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Law in the Internet Society
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Encoded Flak Jacket: Masculinity in the Internet Era-- By JorgeRosario - 13 Oct 2024 From taking grenades in the depths of Korea to cursing out their latest Tinder rejection, societies have devised accepted mechanisms to internalize the aggression and resentment of men. While most discontented young men do not fight in wars, they externalize their masculinity through social media, where the platforms become battlegrounds for affirming identity. Whether it be through intense sexualization, performative chivalry, or curated personas, these spaces allow men to channel their frustrations into digital arenas. This digital phenomenon exacerbates already existing gender inequalities: empowering dynamics that privilege masculine narratives and burden women with the fallout of these frustrations. Men’s inevitable failures to conform to idealized versions of success or dominance often lead to resentment, which is then projected onto women as scapegoats. Whether it be romantically or socially, modern day social media applications such as Bumble and X produce a cocaine-like high on its users, creating a new male aura of masculinity that makes men feel like gangsters and Playboys when they truly are much more like porn addicts and comfort seekers. Masculinity affects humanity and therefore the gender relations within that society. But how exactly has the invention of a hyper-connected social media truly changed the fabric of human interaction? And even more importantly, has masculinity been truly shifted from its primal and Darwinist conception or has it just presented itself in a different form, that is la misma mierda, pero en otro envase?Love the way you lieLies are a common practice within human interaction. Research has shown that over the course of a week we deceive about 30 percent of people we have 1:1 interactions with. Good lies about unseeable and unprovable things are even more believable when they are said face-to-face. However, apps like Tinder and Bumble have opened a new and unprecedented space for men to appear as something they are not. Now, visible and physical aspects that could not be denied but only made up for with a “good personality” can be smudged and altered behind fictitious height measurements and carefully curated pictures that tell a story of a man’s wealth and altruism even if that is not the case. However, stepping back from the male domination of cyber dating sheds more light on the propagation of inequalities and danger the social net has created. Historically male beings have been the ones that seek out their female counterparts. The male bravado is something that women have experienced for most of their lives, and the fear of dire repercussions has only been made worse through social media. While men and women may equally participate in platforms like dating apps, their possible losses are astronomically different. Men worry that their dates will either not show up, get a free dinner and not sleep with them, or that they will be made fun of for not looking exactly like their profile. Women face an extremely different reality, where their lives are at the mercy of someone they have chatted with a few times. The fear of possible rejection versus the fear of possible dismemberment are the unequal dynamics that have always existed in traditional courtship but are exacerbated by that machine. Now the digital age provides even less protections for women, while apps may allow a female user to block and report, giving the false impression of security, usually these profiles are linked with other social media accounts with phone numbers and addresses that put women's lives in danger. While deception in these apps is practiced by both parties, they are for completely different reasons. Men deceive in order to be shielded from a large insecurity: rejection. That feeling of rejection, so ingrained into our genetic code, is ultimately passed on to the machine that corrects its algorithm and continues spitting out more desirable matches for the carefully curated (and usually fabricated) profile the man has created. This ultimately leads to the inception of beta males and incels. With an inability to satisfy their sexual desires, they turn to blaming women for their misfortune instead of modifying their own behavior. What was once resilience to better oneself becomes compliance with the machine, and what was a lesson after a rejection turns into unhealable frustration and violence towards their counterparts. In stark contrast to men, women deceive in order to protect themselves. Whether it be conforming to beauty standards or lying to get out of a date they no longer feel comfortable with, women are forced to appease the man, and to give him reasons why they are not the problem, why the man’s fragile masculinity and explosiveness is acceptable. The balances are all tipped against the woman, giving the man incentive to seep further into lunacy and objectifying attitudes. Dating apps have not changed the essence of partner finding, but it has aggravated the dangers women face and the leeway men get to ‘trash’ the matches they do not like (or make them feel insecure) instead of internalizing the feeling of rejection and possibly self-actualizing. Thus, both men and women are users of the platforms, but only one of them faces greater costs of participating.Where do we go from here?These digital systems, while portraying masculinity in a different flavor, only magnify the primal ways they have been shown throughout history: violence and projection, especially to what are perceived as inferior (e.g women). The Parasite is able to perfectly create an ecosystem where there is a gendered cost of participation and potential loss, but that all participants are willing to engage with given dating apps skyrocketing users. The solution is much more complicated than what Bumble purports to do by giving women more “agency,” rather it requires for men to understand that women's liberation from a patriarchal system is men's liberation from restrictive social expectations.You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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