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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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He also likes to give advice to young men to move to the middle of nowhere so they can buy cheap houses and work at the general store down the street... just absolute drivel, in my opinion, and he's passing it off like he's actually saying something

This has me thinking, the idea of "dropping out of the rat race" is very Gen X coded. Youth today think that's "copium" and seem to want to fight for control of the places and positions that matter. One's individual sanity or ability to remain morally-cum-cognitively uncompromised is not as important as the culture war and prestige. And living humbly is just deluding yourself that you aren't a loser accepting loser outcomes.

Michael J. Fox was right to leave Smallville and go to NYC in the 1987 film "The Secret of My Success." And Harrison Ford was wrong to leave for the Mosquito Coast in the movie of the same name. Even if the latter meant literally working harder - for which there are romantic and agreeable vibes - it wasn't working smarter.

This has me thinking, the idea of "dropping out of the rat race" is very Gen X coded. Youth today think that's "copium" and seem to want to fight for control of the places and positions that matter

I wonder if it's due to young people being raised on social media. The only kind of dropping out they can idolise is the vanlife/digital nomad/world traveller kind that is broadcast on Instagram.

I'd argue that for an average young Western man today to find work at a general store in the country is not exactly to drop out of the rat race but to find a livelihood that is actually not even bad on balance when compared to his other options for employment.

Youth today think that's "copium" and seem to want to fight for control of the places and positions that matter.

I think the Gen Z preoccupation with "staying in the fight" is also downstream of the proliferation of min-maxxer/striver culture. Leaving the rat-race isn't just a loser thing to do, it's effectively prescribing that you will remain a loser indefinitely. There may be some prestige in going your own way and blazing a trail, but it quickly wears off when faced with the prospect of never achieving much of anything, never advancing much of anything, and never being much of a "somebody" at all.

As to whether or not it's ideal to try and be "somebody," that remains to be seen.

There may be some prestige in going your own way and blazing a trail, but it quickly wears off when faced with the prospect of never achieving much of anything, never advancing much of anything, and never being much of a "somebody" at all.

i guess I'm not sure that I consider most white collar workers who live in the suburbs to have much prestige or "be somebodies"

I don't think it's a matter of literally having prestige or being prestigious. Rather, living in the suburbs of a metro area at least allows someone to fantasize about or imagine the possibility of getting prestige. If you live, say, in Long Island, NY and work as an insurance agent, you're close enough to the city that you can slip in and engage with the aspirational culture there. Being a bedroom musician, for example, in a suburb of New York has a very different prognosis from being a bedroom musician in Huntsville, AK.

I'd say the looksmaxxing and e-thotting phenomena are consequences of unrestricted female hypergamy fueling the mating market apocalypse; it's plausible that more and more GenZ-ers are engaging in this among the minority of them that are more exhibitionist and/or psychopathic than average but a much larger part of them is effectively checking out. In China there are actually different names applied to them: rat people, lying flat.

It's interesting that for all the repudiation of narcissistic individualism and neoliberalism by the new, young right, they're far more cutthroat and "realist" about a mandatory sense of competition in life. They're far more zero sum about things. "You're not in competition with others, just yourself" is a load of hogwash. Dropping out and doing your own thing is looked down as cope. I don't think they believe someone when they say they're unhappy doing something prestigious and wants to quit, even at the risk of becoming invisible. A mandatory sense of hustle, but from their peers, not bosses and older adults, is so omnipresent and taken for granted such that they can't imagine someone not wanting anything to do with it unless they're just sucky losers.*

(This also helps to explain why third parties in politics have become passe. It's thought of as a way of dropping out, and at a time when your cultural enemies seem like they're right on top of you, necessitating remaining in the 1 of 2 political tribes and with gusto.)

They're the least Buddhist people in the universe.

*Karl Pilkington once told Ricky Gervais that he quit his job as a program manager at a radio station to...walk dogs. Gervais was aghast. "I wasn't happy doing it." How could you not be?!

There are no single women in the middle of nowhere who will be impressed with your house and stable job at the general store, so this strategy is a non-starter.

Yes there are.

You will, however, not be impressed by those women.

Right. But there are men for whom "Is there a woman around?" isn't the most important thing.

I forgot who said that one hallmark of intellectualism is thinking there are things more important in life than chicks. Paraphrasing.

Telling a man to move to the middle of nowhere, get a job at the store, and become a monk is not exactly a great sales pitch. Or the kind of thing that will positively change society at any scale.

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