Luke Ford

Ross Douthat writes:

Across a wide range of elite professions, from academia to journalism to entertainment, the new system significantly changed who was hired and promoted by seemingly discriminating against younger white men.

The “young” part is crucial because, as Savage emphasizes, the older white men in charge of these institutions mostly kept their jobs. There were occasional coups, but white male leaders in their 40s, 50s or 60s didn’t all hand power to women and minorities. Instead they embraced the moral claims of wokeness and made sure that the employment effects fell on the rising generation instead of on them.

When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. This was the watchword of the era, implying that any claim of anti-white discrimination is really just a resentful reaction to a long overdue balancing of the scales. The most important aspect of Savage’s argument is the use of numerical trends to suggest that, no, the apparent discrimination was probably real discrimination, yielding hiring patterns aimed at redress rather than just equal treatment.

And while his argument focuses on the creative class, with data on media internships, tenure-track jobs and Hollywood writing staffs, he points out that “white men shut out of the culture industries didn’t surge into other high-status fields,” because the general pattern held everywhere. From medical schools to corporate middle management, white male enrollment and employment fell sharply under woke conditions. If you weren’t an absolute peak talent, it was a bad time to be a young, ambitious, well-educated white guy.

One progressive counterpoint might be that demographic change and the general educational struggles of boys explain some of this shift. I’m sure they do — but not the speed and scale of it.

Another counterpoint might be that for the entirety of American history, discrimination ran the other way, and if the past 10 years were unfair to some subset of white men, well, revolutions are always a little messy, and success is nobody’s natural birthright.

But even if you set aside the moral problem of collective punishment — is a young white man who wants an academic job in 2020 responsible for how white men behaved in 1960? — and the legal issue of discriminating on the basis of race and sex (quite a lot to set aside!), you are still left with the political problem: This particular attempt at revolution has created a cadre of potential counterrevolutionaries with a clear material grievance against the entire system, especially against its claims to moral superiority on issues related to race.

There is a quiet war happening in the modern institution, but you won’t see it in the quarterly reports. It isn’t a battle between Left and Right, or even Management and Labor. It is a collision of two incompatible moral operating systems—and one side is structurally destined to lose.

Sociologists Campbell and Manning provide the map for this conflict in The Rise of Victimhood Culture. They argue that the Western world has cycled through three distinct moral phases:

Honor Culture: (Traditional) Reputation is physical and immediate. You defend yourself.

Dignity Culture: (20th Century) The era of the “stiff upper lip.” You ignore insults, focus on merit, and resolve conflict privately.

Victimhood Culture: (Current Era) Status is not gained by endurance, but by fragility. When you are harmed, you do not defend yourself; you appeal to a third party to intervene.

Participants in victimhood culture don’t get much respect these days, but there’s no inherent reason why handling things face to face is better than referring things to a third party. Some people and some situations are best solved face to face, but just as many situations are best dealt with by referring out.

In his recent analysis of the “Lost Generation,” Ross Douthat points out a brutal economic reality: The older leadership class didn’t step down to make room for a more diverse generation. Instead, they adopted the language of the new generation to protect their own seats.

This created a bizarre dynamic. You have senior leaders (often from the “Dignity” era) presiding over systems designed for the “Victimhood” era. They set the rules, but they don’t have to live by them. The friction is pushed down to the middle and bottom of the pyramid.

This is where the conflict becomes costly for the “Dignity” mindset.

Imagine a communal dispute between a “Stoic” (Dignity Culture) and a “Claimant” (Victimhood Culture).

This might be at a stamp club or a church or a gym.

The Stoic believes that complaining to authority is shameful. It’s a sign of weakness. So when they feel slighted or misunderstood, they say nothing. They absorb the friction.

The Claimant believes that complaining to authority is a civic duty. It is how they enforce safety. So when they feel slighted, they document it immediately.

This kvetching isn’t coming from immaturity or selfishness. The motive here is noble — creating a better world.

It is easy to dismiss the new culture as “soft,” but that misses the evolutionary point. As Douthat suggests, the economic ladder for the younger generation has been pulled up. “Thin” identities—job titles, home ownership, financial independence—are harder to achieve.

I’m skeptical of self-serving narratives, and those who imagine themselves as stoic warriors navigating treacherous victim culture are addicted to self-serving narratives.

There’s always a new way to look at things. How might the people around you experience your so-called stoic commitment to excellence?

I suspect you are not as wonderful as you think.

Anyone who says that they are Mr. Competent and they don’t harm anyone is likely self-deceived.

If they are so stoic, why am I hearing so many of their tales of woe?

I don’t know much, but I do know that if people ignore some key part of being human, it comes out in other ways all distorted.

A key part of being human is navigating relationships with people different from oneself. If you fail at that, then you’ll have to construct narratives about how you’re the good guy and you are only suffering because you see through the BS.

We are all organisms adapting to our environment and reshaping it to fit our best interests. We all engage in niche construction. And we all think we’re noble and our competitors are losers.

The Stoic who won’t stop telling you how stoic he is may not be as stoic as he thinks.

Real stoicism is quiet. It endures without fanfare. But the “Stoic Warrior” persona is often a loud, brittle performance. It is a defense mechanism designed to protect a fragile ego from the messiness of actual human connection.

Here is a breakdown of how this commitment to “excellence” and “truth” is often experienced by the people around them, and why it is often a form of self-deception.

1. The “Competence” Shield (Competence as Avoidance)

For many of these men, hyper-competence is a way to opt out of emotional labor.

