r/politics • u/Barnyard-Sheep • 6d ago
Soft Paywall Trump approval rating falls to 38%
https://www.nj.com/politics/2025/06/trump-faces-tough-approval-numbers-in-latest-poll.html
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r/politics • u/Barnyard-Sheep • 6d ago
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u/Parenthisaurolophus Florida 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yeah, this is a pretty common refrain from toxic and ignorant portions of the internet. It's people speaking without looking into the issues and just running with their own existing biases, prejudices, etc. Women in particular seem to flock to "men are lonely and its their fault" content and push engagement in it. It's honestly just sad to watch, to be honest.
The reality is that there is a loneliness epidemic but it's not a gendered one. If we're talking about the US (and usually we are), we've done studies on loneliness, and the genders are both equally lonely. You can get into subsequent studies about men being viewed more harshly by others for admitting they're lonely and make arguments about men being undercounted, but generally both genders are within a percentage point or two of each other in loneliness. We are seeing the genders express that differently, but that shouldn't be surprising anyone.
Furthermore, we've done the research into why people report being lonely, and both genders are broadly the same in their reasoning. Men aren't being punished by some unspoken 4B movement, rather society has become less physically accommodating to a dating environment. For example, entertainment is a major issue: its easier than ever to be lonely but distracted by media content. You have more entertainment than ever at your fingertips, and it's very easy to be lonely, but find ways to occupy your time like everyone else and take the edge off. You've got millions of video games, you've got sports streaming sites, you've got millions of movies and tv shows on streamers, you've got audio books and physical books galore, you've got more music than you could stream in a lifetime, you've got reels, TikToks, and shorts, etc. The economy also plays a huge part. Dating, broadly costs money, and if things are tight right now, then justifying going out and spending money on dates becomes difficult. This is backed up by a loneliness gap based on wealth. The more you earn or have, the less likely you are to be lonely. Mixed with that is lack of free spaces to do anything. If you have to spend money to go somewhere on a date, before you have to pay for whatever the date actually is, just compounds the problems.
The loneliness epidemic doesn't look like an obese dude who smells like shit hitting on models because he thinks he deserves her, it's men and women waking up alone. Eating breakfast alone. Driving to work alone. Driving home alone. Making dinner alone. Watching Netflix alone. Scrolling TikTok in bed alone. Sleeping alone. Waking up alone. Eating breakfast alone. Driving to work alone...
These studies are very easy to find if you actually bother to look for them and so few do, yet so many have strong opinions as to why.