trying talking about your feelings as a man and see how society reacts…
This is odd to me, because talking about my feelings is how I got close to romantic partners. It’s also how I formed a lot of friendships with other men. How can you be close to someone if you don’t talk about feelings?
Very few feelings are allowed. If you keep to those social acceptable feelings, you’re fine. The second you go off-script, people are done with you.
Like I can pet my dog and say I love her. That surface level stuff is fine. But talk about anything complex, like the struggles we’ve had, or how she helped me through some depressing periods or she had a period of sickness and anxiety and misbehavior? People freak out and back away or tell me to shut up and go get a therapist and get my dog one too.
Men are allowed a very narrow and shallow range of public emotion. Basically anger, and sentimentality are acceptable. Anything else? You’re creepy, weird, or mentally ill.
If you go outside that box or show complexity or vulnerability, you’re socially rejected because it makes people ‘uncomfortable.’
Yeah, no, I meant less the surface level stuff and more the “anything complex” category that you brought up.
Not everybody wants to talk about that kind of stuff all the time, and that’s normal. But it has not been my experience that all men want to talk about surface level stuff and only women talk about deeper feelings.
cool, my experience is that people only want to talk about their problems, regardless of gender. they dont’ give a fuck about yours and get offended and upset if you do so. but I’m male, and I’ve never had the experience of having anyone care about my problems beyond dismissing them as ‘bringing them down’ and that i need to ‘get over it’. even when it’s my dad dying of cancer and it’s my so called ‘loving girlfriend’ of years.
That really sucks, and I can’t tell you why your experience has been different from mine. I’d guess you ended up around shitty people. And maybe it kept happening, making you feel jaded and/or reluctant to share with others, including those who may have been more accepting.
I’m glad you are least recognize that your girlfriend (hopefully “ex-” now) isn’t as loving as she seemed.
I hope that you can find people to keep in your life with whom you can have those deep conversations about your feelings.
Yeah that’s what toxic masculinity is. People (men and women) hold toxic views of what a man should be, and punish men for staying from this ideal.
You were a victim of toxic masculinity when you shared your feelings and were then victimised because of it. The people you shared your feelings with were toxic assholes.
am i a victim of air because I have to breathe it? or a victim of capitalism because i have to work to pay my bills?
there is no getting outside of it. every ‘woke’ person i’ve ever met also hates men for sharing their feelings, almost as if they are just virtue signalling…
the only person who a man can ever open up w/o consequence is a therapist, because it’s a professional paid relationship.
sucks, but that’s how it is. and nobody is interested in changing it.
And do people really believe that women don’t talk to AI companions, in various forms, too?
I’m a woman and I spoke to one of the apps for a while because I was bloody lonely (still am 🤷♀️). Had zero to do with men or murder. I didn’t have anyone, of either gender, to connect with.
It’s really easy to just reduce this to a male issue, a toxic masculinity, a male violence issue. We need to go deeper than that if we actually want to understand why people, men, women, everyone, use different AI.
But threads like this, with all the judgement, aren’t going to get a lot of people who admit they use/have used/have considered using AI. By just criticising/laughing, etc at people who do it, ironically, we turn more people towards the AIs.
nah, it’s just the sexist double standard, that if a man does it, it’s nefarious/negative/harmful. but if a woman does it, it’s a form of ‘self-care’.
the way interpret this stuff would also be a matter of physical looks as well, as if an attractive person doing it would be viewed very differently than an unattractive person.
yes, you’re correct. stigmatization just further entrenches things.
Yeah. I have become painfully aware of this the past few years. People’s obessive use of AI and social media has distorted their real life interactions to be far less substantail than they used to be.
Which is why so many people, even who are very social, are so lonely. We have created a society that does not create substantial connections anymore, and obsesses over trivialities, and endless repeats and broadcasts them as fundamental truths.
I have noticed that online, and in IRL, nobody asks each other questions anymore. What they do, is make accusations. And it’s miserable and draining to be constantly accused of stuff. I feel like this shift started around 2021.
Back in 2018 I could meet a stranger and they would be like ‘oh where are you from? oh cool, what was it like there, I have not been!’
now it’s like ‘i bet you are from x, oh you’re not? well you SEEM LIKE a person from x. oh you are from y? THAT’S WEIRD. I haven’t been there but i bet it’s weird because you are weird.’ Or they try to tell me that I can’t be from y, because they KNOW i am from x. It’s so bizarre. Increasingly the strangers I meet basically tell me that they know the TRUTH about me… even as I tell them that what they are saying isn’t true.