The Internal Logic: “I did my job perfectly. I generated the revenue. I fixed the code. Therefore, I have fulfilled my contract with humanity. Do not ask me to be kind, patient, or understanding.”

How Others Experience It: To a spouse or a colleague, this feels like transactional coldness. It manifests as a refusal to engage in the “inefficient” parts of a relationship—listening to a problem without solving it, or dealing with someone else’s irrational feelings. They use “logic” and “facts” as a cudgel to beat down anyone who tries to connect with them on an emotional level.

The Distortion: Because they believe they are “objectively” right, they view any relational conflict as the other person being “illogical” or “hysterical.” They cannot see that being pleasant to work with is actually a component of competence.

2. The Fragility of the “One Sane Man”

The narrative “I am the only one who sees through the BS” is incredibly seductive because it turns isolation into superiority.

The Self-Deception: It reframes social rejection as proof of genius. If people don’t want to work with you, it’s not because you’re abrasive; it’s because they can’t handle your “truth.”

How Others Experience It: It feels like exhausting arrogance. Being around someone who constantly scans the horizon for evidence of “idiocy” or “wokeness” is draining. It kills joy. Every movie, every dispute, every news story becomes a battlefield where they have to prove their intellectual dominance.

The Reality: Often, the people around them are not “blind sheep.” They just have different priorities—like keeping the peace, getting along, or just having a nice Tuesday. The “Stoic Warrior” mistakes their social grace for stupidity.

3. The “Return of the Repressed”

When you suppress empathy and vulnerability in favor of “hard truths,” that suppressed energy often leaks out as cynicism and resentment.

The Leak: The “Stoic” often ends up having thin-skinned outbursts over minor slights. They might rage at traffic, obsess over a Twitter comment, or spiral because a woman didn’t laugh at a joke.

The Paradox: The man who claims to be indifferent to “victim culture” becomes obsessed with how the world has wronged him specifically. He collects grievances like stamps to prove his worldview is correct.

4. Relational Incompetence Disguised as “High Standards”

Navigating relationships with people different from oneself (different politics, different backgrounds, different communication styles) is difficult. It requires humility and flexibility.

The Cop-Out: It is much easier to say, “I refuse to engage with illogical people” than to admit, “I don’t know how to relate to someone who doesn’t view the world exactly like I do.”

The Enclave: This is why they retreat to “parallel institutions” or online echo chambers. It’s not just about free speech; it’s about safety. They are building spaces where they never have to do the hard work of translating their worldview for someone else. They call it “preserving Western Civilization,” but often it’s just a way to avoid the discomfort of being challenged.

If you asked the ex-girlfriends, former colleagues, or estranged siblings of these “Stoic Warriors” what they are like, they wouldn’t say “brave truth-teller.” They would likely say:

“He was impossible to please.”

“He made me feel stupid for having feelings.”

“He was always angry about things that didn’t affect him.”

The tragedy is that by armoring themselves against “victimhood,” they often render themselves incapable of the one thing that actually makes life bearable: intimacy.

Intimacy requires admitting that you hurt, that you are vulnerable, and it opens your mind to how others hurt and are vulnerable.

My dad had this goal that he would ruthlessly suppress his own needs to maximize his service to humanity. I’m not sure it such a great goal.

You cannot truly understand the pain of another person if you are actively suppressing the reality of your own.

Admitting hurt is essential to understanding hurt.

1. The refusal to mourn blocks the ability to empathize

If a man convinces himself that he is a “warrior” who does not feel sadness, only righteous anger, he loses the Rosetta Stone for translating other people’s experiences.

The Internal Block: If he denies his own vulnerability (“I’m not sad I didn’t get the job; I’m angry at the system”), he essentially numb himself.

The External Consequence: When he encounters someone else’s pain—say, a minority colleague discussing their own struggles—he cannot resonate with it. Because he has labeled his own pain as “weakness” to be crushed, he views their pain as “weakness” to be mocked. He cannot offer grace to others because he refuses to offer it to himself.

2. Grievance is a cheap substitute for Grief

There is a critical distinction between Grievance and Grief, and the “Lost Generation” narrative is almost entirely about Grievance.

Grief (Intimacy): “I tried my best, and it wasn’t enough. I feel small. I feel afraid that I won’t matter.” This is vulnerable. It invites comfort and connection. It is human.

Grievance (Armor): “They took what was mine. They are corrupt. I am the superior man surrounded by idiots.” This is a fortress. It repels connection and invites combat.

The Trap: Grievance feels powerful (dopamine), while grief feels terrible. But grief metabolizes the pain and allows you to move on. Grievance preserves the pain forever in a hardened state.

3. The “Thick Identity” requires cracks

Thick identity isn’t a monolith; it’s a mosaic held together by shared frailty.

Real community—whether a parish, a family, or a marriage—is formed in the hospital waiting room, the unemployment line, or the confessional. It is formed when people drop the “competence” act.

The “online brotherhoods” these men often flock to are fragile because they are built on shared strength (or the pretense of it) and shared enemies. They lack the “glue” of shared vulnerability. If you admit weakness in those spaces, you are often exiled (labeled a “cuck” or “soft”).

4. The Courage to be Ordinary

The “Stoic” narrative is often a defense against being ordinary.

To admit you are hurting is to admit you are just a person, subject to the same whims of fortune, rejection, and sadness as everyone else.

The “System Rigged Against Me” narrative allows one to remain the Main Character—a tragic hero in a grand epic.

Real intimacy requires stepping down from the pedestal of the tragic hero and just being a guy who is having a hard time. That is much less glamorous, but it is the only place where real love can find you.

