When I have a question about human behavior, I get a little obsessive and try to find the answer. Most recently, I’ve been curious about what’s going on with young men. Why the hell are they so angry? What’s leading to the insane amounts of anger coming from young men that turns into online harassment, and worse, mass shootings. I ended up grabbing a copy of a book by a leading expert on this topic, but I instantly realized the book was pushing bad information about the disparities boys and men are suffering from. Things like this are only making the problem worse, and we need to address it.
When we give young men bad information and tell them that their problems are worse than they are, we are making them angrier at the world, which is the opposite of what we’re trying to do.
I was actually planning on finally writing this piece that’s been on my mind for weeks. I’ve wanted to discuss why seeking the truth is often not in our best interest, which is why it’s so hard to make people care about the truth. But, I couldn’t shake this topic from my mind. Fortunately, it ties into something I’m passionate about, which is educating people about why the truth matters, even if the truth doesn’t seem advantageous.
I also think this is an important topic to get out there in light of the Roe v. Wade news and how angry young men are viewing it.
Men are Struggling
One of the first stand-up comedy specials I ever watched was Chris Rock’s Bigger and Blacker on HBO in 1999. I was 14 years old, and I remember watching it multiple times and always laughing my ass off.
This is decades before the culture wars, but one of his bits perfectly explains the idea of white privilege. So, because of him, I’ve understood the concept that so many people fail or refuse to grasp.
“The white man thinks he’s losing the country…white people ain’t losing shit. If ya’ll losing, who’s winning? It ain’t us.”
“There ain’t a white man in this room who would change places with me. None of you would change places with me, and I’m rich! That’s how good it is to be white.”
“There’s a white one-legged bus boy in here right now that won’t change places with my black ass. He’s like, ‘Nah man. I don’t want to switch. I want to ride this white thing out, and see where it takes me.’”
Is he wrong? Nope. The fun thing is that white men can easily say, “Yeah! I’d switch places in a heartbeat,” simply because they’d never have to do it.
But even if he’s right, does that mean white men aren’t struggling? No. They clearly are.
I just celebrated 10 years sober the other day, and although I don’t cover it as much anymore, mental health and addiction are what I care about the most. I’m a man who was struggling bad. I was suicidal for years, but I opted to just slowly kill myself with drugs and alcohol. Fortunately, I got sober and found hope.
I’ve been a mental health advocate since early sobriety, and I’ve seen the statistics. here are some stats from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention:
The rate of suicide is highest in middle-aged white men.
In 2020, men died by suicide 3.88x more than women.
White males accounted for 69.68% of suicide deaths in 2020.
Here’s what suicide rates look like in the UK:
Although Chris’ words are just as true as they were in 1999, it doesn’t mean there’s not a problem. For each man who doesn’t take his own life, there’s a high probability of a man who feels hopeless and is much more likely to verbally or physically abuse someone, harass someone online, or commit a mass shooting.
I’m a progressive dude, and although I’m half black, I look 100% white. I know that I got it good, but I get it. I do not feel comfortable at all talking about my problems in the vicinity of anyone from any marginalized group. It’d be like me complaining about how I don’t have the money to buy a new car to someone in a third-world country.
I get why young men are so angry because you can’t discuss how men are struggling without the fear of multiple groups attacking you. Fortunately, I’ve found numerous alternatives to discussing it in public, which I think we need to teach more men to do. First, I had 12-step meetings and learned to surround myself with men who supported me rather than fueling my anger toward the world. Now, I have even more tools like journaling, therapy, meditation, and much more.
So, although men have it the best, and it’s even better if you’re white, we can’t just act like there’s not an issue because their problems turn into all our problems.
I think one of the weakest arguments from conservatives is that the United States is great so liberals should stop complaining. As much as I bitch about the US, like other liberals, I love this damn country and know we got it good. But to say there’s no room for improvement is a dangerous type of complacency.
If you agree with that, then you should also agree that even though men got it good, we can do better.
The Manosphere Rabbit Hole
I have recently found a lot of great YouTube channels that discuss the problems with the “manosphere”. Young men are being drawn to men of influence who are extremely toxic, and these YouTubers explain the dangerous pipeline to some messed-up communities.
Young men are being drawn to people like Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, and the millions of pickup artists on social media. Young men start by finding content promoting personal responsibility and how to get women, and they’re ending up in incel and alt-right communities. Although the aforementioned men don’t directly promote those communities, the whole narrative of “men are the supreme beings” is the common thread.
Side note: I didn’t want to add Gary to that list, because he’s much different than the others. But, he does promote a way of living that draws in the same type of young men who are finding the content from the others.
I don’t have time to go into how this pipeline works, so at the bottom of this post, you’ll find a list of recommended videos that explain this perfectly.
After watching a bunch of these videos from other men about the problem with the manosphere, I had some realizations. First, I gained some hope. I gained hope because these are good men who are also discussing that although men got it good, there’s clearly a problem. Their videos are getting a ton of views, so it means people are watching.
