By Myra Kirk
My ex-roommate and I were in her Toyota 4Runner with her boyfriend when he started yelling at her for wanting to buy a brand-new motorcycle with her own money. After I chimed in and told him to stop, he querulously urged her to pull over at the nearest gas station to “cool off.”
Finally, he left the car. In between sobs, she apologized to me. I turned to her, having experienced this myself.
“I know you might not listen to me, but this is going to get worse,” I said. “I love you as a friend, and you do not deserve this.”
It didn’t take long for me to contemplate moving out. I got out of the lease hastily, emailing her parents about the concerning behaviors I witnessed.
While I don’t blame my ex-roommate, the environment wasn’t conducive to my own wellbeing. I don’t want to live with a Nazi who prolifically uses the n-word and excuses yelling at women. I could no longer stand her boyfriend “shadow-boxing,” or rather, throwing fake punches at me so that I’d flinch, insisting on hoisting me in the air out of nowhere, and yelling about how he craves to take my life.
Although many like to pigeonhole domestic violence survivors into a slender category of personality, of being “too nice,” my ex-roommate contravened those stereotypes. She rocked a mullet and skater JNCO jeans, revving and tinkering with her motorcycle constantly. She was a badass, and the farthest from weak. But her boyfriend whittled her into someone I did not recognize.
I have carried some guilt surrounding not convincing her that he was dangerous, which women are socialized to do while most men seemingly sit idly by. The situation made me reflect on the toxic string of behaviors I’ve seen with young men today.
There is a common thread with men like this: They live and breathe propaganda. Jobless at 25 years old, relying on disability compensation as an ex-Marine, my roommate’s boyfriend would lounge on the couch blaring right-wing mumbo jumbo from YouTube.
One version of this extremist media, among Gen Z, is “red-pilled” content. Epistemologically, it budded from The Matrix, where misogynists interpreted the film as reflective of our society in the sense that men do not hold privilege. They believe that to escape the grain of this “matrix,” one must take the red pill and jettison respect for women.
“Women are agents of the matrix, and they’re not letting you fight back,” claims Andrew Tate in his garishly superficial videos, where he is often shirtless or parading his watches. Tate now faces human trafficking and sexual misconduct charges in Romania. He and many others are at the head of the red-pilled dominion, rallying boys as young as 13 into a lifestyle of contempt.
Social media sites almost beckon for these ideologies to take root, with gendered algorithms that pantomime stereotypes. Sites promote sex and soft porn to men, and beauty and fashion to women. This breaches into politics, with female users receiving 11% more content about 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris than men, according to The Washington Post.
Online echo chambers reinforce those beliefs, or rather play on confirmation bias, and disseminate fake news to make profit. This is especially prevalent with YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok, where younger demographics are more likely to consume news videos. Using similar language to white supremacists, many who consume this content are drawn toward an alt-right ideology that shares a deep disdain for women and feminism.
One of the best-known influencers of this red-pilled parade is Nick Fuentes, who criticized JD Vance for having an Indian wife, but is celebrated as a Trump supporter. He has said of women seeking the presidency: “Glass ceiling? It’s a ceiling of bricks; you’ll never make it. Never going to happen, sweetie. Your body, our choice.”
Comments like these rose up to 4,600% on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) following the election, according to reporting from PBS. These guys see Trump as an emblem of triumph over women.
Both my ex-boyfriend and my ex-roommate’s were equally infatuated with Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old mass-murderer. He killed six people, including two sorority girls, in California and attributed the acts to vengeance toward a reality where he is “denied” sex and love. He even wrote a 141-page manifesto on his virginity and unhinged views on women.
Yet another element of men’s disillusionment is that they abhor women who aren’t virgins, yet they consume pornography like madmen. In being desensitized, they have outrageous — often Eurocentric — standards on who is nubile, or “looksmaxxed,” and who isn’t. Hypocritically, they generalize that all women care about is a man’s looks while they pick apart a woman’s appearance.
Hubs for these men and young boys are forums like 4Chan. Unsurprisingly, my ex-roommate’s boyfriend would frequent 4Chan, and tried to persuade me to join so that I could find a boyfriend like him. One of the most egregious examples on this trend of online misogyny was a chat with 70,000 men detailing how they would rape a woman.
Now the themes of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale don’t seem too far-fetched. As Atwood wrote, “may the Lord open” the minds and hearts of young men today, before it is too late.
Myra Kirk is a junior majoring in journalism at CU Boulder. She is currently an intern and multimedia journalist at Bucket List Community Café.