The Doomerism Plague
RedPill masculinity can't hold a candle to what comes after.
Information is useless if left unapplied. You can be the smartest person in any room. It matters little if you don’t have the wisdom necessary to yield proper outcomes. Context matters. Intention matters. What you do matters. This has always been true. It’s even more true now.
This can manifest in a multitude of different ways. Due to information having both more breadth and more depth than ever before, people have never been smarter. However, as Mark Driscoll so truthfully states, the vast majority of people that fall into this realm have been educated far beyond their levels of intelligence. Ergo, if you can’t use the information you put in your brain through books, podcasts, sermons, whatever to live your life better, you’d be better off not doing those things at all.
The area where this trend of being educated beyond your intelligence has manifested most is, by far, our Expert Class. Our Expert Class, those who assume higher positions of authority due to things such as credentialism, job titles, and social status, has taken a tremendous hit for this exact trend- possessing all the information possible and fumbling every single bit of it, in almost every single way you can think.
The fall of our Expert Class in their social status for everyday, normal people has been a very curious thing to witness. For the most part, it’s a very good thing. This chaff needed to be separated from the wheat a very long time ago. They have been proven wrong on so many things- COVID, every single war we’ve gotten ourselves into, Donald Trump, and so many more. And yet still they scream. Still they yell from the rooftops that they are our betters, that they know more than the rest of us. It’s not true, obviously. In fact, it couldn’t be more wrong, in some respects.
Culturally, one of the arenas that has completely melted the brains of our Expert Class, one of the areas they’ve been most wrong, is the state of American men- particularly young American men. I would argue that there has been no other trend that has gotten the amount of traction than men’s issues over the past two years. This is a very positive sign. Going from zero traction to any traction is a good thing. Particularly with a topic that was this taboo for so long, it’s a welcome sight.
Yet, as with any new trend, it’s going to have some fits and starts out of the gate. As more people, from more walks of life, have focused on the welfare of young men in America, several things have happened. Both positive and negative role models have sought their attention and validation. Our Expert Class has tried to appeal to them in foolish and stupid ways. The internet has lured them into some bizarre, and I would argue harmful, trends- more on this later.
Either way, we have entered a very unique unipolar moment in our culture. Young men have never had this much attention paid towards them, the issues they face, and what could possibly be done to turn them around. Much progress has been made. A good bit of that progress has been squandered. The spotlight still remains- for now. It would be a shame if we squandered it. To avoid that, we must check in, use the information we have, and get a realistic picture of where young men actually are.
To give our Expert Class some credit, they have been right about one thing in regards to young men in the two years since the mass awakening of our society towards young men has happened. For the last two years, these experts, these gatekeepers of our culture, have told us that young men need to fight against the apparent scourge of the Manosphere- chauvinism. Chauvinism, defined by the RedPill movement, Andrew Tate, and others, was poisoning the minds of young men. They needed to be expunged in every way possible- social media cancellations, arrests, censorship, and others.
While arrests, cancellation, and censorship for speech one doesn’t like is both immoral and wrong, our Experts weren’t wrong in their opinions about this type of chauvinist masculinity. Chauvinism, the inherent belief that you are better simply because you are something, is wrong. It’s arrogant, discriminatory, and prideful. Real men do not act this way. Men are leaders of culture, homes, and societies. Respect is due. But respect also must be earned. If respect becomes entitlement, it loses all authority, gravitas, and power- as it should.
Andrew Tate is not the solution to the problems of young men today. The RedPill movement is not the solution to the problems of young men today. As time continues to pass, we will see it no different than feminism, its equivalent. It promises much, but delivers little. There are reasons, like feminism, we should be concerned with RedPill chauvinism. There are things people like Tate and the RedPill movement at large get right. But adopted as a wholesale philosophy, they only lead to destruction.
But here is where our experts start to lose the plot. As they do with everything, they are very selective in how they talk about their issues. They love to believe that they are so right that nothing else can threaten their hypothesis. We hate “endless wars”, but we can invade Iran. We hate “wokeness”, but we can threaten your ability to visit Europe if you espouse criticism towards the state of Israel. We value men, but only if they fit in their cozy little narratives. We value family, but only if family can be of any sort or kind that we deem it fit.
We all have blind spots. It’s human nature to hide our weaknesses. I do it. You do it. It’s no secret to anyone when you genuinely ask them. What IS a sin is if you allow your blind spots to be emboldened by your pride, so much so that you refuse to discuss the problems you create, even and especially if you yourself have helped cause them. The real problem with young men is not chauvinism. The real problem with young men is its foil- not necessarily its opposite, but the other side of the same coin:
Doomerism, defined by people such as Nick Fuentes and the Groyper movement, poses a far more serious threat not only to young men, but society at large, than Andrew Tate and the Redpill movement ever did. Scarier still? It’s far more popular- by a mile. It’s way more mainstream than anyone ever thought it would become. Particularly as we approach the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, it has become the dominant strain of philosophy in young men, to the detriment of all.
