Tag: society

Seriously, WTF?

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

A billboard in Bismarck, ND blew my mind.

Source: Photo by The Glorious Studio from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-shot-of-diamond-rings-12427696/

I had to go out of town recently for a dentist appointment as medical service providers are few and far between in the great stupid state of North Dakota. Since there was nobody in network in my town, and my previous dentist office hardly ever has an actual dentist on staff — just hygienists and one moron office manager— I had to drive three and a half hours to go to a new dentist for X-rays and a cleaning.

Yes, I had to stay over night in a hotel, rent a car, and drive halfway across a state just for a one hour appointment. It’s insane, I know.

But that’s nothing compared to a completely fucking insane billboard I saw while I was down there.

I was parked at a Wendy’s eating my actually not bad spicy chicken sandwich when I looked across the road and I saw a big yellow billboard for a jeweler in town advertisting payment plans for engagement rings for as long as 48 months.

What??? I almost dropped my sandwich in shock. Who the fuck is financing a diamond engagement ring for four years? Good Christ, most marriages don’t even last seven years. You might be getting divorced by the time you pay the damn thing off.

My mind was blown. I was utterly floored. Are people — “men” — actually doing this, I wondered. I couldn’t believe it. Then I began to think about the many, many imbecilic male slobs I’d encountered in my life. Slovenly creatures in backwards hats, flip flops, scruffy beards, cargo shorts, forearm tattoos, fast food afficionados, fantasy football betting, sports-enthused, vape-toking, video game playing, Monster Energy drink sipping Neanderthals — yes, I could totally see many of these specimens going “Hur dur, happy wife, happy life,” and walking into that jewelry store ready to sign up for basically car payments on a twinkling rock for their idiot girlfriends.

Am I the only one who sees how insanely stupid this is?

How dumb do you have to be to sign up for four long years of debt just for a rock? There are a million better things to spend money on in a new marriage than a piece of bling.

Dear men, stop doing this to yourselves. Seriously.

No woman who truly loves you and wants to be with you would want you to finance a rock for four years. Only a gold-digging Instagram thot who takes seflies at the gym in her booty shorts would demand that, not someone truly worthy of years of your sacrifice and financial hardship.

A worthy woman would want you to put that money toward a house, furniture, a car, baby things, or other practical purchases that really matter and help build the foundation for a successful marriage and family. Not a shiny stone.

An engagement ring is just a symbol. She didn’t win the fucking Super Bowl, gents. Buy her something modest and within your budget, and move the fuck on in life.

In fact, this makes for a good litmus test. The bigger the rock she expects, the bigger the undeserving asshole she likely is.

This simp epidemic has to stop. I mean, think about the underlying misandry of that billboard’s message. It reflects a societal expectation that men go out and financially fuck themselves royally as a traditional precursor to marriage.

Now imagine the message, but directed at women. Imagine that billboard was offering payment plans on appliances like washing machines, dishwashers, and dryers that women go buy so when they get married they can be good little stay at home housewives. Or imagine it was advertising payment plans on BOOB JOBS so hubby can have a nice set of flesh pillows to bury his face in after a hard day’s work. Imagine all the outrage at that.

Well, it’s the same thing with this silly and frankly asinine expectation that men burden themselves for years for a stupid rock.

Fuck. That.

I could see dropping like $5k on an engagement ring. Maybe even $10k if it’s within your budget. But only if you can pay that in cash and it’s not going to force you into indentured servitude for the length of a presidential term.

Marriage is tough enough without additional and unnecessary financial burdens. Why make it needlessly harder on yourself?

I wouldn’t care if it were Sydney Sweeney. I’d rather be single for life than finance a rock for ANYONE.

Seriously, WTF?

Our Decades Don’t Have Cool Nicknames Anymore

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

The Trumpy Twenties? The Terrible Twenties? The Turbulent Twenties? The Spendy Twenties? Just spit ballin’ here.

Photo by Viridiana Rivera from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/colorful-2025-planner-with-pen-and-plant-29996971/

I truly believe that in the year 2000 our timeline somehow got diverted into the Shithole Dimension in which we currently reside.

