By David Futrelle
So brain teasers are supposed to keep your brain nimble, right? In that case, after all the years I’ve spent trying to make sense of misogynist nonsense I must be some kind of supergenius by now. I have to say I don’t feel any different, brainwise, but maybe that’s because I was a supergenius all along and I just didn’t realize it?
Anyway,trying to figure out these MGTOW memes may help you all get on my level. Take that first one. As far as my supergenius mind can figure it, the meme maker wanted to say that if guys refuse to get married they can look forward to growing old happily with all their MGTOW buds. But what the meme seems to be saying is that MGTOW is some sort of rapid-aging disease that will turn you into an old codger in, like, a year.
If you have a better explanation, let me know.
Here’s some others that I find equally baffling.
The problem with this one isn’t that it’s in Spanish. I’m pretty good at figuring out Spanish-language memes, at least if they involve someone asking someone else where the library is. This meme is a little more complicated than that, but with a few assists from Google Translate I’ve got the basic idea of what each person in this meme is saying.
The feminists are calling MGTOWs male chauvinists. The PUAs are calling them beta losers. Some dude with his shirt open is calling them, well, a homophobic slur. And the Nazis are saying that MGTOW is a Jewish invention. (I don’t know who exactly that person in blue is supposed to represent, but I suspect you can figure out what they’re saying even if you don’t know Spanish.)
Meanwhile our poor beleaguered MGTOW in the Middle just wants to be free.
So far so good. What I want to know is WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING IN THE MIDDLE? And WHY IS EVERYTHING ON FIRE? WHY ARE THE FEMINISTS JUST A COUPLE OF SEVERED HEADS? WHY ARE SO MANY OF THESE DUDES MISSING THE LOWER HALF OF THEIR BODIES?
I think this is supposed to be an indictment of feminism for causing people to write songs less efficiently, or something? What it really shows is that if you sample another song in your song you have to give the original artist(s) and producer(s) credit and some money.
Also, while Bohemian Rhapsody was basically Freddie Mercury’s baby — and one he’d been working on for more than five years — it’s officially credited to Freddy Mercury/Queen because the other members contributed to it. So that’s four people. The song was a massive group effort that took a month and a half to rehearse and record.
I guess the big question with this one is why the dude in the cartoon is being such a dick.
I must be missing something here because I have no clue what the point is supposed to be. Yes, “manginas” probably talk to women a lot more than MGTOWs do. Of course, MGTOWs spend more time talking and thinking about women than anyone else on earth including gynecologists and the board of directors of the National Organization for Women.
This is what comes of people designing memes. Memes should just happen, and catch on, organically. Who could have predicted that “An avocado! Thanks!” kid would take off? Nobody, that’s who!
If people have to have post-graduate degrees in comparative literature to solve your damn meme, it’s a crappy meme.
And as usual, David, kudos for having the iron stomach to actually follow this crap. It’s bad enough second-hand. Ugh.
Plenty of rock songs look stupid when you print the lyrics out. Exhibit A, “D’Yer Mak’er”. Written by a guy.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
You don’t have to go, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
You don’t have to go, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
You don’t have to go
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay,
All these tears I cry, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay
(etc)
As for what that thing in the middle is in the second meme, my vote is Quorn patty.
My brain squeaked and retreated under the sofa.
Thanks, lads.
The dump one…is the miggy trying to say that men always take an hour to take a dump? Dude needs more fiber.
Freddie Mercury?
Freddie. Mercury.
Freddie Mercury
http://i.imgur.com/pimAEBO.jpg
No. You cockwombles do not get Freddie. He’s ours.
@Catherwood,
I do see your point, but I must object. These memes don’t require knowledge to understand them; they require viewing the world through mgtow filters. That, or removing your brain and filling your head with toothpaste 🙂
@kupo
It’s Roosh. Takes time to squeeze out a new article, you know.
Well, if we’re going to cherry-pick music to prove a point, I think I’ll go with White Rabbit (written and sung by Grace Slick, and, for me, one of the finest 2:31 slices of 60s music), versus absolutely anything by Nickelback.
No improvement to misogynist memes, now or ever it seems.
Off-topic, but I’m happy to see there’s no interference with the Hugos this year.
They do know that Freddie was…gay, right?
@Mish: toothpaste, sparkly vanilla pudding, anything other than actual gray cells.
@Moggie: let it roll! Just as high as the fucker can go! And when it comes to that fantastic note where the rabbit bites its own head off, I want you to throw that fuckin’ radio into the tub with me!
One has to wonder who these memes are for? Do these jamokes make these memes and think to themselves “yeah, that’ll totally trigger all those beta cuck manginas for sure”? I mean, how could anyone look at those memes and think they’re good? How?
@Fujimoto: yeah, it looks like the angry dogs* have decided that they don’t need the Hugos now that they have the White House.
(* Tip o’the Hatlo hat to Elizabeth Sandifer, whose Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: notes on science fiction and culture in the year of angry dogs is going out of print Monday, along with all the other books she self-published as Eruditorum Press under what is now her deadname, and unlike them is not coming back into print because it’s been superseded by Neoreaction a Basilisk: essays on and around the alt-right. This has been another inciting exstallment of Logrolling in Our Time from someone who backed the Kickstarters from NRXaB, The Last War in Albion and two several volumes of TARDIS Eruditorum.)