The Ecology of Ambition: Niche Construction in the City of Angels

In evolutionary biology, “Niche Construction” describes a process where an organism doesn’t just adapt to its environment; it modifies the environment to suit itself. A beaver doesn’t learn to breathe underwater; it builds a dam to stop the river. An earthworm doesn’t just live in the soil; it chemically alters the dirt to make it livable.

If you view Los Angeles through this lens, the city stops looking like a chaotic collection of narcissists and starts looking like a highly competitive ecosystem. In a city with “Thin” social glue—where there is no shared history or dominant tradition—everyone is frantically building their own niche to survive.

Broadly speaking, there are three distinct “species” of niche constructors in LA, each trying to bend the environment to their own interests.

1. The Signal Amplifiers (The “Visibility” Niche)

This group modifies the informational landscape. In a sprawling metropolis where no one knows your name, obscurity is death. These organisms construct a niche made entirely of attention.

The Strategy: They turn private moments into public broadcasts. A dinner isn’t nutrition; it’s content. A friendship isn’t a bond; it’s a collaboration.

The Goal: To create an environment where perception creates reality. If they can modify the “vibe” enough, resources (money, status) will flow into their niche. To an outsider, this looks like vanity. Biologically, it’s just a peacock widening its tail to maximize surface area.

2. The Moral Fortifiers (The “Safety” Niche)

This group modifies the regulatory landscape. Often found in corporate structures or institutions, these organisms cannot compete on raw visibility or risk-taking. Instead, they build safety enclosures using the tools of bureaucracy and language.

The Strategy: They introduce new norms, language codes, and protocols that prioritize emotional safety over efficiency. By redefining “discomfort” as “harm,” they construct a protective barrier that filters out aggressive competitors (like the blunt “Honor Culture” types).

The Goal: To create a stabilized environment where survival depends on compliance rather than raw output. It is the human equivalent of a coral reef—rigid, protected, and filtering out the rough currents of the open ocean.

3. The Craftsmen (The “Competence” Niche)

This group attempts to modify the physical or output landscape. They believe that if they just “do the work” (build the house, treat the patient, solve the equation), the environment will reward them.

The Strategy: They rely on “Thick” skills—deep technical knowledge, specific expertise, and tangible results. They ignore the signaling wars and the safety protocols, assuming that merit is the only currency that matters.

The Problem: In an ecosystem increasingly dominated by Signal Amplifiers and Moral Fortifiers, the Craftsman often finds their niche shrinking. They are the beavers trying to build a dam in a river that is being diverted by influencers and regulated by bureaucrats.

The Friction of Coexistence

The tension in Los Angeles—and in many modern workplaces—isn’t usually personal. It’s ecological. When a “Craftsman” (who values efficiency) bumps into a “Moral Fortifier” (who values process), it is a collision of two different survival strategies.

The Craftsman thinks the Fortifier is “soft.” The Fortifier thinks the Craftsman is “dangerous.” But neither is strictly true. They are just organisms accustomed to different biomes.

The secret to navigating this city isn’t to judge the other species, but to recognize the dam they are building. You don’t have to live in their niche, but you do have to know where the walls are if you don’t want to crash into them.

If, for argument sake, we accept the Douthat and Savage thesis as the “base reality”—that the economic and cultural ladder has been pulled up by an older generation, and institutions are structurally engineered to disadvantage young white men—then the standard advice (“just work hard and wait your turn”) is actually bad advice. It’s advice for a world that no longer exists.

If the game is rigged, you don’t keep playing by the old rules and getting angry when you lose. You change your strategy.

Here are three productive mindsets and ways forward, framed through that “Evolutionary Realism” and “Niche Construction” lens.

1. The Mindset Shift: From “Displaced Heir” to “Pioneer”

The most paralyzing mindset for this cohort is the feeling of being a “Displaced Heir”—the belief that they should have had the careers their fathers had, but were robbed of them. This leads to resentment, online radicalization, and despair (the “black pill”).

The Productive Pivot: Adopt the mindset of a Pioneer or an Immigrant.

The Logic: Immigrants don’t expect the existing power structure to like them or help them. They assume the establishment is indifferent or hostile. Therefore, they don’t waste energy complaining to HR or tweeting about fairness. They focus entirely on building their own resources, relying on their own networks, and out-working the natives.

The Win: This kills the entitlement that leads to misery. It replaces “Why is this happening to me?” with “What is the most efficient path around this obstacle?”

2. The Economic Strategy: “Thick” Skills in a “Thin” World

Douthat notes that the “creative class” (journalism, academia, Hollywood) is where the gatekeeping is fiercest. These are “Thin” professions—they rely on reputation, networking, and subjective approval from peers. If you are politically or demographically disfavored, you will be filtered out.

The Productive Pivot: Aggressively pursue “Thick” Skills.

The Logic: A “Thick” skill is one where the output is undeniable and objective. Coding, specialized trades, engineering, logistics, high-stakes sales, or create your own business.

The Strategy: It is much harder to gatekeep a plumber or a top-tier surgeon than it is to gatekeep a screenwriter. The “Moral Fortifiers” have less power over people who work for themselves or generate immediate, measurable revenue.

The Advice: “Don’t try to be a thought leader. Be the guy who keeps the lights on.”

3. The Social Strategy: Build “Parallel Polis”

Douthat describes a generation retreating into “Thick” identities of race or radical politics online because they are locked out of the “Thin” mainstream. But online rage is a trap—it feels like action, but it’s just digital exhaust.

The Productive Pivot: Engage in Constructive Localism.

