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The Man or Bear<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Man or Bear\u2019 has been a meme that\u2019s spread across the internet since April of 2024. The meme basically stems from a viral interview that had someone asking eight separate women whether (in a case of survival) they would choose to be stuck in the woods with a man or a bear, with seven out of the eight women choosing a bear. Women in the comments of the video also agreed stating their reasoning and supporting the bear option. Many men across the internet were enraged by this choice, coming from the explanation that \u2018not all men\u2019 are a threat. Men since then began to make memes depicting them leaving women alone with bears refusing help because she \u2018chose\u2019 the bear instead of them in a case of survival. The man in the meme would often take pride in having the woman die by the hands of the bear, depicting him glorified for being in the right, or proud of himself in an almost narcissistic fashion.<\/span><\/p>\n This mentality to many is sickening, and solidifies the fear that women have when choosing the bear over a man. Imagine you are running from a bear, and when in need of help you find a <\/span>man. Yet he doesn\u2019t just deny help and willingly lets you die; he takes pleasure in it because that is what he deemed you deserved. That, in plain words, is tortuous behavior.<\/p>\n The interview was not to say that men were threats, however by the backlash of the interview, men showed that they can be more threatening than women through these memes. What if a woman was stuck in the woods with the same man that denied her help initially, instead of the bear? Is it so far to consider she might be in more threat of violation than with that of a bear? A bear is deadly, don\u2019t get me wrong. However, a bear is built on animal instinct; as all animals are. That makes the bear predictable. A man is unpredictable and creative, acting on impulse, instinct and control. A bear will physically harm you, but a man can do so much more aside from simple harm.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet this isn\u2019t the only problem with the meme. The idea itself is immediately polarizing and vague. There is no explanation for what kind of bear you are dealing with, what kind of man you are dealing with, etc.. For example, let\u2019s say the question was phrased differently:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cwould you rather be stuck in the woods with a grizzly bear or your brother?\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0Many women might answer \u2018your brother\u2019 because they feel safer with that option, despite \u2018your brother\u2019 being a stranger to another. Now, if the question was:<\/span> \u201cwould you rather be in the woods with a black bear or a man convicted with a felon?\u201d <\/span><\/i>The obvious answer to many women might be the black bear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But I don\u2019t want this message to be that men are a threat. In fact, I believe by this interview many men felt threatened by such responses. To have the bear be picked, it essentially <\/span>is telling men that you are unsafe. And justifiably, that can have some dramatic and emotional responses. Saying you are more threatening than a predator and deemed untrustworthy by a majority, is unfair. But with the retorts being so violent, the cycle of separation between men and women continues.<\/p>\n A meme with a different outlook:<\/p>\n Truthfully, I don’t know how much a meme like this would work. On one hand, it gets the message across that we need a break from so much that even the bear is tired. But at the same time, I ask myself “is this sweeping the issue under the rug?’ I believe positivity in the media is difficult considering how cynical and sarcastic a lot of today’s memes are. But, I believe that this meme at least gets the point across. That point being, we need a break. From the internet, from the polarization. Or in other, lighthearted words: “let the bear be.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Man or Bear \u2018Man or Bear\u2019 has been a meme that\u2019s spread across the internet since April of 2024. The meme basically stems from a viral interview that had someone asking eight separate women whether (in a case of survival) they would choose to be stuck in the woods with a man or a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":24335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[153,161],"class_list":["post-24333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-153","tag-task-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/download-7.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24333"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25111,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24333\/revisions\/25111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Screenshot-2024-09-13-at-4.03.24-PM.jpg\")
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