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Posted
15 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Are people SURE that’s the exit we want when discussing disparate outcomes?

You and I both clearly feel the same on this, and I also think it's why @Bozo_Casanova is getting accused of being condescending. 

He is, in my opinion, condescending of a general "if THEY feel that way it's their own fucking problem" response that makes up a good number of the posts in the thread.  

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Posted
9 minutes ago, G650 said:

 I mean, we are losing sight of the actual problem, that if one doesn't go to college one shouldn't be consigned to a miserable life as a social pariah. No going to college isn't a "shitty" outcome.

To be honest, these discussion always remind me how oblivious a lot of people are to how half this country lives (not aimed at you).

I don’t disagree at all. I think that across lots of areas but especially education we have succumbed to a kind of cargo cult mentality towards credentials that mistakes the symbol of a thing for the thing itself.

We noticed that high school graduates had better outcomes than non-graduates and so we dramatically dropped standards and made it close to impossible not to graduate. A large percentage of high school graduates cannot read at near a “sixth grade level.” Close to half of graduates leave with an “A” average. We noticed that students who got As did better and so we gave out more As. 

Crept into college, too, and we have oodles of innumerate and barely literate bachelor holders.  While high schools grades have risen, standardized test scores have fallen and so schools choose to deemphasize them.

Cargo cult. The credentials were merely symbols of possessing a certain amount of ability, knowledge, and discipline. Divorced from that theu hold less and less predictive power for outcomes. Like building an airstrip in the jungle in the belief it will attract airplanes full of valuable goods. 

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Posted
26 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Stop cutting these whiny fuckers slack.

I’m not cutting anybody slack. My problem with the people on this thread, progressives in general and Joe Rogan is the same: I don’t like people who kick down. 

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Posted
I’m not cutting anybody slack. My problem with the people on this thread, progressives in general and Joe Rogan is the same: I don’t like people who kick down. 

The author of the piece you cited does.

He wants to blame everyone else for his failures. Well, not EVERYONE else. Just…certain people. You know the ones. Those people who got jobs that HE really deserved. Those other people didn’t deserve them. You can tell they don’t. Because they aren’t white men, who are obviously the inherently superior life form. If a white man doesn’t get a job or opportunity, well…we know why.
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Posted
4 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

I’m not cutting anybody slack. My problem with the people on this thread, progressives in general and Joe Rogan is the same: I don’t like people who kick down. 

I'd really like to hear your solution. Empathize and then.... what? Let's say for a second the problem isn't discrimination against white men. Let's just assume the problem is that a person of lesser ability is angry because their lot in life sucks, and it sucks because our society does a poor job of providing for those with lesser abilities. Do we have to cater to their fantasies that white people are being discriminated against? Or can we try and address the problem of society doing a sucky job of providing for everyone? 

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Posted
I'd really like to hear your solution. Empathize and then.... what? Let's say for a second the problem isn't discrimination against white men. Let's just assume the problem is that a person of lesser ability is angry because their lot in life sucks, and it sucks because our society does a poor job of providing for those with lesser abilities. Do we have to cater to their fantasies that white people are being discriminated against? Or can we try and address the problem of society doing a sucky job of providing for everyone? 

Fantastic post. Thanks for stating the decision tree so well.
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Posted
8 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I'd really like to hear your solution. Empathize and then.... what? Let's say for a second the problem isn't discrimination against white men. Let's just assume the problem is that a person of lesser ability is angry because their lot in life sucks, and it sucks because our society does a poor job of providing for those with lesser abilities. Do we have to cater to their fantasies that white people are being discriminated against? Or can we try and address the problem of society doing a sucky job of providing for everyone? 

Until recently, people got the same information diet across the board. Now they don't, and until that is addressed, it doesn't matter whether progressives cater to their fantasies or try to address the root problem. Like I said earlier, they aren't going to see stuff that doesn't cater to their fantasies, at least online. And most of them get their news/info online, from hyper-curated sources. It's only going to get worst with the progression of AI-created content and deepfakes. I don't want to be terribly cynical, but I don't think we can put the toothpaste back into the tube. I'm hoping someone smarter than me can come up with some kind of solution that addresses this, because I don't see things getting better otherwise. 

