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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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Seven months ago I posted the following thesis (if we can call it that) here:

The online proliferation of the man vs bear in the woods meme, plus similar earlier social media phenomena with a feminist message are, in reality, generalized and simplified expressions of women's overall frustration and latent anger directed at the loss of manhood initiation rituals that characterizes modern post-patriarchal atomized societies; namely, the current social reality is that adolescent boys and young single men are no longer vetted by fathers, elders, brothers, uncles and other pre-vetted eligible men before they are, in effect, released into their wider social circle from the family environment, which makes it rather difficult and risky for single women to separate eligible men from ineligible men.

Regarding the part I now bolded for the current discussion I’ll say that I did have some rather vague awareness of the “Are we dating the same guy” Facebook group back when I posted the comment, meaning that I was aware that they exist and are mostly feminist in their social orientation, but that was it. Well, a couple of days ago I unexpectedly came across a reddit thread that was rather interesting from a culture war perspective where the original poster accused the local AWDTSG group of committing defamation, slander and violation of privacy. I would link the URL but I can’t, as the entire thread was nuked after entire comment chains were purged and the OP deleted his profile (probably as a result of getting doxxed by feminists). The Facebook group in question was also scrubbed from Google somehow i.e. some setting was changed so that it doesn’t show up in Google results anymore, or something like that, plus its admins made their profiles private.

Anyway, as the thread piqued my interest I later found out that there’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to this phenomenon and now I’d like to make some observations.

  1. The name itself is already curious. It makes it all seem innocent and well-meaning, light-hearted. Just a bunch of average women helping each other out and also having a bit of fun and enjoying a sense of community in the process. Of course, the reality is that these groups should rather be named “Did I just fall for a bigamist/fraudster/liar/rapist/harasser/creep” because these are the real sentiments the female members are expressing.

  2. Also I just love how the name absolutely reinforces the Red Pill thesis on unscrupulous alpha males practicing plate-spinning / building soft harems in a social milieu of unrestrained hypergamy (hypergyny, to be more precise). I’m rather certain we’ll never see a “Are we dating the same girl” online men’s group anywhere.

  3. The name also entails that the members share the expectation of strict monogamous living as the default social arrangement. This is also somewhat comical, as I’m sure that if asked, nearly all of them would swear up and down that they support sexual autonomy, ‘alternative lifestyles’, sexual freedom, polyamory etc.

  4. I’ve seen people argue that such groups regularly violate GDPR regulations. In other words, sharing non-public personal information such as employment data, photos, screenshots of personal messages, photos/screenshots of documents etc. in Facebook groups is technically against the law. I doubt that I’m qualified to comment on the legal aspect of all of this, but I do find such arguments plausible. What I do not doubt though is that were there men’s online groups doing the same to women’s personal information, I’m 100% sure they would swiftly invite a huge media scandal, widespread condemnation, legal action and the attention of the authorities.

  5. The consensus between female members and women that are sympathetic to them is “just be a decent man, and you won’t get accused by the group” i.e. “women never lie”. Which is just pure gold. I’m sure they don’t even hear themselves or just don’t care, which is more likely. “Just be a decent comrade and the Cheka won’t arrest you”, “good citizens have nothing to fear from the police” etc. It’s a story as old as time.

  6. One usual story that gets posted in such groups is “I was duped by a man who was actually married with kids”. Alternatively, “I was duped by a man who was a violent creep”. My initial response is: do you actually need the assistance of a Facebook group of anonymous posters to realize that? Did you not see the warning signs? Also, just the logistics involved in all of this make me wonder. If you’re an asshole guy who just wants to heartlessly use up some gullible woman as a fuckbuddy/FWB, how do you even keep your marriage, wife and kids a secret? How does this even work i.e. how many men are there who can plausibly make it work? If you’re a family man, most of the time you have outside the workplace will usually be taken up by your family.

  7. Just to state the obvious: if these women are so afraid, so certain that a hostile male-centric society enables their victimization routinely etc., why don’t they try finding male partners through people they trust? By their own accord, they are all normal, decent women with lives, not isolated loser incel creeps living in basements – surely they have friends, colleagues, relatives they can trust?!

I’m rather certain we’ll never see a “Are we dating the same girl” online men’s group anywhere.

Well, the Wikipedia article you linked yourself gives an example of that:

A male counterpart, named "Are We Dating the Same Girl NYC" was created for New York. It had mostly the same guidelines and rules to the original. When the original Are We Dating The Same Guy group found it, they said that it was disgusting and unacceptable for men to post screenshots of women's dating profiles. Many people in the men's group were called incels.[14]

But of course we all know the men's group is simply a counterreaction borne out of spite and not a serious contender since your reasoning is still mostly true. However, the hypocrisy is still incredible. The women feeling justified in their own stalking behavior while criticizing the men is a classic instance of the Women are wonderful effect.