100 Men vs. Gorilla

[scary_robot_music]

I don't know either, but until I saw this helpful article just now, I didn't realize that it's not really about who would win. The point is that...

*** Spoiler alert ***

Men are bad.

Men vs. gorilla vs. the rest of us: Why masculinity contests go viral

Could a man win a fight with a gorilla? What about 100 men? Those are the questions that took over social media this week, with posts about gorilla battle royales gaining hundreds of millions of views on X and more than 4 billion potential impressions since April 19, according to analytics firm...

www.yahoo.com

 

[Steady Hands]

I don't know either, but until I saw this helpful article just now, I didn't realize that it's not really about who would win. The point is that...

*** Spoiler alert ***

Men are bad.

Men vs. gorilla vs. the rest of us: Why masculinity contests go viral

Could a man win a fight with a gorilla? What about 100 men? Those are the questions that took over social media this week, with posts about gorilla battle royales gaining hundreds of millions of views on X and more than 4 billion potential impressions since April 19, according to analytics firm...

www.yahoo.com

Selected passages follow that are just too good not to quote.

I'm a bit preoccupied to respond with a full-length take down so my trusty GIFs will get the job done today.

These viral hypotheticals have something in common, according to social scientists. All of them ask whether men could maintain dominance and control against incredible odds. You won’t find viral memes asking whether men could collaborate with a gorilla - or whether women could do any of the above

A preoccupation with battling gorillas, who can weigh 500 pounds, might reflect an absurd overconfidence on the part of human men, said Samuel Perry, a sociology professor at the University of Oklahoma who studies the connection between masculinity and ideology. But it more likely reflects a deeper insecurity, he noted

“This runaway meme of men fighting a gorilla and all of the similar memes that we’ve seen over the years, I think they land in the fertile soil of young men who are quite insecure in their masculinity,” Perry said.

Emma Gray, co-creator of the culture newsletter Rich Text, said she struggled to find comparable memes about women’s strength and abilities

...The closest thing she could think of was a trend from last year in which women debated whether they’d rather run into a man or a bear when alone in the woods.

Male gorillas may be big, strong and aggressive in some circumstances, Stoinski said, but at the end of the day they are gentle creatures who enjoy spending time with their families.

Hillary Lucas, a 47-year-old from Tennessee, watched the debate play out all week as she scrolled through TikTok, Facebook and X. She felt exasperated, she said. “There’s so much happening right now - breaking news, executive orders, attacks on women’s reproductive rights - and these guys just want to fight a gorilla,” she said.

 

[Thomas More]

There are lots of great variations on this theme, with simulations. Great stuff!