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Posted
15 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

He wants to blame everyone else for his failures. Well, not EVERYONE else. Just…certain people. You know the ones. Those people who got jobs that HE really deserved.

That's not what he does; the author is specifically attributing the result to white males a generation or two ahead of him in the career ladder, not the historically underrepresented groups who found themselves with improved employment opportunities.  

 

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Posted
20 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

The author of the piece you cited does.

He wants to blame everyone else for his failures.

You realize you aren’t in front of a jury, right? I’ve read the piece. I brought it to your attention. So your whole Miss Cleo routine where you speculate on his motivations that follows would need to pass through the filter of my lived experience to get accepted, not to mention the fact that you obviously have no idea about why he or anyone else thinks what they think. 
Sales, marketing, politics, evangelism even- they aren’t litigation. You’re dealing with deciders who have their own version of the facts and causation before they hear from you. And there’s no referee or independent party to say what’s fair and what’s foul. It all counts.

Posted
24 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I'd really like to hear your solution. Empathize and then.... what?

Then nothing. Then solidarity. You realize progressives lost these people, right? They were with you, now they aren’t. You lost them, because you didn’t care. 

Posted (edited)
1 minute ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Then nothing. Then solidarity. You realize progressives lost these people, right? They were with you, now they aren’t. You lost them, because you didn’t care. 

I don't think this is about anyone but you. You're angry and you want to lash out. You don't want discussion. You don't want solutions. You don't want truth. 

Edited by Dahobbs
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Posted
7 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

That's not what he does; the author is specifically attributing the result to white males a generation or two ahead of him in the career ladder, not the historically underrepresented groups who found themselves with improved employment opportunities.  

 

Spoiler

Sotto voce: they didn’t read it

 

1 minute ago, Dahobbs said:

I don't think this is about anyone but you. You're angry and you want to lash out. You don't want discussion. You don't want solutions. You don't want truth. 

miss cleo infomercial GIF

Posted (edited)
16 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I don't think this is about anyone but you. You're angry and you want to lash out. You don't want discussion. You don't want solutions. You don't want truth. 

I think this has been a good discussion, as several posters up thread pointed out (and nary a word about Trump, thank God for the respite).  It's hard to have a good discussion without there being some provocation, and I'm appreciative of @Bozo_Casanova for being willing to take the live fire this weekend.  

I deleted something from my previous post in regards to your question about solutions because I didn't want to speak more for him than I already have (and you addressed the question to him), but I think just acknowledgment is kind of what the author is looking for. 

Yes, policies that lift everyone up and more correctly point the finger at entrenched interests and gatekeepers is the right prescription, but just acknowledging that there are losers in the effort for fairer representation seems a hard task for many people here.  

Edited by LCHorn
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Posted
You realize you aren’t in front of a jury, right? I’ve read the piece. I brought it to your attention. So your whole Miss Cleo routine where you speculate on his motivations that follows would need to pass through the filter of my lived experience to get accepted, not to mention the fact that you obviously have no idea about why he or anyone else thinks what they think. 
Sales, marketing, politics, evangelism even- they aren’t litigation. You’re dealing with deciders who have their own version of the facts and causation before they hear from you. And there’s no referee or independent party to say what’s fair and what’s foul. It all counts.

“It all counts.” Yep. Including my contempt for them, and my belief that they are unreachable and unsalvageable because they don’t want to be.
I read the piece. I particularly loved his half-assed use of stats and lack of realization of what they might actually indicate.
And I got the overt message blaming older generations of men in power for fucking him over….by offering opportunities to women and minorities, who…come on…you and I KNOW don’t have the merit that the auditor has. He has it. You can tell. Just look at him.

