gxgx55@lemmy.world 63 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Painting all lonely men as douches is kind of fucked up, no?

[–] gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah it's really invidating and alienating young men.

Liberals wonder why young men flock to the conservative, and then they say stuff that's just very invalidating. Like, if you want to convince somebody, you have to make an attractive offer. Instead, it feels as if today's "feminists" are just blaming everything bad in the world on men. Even though your neighbor man has exactly zero responsibility for the world at large.

[–] CMonster@discuss.online 1 points 6 days ago

People just aren't wired to handle uncomfortable self truths. We haven't figured out a way to get around it yet as a society.

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[–] TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone 57 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The fascists go for a predatory numbers game, hitting up as many women as possible while hoping they find ones vulnerable enough to get roped into an abusive relationship. It's a strategy that breaks down against women who socially reinforce self respect amongst each other. Of course, this isn't unique, as fascism similarly recruits vulnerable men who struggle with self respect. It's abuse and cruelty all the way down.

[–] sudneo@lemm.ee 43 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There are plenty of women in far right/neo-fascist etc. groups, and often people from those groups have relationships with other people from those groups. Your comment gives very much the impression that only males are fascists, which is absolutely not my experience dealing with Forza Nuova/Casapound people (both neo-fascists parties) in my youth.

I also see the male loneliness epidemic as an orthogonal problem to males being fascists, but that's yet another topic.

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[–] chunes@lemmy.world 56 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

Not even remotely true. Reminder that Trump won white women voters in 2024.

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[–] Manticore@lemmy.nz 50 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Every time I see this meme format I'm a little frustrated and sad.

A long time ago, Cosmo did a bunch of studies on dating app users. It published a bunch of their results and people have been miscounting it ever since to serve their assumptions.

On dating apps, when one woman matches with one man, 90% of women match with 10% of men. This is largely a result of the app populations, which were and are mostly men. Unless you're okay with your girl dating ~9 men at once, dating apps will only match a small percentage of men, because that's how maths works.

When asked to judge dating app profile pictures (no other profile information), women judged men's pictures lower than men judged women's. This is as much a factor of the profile pictures we choose as anything else. In addition, men's match preferences had a strong relationship with their attraction ranks. Whereas for women the relationship was weaker, and the content of the profile was a larger deciding factor. But people hear about the judging profile photos thing and go 'women are more critical of appearance than men are -> women are shallow'.

When asked 'what age are [men/women] most atteactive', women tended to answer close to their own age (with a drop off around 50). Most men said 20-25. But most men saying still typically matched close to their own age. Much like the women with profile pictures, they were trying to answer a direct question with what they believed was a critical, scientific, 'objective' answer, rather than reflecting their own dating preferences. But now women fear (or believe) that any men will not find them attractive as they age.

There's a lot of interesting things in those findings, if you acknowledge it is specifically measuring dating app users, had nuanced findings, and was not scientifically robust in the first place. It's broad conclusions DO NOT apply to the population as a whole.

And I ache a little each time I see its conclusions reduced and misused to justify misanthropy. Much like the myth of 'the alpha wolf', it's misinformation that refuses to die.

[–] Zenith@lemm.ee 11 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Dating apps are social cancer

Make friends with women, jumping straight to “romance” with zero friendship is like running a relationship on insane difficulty

[–] CMonster@discuss.online 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I don't agree with this. They are a stream-lined method to meet other people who are interested in making new contacts without going out of their comfort zone. I also may be biased since I met my s/o on Bumble but we are 6 years in and this is the healthiest most loving relationship I've ever been in. I know my experience is most likely the exception rather than the norm YMMV

Also I don't know how going on a few dates with someone is "jumping right to romance"

[–] uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 4 points 6 days ago

Dating apps are quite horrible, but I would have never met my girlfriend without them. We are both very shy and agree that even if we had met by chance, nobody would have ever made a move.

None of my women friends are romantically interesting to me and I'm not the kind of person who meets a lot of new people. I'm very happy with my small circle of friends and neither my job nor my hobbies expose me to new people.