I also realized that many of these men were just like me. A lot of us were going down that dark path or actually ended up there, but we got out. I’ll share my personal experience at some point, but just know that I was a woman-hating man who was angry at the world during my younger years, and it’s why I empathize with the young men falling into these terrible communities.
Something that may have helped was that I got my life together before algorithms could ruin my life.
These young men are watching people like Jordan Peterson who would make you think there’s some sort of male genocide happening. The guy can’t even talk about men struggling without breaking down in tears. Albeit sad, when you combine his tears with his narrative that men are somehow marginalized more than any other group, people believe the other bullshit and bad science he promotes. He promotes the most sexist, misogynistic ideas under the false premise of science, and it’s awful.
And as a former drug addict, don’t even get me started on the fact that he’s a self-help guru who never addressed his very public benzodiazepine addiction.
Then, you have all of these male pickup artist types who have millions of followers. If you go on TikTok, you’ll find the most toxic male behavior treating women like their only purpose in life is to serve us. Then, you have the Fresh and Fit podcast where these dudes promote the worst things to men you can imagine and tell men that women are their property.
At least Peterson is a psychologist promoting bad science. These other dudes probably got a business degree in community college but root all of their ideas in “the science of men” like they’ve done any research.
Again, if you fall into the rabbit hole of watching videos, listening to podcasts, and consuming content from these awful guys, you start to get a false view of the world.
If your primary source of content is these guys, here are some things you’ll start to believe:
You need to be an “alpha male” and anything less means you’re not being a man
Women are things. They only exist to serve you.
You have more rights than women because you are stronger and smarter than them
Women owe you something
You can say anything and do anything to women because they are things
Feminists are evil
Men have it worse than women
The list goes on and on and on. But, if you’re unaware that this is what young men are consuming, I hope you now have an idea.
For a minute, just imagine you’re a young man struggling with depression or other mental health issues. Imagine constantly receiving the message that if you’re not constantly having sex, you’re less of a man and that women owe you sex. Imagine thinking that you’re not making money and living up to ideas of “success” but women have it better than you.
You go from being sad to enrage real fucking quick.
Another phenomenon I’ve noticed is that men “flirting” with women has mutated into something insane in recent years on the internet, and I truly think it’s because of these issues. If you think women owe you something and are there to serve, you start believing you can say whatever the hell you want. Then, when it doesn’t work, you’re flabbergasted.
What do I mean? Here are some examples as well as how they think:
If you think these are bad, just know that these are the tame ones. More often than most people think, after these terrible first messages, the person then goes on to yell at the woman and call her names.
This is the type of entitlement young men are believing they have to female bodies.
These came from a Twitter account called Incel Pickup Lines where you can see more. There’s also a subreddit r/niceguys where more of the examples are where the anger and rage towards women come out.
I’m not sure if putting these on display (even if the name is edited out) is a good or bad thing. Maybe it’s helping by showing men that this strategy doesn’t work. Or, it’s making their entitlement even stronger because they don’t understand why they are wrong.
The Boy Crisis
For this last section, I want to bring it back to the topics I find to be the most important: the truth matters, and we should all value truth above all else.
I’m a root problem kind of guy. We can talk about issues all day, but I want to know where it starts. So, when I started getting interested in this topic of why young men are so angry and struggling with their mental health, I wanted to know what’s causing it.
I sent out this tweet yesterday:
I appreciate the replies, but they were mainly theories. Then I even had one guy tell me to just search Google scholar. I did, and it was more of the same. Most of the topics are just about algorithms.
I’m not satisfied with the algorithm answer because algorithms just make it worse. I’m not satisfied with these male influences being the root of the problem either.
For example, if someone burnt down a building, I don’t think we should focus on where they bought the matches. I want to know what made them want to burn down the building.
Why is this content resonating with these young men? They’re starting from a place where they’re looking for answers because they feel some type of way.
To this day, I still think Deaths of Despair provides the best theory for most of the problems we’re facing in the United States. In short, the book argues that growing wealth inequality and our screwed-up capitalist system is the primary cause. Their theory is built upon years of research and a ton of facts, data, and other evidence they’ve collected.
But, I like getting a wide range of opinions. So, someone recommended that I check out this book The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It by Warren Farrell.
There are a million books on this topic, so it was hard to decide where to start. When I searched for this book, I saw some good signs that made me decide to read it. Warren Farrell has the credentials and has written numerous books on this topic over the years. This book is also a bestseller on Amazon and has a 4.5-star rating with 871 reviews.
Good reviews don’t indicate a good book. But a lot of good reviews? That’s a different story. Most authors struggle to get 100 reviews, let alone almost 1,000. That being said, I was extremely optimistic going into this book. But as with any book by an author I’ve never read, I enter being much more skeptical until they earn my trust.
The introduction was decent enough. The author lists his credentials, and he was even offered the opportunity to work on some White House committees looking into the problem. Then, the book starts listing out some factors men are facing that you can’t really quantify. For example, saying men feel like they lack purpose, and I can see that.
