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.
"Functional invisibility" is interesting - I can see that. In your case, it sounds like you've been at your most functional outwardly when you're hurting the most inwardly. Thanks for sharing some of what you've gone through and grown from. I'm glad the article resonated, and suspect you will succeed in putting the pieces back together and heading somewhere meaningful.
Hang in there, young brother. I know it sounds trite, but it does get better.
The world has always been falling apart - that is one of the great secrets that comes with age and perspective. Every generation figures that out just a little too late.
Read the Upanishads a little bit each day - for yourself and no one else.
Try growing something, even if it's just a single tomato plant in a window.
If you haven't already done it, consider getting out of Google. The culture there has become poisonous and the water is warm outside. Sure, tech-wise some stuff will seem medieval after Borg and Google3 but I can assure you, if you're an RTALM then Google is bad for your mental health and you won't be able to fully achieve your potential until you leave.
Sending you a firm handshake from far away; an ex-Googler.
Good man. I wonder how many actually balanced people they managed to get rid of over the years through the simple expedient of denying promotions for political reasons.
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.
Well done on your success, and thanks for commenting. I've met a few guys who are married with kids who share the alienation, but agree the vibe is strongest among men who have yet to fully launch (pre-marriage, pre-kids). It's great that you want to help others younger than yourself. I'm interested in the same, but I'm not sure how to tbh. This article was a step in that direction.
One thing I will admit to is that I do feel the loneliness. I blame it less on these factors, and more the frequent moves and job changes I made to get to where I am. Only people I see regularly are family members. But I also think there is also a post COVID loneliness that Millennials felt worse than most other generations.
One solution I wrote about is moving to 'deplorable' country - i.e. outside of major liberal cities.
Housing is much more affordable, the cloying oppression of feminized therapy-culture isn't nearly so ubiquitous, and men are frankly more valued in places where the economy is still based on building things.
"The less you care about rubbing shoulders with fellow highly-educated elites, the easier it is to live somewhere affordable. Decamping from urban centers like New York, London, Toronto, etc. in favour of lower-priced heartland cities/towns goes a long way towards achieving financial security without having to falsify preferences for the sake of an elitist career."
First, I’m done with the Boomer Dad myth. Their kids grew up 20 years ago. These are GenX dads. Genders have just become the new “boomers” and someday it’ll be the Millennial’s turn to be out of touch. Some ol’, same ol’.
Second thing. The X-factor that people are missing is mentoring. It simply doesn’t exist anymore***. There’s no ancestral knowledge, no coming of age, no rites of passage. There’s no old dudes that you’re forced to learn from even though you think they’re complete pigs. The company of other men is how we learn who to be and not be.
I suspect the answer is simply technology. Our entertainment elides any undesired human contact and our jobs no longer require apprentices to carry our tools. The Olds aren’t seeking out the Youngs, and the Youngs don’t even know asking is an option.
It’s a pretty easy thing to fix if we wanted to.
***obvious carve outs for apprenticeships and the military, which all also not what they once were.
Millennials rode a strong wave of support growing up. It was very easy to take the pipeline for granted. Get into college, a nice internship, maybe a grad program. Meritocracy, yes, but with the targeted social capital support of family, teachers, professors, advisors...
But what about when you fall off the wagon at some point? The financial crisis, a devastating breakup, the rules of the game shifting when you suddenly don't fit the right demographic profile for a position... These present as very different problems for Millennials compared to people in Gex X, Boomers, or the Silent Generation. Advice no longer applies. Resources and capabilities that existed earlier in your life are no longer available to be leveraged. What might have been a simple problem with an easy enough fix is now exponentially harder at a different point along the timeline.
