When you spend as much time as we do here at Man Boobz scrutinizing the Men’s Rights movement, it’s easy to forget what a fringe phenomenon it is. So here are some charts from Google Trends – charting the frequency of certain search terms from 2004 until today — that help to put it all in perspective. (Thanks to Katz, Cloudiah and Cthulhu’s Intern in the comments for inspiring this post.)
That “rapidly growing” Men’s Rights movement that MRAs like to talk about? It may actually be stagnant or even shrinking, if searches for “men’s rights” are any indication. Despite a recent comeback, they’re still less than half of what they were at their height in 2004.
Now let’s put that in perspective.
No, there’s nothing wrong with that graph; it’s just that My Little Pony is so much more popular than Men’s Rights that the latter simply vanishes into the X axis.
But this graph is my favorite:
Well, nothing will top that, but here’s a graph showing that people are a lot more concerned about misogyny than misandry — and, I would add, for good reason.
Let’s see what other trends we can find!
(Oh, and sorry about the low quality pics; WordPress won’t let me embed the charts.)
Y’know, it may be lovingly detailed as I described it, but don’t you think it’s a touch … optimistic?
Okay, I am in love with that poster. It is the epitome of Poe’s Law–so goofy, bizarre, and shoddy that you immediately think “That can’t really be real,” but not quite goofy enough to be obviously a spoof (and actually bizarre and morbid enough to fall beyond what any of us would have even thought to make).
The sad thing is when I see those plain white posters with black Arial words, I think those are the best, because at least the lack of design elements at all means they’re lacking bad design elements.
@Amnesia: CLAMP has brought joy to many, many people all over the world.
The MRAs just seem to sit in their task chairs and stew in their misery.
I’ll take ectomorphic kids with ocular hypertrophy over misery, any day.
Without a doubt, for Men’s Rights Activists, the greatest success is in not trying.
But SSAE, that’s like the #1 evidence of his oppression. The dissolving ant man is horny so that we can see how oppressed he is.
In hindsight, I should have warned you that that drawing was NSFW. But it’s so badly drawn, that you have to squint at it to figure out what it is.
Definitely a troll account but it is funny, that as Pecunium notes, a r/mr regular manages to be an asshat in the comments.
“The Mad Scientists Club” and Madeleine L’Engle.
Oh man, I read the crap out of those books! ^^ And Heinlein (insert required it-wasn’t-the-bad-ones-though) and Asimov and all those famous ones. And I also read stuff by L. Ron Hubbard because NO ONE’S PERFECT, OKAY??
Ooh, anyone else into Andre Norton’s old stuff? She was my hugest author crush for ages.
Also delurking to express my appreciation of Diogenes the Cynic. He’s my favourite type of internet personality – the kid who’s so much smarter than everyone else in his high school and decides to grace the world with the gift of his oh-so-informed and intelligent opinions. I could read posts like his all day, and they’ll never stop being funny.
@Bagelsan: Adore ANdre Norton’s stuff (some of the old out of print stuff that didn’t survive–darn those 95 cent paperbacks-is available for Kindle, yay).
My favorites are the isolated adolescent protagonist who meets up with intelligent alien in somewhat cat form!
Apologies if someone did this one already, but the periodic nature of the radians graph is too funny to my math nerd self to not share anyway.
Radians are more popular than men’s rights: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=men's%20rights%2C%20radians%2C%20&cmpt=q
As an objective observer, though (hee), I have to note that degrees have won the Google Trends battle, one of the bloodiest in the Great Radians War.
OK, whoever said the cyclical trend was school has to be right. Look how feminism correlates with radians: Peaks during each semester, small dip for Christmas, large dip for summer. Also, feminism is beating radians! Woo hoo!
The one I don’t understand is the little dip in radians during March. Feminism has no such dip.
Could it be be an related to something like papers being due? And fewer people needing to look up radians, while those who were doing papers needed to find sources?
I still reread Catseye and The Beast Master periodically! 🙂 Never read her other work but love those two books.
That Ball (pun intended?) poster really sums up the MRM, doesn’t it – both in the “obsessed with their penises” sense and “what tossers” sense.
Feminazi loses to misandry, both fall below radians and feminism; but donuts puts all four to shame.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=radians%2C%20feminism%2C%20Donuts%2C%20feminazi%2C%20misandry&cmpt=q
Oddly, while it’s no surprise that Kimono clobbers Men’s Rights, ai dao paces it, for awhile, and then trends higher.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=kimono%2C%20men%27s%20rights%2C%20ai%20dao%2C%20%2C%20&cmpt=q
Sperm jacking is about as trendy as divorce rape. both lose to Paper Abortion (which is really popular in the Phillipines. Sperm jacking seems to be solely of interest in the US).
Add feminism, and they all crash to the floor, sticking, like glue, to the X-axis.
In the culture wars, Kimono beats out two button suit and Chopsticks beats out silverware.
Just caught up on this thread, and I think Cloudiah’s smelly discharge wins the thread!
Wait, that didn’t come out right.
In case anyone’s interested, this was something people talked about a couple threads ago, and now it’s apparently a thing.
http://shulamithbond.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d5ntsdk
LOL! Oh this is precious. “I’m not a troll! I’m a PHILOSOPHER! The totally unbiased imaginary people in my totally unbiased brain think YOU’RE the troll!” Come to that opinion objectively, did you, philosopher man?
Also, I hate to break it to you, but cynically speaking, unless that manuscript you’re so brilliantly cracking* can cure cancer, solve all our global warming, pollution and resource limitation issues, bring world peace and give the answer to life, the universe and everything**, all at the same time, there will always be plenty of people queuing up to tell YOU what a smug waste of life, good for nothing jackass you are. There is no shortage of people in this world who think if you aren’t x, y or z, you’re nothing. The trouble is, x, y and z are different to everyone. That’s why people who will go around telling people they’re useless if they aren’t those things are generally assholes. Pro tip: don’t be an asshole.
*I think you mentioned you’re in the process of cracking that. Some advice from a worthless secretary, don’t brag about feats you haven’t yet accomplished. It looks presumptuous and really REALLY bad for you if you wind up falling on your ass with whatever project it is you’re bragging about. And particularly when it’s used as a “what have you done lately” comeback, it just looks more like you’re trying to reassure yourself that your life has relevance, more so than trying to prove anything to anyone.
**I’ll save you the trouble, the answer is 42.
And I just did a google search for horse porn. Ugh, why, WHY!?
@Mklien
But truly sexy calligraphy is written on your lover’s back!
(Other than that it was rather sweet, really. Ignoring the reality of the characters involved.)
@Mklein
Ok, that was weird, but funny.
@Carleyblue
WHY?! I mean, surely every fibre of your being would tell you to not google ‘horse porn’!
Titles like this are why I never let anyone else see my computer screen at any time.