How? I blame Y2K. We were supposed to let that supposed “glitch” play out, not “fix” it. Instead, we collectively ctlr+alt+deleted our way into this nightmare world.

That, or the gods simply hated those stupid “00” New Year’s Eve glasses everyone was wearing celebrating the Millennium, and decided to punish us with two and a half gray mushy mash no identity decades. What is the difference between the year 2003 and now? Seriously. None. If you stuck me in a Delorean and sent me back, I’d hardly notice any changes. The clothes, the tech, the political scene — all virtually the same.

We left the “Go-Go 90s” or the “Gay 90s” or “The Decade of Peace,” for the “Oughties.” Or is it just the “Zeroes?” Or the “Two-Thousands?” Boring and WTF either way.

Even IN the ’90s, we used to say, “It’s the ’90s, baby.” On New Year’s Eve of 1999, I remember partying with some coworkers at a popular resort named after a Roman emperor to Prince’s song “1999” the moment the ball dropped. It was awesome. It was like we knew we’d reached an Apex of Cool and the universe had serendipitously rewarded us with our very own anthem for the year with a song written way back in 1982. How’s that for a pre-expectation of good times? People were excited for the ’90s already in the ’80s. Who the fuck was looking forward to 2009? 2013? 2017? 2023? The current year?

“This the ’80s and I’m down the ladies.”

Then just today I’m driving along and I hear the classic 1989 song “Funky Cold Medina” by Ton-Loc, which includes the line I quoted above. The previous seventies decade may have been the “Me Decade,” but even in Ronald Reagan’s America people were ready to get down. And that was with the Cold War still going on. The “Swinging Sixties” were turbulent, sure, but defined by great music, social changes, and apparently swinging. It was a decade marked by sexual experimentation and liberation. So like the ’70s, ’80s and ‘90’s, it had a certain sex appeal. Then before that you had the “Rockin’ Fifties.” Also known as the “Fabulous Fifties.”

It wasn’t all fun and fornication, of course. You had the “Fighting Forties,” due to WWII. The “Dirty Thirties” thanks to the Great Depression. But before them you had the “Roaring Twenties,” because of the skyrocketing stock market.

Meanwhile, the 2000s, or “Oughts” or “Zeroes” has no real nickname. The “War on Terror Decade?” Too negative. “The Age of Premptive Strikes?” No, too cynical. “The Bush Years.” Come on, man.

Okay, forget the 2000s. Onto the “teens.” Or “twenty-tens.” Or “twenty-teens.” This decade doesn’t even have a proper numerical designation. Can we hope for at least a halfway decent nickname? I’m drawing a blank here. The “Troublesome Teens?” The “Tiresome Tens?” Oh, I know. the “Transformative Teens.” Kind of a catch-all. Plus it subtly alludes to the whole transgender craze starting during the latter part of the decade. And it was a transformative decade, for sure.

Which finally brings us to this decade. The twenties. We’re halfway through and I’ve yet to hear any kind of a definitive nickname. I’ll refer you to my suggestions up at the very top. The “Terrible Twenties” sounds too dramatic. The “Trumpy Twenties” is too specific.

Besides —

We don’t yet know how the next five years will shake out. For all we know, we’re all of us gifted with unicorns that piss gold coins and shit Godiva chocolate in this decade’s latter half. In which case we’d be the “Enchanted Twenties.”

It could maybe be the “Twitter Twenties,” if it hadn’t become X. I like “The Spendy Twenties” best as it alludes to high inflation and the costs for everything getting completely out of control. I went to the supermarket recently and eight chicken wings cost $18. Eighteen dollars. Fuck it, I’ll just eat carpet.

I’m not ready to write off this entire decade just yet. I’m willing to give it a chance. But unlike the ’90s or ’80s, the twenty-twenties has got no vibe. It’s got no aura. No zip. No rizz, as the kids like to say. Frankly, I’m embarassed to be living in it. Especially when I’ve had better. Way better. That’s not good. We need to reset those computers back so they just read two digits again, so we can spring out of this bizarro pocket dimension of identity-less decades and back into our old reality. We should have had the “Duuude-Thousands,” then the “Terrific Teens,” before living smack dab in the middle of the “Friendly Twenties.” Instead, we are lost and adrift, and without a name.