One of the things I learned in the long term travel world was just how common it was for travelers not to talk with each other. Everyone wanted (the illusion of!) their own personally curated experiences. Whether from embarrassment and shame, lack of running into people in the same situation in real life, or no focal point to bring similar people together online, Remarkably Talented and Alienated (Elder, Mid &) Late-Millennial Males are too easily siloed. One of the best things that could happen from this article going relatively viral is guys realizing they aren't alone. There are many obviously talented people here that have just had a run of bad luck from one reason or another. Maybe we can help each other out? Hell, maybe even a startup or two emerges from this. So, let's talk :)
Great point about breaking the sillos, Jarlis. What's a good way to provide a forum to organize these guys? Personally, I'd want it to be constructive and positive, rather than edgelord-ish and angry. My follow-on essay on the housing affordability is the type of issue where I could see this cohort uniting to advance. https://jeffgiesea.substack.com/p/housing-affordability-is-a-tremendous
People act very differently online vs in real life. There's even a difference between initially meeting someone online vs IRL. I've met hundreds of people traveling. Some for only a 5 minute conversation, but connecting just enough to add on social media -- and then still be in regular contact a decade later. Wheres online is more disembodied and partially dehumanizing. It's far easier to engage in edgelord-y behavior with someone when they're just a user name on a forum, blog, or Twitter. Even someone added on social media you haven't met in person is far more ephemeral (and it was downright bizarre and otherworldly for to finally meet a few people in person years later). Physically getting a group together in a space would be difficult though, so maybe a better option would be a Skype or Zoom sessions with whatever the optimal number of people to initially put names to faces.
The problem with this one though is the need for pseudo-anonymity. Moderate liberals, let alone the people to the right of the center, hold "politically incorrect" cancellable views relative to the small yet dominant progressive social justice activists. So you'd need to have plausible deniability and a doxxing firewall between people in the group relative to their online personalities.
Get offline, stop reading anything on the internet no tech. Read books, anything, physical book in hand. Get outside, in the woods, no tech. Speak to a friend, in person, no tech. You'll feel better within 30 days. The main difference between humans now and humans 20-30-100 years ago is Tech Attachment Disorder (TAD)
My bros out there who feel unseen - find a good woman. I highly recommend courting and marrying a beautiful girl with classic virtues from South America who comes from a loving family. Your life will improve in unimaginable ways. I'll personally attest to it 👍
Strongest advice I would try and give would be to get out of the US for a period of time and travel. South America, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia... money goes further, societies are more like the US in the 1990s to early 2000s. Come up for air, reestablish your point of equilibrium.
And if you manage to solve this contradiction, let everyone know...
Great piece. I'll tell you what, I know plenty of late Gen X men who would be absolutely delighted and happy to give these guys a stop-bitching-you-whiny-pussy smackdown (jovially, offering them a hand and beer after they've been beat down), if that's what they're looking for.
But also, serious question: how come none of you millennials peg the blame on your parents being way too fucking nice to you and letting you grow up believing your remarkable selves mattered?? Even if you acknowledge this, you don't seem to really understand how much this is the issue. It really is messed up how important your parents allowed you to think you were. The parents did the same thing to to the Zoomers/Gen Alpha, but the difference with them is that they also had the entire Internet telling them they were worthless garbage their whole lives, as a counterweight. It seems that it was only the Millennials who were raised truly believing they were special, important, and mattered the entire first two decades of their lives, and they didn't even have the internet telling them otherwise til they were older.
Happiness and satisfaction are mostly just a function of expectations versus reality. Y'all were done dirty being raised with excessive expectations.
A friend of mine, a Millennial male who identified with this piece, noted that I mentioned Boomer Dad but not Boomer Mom. It was a great point. Parenting is a factor worth exploring as a factor. As late Gen X myself, the way I was raised compared to guys 10+ yrs younger is just so different (to grossly generalize). Also, at some point I want to offer my Gen X perspective on these issues, but I want to do it empathetically - which may be hard at times (ha).
Sorry for assuming you were a millennial/describing your own cohort. 😊 Yes I'm late Gen X and fully agree that the transformation in how parents (and not just parents but also teachers and basically all adults) treated kids just 5 to 10 years later was enormous. At a family get together recently, we were describing things that were completely normal and par for the course as far as conduct of family members in earlier years, to the roughly 30 year olds there...and they straight up didn't even believe us. Like the fact that your parents would make you eat an entire dinner that you absolutely hated and were gagging over, and you were going to keep your butt in the chair til you finished it and they did not care if you sat there for an hour crying over it...you ate it because they made it for you, and you weren't getting an alternative. In their view, that was basically child abuse and they couldn't believe their own parents and grandparents ever acted that way. They also didn't understand why we viewed these things as humorous in retrospect and not a big deal.