The Logic: If national institutions (universities, media conglomerates) are closed off, stop banging on the door. Build smaller, parallel structures where you have agency.

The Strategy: This is the “Stamp Club” or “Bondi Community” concept. Start a business, a local meetup, a family, or a niche media channel.

The Goal: Niche Construction. If the big ecosystem is hostile, build a micro-ecosystem where you set the rules. This restores the sense of agency and status that is being starved by the macro culture.

For young white men who possess absolute certainty that they are victims of racial discrimination, the worldview is often constructed around a perceived inversion of the social hierarchy. To them, this is not a vague feeling of “reverse racism,” but a concrete, systemic reality observable in law, corporate policy, and culture.

Here is an analysis of the drivers that solidify this 100% certainty for this demographic, broken down by the specific mechanisms they observe.

1. The Institutional “Zero-Sum” Game

For this group, the strongest evidence is often found in explicit institutional policies. They view the economy and education not as meritocracies, but as systems rigged against them by design.

DEI and Corporate Hiring: They point to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives that explicitly state goals for hiring non-white candidates. To a young white man entering the job market, a stated preference for “underrepresented groups” is interpreted mathematically: My chances are artificially lowered because of my race.

The “Diversity Hire” Narrative: High-profile controversies (such as those in aviation or tech) regarding competency and diversity quotas reinforce the belief that merit is being sacrificed for racial balancing, and that they are the ones paying the price for that sacrifice.

University Admissions: The legal battles over affirmative action (e.g., Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard) provided them with data and rhetoric suggesting that being white (or Asian) is a statistical disadvantage in elite admissions.

2. The Cultural “Double Standard”

Beyond economics, the certainty of discrimination is fueled by a sense of cultural double standards regarding speech and identity.

Asymmetrical Identity Politics: They observe that every other demographic is encouraged to celebrate their racial identity and advocate for their group interests, while white identity is frequently framed as inherently toxic or historically oppressive.

“Punching Up” vs. Hate Speech: They see a media environment where disparaging white men is socially acceptable (often framed as “punching up” or comedy), whereas similar comments directed at any other group would result in immediate cancellation or job loss. This creates a feeling of being a “second-class citizen” in the realm of public discourse.

The Loss of Individualism: Many in this demographic feel they are being held collectively responsible for historical injustices (slavery, colonialism) that they, as individuals born in the 21st century, did not commit. They view “white privilege” discourse not as a sociological theory, but as a personal attack that invalidates their own struggles (poverty, mental health, family breakdown).

3. The Rejection of “Privilege”

The concept of “white privilege” is the primary target of their intellectual opposition.

Economic Reality vs. Academic Theory: A young white man working a gig-economy job, facing high rent, and carrying student debt often experiences a cognitive dissonance when told he is “privileged.” The gap between his lived reality (struggle) and the social narrative (dominance) convinces him that the narrative is a lie designed to disenfranchise him.

Suicide and Despair: They may point to statistics regarding “deaths of despair” (suicide, overdose) among white men to argue that society ignores their suffering because it doesn’t fit the intersectional narrative.

4. The Intellectual Ecosystem

This certainty is reinforced by a robust media ecosystem that provides a vocabulary for these grievances.

Anti-Woke Intellectuals: Figures in the “anti-woke” sphere (ranging from moderate liberals to the far-right) provide intellectual frameworks that validate these feelings. They argue that “Civil Rights law” has been weaponized into a “Constitution of Dispossession” (a concept discussed by authors like Christopher Caldwell).

Algorithmic Validation: Online spaces allow for the sharing of anecdotes—screenshots of anti-white tweets, leaked corporate DEI memos, or videos of altercations—that serve as daily empirical evidence that the world is hostile to them.

For this demographic, the “certainty” comes from the belief that the rules of the game have changed. They believe the old social contract (judge by content of character, not skin color) has been replaced by a new hierarchy where they are explicitly de-prioritized to atone for the sins of their ancestors.

For young men in Los Angeles who feel alienated by modern culture and besieged by institutional discrimination, religion offers a counter-strategy: the construction of a “thick” identity that the secular world cannot touch.

In a city like Los Angeles, which often prioritizes “thin” identities (based on consumption, career, or signaling), engaging with religion effectively requires finding communities that demand more of you, not less.

1. Seek “High-Friction” Religion

The most effective engagement for this demographic is often found in traditions that resist modernization rather than accommodate it. “Low-friction” churches (coffee shop lobbies, rock bands, short sermons) often mirror the very secular culture these men despise.

Instead, they should look for “high-friction” faiths—Eastern Orthodoxy or Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) Catholicism—that require physical and mental discipline.

The Appeal: These traditions offer an ancient, unchangeable hierarchy. For a young man who feels the modern “rules” are rigged against him, there is profound relief in submitting to a 2,000-year-old system of rules (Canon Law, Liturgy) that isn’t subject to modern HR departments or shifting political winds.

LA Context: Los Angeles has specific hubs for this. The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) operates in the San Fernando Valley (e.g., St. Vitus), offering the traditional form of the Roman Rite. Similarly, the Orthodox community (such as St. Sophia or various ROCOR parishes) provides a liturgy that has remained largely unchanged for centuries.

2. Sublimate the “Victimhood” into Asceticism

The belief that “society is against me” creates a sense of passivity and resentment. Religious asceticism flips this script by turning suffering into a voluntary act of will.

The Mechanism: Fasting (common in Orthodoxy and traditional Catholicism), confession, and rigorous prayer schedules allow these men to regain agency. Instead of being a victim of external discrimination, they become a master of internal passions.

