Need a plate of generic, insipid platitudes with a giant helping of bad science and misogyny?

  • skyler@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    One of my favorite examples of Jordan Peterson stupidity is when he was lecturing about some ancient civilization artwork that showed two serpent creatures creating humanity. He said that because the snakes were drawn in a double helix that this ancient civilization knew about and wanted to represent DNA.

    Snakes coil around one another in a double helix when they mate. The snake creatures in the art were just fucking.

    Source is at 1:15:39 in this vid: https://youtu.be/hSNWkRw53Jo?si=MPWip62wkrMX_bP7

    • HipHoboHarold@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Stuff like this is why I will never understand people following him. Like, I get it. It’s the bigotry. And when it comes to that, nothing else matters. I understand it on paper.

      But at the same time… why? When he’s constantly wrong, or when they have to constantly lie about the things he says, why keep listening to him? Why are they like this?

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Which is a kind of superpower that makes him hard to criticize. Whenever he commits to a fact or something, that’s easy to disprove, and people do it all the time. But, when he just says something about cultural marxism or whatever, it’s so hard to unpack what he’s actually saying that it’s hard to prove he’s wrong.

            That lets his followers say that he’s so smart that even the leftist intellectuals can’t take him down. Obviously they don’t understand what he’s saying either, but that doesn’t matter. It lets them adore him as some kind of intellectual hero.

            Peterson’s got the act of a public intellectual down pat. He’s never seen without a suit or with a smile, he has a distinguished haircut and a trimmed beard. He shows no sense of humour and uses big sciencey-sounding words.

            That lets him have a symbiotic relationship with incels. He makes money selling them things like books, they get to point to a “public intellectual” who’s on their side.

              • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                But not in an obvious way like say Ben Shapiro. He does it using words that sound plausibly scientificalish.

                I just want someone to say to him “So, they say when you truly understand something, you can break it down so that other people can understand it. So, break down what ‘cultural marxism’ is so that one of these poor young men you worry so much about can understand what you mean”.

                I’m sure he’d try to deflect, try to gallop, try something. But, I would bet that a good interviewer, just keeping him focused on those two words, would show he has no idea what he’s talking about.

              • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                I don’t think so. Not even wrong is for something where you can understand what they’re saying, but what they’re saying is so nonsensical that it’s not even wrong. Peterson instead uses words that seem like they could belong together but that are borrowed from many different fields to end up with something that sounds like it could plausibly mean something if you could unpack the words he’s using, for example, in a debate he said this: “We lose the metaphorical substrate of our ethos.”

                That’s not “not even wrong”, it’s just words that have never been used in that order by anyone else, so they could essentially mean anything. Unless you can get him to explain what he means by those words, you can’t say that he’s wrong. But, he’s using those words to deliberately obfuscate what he’s saying, and if you ask him to explain what it means, he’ll just drive the conversation somewhere else.

                • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  I can easily deduce from his inability to elaborate, that he has no idea what he means and likes those words together.

      • balderdash@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        A lot of young boys don’t have positive role models and feel lost. I think that, in many ways, we are transitioning as a society and young boys are trying to figure out what it means to be a man.

        That said, there are better role models than Peterson. He really seems to think that he has expertise in every area he touches on (and he can’t help but touch everywhere).

    • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Don’t forget the time he wanted to quit benzos to show how masculine he was. His doctors wanted to taper him down so his brain didn’t fry (benzo addiction alters brain chemistry and withdrawal can seriously screw you up or kill you if you stop), but trying to taper off over several years wasn’t manly and powerful. So he flew to Russia and got a few potentially sketchy doctors to put him in a medical coma for a month, and that’s part of why he’s so fucked up now.

      Oh, or the part where his daughter convinced him to only ever eat red meat, and literally nothing else.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Even though facing the road to recovery like a man is manlier than an easy band-aid fix where you go nap-nap for a little bit and wake up crazy, but unaddicted.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      I can only assume he played a bit too much Assassin’s Creed before coming up with that one.

          • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            It did make me raise an eyebrow when Rogan got him to admit he was afraid of the possibility of Heaven being real, due to it also being eternal.

            Bruh, if you really don’t believe in something, why fear it? Do you know how scared I am of the possibility that Jason Vorhees is real? Not at all! I’m also not scared of the idea that Outworld is real and will take over our realm if we lose another tournament…

            So shouldn’t the concept of Heaven be just as powerless to his sense of fear?