Would definitely be interested in reading an essay on this topic.
I don't see the relevance of calling Gen Y coddled or whiners. Gen X was also coddled. You yourself wrote posts I'd consider whining. There's a misunderstanding here, these men aren't looking for happiness they're looking for a rock to lift, responsibility, meaning. What do you really understand about sacrifice when you live purely for your own happiness?
Gen X might want to not throw stones from their glasshouse.
I don't know if you're talking to me or Kate. Speaking for myself, my goal is to describe what I'm observing both accurately and empathetically. I agree with not throwing stones or being condescending, which is all too easy for older generations to do, but I also don't want to ignore real differences in perspectives and experiences.
I don't know what they're looking for and happiness versus meaning is a complicated topic bc some people heavily weigh one or the other but not both. Fact is that as far as *happiness* goes, besides general inborne temperament, it's mostly a matter of expectations versus reality. So giving someone high expectations leads to unhappiness if reality doesn't match it. I don't think Gen X was coddled compared to millennials, not at all...and certainly not allowed to whine as a child because all you'd hear in response is "I'll give you something to cry about."
Every generation since the silents has been more coddled than the one previous. That hasn't mattered when living standards also kept rising, but now kids are raised with expectations that likely cannot match the actual opportunities available to them. So it does them a disservice to give them unrealistic expectations.
I have no idea what you think I've whined about, given I have zero complaints whatsoever about my life and consider myself about the luckiest person on earth. You seem to just be mad because I don't have/want kids, given you mention "I only live for myself". I don't know why that's relevant to the topic at hand. I mentioned whining here in the context of a joke about Gen X guys offering a friendly smackdown, since the essay expressly states that the condition of these men is one of feeling ashamed of their inner whiner.
Speaking as one of them, I'm starting to suspect that what we're waiting for is to hear "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat".
For a war. Not the 'go bomb someone in the middle east to protect the oil industry' sort, but an old-school close-to-home one. One where the choice is clearly and immediately 'hold the line, or everything dear to you will be overrun'. There's 10,000 years of evolution and 2,000 years of culture telling us that our purpose is to fight and die for the tribe/crown/flag if it's under threat - and we can feel that threat in the air.
Trouble is, it has to be a Just War. We can't just go pick a fight unprovoked - can't throw the first punch - because we're too well socialised for that. We need to see ourselves as fighting to protect civilisation, rather than as the barbarians sacking it. And nothing has crossed that line yet. Nothing - so far - will let us say 'OK, I didn't start this fight, but now I'm going to finish it'.
I worry about this. There's definitely a dangerous, crackly side of this phenomenon. This is part of the reason I wanted to identify the issue and try to understand it where possible. Only then can we address it.
I'm getting really worried about the US. Not there myself so it wouldn't affect me immediately, but the whole "imprisoning the leading presidential candidate on bogus charges" thing is very banana republic, and banana republics tend to go through violent revolutions. The situation is perfectly set up to split people down partisan lines, and convince them that there's no peaceful resolution to be had.
...i think the first problem with this dude is he needs a new nickname...RTALM just ain't gonna cut it...hard to pronounce...is he "Rawlm with a silent T"? or "Arty Alm"?...
...true true...well i like keeping it broad, so i would probably just call him man, man...and maybe sometimes dude, or brother...if we really wanted to stay in the realm of creative memorable coined names i would trade the T for an E and name him Realm aka Real-Man aka Real-Mad aka Real-M-word-extravaganza...Real-Monkey even if you like Darwin...the E could be educated, expert, experienced, etcetera...but this is all branding...Arty Alm is also a good name...especially if we give him a good hat...