I basically can’t have conversations anymore, at least like I used to. I used to be able to sit there for 20-30m and talk about a single book I read to someone, and they’d ask me all about it and I’d ask them about a book they like. Now they just jump down my throat or lecture me and never ask me any questions, and switch to another topic after like a few minutes and say dismissive stuff about how books are outdated and dumb. Or even if they do like to read, they get all bent out of shape that I don’t read the same type of stuff as they do.
Same with movies, same with hobbies, same with my job or my family or other stuff that I used to be able to connect with people over. Used to be a nice back and forth, now it’d dodging bullets and if you don’t give the ‘right’ answer they get angry and dismiss you as a bad person.
And on the flip side… AI gives these people what they want. It just parrots back to them what they want to hear about how wonderful and great they are and how everything they do is amazing and valid and their life is so hard… which is precisely what another human being is NOT going to give you…
I feel like it’s a social psyop… To help forward all this crazy shit happening. It’s clear Ai is an “arms race”.
It seems like the psyop is to make life shitty and then promote some magical fix (Ai) that’s going to save us, while it further leashes us to submission and rewrites history and current narration of what humanity is.
It’s just the mental version of obesity crisis. It’s people choosing the easy and unhealthy option because it’s cheaper and readily available, than the far more difficult and more costly option of eating well and exercise.
People choose to be dumb. Just like they choose to be lazy.
no psyop is required. biology doesn’t like making an effort if it doesn’t have to do so. you can see lots of non-human examples of this as well.
getting human beings outside of their default biological impulses to be lazy and not think… takes years of training and work. hence why so few people are able to achieve it. and you can always default back to it if you don’t maintain the effort consistently
This is more sad and pathetic than anything. But this is the result of toxic masculinity.
Is this also the result of toxic masculinity or does it just go one way?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/09/ai-chatbot-love-relationships
Toxic masculinity is a cultural mindset. Men should not be talking about their feelings because it’s weak and “gay” says society.
That’s what I’m going for.
trying talking about your feelings as a man and see how society reacts…
spoiler: it won’t be pleasant.
sort of like how these men in the article are talking about their feelings…
This is odd to me, because talking about my feelings is how I got close to romantic partners. It’s also how I formed a lot of friendships with other men. How can you be close to someone if you don’t talk about feelings?
Which feelings?
Very few feelings are allowed. If you keep to those social acceptable feelings, you’re fine. The second you go off-script, people are done with you.
Like I can pet my dog and say I love her. That surface level stuff is fine. But talk about anything complex, like the struggles we’ve had, or how she helped me through some depressing periods or she had a period of sickness and anxiety and misbehavior? People freak out and back away or tell me to shut up and go get a therapist and get my dog one too.
Men are allowed a very narrow and shallow range of public emotion. Basically anger, and sentimentality are acceptable. Anything else? You’re creepy, weird, or mentally ill.
If you go outside that box or show complexity or vulnerability, you’re socially rejected because it makes people ‘uncomfortable.’
Yeah, no, I meant less the surface level stuff and more the “anything complex” category that you brought up.
Not everybody wants to talk about that kind of stuff all the time, and that’s normal. But it has not been my experience that all men want to talk about surface level stuff and only women talk about deeper feelings.
cool, my experience is that people only want to talk about their problems, regardless of gender. they dont’ give a fuck about yours and get offended and upset if you do so. but I’m male, and I’ve never had the experience of having anyone care about my problems beyond dismissing them as ‘bringing them down’ and that i need to ‘get over it’. even when it’s my dad dying of cancer and it’s my so called ‘loving girlfriend’ of years.
That really sucks, and I can’t tell you why your experience has been different from mine. I’d guess you ended up around shitty people. And maybe it kept happening, making you feel jaded and/or reluctant to share with others, including those who may have been more accepting.
I’m glad you are least recognize that your girlfriend (hopefully “ex-” now) isn’t as loving as she seemed.
I hope that you can find people to keep in your life with whom you can have those deep conversations about your feelings.
Yeah that’s what toxic masculinity is. People (men and women) hold toxic views of what a man should be, and punish men for staying from this ideal.
