After graduation, they drift aimlessly from one dead-end job to another, spend more time online playing video games and gambling than they do on dates. …”
I typically spend about 50 hours a year on video games, and I don't gamble aside from spending $2 on lottery tickets every time the Mega Millions or Powerball hits $500+ million.
With that said, I'd rather be playing video games and gambling than going on dates. At least there's some joy in those games, and you actually have a chance of making money when you gamble.
Women technically don't need men nowadays. They have great careers and can pick all the hot alpha guys in the corporate world, etc. Same with all the guys in the corporate world who get all the alpha females.
It's the middle-class that struggles. So middle class men are being hedonistic and turning into Omega males.
It's not a women/men issue; it's a white-collar vs. blue-collar issue.
Theres actually quite a movement amongst women now that men are too much trouble to have in their lives. All of the effort of dating, ghosting, being messed around, risk of being cheated on, all for a man who likely earns less than you, has some debt due to stupid decision making and wants you to wait him at home like his mom did. And then if you do have kids, the risk of him cheating/leaving you, divorce costs and so on. Then you are a single mom with kids to look after as well as trying to reconcile your career.
So many men (and I have to agree with you thats its often middle class men) walk in and out of our lives, causing drama at best and devastation otherwise. You just have to look at all the posts on here criticising women and telling us how western men don't want us anyway. If I were single again, I would deliberately avoid dating because its just too disruptive. I can earn enough money to have a good life from my career and don't want to put it at risk.
ALL of my female friends have been cheated on by their boyfriends at one time or other, struggled to eat, developed depression or had to take time off work as a result. Mainly because the guys they were dating thought they were too good to be in a committed, monogamous relationship. Although they were just ordinary guys.
I thought men earned more than women? I think that is only in some cases. In other cases, pay is probably equal and dependent on experience and occupation.
I do think there are more females in management, as more of them are better-educated. I cringe when I see guys playing video games. They should be getting master's degrees or better jobs to keep up with society and compete with other nations on a business level. But video games...
I have often been tempted to play games like CoD at times but back off because I feel self-conscious about it.
I do agree with you in that I don't blame women somewhat for not wanting men, esp. if they just cheat and screw around, etc. I see more men and women being single in the next 20-30 years.
The fundamental reality is with the rise of dating apps along with the pill, a lot of men are struggling to find a partner because the dating dynamics has changed giving women more power to pursue men who are out of their league. There is no incentive for young men to work and die as a worker bee and a lot of them are realising that and becoming full of nihilism. Very scary times ahead of us
So what? I've never been in a relationship, and there's still plenty of incentive to work hard, earn a lot, and be successful:
- early retirement
- luxury travel
- fancy cars and mansions
- satisfaction in being in senior management and making a company successful
- not having to worry about whether you can afford something
- expensive hobbies
Give me a choice between lifetime singlehood with $500K a year or being married to anyone I like with $50K a year, and I'd choose the former. Always.
That's fair, but at some point all the material things in the world won't last.
I have known a few guys like this. They have become so happy in the cozy rut of their routine, they cling to it steadfastly and refuse to seriously consider growing beyond it. They stay in the same, unfulfilling jobs with no potential for promotion, do the same things with the same people for decades, stay anchored to the same sort of living situation in the same place forever. They are highly educated (STEM/grad degrees) and risk averse. That can be a good life yet it's patently obvious that they're lonely. One has even put himself in a nutty chick's friendzone for over a decade to maintain denial. Change is hard, but it's impossible when you have convinced yourself that you're doomed by things outside your control so you don't do anything about what you can control.
You nailed it. They're risk averse, but over really small things that people shouldn't be risk averse over, and then often their behaviour/decision making over bigger things is risky - doing drugs, sleeping around, not performing well in their career, not cultivating healthy relationships/friends.
One of the guys I'm thinking of had an unemployed gf for about 10 years, she moved in with him, he refused to get married, she left him eventually and married somebody else. All the time he was cheating on her but mainly getting turned down by higher value women because he had a gf. He's now in his late forties, single, spends most of his time on Tinder and lives in a really small apartment in a small dead end town, probably because his salary on his own doesn't stretch to anything bigger.
And he has a STEM degree!
I know several with similar patterns.
It sounds like he's smart but lacks ambition--get a second job, make friends, go run, etc. But if he's only making 35-40k with a STEM degree he needs to re-evaluate. (small apartment = $500 a month or more). And it sounds like he will have to work until 80.
Take Cece, a rising senior: “The majority of the guys I’ve encountered at U.Va. don’t want to commit to an actual relationship. They haven’t grown up. They want to hook up with girls, but that’s it. Many of my friends and I are frustrated with the lack of maturity our guy friends exemplify. My parents met in college, which was common among their generation, and are about to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Meanwhile, I have one year left at U.Va. and don’t foresee myself dating anyone.”
Great article. It's scary: “In another era, these guys would undoubtedly be poised to take their place in the adult world, taking the first steps toward becoming the nation’s future professional, entrepreneurs and business leaders. They would be engaged to be married, thinking about settling down with a family, preparing for futures as civic leaders and Little League dads. Not today. Today, many of these young men, poised between adolescence and adulthood, are more likely to feel anxious and uncertain. In college, they party hard but are soft on studying. … After graduation, they drift aimlessly from one dead-end job to another, spend more time online playing video games and gambling than they do on dates. …”
And this:
“I would say the qualities of guys I generally come across are not necessarily guys I would date,” said Claire, also a junior. Claire has noticed, at least in the School of Architecture, that “the girls seem to be driven and just focused on academics … a little more serious about it (than guys).”
Even when I was in college decades ago I saw it--the female students did better and got more connections/jobs because they worked harder, and the guys, even with talent, thought they could coast. The women had to work twice as hard out of fear of being left behind.
So what? I've never been in a relationship, and there's still plenty of incentive to work hard, earn a lot, and be successful:
- early retirement
- luxury travel
- fancy cars and mansions
- satisfaction in being in senior management and making a company successful
- not having to worry about whether you can afford something
- expensive hobbies
Give me a choice between lifetime singlehood with $500K a year or being married to anyone I like with $50K a year, and I'd choose the former. Always.
That's fair, but at some point all the material things in the world won't last.
Material things won't last, but the experiences you can buy with money do. The memories you'll have of going heli-skiing or the pictures you take while on a luxury Arctic cruise will be with you for your entire life.
Great article. It's scary: “In another era, these guys would undoubtedly be poised to take their place in the adult world, taking the first steps toward becoming the nation’s future professional, entrepreneurs and business leaders. They would be engaged to be married, thinking about settling down with a family, preparing for futures as civic leaders and Little League dads.
Futures as Little League dads? Is that really what you want out of life? I'd rather be playing in an adult baseball league.
And you can certainly be a civic leader, business leader, or entrepreneur as a single person.
As a society we have move the goal posts on adolescence up and up and up and while we THINK we are doing people a favor, in reality we are laying a false premise on top of the reality of biology. This causes a short circuit in the brain and leads to bad outcomes like depression, self medication, confusion, anxiety.
Everything in this young man's mind and body is telling him he is a man, he needs to do man things (work/duty/purpose, mate with females) yet our modern society tells him he is "just a kid" and not ready for these things.
A man without a job is a man without purpose. And large groups of men without purpose are very dangerous things.
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