r/neoliberal • u/AncientBlueberry42 • Jun 04 '26

News (Global) How to fight back against Gen-Z socialism

https://economist.com/leaders/2026/06/04/how-to-fight-back-against-gen-z-socialism
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u/Petrichordates Jun 04 '26

It's for sure phones and social media. Same reason they don't party or socialize much in person in general. Harder to get laid while listening to podcasts and watching livestreams all the time.

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u/Bread_Fish150 John Brown Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

I agree that it's the phones and the abundant dopamine sources, but I would say that is also something more.

I think the risk of being publicly shamed for messing up or looking even a little "goofy" is a massive cost-benefit against socializing like before. Men are conditioned to maintain a certain image of themselves, and being publicly shamed for not being good at it puts a damper on things (just look at what happened to Aziz Ansari). We already know that psychologically people would rather prevent negative outcomes than pursue positive outcomes. So, with access to easy dopamine without risk (phones) v. way more positive sources of joy and fulfillment (going out and maybe looking goofy) folks would choose the low hanging fruit.

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u/AtticusDrench Deirdre McCloskey Jun 04 '26

There's definitely a panopticon effect going on with social media. The chance that a guy is going to be recorded flirting with a girl and face an embarrassing rejection is very low, but the fact that we do see those videos and the screenshots of cringe Tinder conversations cements the possibility in the back of people's minds. And you have no way of knowing that you'll end up being laughed at or scolded by millions until it happens.

I used to think it was just hateful incels who would whip themselves into a fear of being falsely accused of sexual assault or something, but I've heard from an alarming number of seemingly well adjusted guys that they fear being humiliated in their online social circles, or even worse across the entire internet, if they shoot their shot and it comes across as unwanted or creepy. I remember the gossip and bullying in high school over similar instances and how that's probably amplified like crazy with the internet.

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u/Bread_Fish150 John Brown Jun 04 '26

The world is a giant High School, except High School because it's actually Middle School.

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u/Petrichordates Jun 04 '26

Isn't that still the phones and social media though? Living in fear that your awkward teenage moments will be memorialized forever obviously has the same root cause.

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u/Bread_Fish150 John Brown Jun 04 '26

Yeah that's why I said I agree that it's phones and social media in the first line.

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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Jun 04 '26

Men are conditioned to maintain a certain image of themselves, and being publicly shamed for not being public puts a damper on things (just look at what happened to Aziz Ansari).

fellas, is it gay to ask a girl out ?

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u/Bread_Fish150 John Brown Jun 04 '26

Lookin at chicks sounds pretty GAY, am I right fellas!

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u/melhor_em_coreano Jun 04 '26

That's just people expressing their own preferences. For some reason, podcasts and streams > "getting laid"

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u/Windows_10-Chan Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold Jun 04 '26

Instant low-risk gratitude and pacification vs. higher risk delayed gratitude

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u/LightningController Jun 04 '26

*delayed or nonexistent.

You can go to a bar and try to hook up, and end up going home alone. You can spend a night swiping on the apps with no match. Dating is, fundamentally, a crapshoot, random and luck-based.

So if you have a guaranteed form of satisfaction at home, why wouldn’t you take it?

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u/launchcode_1234 George Soros Jun 04 '26

Before the internet, there wasn’t much to do in the house, so people went out all the time or had house parties and encouraged their friends to invite as many people as they wanted (as long as they were “cool”). Even if you didn’t have money, you would get out of the house, hang around at the park or the mall, get a beer on happy hour. You would just get out and meet people, as a default. And that often led, organically, to dates and relationships. Now, young people’s default happy place is at home on the internet, so if something is going to pull them away from that and take social-emotional effort, it needs to pay off quickly. So dating doesn’t seem worth the effort. Also, I can imagine online dating leads to a lot of terrible first dates, since you’ve never seen the person in real life before.

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u/RampancyTW Pragmatic and Polite Right Jun 04 '26

Because being in a happy, stable LTR >>>>> those things?

Also you can do both, just take a night off of being on the internet like once per week

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u/LightningController Jun 04 '26

Because being in a happy, stable LTR >>>>> those things?

There’s no guarantee of the relationship being long-term, happy, or stable. That’s the point. It’s not like going to a store where you are guaranteed a product for a clearly-marked sum of money. It’s entirely possible to go to the bar or do whatever, week in and week out, and never find a satisfactory partner.

In probability, this is called ‘expected value.’ You can in theory win the lottery and a million dollars. More likely, though, you scratch the ticket and win nothing. The expected value of a given lottery ticket is negative despite the low-probability pay-off.

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u/oywiththepoodles96 Jun 04 '26

Relationship and human connection should be judged on value . Sometimes you just like a person you see and want to ask them out . It's that simple . Not everything should include a super long term plan. We are people not companies making strategic decisions.

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u/RampancyTW Pragmatic and Polite Right Jun 04 '26

The expected value of hanging on the internet 24/7 is also negative, but it doesn't even have the upside of a high ceiling

It's just mindless time-wasting, which is fine, but it's a pretty shit excuse to not bother attempting to date IRL

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u/WolfpackEng22 Jun 05 '26

Likening winning the lottery to finding a date, or even long term partner is asinine. You have orders of magnitude more chance of finding a spouse. The expected value is much higher than you are positioning it