I honestly think you’re not reading enough into it. For one thing, I’m not calling the crisis “supposed”, I’m quoting the article. The author is calling it “supposed”. It’s one of the things that makes me doubt the rest of the article’s problems are (just) bad writing. “Agenda” is a loaded word, it’s (ironically) too black and white, and presumes intentionality. A better one is “Perspective”, and the one on display is that men and women go nuts for fundamentally different reasons, where ones are personal faults (and fixed by changing the person), and others are systemic faults (and fixed by changing the system). I specifically chose the article I linked to show that it’s not malice, necessarily, it’s just the lens through which the subject is seen. IDK, think of it as sublimated misogyny, if you must.
And just to make this point one more time: young men do spend too much time online. So does everyone. You don’t end up in a Qanon Facebook group by not being online. And they do fall for bullshit artists. So do the rest of the cranks. You don’t end up in a Qanon Facebook group by not falling for bullshit artists. They just stick out like a sore thumb because, tech being male dominated as it is, they were the first to be a big enough bunch of suckers to be worth dedicated con artists. The rest of the world will undoubtedly get there, just wait :(
Then what is it doing? Because from what I can tell, it neatly splits the kooks into “the mum who shops at Holland & Barrett” and “Andrew Tate-watching teenage son”. It then interprets the son as “spends a lot of time online”, “supposed crisis of masculinity manifesting in the “incel” movement”, “rightwing influencers” and “masculine gym culture [… ] keen to look for the “secrets” of getting healthy”, but presents the mother as “Far too often, we blame women”, “it’s not the women we need to fix;”
If the article were more honest, it would see the throughline of “not happy with reality and looking for alternatives”, and the mirror images of “gym and suplements” and “yoga and Acai berries”, or “influencers” and “health gurus”. It would maybe even notice the “inadequate healthcare drives people to seek help elsewhere” parallel between women’s chronic pain and men’s mental health. Or it would at least have the selfawareness to rephrase the diagnosis, considering the Grauniad constantly calling for men to be fixed, to the point that even the sympathetic articles use the exact same phrasing.
That’s not the distortion, the bias in diagnoses and treatments is well known, same reason nobody in their right mind should trust the AI diagnobots. The problem is that if you’re concerned about the loss of trust in the official sources, maybe don’t immediately split the people you’re writing about into “victim of the system” and “Alex Jones gymbro incel” (ironically, thus denying the women in question the agency to be a shithead).
That’s the thing, in their mind that’s not distorted, and they won’t, or even can’t, step into someone else’s shoes. Ironically a problem they share with conspiracy theorists.