Jeff, you've really touched a nerve here, and I don't know that there's a more critical and urgent challenge in our society today. The problems are deep and multi-generational, and in the absence of broad systemic change we run the risk of losing whole generations of young men in the future. I do think we all have a personal responsibility to do what we can on a local level, whether it's mentoring, apprenticeships, or other hands-on involvement and I love that you've chosen this topic to write about.
Amazing Jeff. I've never seen such an accurate description of guys like me and my friends before. It's moving. I feel moved. Strange to say that. I don't remember the last time I said something moved me. It's an unfamiliar emotion.
We're born in the early 80s and so the only details you got wrong were that we already learned to code, we have wives, and my father watches BBC not Fox. Not much support to be found there; he seems to believe whatever garbage journalists feed him. Mother is more aware and sympathetic. When I've told her about some of the things that happen in the modern workplace (to me, to others) she is shocked. Our parents truly don't understand the world we live in, and how could they? They are retired and faced different fights. In my father's case, fights with militant unions, a problem my generation and industry fortunately don't have.
A friend and I were recently discussing the trans in sport issue. What we both found quietly shocking was how utterly men seem to crush women in any fair competition, even when up against pathetically weak men. A lot of men know the story of the 15 year old schoolboys beating the Australian national women's football team, or Wrexham crushing the female World Cup winners. But he pointed out that this is also true in chess; I didn't know that before. Everyone knows the movies where pint-sized pretty girls drop-kick The Rock are stupid, but these lies are so pervasive they obscure what seems to be true: our society is pervaded by fakeness and deception because if the game weren't constantly rigged against us RTALMs would always outcompete the women. Especially in coding everyone knows it to be true deep down, the gender disparity there is massive and can't be hidden.
RTALM isn't a great acronym. How about Competent 30s Male - a C3M? I don't think there are many C3Ms who aren't alienated by our culture so specifying that explicitly seems redundant. Yeah, sometimes you find leftists who sincerely believe that within five years the rain will be boiling and Hitler will rise from his grave. They tell people they feel alienated but it's feeling depressed, not alienated. "Why can't everyone be as far left as me?" is not alienation. Alienation is different. It's an awareness that society is run by people who viscerally hate you and will screw you at any opportunity, whilst also having the strength to NOT get depressed about it.
Thanks Alistair. I am honored that you were moved by this. Truly. I put my heart into it. Btw, I agree we need a new acronym. Will brainstorm more on that.
He might also have this sense that the only way to get compassion from the culture around him is to perform his pain in a way he's not comfortable doing. He might have the impression that nobody cares about your distress unless it's rooted in some specific trauma. Maybe he has a specific trauma in his past but doesn't feel like he should have to trot out the details for public consumption. Maybe he doesn't, really, and he's not going to try to play up his life's mundane imperfections for sympathy, even though he sees a lot of people who seem to be doing exactly that and getting rewarded for it. Maybe he does find a way to make his pain comprehensible to others, but he feels manipulative doing so, which makes any comfort he receives hollow.
"He wants a wife and kids, a thriving career, and a home in a leafy suburb with low crime and high trust."
The only part I would change in this line is adding something, "and if he's really ambitious, he'd like to live in a neighborhood with old trees." Years ago, a friend of mine pointed out that the best neighborhoods to live in have old trees, trees that have been around for decades with big knotty roots that grow up and crack the nearby sidewalk but provide tons of shade in summer.
I like the last part of your sentence, with the words "high trust." There's a suggestion in those two words that the Millennial Male is aware of the historical value of high trust neighborhoods, and would like to live in one so that his potential wife and future children could be safe and everyone could be part of a thriving local community.
Lots of interesting ideas well expressed in your essay.
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.
"Functional invisibility" is interesting - I can see that. In your case, it sounds like you've been at your most functional outwardly when you're hurting the most inwardly. Thanks for sharing some of what you've gone through and grown from. I'm glad the article resonated, and suspect you will succeed in putting the pieces back together and heading somewhere meaningful.
Thank you for posting & hang in there 🙏
Hang in there, young brother. I know it sounds trite, but it does get better.
