Transcription
When you get enough lonely single men in their young ages of like 20 to 30, right, with no family, no kids, nothing to die for. What is happening to men? There's something ominous happening. The male suicide rate is scary. The number of men that are just choosing to be single and live alone for the rest of their lives is scary. The number of men that don't even want to identify as men anymore is scary. And I mean, most men work jobs that they hate in places they don't want to live with people they can't stand. So, there's something sinister going on with men, and I'm not completely sure what it is. It's probably a plethora of things, but we're gonna have to figure it out because this this ain't going to work.
Your favorite song comes on, and you feel nothing. A friend texts you and asks, "You want to hang out?" And just thinking about it makes you tired. The goals you wrote down six months ago, they look like someone else wrote them. The hobbies you used to love, collecting dust, the people you used to call. You can't remember the last time you reached out. You're not sad, you're not angry. You're just empty, flat, like someone turned down all the lights and you can't find the switch. And the worst part isn't the numbness. The worst part is nothing went wrong. No tragedy, no betrayal. Your life looks the same from the outside, but on the inside, you've already left. What's happening to you isn't what you think. And by the end of this, you're going to understand exactly why your system is doing this and what's waiting on the other side.
This is happening everywhere. There's a guy in his early 30s who used to be down for anything. Social, spontaneous, always meeting new people. Then around 2022, something flipped. He stopped laughing. He started seeing through people instantly and he couldn't explain why because nothing had actually changed. There's a craftsman in his late 40 who spent his whole life customizing cars and boats. One day he just said, "I'm done." He put down the tools and never picked them up again. The passion didn't fade. It just vanished. And then there's this one that hit me. If I don't reach out first, I could go a year before anyone contacts me. A year.
Most men aren't happy. Men that are just they're they're completely lost. I mean, society's against him, culture against him. So many men haven't had a blueprint on what it means to be a man. They get lost in all of these expectations from other people. They get lost in the expectations from their wife, the expectations from family, the expectations from work, the expectations from church or whatever society puts on them and they lose their identity. They don't even understand it. They've basically given up their identity for this host of responsibilities and expectations from others. They have lost that tribe. They've lost that energy to go conquer the next day. Like you, you know, you're on a team and you're going out to kick ass for whatever that whatever that objective is for the day. uh they've lost that and they're just kind of going through the motions. Even though they're doing the career that they love, they're not satisfied or fulfilled at all on that front. They don't even know what it means to be a man.
These aren't rare stories. Thousands of men are saying the same thing in different words. I thought it was just me. It's not just you. This is measurable. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6.8 8 million men between 25 and 54 aren't working and aren't looking for work. In 1954, that was only 2.5%. Now, it's over 10%. That's a 400% increase. The San Francisco Federal Reserve found that 14% of millennial men weren't working by age 25, double the rate of boomers at the same age. And it's not just work. Gallup says 25% of men under 35 feels lonely, way higher than the national average. AARP found that men over 45 now report more loneliness than women. 42% versus 37%. Men are withdrawing. And it's not just in America. In China, there's a movement called Tangping, which means lying flat. But in China, a new type of rebellion is taking place. This is part of the lie flat movement or laying flat movement. And young people basically are just refusing to compete, refusing to push themselves, and they're oftentimes refusing to even work or study. This is something that challenges the nature of the CCP itself. And when the CCP notably is trying to revitalize its economy, which requires this type of high level competition, if people lie flat, this is destructive.
Young men refusing to grind, no overtime, no marriage pressure, no climbing the ladder. The Chinese government was so scared of this that they banned the phrase from search engines and publicly shamed anyone who showed signs of lying flat. Why would a government treat men checking out as a threat? Because when enough men stop participating, systems collapse. In Japan, they've been tracking Hikamorei since the 1990s. Over a million people, mostly men, who've withdrawn into their home for months or years. In the West, we called it quiet quitting. Over half of US workers fit that description. Different countries, different languages, same pattern. That's not a coincidence. That's a signal.
The deal men were raised on doesn't exist anymore. The deal was simple. Work hard, build skills, provide value, and in return, you get stability, respect, a family, a purpose. Every part of that chain is now broken. Row wages have barely moved since 1973. only 9% in 50 years. Meanwhile, housing, education, health care have exploded. Men are working harder just to stand still. And standing still feels like falling behind. But it's not just money. Relationships became transactional. Friendships became performances. Every interaction started needing a calculation. Is this worth my energy? Will this drain me? Am I getting anything back? For a lot of men, the math stopped working.
Your brain isn't broken. It's overloaded. Brain rot was Oxford's word for 2024. It means mental exhaustion from too many lowquality content. Your brain evolved for quiet, for occasional new things, for long stretches of nothing happening. Now you get hit with more information before breakfast than your great-grandfather did in a month. Every app is built to hijack your attention. Every notification is designed to trigger you. At some point, your nervous system does what it's supposed to do when it's overwhelmed. It shuts down, not because you're weak, but because the system is working correctly. When an animal is overstressed, it freezes. That's survival. Your brain is doing the same thing, pulling back from a world that takes more than it gives.
