Angry Young Men

Book Club is canceled today for my IRL folks! | some thoughts on demographics as destiny, data, aesthetic conformity, and the rise of conservatism

After the election, the internet was flooded with hand wringing: What will we do about the men this time? 

Much has been written about the radicalization of Gen Z—I myself posted about it a few days after the election. Especially of interest is the alt-right pipeline drawing in young men at younger and younger ages, rewiring their brains using rageful right-wing grievance culture. A few months ago, hundreds of teachers took to TikTok to warn parents about fourth and fifth graders—ten and eleven year old boys—about the rampant misogyny exhibited by children due to ingesting content from the Paul brothers, Andrew Tate, and Joe Rogan. 

I’ve written about incels at length, so I won’t retread that ground here, but my point, as always, is that the poisonous logic incels operate under has proliferated across the internet and become commonplace. We all understand what looksmaxing is. The internal logic of The Substance wasn’t even questioned. Who doesn’t want to be young and beautiful forever?

Inputs & Outputs

On The Daily, The New York Times investigated the widening political gender gap and found that young men are lonelier than ever. Additionally, they feel left out of social movements due to academic language being misused and distilled into simple (but muddled) concepts for the general public. 

I’ve called this a failure of sociological language: the tying of demographics to destiny obscures the complexities of both American racial and class stratification (the data is the data, but the data is not the whole story). It is very easy to say that men are the root of all evil in this country, but it turns out you cannot tell a group that they’re inherently bad people without radicalizing them. (That being said, the data shows that Trump gained with young people overall— not just men. The true horror show is the stat showing 60% of white men voted for Trump.)  

“clean girls” according to Pinterest.

Thinking of young people becoming more conservative, the signs have been written on the wind for years now. This viral TikTok by Elysia Berman discussed the rising conservatism in the fashion world: no makeup makeup looks, the severe bun beloved by marketing/PR girls in the West Village, the delicate gold hoops adorning outfits constructed around blazers. It’s worth noting that plus size creators have been calling out these trends for years— aesthetics are often a bellwether for larger societal shifts. A large-scale push towards not only aesthetic blandness but a sleekness meant to display extreme levels of self control would never end well for most, let alone anyone existing in a body larger than the ones deemed ‘acceptable’ by the algorithm.

The aesthetic conversation on TikTok is interesting because I’ve never seen an app breed hyper conformity in such a specific way. People will make content asking “what’s the shoe of the summer? What are we wearing to the bars? What coats are in this fall?”  While a few users have risen to prominence due to having idiosyncratic personal style (Carla Rockmore, Mandy Lee, Mina Le, Wisdom Kaye), many of the larger influencers tend to dress identically.

Another creator pointed out we should have known Trump would win when Pookie and Jett exploded onto the scene this year. I’ve gently pointed out that their story isn’t that exciting, especially in New York: many, many couples here are composed of beautiful women married to wealthy men who buy them expensive clothing. She’s just the first to exploit the fact that he’s besotted by her in a very public way, but these couples are a dime a dozen in SoHo. 

Three years ago, we got the seminal Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny, which explored the current antiseptic cinematic landscape (save us, Challengers and Babygirl, we need you Challengers and Babygirl). Every few months we get “no one needs sex scenes in movies” from pearl clutching puriteens, which tracks, considering Gen Z is having less sex (data here, fascinating Reddit thread here). And that’s not even mentioning the rise of tradwife content and the cosplaying of domesticity alongside the rise of punishing gender norms on both sides: divine feminine/divine masculine slop on one end, “high value man” nonsense on the other.

Put together, the portrait is bleak. Podcasts are telling men to manipulate women outright or spend their lives building altars to their muscles. Young people aren’t drinking or partying or hooking up. Loneliness is more prevalent than ever. It’s easy to see why people are disaffected: the lives they’re living are, for the most part, a simulacrum of the lives they were promised. 

Outside of this, it’s hard to have sympathy for this crop of furious young men. I don’t really have the answer on how to pull someone out of the manosphere. I was a lonely young man myself: I’ve written about being a teenager who spent hours and hours on fanfiction.net and message boards discussing The Sims. I was online, but I didn’t fall into the rabbit holes promising me I’d be happier if I learned to blame others for my problems. Even in the world of gay men, where the siren song of all your problems will vanish if you’re hot enough reigns supreme, most of the damage is directed inward. We’re taught that if you’re not hot, it’s your own fault. We’re very tidy that way.

I went long on Gen Z (as I tend to do), so part two is coming later this week. I’m examining the morality plays around calling someone annoying online.

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• TtB Book Club: I canceled the meeting today as it seems you guys were NOT feeling The Interestings (not taking it personally but I do really love this book). I’m combining the Q4 meetings and aiming to do a final in-person event in early December.

• I didn’t even write about the r slur coming back (alongside the casual use of Twink in place of the f slur) and the rise of weird “alphas”/findoms lurking around gay spaces, seeking to separate gay men from their money by appealing to their baser instincts. Spooky!

• I wrote about the obsession with moral purity last week, but I liked this piece examining the way Gen Z is navigating dating as a battlefield, shouting instructions on how to never get hurt into the void.

• Long read on technology and loneliness being interlinked: Tech Created a Recipe for Loneliness. Texting doesn’t really make us closer is the biggest takeaway here but still fascinating. I hate to blame the phones but…