So, for those who are unaware- what exactly is doomerism? Doomerism, in a nutshell, is a pervasive ideology whose creed is, essentially, the following- nothing is ever going to get better. We missed it. Nothing is ever going to get better again, or be as good as what it was. So, even though we exist in our current time, why should we even try at this point, at anything? As Tony Soprano once immortally said:
In their remarkable book The Sopranos Sessions, Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz come to the most interesting conclusion I’d ever heard about The Sopranos. The most iconic television show of all time, at its core, wasn’t really about crime, or family, or power, in their view. Instead, it was about something else, something far more depressing- decline. The Sopranos, at its core, is an existential struggle about people dealing with the bottoming out of something, of desperately trying to swim against the current of their hopeless lives, failing, and falling right back into its mercy, becoming everything the current, that moment, demands of them. Struggle is futile. Fighting has no purpose. It is what it is.
This observation is incredibly astute- and incredibly accurate. Now, one could argue The Sopranos was prophetic. Young men today feel exactly as Tony Soprano did- like they came in at the end. We’ve reached the end of history. There is nothing new under the sun. Everything is out of reach, from happiness to home ownership. They don’t see a way out. So, they are doing what all hopeless and nihilistic people do- break as many things as possible in the meantime so that people can join them in their bitterness and resentment.
Jordan Peterson has warned people about this for decades. When people lose hope, particularly men, bad things happen. When bitterness and resentment become your core values, everything falls apart. For young men, this is exactly what is happening. They are checking out across all areas of life. They are doing nothing constructive to better themselves and improve their lives. Because their view of the future is so bleak, they don’t believe in investing on their own.
The doomerism of young men is not just siloed to one area, either. It is widespread across all areas- dating, politics, friendship, health and wellness. It’s not that young men are just not trying. That would be bad enough. What’s worse is what doomerism encourages- collectivized suffering, no different than Marxism or wokeism. A right-wing victim mentality is what stems from doomerism. Infecting others with your bleakness is the point. Trying is for saps. Don’t attempt anything. Be miserable, just like me.
This leads to a logical next question- why has this happened? Why has doomerism become the dominant thought strain of young men? The answer is multifaceted. However, it is not complicated. The multifaceted part is easy enough to see if one is honest enough to look at the situation. There are a range of outside factors that have contributed to the hopelessness of young men. The radical bent of women towards left-leaning politics. The perceived betrayal of Donald Trump. The lack of job opportunities, predominantly for white men. The rebuke of existential and/or religious solutions. The price of colleges and homes. The betrayal of older generations who haven’t helped young people due to their own selfishness.
One could write several articles, and more than likely books, on all of the above issues. I encourage them to be written. But yet, that is not what has resulted in the doomerism of young men. Those are just circumstances. Something else has to happen to mold circumstances into a mindset. Like all chemical reactions that tend to explode, there must be an accelerant, a catalyst, to cause it. That catalyst? Victimhood. The only reason why doomerism can thrive, and IS thriving, is because victimhood has allowed it to.
Now, some balancing statements and caveats. Do young men face, in many ways, a far more uphill battle than in years past, particularly young, white men? Yes. #MeToo wasn’t fair. Neither was DEI. Neither was the COVID pandemic, or the War on Terror, or our government’s addiction to cheap money. They (just like everyone else, by the way) are victims of that, or anything else. They did not choose this world. Some things, at the end of the day, just happen to you. This is the same today as it has been throughout any other generation and time. As Morgan Housel says, same as ever.
The fault of the Doomers is that they have come to believe that victimhood is the only option in a world that seems dark. They have convinced themselves that there is no other way but down, that there are some situations that cannot be overcome, that they cannot forge the life that they want. Choice still matters, no matter how bleak the situation or how hard the outcome may be.
This will be, in my view, the lasting legacy of Charlie Kirk. Kirk wasn’t a chauvinist RedPiller nor a nihilistic Doomer. Ironically, Charlie Kirk- a repeated and righteous rebuker of Third Way Christianity- created his own third way for young men. That way? Don’t buy into chauvinism OR nihilism, RedPill nonsense or Doomer victimhood. You do not have to go either way. The forces pulling you towards them are liars, grifters who only want you for advertising revenue and high-ticket course mentorships.
This Third Way, started by people like Charlie Kirk, Jordan Peterson, and others, is the fight that will define this moment in the history of American masculinity. We cannot afford to lose our young men to either side of the extreme. It will decide the 2026 Midterm and 2028 Presidential Elections. It will decide our birth and marriage rates. It will decide our overall wellness as a culture- one that has always been defined by masculine leadership forging ahead righteously through both certain and uncertain times. Women matter- immensely. But this fight lies with the men. It is our birthright, our responsibility.
If Third Way Masculinity dies with Charlie Kirk, and God forbid Jordan Peterson, America will die alongside it. If young men- and young women, for that matter- do not believe that things will get better, that they have a hope of a future, all of those things will eventually come true. You are, to an extent, your thoughts. If we allow an entire generation of men consumed with doomerism to inherit America without extinguishing that doomerism, it will do what it naturally does- spread. To everything. Our institutions will become more corrupt. Our churches will become more weak-willed. Our families will continue to either shatter or not form altogether.
Doomerism has another name- civilizational suicide. Doomerism is defined by pessimism and selfishness, an upholding of victimhood over victory in the value hierarchy. America is already at a tipping point. If we continue to rock that boat to a point where doomerism becomes dominant, everyone will suffer immensely. The great Stoic philosopher Seneca once remarked that we suffer far more in our imaginations than we do in reality. This sentiment is true.
But our young men don’t realize its truth, however, we will ALL suffer very much in reality.
Own the Day,
Sam