Former England manager and renowned penalty whiffer Sir Gareth Southgate recently delivered the prestigious Richard Dimbleby lecture, as reported by The Guardian (and doubtless some other places, but The Guardian is where I saw it).
The thrust of Southgate's speech was the plight of young men, and how they are, I quote, "feeling isolated, grappling with their masculinity and with their broader place in society".
I agree with this part, though I'd probably broaden it to "most men" rather than just "young men". We are encountering a problem I could have predicted a decade ago: that strides forward in progressive attitudes are leaving some men feeling somewhat cast adrift.
This isn't to say that the broad shifts in progressive attitudes are in any way wrong, I hasten to add, whatever the current United States administration might be attempting to do right now. No, on the contrary, it's good that, on the whole, we have much less sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia than we used to have. We haven't eliminated any of these problems, unfortunately, but progress has been made.
As part of all that happening, though, there was a certain amount of demonisation of privileged groups in society. Not universally, by any means, and again, I'm not saying that white men deserve to be "better" than anyone else. But for a good decade or more, men have been facing something of an existential crisis as society attempted to "make up" for their historical position of privilege. And this, in turn, has led to things like the loneliness epidemic among young men, the alt-right pipeline and all that business. That's a thing that has happened. The question is why.
Southgate argued that these men "spend more time online searching for direction and are falling into unhealthy alternatives like gaming, gambling and pornography". This quote, unsurprisingly, is the one that has been largely taken out of context and objected to. And I don't disagree with the people who did that. While gambling is hard to defend, I firmly believe there's a place in society for both gaming and pornography, and that neither of them are inherently evil things. The problem, as with so many things, is the groups that spring up around those things.
Which, as it happens, is what Southgate's speech went on to criticise.
"This void is filled by a new kind of role model who do not have their best interests at heart," he said. "These are callous, manipulative and toxic influencers, whose sole drive is for their own gain. They willingly trick young men into believing success is measured by money or dominance, never showing emotion, and that the world — including women — is against them. They are as far away as you could possibly get from the role models our young men need in their lives."
The key nuance that Southgate is missing here is that while some "influencers" (ugh, I hate that word, but I'll use it for the sake of quotations in this instance) in the gaming, gambling and pornography spaces are having a harmful effect on young men's wellbeing, this is not a universal thing by any means. (Again, I'd make the argument that gambling is the hardest to defend here, but even that's by no means a universal negative — look at things like The National Lottery and the charitable organisations attached to them.) I hate to be all "not all [x]", because people seem to take that as you having lost an argument, but it really is the case in this instance.
What he's getting at is exactly what I described above (and back in this post) — disenfranchised young men are finding what they believe to be "role models" in figures like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, who are saying the things they want to hear, and reinforcing harmful attitudes. And these figures "recruit" from fields that young men are interested in — like gaming, gambling and pornography.
The nuance is that gaming, gambling and pornography aren't themselves to blame for the existence of Tate, Peterson and others like them, but rather they just happen to be where figures like that found their most fertile markets. Being into gaming, gambling or pornography doesn't mean you're immediately going to get sucked down the alt-right pipeline into a life of perpetual fury at the world — but I can see how that happens, as I've described elsewhere.
I think it's important to highlight the positives of these things. Gaming, in particular, is probably the fastest growing creative medium in the world, and is a truly democratised form of art. Anyone from a solo independent developer to a huge multinational corporation can make a game, and the market will support that. Granted, it's harder for a solo independent developer to make as much of a splash as a huge multinational corporation with an army of marketing specialists, but it's not impossible — look at stuff like Vampire Survivors and even Minecraft's origins.
Gambling, as I say, is harder to defend, but not impossible. While a gambling addiction can be utterly devastating to individuals and families alike, I don't see the harm in an occasional flutter on the National Lottery, particularly when the money is going to Good Causes™. Sports betting, I'm not even going to try and defend. But you hopefully see my point.
And pornography. While there has always been exploitation and suffering surrounding the production of pornography, today we have a society where sex workers aren't treated as something shameful to be swept under the rug, but where they have meaningful contributions to online discourse, and where the most prolific, uh, performers can make a surprising amount of money, often for just posting videos online. We have artists who focus on drawing pornography as a means of self-expression, or to cater to the tastes of their audience. And that audience gets to explore their fantasies and learn about their tastes in a safe environment.
All of these fields have their negative, toxic ends. "Gamer" discourse surrounding the recently released Assassin's Creed Shadows, for example, shows that we still have a lot of work to do with regard to racism. I don't know anything about the gambling influencer sphere, but it doesn't seem like… something I want to get involved with. And, of course, pornography still has the exploitation element, even in seemingly democratised scenarios such as OnlyFans.
But then… doesn't anything have its toxic element? Southgate's own field of football has its own problems with racism, homophobia, xenophobia, hooliganism and violence, but I don't see him acknowledging that. It feels just a little disingenuous to specifically pick out the things he did in his speech; it's approaching "moral panic" territory, and while there are things we can work on with regard to all of those fields, I don't think it's justified to make blanket statements like "gaming is an unhealthy alternative to having a father figure".
Toxic influencers are a different issue to the games industry in general. The games industry has its own problems that it still needs to grapple with, but it is not a direct, straight line from gaming to Andrew Tate. Southgate argues that "success is about much more than the final score; it isn't a straight line, and it's not a single moment". The same is true for negative cycles, too; you can't point to one single thing and go "that is the cause of all my woes".
For my part, I believe the increasingly abusive practices of algorithm-driven social media are more harmful than anything else when it comes to the situation men find themselves in these days. Because social media is how those harmful messages get out and how they are spread — often with the full approval of the platform holders, because they know the most toxic waste of the Internet is that which gets the most "engagement". But social media is just part of a much more complicated picture, and one we could do well with trying to zoom out and see the entirety of.
Men are suffering. Men are feeling isolated. Men are grappling with their masculinity and with their broader place in society. Gaming and pornography, like anything else, within reason, can be a comfort for those men when engaged with in moderation. They are not the enemy. It is, however, correct to say that toxic "influencers" are a real problem, so that is what we should perhaps be looking at more closely.
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