THE EMPIRE
Aight Blokes Time for a pow wow
Unless you’ve been living under a digital rock for the last few months, you’ve likely heard about a secret ( or not so now ) facebook group called Blokes Advice,
Which in the last few months since I’ve been in it has doubled in numbers to well over 400,000 members. Now kinda the point of the group is to keep it all internal and keep it a bit exclusive for those that are in the know, So far I’ve not been asked to summon a spirit or sacrafice a goat so things are going fine.
However this group is making headlines in Australia ( Where it was originated) with a really strong force of bad press. We can speculate as to what the drivers behind some of these stories are but as we may never know I’ll just slide right past that and get to my point.
Some of the accusations made in these stories are completely ridiculous and fabricated, some of them are taken so incredibly out of context and twisted into something else, and to be fair some of them are kinda understandable
So what’s their gripes?
One headline read ” SHOCKING Facebook group offer advice on how to drug and rape women”
the foundation for this story was a comment on a huge thread where someone sarcastically mentioned the use of chloroform to quiet is significant other. Which I can see the humour in. Now what that story failed to mention was that the guy was asking for advice. One thing I’ve noticed in the time I’ve been in the group is the huge amount of support and advice that guys get when they post in this group. Ladies might not understand but i’ll try give you an example, I consider going to the gun club my ” Man time” its a male dominated sport and men can be manly and use chainsaws on working bee’s and shit like that. But its just as much about men being men as it is to enjoy the sport. Man time isn’t available to a lot of people, perhaps responsibilities get in the way of getting to the golf course or whatever it might be. This group seems to offer that to a huge number of people, anything from advice to discussing topics, finding travel bud’s and of course, because its facebook, Humour
Humor is kinda the part of this that seems to be the most talked about in these stories so it’s important we talk about it.
Now some of the humor is dark, very dark. there are misogynistic tones and the banter can get pretty extreme. Some of it makes my skin crawl, some of it makes me laugh. Given the behaviour of guys being guys ( sorry if that offends you, but not really) they will always try and one up each other, its human nature with a pack of Animals. Can this lead to comments getting pretty rough? of course it can, but this is the internet where things can be taken wildly out of context and used against people to make an unrelated point. One thing that was very clear when I was added to this group was the strict rules, There’s no racist comments, bullying, delving into peoples facebook profiles to gather dirt on them for an argument, it’s actually really well thought out. Does this mean that saying something misogynistic is just as offensive as saying to a woman’s face? I don’t think so, I think everyone has their modes if you like when around different people, and different social circles find different types of humour acceptable or funny. Given we know that this is a man only space, should those men then pander to please people outside of a social circle? I don’t think so??
Now with all this talk of safe space, It’s important to point out that yes there is some bad in there, but the amount of good I’ve personally seen is amazing. Guys being talked down by a community keeping them from taking their own lives, that’s pretty fucking amazing. Having been in a position, not even that long ago where someone reached out to me who was suicidal and then was talked down is no easy thing to do, she’s still here and coming right, and a number of blokes im sure yet to speak up have had similar experiences through this group. as you well know I’m big on suicide awareness having lost friends to it already so anything that can help is going to be worth looking into and supporting. Sure its not perfect but given that its a non profit group of people talking on facebook moderated by a few guys with day jobs, they are doing alright.
Sure, offensive things get said and as stated there are things in there that I don’t like, but hey social circles right? maybe there should be a venn diagram of the people in there with super dark humour and the people like me that maybe just wana see peoples cool cars and maybe go a hike when people are in town?? and that’s ok cause that’s the choice, if you don’t like it leave the social circle? or group in this case?
Right about now is when i would normally find a hypocritical post showing the double standard but lets be fair, I don’t think I need to anymore, the hypocrisy is rife and I can’t be fucked wasting my time on it.
Let men be men, trust me on this, I’ve seen mates who live under the thumb who get loose when they get a hall pass and fuck me, if they had just a little more breathing room to be men with men when they needed, home life would be a fuckload less stressful
I’ll be interested to see how this all pans out but I thought it was worth casting an opinion on.
If you want to help support this group they have a petition going here — > CHANGE.ORG
Until next time Blokes
Addendum, from the head admin of B.A.
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