You were a victim of toxic masculinity when you shared your feelings and were then victimised because of it. The people you shared your feelings with were toxic assholes.
am i a victim of air because I have to breathe it? or a victim of capitalism because i have to work to pay my bills?
there is no getting outside of it. every ‘woke’ person i’ve ever met also hates men for sharing their feelings, almost as if they are just virtue signalling…
the only person who a man can ever open up w/o consequence is a therapist, because it’s a professional paid relationship.
sucks, but that’s how it is. and nobody is interested in changing it.
To riff off of Margret Atwood, men go to AI chatbots because they won’t laugh at them. Women go to AI chatbots because they won’t kill them.
did you read the article? this doesn’t seem related at all
No, they are just here to spout cliche gender war bullshit about how men are awful for existing.
and if you asked them about women on male violence they’d deny it exists.
And do people really believe that women don’t talk to AI companions, in various forms, too?
I’m a woman and I spoke to one of the apps for a while because I was bloody lonely (still am 🤷♀️). Had zero to do with men or murder. I didn’t have anyone, of either gender, to connect with.
It’s really easy to just reduce this to a male issue, a toxic masculinity, a male violence issue. We need to go deeper than that if we actually want to understand why people, men, women, everyone, use different AI.
But threads like this, with all the judgement, aren’t going to get a lot of people who admit they use/have used/have considered using AI. By just criticising/laughing, etc at people who do it, ironically, we turn more people towards the AIs.
nah, it’s just the sexist double standard, that if a man does it, it’s nefarious/negative/harmful. but if a woman does it, it’s a form of ‘self-care’.
the way interpret this stuff would also be a matter of physical looks as well, as if an attractive person doing it would be viewed very differently than an unattractive person.
yes, you’re correct. stigmatization just further entrenches things.
A result of modern culture I’d say. People became less human in real life, so much so that people are using robots instead.
Yeah. I have become painfully aware of this the past few years. People’s obessive use of AI and social media has distorted their real life interactions to be far less substantail than they used to be.
Which is why so many people, even who are very social, are so lonely. We have created a society that does not create substantial connections anymore, and obsesses over trivialities, and endless repeats and broadcasts them as fundamental truths.
I have noticed that online, and in IRL, nobody asks each other questions anymore. What they do, is make accusations. And it’s miserable and draining to be constantly accused of stuff. I feel like this shift started around 2021.
Back in 2018 I could meet a stranger and they would be like ‘oh where are you from? oh cool, what was it like there, I have not been!’
now it’s like ‘i bet you are from x, oh you’re not? well you SEEM LIKE a person from x. oh you are from y? THAT’S WEIRD. I haven’t been there but i bet it’s weird because you are weird.’ Or they try to tell me that I can’t be from y, because they KNOW i am from x. It’s so bizarre. Increasingly the strangers I meet basically tell me that they know the TRUTH about me… even as I tell them that what they are saying isn’t true.
I basically can’t have conversations anymore, at least like I used to. I used to be able to sit there for 20-30m and talk about a single book I read to someone, and they’d ask me all about it and I’d ask them about a book they like. Now they just jump down my throat or lecture me and never ask me any questions, and switch to another topic after like a few minutes and say dismissive stuff about how books are outdated and dumb. Or even if they do like to read, they get all bent out of shape that I don’t read the same type of stuff as they do.
Same with movies, same with hobbies, same with my job or my family or other stuff that I used to be able to connect with people over. Used to be a nice back and forth, now it’d dodging bullets and if you don’t give the ‘right’ answer they get angry and dismiss you as a bad person.
And on the flip side… AI gives these people what they want. It just parrots back to them what they want to hear about how wonderful and great they are and how everything they do is amazing and valid and their life is so hard… which is precisely what another human being is NOT going to give you…
I feel like it’s a social psyop… To help forward all this crazy shit happening. It’s clear Ai is an “arms race”.
It seems like the psyop is to make life shitty and then promote some magical fix (Ai) that’s going to save us, while it further leashes us to submission and rewrites history and current narration of what humanity is.
No it’s not.
It’s just the mental version of obesity crisis. It’s people choosing the easy and unhealthy option because it’s cheaper and readily available, than the far more difficult and more costly option of eating well and exercise.
I mean I can’t disagree with that, but couldn’t that BE the psyop…? Make people dumb as fuck so you can own them…
People choose to be dumb. Just like they choose to be lazy.
no psyop is required. biology doesn’t like making an effort if it doesn’t have to do so. you can see lots of non-human examples of this as well.
getting human beings outside of their default biological impulses to be lazy and not think… takes years of training and work. hence why so few people are able to achieve it. and you can always default back to it if you don’t maintain the effort consistently