Most men who end up on the internet manosphere fiercely hide this fact. Besides the fact that liberal society hates masculinity, male spaces, and the like, and thinks we're all sexist, racist, creepers one internet post away from shooting up a school, women and men both prefer men who innately "get it". Men who read about "it" on the internet are not men who have always gotten it.

The kind of men who succeed with women, at business, at making friends, and at life in general tend to be men with a high degree of social awareness. Naturals. Men who do not need to be taught how to do any of this and just seem to pick it up on their own. These men have never read an internet article on how to do better socially. They just naturally picked it up as a product of living among other humans.

These men aren't necessarily star football players, male magazine models, or rock stars. They're not the modern day equivalent of the best warriors in the tribe. But they're still fun to be around, charismatic, and everybody likes them.

This social "muscle" is often what separates a man everybody wants to be around and a man everyone wants to see succeed from a man people find off-putting and creepy. If you won the Nobel prize in physics, but you're socially retarded, nobody cares. But if you're a cubicle jockey for a mid-sized company and you're socially charismatic, everybody in the office loves you and when you get promoted, everyone says you deserve it.

The act of learning how to game women, or even less specific self-help books and forums about how to do better professionally, all provide advice that essentially helps men who lack social skills emulate men who don't. Men who suck socially have a hard time getting laid, making friends, or getting ahead at work. They have a hard time being men.

Is social "muscle" a component of modern masculinity? Or has society simply become a shallow farce that loves good bullshitters?

@jwayne The first world is definitely very interesting in this way.

For probably the first time ever, a man can still have a "successful" life without being masculine at all. A fat or scrawny, uncoordinated man who's never worked out or played a sport in his life can get a degree and a job, live in an air conditioned apartment, go to work every day, and play video games all night. He'll have enough money to live out his days and won't want for food, water, an air conditioned residence, or clothes. He won't have much success with women or friends or getting promotions at work, but he'll still have a respectable life. A degree, stable job, his own place. The won't be anything "wrong" with him. His life is perfectly respectable and he worked decently hard to get there. But he didn't do anything right or anything to stand out either.

For the first time ever, a man can be non-masculine and nobody's survival suffers as a result. Everybody still eats and lives comfortably.

We live in a world where now, a man can choose whether to be masculine or not. And choosing to be masculine is much harder.

And because nobody dies or starves to death if somebody is non-masculine we, as a society, don't care. It's his choice. We even tell him it doesn't matter. I mean, we don't want to be that guy's friend, or hire him, or promote him, and women don't want to fuck him, because he's weak even though it doesn't matter, but his non-masculinity doesn't affect the rest of us, only him, and it doesn't even affect his survival anyway. It's just his personal choice.

It's an interesting question. Does society need to catch up to reality and recognize that masculinity isn't necessary any more and start to reward other traits? Or are men finally facing their biggest test: Whether they will choose to be masculine even when their lives don't depend on it any more?

Many modern writers equate the idea of masculinity with "struggle". A tribal warrior who needs to overcome nature to bring meat home struggles more than a guy who sits around sewing. A carpenter who can build a house with his hands struggles more than an insurance agent who spends his day in a cubicle answering e-mails. A man who mops floors and works night shifts in the dorm cafeteria to put himself through college then starts his own business struggles more than a trust fund kid whose parents pay his way.

Even manosphere authors acknowledge that men have the burden of performance. When you're trying to date, women just sit there and accept suitors. It's men who have to work on their appearance, their professional success, their social skills, their useful skills and interesting hobbies, and be somebody valuable. All of these things men do simulate the appearance of a man who is familiar with struggle. A man who works hard physically, talks to people everywhere he goes, learns things, and is always busy. Even if that's not what a man is actually like, this is what he tries to look like.

Some might argue that part of the reason an "average" guy has trouble with women, trouble making friends, trouble getting ahead at work - trouble at life in general, is because there isn't much struggle in being average. There's no risk in keeping your head down and studying hard at school, making good grades, going to college and getting your BA in business or your BS in engineering, getting a worker-bee job, going to work every day, being nice to everybody, and being a generally good, moral, upstanding guy who works hard. Even though this example guy hasn't done anything wrong and is living a perfectly respectable life, he hasn't done anything particularly right either. He hasn't struggled.

Trouble is, life in 2019 is pretty easy. There's not much to struggle about. We artificially invent struggle. Because our job involves answering e-mail all day, we go to the gym to simulate physical strain. Because our lives are safe and easy, we travel and take pictures of other cities with our cell phones, climb fake plastic rocks with ropes attached to us, learn rudimentary martial arts and have fake fights with people - we simulate struggle. The struggle may be how we stand out from others. Long ago, that would make one man a better warrior or hunter than another. But today, it's more like building up our hobby resume so we can add a few lines to our online dating profile.

Is the struggle still something that matters? Or has that gone the way of the dinosaur?

A lot of men define their worth, if not their very masculinity, based on their success with women.

On one hand, this makes a lot of sense. Charming a woman and having sex with her (which in more primitive times meant procreation) was a very masculine act. Maybe even the quintessential masculine act. It's hard to argue that impregnating women (or in modern days, doing the act of impregnation while using contraception) isn't a masculine act. The ability to get laid is at least an indirect indicator of masculinity - maybe women choose men who are masculine for sex. Maybe even a direct indicator, with the ability to seduce women being, itself, masculine.

On the other hand, defining your masculinity by the opinions of others - not just any others, but people who aren't even men - seems grating. Of course women don't get to decide who is and isn't masculine based on their opinions, right?

Of course, every one of us is alive today because some woman wanted us and didn't abort her pregnancy. We live in a world where the value of a fertilized egg is, quite literally, determined by how much a woman wants it. If a woman doesn't want to have a baby, having a zygote or small fetus sucked out of her uterus is a quick and easy outpatient medical procedure and is paid little more mind than having a mole removed. But if a woman wants a baby and you end her pregnancy in a car accident, that's a serious crime in most states. The value of that fertilized egg is, quite literally, based on how much a woman wants it. A woman's want is what turns it from a lump of cells no more important than an ugly mole into a child.

In this social climate, is it any wonder, with 90% of primary school teachers being women and fathers working longer hours than ever while mothers (or predominantly female daycare workers) raise boys - a constant string of woman authority figures that must be pleased, that young men grow up feeling as though their value depends on how much women like them? Is it any wonder that this translates into adult men defining their very masculinity by their dating life?