Ok, I don’t like to talk about this much there was a time when I was just like them: Fedora, the obsession with martial arts, the “times I respected women card”. I can’t necessarily speak for every one of them but there is this a semi-logical thought process that led directly towards that behavior/lifestyle and imagine many men followed the same path.

For me it came down to a rejection of what I saw was traditional masculinity. My dad was a “manly man” and he wanted me to play sports and work on cars but I wasn’t really that interested in that. To add to it I was physically weaker and the guys that played sports were not shy about beating the hell out of me just for fun.

To put it simply I didn’t fit in, I didn’t like the things that the other boys liked and at the time there was this fear that I might be gay because I liked to read books, I hated violence, and loved musicals. After determining that I was heterosexual (despite the insistence to the contrary by the football team) I was in desperate need of a masculine model while still rejecting the masculinity of my father and the bullies at school and still get girls to like me.

I hated everything about those people that rejected me so I rejected them and everything my teenage mind believed they were: mindless, uncultured brutes.

While trying to find my way in the world and survive high school I ended up stumbling face first into nearly every neckbeard cliche and now all these years later I think I can explain why:

An obsession with intellect: I was never going to be physically superior to any of my bullies but I knew I could outsmart them. For them it was “Do you even lift bro?” for me it was “Do you even read Nietzsche good sir?”

The Fedora: Everyone watched the latest movies and listened to the hottest pop songs so of course be being the smartest guy in the world made me above all that. I only watched critically acclaimed films from the early days of cinema and listened to classical music or jazz. The fedora was a symbol of class and elegance. Humphrey Bogart got all the girls and he wore one. Why wouldn’t it work for me?

The fascination with asian culture and bladed weapons: For me the allure of Japanese art and history was clear. Asian culture didn’t appear fetishize brutality for the sake of brutality and overt displays of strength. As I had understood it, strength came from within, from channeling some unseen energy. I was fascinated with samurai and ninja. They were powerful. They spoke softly but carried a big stick.

“Respecting” women: This one came from an desire to do good that went wrong. At the time I had never considered the transactional nature of my behavior (be nice=get girl). I saw these girls that I was attracted to going off and getting with the same people that had hurt me. I projected onto them, I assumed that the way they treated me was how they would treat them and I was determined to be better than them. I would be kind and generous. I would “listen” to women and understand what they wanted from a man. I would be what they asked for. I hadn’t realized at the time that I was essentially using women that just wanted a friend. All I felt was frustration as I bent over backwards to give women what they asked for only to get what I perceived as nothing in return.

After all that came the echo chamber. I finally got what I was looking for, a place to belong. But we ended up just confirming and reinforcing our own faulty beliefs. In the end we were nothing more than a hodge podge of sad little boys adorned in bastardized cultural signifiers, removed from context. We just wanted people to think we had value because we couldn’t value ourselves.

Wow…… ummm…. sorry that went on so long.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/7wwyw5/neckbeard_crew/