What the F*** is Going on With Young Men?
Part 3 of The Great Dating Divide
We walked into the Kava bar after not finding any place to go dancing.
You see, in a town like Naples Florida where the Hispanic population hovers around 30%, you figure some place would have Latin music on a Saturday night to dance Salsa and Bachata to. But, alas, we had no luck. So, I thought, why don’t we go to a Kava Bar? There will be young people there.
I scanned the room looking for a couple of empty chairs by the bar. The place was packed. But I was so focused on finding an empty seat that I didn’t evaluate the people in the place. She and I walked over to the bar where there were two empty seats at the far side of the room. In front of the chairs on the bar top were two Nintendo controllers. I looked up, and there was a TV with Super Smash Bros on it. A video game from my childhood.
Odd. Who wants to play videogames in public on a Saturday night?
I turned to look at a row of guys who were sitting just behind the bar. One of them made eye contact with me through his brown, curly hair.
“Are these seats taken?” I asked.
“Yeah man, they’re for the tournament. Sorry,” he responded.
Um, what?
I turned to Abby and gently directed her by the waist back to the front of the room. Then I stopped her. I looked around the place and evaluated the people more closely as I searched for a place to sit. That’s when I realized something. I leaned in and said to her in her ear, “Um, there are only dudes here.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”
There were two girls in the place. One was with a small child. The other was at a table with a laptop in front of her with a look on her face that said “Please, someone talk to me.”
No one did.
I scanned the room again as the strangeness of the scene slowly downloaded. The room was filled with guys in their early 20s. And they were all doing one of three things: staring at their phones, playing videogames, or staring at their laptops, which were propped up on the bar. And probably had videogames on their screens.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here. Want to just go back to your place?” I asked Abby.
“Sure.”
We left. And that’s when I realized I knew exactly how I was going to introduce Part 2 of this article series. Because this exact scene is most likely playing out across the country. Rooms filled with guys, staring at their phones, swiping away on dating apps or playing videogames, waiting for a girl to come talk to them, while surrounded by zero of them.
This scene is not one indicative of a healthy society. Young men aren’t doing well. They’re lonely. They’re afraid to talk to women. And I think we all realize this.
But this is only one of the scenes with young, lonely men playing out across our country. The other is far sadder.
Chase Garvey was your classic outsider with a troubled history. There were clear signs of distress leading up to the horrific events of July 6th. Some might say that the authorities should have known he would act out. When one of these mass shootings happen, we always look back in hindsight and say “We should have known.” But how can we really anticipate such things?
At 2:50am, Chase arrived at the home of Brendon Parrett, where Brendon and his friends were celebrating Brendon’s 21st birthday. Also at the party was Delaney Eary, Chase’s ex-girlfriend.
But Chase wasn’t invited to this party. He wasn’t there to celebrate. He came there to kill.
Holding the gun that he brought, he began opening fire. In the chaos, Shane Miller jumped on one of his friends, Claire, and saved her from the carnage. Shane lost his life for his efforts.
Chase shot and killed his ex-girlfriend. And he killed two and injured three others before fleeing the scene.
Cops were on him in an instant due to there being a Patrol Office nearby. He ran his car off into a ditch, shot himself in the head, and was pronounced dead at the hospital.
This terrible scene occurred only weeks before the publishing of this article. And it’s only one of many similar stories.
In Uvalde, Texas in 2022, 21-year-old Salvador Ramos killed 21 students at Robb Elementary School.
In Buffalo, New York in 2022, 18-year-old Payton Gendron killed 10 at a Tops Friendly Market.
In Indianapolis in 2021, 19-year-old Brandon Hole killed 8 at a FedEx facility.
And in Oxford Township, Michigan in 2021, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley killed 4 at Oxford High School.
These are not isolated incidences, either. Mass shootings among young male loners is a growing trend. Since Columbine, mass shootings fitting this description have increased dramatically (NIJ). This trend is potentially a sign that there is a larger portion of men than ever who feel left behind by society.
And as a growing number of men lash out at a world that seems to keep rejecting them, a growing number of women think this…
To answer the question of why young men are strulgging, we need to first ask:
Why do men build things?
"Men want to do things for women. That's why men build bridges, clean up messes, get involved in fights. It’s always about a woman." – Jerry Seinfeld
Men build things because of women. And this isn’t a new thing. It has always been this way. Well, for humans at least.
The thing that makes humans differ from all other animals is our ability to communicate new ideas. A fun read is Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens”. In his book, Harari discusses how complex language and the sharing of stories, above all else, has shaped humanity.
In most species, the dominant male is not intellectually more dominant. He is physically more dominant. The dominant Lion, Elk, or Elephant Seal, which all control harems of women while their less dominant counterparts get little to no action, don’t get that control through their ability to quote Shakespeare. They get it through being able to kill any other male who tries to bed one of his sex-slaves.
In human societies, however, men get access to women through their intellect. The strong but dumb brute is the perfect workhorse for the high-IQ clan leader who can effectively communicate what the clan needs to do to not get eaten by lions or starve to death. The brute could kill the leader at any moment. But he chooses not to. Because the brute would lead the clan astray. And everyone knows that. Including the women. Which, by the way, the high-IQ human clan leader has full access to.
And there is historical precedent to prove this. Men of high-status in society get the lion’s share of the women (see what I did there?). Genghis Khan, King Solomon, Wilt Chamberlain, and Mick Jagger have had incredible success with women. And nobody ever talks about how beautiful they are. And if you’re a lady and you’re reading this and you email me to tell me you find Mick Jagger so sexy, I’m telling you right now that it has little, if anything, to do with his scrawny nerd-looks.
