The Bear vs. Man Meme is a Big Deal

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into the recent "bear or man" meme, which revealed a disturbing level of normalized bigotry against men in contemporary society. The hosts analyze the responses to the question "Would you rather be in the woods with a bear or a random man?" and compare them to hypothetical scenarios involving other marginalized groups to highlight the double standards at play. They explore the roots of this bigotry, its manifestation in various aspects of life, such as college admissions and fertility choices, and the potential consequences for society as a whole. The conversation also touches on the importance of recognizing and addressing misandry, even when it has become so pervasive that it is often overlooked or dismissed.

[00:00:00] Question. What kind of bear is best? That's a ridiculous question. False. Black bear.

Malcolm Collins: This is why it's so important that I elevate this and I'm also elevate your reaction to this Okay, because it's the reaction that many people will have that shows how dangerous this has gotten

If you lived in a society like if in America today People were responding the same way to a question about Jews or black people.

Would you be like, holy? You We have a big problem in this country and we need to do something about it immediately.

Yeah. You would be raising every alarm bell you could raise. This is true.

Fact. Bears eat beets. Oh. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica. Bears do not What is going on?

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: You

Malcolm Collins: look good.

Simone Collins: Are you ready to go? I'm ready to go.

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! I am so excited to be chatting with you again today. There has been a meme, and whenever we try to do [00:01:00] timely episodes, we are always going to be late to the subject, because that's just not how we produce our videos. But the bear meme! First I'll ask you the question.

Would you rather be in the woods with a bear or a random man?

Simone Collins: Yeah. As long as it's a genuinely random man, obviously a man.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So a lot of women, and then I've seen this done on shows and stuff like that. It seems to be like 50 percent of women or more, maybe within these more progressive environments, like college campuses, you're getting like 70 to 80 percent of women.

Okay. Are saying a bear and the standard have they not been like camping ever? Okay. So that's not the issue And what i'll say is the standard mind dead Take on this is are they either not aware of how dangerous bears are or the standard take on this is [00:02:00] Oh women these days, aren't they silly and hasn't feminism gone an extreme degree?

And if we weren't based camp if we were some basic podcast That's the take we'd be having but I actually think that what can be Gleamed from this particular meme is much deeper and that's why I wanted to make sure to do an episode on it even if it's not appearing while this is still in the zeitgeist of the topic because I think that this was actually a great sort of natural experiment to see where our culture is heading and to predict where things will go downstream of here.

Simone Collins: The, what this really indicates is what media has done to female audiences, which is that when they hear the word average or random guy, they assume some kind of aggressor or some kind of dangerous person. They're evoked set for random guy, rather than [00:03:00] Your brother, an uncle, a family member, a co worker.

Malcolm Collins: No. They've further asked this. If it was your dad, would you say, no, they'll say. They would choose to bear over their dad.

For example, look at this woman's caption. I choose the bear every time. If it's my boyfriend the bear, a friend the bear. My dad, the bear. Life and men have given me enough reason to choose the bear any time over any of them. I don't trust them. I don't think I ever will. Whether they're family or friends or stranger, I choose the bear.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I think you always, and a lot of people do this. They're like Malcolm, you go too hard against the monoculture and stuff like that. Because they assume that the monoculture is their perception of the monoculture when they've been associated with it.

Not the, like they don't know how brainwashed and culty some individuals have gotten. But what I would say is the first thing to understand what we're really learning from this is I'm going to play a clip of somebody interviewing a bunch of women, but first I'm going to slightly change the question that's being asked.

Would you prefer [00:04:00] to be in the woods? with a bear or a random black man

black

Man is scary. Um, with a bear. What I've heard about bears, they don't always attack you, right? So maybe a bear.

Probably a bear. 100 percent a bear, which is like, terrifying to say, but Definitely a bear. Some

Malcolm Collins: black

men are very scary out there. I bet. Even some men are saying bear, although we could predict that this man's opinion will be whatever makes women approve of him. If I were alone in the woods, would you rather me encounter a bear or a

Malcolm Collins: black

man?

I feel more like bear. I don't know, cause I feel like I would know what the outcome would be with a bear.

Malcolm Collins: and I think when you hear this, now you get really uncomfortable when you hear the way people are responding to the initial question,

Simone Collins: but I have

Malcolm Collins: changed the context slightly.

You get really uncomfortable.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Or I could change it a bit. I could say, would you rather [00:05:00] be in the woods with a bear or a Jew?

Oh, wow! This would be really offensive if they had asked one of these other questions.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And this is because what you are actually seeing within this meme is just pure, uncut bigotry. And you are seeing the extreme levels of bigotry that have become normalized in our society. And this gets really interested because now you get into how does bigotry spread? How did, and so first, something that's useful to note whenever bigotry spreads, because when I say this, if you're, in the cult, you're like men, Don't count as a class that is worthy of any protection.

They do they're not worthy at the same level of human dignity of other classes. This is always the first step in the proliferation [00:06:00] of systemic bigotry. The first thing the Nazis did was to compare the Jews to animals, the same thing we see

happening again within the Palestine protests and stuff like that with the, we've talked about this in another episode actually one that might go live after this one but yeah you First need to like racism never is Oh, we hate this group just in particular.

It's no, this group is genuinely lesser, genuinely deserving of lesser protections before you go on. And people can be like come on, men have all the power in our society. And I'm like have you looked at like college admissions rates recently? Like men are being systemically pulled out of our economy right now.

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: Anyone who does, if you look at like the number of scholarships for men versus the number of scholarship for women, that's 10 to 1, even with the higher rates of men. One of the things that shocked me was I was rece