            I’m not making a statement or trying to imply anything, I’m not sold on an afterlife of any kind (I think it’s a lovely idea, but, I also think it literally raining chocolate is a lovely idea), I just found that confusing is all.

          • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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            1 year ago

            Even if we assume he somehow made it through the hippy era as a PhD holder without trying it, there’s no way no one has hooked him up in the past ten years.

            • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Idk would you want to be near him when he trips? He doesn’t seem like a fun person to do a substance that can cause experiences of religion with.

              • NielsBohron@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                As an agnostic atheist that favors materialism, I found it to be very fun and exciting to do pretty massive doses of psychedelics, especially ones that frequently spur thoughts of “higher powers.” 2C-E, in particular is known for bringing about thoughts about the divine, and that was a lot of fun (I just played around on Universe Sandbox while I came up, put on some good music, then laid on the floor in a blanket and thought about the universe for a few hours).

                Dawkins on acid would be a hell of a time

                • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  God I gotta trip shrooms this weekend, that one time where I saw myself as a squid outside of my body playing with it and being judged by a stream of squids for refusing to “Stop playing with that thing and move on to embrace your truest self, a being beyond physicality, a being that can take any form or shape it wants, something far great than a human being.”

                  Was awesome…

                  God I hate being human. I’d demand to be freed from this flesh prison, but I’m not sure there’s anything to actually let out… That I may actually BE the flesh prison.

                  I feel like I’m in this weird camp of “I Don’t Want To Be An Atheist!”

                  Not because I fear Hell or anything, I just find the concept of a cold purely material universe where no greater force than Entropy exists scarier than any interpretation of Tartarus!

                • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Yeah I just worry he might do what I did and find Gaia. Us earth worshippers are annoying enough without Dawkins among us. Though I’ll acknowledge I already had a foot in the door to pantheism at the time

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Isn’t Richard Dawkins a bigger transphobe than Peterson, having literally compared being trans to wearing blackface?

          • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Because Dawkins shouldn’t get a prize for being merely “Not as insane as the other bigot!”

            What’s your understanding? Because he literally had humanitarian awards for basically being the biggest piece of shit ever when it came to women and transpeople, especially if they were both!

    • This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Lobster Peterson: “The way these snakes are drawn in resemblance to the structure of DNA, it is evident that ancient civilizations were familiar with the concept of DNA.”

      Bro, they fucking

    • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I love that channel. It’s one of the best channels I’ve discovered all year. A perfect balance of entertainment with deep dives into current hot topics. It’s like John Oliver but triple the length and even more sarcasm.

      • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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        1 year ago

        Cody’s showdy is absolutely one of the best things. Even just on how he decided to do a bit where his outfit got more deranged as the world got more chaotic and I don’t think he’s straightened his tie since the 2010s

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Joke’s on you. The crazy hair guy explained that ancient aliens taught Egyptians how to pyramid dna. Pwned!

      • seitanic@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        I love the hidden racism in those theories. Ancient Egyptians couldn’t possibly have been smart enough to build the pyramids! It must’ve been aliens!

        • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          I suppose that’s true for some people.

          I revere Ancient Egyptians and think that the disbelief (not denial, mind you) of their accomplishments relates to the sophistication of their math and architecture skills. Same as my disbelief at Ancient Rome’s ability to build a massive colosseum. How anyone could build anything massively impressive that still stands today before the Enlightenment astonishes me.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Really? He’s on the “Ancient Super Humans were Super Geniuses!” pack? I expected him to have a higher level of research than fucking Spirit Science, but naw.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hell even if they had ladder double helixes the most reasonable explanation would be a laborer did some psychedelics and either blew a priest’s mind with it or decided to incorporate the thing that blew their mind into some detailed work. It’s not difficult structure to imagine while tripping and ancient people sure did trip from time to time.

      In general, assume ancient people were on drugs before you assume ancient people had knowledge of the complex structures they didn’t have the tools to observe.

  • MediumRareChicken@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I used to like him. I fell for the crap. To my 16 year old brain what he said made a lot of sense. He had a handful of good points, and it made me believe the rest of the shit he peddled.

    I see him now, I look back on how I hung onto his words like a lost lamb, and I can only facepalm.

    I realised that the only thing he is good at is marketing, not psychology…

    • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Being 16 is the best excuse you could have for believing anything that cretin says. You’re good bro.

      • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        He has some good advice (and some batshit crazy certainly), but not anything stoics weren’t saying 2300 years ago. And he sprinkles on top of that a weird religious-adjacent theories that are perhaps due to his psychedelic use. People seem to confuse that rambling with wisdom, like they usually do with cult leaders.