One-sided friendships. Most men, if they're honest, would tell you they're always the one who reach out first. If they stopped, they'd hear from almost no one. And at some point, a lot of men run that experiment. They stop initiating. They wait. And the silence is loud. This isn't self-pity. It's pattern recognition. When you realize most of your relationships were held together by your effort alone, you have two choices. Keep performing or stop.
I've seen more people talking about this. The holidays, they don't have the same spirit. Spending time with friends and family doesn't feel the same. Doing the things that used to enjoy, hobbies, it's not as fun. It doesn't feel the same. And when I first started realizing this and feeling this and experiencing it, I started to get kind of disheartened by it because I was like, you know what? Maybe this is happening because of all the crazy stuff going on in the world around us. Maybe I'm retreating from society and nothing feels the same because our spirit is being degraded. And I do think that is playing a role. I do think that is a major cause of why this is happening. But I think there's something else that we're kind of glossing over. And I think this is something that's actually a silver lining. And what I believe that is is that that's a part of ourselves that is actually starting to fade away. It's a part of ourselves that is starting to die. And that's not a bad thing because the part of us that's starting to fade away is the part that would have us going out craving validation. The part of us that would have us going out looking for that instant gratification. It's the part of us that would have us scrolling our phones and seeking attention and putting ourselves out there on social media and comparing ourselves to other people and buying into all this crazy stuff, all these insane ideologies that have been basically programmed into our minds at this point. It is that part of us that is dying because most of us that are experiencing this, we have begun to see through the illusion. We're seeing things for what they actually are. And what they actually are is that we are being played. I mean, the fact of the matter is is that we are being played like a like a fiddle. That is exactly what's happening. The manipulation and the deception is rampant. And those of us that are feeling this have woken up to that fact. And the reason we're starting to feel empty and nothing feels the same and we're losing interest in everything and the music doesn't sound as good and the movies aren't as good and all of these things is because that part of ourselves, that part of ourselves that bought into this illusion, it is dying. It is dying and it is withering away. And what it is revealing is the part of ourselves that we have buried.
More men are choosing to stop. Not out of anger, out of exhaustion. There's a specific tiredness that comes from being the useful friend. The guy who gets called for help, but not for hangouts. Unexpected to show up, but never asks how he's doing. Eventually, the energy it takes isn't worth it anymore. So, men pull back. And here what surprises them. They don't miss it as much as they thought. You didn't become cynical, you became aware. There's a moment a lot of men describe. It's not dramatic. It's like a fog lifting. Suddenly, you see the game for what it is. The algorithm is designed to keep you upset. The outrage cycle that exists to grab your attention. The status games with no finish line. The buying treadmill that promises happiness and delivers emptiness. You see people performing happiness online while drowning in private. You see an entire culture built to extract your time, attention, and energy. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. The problem is seeing clearly without anyone to talk to about it is lonely. When you've woken up, but everyone around you is still asleep, you don't feel enlightened. You feel alone. So you retreat further. Not because you're broken, but playing along feels like lying. This is not a breakdown. This is protection. What million of men are feeling right now isn't depression. It's a logical response to an illogical world. Your system isn't broken. It's protecting you. Think about what's being asked of you. Fake excitement you don't feel. Keep up relationship that drain you. Chase goals that were never yours. Consume content that makes you anxious. Compare yourself to highlight reels. Stay plugged into system built to use you and do all that while being told any struggle is your personal failure. At some point, the healthiest thing your body can do is refuse. The withdrawal is not weakness, it's wisdom. Your body is telling you something your mind hasn't caught up to yet. The way you were living was unsustainable.
The peace on the other side. The men who've been through this don't describe despair. They describe quiet. One guy put it perfectly. Boredom isn't boredom. It's peace. We're just not used to it because we're always overstimulated. Another said, "No job, mid-40, no friends by choice, never been happier." These aren't men who gave up. These are men who stop forcing themselves to want things that they never wanted. When you stop performing, you stop chasing obligations, you stop consuming out of habit, something else shows up. Space. Room to hear your own thoughts. Room to figure out what you really want versus what you were told to want. This isn't the end of living. It's the start of living honestly. If you're in this right now, if nothing excites you and everything feels flat, hear me. This is not the end. This is what it feels like to stop running on empty. To stop faking it for people who will never be satisfied anyway. The withdrawal isn't the destination, it's the hallway. And on the other side is a version of you that doesn't need permission to exist. that knows what he wants because he finally got quiet enough to hear himself. You're not disappearing. You're refusing to keep playing a brricked game. And that's not weakness. That's the first step towards something real. You don't owe anyone any explanation for going quiet. You don't owe anyone fake energy. You don't owe anyone a timeline for getting back to normal. Stay in the hallways. The door opens when you're ready, not when someone else said you should be. It's been your girl Renee here. I'll see you guys in my next video.