Sizzle & Steak: Evangelism in the Hustle Economy

What exactly are we teaching the Lost Boys today?

I came across the term Lost Boys in 2016. It’s attributed to the fan base that Dr. Jordan Peterson was generating around that time, but I had heard similar references to “drop out” young men as early as 2014. The fem-stream media was concerned that these 18-29 year old men were deliberately thwarting women’s mating/life strategies by not preparing themselves for adulthood. Women were concerned that fewer young men were going to be suitably ignorant-yet-dutiful husband material by the time they were 30. Meanwhile, TradCon media (predictably) made this crisis of masculinity all about men “shirking their responsibilities” from a want to “perpetuate their adolescence”. As expected, men assuming more masculine responsibility was the cure to solving this social malaise. Both sides of the ideological spectrum have never had a real interest in discerning the root causes for the now two generations of Lost Boys. To do so would challenge both ideology’s base presumptions about innate sex differences, feminism, gynocentrism and female empowerment stretching back to the sexual revolution. Hannah Rosen called it the End of Men in The Atlantic back in 2012. The Kidults and Peter Pan Men were an easily shamed novelty. Breitbart called them the Drop Out Generation and we’re similarly dismissed as “lazy kids not preparing themselves for being fathers and husbands.” Even I threw my hat in the ring when I penned Are You Experienced.

In 2021 we are now two generations into the Lost Boys. Just like the latter half of the Millennials, now Gen Z young men are becoming the next wave of guys trying to find purpose in a life that has no need of them – or they’re endlessly derided for not living up to an old order standard. As Rian Stone has said, they are sheep in search of a shepherd – students with no teacher – young men who are effectively rudderless in life. This is where the Red Pill, Manosphere, male space or whatever we’re calling it now is stepping in to become the teachers these young men have lacked. But what are we actually teaching the Lost Boys? From what I see today, most coaches” haven’t done much more than profit by them. Today, they are more lost now than when Dr. Peterson identified them. What will be the long-term human, societal, cost of two generations of young men guided, taught and/or hustled into, or out of, embracing conventional masculinity?

The Blind Lead the Blinder

“Who’s the more foolish, the Blue Pill chump or the chumps who follow him?”

If you’ve read my latest book The Rational Male, Religion you’ll already be familiar with the concept of The Brand of Me. Today, everyone is their own brand. From the frustrated soccer mom, to the 12-year-old girl interacting with “friends” she’s never met, to OnlyFans girls, to niche marketing Gurus, everyone you know is actively engaged in some form of personal brand management. Even your grandmother on FaceBook is her own PR agent. Likewise, masculinity/positivity gurus are their own personal brands. I’m emphasizing ‘are’ here because we live our own brand identity as our personal identity in our day to day lives now.

It’s becoming exceedingly difficult to separate the ‘man‘ from his brand today. In the Hustle Economy, managing brand identity, is managing livelihood, is managing personal identity. Everyone is their brand. In the early 2000’s it was the likes of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian who were the pioneers of being famous for being famous. Neither had (has) any real exceptional talent that made them celebrities; they simple were famous. There are other examples, but most of that “fame” was generated via careful personal brand management in a time when social media was nothing like it is today. Then, it took a lot more work and money to curate fame for being famous. Now, in the new order, it’s never been easier to create an easily believable perceptions of fame – even if it’s just a low degree of it.

It’s all sizzle and no steak. E-Celebrity is now reality show entertainment that virtually anyone, any demographic, can create for themselves. In my 2014 essay Hysteria I detailed the social experiment of a guy who created his own instant celebrity:

Basically, the guy had a few friends follow him around the mall, one guy filming him and the other two guys (I can’t tell if any of his hired guns were women) acting as his “groupies” or entourage. He goes around identifying himself as “Thomas Elliot” when people, mostly women, ask him his name. Eventually, he begins to pile up admiring and gawking female attention, which only snowballs into more female attention. Apparently, not one of these starstruck chicks thought to question if Thomas Elliot was a real celebrity. That’s the power of preselection and fame; so powerful, it can disengage a woman’s neural logic circuitry.

Remember, the linked videos were produced in 2012. This experiment required a film team, at least 2-3 collaborators to give the guy some legitimacy. You don’t need this today. In fact you don’t even need great post-production or computer skills now. All that’s required to create a similar video is a smart phone and Instagram. Social proof, preselection, status, clout, prestige, indignation and fame have never been easier to manufacture for average people than in the first 20 years of the 21st century.