“Progressives lost these people.” Seems likely.
And all we have to do to win them back is re-define “meritocracy” as “the white guys get the job, even if they are only 35% of the applicant pool. Because…merit. Yeah, that’s it. Merit.”

We are in some shit, we are headed for more shit. I’m tired of trying to head it off, and coddling the fucking worst people in a futile effort that only makes us worse human beings. Fuck that. Time to burn. All of it. And all of us. There’s no other way forward.
Posted
29 minutes ago, austingirl said:

I'm hoping someone smarter than me can come up with some kind of solution that addresses this, because I don't see things getting better otherwise. 

You’ve got a leg up on most of the people in this thread, evidenced by the fact that you read the prompt and understood it before you reacted. 

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Posted
You’ve got a leg up on most of the people in this thread, evidenced by the fact that you read the prompt and understood it before you reacted. 

You’re missing the ultimate point that there’s no “solution” that doesn’t make all of us worse.

Hate, rage, and pain are the only currencies. Yeah, I am quite aware of your comparison to evangelism, marketing, etc. And it’s true in all of those milieus.
Posted
On 12/19/2025 at 11:58 AM, Bozo_Casanova said:

Predictably, this essay has been latched onto by online progressives and online MAGA to signal their respective audiences. For progressives, this means ridiculing the idea that white male privilege took a holiday (which is not what the essay says). For MAGA, this means banging the drum of racial grievance. Neither are responsive to the point, which rang true to me. 

Bbc Iplayer GIF by BBC

Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, LCHorn said:

You and I both clearly feel the same on this, and I also think it's why @Bozo_Casanova is getting accused of being condescending. 

He is, in my opinion, condescending of a general "if THEY feel that way it's their own fucking problem" response that makes up a good number of the posts in the thread.  

I've been a bit simplistic in some of my responses because I didn't have the time to give this 5,000+ words when shit needed doin over the weekend. What I and Dahobbs and others have been pretty clear about though, I think, is that we are willing to believe that some young white men have been discriminated against by silly employment policies, but that it isn't a real widespread issue. There's reams of data backing up the fact that it isn't really a widespread issue. It's certainly not as severe an issue as Republicans pretend it is. That means that many, and I believe most, young white men who believe they've been discriminated against are wrong in that belief. Now I can empathize with why they wrongly think that. I grew up in a conservative family surrounded by conservative families. I remember the whispered racial grievances of the 90s and 2000s. We were all too good and too respectable to be racist; that was for white trash. But my mom and tons of friends' parents would talk about how it wasn't fair that underperforming black kids were taking our spots in college and that reverse racism was the only real racism left in America.

It's easy to start believing that shit and if you start believing it might be true you'll start spotting things that you think reinforce it as you progress through life, because the world is a big place with a lot of people in it and many of those people make mistakes and some of those people are just shitty people who do bad things. I was a shitty student from a middle class home at a very diverse high school full of high-achieving minority students.  I absolutely could've gone down that path. I like to think I'm smart enough that I never would've fallen for it, but if I had been born ten years later and Trump was mainstreaming unapologetic racism again at the time I was becoming an adult and politically aware, I could see an alternate timeline where a version of 19-year-old me bought into the racial grievances.

I think about that alternate me and I wonder: would it help turn him away from that path to have a liberal tell him that those peddling the racism were right about him being screwed over to help some dumber black kid or whatever? Fucking of course not. "Even the liberal [centrist pundit] agrees with us that the left has gone too far" is some of the most effective conservative rhetoric.  The idea that reinforcing that rhetoric would result in liberal political gains is insane. 

Of the white boys and young men who've bought into these false racial grievances, some are undoubtedly open to persuasion. Those who are a little smarter than most of the others, those who have some liberal friends, those who stumble onto a lefty podcast that starts to make sense to them, etc. But persuading all those young white men requires convincing them that their racial grievances are mistaken.

