There is no reason to decide between being sympathetic and unsympathetic. We are both, and for good reason. We naturally sympathize with those that we see ourselves in, those whose circumstances we recognize as similar to our own. And we withhold it from those who have harmed us, those who are not aligned with us.
A perfect example of who can garner both from us is the social loser. Losers that are picked on for no reason, who may have a harsh family life, losers that we could be friends with if it were not for the social taboo. Then losers that have despised everything and everyone around them, who refuse to make respectful conversation, losers that are fine with being losers so long as everyone else is deemed something worse.
The point of writing this, however, is not to bully the second one, nor is it to implore you to text the first one back. It is to recognize that they are often the same person. The Mark Zuckerbergs were long considered innocently nerdy before they stripped us of any sense of digital privacy.
In Ted Lasso, the titular character’s assistant Nate follows nearly the exact same pipeline. When we meet him in the series’ early days, he is nothing more than an innocent, awkward equipment manager for whom we long for his success. Fast forward three years, however, and our sympathy has morphed into distaste, as there is little to no innocence in the power-grabbing, unempathetic coach we see him shape up to be.
The awkward nerd and the contemptible tech mogul are not always different people. Call it the dichotomy of losers or the slippery slope of men. Young men are increasingly seeking validation and role models from online sources, leading to both a decrease in social skills and physical intimacy. It is why “trad” wives and the manosphere are more popular than they have ever been, with algorithms feeding such information to boys before they can even shape an opinion on it.
Dichotomies are supposed to consist of two things that are inherently opposite one another; two beings that share no qualities except that they are being compared. The struggle with losers, however, is that they often occupy both sides at once, both sympathetic and unsympathetic, and that we fail to realize that one can quickly become a pipeline to the next. But it is difficult to know which side someone will end up on.
To Nate, to Mark Zuckerberg, to many of these men, our sympathy is one of the crucial forces that shapes what comes next for them. Pour it on, and you may be able to hold a conversation. Withhold it, and loneliness may be hardened into contempt, spite, entitlement.
We reserve our sympathy for those we recognize and those who might one day be useful to us. It is an efficient system. But it is also a closed one: the men who most need it are, by definition, the ones we have decided not to see ourselves in.