I think it’s important to dig into this for one major reason: because this specific form of being a guy - and the physical and online spaces where it’s created and reinforced - lies at the foundation of grasping both the current state and future of a whole swathe of American culture and politics. Why think too hard about it? Its participants generally don’t, with some notable exceptions. It’s easy to write off this type of bantering, competitive male interaction, and the cultural spheres in which it takes place, as Guys Being Dudes and nothing more. But if you hang out in combat sports gyms, on military bases, and at construction job sites, or if you watch Joe Rogan clips on YouTube and follow the algorithm down the rabbit hole, this type of masculinity - what it means to be a guy - is absolutely ubiquitous. I encourage you to watch at least a couple of minutes of it, if not the whole sixteen minutes and forty-nine seconds, because it’s essentially the Rosetta Stone for understanding a huge piece of American masculinity.įor those don’t spend a lot of time in these corners of Instagram and YouTube, or the actual physical spaces that underlie them, this specific form of American manhood might be hard to see as anything other than a parody. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, the Platonic ideal of the gym conversation, guys being dudes at a staggeringly elite level.
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