The world has always been falling apart - that is one of the great secrets that comes with age and perspective. Every generation figures that out just a little too late.
Read the Upanishads a little bit each day - for yourself and no one else.
Try growing something, even if it's just a single tomato plant in a window.
If you haven't already done it, consider getting out of Google. The culture there has become poisonous and the water is warm outside. Sure, tech-wise some stuff will seem medieval after Borg and Google3 but I can assure you, if you're an RTALM then Google is bad for your mental health and you won't be able to fully achieve your potential until you leave.
Sending you a firm handshake from far away; an ex-Googler.
Yes, I quit 3 years ago.
https://rajeevram.substack.com/p/the-real-exit-is-the-friends-you
Good man. I wonder how many actually balanced people they managed to get rid of over the years through the simple expedient of denying promotions for political reasons.
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.
Well done on your success, and thanks for commenting. I've met a few guys who are married with kids who share the alienation, but agree the vibe is strongest among men who have yet to fully launch (pre-marriage, pre-kids). It's great that you want to help others younger than yourself. I'm interested in the same, but I'm not sure how to tbh. This article was a step in that direction.
One thing I will admit to is that I do feel the loneliness. I blame it less on these factors, and more the frequent moves and job changes I made to get to where I am. Only people I see regularly are family members. But I also think there is also a post COVID loneliness that Millennials felt worse than most other generations.
One solution I wrote about is moving to 'deplorable' country - i.e. outside of major liberal cities.
Housing is much more affordable, the cloying oppression of feminized therapy-culture isn't nearly so ubiquitous, and men are frankly more valued in places where the economy is still based on building things.
"The less you care about rubbing shoulders with fellow highly-educated elites, the easier it is to live somewhere affordable. Decamping from urban centers like New York, London, Toronto, etc. in favour of lower-priced heartland cities/towns goes a long way towards achieving financial security without having to falsify preferences for the sake of an elitist career."
https://milesmcstylez.substack.com/p/embrace-your-inner-barbarian
First, I’m done with the Boomer Dad myth. Their kids grew up 20 years ago. These are GenX dads. Genders have just become the new “boomers” and someday it’ll be the Millennial’s turn to be out of touch. Some ol’, same ol’.
Second thing. The X-factor that people are missing is mentoring. It simply doesn’t exist anymore***. There’s no ancestral knowledge, no coming of age, no rites of passage. There’s no old dudes that you’re forced to learn from even though you think they’re complete pigs. The company of other men is how we learn who to be and not be.
I suspect the answer is simply technology. Our entertainment elides any undesired human contact and our jobs no longer require apprentices to carry our tools. The Olds aren’t seeking out the Youngs, and the Youngs don’t even know asking is an option.
It’s a pretty easy thing to fix if we wanted to.
***obvious carve outs for apprenticeships and the military, which all also not what they once were.
Your comments on mentoring are on point. "The company of other men is how we learn who to be and not be." — yes
Millennials rode a strong wave of support growing up. It was very easy to take the pipeline for granted. Get into college, a nice internship, maybe a grad program. Meritocracy, yes, but with the targeted social capital support of family, teachers, professors, advisors...
But what about when you fall off the wagon at some point? The financial crisis, a devastating breakup, the rules of the game shifting when you suddenly don't fit the right demographic profile for a position... These present as very different problems for Millennials compared to people in Gex X, Boomers, or the Silent Generation. Advice no longer applies. Resources and capabilities that existed earlier in your life are no longer available to be leveraged. What might have been a simple problem with an easy enough fix is now exponentially harder at a different point along the timeline.
One of the things I learned in the long term travel world was just how common it was for travelers not to talk with each other. Everyone wanted (the illusion of!) their own personally curated experiences. Whether from embarrassment and shame, lack of running into people in the same situation in real life, or no focal point to bring similar people together online, Remarkably Talented and Alienated (Elder, Mid &) Late-Millennial Males are too easily siloed. One of the best things that could happen from this article going relatively viral is guys realizing they aren't alone. There are many obviously talented people here that have just had a run of bad luck from one reason or another. Maybe we can help each other out? Hell, maybe even a startup or two emerges from this. So, let's talk :)
Great point about breaking the sillos, Jarlis. What's a good way to provide a forum to organize these guys? Personally, I'd want it to be constructive and positive, rather than edgelord-ish and angry. My follow-on essay on the housing affordability is the type of issue where I could see this cohort uniting to advance. https://jeffgiesea.substack.com/p/housing-affordability-is-a-tremendous
Let's try and game out the challenges...