        Still, I think it’s quite probable that he was a fine psychologist and was completely capable of helping individuals in whatever their struggles were. It’s his moving to a youtube stardom that caused all the problems.

        • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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          1 year ago

          As the maoral-less L. Ron Hubbard would say…
          “You don’t make money selling a book, if you want to be rich, start a religion”

          Peterson is just running a dumb cult of generic (kinda bad for most people) advice that hinges on the shared identity of sad lonely boys.

          Peter Pan in the books is sad as shit, advice to never grow up and never try to be better just makes people more lonely and miserable.

          • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            Peterson is just running a dumb cult of generic (kinda bad for most people) advice that hinges on the shared identity of sad lonely boys.

            Peter Pan in the books is sad as shit, advice to never grow up and never try to be better just makes people more lonely and miserable.

            Isn’t Peterson’s advice exactly the opposite of Peter Pan’s, though?

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Meh, all of the good advice he gives you can get from some other internet guru that isn’t such a grifter.

          “clean your room” and “wash yourself” really aren’t that profound.

          • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            I dare say that we have plenty of men (and some women) who need advice as lowly as that. If Peterson reaches them, it could be a net positive. Too bad there’s a lot crap in his advice as well.

    • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s understandable - back in the day, he had some reasonable points and an academic veneer. If course, what he was saying tended to have a strong bias, and didn’t stand up to scrutiny, but it’s hard to fault a 16 year old looking for guidance for falling for it. Hindsight is 20 20 - particularly when the negative tendencies ratcheted up rapidly over time.

      Since his Russian benzo coma (remember, kids - clean your room and don’t criticise others or systemic issues unless your life is perfect… pay no attention to my crippling addiction as I peddle that advice), things took a hard turn. I honestly think he suffered non-trivial brain damage. He’s far more erratic, bursts into tears at the drop of a hat (while trying to sell “traditional” masculinity, his takes have lost their academic veneer and are self-evidently stupid. There’s a reason he may be stripped of his accreditation.

      TL;DR: Peterson went from being a pseudo-intellectual preacher to a lolcow, and (to me) the benzo coma seems to have been the catalyst for that shift.

      • MediumRareChicken@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I didn’t know about the benzo thing. And that was the advice from him I appreciated; the clean your room, etc.

        I didn’t realise he was a walking blackout the entire time.

        And I think his as following grew, so did his ego, and he began to think he knew way more than he actually did.

        Ah well. An oversized ego is as bad as a termite infestation - if you let it grow it’ll eventually make things collapse…

        • constantokra@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Oversized ego is generally a problem with people who take it upon themselves to give advice to society in general. Sometimes you can work around it. The guy has some interesting things to say, and he’s an eloquent look into the rationalization certain people give for the problematic beliefs they already have.

          You just have to learn how to approach these people without thinking they have some special right to think and you don’t, because a little thoughtful examination shows much of what he says for the bs it is. That ability frequently comes with age and self sufficiency, which is probably why ye targets the people he does.

        • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah - it speaks to his long-term lack of principles and integrity, but that’s not on you as a teenager. I’m just glad you grew from it, acknowledged when you were wrong, and grew from it - that’s no easy thing to do.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I’m still pissed that because he badly quotes and misinterprets Jung all the time, people assume Jung is bullshit by association.

    • Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I didn’t believe him, I believed the positive messages he send and implanted. I don’t care about him nowadays, but I also don’t regret internalizing certain stuff he preached. It wasn’t totally bullshit of what he said, until a point where he completely drifted off.

      Thankfully I stopped watching any of his stuff quite a while before that happened, so I dodged this whole mess and only saw the burning ship wrack from the distance. I understand the hard feelings of others who are more involved in this topic though.

      To agree, that something someone said, was correct, isn’t a bad thing. Even if the stuff that follows is off the mark.

      To regret that, would also mean regretting failure, but without failure there’s no progress.

    • Acters@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I did what I did for everything, and I took it with a grain of salt. This had the unfortunate side effect of just not following others and keeping up with the latest trends. Oh well, I feel happier than ever before

      • Seeker of Carcosa@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        “Depression is a myth; tidy your room. Also, I’ve been clinically depressed for my whole adult life and I shamble from one crisis to another.”

    • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      And then he had to do physical therapy afterwards for months to recover from the medically induced coma that only Russia allows since the rest of the world doesn’t allow the procedure since it isn’t backed by any science.

