002 - All The Lonely People.
This one is a little bit longer than the first one. I'm still figuring it out.
Today’s inspo: seeing Malcolm Gladwell give a talk last night in NYC. Truly one of the most interesting thinkers we have right now.
And this tweet:
I feel seen.
The Show
Let’s just get this out of the way. We’re both annoyed that this - like so much of everything - starts with a story about Taylor Swift.
In May of last year, I found myself swimming in a sea of Swifties at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Her show was incredible in size, scope, ambition, and fun. An almost four hour set of nonstop, Springsteen-ian energy.
But leaving New Jersey in a haze of High Noons, I was sort of heartbroken.
Because this for straight white, cisgendered, non-dad, male (there were only a handful of us in the audience), it was a night of almost anthropological observation, not just of the community that so many have written about and marveled at, but of belonging. Belonging with an earnestness and intensity that I had neither seen nor experienced before. I’ve been to hundreds of concerts over the years, many in small clubs, some in large stadiums. I’ve been to insane and rowdy and important games and matches.
But amongst the 80,000 people dancing and jumping and making themselves known to both decibel meters and the Richter Scales, what was most palpable was a sense of safety and comfort to just express and exist, together.
On that day, MetLife Stadium was the least lonely place on Planet Earth.
Taylor was the centerpiece and ringleader, sure, but this was a group that policed itself: it had shared rhythms and rituals, values and norms. Tens of thousands of mostly young women and queer people who made the pilgrimage, exchanging bracelets and sharing inside jokes, and millions more following along at home, excitedly glued to TikTok; anxious to discover what songs she surprised the crowd with.
In the midst of an epidemic of loneliness, it was a profoundly un-lonely place.
The Data
Maybe I felt it more acutely because men, especially young men, are more likely to report feeling lonely, isolated, and disconnected from society. And it has big, real world consequences.
This is a very dense topic that many people have written about much more eloquently, (especially Richard Reeves’ “Of Boys And Men”) but to summarize, the data tells a pretty bleak story:
Men make up 75% of all “deaths of despair” (drug overdoses or death by suicide) (CDC)
Between 2000 and 2018, the percentage of U.S. men aged 18-24 who reported not having any sexual partners in the past year increased from 19% to 31%. (Archives of Sexual Behavior)
A pause, before I continue:
Because this is a nuanced and challenging topic: I am in no way in this piece blaming this reported male loneliness on the economic and cultural advances of women or people of color, and I am not advocating for anything that mitigates that continued advance. We must continue to lift up and invest in opportunities for those groups, while also recognizing that young men are particularly struggling in this season. Those two things can be true at once.
Anyway, back to lonely, scared, left behind fucking dangerous young men.
The Question
Late the night after the show, between delicious bites of Sticky’s, my mind wandered what our larger world might look like were more spaces like Taylor’s available to young men. More (or even just one) un-lonely, extremely safe place specifically for belonging - specifically joyful belonging - for dudes.
Where could thousands of your average, run-of-the-mill-dude, feel that same version of Eras-Tour-Level-Of-Safety to exist, feeling totally safe expressing joy with reckless abandon?
Sports fandom is similar, but any joy is counter-programmed with some dark and combative undertones (See: any UFC fight, Football Hooliganism, the 2024 Waste Management / Phoenix Open, etc…).
Punk rock shows are also similar, and tap into an important (and beautiful) masculinity, but it’s a different, more aggressive flavor than “joy” (even while punk shows are filled with the sweetest and warmest humans).
So what’s the answer? Maybe church? Maybe AA or a type of group therapy? At their purest, maybe those are closer to what the TSwift show felt like, providing the safety and security of rhythms and rituals, values and norms.
One person’s forehead ash is another person’s friendship bracelet.
I first arrived at a conclusion that maybe, by definition, it’s not possible. Since, as straight, white, cisgendered, males, and ya know, coupled with the whole patriarchy thing, I’ve been told that I am supposed to feel that level of safety and confidence anywhere. To not feel that safe and confident is a weakness. Ipso facto, spaces like the Eras Tour can only exist for other communities out of necessity; rebellion against the patriarchy and white male confidence. The uninhibited, shared joy I was seeing and feeling all around me in that space was maybe, actually, shared trauma: a release of finally not feeling unsafe.
Either by happenstance or because this has continually been top of mind since then, the lonely and lost young man has started to intersect my daily media diet in a more meaningful way. It’s starting to get more and more attention online, amplified by brilliant people like Reeves and Scott Galloway.
Who is giving young men, lost and confused, a place to belong?
By process of elimination, only one space remained.