The Result: This shifts the locus of control. If you can fast for 40 days or stand for a three-hour liturgy, the perceived slight of a corporate diversity policy matters less because your source of dignity is internal and transcendent, not economic.

3. Replace “Online Grievance” with “Physical Brotherhood”

Many young men in this demographic get their sense of community from online spaces (Twitter/X, Discord) where the primary bond is shared anger. This is isolating.

In-Person Friction: A physical parish forces interaction with people one might not choose—the elderly, the annoying, the needy. This dilutes the “ideological purity” of online spaces and humanizes the struggle.

Male Spaces: Many traditional communities have strong, specifically male fraternal organizations (Knights of Columbus, men’s guilds) that provide the camaraderie found in the military or sports, which is often missing in the modern white-collar workplace.

4. Intellectual Engagement

These men should engage with theology that matches that level of rigor.

The Shift: Moving from political theory to theology helps resolve the “Friend/Enemy” distinction. In secular politics, the enemy is a rival group (e.g., “the woke left”). In serious theology, the enemy is sin or chaos.

Reading: Engaging with the “heavyweights” of tradition—Thomas Aquinas, the Cappadocian Fathers, or modern traditionalists like Alasdair MacIntyre—satisfies the intellectual hunger that is currently being fed by political podcasts.

The danger for this demographic is treating religion as merely “politics by other means.” If a young man goes to Mass only to “own the libs” or signal his rejection of modernity, he remains trapped in the same resentment loop. The “improvement” comes only when the religious practice actually humbles him and redirects his focus from what the world owes him to what he owes God.

The Great Bifurcation: The Cultural Consequences of the White Male Exodus

If the “Lost Generation” of white male millennials has been systematically filtered out of legacy institutions—Hollywood, the Ivy League, and prestige journalism—the question of their whereabouts is not merely a matter of demographics, but of political stability.

They did not simply evaporate. Instead, this displacement has triggered a massive talent migration toward unregulated “frontier” sectors. By closing the doors to the traditional meritocracy, legacy institutions inadvertently created a rival ecosystem—a “counter-elite” that is now building the financial, media, and political infrastructure to challenge the very institutions that rejected them.

Here is an analysis of where this cohort has gone and the profound cultural implications of their exodus.

I. The Destinations: Seeking “Permissionless” Status

The primary driver for this migration is the search for sectors where gamesmanship is weak and “meritocratic signal” is high. If a resume is a liability in 2016 corporate America, these men moved to spaces where resumes didn’t matter.

1. The “Wild West” of Crypto and Web3

While legacy finance (Wall Street) and Big Tech (Google/Amazon) faced intense pressure to diversify, the cryptocurrency sector emerged as a permissionless alternative.

The Appeal: In 2017–2021, a smart young man frozen out of a traditional VC track could launch a token or build a protocol pseudonymously. The code either worked or it didn’t; the market went up or down. There were no diversity statements in a smart contract.

The Culture: This environment fostered a libertarian, hyper-capitalist ethos that viewed traditional regulatory bodies (the SEC, the Fed) not as protectors, but as the same “gatekeepers” who rigged the job market.

2. The Substack and Podcast Archipelago

The collapse of white male representation in newsrooms (e.g., The New York Times, Vox) coincided perfectly with the explosion of the “creator economy.”

The Mechanism: Journalists like Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, or Bari Weiss (and the younger cohorts following them) realized they could earn significantly more money on Substack without navigating internal newsroom politics.

The Shift: This created a “brain drain” from mainstream media. The writers with the most devoted followings left, taking their audiences with them. This left legacy institutions with a higher concentration of ideologically compliant but less commercially potent staff, accelerating the decline of trust in mass media.

3. The “Tech Right” and the Vance/Thiel Sphere

Excluded from the cultural prestige of Hollywood and the humanities, a subset of this cohort found patronage in the burgeoning “Tech Right.” Figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk became aspirational avatars not just for their wealth, but for their open disdain for “woke” cultural norms. This sphere offered an intellectual home where their specific grievances were validated rather than demonized.

II. Cultural Implications: The Rise of Parallel Institutions

The most significant consequence of this exodus is the fracturing of the American monoculture. We are no longer watching the same movies, reading the same news, or trusting the same experts.

1. The “Competence Crisis” Narrative

As this cohort exits, they take their skills with them. A growing narrative on the Right (articulated by figures like Harold Robertson) argues that legacy institutions are suffering a “competence crisis.”

The Argument: By prioritizing identity over raw merit for a decade, institutions like Boeing, Medicine, or the Secret Service have supposedly degraded their operational capacity. Whether statistically true or not, this belief fuels a deep cynicism toward expert class authority among young men.

2. Radicalization and the “Gender Gap”

The “Lost Generation” essay notes that many of these men started as liberals. Their rejection has fueled a rapid rightward shift, visible in the massive gender divide in Gen Z and Millennial voting patterns.

The Consequence: We are seeing the formation of a political bloc that views “liberal democracy” not as a neutral system of governance, but as a vehicle for their own dispossession. This makes them highly receptive to “Caesarist” or authoritarian rhetoric that promises to smash the HR bureaucracy.

3. The Death of the “Mainstream”

When the New York Times or Disney lost the ability to hire the “hungry, young, talented white male” demographic, they didn’t just lose employees; they lost a connection to a massive segment of the audience.

The Result: Culture has bifurcated. One side consumes content produced by legacy institutions (which increasingly caters to a female, progressive demographic), while the other consumes content from the “parallel economy” (podcasts, X/Twitter, YouTube). There is no longer a shared “water cooler” conversation, only two hostile camps speaking different languages.

