Hey there. I've made a decision. I'm enlisting in Army Officer Candidate School. I've made up my mind yearning for a different life outside of corporate work and journalism. That's why I ghosted y’all last week.
My Substack will continue so please stay subscribed but my Medium presence won’t be around after this year.
For this story, I’m posting to both Medium and Substack because it is a reaction to a staff-promoted story called “The Male Loneliness Epidemic Does Not Exist.”
It’s total bullshit.
I read an article yesterday on Medium titled “The Male Loneliness Epidemic Does Not Exist,” and it caught my attention.
Not only that, it was a coveted staff-selected article.
So, this is the state of Medium in 2023? White male-hating bigotry posing as counter-culturalism that any blue-haired tattooed 19-year-old could have written up for their Eng Lit II class?
Utter crap. And not just the piece itself: it’s the fact that Medium is now obsessed with boosting hate-driven ideological content (as long as it's left-wing, of course) that they pass off as “alternative media.”
Wow. So much different than the NYT, CNN, MSNBC, CNN, WaPo, NPR, Reddit, Digg, and the vast majority of mainstream media. My Medium subscription feels validated, indeed!
Medium has become the mainstream media. It’s even worse because the current staff delude themselves into thinking they’re counter-culture.
They’re not. And since my version of this story isn’t going to be boosted on Medium — in place of another story from Baby Killer and the most journalist-persecuting president in history Barack Obama— let me explain how the author and Medium missed the mark.
Why have we seen a meteoric rise of these figures:
Andrew Tate (one of Google’s most searched figures in 2022/23)
Jordan Peterson
Joe Rogan
And the unironic YouTube “Manosphere.”
I’m not even saying these men are all the same — they aren’t — but each has found a large audience who, like them, sense that something’s gone astray in the world of men today. Someone like Jordan Peterson, who is about to hit eight million subs on YouTube, said for a while his sold-out public lectures would be 80–90% men looking for some kind of meaning in life.
And the existence of Andrew Tate is a literal mirror of something gone wrong. Tate is raw unfiltered masculine ideals; that’s America’s biggest fear.
He’s the Eminem of the male loneliness epidemic, a lewd wake-up call that some men feel is the voice of their generation while others are mortified.
C.S. Lewis once said, “Reality is about something you could not have guessed.” Andrew Tate is what you get when the mass of men lack paternal guidance followed by a barrage of “toxic masculinity” claims on actual good male role models.
Is any of this also not evidence?
The rise of pornography use? Or the fact that men match with 2% of the people they like on dating apps compared to women’s 36%? Or that male college enrollment has dropped nearly 6% more than women, with white men suffering the sharpest decline of 20%.
What about simp culture?
Or the fact that young men commit suicide at a rate of four times more than younger women? Or the rise in school shootings, which have been perpetrated mostly by young men.
It’s all so obvious you’d have to be willfully blind not to see this reality.
Also interesting to me is the author of “The Male ‘Loneliness Epidemic” Does Not Exist” is trans. One of the best articles I read this year was from another trans person describing just how jarring the transition was to becoming a man:
“Before transitioning, I didn’t receive short pat hugs or shake hands; I got deep, long hugs. I didn’t get quick answers about life; I got hour-long conversations. When traveling or running errands, and I saw a parent dealing with an exhausting kid, I could help and not be stared at like a creep…
We exist in a world where men are told their worth comes after women and children, that they cannot be a caretaker or nurturer without losing their masculinity, and that their sadness is not to be talked about. It’s as if we’re asking men to despise their lives, and then become shocked when they are violent.
Before I transitioned, I had little empathy for men. And while I still hold us to a high standard, I now see the brokenness. The brokenness of masculinity, how isolating it is, and how men don’t know how to break the cycle.”
Carl Jung wrote to be our best selves a man needs to incorporate his “anima” or his inner feminine side and a woman her “animus” or inner masculine side.
What’s happening now is that men don’t even know what it’s like to be a man first and foremost before developing further.
We aren’t taught self-discipline, or how to seek real experiences over virtual ones (nothing wrong with the latter within reason), or how to have a healthy relationship with violence and stand up for ourselves, friends, and family if the time comes.
There’s nothing wrong with traditional male values. Sure, some could be updated, like being empathetic and open with our feelings, but overly feminizing men is why both men and women are unhappy today.
One last thing: Can we stop blaming white men for everything?
It’s low and pathetic. It’s like conspiratards who blame their problems on “the Jews” or like incels who blame everything on women.
If you’re the type of person who thinks middle to low-class white men are America’s biggest problem I imagine you’ve never been outside a liberal arts echo chamber for most of your human life. Speak to a Black person. Read a book. Read one by Thomas Sowell, or “Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D. Vance. Seriously.
The game has always been for the ultra-rich plutocrats to divide and conquer by making us play identity politics.
Even a separatist firebrand like Malcolm X realized the real fight wasn’t Black vs. White or Men vs. Women. It’s class warfare.
And finally, a lot of men’s frustrations are definitely with dating, but the real issue is the meaning crisis. If we keep dunking on men because it is easy to do so — well, as C.S. Lewis said, “Reality is about something” and the rise of Andrew Tate culture will continue. And at that point, you’ll have no one to blame but yourselves.
Good article! I probably will ditch my Medium subscription when its up.
So true. Medium is as WOKE as it gets. I only use it for Tech related content.