An Unfortunate Answer
We liberals (🙋🏼♂️) view MAGA rallies as places filled with people and views we despise. We label them, we judge them reflexively, we use them as a baseline for all that is “wrong” in the world.
Because, quite simply, in my opinion it’s been earned. Many? Most? All? of the views that are espoused at those events are not just hateful, they’re bad for our country and the world.
But he built it, and they come. They drive from miles and miles away because at home or at the office, they can only whisper who they voted for, if they can say anything at all. Because - accurately or inaccurately - they carry the shared trauma of being called a racist, or a sexist, or hateful, or just being told they are wrong.
He’s is a selfish narcissist but he’s also shown himself to be a ruthless opportunist, and knew - instinctively or otherwise - how to become a flame to the moth of the lost young man.
Next time you see a MAGA rally on TV, stop and take it in. Hate what it’s doing, but observe it. It’s the biggest party in town. A pilgrimage with people singing, laughing, drinking, dancing… buying and wearing merch both official and bootleg. The uninhibited, shared joy I see in that space on TV is shared trauma: a release of finally not feeling unsafe.
Los Angeles, New York City, even Austin, feels foreign to large swaths of these people. But Friday night in Western Pennsylvania might as well be MetLife Stadium.
These men go home with a t-shirt or two, some memories, and maybe even a nice, Trump-accepting lady to hang out with.
For a night at least, they can finally be in a place they are told they are perfect, just the way they are.
Ok, so?
Ok, so what man. You just wrote hundreds of words on the two most famous people in the world, to what - make a point that a bunch of people like them?
Yes. And I’m going to continue.
The word Taylor Swift uses most often when publicly addressing an audience is “you.” She does this at incredible length in her songs and at her shows. In interviews and on social media.
She (Donnie does this as well) employs the language of cults (s/o Amanda Montell’s book Cultish — it’s so good.)
And I’m not saying Swifties are a cult, just as I would argue against people who say MAGA is a cult. (What you learn in the book is that cults and communities with loyal followings are a sort of blurry distinction without a difference.)
But these are leaders who have thoughtfully cultivated intense fandom by creating safety, and also - unfortunately - by manifesting villains. One person’s immigrant is another person’s Matty Healy.
Before the internet matured, a popular monoculture ruled. And with that came a shared set of understandings… rhythms and rituals, values and norms. It’s why Oscar acceptance speeches and big flashy Super Bowl advertisements and shows like “Will & Grace” mattered. The fewer pipelines of communication meant a shared existence that we were all included in, whether we liked it or not.
Remember “watercooler chat”? That was fun. It forced people to live in the same reality. Belonging meant together, in the same reality.
One promise of the internet was your own little corner of the world to feel safe and seen, and that has borne out in some beautiful and positive ways. But the demise of the monoculture has created a sort of cold culture war between a million tiny in-groups and out-groups, providing the facsimile of community, while preying on the disconnect.
Until our broader culture helps more people feel safe, the grievance-identifying will run to their corners, more plugged in and powerful than ever.
Our culture is so fractured, so broken (or maybe: so comfortable?), that it takes real effort to reach into other spaces. If it’s that important to me, I can choose to never listen to a country music song, ever, if I don’t want to. I can choose to never converse with a Trump voter, ever, if I don’t want to. I can choose to worship Oprah, or never know who or what a Chip and Joanna Gaines are.
And all people want is to be included and to feel safe. And we have a horrible tradition in this country of keeping people from feeling that way.
The End.
I don’t know how to end this. There are no answers. In many ways this is just another complaint about what has become a very loud problem with no simple solution.
There are plenty of things to point at: phones or video games or bad parenting or social media or cutting budgets for arts programs or cable news or demagogues overprescription of drugs or water turning the friggin’ frogs gay or any number of things… but there is no magic bullet. There is no Kumbaya.
More should be expected of us as individuals to cultivate belonging. Just fucking be kind to people by default, I guess. But that feels too trite.
All I know is that the Taylor Swift show felt good and cathartic and peaceful, like an antidote to the cultural rut that young men are in right now, that’s being taken advantage of by bad actors, leading to real world consequences, and it seems like something we should be thinking about more. There, I just summed up hundreds of words into one, long, run-on sentence. I guess that’s the point of this place.
05.08.24 Library List:
“We Want All Of It” - The Atlantic
“A Martini Tour of New York City” - The New Yorker
“The Diminishing Returns Of Having Good Taste” - The Atlantic
“Anne Hathaway Is Done Trying To Please” - The New York Times
This thread on Ernie Johnson and the NBA on TNT. - X
“Alo Is Beating Lululemon At Its Own Game” - The Wall Street Journal