      That guy.

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Never take advice on personal responsibility from a guy who intentionally put himself in a coma to avoid taking responsibility for his addiction to a narcotic with zero medicinal properties.

    • Foofighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      It’s so weird for me that he seemed surprised that benzos are, in fact, highly addictive with severe withdraw symptoms. Isn’t he a psychologist and potentially someone who is allowed to prescribe such drugs?

      • amelia@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Fortunately only psychiatrists can prescribe drugs and they’re actual physicians.

        • troutsushi@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          That’s an important distinction that too few people understand:

          Psychiatrists: medical doctors with a specialization in mental health who can prescribe drugs

          Psychologists: trained professionals with an academic degree who provide mental health care by (generally) talking with you

          Both are important health care providers, but they generally do very different things, and in a mental health crisis you best have one of each at hand.

      • flucksy_bango@lemmy.world
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        Your ignoring 2 facts about him. He’s a liar and he likes taking drugs. A simple Google search will tell you how dangerous it is to abuse. J-dawg didn’t care because he likes taking drugs.

        The fact that he got addicted to an antianxiety medication when his personal philosophy involves fighting monsters and dragons is hilariously pathetic.

        Also, I dare you to Google “Jordan Peterson Grandma”.

          • flucksy_bango@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You couldn’t torture that shit out of me. St. Peter could ask me to admit to it to get into heaven, and I’d walk straight past him into hell.

  • Dale@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    He is such a disappointment to me. Early Peterson was just a clinical psychologist who actually gave a shit about men’s mental health. You could filter out his religion and actually get something out of it. Then he turned into… something else.

    • BigNote@lemm.ee
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      I think this is right. I always thought of him (when I thought of him at all) as a mostly apolitical self-help guy, then I noticed that he’d become a kind of villain for the left so I looked into it and he really does seem to have gone off the rails at some point.

      There’s some kind of radicalizing feedback cycle at work with guys like Peterson --to name only one prominent example-- and I’m not sure that it’s simply that they were always assholes to begin with. You see a similar dynamic with Elon Musk; it’s almost like they take personal offense at any criticism and instead of thinking about it, they just double down.

      • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Some of it is just inherent to being rewarded for certain things. You don’t have to consciously choose to go that way, but whenever you stray that direction you get social and financial feedback.

    • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Yup as an avid TVO watcher he still has a very seminal discussion on “the meaning of man” that I highly recommend to this day.

      https://youtu.be/7uYengUXFG0?si=OP_EJrTpYB9EiFFT

      The problem as I see it is the kids ain’t alright and men in particular are struggling with this shifting dynamic in the world. He saw it, as do many of us, but Jesus Christ did he fly off the rails once the pronoun debate started.

    • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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      Yes, around a decade (or a bit more) ago I also found him interesting, based on a few short youtube videos or things I’ve read. Was never a fan, but as some other comments mentioned, young men were/are looking for these types of belonging and guidance.

      Then I of course grew up, formed my own opinions of the world, and the same time he went further and further to the unhinged side, so yi can’t take him seriously anymore.

    • HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Transphobia reliably causes brainrot. It’s weird how much faster and harder the effect seems to be relative to other bigotries, but look at Graham Linehan and how he burned his life to the ground.

    • rotopenguin@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      He was so much better 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘬 𝘰𝘧𝘧.

      Nah mate, this now is who he always was.

  • Nobsi@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Oh god, this is so embarassing for us as a society. Young men look for guidance, and all they find is Rape Tate who tells you to be an alpha male by just being obnoxiously “superior” to others.
    John Peanutbutter who tells you to be an alpha male but with science in your brain
    fresh and fit who tell you to be alpha males but by figuratively just shaming women
    and on the opposite side you have nothing for a while and then you have destiny and hasan who try to make you debate like highschoolers.

    Is the world just full of grifters now?

    • Nerorero@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      There are great people, the top Spot for me is healthy gamer gg.

      F D is peak as well.

      There are a lot of people, but non of them have the quick and simple solution that attracted lost boys and men.

    • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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      The grift of giving some free advice that may or may not work, to get them hooked so you can sell bad advice that when it doesn’t work they say it didn’t because they didn’t believe enough or try enough and there is yet another book for them to buy which then locks these people into a spiral of buying only their advice…

      Is such a long running and stupid grift for people to still be falling for this strongly.

      We are right back around to people selling blank books for you the reader to fill out with the great plan that’s gonna work. But people feel directionless and scared of the future so idiots will seek comfort anywhere they can.