History suggests that the most dangerous political force is not the downtrodden poor, but the “blocked elite”—capable, ambitious young men who feel the existing power structure has no place for them.

By shutting these men out of the “prestige” economy (tenure track jobs, screenwriting, law partners), legacy institutions did not silence them. Instead, they forced them to build their own castles. We are now living in the early stages of the siege.

In a 2019 interview, Editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg said: “It’s really, really hard to write a 10,000-word cover story. There are not a lot of journalists in America who can do it. The journalists in America who do it are almost exclusively white males.”

I’m skeptical of this claim.

Gemini says: Goldberg’s statement—that the writers who “can” execute a 10,000-word cover story were “almost exclusively white males”—was statistically accurate regarding the existing talent pool at that specific moment, but it reveals a circular logic about how that pool was created.

Here is an evaluation of why he said it, why it was true in practice, and where the logic fails.

1. The “Lagging Indicator” Problem

In 2019, the roster of journalists with the proven track record to deliver a polished, legally vetted, 10,000-word narrative was indeed overwhelmingly white and male.

The Era of the “New Mandarins”: For the 30 years prior (1980s–2010s), the magazine industry cultivated a specific archetype of the “star writer”—figures like David Foster Wallace, Michael Lewis, Christopher Hitchens, or George Packer. These writers were given the runway to fail, succeed, and refine their craft.

The Experience Gap: Writing a 10,000-word piece is not just about typing; it requires structuring a massive narrative arch, managing months of reporting, and synthesizing complex data. It is a mid-to-late career skill. If the entry-level pipeline was 80% white men in 1995 (as the Savage essay suggests), the “master class” in 2019 would naturally reflect that demographic.

Verdict: Goldberg was accurately describing the result of previous decades of hiring, not an innate biological reality.

2. The Economics of Risk

Goldberg’s claim highlights the extreme risk aversion of legacy media.

The Investment: A cover story costs tens of thousands of dollars in travel, months of a writer’s salary, and weeks of top-tier editorial attention. If the story fails, it is a massive loss.

The “Safe” Bet: Because the stakes are so high, editors historically defaulted to writers who had already done it. This created a closed loop: You can’t get the assignment until you’ve proven you can do it, but you can’t prove you can do it without the assignment.

The Bias: White men were historically viewed as “safer” bets for these “authoritative” pieces, while women or minorities were often pigeonholed into shorter, beat-specific reporting or personal essays (the “I” voice) rather than the “God view” (the authoritative voice).

3. The “Voice of Authority” Factor

There is a subtle cultural critique embedded in Goldberg’s observation regarding who feels entitled to hold a reader’s attention for 45 minutes.

Cultural Confidence: The 10,000-word essay requires a specific kind of intellectual arrogance—the belief that my thesis on the Iraq War or my profile of the President is definitive. Culturally, white men in America were socialized to possess this specific type of confidence (“mansplaining” raised to an art form).

The Reader’s Expectation: For a long time, the “default voice” of general interest nonfiction was white and male. Readers unconsciously associated that voice with objectivity and authority. A woman or person of color writing the same piece often had to work twice as hard to establish the same level of authority with the reader.

4. The Blind Spot: “Can Do” vs. “Have Done”

Where Goldberg’s claim invites criticism is in the ambiguity of the phrase “can do it.”

The Flaw: By framing it as a scarcity of ability rather than a scarcity of opportunity, he obscured the institution’s role in creating that scarcity.

The Counter-Examples: When editors did take risks on non-white-male writers for long-form, they often succeeded wildly. Ta-Nehisi Coates (who Goldberg himself championed at The Atlantic) is the prime example. His “Case for Reparations” (approx. 16,000 words) became one of the most widely read magazine pieces of the decade. This proved that the talent existed, but the pipeline to cultivate it did not.

Goldberg’s statement was descriptively true but prescriptively flawed.

He was correctly identifying a supply-chain issue: The “factory” of American journalism had, for 40 years, only produced a specific model of “heavyweight writer.” However, by framing it as “there are not a lot of journalists… who can do it,” he risked naturalizing a disparity that was actually engineered by the very hiring practices Savage’s essay critiques—practices that historically weeded out others before they ever reached the 10,000-word level.

If you are skeptical of “feel-good” victimhood narratives, you should be equally skeptical of the ones emerging from the Right. The essays by Jacob Savage (The Lost Generation) and Ross Douthat (The Case for the Disenfranchised White Male)deploy the very tools of “identity politics” they claim to oppose.

Here are the strongest factual and logical arguments against this specific narrative, focusing on the data they omit and the contradictions in their philosophy.

1. The “Regression to the Mean” Fallacy

The core statistical trick in these essays is framing the loss of dominance as the loss of fairness.

The Argument: Savage cites stats like “white men dropped from 50% to 11% of entry-level TV writers.”

The Rebuttal: If white men are ~30% of the US population, a drop from 50% (overrepresentation) to a lower number is a mathematical correction, not necessarily a persecution.

The Data Point: Recent census analysis suggests that white men in their 30s (the specific “Lost Generation” cohort) are actually doing better economically than they were in 2013. Their employment rates and earnings have risen. The “crisis” is restricted to highly specific, shrinking elite sectors (Hollywood/Media), but is being extrapolated to represent the entire economy.

2. The Myth of the “Pre-2014 Meritocracy”

The “Lost Generation” narrative rests on the premise that before 2014, hiring was based purely on merit, and then identity politics ruined it.

The Argument: Savage implies that in 2011, he would have been hired because he was “good enough,” but in 2016 he wasn’t because he was white.

