Bowling Alone Among the Sexless Thugs

How we struggle to make friends, have sex, and create babies

It is difficult to identify the current social malaise, or to articulate it in a succinct way. There is a feeling that the stability of everyday life is melting into air; we sense that the social order is being disrupted and that the mood has changed. We struggle to fully understand the present moment, or even comprehend it, because at the heart of our collective disorder is an overall incivility and an inability to listen. We are getting increasingly bad at making friends, being intimate, and raising children, to our profound detriment.

Staying in Your Lane

Thirty years ago we were warned by Robert Putnam that a startling amount of Americans were “bowling alone.” What he described was the slow decay of social institutions, from churches and charity groups to his emblematic bowling alley, which was representative of the erosion of civil society and healthy social interactions.

The decline in civil society occurs alongside a social disconnectedness; we end up with a very lonely crowd of isolated individuals watching bowling videos on YouTube. Very few people are going out into the world and joining metaphoric bowling leagues, and instead they are latched onto Web 3.0 and the illusion of togetherness. But we all want something more.

The dramatic, pandemic-driven acceleration in the number of people searching online for ways to make friends suggests a startling, generational shift in our social structures. There is an unwinding of social cohesion as an ever-increasing number of people struggle to know what it means to have a friend, let alone where to even find one.

A healthy democracy always presupposed a socially-connected  voter who could communicate and act in the world among others. The isolated individual has always been seen as antithetical to the democratic spirit, Perhaps more importantly, the isolated individual is never entirely validated as they are removed from the richness of life’s most immediate experiences.

No Nut November Lasted Longer than Expected

Men are finally getting honest about how much sex they are having, and it turns out that a lot of their action is happening in the multiverse. Social media has allowed a new gender dynamic to emerge, where young men are suddenly having less sex in the real world and are substituting it online with a random dopamine hits. Never before have we seen so many alleged-stepmoms and babysitters. The fantasy machine runs wild, if not juvenile.

For years, men and women were having sex at similar rates. It is not a coincidence that the trendlines diverge at the moment that social media gained ascendancy. The virtual world created a change in behaviour and expectation. Young men learned that they could get whatever they wanted without any commitment or vulnerability, which stunted their emotional growth.

When men increasingly struggle to make friends or have intimate, meaningful relationships, they become worse people. In the absence of healthy relationships they develop a frustrated anger towards women and minority groups. These men become the thugs that Bill Buford warned of: men seeking an identity and sense of belonging through populist rhetoric and communal violence..

The idea of a nation being terrorized by a legion of undersexed men with no friends is terrifying; it is the thing that nightmares and Greek tragedies are made of. The unfulfilled man devolves into an Incel: a self-hating man who struggles with accountability and blames a weaker Other for every misfortune that befalls him. Luckily, Incel folks struggle to reproduce for reasons of self-selection, although they compensate for this with the Second Amendment and Dodge trucks.   

The Rhythm Method Doesn’t Skip a Beat

Recessions are a good way for parents to lose weight. If Dad skips a meal, it’s one less mouth to feed and there is some extra money for the kids. An even better way to save money is to not have children at all, which is easy to do if you have no friends and are busy in the metaverse complaining about being a virgin. 

You can see the clear decline in birth rates that occurred after the 2007-08 recession. Our priorities shifted away from the unaffordable nuclear family and social media soothed us into thinking we hadn’t actually abandoned reality. 

Birth rates are a function of demographics, but are also a reflection of social decline and show a loss of purpose and drive. There is no aspirational growth or plan for tomorrow. We are reproducing below our replacement rate, which has increased our functional need for innovation and immigration.

As our society ages, we can only maintain our standard with productivity growth (automation, AI) and immigration (increase entries, recognize qualifications). What is unfortunate is that these methods of economic growth are both proven and necessary, but at the same time they are wildly unpopular with unfriendly men who aren’t having sex and are triggered by robots that can weld and people of colour. 

TL;DR

Social media ushered in the lonely crowd, and the pandemic accelerated this disturbing trend as more people struggled to form healthy social relationships. Aristotle says that we are social animals, and so the isolated individual is unable to properly participate in democracy or society writ large. The political realm is abandoned and left unaccountable, left to the grifters, opportunists. and those still foolish enough to think they are neither.

The loss of friendships creates a dissolution of social structures, and this instability causes breakdown. We see Durheim’s anomie come alive as once-accepted norms and values are plundered and written anew with so many variations. Nobody knows how to talk in the Tower of Babel, and so people turn inwards to online communities of like-minded people to confirm their own biases. No longer out-in-the-world, the richness of a full relationship is cheapened, and for many is inaccessible. 

Men are having less sex and everything we know about hormones tells us that this is how you find yourself among the thugs. There weren’t a lot of women at the English soccer brawls, just a lot of very angry men with some very angry political views. We have now arrived at that moment where the social breakdown is complete, and the frenzy of mob violence isn't contained to an orderly Saturday morning cathartic release before the match, but has become the zeitgeist of the moment. 

Declining birth rates have ushered in an era where many frontline jobs in the economy will be filled by artificial intelligence and immigration. A lot of angry men have some very visible targets upon which to focus their aggrieved gaze, and the Other needs to be careful in an environment defined by resentment, isolation, and no agreement on what constitutes the public good.

Populist politics and social conservatism are the two very obvious consequences of a society that cannot engage with itself. Reasoned dialogue gives way to unchallenged monologue, if only as a function of the medium. We are all passive listeners until it is our turn to shout. And it’s not so much that I mind all the yelling, I just wish people would go outside and do it a little quieter with someone they love.