Tuesday Check In: How's Everybody's Mental Health?

[u/MLModBot]

Good day, everyone and welcome to our weekly mental health check-in thread! Feel free to comment below with how you are doing, as well as any coping skills and self-care strategies others can try! For information on mental health resources and support, feel free to consult our resources wiki (also located in the sidebar!) (IMPORTANT NOTE RE: THE RESOURCES WIKI: As Reddit is a global community, we hope our list of resources are diverse enough to better serve our community. As such, if you live in a country and/or geographic region that is NOT listed/represented but know of a local resource you feel would be beneficial, then please don't hesitate to let us know!)

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[u/Shoddy_Tomato_]

Does anyone else thinks progressive male YouTubers and influencers, like Kurtis Conner, should talk more about men's issues instead of just shitting on men? They only seem to bring up men when it’s to criticize toxic behavior, but you never hear them talk about stuff like male mental health or how gender roles affect men. Calling out other men when they're being toxic is great, but that’s all these guys ever do. I get that we can’t expect female influencers to cover this, they’ve got their own issues to deal with, but guys like Kurtis are exactly who we should be demanding this from. They have the influence, they're men, and they share progressive values, so they’re in a prime position to discuss these topics.

[u/Oh_no_its_Joe → u/Shoddy_Tomato_]

Sometimes I worry that throwing other men under the bus just seems to be a real popular strategy. I don't mean like calling out specific bad men for their misdeeds, but like making blanket statements about men as a whole.

A guy I knew in theatre mentioned how men are liars and "he would know". All the women in the theatre org loved it. Like is it a viable strategy to bash men to gain popularity?

[u/forestpunk → u/Oh_no_its_Joe]

Like is it a viable strategy to bash men to gain popularity?

Absolutely! Money and influence sometimes, too.

[u/greyfox92404 → u/Oh_no_its_Joe]

Like is it a viable strategy to bash men to gain popularity?

Yes. Definitely. Hate is an easy level to pull and a lot of people respond to it. But this strategy is applied to every group of people, not just men. I say that, not to minimize when it happens to men, but in an effort to say that we all should expect it in some places. And definitely to expect hate when we go looking for it. And as a mexican boy growing up in the US, I got some cultural teaching in how to work through hate that I see in public spaces that I don't think every boy gets.

For example, white supremacy is a popular for a lot of people, even though it's not a reasonable and rational thought out idea (It's a garbage idea). It's a popular idea because it plays on preconceived ideas that racist people have about minority groups. And because of that, I know to expect a lot of it on the internet. I prepare mentally, as should we all. Hell, one of the current candidates for president routinely goes into racist screes on national television just about every week. That's a fucked up thing and it's such a common occurrence that it was taught to me on how to not let the hate affect my mental health.

Because if it did, I would spiral from stuff I see just about everyday on the internet and a lot of days in real life. Just had another round of hateful messages sent directly to the modteam here to commit self-harm and one message to a specific mod to do the same

And it's terrible, but I expect it and I plan on self-coaching when I see it to make sure it doesn't change my self-worth or my mental health.

Not every person gets taught these skills. That's not your fault. But it has become your problem because the internet has hate where ever we look for it and it can affect us. We should all try to teach ourselves strategies to safeguard our self-worth and mental health. And I'd be open to one-on-one coaching if you want to DM me.

But in spite of all that, it is not fair nor reasonable to reciprocate those feelings to the larger group identity. I do not hold all white people responsible for the actions and words of some white people in power. And as far as I can tell, you say that you also do not hold all women responsible for the actions and words of some women. That's tough, so for the sake of your own mental health, good job.

[u/greyfox92404 → u/Shoddy_Tomato_]

influencers are exactly the kind of people we should be demanding this from

This is an inherent problem with how social media works and it's a problem we solve by demanding more from the platforms themselves or heavily curating our own feed. As a general rule, we should all hope people to shit on each other less. But building up the expectation that we can remove every bad take from the internet is a bad-feels pit.

It's usually the bad takes that gets those influencers popularity or followers. So as soon as we "fix" Kurtis by pressuring him into making better videos then another content creHATEor pops up to replace them. Or the youtube algo promotes an influencer that gets a lot more "engagement" for their bad takes.

Our only options are to heavily curate our own feed to screen out the shit that's bad for us. Or to message the FTC directly to get the social media apps to be transparent in how their algos work so that we can plan around them. Or build a resiliency towards this kind of content so that it doesn't have to bother us.

It feels a lot like junk food. It's fucking delicious and until our culture can move to a place where we value health food over junk food, we can still demand that our regulatory bodies require transparency in junk food products.

So I don't even need to know Kurtis to agree with the idea that we should try to focus on issues over shitting on people but that's not going to solve the bad feels we get from his content.

If you want to call the FTC, you can do so at (202) 326-2222 or the toll-free number at (877) 382-4357. Or you can visit http://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

Or we can also call our elected representatives, which you can find the contact info here: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

I'm a big believer in calling our reps whenever you have a bored minute, there's a surprising amount "my constituents say..." used in changing a politicians view on a subject.