Never have more people (and mostly women) been so rewarded for so little real work, talent, virtuoso, education or creativity. And rewarded with money, adulation, admiration, “respectability“, love, attention and importance. Today, anyone can become influential – an influencer. Potentially, anyone can get paid better and enjoy more status than the career they may have went to years of college to get. As a result, the value of a formal real education is debased.

But, who cares about college or education anyway, right? Even STEM fields and the hard sciences have been infiltrated by Wokezis. Academia is rife with socialists and Marxism at every level now. Post-modernism has owned the humanities and the arts since at least the 1960s if not the late 1800s. True education has become a grift too. Most universities are just very expensive diploma mills that supply you with the paperwork necessary to allow you to be considered for an entry-level job – usually determined by an underpaid Karen in the HR department; likely with less “education” than what you paid for just to get an audience with her. Now, is it any wonder that education and “preparing oneself for life and responsibilities” is effectively worthless to the Lost Boys generation?

‘Cause I’m a twenty-first century digital boy
I don’t know how to live but I got a lot of toys
My daddy’s a lazy middle-class intellectual
My mommy’s on Valium, so ineffectual
Ain’t life a mystery, yeah?

Bad Religion, 21st Century Digital Boy, 1990

Damn, that song was prophetic. If an education’s purpose is to allow the graduate access to the job (in the working world) he believes will profit him best, and he’d have better results in the Hustle Economy, why bother with the investment of time and student debt? If a young woman can make a fortune from the minimum investment needed to be an OnlyFans influencer (sex worker) why bother to study nursing? If a guy can make more money and be more attractive as a “life coach” for far less investment than a degree in a suspicious major like psychology what’s the incentive to be educated?

The motive is profit and the process is profit. In the New Order we’ve become hyper-efficient at commodifying both motive and process. This has led to a mistrust, if not disdain, of education, science (as a method), wisdom and genuine creative inspiration.

“If it doesn’t lead to my first million dollars what’s the point of doing it?”
“Fuck it, I’ll just be a stripper OnlyFans girl or entrepreneur.”

As a result the Hustle Economy tends to attract pathological personalities. As most of my readers know, crazy tends to draw more crazy into its orbit. Pathological doesn’t always mean criminally insane. Guys like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk had/have pathological reality distortion fields about them. And while they are what we’d excuse as eccentric, maybe asocial, they weren’t destructive malcontents. Unfortunately, they’re the rarer exceptions. Get rich quick, get fit quick, get clout quick, get love, adoration, props, respectability, attention, concern, empathy/sympathy, and commiseration instantly, with the least amount of money and personal investment is an irresistible pull to pathological personalities. In any other era, these guys would have to be supremely creative and driven to get up and over the loser status barrier to become more than they started as. And only then after a constant learning from defeat and setbacks. For today’s TL;DR generation, if it can’t be delivered instantaneously why else would you bother doing something?

“Only the insane have the strength to prosper. Only those who prosper truly judge what is sane.”

Part II, next week,…

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Published by Rollo Tomassi

Author of The Rational Male and The Rational Male, Preventive Medicine

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2 years ago

Bit off topic, but here is a post linking to a documentary about how a hastily developed polio vaccine in the 1950s very likely introduced the ancestor of HIV virus into human beings. My point is that good intentions, but poorly thought out actions, can often lead to very bad outcomes.

https://dissention.wordpress.com/2021/06/20/documentary-about-hiv-origins-and-similarity-to-covid-19-situation/

Rugby11
Rugby11
2 years ago

“ Millennials, now Gen Z young men are becoming the next wave of guys trying to find purpose in a life that has no need of them – or they’re endlessly derided for not living up to an old order standard.”

Religion and technology

Updates in expectations

“And only then after a constant learning from defeat and setbacks.”