People act very differently online vs in real life. There's even a difference between initially meeting someone online vs IRL. I've met hundreds of people traveling. Some for only a 5 minute conversation, but connecting just enough to add on social media -- and then still be in regular contact a decade later. Wheres online is more disembodied and partially dehumanizing. It's far easier to engage in edgelord-y behavior with someone when they're just a user name on a forum, blog, or Twitter. Even someone added on social media you haven't met in person is far more ephemeral (and it was downright bizarre and otherworldly for to finally meet a few people in person years later). Physically getting a group together in a space would be difficult though, so maybe a better option would be a Skype or Zoom sessions with whatever the optimal number of people to initially put names to faces.
The problem with this one though is the need for pseudo-anonymity. Moderate liberals, let alone the people to the right of the center, hold "politically incorrect" cancellable views relative to the small yet dominant progressive social justice activists. So you'd need to have plausible deniability and a doxxing firewall between people in the group relative to their online personalities.
Substack has helped cross some of the silos over.
Get offline, stop reading anything on the internet no tech. Read books, anything, physical book in hand. Get outside, in the woods, no tech. Speak to a friend, in person, no tech. You'll feel better within 30 days. The main difference between humans now and humans 20-30-100 years ago is Tech Attachment Disorder (TAD)
Said the dude on the internet.
I completely agree with you, BTW.
My bros out there who feel unseen - find a good woman. I highly recommend courting and marrying a beautiful girl with classic virtues from South America who comes from a loving family. Your life will improve in unimaginable ways. I'll personally attest to it 👍
Strongest advice I would try and give would be to get out of the US for a period of time and travel. South America, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia... money goes further, societies are more like the US in the 1990s to early 2000s. Come up for air, reestablish your point of equilibrium.
And if you manage to solve this contradiction, let everyone know...
Great piece. I'll tell you what, I know plenty of late Gen X men who would be absolutely delighted and happy to give these guys a stop-bitching-you-whiny-pussy smackdown (jovially, offering them a hand and beer after they've been beat down), if that's what they're looking for.
But also, serious question: how come none of you millennials peg the blame on your parents being way too fucking nice to you and letting you grow up believing your remarkable selves mattered?? Even if you acknowledge this, you don't seem to really understand how much this is the issue. It really is messed up how important your parents allowed you to think you were. The parents did the same thing to to the Zoomers/Gen Alpha, but the difference with them is that they also had the entire Internet telling them they were worthless garbage their whole lives, as a counterweight. It seems that it was only the Millennials who were raised truly believing they were special, important, and mattered the entire first two decades of their lives, and they didn't even have the internet telling them otherwise til they were older.
Happiness and satisfaction are mostly just a function of expectations versus reality. Y'all were done dirty being raised with excessive expectations.
A friend of mine, a Millennial male who identified with this piece, noted that I mentioned Boomer Dad but not Boomer Mom. It was a great point. Parenting is a factor worth exploring as a factor. As late Gen X myself, the way I was raised compared to guys 10+ yrs younger is just so different (to grossly generalize). Also, at some point I want to offer my Gen X perspective on these issues, but I want to do it empathetically - which may be hard at times (ha).
Sorry for assuming you were a millennial/describing your own cohort. 😊 Yes I'm late Gen X and fully agree that the transformation in how parents (and not just parents but also teachers and basically all adults) treated kids just 5 to 10 years later was enormous. At a family get together recently, we were describing things that were completely normal and par for the course as far as conduct of family members in earlier years, to the roughly 30 year olds there...and they straight up didn't even believe us. Like the fact that your parents would make you eat an entire dinner that you absolutely hated and were gagging over, and you were going to keep your butt in the chair til you finished it and they did not care if you sat there for an hour crying over it...you ate it because they made it for you, and you weren't getting an alternative. In their view, that was basically child abuse and they couldn't believe their own parents and grandparents ever acted that way. They also didn't understand why we viewed these things as humorous in retrospect and not a big deal.