Why Western Birth Rates Have Collapsed

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

What population and fertility trends in Nigeria say about the West.

Photo by Vika Glitter from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-and-woman-carrying-babies-while-sitting-on-chair-1648396/

Despite not having any kids, I’ve become intrigued lately by all the doomsdayers out there raising alarms about birthrates and replacement rates. Elon Musk, who has 14 children with five different women himself, talks about it almost every day on X. Recently, he retweeted a user who shared some shocking graphs:

Source: OurWorldinData

Then there’s this one:

Source: National Statistics Offices

Wow. That is what’s called a precipitous collapse. The West will be extinct before long at this rate.

Anecdotally, my grandmother had eight kids. My biological father had seven. My mother had four. I have two half-siblings who have two kids each. My youngest half-sibling has none, as do I. Only a few of my cousins have more than one child. I’ve witnessed in my time a severe narrowing in the number of kids couples have over the generations. Marriage rates have also gone down. The average age people marry has gone up. And the number of children people have who happen to get married or cohabitate has shrunk across the board.

Not so in Africa, according to the graphs above. Especially countries like Nigeria, which actually has a population explosion that is projected to reach over 400 million by 2050, according to the World Bank. The United States’ population is currently 340 million for comparison.

So, what’s going on? Why can’t the West reproduce itself? I’ve heard all the excuses: expensive housing, cost of living, the job market, etc. However, according to a recent study that looked at the population trends in the African country, “income does not play any significant role in the demand for children in Nigeria.”

The 2022 study is titled “Fertility and Population Explosion in Nigeria: Does Income Actually Count?” You can check it out at this link here.

There are some key takeaways aside from the obvious ones involving increased life expectancy, declining death rate, and high infant mortality. Nigeria has seen improvements in both those areas over the last 59 years, though its infant mortality rate is among the highest in the world, and correlates with the higher number of births.

But if it’s not income or medical care that’s keeping the West from reproducing, what is? Culture, mainly. Take a look at Nigeria’s attitude toward children in general, and see if there’s a marked difference with the West’s.

From the study:

Children are viewed as a future investment and given the uncertainties of them having a brighter future, a poor household can produce more children to try their odds. That is, out of the very many children, some could have a chance to become prominent individuals in the society. Apart from that, some traditional Nigerian households views greater number of children as a strength to the family in terms of providing family labour at the subsistence level.

There are other cultural factors at play, which I’ve broken down here:

  • early marriage
  • universal marriage
  • prolonged childbearing
  • low contraceptive use
  • cultural emphasis on large families due to fear of lineage extinction.

I bold-faced the last one because it ties in with high infant mortality.

Fear of extinction fostered increased reproduction in the face of perceived high child mortality with the expectation that some of the births would survive to carry on the lineage.

It also is what most differentiates Nigeria from the West. Those few who procreate here in the U.S. do so within a bubble of relative security. It’s never been safer or easier to have kids from a medical point of view. Yet families in the U.S. remain largely fractured and small. Members are often adrift from one another. Who fears their family name dying out who isn’t named Trump or Musk?

Meanwhile, Nigerians reproduce as if they have a gun to their heads. Is it mostly due to the infant mortality rates? I don’t think it’s that simple. I get the sense that even if infant mortality were to suddenly incline here, it’d be met with indifference. Most women support abortion rights and put off having children until their 30s. Few men want to become fathers. Fertility and parenthood are not treated with celebration but looked at like nuisances. As obstacles to having fun or achieving life and career goals.

Photo by Janko Ferlic from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/pregnant-woman-1692050/

People are staunch individualists, focused intensely (selfishly, even) on their career and capital acquisition over reproductive relationships. We’re a culture obsessed with entertainment, dopamine fixes, and endless sensory distraction. To put it crudely, women would rather strip on OnlyFans or sip mimosas at the bar with their girlfriends on Friday nights, while men would rather play video games and jack off to internet porn, than do something as backbreaking like start a family. Much less a family above the replacement rate.

