It's honestly pretty sad. The type of masculinity they're trying to recapture is basically just about being useful. They want to contribute more to society than just making their boss more money by sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day. They want to feel like they can build stuff people need, fix stuff, and bond with the guys over a pint. What they're really looking for is solidarity and meaningful work, but they can't figure out how to do that so they buy masculine-branded shit instead.

Here's an unending repository of this kind of guy

I like the dude who carries a knife, a pen, a flashlight, and a Gameboy Advance SP GameBoy Micro with a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics

Holy shit, i was trying to articulate this theory to my GF a couple months ago. My gen x performativly masculine boss got me a craft beer man crate for christmas. all the branding and instructions and stuff were all like huge block letters, manly etc. the instructions had a bunch of shitty sarcastic self-aware 'jokes.' but all i could think about was who this kit was made for: probably a man in his 30s who in his 20s though of himself as a tough dude/ladies man/big boy. Now though, he's had a couple of kids, put on some weight and spends his life at an utterly dehumanizing (therefore emasculating) job. Therefore, he buys products that sell a masculine lifestyle so he can try to buy back the pieces he's lost.

Because, as much as these guys want to be masculine, they aren't willing to do the work to be masculine

Work, you ask? How does one work to be masculine?

Simple, the positive traits of traditional masculinity that are valued--strength, loyalty, honor, discipline, bravery, etc.--the POSITIVE ones--are hard

Similarly, the positive traits of traditional femininity--nurturing, patience, wisdom, diplomacy, management--are hard

That's why they worship special forces psychos instead of being them, that's why they worship MMA wackos instead of being them, it's idolatry

That's why they buy straight razors even if they can't grow a beard, that's why they buy a gun then never shoot it after the first trip to the range, that's why they go into that "art of masculinity" shit that, if you tried to sell in the 1970s, everyone would be calling you "gay" over for how campy it is

Yeah, it's alienation, it's working a dead-end office job, it's having grown up in a suburb hellhole with no trees or streams or rocks to break bones/scrape knees on, but there's also an undeniable element of American laziness and conspicuous consumption

And you better believe that a super individualist society is corrosive to traditional masculinity, because why the fuck would cutthroat capitalists need loyalty or discipline or honor? Take a look at your CEOs and finance capitalists, they're cowards and scumbags, not Greek or Roman folk heroes they'd make statues of

I am definitely traditionally masculine. In my spare time I love training boxing, weight lifting, watching a little sports, and camping. My job is mostly working outside and I go on some dangerous hikes. However I don’t make much and my family background are the blue collar salt of the earth type of people you mentioned. My blue collar family like what they like and that’s it. Cheap beer and sports make them happy.

When I think of these middle class men who project their idea of “real men” they always come from a privileged background and work a job that could be removed tomorrow and society would never notice.

This also makes me think of the three combat veterans I know who the men you describe would worship. The one vet did like three tours and has been in the army for almost 20 years. He’s the stereotypical man’s man but the guy is the biggest fucking nerd ever. Plays video games all the time and is huge into DnD. The other one is a gamer too and my cousin just smokes a ton of weed and is a laborer.

The Fight Club speech about being God’s middle children always comes up in my mind when I think of these macho guys. These guys have no struggle, no Great War, they had everything come to them so they have to buy and prove to everyone how tough they are.

Edit: I never feel the need to show off my “manly” hobbies to other people unless they ask.

They see themselves as fraud (to their existing societal perception of masculinity) and surround themselves with tokens of their perception of societal perception. Probably connected to absolute alienation of labor, where you can say “I made this” in manual labor (even if it’s shipped somewhere), when you do some spreadsheets it’s much harder to see your work in real world.

This is what happens when there is complete alienation from others.

Every time I see a giant lifted truck covered in blue lives matter stickers I question whether I really identify as male if this is what society considers "masculine".

The Bachelor Pad itself is an invention by Hugh Heffner and a reaction to the original men's liberation movement. Instead of achieving liberation through politics and collective action (men at the time were concerned about how traditional gender roles would reduce them to their function as bread winners and exclude them from their own families, also the draft), the idea of liberation was recuperated as consumerism: be free in your man cave after work.

It's a fascinating phenomenon of American culture, to have a designated man space. I wonder whether this seclusion space is just healthy retreat or whether it fosters isolation even more. Probably both in some sense?

Yeah it's just another version of buying an identity. It's fundamentally the same thing as the soy nerd who's too into legos and Zelda.

Anyone else run into this kind of guy?

Everyone I work with who's over 30

You know I never realized how much overlap there is between suburban/exurban chuds and the soyboy stereotype

And this guy just loves quoting Marcus Aurelius or just the ancient Romans and Greeks in general.

There's also a sub-culture of this guy that's particular to Evangelicalism...

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white supremacist american “meat”-eating culture is performed as toxic masculinity.

A sort of regional sister species to this type is the primary type of person my company employs: suburban white dudes who have never seen a farm in their life who take the affectation and aesthetic of being "country boys".

I see this a lot. I have a whole manifesto on angry eye'd jeeps ready to be unleashed at any given moment.

I live in an area with many white collar professionals who have the need to own pickups and buy all the tools possible. One of my good friends included. I will never be able to explain to him how dumb it is to own an f150 "to tow" when he has never and will never tow anything. Or how he buys tools for the sake of buying them rather than needing them. I will admit as someone who enjoys working on cars with no space for a project, it is nice to have a friend who loves to buy dumb shit and lets me drive it because I'm always offering my free labor when hanging out.

i've heard two dads who dress up like bikers without riding motorcycles tell their sons to eat the "man food", rather than the grilled vegetables.

These totems of manliness, the brown leather, wood handled, sharp bladed items are seen as a way to buy one's way into some kind of masculinity that they fear they don't have,

Things like "Dude Wipes", "Bespoke Post", "The art of Manliness", etc are all ways to buy into some kind of Man club. Its like when a kid wants to be "cool" so they put on sunglasses like they see on TV.

It sorta bugs me too because I genuinely love working with my hands. I'll trim a friends bushes if he neglects it. I once masked off two whole rooms and painted in an afternoon because I had enough automotive masking experience to do it 4x as fast and wanted to see my friend live better. I'll pull furniture out of the trash and refinish it just because it makes me happy.

It bugs me because these dudes are cosplaying a blue collar lifestyle they know they could never fit into. I have a desk job, I'm not blue collar, but I know I got along better with machinists and maintenance guys at the smoking area than I did with the computer guys inside. I've gotten to intimately see both sides and it drives me up a wall when a guy is trying to tell me about beard maintenance or craft beers.