In the bathroom one, it looks like the guy’s reading stuff on his phone. If he’s literally been there for an hour… well, his assumed significant other has a right to be mad. This is not a case of women pestering men. It’s a case of SHE NEEDS THE TOILET AND YOU CAN READ STUFF ON YOUR PHONE ELSEWHERE.
Pah, and I’m the one who has trouble being in the right place at the right time, because my head has attention problems.
@Shadowplay, re:
LOL, literally (loll?)
Yeah, I find Freddie Mercury to be a strange example of misogynist alpha male superiority. He was queer, dressed pretty ostentatiously and they really seem like probably the least sexist all male band of the era. I can’t think of any songs off the top of my head that had creepy sexist lyrics. Even Fat Bottomed Girls was too cheeky (no pun intended) to be offensive. Plus, big butts are probably misandry.
My favourite is Defenders of the Crown by Edguy, which prints the following as part of the lyrics in the booklet:
[Master of ceremonies:] Whoa oh oh hoe oh hohoe?
[Voices of the damned:] Whoa oh oh oh oh oh oh!
[Moc:] Whoa ho ho hoe oh hohoe?
[Votd:] Whoa oh oh oh oh oh oh!!
[Moc:] Whoa oh hoe oh oh oh oh hohoe?!?
[Votd:] Whoa oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh!!!!!!
[Moc:] Whoa oh oh oh hoe hohoe????
[Votd:] Whoa oh oh oh oh oh oh!!!!!!!
[Moc:] Whoa oh oh oh hoe???!?
[Votd:] Whoa oh oh oh oh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh yeaaaaaaah!!!!
It never occurred to me that the Bohemian Rhapsody thing was antifeminist specifically, so much as anti-mainstream pop, but it’s definitely inaccurate to say that one person was solely responsible for it!
The Spanish one with the flames actually kind of looks like it’s saying MGTOWs live in a hell of their own making in which they obsess about women and some men they don’t approve of. Very unintentionally honest.
I mean, I can come up with a dozen well-crafted cock rock songs off the top of my head. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is just such a bizarre choice, here.
Women have written a ton of great songs. There’d be an even bigger back log of those songs if women hadn’t been nearly shut out of rock and roll for the first twenty years. Read up on Joni Mitchell’s struggle sometime if you haven’t.
I once saw an idiotic meme about how music has supposedly gone to shit today that compared Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven with Rebecca Black’s widely-mocked Friday. These memes have even faultier premises than that one.
1. Not so bad, obviously this is their core belief. If all you knew about MGTOW was this one meme they would seem like decent people. However it seems that whenever a group of MGTOW men get together to talk about MGTOW is quickly devolves into insulting women. If a MGTOW man was hanging out with non-MGTOW men they would also be more likely to start arguing about women.
2. Various groups hating on the poor little MGTOW. Hate = Fire in the background I guess. Of course if such a diverse set of groups hate you, that is hardly a compliment.
3. Seen this before, not sure what it has to do with MGTOW. Originally it is just insulting pop music. Pop music has more people working on each song, and yet the songs are super repetitive. I suppose since it technically has a female face on the bad side MGTOW thought that was close enough.
4. Seen this before, some couple that makes cartoons joking about married life. Obviously the original couple likes being married, but they acknowledge the various annoying bits. MGTOW sees such annoying bits as unforgivable sins.
5. Apparently the guy talking to women is a magina, while the goodly MGTOW only talks to other men. They have long since moved past the point where they feel the need the establish WHY talking to women is bad, but they still need to remind everyone about it. Presumably if you asked them about it, you would be called a magina too.
Yeah, the cartoon with the man on the toilet – he’s an artist in Tel Aviv who did a little cartoon series about life with his wife. It’s pretty adorable all around. The funny thing is he has some that are much more indicative of “annoying wife” though through the series he shows it going both ways (this would be one of him being the asshole, not her)
Anyway, his website: https://www.yehudadevir.com/
@me and not you, yes, I was going to chime in on that too, I like his style and a lot if his comics are about how much he loves to do nice things for his wife or loves her weird flaws. Yes out of context this one doesn’t look great, ha.
@me I’ve seen his stuff too. The fun-pokery goes both ways. He’s had ones that ding himself, her, and just the fact that sometimes onions need a gas mask and a containment box to be cut. Or that mosquitos and his missus have epic duel confrontations a la Street Fighters. In context this strip looks a lot less misogynistic.
Unrelated to the topic, but not to the blog – plus amusing:
Vancouver man banned from club for ‘mansplaining’ denied human rights hearing
You can literally smell the fedora.
So I take it that Rwandan MGTOW has never lived in house where there was only one working toilet and he needed to go desperately but it was already in use? Does he somehow have no idea what its like to have to desperately go to the bathroom and be in severe pain? I think if he did he’d understand why someone might be begging for that guy to hurry up.
Heh. Regarding that bathroom meme–Captain Awkward had a now infamous question from a woman whose boyfriend spent all evening in the sole bathroom with his tablet/phone/laptop. And would not vacate when she knocked desperately on the door to use the facilities. She ended up peeing in the sink more than once because he was such a jerk. You can imagine the advice she received about this shitty boyfriend and terrible relationship.
What I find most freaky about the Spanish hellscape meme is that Mr MGTOW doesn’t have a head or even a face. Like, shouldn’t he be shouting “I am not a symbol, I am a free man!” Oh, wait. Instead, he just sounds like a bad Cyndi Lauper knockoff, “MGTOWs just wanna be free!” Like, dude, just be more declarative and let your actions follow your words. That’s all it takes, man. Fly away and be free little froggie. And get out of the 80s.