Would definitely be interested in reading an essay on this topic.
I don't see the relevance of calling Gen Y coddled or whiners. Gen X was also coddled. You yourself wrote posts I'd consider whining. There's a misunderstanding here, these men aren't looking for happiness they're looking for a rock to lift, responsibility, meaning. What do you really understand about sacrifice when you live purely for your own happiness?
Gen X might want to not throw stones from their glasshouse.
I don't know if you're talking to me or Kate. Speaking for myself, my goal is to describe what I'm observing both accurately and empathetically. I agree with not throwing stones or being condescending, which is all too easy for older generations to do, but I also don't want to ignore real differences in perspectives and experiences.
You're fine, I find Kate incredibly hypocritical.
I don't know what they're looking for and happiness versus meaning is a complicated topic bc some people heavily weigh one or the other but not both. Fact is that as far as *happiness* goes, besides general inborne temperament, it's mostly a matter of expectations versus reality. So giving someone high expectations leads to unhappiness if reality doesn't match it. I don't think Gen X was coddled compared to millennials, not at all...and certainly not allowed to whine as a child because all you'd hear in response is "I'll give you something to cry about."
Every generation since the silents has been more coddled than the one previous. That hasn't mattered when living standards also kept rising, but now kids are raised with expectations that likely cannot match the actual opportunities available to them. So it does them a disservice to give them unrealistic expectations.
I have no idea what you think I've whined about, given I have zero complaints whatsoever about my life and consider myself about the luckiest person on earth. You seem to just be mad because I don't have/want kids, given you mention "I only live for myself". I don't know why that's relevant to the topic at hand. I mentioned whining here in the context of a joke about Gen X guys offering a friendly smackdown, since the essay expressly states that the condition of these men is one of feeling ashamed of their inner whiner.
Speaking as one of them, I'm starting to suspect that what we're waiting for is to hear "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat".
For a war. Not the 'go bomb someone in the middle east to protect the oil industry' sort, but an old-school close-to-home one. One where the choice is clearly and immediately 'hold the line, or everything dear to you will be overrun'. There's 10,000 years of evolution and 2,000 years of culture telling us that our purpose is to fight and die for the tribe/crown/flag if it's under threat - and we can feel that threat in the air.
Trouble is, it has to be a Just War. We can't just go pick a fight unprovoked - can't throw the first punch - because we're too well socialised for that. We need to see ourselves as fighting to protect civilisation, rather than as the barbarians sacking it. And nothing has crossed that line yet. Nothing - so far - will let us say 'OK, I didn't start this fight, but now I'm going to finish it'.
I worry about this. There's definitely a dangerous, crackly side of this phenomenon. This is part of the reason I wanted to identify the issue and try to understand it where possible. Only then can we address it.
I'm getting really worried about the US. Not there myself so it wouldn't affect me immediately, but the whole "imprisoning the leading presidential candidate on bogus charges" thing is very banana republic, and banana republics tend to go through violent revolutions. The situation is perfectly set up to split people down partisan lines, and convince them that there's no peaceful resolution to be had.
...i think the first problem with this dude is he needs a new nickname...RTALM just ain't gonna cut it...hard to pronounce...is he "Rawlm with a silent T"? or "Arty Alm"?...
Haha true. What should we call him then? You're a wiz with coined terms.
...is whiny bitch already taken?...
uh... that misses the spirit of this!
...true true...well i like keeping it broad, so i would probably just call him man, man...and maybe sometimes dude, or brother...if we really wanted to stay in the realm of creative memorable coined names i would trade the T for an E and name him Realm aka Real-Man aka Real-Mad aka Real-M-word-extravaganza...Real-Monkey even if you like Darwin...the E could be educated, expert, experienced, etcetera...but this is all branding...Arty Alm is also a good name...especially if we give him a good hat...
