Throwaway because I'm a regular poster here and I don't want to be identified.

As a guy in his mid-twenties living in an area of a city where many people are young, white, and living off their parents' income, I can't help but notice certain attitudes that have become prevalent among my male peers over the past few years. Sometimes I think it's because we're getting older, and this is the natural consequence of the constant coddling that millennials from relatively privileged backgrounds have become accustomed to. Other times, the things I hear from the mouths of otherwise normal, mature, open-minded, responsible individuals are just so redpilly that I wonder if the internet has been leaking.

For instance, I can't tell you how many times I've been shamed or verbally emasculated for admitting that, at 24, I'm beginning to find it difficult to see 18-22 year-olds as being attractive. I'm constantly told that the late teens / early twenties is the age range in which women are most attractive, thus my attraction to women who are my age or even slightly older than me is abnormal and apparently also makes me a loser.

I kid you not--a while back, I was discussing relationships with my brother, and he said, "Why buy used when you can buy new?" He was talking about preferring his partners to be virgins, even though he, himself, is not one.

As well, I feel pressured by my peers to partake in certain hyper-masculine activities (for example: going to the gym) that I'm really not that into. Is it just me, or was being obsessed with lifting not all that common five years ago?

Hell, even the most arbitrary things have become dick-measuring contests. Growing a beard is now a dick-measuring contest (the implication being that those who can't grow beards are less masculine therefore inferior). Having a knowledge of craft beer is a dick-measuring contest (oh, you don't like craft beer? what are you, a woman?). Everything's a fucking dick-measuring contest these days, and it's not just between 14-year-old boys on the internet anymore. There are grown-ass men partaking in this shit.

BTW, sorry for this long rant that I'm not even sure belongs in this sub. I just wanted to get this off my chest. It seems like certain ideas associated with TRP have been seeping into mainstream culture, and its effects are incredibly harmful to men as well as to women.