By David Futrelle
Why do human beings go to war against one another? It’s a question that’s been around as long as civilization itself, and perhaps longer. Happily, we now have an answer, and it comes from YouTube: According to Sandman, a popular MGTOW YouTuber, it’s all about men’s love of female butts — and the desire not to get nagged by the women attached to these butts. And also men’s desire to rape women from other countries. And then there’s something about killer robots.
It’s not a very coherent argument, frankly.
Sandman begins his 2000-word tirade on the evils of female booty by positing a uniquely ahistorical theory of war as a way to avoid nagging from the ladies. “I believe,” he begins,
that the majority of wars are actually fought because it’s really women’s nagging and never ending demands to creature comforts that light that spark. … My theory is that this is done so women stop nagging them long enough to get some peace and quiet.
So throw away all those history books purporting to explain the causes of war. Forget Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s unhappy demise. War is all about getting women shoes and fur coats so they’ll stop with all the yapping.
You may find yourself asking: if war is all about getting things, don’t men want things too? According to Sandman, not really. While women clamor for “shoes, coats, hats, purses, vacations on the beach” and other fancy swag,
most guys out there don’t really want all that much in their lives. They don’t need a giant mansion and fancy cars. The reason many them purchase those things is because it attracts the best possible women to them. …
I would wager that the majority of male consumer spending is on sporting events and video games. Those are things that take up very little actual resources to produce. Computer code is cheap to replicate and so is the television signal you get beamed to your house with the big game in it.
Just FYI, video games are expected to generate $152.1 billion in revenues this year; the net worth of the NFL, by itself, is nearly $75 billion. But yeah, men don’t spend money on themselves; they just give it to women so they’ll stop nagging.
After delivering this definitive explanation for war, you might expect Sandman himself to shut up. What more is there to say? Apparently quite a bit. Because, as it turns out, Sandman doesn’t just have a theory of war; he’s got several theories all smushed together into one giant ball of bullshit.
In addition to showing their “love of women” by giving their wives and girlfriends fancy shit to shut them up, Sandman argues, men also demonstrate this love by … raping other men’s wives.
[T]hroughout history, men would be sent to war with the promise of being able to rape the other side’s women. And in a time of ancient Greece and Rome, they were able to take those women home from those men that they conquered and turn them into sexy slave girls. Warfare was all about taking the enemy’s riches and giving them to your wife while taking advantage of the enemy’s wife …
The love of women drives men to do unspeakable things for the desire to reproduce.
I’m pretty sure raping women doesn’t have much to do with love.
Oh, but Sandman isn’t done yet. Sandman winds up his incoherent mess of a video with a strange fantasy about a dystopian near-future in which the women of the world have somehow come into possession of killer robots.
Yes, I’m serious, and so, evidently, is he.
[W]omen keep saying that if they ruled the world, there would be no wars. But in reality, if they ruled the world and had robotic armies, they would be more wars than ever.
Uh, what?
As women use technology to fight and conquer peoples in other countries so they could strip them of their resources and for what? So they could expand their shoe collections? …
[T]hat scenario is coming and if women are increasingly killing their own newborn babies and getting away with it in the courts, do you really think that women in the future that start World War Tampon are going to have to face any kind of war crimes for whatever they do … ?
World War Tampon.
We’re talking about handing over weapons of robotic destruction to the more irrational and emotional side of the species.
Well, to be fair, you’re talking about this. I don’t think anyone else is.
What do you think is going to happen if she’s having a rough period that week? Men’s love for women means that we will be willing to hand over the keys to our own robotic destruction to the women that we love.
Right now the only robots killing people are self-driving cars.
We gave women the vote and they helped vote in socialism into the West. … We wanted women to be equal, so we opened the entire workforce to women. And as a result, men’s salaries are no longer enough to purchase the most basic place to live as a single man in a big city. …
Now we’re going to hand over robotic weapons of mass destruction. … If you’re listening to this in 2030 than you are the resistance. Except you’ll be fighting against estrogen controlled killer robots instead of A.I. … You don’t see her face as she decapitates you with her remotely controlled TV 800. …
It’s our love for them that will actually be our downfall.