The Rebuttal: Pre-2014 Hollywood and Media were not meritocracies; they were networkocracies. Hiring was heavily driven by nepotism, alumni networks, and “cultural fit”—mechanisms that overwhelmingly favored white men.

The Logic: Savage is not mourning the loss of a neutral playing field; he is mourning the loss of a playing field that was rigged in his favor. When a monopoly is broken, the former monopolists always feel “oppressed” by competition.

3. The “Strategic Victimhood” Hypocrisy

This addresses your specific point about right-wing men.

The Contradiction: For years, the intellectual Right has argued that “victimhood culture” is toxic because it encourages passivity, externalizes blame, and demands unearned handouts.

The Pivot: By adopting this narrative, they are effectively saying, “Identity politics is cancer, unless it is White Identity Politics.”

The Mechanism: They are using the same “lived experience” arguments they despise in left-wing discourse. Savage’s essay is entirely anecdotal—a collection of “sad stories” about friends who didn’t get jobs. If a minority writer published a similar essay based on “vibes” and anecdotes, these same intellectuals would likely dismiss it as “grievance studies.”

4. Scapegoating “DEI” for Industry Collapse

A crucial logical error is attributing the lack of jobs to Diversity rather than Decline.

The Reality: The industries Savage focuses on—Journalism, Academia, Hollywood—are in freefall.

Journalism: Ad revenue collapsed; thousands of jobs vanished regardless of race.

Academia: The “adjunctification” of universities means nobody is getting tenure tracks, not just white men.

Hollywood: The “Peak TV” bubble burst, and studios are slashing budgets.

The Argument: It is logically easier (and more emotionally satisfying) to blame a “woke HR lady” for taking your job than to accept that the job simply doesn’t exist anymore because the business model failed. Savage’s cohort isn’t the victim of a conspiracy; they are the victims of a shrinking market.

5. The “Zero-Sum” Blind Spot

Finally, this narrative assumes that talent is the only variable.

The Logic: If a white man doesn’t get the job, he assumes it went to a “less qualified” diversity hire. This axiomatically assumes that the white candidate was the superior choice.

The Counter-point: It is statistically probable that in a globalized, hyper-competitive talent pool, the “best” candidate might actually be a woman or a person of color. The “Lost Generation” narrative refuses to entertain the possibility that they are simply losing largely fair competitions against a previously excluded talent pool that is hungrier and harder-working.

The strongest argument against these essays is that they are psychologically soothing but sociologically weak. They offer a comforting lie to struggling young men: “You aren’t failing because the industry is dying, or because you aren’t competitive, or because of bad luck. You are failing because you are a martyr in a grand civilizational war.”

It is a “feel-good” narrative for people who claim to hate feelings.

If Hollywood has closed itself to brilliant young white men, why don’t these brilliant young white men go create something brilliant outside the system? If they have done this, where is it?

This is the “Atlas Shrugged” question: If the competent people are being mistreated, why don’t they just go to Galt’s Gulch and build a better railroad?

The answer reveals the specific difference between writing (which is cheap and permissionless) and filmmaking (which is expensive and logistical). A brilliant writer can start a Substack for $0. A brilliant filmmaker cannot shoot The Godfather or The Matrix in his backyard for $0.

Here is why a “Parallel Hollywood” has failed to materialize despite the talent exodus.

1. The “Heavy Industry” Problem

Filmmaking is not a “creator economy” pursuit; it is heavy industry. It requires massive upfront capital, complex logistics, and specialized labor.

The Cost Barrier: A “brilliant” script often requires $5M–$100M to execute properly. You need lighting crews, insurance, union contracts, locations, and VFX.

The “Substack” Asymmetry: A writer on Substack keeps ~90% of their revenue and owns their IP. A filmmaker outside the system has to raise millions from private equity (who want a return), manage a 200-person payroll, and navigate distribution. The friction is exponentially higher.

The Result: The “brilliant” young men who might have been directors look at the ROI and go into Tech or Ad-Tech instead. The barrier to entry filters out the builders.

2. The Distribution Choke-Point

Even if you make the movie, you cannot replicate the cultural impact of Hollywood without mass distribution.

The “Prestige” Trap: These men generally don’t want to be YouTubers. They want to be auteurs. They want the specific cultural cachet that comes from a theatrical release, a marketing campaign, and broad cultural conversation.

The Monopoly: The “Water Cooler” is owned by Netflix, HBO, Disney, and Apple. If you release your movie on a niche platform (like The Daily Wire’s DailyWire+ or independent streaming), you are preaching to the choir. You are not “shifting the culture”; you are servicing a subculture.

The Catch-22: To get on Netflix, you have to play by Netflix’s rules (DEI, content guidelines). If you don’t, you remain obscure. Brilliance in a vacuum looks a lot like failure.

3. The “Conservative Art” Problem

To build a parallel system, you need an audience. But the audience that has opted out of Hollywood (conservatives, anti-wokes) often has a utilitarian view of art that stifles “brilliance.”

Didacticism: The “Parallel Economy” (e.g., Angel Studios, Daily Wire) often demands content that is explicitly “anti-woke” or “wholesome.”

The Conflict: “Brilliant” art is often dark, subversive, morally ambiguous, and shocking (think Taxi Driver, Fight Club, or Pulp Fiction).

The Mismatch: A brilliant young filmmaker who wants to make a dark, cynical masterpiece about modern male alienation will find no funding in Hollywood (too white/male), but also no funding in the “Parallel Economy” (too dark/amoral). He is politically homeless.

