Reject Modernity, Embrace Masculinity

Is it only a meme, or is there more to it?

If you've braved this part of YouTube before, then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m referring to a category of videos, all sharing the same title as this piece - Reject Modernity, Embrace Masculinity. The videos are short, about 2-3 minutes usually, and begin with clips intending to show the ‘worst of humanity’. By this I mean that the clips show men in embarrassing or humiliating states, like grotesque figures stuffing their faces in muk-bangs, men in furry suits or living out fantasies of pretending to be an actual baby, diapers and all, and men saying things that compromise the integrity of masculinity itself. The assertion here being that modern men are an affront to what masculinity stands for. You might think of these videos as being very much pro-toxic-masculinity.

Most include the same song, which is a hardstyle electronic remix of Alec Benjamin’s Let Me Down Slowly. Hardstyle is a sub-genre of electronic music that’s characterized by loud thumping baselines as the main part of the song. In the fitness realm, this style of music was popularized by an online figure in the early 2010’s, Zyzz, who passed away at the age of 22 of a heart attack, commonly believed to have been brought on by the use of anabolic steroids. After the initial clips showcasing men “embarrassing” themselves, these videos then show Zyzz clips as the song crescendos and the bass drops. The back half of the video can be described as a motivational video for men, showing historical figures, statues of Greek Gods, legendary sports moments, incredible male physiques, and so on. The point of these videos being that men have lost our way trying to navigate the modern world and that to get back on track, we ought to get back to our roots of being manly, strong, dominating, etc.

I’ll link some examples below.

These videos glorify the whole-milk drinking, rare steak-eating, fist-fighting, mustachioed men of the past and decries the direction that the creators of this content feel modern man is being pushed in. For some, modern culture has all but castrated men, confusing noble pursuits like equality and acceptance with making men feel like they’re villains for falling into a more traditional phenotype. The explosion of these types of videos indicate a push-back against ‘woke’ culture - more of these videos are being posted every day, garnering thousands of views nearly instantly, with ‘wokeness’ being the main target for vilification. The more of these videos you watch, the more YouTube’s algorithm recommends them.

Naturally, the videos and the message behind them has been memed pretty heavily. The videos are pretty cringey, and the worship of an almost forgotten internet figure who died ten years ago is more than a little strange.

I love them.

I spent countless hours of my youth watching motivational videos of a similar type on YouTube, preferring the adrenalized effects of inspirational music and speech laid over the top of incredible sports moments and historical happenings to SpongeBob or whatever Disney show was popular at the time. I’d watch a few of these videos, get all hyped up, and head outside in any weather to imagine myself being the hero of the story - the main character of my own epic. I’d spend entire mornings and afternoons imagining I just hit the buzzer beater in the Final Four, or scored a belter of a goal in the dying embers of a World Cup final, or pretending that I was surviving a heavy fire fight, the only man left in my squad. My brain was filled with larger than life moments created by larger than life men; every decision I made was first run through a series of filters. Would my heroes make this choice? Is this going to help me be like them when I grow up? I so badly wanted to be a tough, disciplined, stoic kid, and I was.

Eventually I aged out of this ‘phase’. My imagination and willingness to get lost in it dwindled, and I turned to motivations more grounded in reality. I think those videos and experiences were extremely formative and helped me accomplish things that I had no business accomplishing otherwise. Watching these silly videos gave me the very same feelings I chased when I was younger. They made me want to be a better man for the sake of being a better man, because it’s the right thing to do. These videos aren’t advocating for maltreatment of anyone; they’re advocating for each and every one of us to embrace what makes us men and focus our attention inwardly, on being better people.

I feel like, for whatever reason, we have a predisposition to focus on the biggest problems in the world and try to work backwards from there. It used to be better understood that to change the world, one has to change oneself first. Grassroots movements are more effective than trying to start at the top.

Yes, it is a ridiculous, absurd movement, but I think if it helps more men be themselves and try to be better, I fully support it.