    • I’m usually up to date on the field of grifters. (understanding dipshits is a specialty of mine) but I’m not sure who john peanutbutter is supposed to be. Can anyone translate?

    • Flax@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      They need to look to Jesus as their rolemodel instead

  • spez@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    It’s the worst kind of job. Taking advantage of developing teens and their self-issues to make money like that.

    • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Realistically, half the economy runs essentially on that.

      Fashion, large parts of tech (Facebook, Tinder, Pornhub,…), entertainment, …

  • M68040 [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    I hate it when people bitch about the left “not having gurus to help lost young people” or whatever when the right’s so-called gurus are worthless sacks of skin like Peterson. Also I’m here because I - in very emphatic terms - do not want a guru.

    • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]@hexbear.net
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      it’s really annoying because personal growth is not even remotely relevant to politics. The left can’t “make you a man” because that’s something you do on your own. It implies a specific set of ideas about maturity, relationships, and various other things which are your own problem. The right wants to fit you into the hierarchy, so they’ll make you a certain thing to fit. We don’t, so it’s your job to figure out if you want to be a man or a woman or something else, and what it means to reach that. We don’t give leftist dating advice because it doesn’t make sense, we’re not writing a script for you to follow. Just respect potential partners and maybe one will become a partner you respect. Whether you start a family or find someone isn’t our political project because we don’t want to make you pump out kids for the factories that obey authority.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        because that’s something you do on your own

        It may also be something best done with others, because isolated insulated alienated individuals tend to become reactionary too.

        • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]@hexbear.net
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          Although yes, it should be done as a group, and it would be better done with a group of leftists because they’re more likely to have a positive view of women, minority, work, mental health and so on, it’s just not something that needs to be done as a political project. Like, religious leftists should pray together, or leftists with children should share child care tips, but that doesn’t make it a leftist goal, y’know?

          • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            It doesn’t, and it doesn’t have to be a “pure” leftist goal for it to matter at an intersectional level. How good is a community if it’s made up of atomized individuals lacking in connection with each other? How much “pure” leftism is possible with a bunch of “I am the Main Character, everyone else is NPCs, fuck you got mine” contamination?

            • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]@hexbear.net
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              I don’t see your point. Yeah, that’s not great, but it’s not a political project and there’s not a way to provide specifically masculinity from a leftist perspective. I see a big part of leftist change in society to liberate people from the alienating idea that they’re supposed to grow up into anything in particular.

              • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                What you’re demanding isn’t possible by the very boundaries that you demand that it must fit in. If you’re stifling my case, the same limitations make yours basically impossible.

                You’re saying it must be a “political project” in some rigid way but at the same time you want some sort of “make boys feel better about themselves” thing which if isolated and non-intersectional is not a political project goal.

                • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]@hexbear.net
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                  “make boys feel better about themselves”

                  I don’t want something like that, I think inherently the goals of leftist liberation make people feel less pressure to correctly present a gender role, so the utility of a guru like JBP vanishes. You don’t need to learn to play your role, because you decide what it means to be you. So we don’t need to teach boys how to act, we’re by our actions creating an environment where that won’t be a problem. The interrim between current world and that world won’t be flawless, but that’s something best addressed by non-explicitly leftist groups. It’s not something “the party” or whatever needs to work on

      • Grumpy@sh.itjust.works
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        That’s precisely why the left will keep losing men. And as I see it, left is going to lose men faster as time goes on unless something changes.

        People can’t figure out life on their own. That’s reality. Especially with the current state of economy where the young men are doing very poorly in droves. And then the left just tells them: go figure it out on your own. Well fuck.

        Meanwhile, the right will say shit like: go work out, improve yourself, do this and that to make more money, and you will get your life together, you will own a home, you will get a wife, etc. You’re right, these advices aren’t even political. But they are real advices, which people like JBP gives. And for the majority of their main points, they are actually good messages, crazy ones aside. Sure, the political right isn’t actually gonna do shit for men, but they have real advices. Things people can follow and have hope. It’s surely more enticing than what the left preaches.

        The rebuttal from the left is often absolutely terrible messages and say things like “just don’t rape women” or “just respect potential partners” which just drives people away further. These are not real advices. These only make sense if you view men already in a negative light. It’s not actionable advice if they’re not a horrible person already. Left demonizes men, like you just did, whether you realize it or not. If a man views themselves as a good person already and the message they get is “just respect potential partners” which they already do, and still clearly achieving nothing. You get two outcomes. At best: you helped nobody. At worst: they now think you think they’re horrible because the reward isn’t coming with the advised action. So one side says you’re horrible and the other side says you have a future. Who will they stick with? Seems obvious to me.

