
Towards a Bra-free Instagram Experience (2017) - aloknnikhil
https://shift.newco.co/2017/12/30/towards-a-bra-free-instagram-experience/
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guskel
>Do men on Instagram contend with this many half-naked dudes and their butts
all the time? I really want to know.

In a way, yes. Men are shown ads or muscular, successful men with chiseled
jawlines reminding us that we're inferior, our clothes style sucks, how we
can't be a man because we don't smoke the same cigarettes as he.

~~~
pm90
Sure, but imagine how worse it would be to see the outline of the said
muscular men’s penises.

Because breasts are similarly sexualized. The muscular man may hurt my sense
of self but he does not challenge me to sexually improve or supplement myself.

~~~
viklove
Muscles are similarly sexualized, so you don't really need to get the penis
involved.

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paggle
Making you feel bad is a proven effective advertising strategy, and a proven
terrible world to exist. There needs to be a pollution tax for advertising the
way there should be for carbon. If you deliberately pump a harmful product out
into the world you should have to pay through the nose for it.

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excessive
It's pretty easy to avoid Instagram and Facebook. Install an ad blocker and
the rest of the web becomes reasonably friendly.

They'll just keep ratcheting up the obnoxiousness until they find your
threshold for quitting. These are "free" products, so if you're still enjoying
the rest of the site, then they're leaving money on the table.

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pplante
I agree with the author and wish I could see less ads for bras. I am a male
and mostly follow makers and woodworkers, yet I see a ton of ads for bras. My
wife doesn't send me too many links to bra companies either.

I deleted my Facebook 2 years ago, and my Instagram is only about 6 months
old. I used the same email address in both accounts.

~~~
dice
Do you have kids? When ours arrived and I started searching for baby and kid
related items The Algorithms decided that I must be a woman.

~~~
pplante
I do. Good point, the algorithms are as biased as societal norms from the
1950s.

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Scoundreller
The objected ads will continue until morale improves.

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microcolonel
> _says something really depressing about our value as women in the world_

Well, most women want attractive men to be attracted to them. The advertisers
attempt to associate their products with being attractive. Men are advertised
to the same way, it says nothing about men's "value to the world". This is
embarrassing melodrama.

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einpoklum
Instead of stopping use of a commercial-propaganda-infested app like
Instagram, the author continues to use it, but shouts at the wind,
essentially, on this is annoying.

Fatalism, defeatism, subservience.

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justinator
(2017)

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dondawest
This is a ridiculous criticism. Ancient Greeks didn’t look at sculptures of
ripped dudes and “feel bad about themselves.” They got INSPIRED and felt GOOD
about themselves. Be like an Ancient Greek.

~~~
2pointsomone
I don't even know where to begin, my friend...

~~~
dondawest
You could begin by choosing to feel good when seeing an inspiring (even
“unrealistically” inspiring) image like Michelangelo’s David. :)

~~~
microcolonel
AFAIK, David is physiologically impossible; as much as a photoshopped ad.

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antisthenes
Which parts of him are physiologically impossible?

His biceps and thighs are well within human proportions I see daily in regular
men.

In fact, the least likely portion of him would be the modest endowment,
something that a modern man would almost certainly not admit to.

~~~
microcolonel
He's standing in a way that requires activating his missing muscle. ;- )

Apparently Michelangelo knew it was missing, because it's due to a flaw in the
marble.

I think individually the proportions aren't crazy, but taken together I think
they contradict eachother.