A dating app helped me to work around that. I was very lucky though and the first person I met with turned out to be the perfect match for me.

[–] Manticore@lemmy.nz 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Women also use dating apps for their own reasons, too. While its true there are a lot of socially inept men on them, I'm uncomfortable with your phrasing. It seems to be blaming men (and not women) for the apps' existence.

Dating apps are mostly a reflection of a society with poor options for socialising organically. They're trying to get people connected in a world that makes organic meeting places increasingly expensive or rare, or work hours that are particularly long and limit our energy and free time.

The world is also increasingly hostile to the 'cold approach'. Dating apps are environments where men know they are allowed to interact with women, snd both can easily disengage from bad matches.That's especially crucial for the more gentle men that don't want to make women uncomfortable in the first place, since they would likely never cold approach, or feel uncomfortable admitting interest to their friends and acquaintances.

[–] uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 1 points 6 days ago

That last paragraph speaks true to me. I'm not the kind of person to make a move. But with online dating, there is always romantic context.

"I've been seeing this person from the dating app for a few weeks now and I'm really attracted, we always have a great time, maybe I should ask if they'd like to kiss" is a lot easier than initiating intimacy without that context.

[–] GaetanLaberge@lemm.ee 1 points 6 days ago

Great breakdown, thanks

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[–] frankpsy@lemm.ee 47 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I really feel like this is an idea that needs to die. Plenty of abusive and hateful men seem to have no problems with getting the type of relationships they want; this just inadvertently promotes the idea that one needs to be a 'nice guy' in order to have a relationship. Not every guy who leans left succeeds in wooing a woman, and right wingers complaining about where the women are at are probably in circles with primarily left-leaning women and they need to go look in a church or country concert or something.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Yeah, i even suspect that what makes men turn a bit more to the right with age is the realization that it's more likely to find a woman-partner this way.

I.e., adapting "work hard" way of thinking to earn more money, because women are ultimately also largely attracted to wealth.

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[–] LongboardingLad@lemmy.world 47 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I'm always super hesitant to comment on stuff like this because I don't want to be lumped in with the fascists but I'm going to break that rule just this once. When people hear "Male Loneliness Epidemic", it means different things to different people. It appears to me as most left leaning people hear, "I don't have a woman that caters to me and my needs". For myself it means, "I don't have a Support System of friends and family to lean on." A partner would be great but I would get far greater satisfaction in gaining a group of friends or a sense of belonging. Paired with likely Autism and ADHD, things aren't super rad for me on any aspect of life. That's all my own stuff to deal with though.

The takeaway is I hope anyone reading this is doing okay, regardless of gender. I may not get the struggles of your life, but I hope you are overcoming them.

[–] megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I think there is a general loneliness epidemic, but it’s particularly acute with men who were never pressured or given the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to build and maintain a community around them.

Like the systems and environments that used to facilitate this no longer exist, and it is left to individuals to do it them selves, something impossible without those skills. Those institutions and systems that used to facilitate community building have been pivoted to profit or dismantled if they couldn’t generate profit or if they were actively undermining the profitability of something else.

[–] Zenith@lemm.ee 3 points 6 days ago

When you tell most men their problem is they don’t have any friends not that they don’t have a girlfriend they take that very personally and reject the idea

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[–] commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 1 week ago

Instructions unclear, turned into an insufferable Marxist and now I don't have anyone to talk to

[–] trungulox@lemm.ee 32 points 1 week ago (2 children)

So. Counterpoint to this, in that I think those guys should just keep doing what they’re doing.

The bar is so low all I need to do is show up on a date and not say anything racist and I’m in.

In fact: y’all should go even harder with the douchebaggery.

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[–] pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 32 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Please, don't be dismissive of a real problem just because people you (rightfully) hate are disproportionately more affected.

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[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Unfortunately there are a lot of similarly awful women, especially in more rural and suburban areas.

[–] Zenith@lemm.ee 2 points 6 days ago

Don’t date them either!

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[–] kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zone 28 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Yeah you're right, I'm only alone because Im garbage, thanks for that reassurance.

[–] CMonster@discuss.online 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Can I ask how old you are?

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