And for the very select few who might've been unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and actually did get shafted for being white, we can say "shit man, that sucks and shouldn't have happened, but you can't let that experience poison you." Using me as an example again, my dad died from medical malpractice when I was a teenager. That experience has undoubtedly impacted how I feel about our healthcare system. If that had happened now to alternate me, with frauds peddling woo healthcare bullshit from the White House, I could see him buying into it. But I didn't buy into it, even though I was pretty familiar with all of that woo bullshit 20 years ago, because I wasn't surrounded by people saying "well you know RFK Jr. is right that there are a lot of problems with the healthcare system!" It was still the type of thing only kooks bought into and that helped me look at their bullshit critically.

If we were talking about healthcare rather than discrimination, Bozo's proposal to reach me would've meant indulging my worst feelings and most wrong beliefs. It would've meant telling me something like "you're right to be angry, they killed your dad for money." But that's not what happened; what happened was that a doctor who was by most accounts a good doctor made a horrible mistake, because he's a person and people make mistakes. I'm very glad Bozo wasn't there to tell me comforting lies when I was at my worst; I'd be a worse person today if he had.   

Edited by wildcat09
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Posted
39 minutes ago, austingirl said:

And most of them get their news/info online, from hyper-curated sources.

There are people who still believe Elon Musk isn't a fraud.

Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

I've been a bit simplistic in some of my responses because I didn't have the time to give this 5,000+ words when shit needed doin over the weekend. What I and Dahobbs

“I don’t have time to read this, so let me tell you what I think about it in 1000+ words over the course of several days and a half dozen or so posts. “

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted
200.gif

It’s worse than that. White male privilege has evolved into white male grievance and surrender of any and all responsibility or agency for your fate.
“Everything bad that has ever happened to me is cuz WOKE. I never even had a chance.”
They have bought the comforting lie because it relieves them of any agency or responsibility. And hey, if it means that we ultimately have to blame women and minorities, well, we don’t even have to dust off the playbook. It’s been sitting there on the nightstand this whole time.
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Posted (edited)
7 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

“I don’t have time to read this, so let me tell you what I think about it in 1000+ words over the course of several days and a half dozen or so posts. “

Man, you very clearly need to talk to a therapist.

ETA: seriously man, what the fuck is wrong with you? That’s the kind of response you should expect to get punched in the face for if you said that shit to a grown man in person.

Edited by wildcat09
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Posted
4 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Man, you very clearly need to talk to a therapist.

He has just been trolling. Something happened to him recently and needs to process. I hope he figures it out. 

Posted (edited)
16 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Man, you very clearly need to talk to a therapist.

ETA: seriously man, what the fuck is wrong with you? That’s the kind of response you should expect to get punched in the face for if you said that shit to a grown man in person.

Well, the thing is I say shit like that all the time in person. I just smile and look them in the eyes when I do it, plus I’m handsome and tall, but not so much of either that it’s weird. 
You’d be amazed what you can say to people’s face if you smile and look them in the eye when you say it, so please, know that I am smiling now, and imagine a handsome but approachable man your age looking you right in the eye and saying to you, in a friendly way:

read the essay next time. 
 

And then I wink at you. And you blush a little, and not in a gay way, not that there would be anything wrong with that, more in a curious way.

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted
12 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

image.png.260af9ef3a208ef9d6f78a0b92c38ca9.png
 

Sad Jim Carrey GIF

I'm sorry. I didn't realize how personal this topic was for you. I'm now realizing you meant you want someone to listen and empathize with you. I hope you find that person. 

Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I'm sorry. I didn't realize how personal this topic was for you. I'm now realizing you meant you want someone to listen and empathize with you. I hope you find that person. 

Bless your heart, thank you

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted
On 12/20/2025 at 5:30 PM, aggie08 said:

I qualify as a millennial (about to cross 40), and I'm pretty comfortable admitting that some of my career advancements have come, in part, to me being a tall, relatively handsome, socially competent white dude. Mechanical Engineer FWIW.

If we're throwing around isolated anecdotes.