Jeff, you've really touched a nerve here, and I don't know that there's a more critical and urgent challenge in our society today. The problems are deep and multi-generational, and in the absence of broad systemic change we run the risk of losing whole generations of young men in the future. I do think we all have a personal responsibility to do what we can on a local level, whether it's mentoring, apprenticeships, or other hands-on involvement and I love that you've chosen this topic to write about.
Thanks Riley
What a brave essay! I think that the cohort for this may extend being your age definition.
Thanks Drake. Agree re age
Amazing Jeff. I've never seen such an accurate description of guys like me and my friends before. It's moving. I feel moved. Strange to say that. I don't remember the last time I said something moved me. It's an unfamiliar emotion.
We're born in the early 80s and so the only details you got wrong were that we already learned to code, we have wives, and my father watches BBC not Fox. Not much support to be found there; he seems to believe whatever garbage journalists feed him. Mother is more aware and sympathetic. When I've told her about some of the things that happen in the modern workplace (to me, to others) she is shocked. Our parents truly don't understand the world we live in, and how could they? They are retired and faced different fights. In my father's case, fights with militant unions, a problem my generation and industry fortunately don't have.
A friend and I were recently discussing the trans in sport issue. What we both found quietly shocking was how utterly men seem to crush women in any fair competition, even when up against pathetically weak men. A lot of men know the story of the 15 year old schoolboys beating the Australian national women's football team, or Wrexham crushing the female World Cup winners. But he pointed out that this is also true in chess; I didn't know that before. Everyone knows the movies where pint-sized pretty girls drop-kick The Rock are stupid, but these lies are so pervasive they obscure what seems to be true: our society is pervaded by fakeness and deception because if the game weren't constantly rigged against us RTALMs would always outcompete the women. Especially in coding everyone knows it to be true deep down, the gender disparity there is massive and can't be hidden.
RTALM isn't a great acronym. How about Competent 30s Male - a C3M? I don't think there are many C3Ms who aren't alienated by our culture so specifying that explicitly seems redundant. Yeah, sometimes you find leftists who sincerely believe that within five years the rain will be boiling and Hitler will rise from his grave. They tell people they feel alienated but it's feeling depressed, not alienated. "Why can't everyone be as far left as me?" is not alienation. Alienation is different. It's an awareness that society is run by people who viscerally hate you and will screw you at any opportunity, whilst also having the strength to NOT get depressed about it.
Thanks Alistair. I am honored that you were moved by this. Truly. I put my heart into it. Btw, I agree we need a new acronym. Will brainstorm more on that.
He might also have this sense that the only way to get compassion from the culture around him is to perform his pain in a way he's not comfortable doing. He might have the impression that nobody cares about your distress unless it's rooted in some specific trauma. Maybe he has a specific trauma in his past but doesn't feel like he should have to trot out the details for public consumption. Maybe he doesn't, really, and he's not going to try to play up his life's mundane imperfections for sympathy, even though he sees a lot of people who seem to be doing exactly that and getting rewarded for it. Maybe he does find a way to make his pain comprehensible to others, but he feels manipulative doing so, which makes any comfort he receives hollow.
I like this line:
"He wants a wife and kids, a thriving career, and a home in a leafy suburb with low crime and high trust."
The only part I would change in this line is adding something, "and if he's really ambitious, he'd like to live in a neighborhood with old trees." Years ago, a friend of mine pointed out that the best neighborhoods to live in have old trees, trees that have been around for decades with big knotty roots that grow up and crack the nearby sidewalk but provide tons of shade in summer.
I like the last part of your sentence, with the words "high trust." There's a suggestion in those two words that the Millennial Male is aware of the historical value of high trust neighborhoods, and would like to live in one so that his potential wife and future children could be safe and everyone could be part of a thriving local community.
Lots of interesting ideas well expressed in your essay.
Thanks Scott. Interesting point about old trees — never thought about that!