One of the useful ideas Freud gave us for understanding how superstructure works. This redditor has a few possible pathological reasons to embrace their death drive, to become self-destructive if not suicidal. A new marriage is forcing them to live a new way, they're self-conscious about their looks and project that onto other facets of their identity, their identity seems to be mostly crypto on reddit and crypto markets have been going to hell over the past couple months. Social and material pressures build up until he's probably facing some degree of suicidal ideation. If not consciously, it's now driving him.

However you can't do that in normal society. r/meirl-type jokes have to speak about things like that under the veil of irony because it's socially unacceptable to be self-destructive. If he expressed those pathologies in their raw form, it'd be toxic emotional outbursts which either alienate them or make others concerned for them. We also have structural and cultural barriers to accessing medical care that would stop those things, while the same structures only immiserate and emasculate him further because it's profitable.

So he channels that into some other form that people do accept. Again it might not even be conscious, but suddenly becoming a mercenary for a conflict he doesn't seem to have an interest in is appealing. It fulfills his emotional need for self-destruction but in a heroic way. It fulfills his emotional need for validation and material security, but in the most culturally masculine way. It's not a suicide attempt because he's not firing the bullet and doesn't have to make that difficult choice we're programmed to avoid. His wife wouldn't have to deal with shame because she'd be a gold star widow. Suddenly that suicide is reframed as martyrdom with all of the same psychological drives that make someone want to martyr themselves.

Becoming a combat medic was partially like that for me. I mostly did it because I wanted tactical medicine training and the Hospital Corps was the best in the world, but wanting to work with warzone refugees outside of the military is a form of escapism from a society I don't like participating in. The self-destruction it causes would be personally validating- helping people that need it- and since it logically culminates in death when MSF hospitals get bombed it's making that choice I'm apathetic toward for me. Before that backpacking fulfilled the same role and let me be an adventurer rather than someone who didn't want to be domesticated. edit: And hiking now- beyond the naturalism and various hobbies tied to it being able to spend 16 miles battling a mountain is where I draw my sense of masculinity from and it fulfills my positive association with l'appel du vide because while it's a physical test I'm one small mistake away from death.