Perseverance not giving up or giving in

Rhys Gordon
Rhys Gordon
2 years ago

A lot here to chew on. I’m going to focus on one small aspect to start and that is the “hustle” phenomenon. Note, first off, that this word use to have a bad connotation. It was associated with grifters and street cretins who were generally looking for short cuts and cons and scams of a low end type. I’ve seen it morph into a business credo amongst the upcoming GenZers. I’m in b2b sales and the net-net of it for me is that actual gist of the word hasn’t changed. All these young kids are looking for a shortcut. For… Read more »

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definitelynotchad
definitelynotchad
2 years ago

I am not a part of the current new generation (and have never actually looked at an only fans account/page), but I cannot see the attraction to guys of only fans. It’s just women showing photos, videos of themselves naked, right? Why would you pay to see that, when there is an abundance of good quality (in terms of the physical attractiveness of many of the women, and HD viewing) porn online to view for free? And in terms of men understandably wanting to feel a connection with a young and beautiful woman, how can anyone delude themselves into believing… Read more »

definitelynotchad
definitelynotchad
2 years ago

Unrelated to this post, but in general blank slate equalism news, complaints are being made in Melbourne that only a small percentage of our statues of people, are of women. And there is a push to make this more ‘equal’. Obviously some people haven’t heard of the burden of performance!

https://statuesforequality.com/pages/melbourne

Sentient
Sentient
2 years ago

Scribss

Glad to see you made it through teh coof.

Why do you think Rollo is playing a sad violin “for them”?

Rollo does nothing to affirm the sad state of your guys. He just reports and provides tools to deal.

Captain Kidult
Captain Kidult
2 years ago

I remember working for Deloitte circa 2010 and everything was about “personal brand”. I remember saying my brand was “lunch pail”, I do my job, work hard and detach from all this nonsense when I go home at night. People were not amused. Deloitte in those days (and probably still is) the land of all sizzle and no steak.

Sentient
Sentient
2 years ago

Tom Peter’s- The Brand You 50

Published 1999…

http://www.tabletopjournal.weebly.com/uploads/5/5/2/2/5522081/4660369_orig.png

Actually a good read.

PalmaSailor
PalmaSailor
2 years ago

This only fans thing keeps cropping up, and I get it that over a very short time span it has been a boom. For a very small minority of women it’s entered bubble territory in the returns it’s generating for them. But it really is a supply and demand thing and it will follow a normal product lifecycle curve. If society has reached a stage where “nearly every girl coming into college has an only fans” then you need a situation where there are at least 1000 customers for each of them at £10 a month each. And that gives… Read more »

Catxman
2 years ago

Women are made to make demands. “Where are we going with this relationship?” is a question I dreaded hearing from a friends-with-benefits bitch back in university days. They’re constantly trying to leverage something and make a mountain out of a molehill. Chicks are users, essentially. Parasites upon men and upon the system. Think about it: how many women have any real skills. These flimsy-armed creatures can barely be creative in a true, deep vein. And they demand more and more as time goes by. The end goal is a ring on the finger, of course. But marriage is the soul-killer… Read more »

max
max
2 years ago

the boys are at home playing video games and not interacting with any females. the females are at home putting on makeup and getting dressed (or undressed) to STAY at home and post online. neither side is actually interacting with each other… neither is developing social skills that are important to sustaining relationships. what you end up with is a hookup culture where girls are nothing but objects to men, and the men feel no connection with the women afer ejaculation. anybody getting into divorce law is gonna be rich with this crew… they don’t know what they’re doing now… Read more »

IRL
IRL
2 years ago

@Palma But it really is a supply and demand thing and it will follow a normal product lifecycle curve. One of the stages is those who notice the downward trend pivot to selling courses and systems for the no longer sustainable business model. Plenty of that around. Selling shovels to gold diggers… lol @max You’re not wrong. This is a slippery slope, with more and more fragmented society, living in an online world of dopamine rush. And yet there are still pockets of communities, high school sweethearts, guys and girls getting married etc. You can be an incel, a pump… Read more »

PalmaSailor
PalmaSailor
2 years ago

@IRL [@Palma But it really is a supply and demand thing and it will follow a normal product lifecycle curve. One of the stages is those who notice the downward trend pivot to selling courses and systems for the no longer sustainable business model. Plenty of that around. Selling shovels to gold diggers… lol] This is why brands are a thing. I’ve heard many a small businessmen talk about their ‘brand’ and I’ve just laughed at them. Coca Cola is a brand, McDonalds is a brand, BP is a brand. You know exactly what you’re gonna get EVERY TIME. They… Read more »

ECM
ECM
2 years ago

HI Rollooooo!

