This is the most depressing article I've read in a long time
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/tiktok-house-collab-house-the-anxiety-of-influencers/
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/tiktok-house-collab-house-the-anxiety-of-influencers/
Harper's Magazine
The Anxiety of Influencers
Educating the TikTok generation
"...A good illustration of this phenomenon recently appeared in a piece for MEL magazine about an increasingly disturbing trend — women whose once-promising romantic relationships implode after their boyfriends become “redpilled.”
These men will tell you, over and over, how they love to use logic, and how the people they follow online also use logic. They are also massive fans of declaring that they have “facts” and that their analysis is “unbiased.”
The men interviewed in the piece, once sweet and caring, started changing after going down a rabbit hole of extremist political content on YouTube and involving themselves in radical right-wing online communities. Convinced of their absolute correctness, these men became at first frustrated, then verbally abusive once they realized their female partners did not always agree with their new views. Any dialogue attempted by these men was not made — at least as far as their partners could tell — with the goal of exchanging views and opening themselves to being challenged. Their goal was to assert their beliefs as fact; to teach their partner the truth, as a Christian missionary might put it. Every woman interviewed in the article — including those who were more formally educated than their boyfriends — makes reference to their former partners belittling their intelligence and rationality. These men were certain that they were the smart ones, that they had correctly assessed the “facts” with “logic,” and that if their womenfolk did not accept this without question, they were simply too dumb to understand.
This might not seem surprising at first — when it comes to contentious beliefs, it’s not uncommon for people to act as though their view is the inherently superior one. But what’s remarkable is how ridiculously confident these men became, in a relatively short time, in their unique philosopher-king-like possession of objective truth and superior analysis… all while copying their arguments from an echo-chamber of poorly cited webcam videos and anonymous internet comments."
https://theoutline.com/post/7083/the-magical-thinking-of-guys-who-love-logic
These men will tell you, over and over, how they love to use logic, and how the people they follow online also use logic. They are also massive fans of declaring that they have “facts” and that their analysis is “unbiased.”
The men interviewed in the piece, once sweet and caring, started changing after going down a rabbit hole of extremist political content on YouTube and involving themselves in radical right-wing online communities. Convinced of their absolute correctness, these men became at first frustrated, then verbally abusive once they realized their female partners did not always agree with their new views. Any dialogue attempted by these men was not made — at least as far as their partners could tell — with the goal of exchanging views and opening themselves to being challenged. Their goal was to assert their beliefs as fact; to teach their partner the truth, as a Christian missionary might put it. Every woman interviewed in the article — including those who were more formally educated than their boyfriends — makes reference to their former partners belittling their intelligence and rationality. These men were certain that they were the smart ones, that they had correctly assessed the “facts” with “logic,” and that if their womenfolk did not accept this without question, they were simply too dumb to understand.
This might not seem surprising at first — when it comes to contentious beliefs, it’s not uncommon for people to act as though their view is the inherently superior one. But what’s remarkable is how ridiculously confident these men became, in a relatively short time, in their unique philosopher-king-like possession of objective truth and superior analysis… all while copying their arguments from an echo-chamber of poorly cited webcam videos and anonymous internet comments."
https://theoutline.com/post/7083/the-magical-thinking-of-guys-who-love-logic
The Outline
The magical thinking of guys who love logic
Why so many men online love to use “logic” to win an argument, and then disappear before they can find out they're wrong.