The remarkably talented and alienated late Millennial man
Some empathy for the younger bros
This is part 1 of a four-part exploration of the inner life of men of different generations.
Part 1 - late Millennials (this essay)
Part 2 - Gen X
Part 3 - Boomers
Part 4 - Zoomers
Friends - Yesterday I posted a Substack note probing an emotional current I am noticing among some late Millennial men in their late 20s or 30s. I wasn’t sure if this was something real, but the response has convinced me that it is. This essay is an attempt to capture it. Let me know if this resonates.
The first thing you notice about the Remarkably Talented and Alienated Late-Millennial Male (RTALM) is his intelligence, generosity, and collaborative approach. He will help you in a pinch. He’s courteous to old ladies at the grocery store. At dinner parties and in online forums, he’s the most interesting person to talk to. He knows stuff. He appreciates a willing Gen X ear.
On the outside, the Remarkably Talented and Alienated Late-Millennial Male has his life together. He’s highly intelligent, college-educated, open-minded, and slightly disagreeable. He’s straight, white or mixed-race, and has that “joiner energy” common among Millennials. He won science or debate competitions in high school, got a cell phone in 8th grade, and had a mom who loved him. He’s good-looking and together enough to succeed in the sexual marketplace despite its annoyances and power-law dynamics, and he does. By all appearances, he is a normal, upstanding guy.
Scratch beneath the surface, though, and the Remarkably Talented and Alienated Late-Millennial Male is full of resentment, rage, alienation, and loneliness. These embers burn bright as hell in him. And they are repressed as hell too. He feels too smart for the system, too disagreeable, not feminized enough. He could easily punch the establishment ticket — or at least learn to code — but the costs of that seem too high to him. If he had lived in his grandfather’s era, he would be running things. But in today’s cultural environment, he is functionally a Weird Nerd (ht
).I mean, who is he to complain? Where is the cultural space for that anyways? And, isn’t complaining for losers? Boomer Dad, if he’s around, will give the Remarkably Talented and Alienated Late-Millennial Male a pep talk about picking himself up by the bootstraps but is clueless about the hostile cultural environment his son has faced at work and school. Boomer Dad never experienced that, and if he did, it was when he was laid off in his 50s, after his formative years.
Boomer Dad is mad about what he sees on Fox News to other people, whereas the Remarkably Talented and Alienated Late-Millennial Male knows it firsthand. Boomer Dad means well but his guidance is dated. In moments of judgment and misunderstanding, Boomer Dad will drop that he was married, had purchased a home, and a stable career at his age. This isn’t helpful. I mean, has Boomer Dad checked the cost of housing lately? WTF.
The Remarkably Talented and Alienated Late-Millennial Male is ambitious. He wants a wife and kids, a thriving career, and a home in a leafy suburb with low crime and high trust. Maybe he already has these things. He has LFG energy and a Faustian spirit — he just wants things to be great. He’s tired of the bullshit and wants a path to solving real problems, to building a really great future. But where is this path? In Silicon Valley maybe? Through entrepreneurship? Certainly not through politics or large corporations!
The Remarkably Talented and Alienated Late-Millennial Male perks up when strong older men tell him to stop being a whiny bitch because, inside, he has voice telling him he is, in fact, a whiny bitch. He responded positively to pre-benzo Jordan Peterson’s firm clean-your-room guidance and laughed when trolls turned that to “wash your penis.” He needs structure, craves it, but is conditioned for Montessori. Ugh! He is frustrated by his many internal contradictions.
To the Remarkably Talented and Alienated Late-Millennial Male, everything is really fucking GAY in our society, though he doesn’t mean that in a bigoted way. Well, maybe a little. It’s less about homosexuals — he has friends and family who are gay (and in some cases he himself is gay) — than a cultural environment that has subverted traditional masculinity and has gone overboard in actively promoting and normalizing fringe identities. Our Rainbow Regime doesn’t feel like the America of his understanding, which he was born too late to experience. I mean, he’s forward-thinking by nature, but can’t we just tone it down several notches? Nope, apparently not! Increasingly, he just feels like (metaphorically) burning it all down. He smiles at the barista wearing a pride pin but also thinks: Fuck this shit.