After that, it starts talking about how men want to provide but aren’t making as much money as previous generations. It’s true that they aren’t making as much money, but I did get concerned that this book was going to promote stereotypical male roles. I let it slide.
And then, it happened. The author begins to state that women have it better than men in many different areas, and he starts to list data. Mind you that I’m just starting this book.
Farrell says, “Male obesity rates are rising, but obesity rates are no longer on the rise for women.” I’m like, “Is that true?”. I pause the book and look it up.
As you can see from the following chart using CDC data, this is barely true:
Yes, the increase for men has risen more, but currently, 42% of women are obese and 43% of men are obese. If the trend continues, this may eventually be truer. But if you didn’t look up this data, you’d just think, “Women have it much better than men in this area.
The next part is what made me put the book down and write this piece.
Farrell then says that in highly populated urban areas, women are earning more than men. This is what set me off. A common talking point from the terrible male influencers is that the gender wage gap doesn’t exist. They use one of two ways to argue this. They either say:
A) Women make as much or more than men
B) Women just don’t pursue higher-paying jobs and then go on to say the most sexist shit that neglects systemic issues that you’ll ever hear.
For more information about what I mean, read Lara Bazelon’s new book Ambitious Like a Mother.
The reason this argument pisses me off is because it gaslights women and tells men that women are delusional and/or lying. It gives men more reasons to be angry at women and further believe they have it worse.
But maybe Farrell is right, right? So, I decided to look this up as well. While I was unable to find gender-specific data by city, I was able to find it for each state. If you know where I can find city data, feel free to email me at TheRewiredSoul@gmail.com.
Here’s what I found for the highest populated states from Census.gov:
The following are median earnings for men and women who worked full-time year-round in the past 12 months.
California:
Men: $57,475
Women: $50,313
Texas:
Men: $51,300
Women: $40,748
Florida:
Men: $45,187
Women: $37,482
New York:
Men: $60,813
Women: $51,992
Pennsylvania:
Men: $55,367
Women: $43,971
Just look at those numbers for a second. In each of those most populous states, the gap is almost $10,000 per year. It’s even worse in Pennsylvania. So why the hell would this author say that?
I’m furious. I pick up a book from one of the leading experts in the field to find out why young men are so fucked up, and it’s already giving me bad and questionable information? I’m annoyed enough that a book is going to have me fact-checking shit for the entire duration of reading it, but moreso that this is a serious problem that we need to find solutions to.
We cannot have people searching for answers and receiving more misinformation about how bad men have it. This does not help and only makes things worse.
Not only will people like Jordan Peterson and the douchebag Fresh and Fit duo use this info and say, “See! An expert said it!” (argument from authority fallacy by the way), but young men who don’t know better will read it and believe it.
It reminds me of when they lied to us about masks not helping so people didn’t panic buy them and then struggled to correct course. They just gave more ammunition to the conspiracy theorists.
We’re going to add more fuel to the fire of these young men who are already anger at the world? Are you kidding me.
The Truth Matters
The problem with young men is a serious one. They’re miserable, and that misery is turning into anger. That anger is turning into harassment, abuse, and violence. We need to value the truth and make it a social norm that truth fucking matters.
I’ll end with this. This pisses me off for the same reason the culture wars piss me off.
We have so many different groups fighting, and that’s exactly what the wealthy and people in power want. They want us to blame each other for our problems. Blame the minorities for taking your jobs. Blame the LGBTQ community for why your kids are messed up. And blame women for why men have it so bad.
Meanwhile, we don’t address the real problems, and we don’t move the needle.
I’m currently re-reading The Status Game by Will Storr, and I’m reminded that this is a class and status issue. We all value status, but men value it more. When men feel like they’re losing status, they fight for it. When they fight, they’re much more aggressive.
Go back up and look at those average income numbers for the most populated states. We were looking at the gender wealth gap but look at the actual numbers. I don’t know about you, but when I saw those numbers, I thought, “How the hell does anyone survive on that much money?!”
Most of us work our asses off and are barely getting by. I’m extremely fortunate to have a job that I love that actually pays well. Most people are working at jobs they hate while also barely getting paid. And we wonder why everyone’s so damn angry?
When we’re angry, we look for someone to blame. A villain. An enemy.
I’m going to keep looking for answers, and I’m going to finish this book out of spite. But for now, I’m holding onto my theory that wealth inequality and our broken system of capitalism is the #1 reason for most of our problems. And that includes why young men are so damn angry.
So quit spreading misinformation and question what you’re being told.
Like Chris Rock said, if white men are losing, who the hell is winning? I don’t think any of us are winning, and that’s the problem we need to address together.
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Love your commitment to the truth, Chris! I hope to watch some of those videos soon; this is something I don’t feel I have anything more than a speculative understanding of (which of course isn’t actually understanding at all). Keep challenging my worldview, please!