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Notes -
Compact published a quite thorough analysis of the discrimination millennial white men have faced since the mid-2010s, focusing on the liberal arts and cultural sectors. It does a good job of illustrating the similar dynamics at play in fields including journalism, screenwriting, and academia, interviewing a number of men who found their careers either dead on arrival or stagnating due to their race and gender. It's a bit long, but quite normie-friendly, with plenty of stats to back up the personal anecdotes. It also does a good job of illustrating the generational dynamics at play, where older white men pulled the ladder up behind them, either for ideological reasons or as a defense mechanism to protect their own positions.
A great quote from near the end of the piece that sums it up:
Edit: typo
This is genuinely the other side of the coin for all the gender/dating wars discourse. All the pressure is being put on the men to improve and jump through whatever hoops women require in order to get one... and every avenue for improvement is being cut off and the hoops have been set on fire, lifted 500 feet in the air, and suspended over a pit full of poisoned spikes. And men are told "just jump higher, it is still doable!"
The whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, nobody is coming to save you, life doesn't owe you anything" mindset/'advice' that gets handed down to young men is blatantly contradicted by the fact that the entire social, legal, and political fabric is arrayed against them achieving the most reliable, rewarding paths to long-term success. On the margins, a lot of these guys will be completely wrecked because they followed the standard advice to a tee and had their path blocked anyway, leading them into a depression spiral.
And so when similar advice comes down with regard to the dating market, "Become worthy of women, nobody will set you up but you, women don't owe you anything" and men notice that they are in fact being selected against based on factors they can't control it starkly informs them that literally nobody is on their side, they have no 'allies.' And so older guys giving such advice will sort themselves into the 'enemy' category for simply failing to see that the situation is now actively intolerable to anyone trying to follow the standard advice.
And this wouldn't be quite so utterly intolerable if it weren't for the fact that these same dudes are going to be paying most of the taxes and will be expected to continue to be productive so as to subsidize their own disenfranchisement and replacement. They can't even really say "screw you, I'm taking my ball and playing somewhere else" because they will be compelled to pay into the system regardless.
On the one hand, you've got women who are increasingly rejecting settling for men and claiming its because they fail to measure up to said women's standards. Standards which have drastically inflated in recent times, whilst the standards women apply to themselves have basically evaporated. She can literally be an active prostitute for the entirety of her twenties and then 'expect' to settle down for a guy who will care for her (whether she gives him kids or not) in her 30's.
Then on the other, men are getting actively nerfed in their ability to advance their careers and they see additional competition is introduced from foreigners and their competitors are getting subsidized meanwhile Old Boomers are squatting in the seats of real wealth and power (and deflecting blame) and adding to the criticism of these young men. Oh, and some old wealthy boomers are also directly snatching up eligible women in their twenties and directly contributing to the aforementioned sky-high standards without a hint of irony. So young men notice that going for absolute degenerate crypto gambling and harebrained startup schemes are the only 'hack' to get yourself out of this rat race that aren't completely stacked against you. Its still gambling, but at least chaos is fair. (Note, I don't actually believe that, but I see the reason it would be preferable.)
And every step of the way, from every angle (except guys like Andrew Tate) they're informed that they are the problem. And if they crash out over this, that is seen as proof positive that they're the problem. In England, apparently, they can get literally jailed for complaining about some of this.
Whatever arguments you want to make about the improvement in material conditions for young men over the past couple decades, their social standing has been eroded to the point they can't actually use that material wealth to satisify their actual desires (marriage, kids, respect, social esteem, and purpose) and are constantly, CONSTANTLY at risk of losing that wealth for making the sort of misstep that today can get you arrested but in the Boomers' day would have been the subject of a classic comedy film.
Which are mostly BS anyway, if we want to be honest.
Well, its pretty clear that you'd prefer to live in this era in terms of the sheer abundance of any goods you could want, and the technology available.
But the inability to parlay that into a meaningful life is... problematic.
I'd argue that no, it's actually not pretty clear, and I also don't believe that the material condition of the average young man factually improved in the past couple of decades.
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