Well, ok then.
Sandman’s videos — and not just this one — are as bizarre and nonsensical as any Reddit MGTOW rando. But he’s got a smooth if weirdly chipper voice and a surprisingly large audience. His typical videos get tens of thousands of views apiece, with his most popular videos coming close to a million views, and he’s been churning them out since 2013. In total, according to YouTube, his videos have gotten more than 80 million views. 80 million.
This is the sort of propaganda that millions of YouTube viewers are feeding themselves on a regular basis, which is, I have to say, even more depressing than the thought of imaginary robots cutting off my head.
H/T — Thanks to @TakedownMRAs on Twitter for highlighting this video.
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Oh, it’s International Men’s Day apparently.
One must assume all the MRA types are out celebrating.
Because that’s the only possible way for women to have political power. Since women on average have less upper body strength than men, and as we all know, our leadership is determined by who can win the most arm-wrestling matches, the only possible way for women to compete is if they have robotic muscle to back them up.
It’s actually remarkable how many of the wars that ravaged Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Revolutions of the 19th century involved succession crises. Hastings. The Anarchy. The Hundred Years War. War of the Roses. The Jacobite Uprisings. Spanish Succession. Austrian Succession. More than butts, blame high infant mortality, the divine right of kings and inbreeding among European nobility.
no, no, No, NOOO!!!!
BUTTS!!!!
WOMEN BAD! BAD!
I am 100% supportive of the new estrogen robot overlords. They can’t arrive soon enough as far as I’m concerned.
@Alan Robertshaw
It’s also the more important World Toilet Day. A day for folks who take sanitation for granted to remember that billions don’t have that luxury, and to donate money to improving sanitation access for those in poverty worldwide.
David did a post about the whole thing a few years ago.
@Naglfar
The gaming industry is very young and has grown very big very fast. There are no unions, no collective bargaining and the companies make it clear how replaceable everyone is. During crunch time, 60-100 hour weeks are to be expected in some places.
Kotaku’s Jason Schreier as well as Jim Sterling did a whole lot of content (video and article) about it.
…As a history buff, my reaction to this is mainly:
…Whaaaaaa?!?!…
Seriously, it’s like his understanding of the concept of war stopped at “the Trojan war was fought because women“, then he completely emptied even that of all context, added a bunch (again, outside-context) of his pre-existing, weirdly pop-cultural prejudices (“to buy shoes”, ugh…), and cultivated the ugly mutant thought tumor that resulted into a huge nonsensical pseudo-philosophical cancer encompassing his shitty misogynistic rhetoric as an attempt to make it appear as seemingly profound “wisdom” for his fellow miggies.
Oh, and something something robots because reasons, I guess. (No seriously WHY!? If women ruled the world and had robots!? Really!? Your premise is right out of a middle-schooler’s first attempt at writing fiction!? WHYYYY!!??)
@Battering Lamb:
Have I spotted another follower of Jim Sterling, by chance?
@Paireon
That is probably the best description I’ve seen of the alt right as a whole. It reminds me of Jordan Peterson in particular.
@Definitely not Steve
I think you might have,there are a few of us here.
@Definitely not Steve
I think you might have,there are a few of us here.
To me the people I’ve seen most obsessed about shoes has been teenage boys.
@Lainy
I’ve seen the same thing. Same with fashion in general. I’ve seen way more teen boys (both when I was in high school and out in the world) talking about clothing brands than women or girls of any age.
I used to have an undeserved reputation as the preening queen of shoes at an old job because I kept a number of pumps in my office. “Do you even have room for your shoes at home?” they would ask my now-husband, who also worked there, with a wink. Meanwhile, his shoe collection was easily twice the size of mine at the time.* He just didn’t have them all on display at the office because men’s shoes considered appropriate for office work are also appropriate for walking to the damn train. I don’t really know the point of this story except that men get to like things and women get to be thought of as shallow and vain.
*Which he would tell them, of course, but for some reason** the message wouldn’t stick.
**It conflicted with their preconceptions so they chose to ignore it.
Edit: I definitely don’t mean to say it’s bad to like shoes! I like shoes myself. It’s just I don’t make-our-home-unlivable-because-it’s-full-of-stilletos-just-like-a-woman-amirite like shoes.
