The Internet got silly (as the Internet so often does) over the appearance of a winsome young woman at the Georgia-Texas football game this past weekend.
A pretty brunette, “Harley” who identifies herself as @harlyisbae on TikTok, was briefly filmed in the crowd.
The result: legions of men who acted as if they had never seen a human female before. “Just became a Georgia Bulldog fan,” X user @Jacoby_27 wrote. A (presumably male) TikTok commenter declared, “You broke Twitter and I’m not complaining.”
I must admit that I do not understand all of the fuss. Yes, “Harley” is an attractive young woman. But unless she is planning to show up at my residence in Ohio (not an outcome I’m anticipating), Harley’s beauty is about as relevant to me as the proverbial tea prices in China.
@harlyisbae GO DAWGS BEAT TEXAS
♬ Delta Dawn – Tanya Tucker
Men in their early middle-age years historically define public masculine culture. These are men who are too old to be college boys, but too young to be grandpas. Gentlemen in their thirties and forties, basically.
Millennial men now occupy that demographic. And the dominant masculine value that they have established is “simping”: i.e., slavishly fawning over women who don’t even know that most of the fawners exist.
One sees examples of male simping constantly on the Internet nowadays. Its most pernicious examples can be found on the cancerous OnlyFans platform, where men plunk down billions of dollars each year to briefly interact with women through a computer screen.
But one also observes simping on mainstream social media platforms, where men will endlessly flatter random women in the hope that…who knows?…they may get a moment’s worth of positive acknowledgment in return.
Not that all this simping is good for women, either. The message sent here is: we are not supposed to objectify women…except when they flash their wares on TikTok, and are clearly seeking to be objectified.
But it is men who choose how they will react to what they see online. Many are reacting like 13-year-old schoolboys nowadays.
To paraphrase Darth Vader, “Your lack of testosterone disturbs me.” Man up, gentlemen, and stop panting like golden retrievers over random women on the Internet.
-ET