Man v/s Memes
Why we can't escape these dichotomous low effort memes?
Do you ever get to a place in your internet wanderings that you want to ignore something, but it just keeps showing up in your timeline? In your algorithm? Like a weird bug? That’s how I feel about the Drake v/s Kendrick thing, and Taylor Swift album releases, and now the new gender discourse meme that’s sweeping the nation: Man v/s Bear. I just wanted to ignore this so badly, not because I want to ignore the real danger that women and people of all genders feel in this world, but because as soon as I heard about this meme, I realised how simplistic, dichotomous, and dumb this discourse was. And I thought we as an internet society would be beyond black and white gender discourse, yet here we are.
If you don’t know what this is (you’re so blessed by the way), Man v/s Bear started from a video from a guy called "@callmebkbk” which is a reply from a comment from an unknown video that said “no seeing a man in the woods is not scarier than seeing a bear for so many reasons bro” Here’s the reply below.
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And he’s right in some way! He’s using that example that a lot of women have been taught through this world that it’s dangerous and scary out there for them, and that’s been proven right by many many many reasons. Women have a good real feeling that for any man that they find in the woods they will react with a sense of danger. That makes sense! Everyone can go home learning a little bit more about women right?
However, if you scratch that itch a little deeper…
It’s also a bit of “stranger danger panic” that we as a society love to do. And it doesn’t take into consideration that the most likely culprit of a sexual assault is someone you know
And with the stranger danger piece there’s always a tinge of racism attached to it
It also takes away the humanity of men, and why they may or not do those things (societal issues at large)
It does not include trans men who may also feel more at danger as well...
And disabled men…
And doesn’t this seem a bit of like lib online feminism
This question “If you find a man in the woods or a bear in the woods, which is scarier?” is not a question that has a real true answer. Bears and men have inherit dangers that are unique. Both may be scary in different ways. One is natural, the other societal.
However, if our minds go to the worst place possible, then both possibilities seem uniquely awful. So there’s no real answer is there? And yet people are out here demanding an answer like we’re forming a debate. Honestly, it’s tiring and reminds me of a great comment from one of my friends in another group paraphrasing another equally smart individual:
“Memes are not arguments. They are aimed at the amygdala and I will not engage with them like they are arguments”
And holy hell does this meme purely encapsulates this. This meme was a direct shot at people’s flight/fight/freeze response. It was not aimed to have a discourse, it was aimed for someone to feel smug, and for the others to feel defensive.
Honestly I don’t blame the original poster, I think he was just replying to a poor comment and I’m sure was happy for the discussion to continue, but maybe not to turn into a meme where we’re asking random people in the street “WHAT’S MORE DANGEROUS, A MAN OR A BEAR???” Or it’s become a linchpin for the worst type of semantic driven discourse that I have heard this year.
The comments and discussion of Man v/s Bear truly remind me of a bygone era where the buds of the feminist discourse on the internet really took hold. Let’s call it, umm, the 2010’s. A space where there was a true increase of feminist content due to the stupid crap that happened due to Gamergate and how feminist were being attacked online and in person. This I think allowed modern feminists to create a discourse around what it means to be a woman in the world and online. This also of course coincided with the rise of Men’s Rights Activists, some of the saddest and pathetic people online.
However, during this time we saw the rise of online liberal feminism. Or at least the apex of liberal feminism since that certain type of feminism has been going on for a long time. Alice Capelle here gives a good breakdown as to why this was bad1:
During this time though, a generation of people started to become familiar with feminism in a way that was more mainstream. A lot of that was actually pretty cool, people actually engaging in the idea of the patriarchy, and how a lot of people, but especially men, played a driving part in it. However, because we had a lot of what I would call “beginner feminists” or feminists who were a bit younger, we got a BUNCH of bad memes. Some of them were just a bit smug, and some just required a bit of further thinking to know it made no sense. Here’s a famous example:
The worst one, I believe, being #k*llallmen (you can fill it in, I’ll call it KAM from now on). If you looked at the context of KAM and the people saying it, it’s pretty clear that it was a joke. No one wanted to kill anyone, it was used as a way in which women were venting their frustrations towards how they were treated in society. Here’s an example of it:
Now did KAM start a bunch of bad faith interpretations of Men’s Right Activists claiming that they were treated unfairly? Yes absolutely, and honestly we should ignore those idiots. But the problem is that because of KAM and other memes like it, fairly or not, it did cause a lot of young men to take it literally, and not engage with feminism at all.
And if you scratch beyond the surface of KAM you will find that…
It did not think about the lives of young black men in North America.
Or the lives of the houseless.
Or the suicide rate of men which are very high.
Or that people can see you venting on the internet saying you are going to kill someone
I get it, it’s a meme. But a meme is not an argument! The issue is that people absolutely dug their heels in to say KAM was actually fine, when truly it became a net negative. Something for people to feel smug about, or people to feel defensive. And the result was that it did become a topic of discussion defending the meme, not discussing further. And it did drive some younger people to disengage withe feminism. I know this because it STILL gets brought up in discourse as to why some people don’t want to be a feminist. 2
I will say that KAM and Man v/s Bear to me are similar. They are from a specific type of feminist discourse that for it to be effective it requires no further questioning. It’s not a discourse, it’s not made to create conversations, or even a sense of understanding. At it’s best it was made for women to feel solidarity (kind of like KAM), but at it’s worst it was really made to shut down conversations. And my worry is that it’s going to have the same chilling effect that KAM did. Drive young people who are extremely online to disengage with feminism.
The issue is that just like KAM, Man v/s Bear started from a pretty ok place, especially if you know the context. But due to how we use social media, and how engagement cycles happen, it got evolved, got remixed, got repurposed as a gotcha, and has created a vacuum for people to not want to engage it in at all. Even in the most feminist places for men, they have shut down that discussion, because they realise a real important fact: MEMES ARE NOT ARGUMENTS. I completely understand how women feel unsafe in this world, and I would even say that the question could even be more simple as asking
“Would you feel safe if you run into a strange woman or a strange man in the woods?”
See isn’t that better? No one would care about bears. Or even try to bring it in the situation, because it’s not relevant. And not only that there would be a healthier discussion about this and not ignore the true dangers that exist for women (And for any other gender besides men) in this world.
I also would thought men would be better than this as well, especially millennial men, like you’ve seen this before. There’s no need to engage in it if you feel defensive about it, and if you need to engage in it because someone accosted you in some way, you can say “I see where you’re coming from” and leave it as that. We’ve all been around the internet long enough to understand this.3
Because again, memes are not arguments.
Just to be clear, feminism is NOT bad, liberal feminism is definitely bad
Now I obviously DO NOT blame those types of memes with the rise of sexism and bigotry in lots of countries in the 2020’s. There are long and ridiculous issues that have contributed to that, and none of it came from online jokes.
I know the irony that I have engaged in this very voluntarily.