EDITORIAL—The Great Pendulum Swing

By The Log Staff

In an online culture fueled by outrage, the growing divide between young men and women may be less about ideology and more about retaliation.

Image generated by ChatGPT

Spend five minutes scrolling on TikTok and you’ll find yourself questioning whether young men and women truly like each other at all. One side of the internet depicts masculinity in an alpha-male fashion meant to dominate women, while another treats men as a monolith that women can collectively attribute their frustrations to.

This online discourse fuels resentment-driven algorithms that constantly place men and women against each other. The ultimate outcome is not a closer means of unity but rather a stronger attitude toward giving the other gender a “taste of their own medicine.” 

Out of almost 24,000 participants from across 30 countries, King’s College found that 53% of Gen Z women identified themselves as feminists, which makes sense when 72% of American women aged 18-29 agree that women still face significant discrimination. In the eyes of women, the issue of misogyny remains apparent in American culture, yet online discourse increasingly transforms real frustration into generalized hostility toward men.

A study done by two psychologists found that retaliation is often a way to fix a felt loss of power or status. However, what the study also addresses, which is more heavily analyzed by psychiatrist James Kimmel, is how retaliation activates the reward system in the brain—triggering dopamine similar to that produced from addictive substances. Kimmel attributes this short-lived dopamine hit to algorithms providing users with an “enemy” to retaliate against through comment sections. 

The result? A great pendulum of extreme, opposing gender ideologies swings back and forth, each time seemingly stronger than the last. Misogyny, experienced by women for thousands of years, understandably prompts eventual retaliation; however, once certain online communities come to a point of revenge against the male gender as a whole, the pendulum swings to the side of men, who begin feeling increasingly isolated from society and are more prone to joining incel-dominated manospheres that blame society’s issues on women.

As each side grows more extreme in an attempt to “regain” the status they feel the other side has taken away, people become increasingly divided and distant from each other. As algorithms regurgitate rage-bait content, users are forced into this false dilemma where they feel like they must resonate with one side or the other—failing to recognize the happy medium that exists behind the two extreme choices of hating men or hating women. 

This tendency for young people to retreat into communities promoting distrust and resentment toward one another only increases the already high levels of loneliness found within Gen Zers. And, while the male loneliness epidemic is often emphasized by men, as of last year, a report by the World Health Organization has actually cited teenage girls as the loneliest group in the world—a stat that should read as more of a threat when over 871,000 deaths a year are linked to loneliness. 

While this spike in loneliness is not all caused by gender discourse, it is certainly made worse by it. As the pendulum continues to swing, there is one thing that is guaranteed to not come about: a solution. 

In the midst of hating one another based on biological differences, what people often fail to notice is the dependency that both extremes of the “gender war” have on each other. In this case, when the pendulum swings, it only swings back because there’s a force willingly pushing it.

What this is ultimately getting at is that the extreme sides found online cannot exist without each other. Without the manosphere’s continued push toward suppressing women’s value, women wouldn’t have a “pendulum” to push back on, and vice versa. 

In the end, algorithms on the internet have learned to capitalize on hatred and rage. The pendulum only continues swinging because millions of people online insist on further pulling it in each direction.

And while the short dopamine bursts granted by retaliatory behavior seem to indicate that something’s being done right, the long-term sadness and loneliness people are experiencing as a result of it is a rather poor tradeoff.

Maybe the solution isn’t deeming one side the “winner” but recognizing that the cycle itself is what’s ultimately keeping both sides isolated, angry and disconnected from each other.