Woeful Bard
Woeful Bard
2 years ago

Love the post picture ! This very well thought out and well written post touches upon many aspects hitting home (for me). Rollo nails the truth about the current pandemic of post modern extreme narcissism and much more. I’m looking forward to next weeks follow up. To be sung in the teeny bopper never want to grow up three note pop me pop culture extremely solipsistic style… Here is one concurrent aspect expressed in a song I recently wrote… Cry For More Saw you on Instagram Such a stupid program Friended you anyway I could’ve stayed away I knew it… Read more »

Woeful Bard
Woeful Bard
2 years ago

Quoting Rollo – ” ‘Cause I’m a twenty-first century digital boy I don’t know how to live but I got a lot of toys My daddy’s a lazy middle-class intellectual My mommy’s on Valium, so ineffectual Ain’t life a mystery, yeah? Bad Religion, 21st Century Digital Boy, 1990 Damn, that song was prophetic ” Prophetic – accurately describing or predicting what will happen in the future. https://www.google.com/search?q=prophetic&rlz=1C1CHZN_enUS928US928&oq=Prophetic&aqs=chrome.0.0i433l2j46j0i433j0l3j0i457j0l2.4293j1j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Although the words “prophetic” and “prophecy” are typically used to describe past predictions of current or future events, it is important to know that so called “prophesies” are more often “prophesized” DURING the… Read more »

Fact
Fact
2 years ago

I got suspended on reddit for saying that swipe apps turn women insufferable fickle bitches. lol

DON’T SUSPENSE ME!

Dr. No
Dr. No
2 years ago
Woeful Bard
Woeful Bard
2 years ago

Peter Wright is a good writer. I agree with much of his work but only in the context within which he seems to think. I do admire his writing style and ability. His observations seem accurate and his discussions of them is logical and true within the context in which he apparently prefers. However, there is crucially more to observe in the overall picture that he willfully or naively typically omits. He contributes to A Voice For Men from time to time. Here is a recent contribution of his. https://avoiceformen.com/uncategorized/white-supremacy-a-euphemism-for-white-women-worship/ Considering his post linked above, let us completely face the… Read more »

Chris
Chris
2 years ago

@Woeful Bard Your comment is long and inciteful. Looking quickly through it, what stands out your criticism of Alison Phipps. Just looking at the review of her book, her tactics are quite clear. With any revolutionary movement (which feminism mostly is) the temptation for newcomers and old guard alike is to declare a cultural revolution and throw now complacent established majority under the metaphorical bus. She wants a crackdown on cis-white middle class females. She’s one herself, but perhaps hopes by spearheading the movement to purge them she can escape their fate. Look at this quote from the review: “Privileged… Read more »

Woeful Bard
Woeful Bard
2 years ago

This is a long one. I hope you endure all of it for your sake. I read The Rational Male Religion a few months ago and that is one reason I’m writing comments on this blog again. It is an excellent book and very well written in my opinion. Good writers such as Rollo seem to improve even more as they produce additional work over time and their writing flows more smoothly as their insight grows and readers become more familiar with their individual writing personality. Partly for these reasons, but not exclusively, I appreciate this particular book by Rollo… Read more »

Sentient
Sentient
2 years ago

Why so woeful Bard? What are you doing these days about sex and women?

Woeful Bard
Woeful Bard
2 years ago

@ Sentient

Sex on a regular basis avg 3-x week. Satisfied there. Married 27 years, we met when I was 30, she was 21, reasonably compatible. 2 others trying to have affairs with me. Ones been at it for 7+ years, not married. The other just started propositioning me, she’s married. Predatory parasites. If my wife hadn’t fallen for me as hard as she did in the beginning, she would probably be doing the same.

long time reader, first time commenter
long time reader, first time commenter
1 year ago

Substitute “Instagram” for “rock-n-roll” and you’ll get your 20th century kid. Nobody wants to be “average”, when they’re 15-25 year old. Back then, it was music and movies that promised the path to the top. Today it’s the Internet. But today the middle class is destroyed, so there is no “average”, only “misery” and “millionaires”. And you never became filthy rich just through sheer talent even in previous centuries. There always was a lot about connections, nepotism, networking and other “niche hustling”. You worked in marketing, you know how important hustling is. More important than anything else, when it comes… Read more »

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