Almost exact same age bracket. I was conscious enough to know that when I got prior promotions to being a head professional and then eventually GM of a country club in Florida, those opportunities would not have been presented to me if I wasn’t a well spoken white man. Not a chance. Anyone thinking otherwise is being willfully obtuse.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Dahobbs said:

I'd really like to hear your solution. Empathize and then.... what? Let's say for a second the problem isn't discrimination against white men. Let's just assume the problem is that a person of lesser ability is angry because their lot in life sucks, and it sucks because our society does a poor job of providing for those with lesser abilities. Do we have to cater to their fantasies that white people are being discriminated against? Or can we try and address the problem of society doing a sucky job of providing for everyone? 

Feels like a good place to start would be the ultra-wealthy class that has accumulated money to the point where most of the population, college educated or not, are fighting for a smaller and smaller economic pie. That part of the equation never seems to change.

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Posted

One of the challenges of this general issue is that we don’t really have the proper language to discuss it, at least in the mainstream. There’s probably some people studying intersectional issues that have some way of talking about this without turning into blubbering morons, but for the mainstream, the discussion gets pigeonholed into racial grievance when the phenomenon isn’t that. We’re stuck as blubbering morons.

Some folks cynically push this into a racial grievance either to amplify the grievance or to dismiss it, depending on their partisan political goals. Either way, the real phenomenon isn’t addressed.

Others turn this into a question of racial grievance due to the fundamental problem of lacking a basic vocabulary to talk about this. We have a coherent way to talk about discrimination against traditionally marginalized groups. We have real words that we all understand and can be used outside of partisan politics.

We don’t have non-partisan words to describe this issue. We have stupid words like reverse discrimination or disingenuous definitions of DEI or labeling everything “woke” or all the other moronic stuff that’s in the culture. Without basic vocabulary, there’s only talking past one another.

 

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Posted (edited)
30 minutes ago, Chult86 said:

Almost exact same age bracket. I was conscious enough to know that when I got prior promotions to being a head professional and then eventually GM of a country club in Florida, those opportunities would not have been presented to me if I wasn’t a well spoken white man.

image.thumb.png.d3c7ed5c7d7835ba051ecae90e4e97af.png

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted (edited)

I read the essay, @Bozo_Casanova, and this thread would be a lot better off if you admitted that your emotions are affecting your performance on this thread as much or more than anyone else's.

The piece is wholly unsurprising because of course entrenched power isn't going to yield their personal piece of the pie, they're going to rig the numbers to hopefully make appearances perfect specifically so their piece of the pie is unthreatened. In the places where the author focuses on that he makes some decent arguments.

But it also includes a whole lot of self-indulgent whining for someone who is hoping to be thought-provoking about an actually serious issue. Here are three of the subjects of his piece, and we know that by being selected for inclusion in this essay they are people whom the author believes to be excellent examples of the issue he's discussing.

1. Andrew the Reporter. He started in the journalism world in 2015. Times were tough, he could never make it. It was a battle, how could someone survive with so much rejection? Oh yeah, he made senior reporter in 2023. Damn, tough life when you have to work 8 years to get to a senior level.

2. James the Academic. We read three paragraphs about James, fully expecting that we will learn of the unfair ways that he, like others, has been rejected despite his qualifications. So what happened with James? He applied twice then gave up.

3. Matt the Film Guy. This guy literally told the story that he didn't even bother applying for Sundance and then noted that because of this entrenched discrimination he had to actually work to become good at what he does instead of his plan to be mediocre and succeed anyway. Holy shit. Now some of the later stuff Matt deals with seems unfair, but this relates to a key reason why the essay overall is completely non-persuasive.

These two paragraphs give it all away.

Quote

The DEI departments have mostly shut down or quietly rebranded. The mountains of reports and glossy PDFs have been quietly scrubbed, as if to hide the evidence. What was the justification for gutting the American meritocracy? No one seems to know. 

