Originally Posted by The Batlord

Were they? I don't know. But I'm not even spearheading them as emblematic of the problem so much as one more symptom. I mean bullying has existed throughout human culture presumably for as long as human culture has existed. The confusion of what it means to be male in society now has confused many as to how they should even act without any real alternative, the loss of the "American dream" through late stage capitalist decay has robbed the youth of what they were raised to believe they were capable of, American consumerism has conditioned the public to see themselves not as human beings but as inhuman digits on a pie chart for advertising firms. Humanity itself is simply a degraded simulacrum of what it once believed it was when even that was a simulacrum of something that it never understood in the first place.

Throw the "common" degradation of being treated as a loser into the mix without proper mental health support and we're reaping what we've sowed.