The topic is multifacedted and I cant pretend to understand it fully, but to speak of some aspects as I understand them

There is a large gap between societal and cultural expectations of men, and the financial and realities for everone at the moment.

One part of societal expectations of men is that they expected to be independent, capable of getting and holding a job that pays well enough to buy a car, own a house, etc. The current reality is that many men are in debt after a university degree, have a hard time finding a job because 99% of applications get rejected outright, and get paid significantly less accounting for inflation and costs compared to their predecessors. It is impossible for the average person to afford a house on the typical wages these days without already having a significant other or by pooling resources. This has led to a large number of people who live at home and have less money to spend on things like going out.

I say this as someone who is fairly well off given my job and field, I get paid ~2x what some of my friends do and I could not afford a house within a 2hr drive of my workplace. I live at home with my parents and it fucking sucks.

Another aspect of bad cultural expectations is that men are expected to be cold unfeeling lone wolf types, and the idea that any sort of male bonding is “gay” which has caused people to spend less time doing things with friends. Men end up with smaller social circles and with less friends. With increasing costs and long working hours, they end up with little time to actually hang out together.

An additional aspect of the failure of cultural expectations to adjust the need to place blame. Blame has fallen on the individual man for being, among other things, lazy good for nothings, who are weak, ugly, etc.

If we look at the US, they have been abandoned by the left, both by the democrats (e.g. economy is fine, must be your fault), by the feminists (told to be vulnerable but called weak for being vulnerable, shunned at every instance because “sounds like a you problem” and “figure it out yourself”) and by their own parents who had an easier time.

This is part of why the manosphere became so popular. Men have been told for so long that they were the problem, many of them still just boys, whereas right wing pundits like jordan peterson, andrew tate, joe rogan, etc gave them targets to redirect blame. An excuse for “actually, its not my fault I cant find a date, its the woman’s fault,” etc. Note that this is not my personal belief. It also gives them a sense of community and people talk to that actually listen and make them feel heard and justified in their struggles.

The blame game has caused us to ignore several important systematic factors. The rise of individualism, stagnant wages relative to inflation and costs, and growing wealth inequality, as well as the erosion of community and mens safety nets are all major factors which have decreased mens mental health and increased male loneliness.

There’s lemmy 411 for trying to find relevant communities

I think he meant to reply to the main thread (which he did with the same comment) but didnt delete this (or maybe it didnt federate?)

Not related to the article, but this seems to have posted twice; is this a double post bug? Or did you manually submit it the second time (i.e. first time errored out)

Thats not even accounting for all the bots, alts and inactive accounts; it wouldnt surprise me in the least if the majority of those were bots or throwaways. Another benefit of lemmy’s setup is that individual servers will be fairly small so theres tons of space for smaller communities with higher quality discussion, even if it does end up causing duplicate communities across instances.

200; It’s pretty hard to play if you’re dead

Anyone who thinks differently is not for you. People can do almost whatever they want for fun, as long as it’s legal. Labeling someone childish because they like something is stupid; what am I going to do, drink all day, go to bars, hike, travel, play sports, do n’th paid activity, etc? Some people have the time, money or health that allows or disallows them to do these things, and some people do or don’t have the interest. Tons of people enjoy watching tv shows. Are we supposed to grow out of that too? By that logic, we shouldn’t enjoy anything we did as kids and just do things only relegated to adults.

Id say most people regardless of when they were born think like this unless they themselves play games. It’s more socially acceptable amongst the younger generation right now (e.g. college graduates) and probably because they’re still considered young. Kids have more free time than adults and the barrier to entry for them is low. Parents often see their kids playing games and in genral have a negative attitude towards them for consuming time. Id say as people go into their 30s and 40s its considered less acceptable because societal expectations are that people will work and get married and have kids by then, and they’d have less time for solo activities. Going to the bar while having young kids or other activities is less acceptable. As kids get older their parents have more time for fun, but playing games is seen as childish because they either see their kids playing or because its something from their own childhood and other ventures that cost money like travel are now available to them when they werent as kids

Id wager that they dont put too much money into R&D and just pay one guy to port over the same code from their last last last generation printer to the new one. Over time its become an unrecognizable mess that is just hacked into working and no one ever takes a look under the hood. Their main market is the ink anyways, so making the printer good at what it does is an afterthought

The south park “cut a chicken’s head of and see where it stops running”;

Freedom of speech is from consequences from the government. That means you cannot be prosecuted for insulting politicians for example. But you can certainly be sued in civil court for the same thing.

Oh man, I forgot to add that to the list

I sunk so many hours just into the train system

I dont like battle royales

Most of the time is spent just trying to get equipment or running from point A to point B, and by the time you’ve spent 15-20 minutes just running, one encounter means you lose

I play CS:GO. I like it because its more constant decision making, and the shorter rounds means less time investment into a single round. But it has gotten so bad with cheaters. I have played CS for over 15 years and yet I constantly run into brand new accounts or accounts that were clearly boosted (500+ commends in each category), bought, and used by cheaters who said that “it was cheaper than rust…” The matchmaking is so atrocious, I have people at the bottom of the ranks on my team and top of the ranks on theirs; the averages arent even close. I’m not playing CS:GO anymore and if CS2 doesnt fix the cheating problem, I’m not going back.