        Imagine the gender flip of that message. “Just don’t be bitch.” How would that message be perceived by women?

        Even Andrew Tate has objectively better actionable messages for the men than the left. He constantly says stuff like go to the gym and work out. Does that actually help in the goal of dating? Fuck yeah. Actual cause and reward. These are real advices for men.

        You can’t expect people to write their own script. Vast majority clearly can’t. They need guidance. And left has none to give. Until that time comes, people like JBP and Andrew Tate will continue to sweep in the young male audience, especially in an era where fatherless boys are more bountiful than ever.

    • Thetimefarm@lemm.ee
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      The gurus normal people trust have this pesky tendency to have advanced degrees and call themselves things like “doctors” and “therapists” as if either is better than being screamed at by a car salesman in a room full of sweaty divorces.

      • 25thNight@lemmy.ml
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        The problem is the sell outs. The vaccines cause autism guy, scientists who publish about global warming being fake, Peterson himself has multiple degrees. Unfortunately in this day and age you even have to vet people with qualifications to make sure they arnt the jack ass who disagrees with the remaining 99.99% of the scientific community.

        • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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          Chopra has a PHD and is a doctor, he’ll never tell you that it’s in endocrinology and not Quantum Physics however…

    • Comment105@lemm.ee
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      Whatever your opinion on it is, the fact is that young guys are lost to right wing patriarchs. And the left doesn’t really want to outcompete the right for their attention, because the left knows they can’t outcompete the right on this without abandoning some highly treasured principles.

    • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]@hexbear.net
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      Yeah, the lifestyle coach is an inherently evil breed. Unhappy young people don’t need a talking head to tell them to buy the book and listen to the podcast, they need friends. Even just a discord where you can get relationship advice from people who have actually been in a healthy relationship is way more valuable.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      The closest the Left has to a guru is the Spirit Science guy (He’s surprisingly progressive for someone who thinks jews are from space), and I still can’t recommend that in good concious unless you need a short cartoon to explain a supernatural concept. The show’s decent on Spirituality, it’s tying it to Science that causes the problems…

      It’s almost like Religion and Science are entirely different concepts exploring different ideas, and shouldn’t be merged together into one unified force anymore than my keyboard and my dresser!

  • frankfurt_schoolgirl [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    Most of his fans have never really read his more academic works (like the one with the grandma sex dream). So, I guess they like his vibe. But his vibe is weepy alcoholic. What’s so great about that?

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      You need to find yourself, you try to let someone else find you for you and you’re inviting trouble.

  • amelia@feddit.de
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    I would have appreciated if the bottom right panel said “Hold my benzos” instead.

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    I just want to say that if you are/were a young man, and found some value in some of what this guy was saying to you…thats’s OK. Don’t feel bad, or embarrassed or mad at yourself or whatever. We are all learning all the time, and doubly so when we’re young. Never think that you can’t take what is useful and reject what isn’t. Fuck knows there is plenty to reject about what this dude says!

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      Something something broken clocks.

      “Clean your room, bucko” is advice many people’s moms tried to give them but too many of them had to hear it from a cryptofascist crank LARPing as the world’s father figure before they listened to it.

      • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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        I get it. I’m actually thinking of a particular friend of mine. He lost his father at 14, and his mom isn’t the greatest parent. He told me Peterson was kind of exactly what he needed at a tough time in his life. Fortunately, he’s always been a smart kid, and saw through the toxic shit. Five years later and he’s a queer communist! I guess I’m just saying that if you really needed to hear “clean your room” from a father figure, and it helped you… don’t feel bad that Peterson was the guy who filled that role at the time. Obviously I’m speaking to people who have grown to see him differently now.

    • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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      I don’t know if it’s a new trend or something, but lots of people have something interesting to say, and say lots of hogwash besides and everyone gobbles it all up including the hogwash. You don’t have to go all in when reading someone’s work. For example, I read Freud and it was quite interesting. Most of it was horseshit (although historically interesting), but he still made the point that we don’t do all that we do consciously , which was hugely important.

      Ideas and memes (in the original sense) are there to be examined and weighed against one another, not followed blindly.

      So Petersen (I’m not really sure who that is), why not, he might have some salient points, even though he seems to be a controversial figure, apparently rightly so.