For an intellectual palette cleanser, I would refer to this (sort of) two-parter on war in World History. Well, if nothing else, it can’t be any worse than Sandman’s video.
War & Human Nature: Crash Course World History 204
War and Civilization: Crash Course World History 205
So umm this is OT, but @David guess who’s on Trump’s advisory board.
https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/trump-advisory-board-member-women-should-strive-be-handmaidens-stay-out-workplace
screams into the void
Jim Sterling is great. Crunch, so called magic, employees being paid poorly, bad business decisions allowing smaller developers to be swallowed up by bigger ones, Bono… These have all made games worse. Destroyed many good game companies. Game companies that tried to be more diverse, more socially conscious, made video games that reflected the wrongs in society… From Origin Systems, that I cluded racist metaphors in their RPGs(and allowed you to be homosexual as the Avatar back in 92) to Bioware who have done the same thing. All swallowed up by EA, leading to even more employee pain. The evils of crunch time, is the worst part of Corporate Culture. Do more work, get paid less.. Make more bland AAA video games. Destroy lives. And that’s Capitalisms endgame, where we take an economic theory, and turn it into Politics, Philosophy, and Religion. Everyone’s lives get upturned, turned into crap, with all the jerks turning on the people without the power. Because it’s easier to hate and blame the powerless then try to build the world up. I mean, this guy is full of utter nonsense. If women have voted in Socialism, where is it?
@Naglfar
Why, thank you! Gotta say I have a special place in my heart for my fellow canuck, and it ain’t the place where love is, let me tell you.
As for me, from what I’ve personally seen women do seem to have more interest in shoes than men, generally speaking, but it’s a rather meaningless bit of trivia. Men have more interest in beer than women do, generally speaking, but you don’t see that many people holding it against them nowadays (unless they’re raging alcoholics). So I really don’t see the point, and it’s less a leap of logic than a freakin’ hyperspace jump into an absurdist parallel universe to claim it’s a major cause of armed conflict.
I don’t remember if my male housemates in college were into shoes, but they did have more grooming products and spent more time on their hair than the female residents did.
“Let loose the dogs of war” – from the legendary estrogen robot warlord and conqueror Sir Mix-a-lot (allegedly)
@Sylvia Daniella Foxglove
I’m also a big Jim Sterling fan.
Thank God for him.
I’m also partial to YongYea, another videogame YouTuber who – to the best of my knowledge – is along with Jim one of the few who isn’t deep down the alt-right/MRA rabbit hole.
Unlike a truckload of others YouTube’s shite algorithm constantly tries to get me to watch.
My husband isn’t into shoes or grooming products. The man washes his hair with body soap much to my dismay. He does how ever have a collection of intricate, expensive litters that he doesn’t really need but he enjoys them. I don’t see the point of having q blow torch litter over just a regular dollar one from Wal-Mart but hey it makes him happy. We all have our little frivolous things we don’t really need but enjoy. To pretend it’s just women who have this is really blind to the world.
The problem with YouTube algorithms IME is that they like to push far right content, even when you don’t watch right wing videos. Case in point: I rewatched some of the Feminist Frequency videos a while ago to show them to a friend, and it tried to recommend me various GamerGate harasser videos from Sargon of Akkad and the like.
YouTube simply pushes content from the very popular creators, because it wants those views. It tries to match subject matter, e.g., if you watch videos about video games, it might suggest videos from a particular nazi-adjacent youtuber from Sweden, just because he’s popular. And of course, since YouTube allows garbage people and hate speech (as long as it’s popular enough), that’s what gets suggested.
Re: shoes, fashion, etc.:
If men’s fashion wasn’t so goddamn boring, way more men would be obsessed with it. Men’s fashion is garbage, and I hate it.
I would say the problem with them is that they don’t differentiate between pro- or con- or neutral or whatever, only if it’s popular and/or is about the subject or not. Then couple this with alt-righters churning out videos about their hobby horses by the truckload.
Result: People get far right content recommended about everything even slightly “controversial”.