Sex education starts young, with a heavy emphasis on contraceptive use. We all remember the condom and banana demonstration in fifth or sixth grade. Sex ed also pounds on this idea that getting preggo is basically the end of the world. While out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy is obviously not ideal, that anti-natal sentiment carries on into adulthood. Fewer people marry, and hardly anyone marries young. In fact, the idea of getting hitched prior to age 25 is seen as absurd. Your twenties are supposed to be for “experimentation,” and screwing around, not getting serious with anyone.

None of this is to say Nigeria’s population explosion is an ideal to aspire to for the West. Severe poverty persists. Excess population is a drain on resources. In fact, the baby boom is considered a crisis in the country. The study states in its conclusion:

Population control is therefore sacrosanct to save the nation from peril.

Nigeria’s high infant mortality rate also continues to be a problem. By reducing that, in addition to better sex education, the country may be able to reign in its population.

In fairness to the West, medical technology may help extend life spans and quality of life far beyond what’s typical. Many people continue to work into their seventies and beyond, and not just our politicians, either. Plus, our infant mortality rates are extremely low (5.6 deaths per 1,000) compared to Nigeria’s (72.2 deaths per 1,000) and other African countries.

It is possible that a birth rate below replacement is a natural and inevitable byproduct of a modern, developed civilization. But it’s odd and disquieting that even in the face of imminent extinction, our collective response is nonchalance. At what point, if at all, does self-preservation kick in? For many Millennials and Gen-Zers, it will be their social media accounts that will serve as their final legacy, not their genetic progeny. A sad state of affairs.

I found this study fascinating because it helps dispel the myth that income and cost of living are the biggest factors in why few in the West want kids or want many of them. It’s not a financial issue, it’s a cultural one. I don’t see those trends reversing anytime soon, if ever. We’re never doing away with sex education. We’re never going to tell our teens to shack up young or put off college to have a family. We’re never going to be anything but workaholic, screen-addicted, materialistic pleasure-seekers who only seem to have families by accident instead of intention. What modern woman aspires to having kids period, much less four or five? What man would choose breadwinning over fantasy football and e-thots? Face it. We just hate kids.

To quote a meme I recently found on X: “We traded bedtime stories for higher GDP.”

Parents Really Don’t Do Jack Shit These Days

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Do they think their kids come shrink-wrapped in perfect factory form? Cause they sure as hell don’t.

Made with Midjourney

I told the tale of the Ravaging Ice Cream Brat a few years ago in my article/rant against sugar and obesity. But I’ll briefly tell it again here.

I was in Wal-Mart waiting in line at the return counter for some stupid reason I forget. While there, I saw a kid who looked nine or ten years old or so and his mom waiting in line. Well, the mom was in line. The kiddo, who was adorned in baggy sweat clothes and looked like a pile of laundry sprung to life, was sprawled out on the one bench, legs spread, one hand fiercely smashing virtual buttons on his smartphone. And whining. Whining, whining, whining about being hungry. So he goes to his mom and begs for a snack. She, without even looking, as though she were spreading bread crumbs for an obnoxious park pigeon, digs into a box of freaking ice cream sandwiches and hands her offspring one of them. The kid tears it open and returns to the bench. All the while his stupid phone game jingles and jangles as he plays it with one hand while stuffing his face with the other.

Now, I don’t think this is an overreaction, but I wanted to punt that kid across the room for acting like that. I stood there in awe watching the tragic scene unfold. You could tell this kid knew how to whine his way into anything, and the mother always, always gave in. He was already fat. Fat at nine years old. The mother was fat. Both had that slovenly, insolent look about them that makes your blood boil and hate humanity.

I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was absolutely unacceptable to behave like that for me growing up. Sure, as a little kid I was rambunctious. But once I was old enough to understand the English language and the concept of right or wrong I knew to be on my best behavior in public. I never acted uncouth, certainly not as old as nine or ten or older.

