Talk Talks | It's raining Manosphere

Howdy from Texas, dear readers! At the risk of being labeled an old grump: Young men today are a disappointment. According to studies, male members of Generation Z are more conservative in their relationships than Boomers and more conservative politically than Millennials, while ideologically further removed from women their age than ever before. US professor Scott Galloway even speaks of a "new species of antisocial and asexual men."

Responsible for these developments are the crypto craze, which creates false notions of wealth, the perverse chatbots that displace real relationships, the "manosphere" (misogynistic online communities) that spreads lies about us, the fairer sex (!), and the so-called Male Loneliness Epidemic – to put it bluntly, men are bored.

False role models also play a major role in this emotional stunting, coupled with inflated expectations and gynophobic ideas – for example, Andrew Tate, the progenitor of embarrassing alpha males and podcast bros; the Holocaust denier and arch-racist Nicholas J. Fuentes; the sleazy lecher Jeffrey Epstein with his island and his list; or Sean "Disgusting" Combs with his baby oil. American men have recently been attracting predominantly negative attention: most politicians, almost all billionaires, and definitely all terrorists.

But we are currently in the middle of the American celebration troika, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, which is characterized by festive outdoor lighting and charity.

At Halloween you get sweets and, with luck, maybe marijuana gummy bears – at least that's what the paranoia moms in the Facebook groups warn against, calling for parents to inspect their children's sweets; someone might have smuggled mind-altering substances into the trick-or-treat box (Nice to be so, the anti-paranoia moms cheekily retort).

Many people help out in soup kitchens on Thanksgiving, a tradition I used to think was hypocritical and performative, but now, with many citizens having their social benefits cut due to the government shutdown, I consider absolutely necessary.

Late autumn in America is also the season for home improvement projects. Every year we watch the Christmas movie "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" (also known as "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation") – and the longer it goes on, the more my husband identifies with the main character, Clark Griswold, who wants to (and potentially destroy) everything at home himself. Not only does my husband insist on putting up the Christmas lights himself to save money (and spend way too much on the necessary equipment), but he actually once fell through the roof, just like Clark. In an epic, Griswold-esque maneuver, his feet broke through the far-too-thin attic ceiling, leaving his legs dangling in the guest room.

Another time, he flooded the hallway with a plumbing mishap. Like Clark, though, he did have a lucky escape: he narrowly avoided a chainsaw massacre of an oak tree known locally as a "Widow Maker." He had more trouble with another tree, a Lagerstroemia (popular in Texas and as stubborn as the Texas heat). After felling it, the gigantic stump was impossible to remove. He asked a colleague and amateur gardener for advice. "Burn it," the man said decisively. So he did. Pizza dough and baguettes also got burned as my husband ventured into his new hobby of baking. Now he's a master at it.

I think my husband and many other members of his gender around us, belonging to Generations X and Y, are excellent guys. Given my underlying and overt misandry, that needs to be said! Young men, on the other hand, should finally learn that women aren't the problem, but their podcasts. That AI can't compete with the fairer sex, and that you become more masculine by chopping down trees for the people you love instead of taking creatine for muscle building like a cretin.