4. The Talent “Cluster Effect”

Cinema is a collaborative art form. You need a brilliant cinematographer, a brilliant editor, and brilliant actors.

Geographic Lock-in: The best gaffers, sound mixers, and colorists live in Los Angeles, New York, or London. They are part of unions. They rely on the studios for health insurance.

The Risk: Asking a top-tier cinematographer to work on your “anti-woke” independent film is asking them to risk their career. The “cancellation” fear keeps the technical talent inside the system, even if the creative talent leaves.

5. Maybe They Aren’t “Builders”

Finally, we must interrogate the “stoic warrior” persona again.

Critics vs. Creators: Many of the men who write these essays are critics, intellectuals, or writers. They are excellent at deconstructing why The Acolyte is bad. They are not necessarily skilled at the logistics of building a production company, raising Series A funding, or managing a set.

The “Sore Loser” Reality: True genius usually finds a way. If a filmmaker is truly a “once in a generation” talent, they often break through despite the headwinds (or they learn to “code-switch” and hide their politics to get the movie made). The ones complaining loudly on the outside might simply be “good, but not good enough to force the system to tolerate them.”

They don’t create something brilliant outside the system because Hollywood is not just a group of people; it is a bank and a distribution network.

Until the “Counter-Elite” (Tech/Crypto wealth) decides to burn billions of dollars building a genuinely rival infrastructure—one that values art over ideology—these young men will remain trapped between a system that hates them and a “parallel economy” that only wants to use them for political propaganda.

I’m reading the Jacob Savage essay and I’m struck that his protagonists are classic under-earners.

When you overlay the Underearners Anonymous (UA) symptom list onto Jacob Savage’s essay, the piece transforms from a sociopolitical critique into a case study in self-sabotage and professional paralysis.

Savage and his subjects display almost textbook characteristics of the pathology UA describes. Instead of “victims of a changing world,” they appear as men addicted to a specific, dysfunctional relationship with work, money, and status.

Here is how the “Lost Generation” maps onto the Symptoms of Underearning:

1. Symptom: “Clinging to Useless Possessions” (Clinging to Useless Strategies)

UA defines this as holding onto things that no longer serve you. Savage’s protagonists held onto a career strategy—”write spec scripts, wait for a showrunner to bless you”—that stopped working a decade ago.

The Essay: Savage writes about scalping tickets for fifteen years while waiting for his break. Matt (the screenwriter) waits years between gigs, drowning in credit card debt, refusing to pivot.

The Pathology: A healthy earner looks at market feedback (“The studios aren’t buying what I’m selling”) and pivots to a new market. The under-earner clings to the fantasy of how the market should work because letting go of the dream feels like dying. They valued the identity of “Screenwriter” more than the reality of making a living.

2. Symptom: “Time Wasting” and “Magical Thinking”

UA describes this as “procrastinating” or waiting for a “big break” rather than taking incremental, realistic steps.

The Essay: “Success felt close. Back then it always did.” This is the mantra of the gambler. Savage describes a life of “tutoring SATs and reselling tickets” to support a writing habit.

The Pathology: This is not a career; it is a hobby subsidized by menial labor. The belief that “five years seemed par for the course” is a justification for stagnation. They confused waiting in line with building value. They believed that if they just suffered enough (paid their dues), the Universe (or Hollywood) owed them a payout.

3. Symptom: “Rejection of Money” (Status over Solvency)

Under-earners often have a snobbish attitude toward money, viewing “commercial” work as beneath them, while simultaneously being desperate for cash.

The Essay: These men are all chasing “Prestige” industries—Hollywood, The Ivy League, The New York Times. They bemoan that they can’t get these specific, high-status jobs.

The Pathology: Why didn’t “Andrew” (the journalist) go into corporate PR? Why didn’t “Ethan” (the academic) go into data science? Because those jobs pay well but lack cultural capital. They chose to be poor aristocrats rather than rich commoners. They are “under-earning” by choice because they are paid in ego (or the potential for it) rather than dollars.

4. Symptom: “Isolation”

UA notes that under-earners often work alone to avoid feedback or accountability.

The Essay: Savage ends the piece describing himself: “their father spends most of his working day in his bedroom, scrolling through spreadsheets and ticket listings.” Matt fantasizes about moving to Thailand alone.

The Pathology: The isolation protects the delusion. If you work in a real business, you have P&L sheets, bosses, and metrics. If you work in your bedroom on a script that nobody buys, you can maintain the fantasy that you are a “genius in exile” rather than an unemployed guy.

5. Symptom: “Guilt” and “Blame” (The Ultimate Defense)

Perhaps the most defining symptom is the inability to take ownership of one’s financial state, often projecting blame onto others.

The Essay: The entire thesis is an exercise in externalizing blame. The reason they aren’t rich and successful isn’t because they failed to adapt to a digital economy, or because they weren’t good enough, or because they refused to pivot—it’s because of Them. The HR ladies. The DEI mandates.

The Pathology: This is the “comfort” you alluded to. As long as the failure is caused by a “Civilizational War on White Men,” Savage and his friends never have to look in the mirror and ask: Why have I spent 15 years scalping tickets instead of learning a marketable skill?

Savage’s essay is dangerous because it validates the under-earner’s favorite narrative: The Noble Failure.

It tells these men that their lack of income is actually proof of their moral superiority. It suggests that succeeding in the current economy would require “selling out” to woke ideology. Therefore, staying broke and angry is an act of integrity.

From a UA perspective, this essay isn’t political analysis; it’s an enabler. It is giving a drink to an alcoholic.