A grumpy old sign of our very scary times

This week it seems everyone has been called upon to have an opinion on Jordan Peterson. It’s no mean feat given that I, and I’m sure many of you, are still trying to understand what this grumpy old dude actually stands for, and why on earth he’s so popular.

There is no denying he is popular, staggeringly popular in fact, albeit largely among dudes. It was an veritable sausage fest on Monday night when I ran into his fans: it was like the feeding of the 5000 30-something white men at his Auckland Town Hall talk. Aside from the dudes, there were six female partners, three placard-wavers, and one wizard in a natty black velvet cape and hat.

For a long time I really struggled to understand this mass masculine appeal. I’d read his book, which is a messianic mixture of biology, biblical passages and Cosmopolitan-level life advice. There’s the occasional heartwarming insight into the kind of man who falls deeper in love with his wife when seeing her exercising relentless kindness to an unloved toddler. But at its best it’s predictable platitudes for respectable living, and at worst reductive biological explanations for all human behaviour.

It wasn’t exactly an earth-shattering read, so I assumed my ovaries must be blocking some of the life-changing magic that the 14.4 million viewers on his infamous Channel 4 interview feel. I’ve been trying to work out all week where his appeal comes from, and the longer I thought about it the more it started to scare me.

Firstly his popularity comes undeniably from his messianic manner. He’s stern, commanding and likes to use very important language. (If you did a shot every time he said ‘‘post-structual Marxism’’ you’d be in a coma within 30 seconds.) You can’t listen to his ‘‘12 rules for order’’ and not draw comparisons to the Ten Commandments.

It’s not exactly surprising he’s popular then, when religion was traditionally used to explain the wilderness of human existence. In the climate of modern ‘‘what’s the point of it all’’ confusion, Peterson’s godly gravitas is both certain and soothing. There’s a reason guys especially find it appealing, though. We’ve come a long way in pulling down stubborn sexist societal tropes, but there’s still a large gap in how we’re teaching boys to be good men.

Many of the guys I’ve spoken to say they’re confused about how to ‘‘be a man these days’’. This big, disorientating gap in young men’s understanding makes it easy for Peterson to step firmly in and say, ‘‘I have the answers.’’ And if the scale of his popularity is anything to go by, there are an alarming amount of lost men out there.

This is worrying in itself, and downright alarming that this group turns to Peterson as a prophet when so many of his arguments are dangerously one-sided. But the scariest part is when you realise how these guys turn to the internet for guidance, and what these men may then be exposed to through his videos.

See, the last part of Peterson’s appeal is his ability to play upon men’s sense of victimisation. One of his favourite lines is that men have never been an advantaged group in society. In fact, he says, they’re actively disadvantaged today.

This is catnip to the Middle-Aged and Enraged Brigade, led by supreme snowflake Piers Morgan, who jump at the chance to retweet ‘‘proof’’ that men are under attack. And to the much more sinister ‘‘manosphere’’, a nasty, murky internet subculture based loosely on the belief that modern society favours women and oppresses men.

And boy do they love Peterson. Have you ever wondered why all of his 1.5m-view lecture videos are titled by what sounds like a douchey 19-year-old (‘‘Jordan Peterson explains why nice guys finish last!!!’’ or ‘‘Jordan Peterson destroys feminists’’)? It’s because these videos are enthusiastically posted by the soft manosphere, who love to use him as heavyweight ‘‘proof’’ that men really are victimised.

It’s hard to tell whether Peterson tries to appeal to this group. He’s very particular about his word choice, and he deliberately uses the exact, flashpoint phrases of the manosphere around liberalism/feminism/gender determinism. But he’s also too sensible, and too interested in the idea of personal responsibility, to align with a group that argues everything from women being the root of all men’s problems to the incel ideology of killing women who refuse sex with you.

However, this doesn’t stop his videos becoming a gateway to pulling lonely, vulnerable men into the manosphere. And given our track record with mental health and loneliness, and the backdrop of increasingly polarised entrenched online gender warfare, you can’t help but find his massive appeal a sign of very scary times.

If you did a shot every time he said ‘poststructual Marxism’ you’d be in a coma within 30 seconds.