I think again, it's really strange for me to be thinking about sort of talking about this from the outside, given that so much of my content crosses over.
But I think that much of the hunger for what I'm talking about, and these guys too, is a sort of reaction to a felt lack of sympathy and sort of denial of male pain.
And I think if there were, if there was more of an acceptance of guys are having a tough time of it at the moment.
Through pretty much any objective metric, I don't think that any group has fallen further faster than men.
That's Richard Reeves line from the American Institute of Boys and Men.
Uh, If it wasn't for the fact that there were no places to go, I think fewer guys would go to the internet.
And that creates both kind of the cause... It creates an opening in the market.
What's that line about?
If there are no role models, if you can't propose any.
And I think that this is a really great question.
In fact...
For you.
Who do you think are some good examples of sort of genuine positive role models that you would say to your boys?
This would be the sort of man that you should emulate.
Well, I mean the answer that gets bandied around a lot over here in the UK is Gareth Southgate, like the former England manager.
I think he embodies a certain sort of dignity and sets of fair play, and obviously in a pursuit that many boys aspire to excel in, many girls too.
I mean, should I come up with a couple more?
There's clearly in the pantheon of program makers my field, David Attenborough.
An adventurer, a world bestriding colossus of naturalism, a sensitive human being.
I mean, I think it is worth saying in that scenario that you've depicted, of kind of male failure, if you like, men despairing that thing of deaths, of despair like suicides and drug overdoses.
We should also, as a father of boys, I often remind myself that the two things that matter most to my kids at various times have been football, English football, obviously Premier League football and rap, grime and drill.
And those are both worlds in which most of the preeminent, world famous, highest paid, highest achieving, exponents are men and worlds in which in fact homosexuality is considered still rather questionable and taboo like not many openly gay footballers not that many openly gay rap artists so there are i i guess i'm pushing back ever so slightly in the sense that there are still realms in which um you know most of the most successful comedians are probably still men like there are still realms in which not just men, but a kind of traditionally masculine presenting man is still ascendant.
No, I would agree.
I think the difference is between where do the guys who raise to the top and where does the mean the average man end up sitting.
Because the average man is not going to become a Premier League footballer or Ricky Gervais.
The average man is increasingly slipping away from going to university, increasingly slipping away from getting a high paying job, increasingly more likely to be addicted to drugs or video games or porn or weed or whatever.
And you're right.
You're right to say that men dominate the extremes, but they dominate the extremes at both ends.
And it's a denial of the slipping back.
I think that And this is my read that if it wasn't for the case that I am struggling as a man well, look at your privilege.
Look at all of these CEOs.
Look at all of the football players.
Look at how well.
But I'm struggling and maybe many of my friends are too.
And there doesn't seem to be a sympathetic place to land for that.
Yeah, I totally agree.
And I think I'm not a fan of like the casual disparagement of men.
And I think very occasionally, maybe more than occasionally, that happens like typical man or uh, you know, step back as a man, check your privilege, especially as a father to boys.
Like boys, I never want to be in a world in which boys have kind of inherited an original sin by dint of being boys.
You know it's like.
Oh well, As a boy, your bequest is the fact that men have tended to run society for hundreds of years.
No, he's like five years old, like seven years old.
Don't put that on him.
Do you know what I mean?
I know, I was joking the other day.
I remember growing up and they were like you remember that nursery rhyme what are little girls made of?
It's all like sugar and spice and all things nice.
And what are little boys made of?
Like pigs and puppy dogs' tails.
I remember I was like seven years old.
Why am I made of puppy dogs' tails?
You know what I mean?
And that's kind of trivial, but I don't like that sort of... like frivolous denigrating of maleness.
And maybe I'm being oversensitive, but I think it kind of, it's a little unfair.
So maybe I'm agreeing with that.
But I think the other thing I'd say is, if I want to sound really apocalyptic, we are all, both men and women.
Now inhabiting a world in which technology's upended so much and promises to upend even more because God knows when, you know, in a world where I know a lot of it's traced back to the decline of traditional manufacturing.
Also, birth control, women entering the workplace, globalization of the economy, you know, and the fact that a lot of like manufacturing jobs moving to places like China and then actually most of the jobs now can be done equally well or better by women.
But in a world where AI is going to eliminate most of the jobs that involve sitting in front of a screen, as is sometimes promised, there's going to be this whole other ruction.
It's going to play out really interestingly, I think, to say the least, in terms of how men and women interrelate, how sustainable, I don't know.
I know taking is a bit off tangent, but I sometimes think that male mental health versus and how it figures in wider society will be subsumed by some vastly bigger social crisis.
Wow.
Yeah.
Do you notice?
I hadn't drawn that part of the path down the circles of hell, but you're probably right that it's all well and good talking about the issues that both men and boys and women and girls are facing.
But when 50% of the workforce is displaced by AI, I don't know whether that's going to happen.
When some percentage of the workforce is displaced by AI and people don't have meaning and certain jobs have jobs and other people don't feel like they've got a path forward.
But it does loop back to what I said before, which is that if anything, if it requires anything, it requires sympathy, like it needs.
You need to be sympathetic.
Wow, the world changed really far, really fast.
That's hard to navigate.
That's hard to navigate but because, at least at this iteration of it, the men were part of a previously beneficial group.
They were part of one that seemed to be afforded privileges in certain domains not the privileges to go to war and die and et cetera, but you know, opportunities that weren't afforded to the women.
It felt, and I think it feels to a lot of young men now, like they are being made to pay for the sins of the advantages that their fathers and grandfathers had.
They're accused of being part of a patriarchy that they no longer feel a member of, when they're looking around and saying well, where is my privilege?
And I think that it ties in with you.
Talk to these two guys And there's a line that they say in life as a man, you're born without value.
And I think what they mean with that is.
It feels to me like there is a kind of love and belonging and acceptance and pedestalization that's given to women and girls that I haven't felt has been afforded to me.
I haven't felt as special.
I haven't felt as cared for unless I do something, unless I make myself big and impressive.
And again with that sympathy to go fuck yeah, you know previously it probably there would have been a pretty linear progression for you to have found a place in society and done these things, and cost of living and and and uncertain, turbulent times and all of these different stimulus that can cause you to be addicted.
And if you believe in life as a man you're born without value, that that probably requires some sympathy too.
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