Women aren’t attracted to men based on their looks (for the most part). This is usually low on women’s list of priorities. Women across cultures find traits like personality and earning capacity far more desirable than physical looks (Study).
In case you were wondering, dudes across cultures still prefer hot chicks. Typical.
And there is an evolutionary basis for these differences. In “The Red Queen” by Matt Ridley, he discusses why humans have sex. But in the discovery process, he also talks about why female and male humans filter for certain traits.
Basically, women filter for personality and status because it means if they have a baby with a man with a good personality and high status, he will be a better caretaker for that child. It’s a long-term game. If you didn’t know, pregnancy takes a while. And you can’t be pregnant with two babies from two different dudes. At least, I think you can’t. But my point being, getting pregnant is a large commitment for women. And the father matters. She wants genes in her baby that will make him a successful human (personality and smarts). And she wants a dad who can provide the baby with the best opportunities for survival (having wealth and status helps).
Men, on the other hand don’t, evolutionarily speaking, have that ingrained commitment level. They can make a whole bunch of babies with a whole bunch of ladies and not really have to care about what happens to them long-term. However, he doesn’t want his genes to be mixed with bad ones. So, he chooses women who are physically beautiful (a sign of health) and with wide hips (for the baby to pop out of easily without the risk of death for the baby or the mom).
Yes, it’s that simple. (Probably not, but enough to explain most of the male to female mate-selection behavior.)
That means men need to have status to attract women. And to get that status they need to be able to communicate and persuade people to do things with and for them. And they need to use those other people to help them build impressive things that society needs and doesn’t know how to get. In turn society awards them with wealth and status. And then come the women.
Now we have our answer for ‘Why do men build things?’ It’s because of women. They want women. Like, really bad. They’ll literally build villages and burn those of their neighbors to do it. Horny dudes are fucking wild.
One problem for men is that when they are young (<30, basically), they don’t have money or status. So, their mate-selection ability is less than it is when they get older. Also, younger men aren’t as physically attractive to women as slightly older guys (Psychology Today). Double whammy.
The Pickup Artist community will even teach men how to fake status signals to attract women. In “The Mystery Method” by Erik Von Markovic, pick-up artist “Mystery” (von Markovik) discusses how to do this. He discusses things called “Displays of Higher Value” (DHVs) and “Displays of Lower Value” (DLVs). Basically, as a guy trying to pick up women, you want to DHV yourself and DLV her. Put yourself on a pedestal and put her down, ideally using things called “negs” (negative put-down comments). Also, according to Mystery, you want to engage as much as you can with groups in a club to seem like the most popular guy in the room. Then, once you have established your social status, go after your “target” (no joke, this is what he calls women).
Does this stuff work? Yes, of course it works. Because, when done correctly, it feigns the things that most women are looking for: status and charisma. But do you know what’s even better than faking status and charisma through bullshit pickup lines and gambits? Actually having status and charisma.
And those are the things that young men lack right now. They are lacking charisma because they are too busy staring at their phones, laptops, and TVs to go out and try to talk to women.
And they aren’t building anything, in part, because of the new societal incentives and norms. So, they have no status.
As we have seen, the wage gap is decreasing. And men are steadily losing a place in the workforce. Manual labor jobs, which pay well, and men are typically really good at, are being looked down upon. And it’s becoming more and more accepted that you can live with your parents and not work until your dream job falls into your lap while you play video games (MSN).
Men aren’t being incentivized to build anything. And in many cases, are being disincentivized to do so. Men used to have to provide all of the money to support a family of four or more. This meant they needed to work long, hard days building stuff to fulfill this monumental, and admirable, duty. But now that women are making as much if not more than men are, they are only required to provide 50% of the income needed to fund a family. And family sizes are getting smaller, meaning they don’t require as much funding. This doesn’t just result in 50% less output by men. When adjusted for compound interest over decades of a career, 50% less effort results in orders of magnitude less output.
Oh, and when they do build incredible things, they are shunned and sued for it (read: any ‘Wired’ article about Elon Musk).
The result of all of these changes to society is that men are working less. They are building fewer things. They are not gaining confidence from their ability to build things. They are not gaining charisma from the act of working with others that they would have if they built stuff. They are not acquiring status as a result of the stuff they built. And they are not attracting the women that they could if they had the status and charisma attained through building stuff.
And why don’t we top it all off with almost unlimited and free porn to replace the girls they would otherwise be highly motivated to date.
The cards are stacked against young men. And we are seeing the resistance to these new societal norms with the rise of such “Alpha Male” influencers like Andrew Tate, Dan Bilzerian, and David Goggins. There are even a million “Alpha Male” Instagram pages devoted to quotes and paraphrases from characters such as these. And it turns out, contrary to popular opinion, women don’t like womanizing douchebags. This pendulum swing is too far in the other direction.
How do we dig ourselves out of this hole? It’s going to require a cultural shift towards a more traditional way of raising boys to grow into the kinds of young men we all want to see (and women want to date).
We need to let our boys play in the dirt, get hurt playing sports with their friends, let them help with the shed Dad is building and not just have them hold the flashlight, and let them learn through experience that holding the car door open and offering their hand for a girl is much more attractive than slapping her on her ass after she lets herself out of the car on her own.
And then, when they are 18, encourage them to pursue a career that is aligned with their innate skills. Not just the hot job in Corporate America that has the highest earning potential when they graduate with a degree they didn’t want in the first place.
Part 3 Coming Soon…