If the Remarkably Talented and Alienated Late-Millennial Male could articulate his feelings without sounding like he’s whining, he might say something like: Wouldn’t you be confused if you were coddled by your parents, over-prescribed at school, passed over in admissions and jobs, and then told to shut up because of your privilege? Just his luck to enter college and the job market just in time for the Great Awokening.
The last thing the Remarkably Talented and Alienated Late-Millennial Male wants is to be seen as is a victim, though he secretly feels like one. He knows he’s privileged by historical standards blah blah blah. He’s well versed on the war on boys. He knows about the lack of male spaces. Hell, even the Boy Scouts went down. He wants to whine about this stuff but can’t.
The Remarkably Talented and Alienated Late-Millennial Male does complain about our feminized, therapy-driven culture. And yet his deepest need — which he can’t articulate because it sounds weak — is just to be seen. More than anything, he wants this deep-seated emotional state acknowledged. Yes, he wants things fixed. He wants structure, pep talks, weight-lifting tips, and career advice. He wants a path to become the man and father and success he knows he’s capable of becoming… and to feel resolved on the inside. And he’s willing to put in the work. But more than anything, he wants this mixed bag of resentment, desire, anger, ambition to be understood. Only then can we talk about how to address it. Only then can he find a way to put together the pieces and create from it. He knows he has to walk this path himself.
There’s not much I can do to help the Remarkably Talented and Alienated Late-Millennial Male, but I’d like to offer one thing: I see you. At least I’m trying to. Let me know if I got it right.
And, yeah, stop being a whiny bitch. Also, here’s a hug.
The term that I came up with recently (that applies to me and probably many other RTLMM) is "functionally invisible". Highly functional. Highly invisible. For me, the functionality has always allowed me to get by, which means people can't see the mess and darkness inside – "You seem to be doing just fine!", making me feel invisible triggering more angst and loneliness.
Some examples:
1. My best performance on varsity swim team was in junior year when I was getting straight As in six AP classes. This was the same year that my anorexia really started in earnest for the next half-decade. And the same year, I lost two best girl friends who started fancying me, and got cold when I (obviously) would not reciprocate. One of them became my worst bully I've ever known.
2. I was on track to graduate from UChicago in less than four years with a degree in computational biology (specialization in Neuroscience and Endrocrinology) and minor in math. Spring quarter of my third year was the very, very, very closest I came to committing suicide; but decided to call my dad instead of [redacted]. When I dropped out, the lady who conducted my exit interview said she could not understand why I was leaving because, "I had a top 15%ile GPA and tons of people liked me."
3. After I dropped out and moved back in with my parents (and was hospitalized for a time), I managed to complete the UChicago degree remotely + get another one in computer science from local state school + while working 2-3 part time jobs. Leveraged my way into a position at a Bay Area startup by teaching myself mid-advanced iOS programming in 72 hours, and further leveraged *that* into my job at Google working on their central distributed computing infrastructure team.
Then COVID lockdowns came + bad breakup (with the only man so far that I could have imagined marrying) + my dog got hit by a car. That was the second closest time I came to offing myself, and my performance reviews were off the chart: "Rajeev was able to get a project 65% done in two years that we've been struggling with for six years, and everyone thinks he is super effective."
You know bits and pieces of the rest of the story since then, as I shared with you on the phone. Here I am in 2024 a location and context that is probably not well-suited for me in important ways, but that at least is giving me some respite and an ability to prioritize my health and freedom, desperately trying to put the pieces back together and head somewhere meaningful.
Great article. Reading this was like looking into a dark mirror version of my life. You described my childhood perfectly, and the only reason you did not describe my adulthood is that I succeeded. I have a wife, a kid, a thriving career, and a home in a low crime suburb. I think I mostly achieved this with my higher agreeableness that made it pretty easy to take the long march through the institutions.
If I did not achieve those things, I would feel angry and alienated. I would be exactly what you described. My goal is to help some members of Gen Z follow my path to security while working to change the institutions so that there are less losers, or at least those that lose are less angry. But it’ll probably be another decade or two before I have the power to really change anything. Millennials that are lost now are going to have a hard time getting back on track.