Scroll through masculinity influencer social media feeds and you're constantly told there's a "crisis of meaning." But is that really true? Has a shared meaning ever reflected the totality of any population?
Derek turns this idea over in his head by looking at the mythology of the hero's journey. But first, he provides some inspirational messages from the White Dudes for Harris call last week, where perhaps a new and empowering sense of masculinity is taking hold.
Show Notes
White Dudes for Harris
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I spend a lot of time reviewing Twitter posts and YouTube videos predominantly for this podcast.
I know a lot of people say, don't give your attention to what's happening on Twitter, but I still find it relevant, especially for this work, because if I don't know what a wide variety of people, especially in the conspirituality realm, the wellness realm, the grifting realm, are thinking and how they're presenting information, then I'm not going to be able to form coherent thoughts around A, how I think we should be able to battle it, but also, importantly, B, where is the crossover between
What they believe and what they're stating and where my own beliefs and my own access to information lies.
So that gives me a more holistic view of the landscape that I'm trying to do either journalism or editorialize within.
Now that said, it's not always great for my mental health.
I can't say I go to bed every night feeling great about the world.
When you consume hours of this information, it can have a very negative effect on you, as you well know, and if you decide to pursue the sort of career that I have.
It's part of the occupational hazard, and it does have an influence on me.
For example, last weekend's brief, I pronounced Kamala Harris's name wrong.
Now, why?
Because I had been reviewing hours of footage before recording that day, and when you're in the right-wing universe, Things slip into your unconscious.
I apologize for it.
It happens.
That said, it is part of that occupational hazard.
If you listen to this podcast often, my focus is generally on health and wellness and medical misinformation, but there are other aspects of this field that I like to study, and one of them is masculinity, or the ways that men present What they think masculinity is.
We've often talked about the influence of someone like Joe Rogan.
Then you have even more toxic influencers like Andrew Tate.
And the way they present this very patriarchal, misogynistic man, as if it's this warrior from the caveman days who needs to be revived, I think is rather toxic.
So today I want to do two things in this bonus episode.
First, I want to investigate, briefly, something that really gave me hope, which was listening to the White Dudes for Harris call last week.
Because you had a group of men who I think provided a really solid framework for a masculinity that I think is very helpful and beneficial, especially to the sort of generation of boys that Andrew Tate has picked off with all of his vitriol and hatred.
I really appreciated hearing these men present what I believe to be more masculine principles which are rooted in care and strength and empathy and compassion and also drive the passion to want to affect the electoral system and put someone in office who Whether or not you agree with all of her policies would make for a much better reality than the alternative that we currently have.
After I play some of the clips that I really enjoyed, I want to address briefly the crisis in meaning that I see circulating so often whenever I see these conversations around masculinity pop up.
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