It’s tempting to wave it all away as secular decline—white men abandoning fields that were losing status or economic value. But the timing doesn’t line up. The sharpest declines in opportunity for younger white men didn’t happen during the rolling crises of the past few years—they were baked in during the mid-2010s, when New Media was expanding coverage, universities were growing, and Hollywood was at Peak TV. 

Which raises some uncomfortable questions: Is the media more trusted now than a decade ago? Is Hollywood making better films and television? Is academia more respected? Have these institutions become stronger since they systematically excluded an entire cohort—or did abandoning meritocracy accelerate their decline?

The author is operating from a belief that the way the world was in 2014 was based on meritocracy but that afterward as white males were systematically oppressed, this was the moment that the United States abandoned meritocracy. He believes that meritocracy results in fields dominated by white men. That is obviously, as you'll agree, completely laughable. So why do you expect people to take this essay more seriously than the author took it? It's true that there is a shift that disproportionately affects white men under 45 more than their older peers. There's a real story there, but this guy loses the plot early and often, including throwing around so many percentages hoping to scare innumerate people while never even providing the baseline - about 30% of the American population are white males. Some of the numbers seem concerning, but then he posts this as a problem:

Quote

In less than a decade, the entire face of the industry changed. The New York Times newsroom has gone from 57 percent male and 78 percent white in 2015 to 46 percent male and 66 percent white in 2024.

What the actual fuck? Those 2024 numbers look, you know. pretty damn good if we're only worried about sex and race. Other than being too white still.

On the other hand, as I've alluded to several times, there is a serious issue hidden here that the author completely swings and misses at. Or more accurately completely loses focus on. I would actually appreciate a much better written piece on this, and I'm thinking that some of your frustration with the reaction here is because the posters are reacting to this C- essay and not to the actual thoughts that you have in your head, but you're conflating the two. Perhaps Jacob Savage's ultimate failures in his writing career may have multiple causes.

- Edited to add that my post here isn't that well-written either because it's an internet post. I meant but forgot to include that he had a winning and persuasive argument when he focused on the extremely low percentages within the millennial cohort. The issue is that generation and how, no, it's not good that only 5-10% of industries are represented by a demographic that is 30% of the population.

Edited by Huckleberry
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Posted
54 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

read the essay next time. 

I don't know. I'm getting the vibe of a dead-end discussion considering:

1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Then nothing.

Seems like the only call to action is to pump up Compact Mag's numbers.

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Posted
16 minutes ago, Mole said:

We don’t have non-partisan words to describe this issue. We have stupid words like reverse discrimination or disingenuous definitions of DEI or labeling everything “woke” or all the other moronic stuff that’s in the culture. Without basic vocabulary, there’s only talking past one another.

"Reverse discrimination" and "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" are both basic vocabulary. People inject their feelings into terms and then turn them into negative buzz words. So if you're waiting for people to find words that have no emotional charge to them you're going to die first. You literally can't get any more basic than those.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Well, the thing is I say shit like that all the time in person. I just smile and look them in the eyes when I do it, plus I’m handsome and tall, but not so much of either that it’s weird. 
You’d be amazed what you can say to people’s face if you smile and look them in the eye when you say it, so please, know that I am smiling now, and imagine a handsome but approachable man your age looking you right in the eye and saying to you, in a friendly way:

read the essay next time. 
 

And then I wink at you. And you blush a little, and not in a gay way, not that there would be anything wrong with that, more in a curious way.

This reads like an Andrew Tate post.

 

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Posted
Quote

Is Hollywood making better films and television?

To this one specific point, yes, Hollywood is making better television today. Unequivocally. Outside of the usual, lazy, laugh track network TV slop that's always been served, that is.

It may be annoying as fuck to find--both where and when--at times, but it's been the golden age of television for over a decade. Bigger budgets, top notch writing and production, A-list talent actually willing to participate. It's honestly overwhelming how many good series are out there. 

 

Also, really struggling to blame cinema's struggles on forced diversity when we all apparently collectively decided about 13 years ago that the only movies worth going to theaters for are dudes wearing tights.



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