巫女 …miko.

While i generally feel that it is appropriate to write essays from the bird perspective of a bigger, general picture, i make a difference in the case of Mainstream-Men. Bill Cosby, Jeremy Hambly and Ashton Hall are referenced directly. Jake Paul, Sean Combs and Andrew Tate are mentioned in tags.

I am aware that this Dirty Half-Dozen is an arbitrary bunch to put in the spotlight. Many thousands, if not millions of other bad examples are getting away as i am writing these words, seeming harmless, hiding in anonymity. However, there are cases that urge an author to come down from her bird perspective. Be concrete. Name bad examples. This is one of those cases.

So just in case some of these Mainstream-Men come across my little essay about them, i want to be sure that they are actually able to have at least a basic understanding of what the problem is i have with them. And i know that i am not the only one with that problem, with that kind of male individual. That is another reason why i want to make my point as accurate and unambiguous as possible.

I know how nonchalant Mainstream-Men can be when it comes to the damage they cause; how delusional they become when it comes to the responsibilities they ignore. How fast and easy they are with downplay, denial, excuses, shifting blame, signaling virtue and playing the victim. Mainstream-Men are feeding on the benefits of being popular and relatable. They are enabled by majority, and they are spoiled by society. They run through their lives with a permanent V.I.P. pass handed out by widespread support and public opinion. They are moving in herds, hiding in networks, and hunting in mobs.

I come to understand that male individuals who fit the contemporary archetype collection of Mainstream-Men are surprisingly fond of cultivating a self-image of outdated, misconceived masculinity. Their attitude and behavior is every bit as macho, delusional and narcissistic as it was the norm in the 20th century; now slightly modernized, less rigid and self-assured, marginally less blunt and obvious but still, oddly blinkered, retrograde and old-fashioned.

Much like the Macho-Men of the past, their sons are particularly fragile in their sense of identity. This is something you would be justified in calling it mentally Effeminate and Asthenic, constantly blurring the boundary between healthy confidence and pathological narcissism. They still try to be as self-centered and laboriously confident as possible, as if this was a trendy trailblazing lifestyle or a young pioneering reformer’s life goal. Modern Mainstream-Men still like to be dominant without thought, and martial without reason, to the point of being intentionally quarrelsome and abrasive.

Like their macho templates from the past they are as self-serious as heart attacks, and in this the New Mainstream-Men are still unintentionally comical and piss-poor examples for kids and teenage boys. They carry the same old gooner-creep, fratboy-like, built-in insecurities as their fathers. They never lay them off, not even when they are way past their prime, when they are tired, weak and broken. Not even when such behavior is so out of touch and so out of place that it becomes lolcow material.

And as their fathers were, they still are pseudo-rational and emotionally underdeveloped. And they still are self-sentimental and nostalgically whiny, wallowing in bouts of saccharine, unbridled self-pity whenever they see a chance to get another one in — sideways if need be. They still are socially unintelligent, and they stay socially unintelligent because they refuse to see how becoming socially smart would actually benefit themselves, and everyone else they spend their life with.

The New Mainstream-Men still cultivate a low-effort, condescending kind of indifference to everyone around them. Many of them spend their whole life in aggressive competition, trying to jockey for some Cartoon Maverick Number-One position that does not exist in reality, and in pursuing that fake life goal they are pointlessly competing with everyone, still turning their whole environment into a tiring, depressing, in-fighting, orchestrated sweatshop.

Next time you come across Mainstream-Men, you should keep in mind that there was never any reason to accept their outlook on life, let alone adopt it, and that little has changed about it as adult generations change. There is no reason to pay heed to however high-up they like to think they are in the social pecking order, or how down-low they like to think you are in it. Not nearly all of them fall so hard, come so low in life that they become involuntary clowns and lolcows, but they all have genuine, serious tragedy clown potential. Every single one of them.

New Generation, Middle Age or Oldtimer, there is still nothing worthy of particular attention or respect in Mainstream-Men. Nothing beyond polite, formal neutrality. The reaction they deserve by default is the very same emotionless, uninvolved indifference they constantly hand out to everyone. Any kind of intense emotion and empathy is essentially wasted on them.

The Challenge (Agnes Miller Wagner 1934) via enchantedbook

I have come understand that some people develop a habit or even a personal preference for quarreling or nagging ― persistently pursuing someone with casual aggression and random, non-constructive criticism. Instead of accepting conflict and resolving it when needed, they come to regularly, actively seek out small-scale, petty conflict without any interest in ending it. Instead of an effort towards solving a problem and conflict management, nagging is a maneuver towards problem making, and conflict perversion.

High-profile arguing and fighting usually happens with a person to be held responsible in a specific situation, for a concrete reason. Low-profile nagging on the other hand creates an opportunity to vent aimless dissatisfaction and unfocused, undigested anger; not on the person responsible for a troublesome circumstance but on a likely, uninvolved target, preferably someone who doesn’t fight back. Regardless of what an argument or a fight might be able to achieve, any kind or amount of nagging doesn’t solve any problem, nor does it even mean to make anything better. It’s just less work than a fight, and far less challenging. And you can get away with it more easily. And it’s a whole lot more convenient.

That said, people nag not only to make it easy on themselves. They also do it to draw gratification from it. That aspect of feeling good, or at least feeling better when they do it, that is one of the core elements of Sadistic behavior. That doesn’t mean that nagging is as bad as other, more severe forms of Sadism. In addition, what makes it especially attractive is the fact that it’s still being tolerated and even supported, at least passively, by mainstream society. 

Nagging at its conceptual core is verbal and emotional abuse rather than physical or sexual abuse. There are also differences in the degree of suffering being caused. Nagging still shares the same roots with other, more severe forms of Sadism. All go back to the same mindset, to the same bad habit and the same antisocial motive. And the fact remains that nagging doesn’t sort any problem, ever, and that the person doing it doesn’t even try to make anything better. They just want to feel better. All they want is to sneak in a short, questionable moment of satisfaction by causing discomfort to someone else.