I wasn’t treated like some wild animal that needed to be placated with sugary treats and electronic distraction. I was treated like a person who required discipline and structure, which is what children need if they’re going to have any hope of reaching adulthood and NOT become gigantic useless assholes.

A few years ago I was visiting a former place of employment to fill out some paperwork. While there I had to sit next to a mother and her five-year-old, who was playing some game on his tablet the whole freaking time. I don’t know what this game was, but it involved capturing fruit or something, and so whenever this kid scored points or whatever, the game would loudly chime, “YOU GOT A BANANA!”

This was an office for a mental health nonprofit, mind you. Not the entrance to Disneyworld. Ironically, this kid and his stupid game nearly made me lose my mind. By the hundredth “YOU GOT A BANANA!” I finally shot a polite glance at the mother, who was playing on her phone, too, and she did finally lower the volume. Yes lady, I have ears. I certainly can hear your stupid offspring’s loud AF game.

An old saying goes that children should be “seen but not heard.” I couldn’t disagree more. I think children should be NEITHER seen NOR heard. In fact, I think children should be packed up and sent to one of those mean, nasty English boarding schools. Like the one in that Pink Floyd music video for “Another Brick in the Wall.” Where the guy yells, “How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat?” Then, after they turn 18, those newly minted adults can be sent to college or trade school to become productive citizens.

Oh, that’s completely unreasonable. We should let them explore themselves and just be who they are. Children are magical little beings!

No, they’re not. They’re not. They are ignorant. They are stupid. They know nothing. They are clueless. They dont know “shit about fuck” to be blunt. When NASA was launching that gigantic V-2 rocket into space to land on the moon, do you recall seeing any 12-year-olds in that control room with the guys who had those crew cuts and pocket calculators? When you’re watching the Super Bowl, do you see any ten-year-old boys out there on the field throwing touchdown passes? No, of course not. Do you think Taylor Swift just accidentally wandered onto a stage one day with a guitar and became famous out of nowhere? Do you think her parents had to tell her sometimes, “Get in that room and practice that guitar!” I guarantee you they did.

Everytime I go out in public I see kids in designer clothes. Kids playing with smartphones. Kids acting like zoo animals. Kids that seem to run their families. All the while the parents stand there agape like zombies doing nothing.

NEWSFLASH: Kids will not magically fix themselves when they turn 18. An asshole kid WILL become an asshole adult 100% of the time.

I look around and all I see is parents OUTSOURCING every parental responsibility to someone else who is often just as irresponsible or worse. They outsource education to government schools. They outsource nurturing to daycare centers while the parents go out to work. They outsource time and attention to TV and movies and streaming sites like Disney and Netflix. They outsource all knowledge to social media — YouTube and TikTok. They even outsource sexual education. Do you realize that boys as young as EIGHT are exposed to hardcore pornography on their phones? Think of how much that’s warping their brains.

But you just said you want to send kids to mean, nasty English boarding schools. Isn’t that outsourcing?

In that case it’s okay, because it’s way better than them ending up flailing around like an untethered blimp in a Wal-Mart and munching on ice cream sandwiches for breakfast. There are SOME good places to outsource, and if parents are going to behave like brainless dolts then it’s better the kids go somewhere else where they can actually learn and develop. I’m all about practical solutions here not inflexible ideology.

Anyway, what is the result of all this awful outsourcing? Children in school today outsource their studies and their ability to think to CHAT-GPT. They don’t think critically, they just transcribe whatever the all-knowing all-wise AI computer in the sky tells them, as if they were ancient scribes scribbling out a prophetic vision of the future.

Made with Midjourney

Parents today don’t even seem to really want kids. They regard their own offspring as if they were happenstantial bodily growths. Like talking moles. Something to be looked at curiously, then ignored, or left to the “experts” or “society” to deal with. Parents are letting teachers call the shots. The third grade teacher thinks Johnny should go on Ritalin because he once looked out the window? Better medicate the hell out of our boy. Don’t want to disagree with an “expert.” Some 85-pound woman on TikTok is telling our 13-year-old daughter she should go on an all juice diet to stay thin? Well, we don’t want to interfere. Hashtag telling our kids to eat Tide pods for the lolz? We had no idea that was going on, honest.

