A Broken Man Chases Charlatans

It's something to at least be cognizant of, as it's happening a lot.

Recently, I got more into the Financial Diet YouTube channel, in part because (before my wife) I mostly liked girls with glasses and in part because Chelsea, said girl with glasses, is one of the only women out there “making content” who actually tells it like it is in the streets as regards gender and money these days. Here’s a new-ish video from her and her team.

The Demise of the male breadwinner is an interesting concept. Now, how true is it? It's true, but probably not “majority true.” You still have something like 18% of families as single-income, and I’d venture 95% of those families are male income, just because of stupid gender norms and how companies promote and evaluate men vs. women. I live in Texas, which is a “gender-conventional” state if there ever was one, but almost everyone I know is two-income. Usually if you find a single-income, it’s because someone got laid off or is in transition. Still, I’d say most people I know, the man out-earns the woman. Not the case in my life, and in six or seven other examples, but that's commonly what I still see.

It varies by area and friend circle, of course.

There are a lot of upstream and downstream effects of “the Demise of the male breadwinner,” including themes such as:

Are men fleeing the workforce to watch porn and play video games?

Have women utterly surpassed men?

Are we within the last 100 years of the patriarchy now?

Is it possible for women to rise without men declining?

If the male isn’t the breadwinner, what is he doing domestically if kids are involved?

Is this another brick in the Demise of men narrative?

What would benefit a man more: feeling purposeful or feeling respected?

I’ve written about all these topics in the past three-four years. I’ll spare you the links. I never used to even remotely contemplate masculinity, but it became a societal narrative and I love to attach myself to trends due to my own crippling insecurities. That, and 15 years of every guy you know having a kid and you’re just over here twiddling your thumbs sometimes unable to even get it up because you’re so fucking depressed about it all, will make you consider what “men” should be and what “masculinity” is.

There is a point made at the end of the above video which is important, though. As men feel “less,” either on the income side or the societal side (think #MeToo backlash, and every normative male development behavior now potentially being slugged as “toxic”), men will feel lost. “Less” = “lost.” Pretty common narrative there.

What happens when you feel lost? I can answer that. Been lost many a time. Often, men adopt an any port in a storm narrative. 50 years ago, that might have been poker, gin, their secretary who “understands them so well,” or tittie mags. Nowadays, however, every single person has some form of a platform, and there are dozens of avenues you can pursue when you feel lost.

Many a male-audience-chasing charlatan will sell some combination of fitness + the grindset + “Look at these conventional success metrics I myself have attained through hard work and resilience, not to mention my dad at one point had the biggest real estate empire in Manhattan” content. A lost man will fall for this shit. It is a major explanation of the Trump rise. Aside from “he tells it like it is” and single-issue voters (I.e. abortion), I don’t think anything explains Trump rising more than lost men, especially men in “deaths of despair” counties, thinking that his brand of success and “DGAF” can somehow save all men.

Same with Jordan P., Tate, guys like Rogan to some extent, etc. Rogan is a little bit different because he’s basically five-hour conversations with a variety of people, although his stuff is “traditionally masculine” and “leans right,” even if you want to argue that somehow.

A broken man will chase a charlatan and think, "Oh, this is my path.” And, currently, we have a lot of broken dudes, for various and sundry reasons.

Are we surprised that some charlatans are rising up in the social discourse sphere, then? Shouldn’t be.

For those who might read this and think I am attacking the right, I somewhat am — but it works the other way too. Although, there are not many admirable or “desired” male figures on the left. Robert Reich talks about interesting stuff, but he’s a short, old Jewish guy. Mark Manson could theoretically be liberal, but since he moved to Los Angeles and talks more about not drinking and laying harder pipe to his wife, he comes off as a bit more conventional masculinity.

But males do fall for charlatan shit on the left, although I would say that’s more about failed parenting approaches, from what I’ve seen, or chasing the way-off target of “men need to be vulnerable.” Men do need to be vulnerable, but the problem is that acceptance of male vulnerability is not at scale, and most men will lose friends (raises hand) for being vulnerable at this stage. If you want to protect a small band of brothers you can rely on, usually vulnerability is a button only pushed in DEFCON scenarios.

If you want societies with less snake-oil dudes, we need ways to make masculinity a little bit better and more robust. Right now, though, we're still arguing about what that all looks like.

Your take?