Why do you suppose so many young men today have checked out of the dating market and aren’t looking for relationships? What do you think is really powering the incel movement? Absentee fathers. Why do you think so many young women are incompetent door knobs? Absentee mothers who would rather watch some trash on Netflix than prevent their daughters from getting an STD before their sixteenth birthday.

Point is, a lot of social problems these days can be traced back to shitty parenting. I’m not saying good parenting can fix everything. You can’t fix every person. Some kids are psychopaths, for sure. But you sure can mitigate a lot of issues out there.

Oh, but it’s so expensive to raise kids these days. You have no idea how hard it is. Both parents have to work. Inflation, cost of living, double-income households, etc.

Listen, I was born into poverty. I grew up in the lower-middle working class. I started working at 12-years old and haven’t stopped since. I had to pay for my own braces by selling candy door to door. Spare me your lousy complaints. I didn’t turn into some obnoxious hellion adult. Because as a kid I was disciplined and taught there is a right way to act and a wrong way. Not an easy set-up in life, but I made it through and didn’t become a felon or some adult loser who blames “society” for their own patheticness.

You can call me harsh. You can call me unreasonable. But you can’t say I don’t care. I care that kids today are raised right so they can be successful adults. I care that they have the tools they need to not just survive but thrive in the world.

Do We Need To Start Husband And Wife Schools?

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Society must deal with declining birth rates, low population, and the shocking lack of baseline domesticity of our species.

Teenagers at a party in Tulsa, Oklahoma 1947. Author unknown.

I have an ex-girlfriend who was borderline incompetent at most things in life.

That’s putting it as nicely as I can.

Her apartment was always a mess. I came over one Thursday night with groceries to make dinner. Her place looked like a bomb went off. I cleaned up the kitchen, then proceeded to make our meal. The following night I came over and her place was a disaster again. I’m talking plates with crumbs left on the floor by the sofa. Food wrappers left on the carpet. I had to clean up the kitchen again before making dinner for us both.

Her car was equally a disgrace, littered with papers, CDs, food wrappers, and other things.

She was a lazy slob who put ZERO effort into the relationship. She never came up with date ideas. Expressed no interest in having kids one day. Had no career ambitions. Couldn’t cook. Couldn’t clean, except when compelled. She constantly complained about part-time jobs she had. I think she got fired from one as a restaurant hostess.

She could, however, dress well. She looked nice. Put together. The only job she ever performed well at was as a model for a painter. A job that literally only required her to sit still and look pretty for an hour. That’s it.

Oh, and she was “pansexual,” or something that meant it took her a “long time to warm up to being physical with anyone.” Long time as in months or even years.

So, a prude. I love these modern made-up words about sexuality that describe basic human behavior that’s been around for thousands of years.

Unsurprisingly, our relationship did not last. I couldn’t stand to be with someone who seemed incapable of baseline adult functioning. She was also petulant and child-like in her attitude. I once took her to a college football game and she literally sat there and stewed the whole time. This was after enthusiastically agreeing to go. We left at halftime.

Now, possibly this lady was inadvertantly trained to be useless. She was the baby in her family, and her folks had money. So, there might have been some poor upbringing in there. But her older sister and brother were competent adults with jobs and families and drive. What the hell happend to her, I used to wonder, before finally breaking things off.

It wasn’t just that she couldn’t do most adult responsibilities. It was that she almost seemed proud to be deliberately helpless. It was a badge of honor. This is not a unique thing amongst many modern women I’ve observed, especially uber feminists. Domestic duties are somehow seen as beneath many of them. As if being able to do laundry and clean the kitchen is a betrayal of some feminist code or something. Yet such duties are common household functions. I do them all the time and I don’t feel “feminized.” It was just one of my chores growing up that I still use in my everyday behavior today. Because, you know, I like things being clean and not disgusting around me.

The oppressive, patriarchal 1950s we’ve all been told was a living nightmare for women. Photo from 1959. Author unknown.

Years ago I had a very good-looking friend. I mention he was very good-looking because I’m quite sure his attractiveness was the source of all his good fortune in life. He was a POS lazy ne’er do well, otherwise, and the kind of guy I tend to have contempt for. But he was a nice guy and had an easygoing personality. He had an attractive girlfriend who did EVERYTHING for him. She cooked, cleaned the house, managed his finances — giving him an “allowance” out of his own pay after deducting for expenses —all while holding down a full-time job. She also had a bachelor’s degree. They were an odd couple. She was a driven, capable professional. He was a former pot dealer who slept on his friend’s sofa before shacking up with Wonder Woman. There could not be a bigger contrast. Yet they were together.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses. My good-looking friend confided to me one evening that he and his girlfriend hadn’t been intimate in a long time. I was surprised, kinda. I suppose it’s hard to fuck a guy — even a hot guy — when you’re practically his mother. They’re married today, however. A development I’d cynically say was probably due more to the sunk costs fallacy than some genuine deep connection they shared. Or maybe my bum ass ex-friend actually matured and started pulling his own weight for once in life.

He was also your typical gamer dude, capable of long hours in front of the big screen zoned out doing whatever-the-fuck. What is it with dudes and gaming nowadays? I played the original NES for a few years as a kid, but that was it. If I try to play a game now I start to go quietly insane. They’re so stupid and pointless. Yet guys in the their 30s and beyond will devote hours and hours to seeing if they can find a silly fucking sword or something for their character. I know guys with huge tattoos of their favorite game characters. That’s just weird to me. So many men are stupidly infantalized, desocialized, and underperforming these days. When you throw in ubiquitious pornography, and you might as well have most men plugged into a 24/7 morphone drip. We may not live in a bombed-out hellscape, but our society feels very dystopian these days.

As nice as my friend’s girlfriend was, honestly, I’d go crazy in a similar set-up myself. I don’t need a woman to baby me or run my life. I do just fine on my own. And the no sex deal…well, that’s a deal breaker, right there. Especially if we’re living together.

My point with all this is that men and women are not optimized for one another anymore. They are not optimized for a marriage or relationships in general. We are only optimized for our own individual needs, wants, and desires. We are like Baby People crying out for our bottles. There is only one word that exists in the collective unconscious — ME. Me, me, me.

Possibly — well, quite likely — this is the result of our ultra-individualist society. We are trained from birth to go through the school system, get an education, all so we can squeeze ourselves into some corporate Borg Cube. All while being hypnotized by the glowing rectangle of the computer/phone screen. Recently, I saw a post on X about how Gen Z women rank marriage as low as seventh on their list of priorities. Career and college were likely at the top.

I’ve mentioned before how in college when asked our future plans no one, not even the women, mentioned things like having a family or kids. Frankly, the very idea seems quaint and cringe or characterized as “traps” to anyone who isn’t a bonnet-wearing Mennonite or an immigrant from a region where having 5+ kids is basically a rite of passage. That’s honestly a shame, and narrows the reproductive window of opportunity. The women in my class were not in their teens, but mainly in their mid-20s. By contrast, my mom had me when she was 24. She had four kids. My grandmother started late relatively-speaking for her era, at 28, but she had 8 herself. Out of all my direct family, half-family, and former family, no one has had more than three kids, with most having none or one. And many of the women in my family had their kids after 30, which historically is pretty old to have a kid for the first time. I have none myself.

I don’t say of any this to shame or make fun. It’s just rather sad, and maybe more indicative of a restrictive and toxic economic climate than a statement on the broader culture. Or perhaps all our comfortable modern technology has lulled everyone into a numb ennui toward family and offspring. Who wants to change diapers when you could binge watch the latest Netflix slop? Why have actual kids when you could be a dog mom or a cat dad?

As in my two examples, even when relationships do miraculously occur, they can often be fake and unfulfilling as plastic flowers.

Whatever the reason for the divide, it seems men and women need some kind of New Deal. A restart. A reacclimation to one another. We put all this time and effort into training people to become monkeys for our corporate overlords. Why not add a School of Domesticity? Or at least pivot our cultural attitudes toward viewing genuine human connection as a natural positive, and not a punch line.