I mean, for me what I found so annoying about the debate was that critics of the essay constantly toggled back and forth between "no, that never happened, white men never faced any discrimination" and "of course white men faced discrimination, that's good, that's equality, that's how we heal the universe." A classic in the genre of "That's not happening, but that fact that it's happening is good."
Usually it involves several steps and a few weeks time, but they really speed ran the "It's not happening" to "It's happening and it's good" pipeline with this one.
Agree with you Freddie. See my comment on this about categorization and false dichotomies. We are in the era of foolish dichotomies, I think. I blame it on social media, of course.
First of all: sir, you are a bigot, a fascist, a coward, and a cuck. With that out of the way...man this mirrors my own experience with academia. Reading that Savage piece was like drinking some forbidden ambrosia: "Yes, my failures are not my own! The system was stacked against me! None of the mistakes I made were my fault!" Dangerous stuff to partake of. I think your analysis--that it was definitely a thing, but that it doesn't excuse the wrong steps I took--is exactly correct. And weirdly, keeping that in mind keeps me from becoming bitter.
HA! Oh yeah it's easy to fall into all of that. It's still important to call this all out for what it was in a broader sense, but yeah you can't let it drag you down and impact you more than it already has. That's like letting it beat you twice.
Thank you for a thoughtful, humble, and civil essay. It's in short supply. I do identify with the quote from the professor. It is what I am doing.
I was born in the thick of the civil rights era. In my neighborhood, I could (and did) get denounced and bullied for publicly consorting with black children. I would be called a "n_____r lover." You could type the missing 4 letters without worry, by the way. You could say them fairly freely to anyone in my neighborhood or family and they mostly thought little of it. Hard times. Good riddance.
The thing that eats at me a little (as a boy from the 60s) in this whole debate is how freely and unapologetically we make sweeping and categorical statements, for or against, "cis white men" and other demographic groups. "Privileged" or "marginalized"--two sides of the same coin? What do we think of the many people who don't fit into that false dichotomy?
The thing that always sticks in my throat is that way that the categories are used almost always (he says, hedging) without hedging or qualifiers (some, many, often, etc.) It is a convenience, of course, to talk about groups, and a political necessity. But it bothers me.
In the case of the "lost generation" the category is used to target (for expulsion or non-entrance). Sometimes it's used in a way that drifts easily into casual bigotry: "You WOULD say that, white man." Or, worse, a strain of self-bigotry: "Well, you know, I'm just a stupid white man."
It tears us apart. It divides us the way those white boys divided me from the little black boys I wasn't supposed to play with. I know I must sound terribly naive, but I keep wanting people to hedge more, to allow the possibility that, by barring cis white men at the door of Disney, Inc.--with the worthy goal of balancing the scales of social justice--we lost something, too, some diversity of experience and viewpoint that audiences could really benefit from.
Don't ask me what I think we should do instead. I honestly am not sure. Maybe go the Confucian "middle way"? Hedge a little? Don't push quite so hard down on the scale on the marginalized side?
The refusal to acknowledge how these types of policies could be wrong or have negative downstream effects is what gets me. "Reaping? Why would I give a shit about that? This sowing stuff rules!"
Yes, and as I watch the protests in Minneapolis, I think, "What horrors are we sowing?" But everything is all or nothing in times like these.
When I say to a younger person "My God you have no idea how bad it used to be! Consider yourself blessed to have to put that "micro" in front of "aggression." In my neighborhood, they just beat the shit out of you if you came onto our block." (And I got the shit kicked out of me, too, if I crossed the line.
Now I can imagine someone out there thinking, "So you are FOR racism, then?"
I was just telling my students today; it’s never been harder to break into industries and it’s never been easier to succeed on your own. It’s the paradox of our time that the systems produced by the gatekeepers to maintain their wealth also offer the prospect of independent from their control. I can’t get a job with YouTube, but I can post short films there and go viral without anyone’s by or leave.
There's a perception that this is limited to "prestige" careers, and technical professions are less effected. From my experience in engineering, this is not the case.
There aren't many women in engineering. What this means in practice is that women with very ordinary or even sub-par skill sets are heavily boosted. As an example, before a female co-worker was hired, I was already hearing how great she was from the hiring team, with the insinuation that her tech skills were better than mine. When she started working, I was assigned to help her with basic tasks such as tolerance stacks and the CAD system. By the time I left she was promoted to engineering manager (she quit within 2 months).
Women outside engineering are given a wide berth in meetings. If you find it necessary to disagree, you'd better have a diplomatic strategy planned out with the whole team in advance. A common strategy is talking over engineers, then when they attempt to interject, reminding them that a woman is talking.
If you look at big female led companies like GM, this is why they are struggling with design and quality problems. Conflict is an inherent part of problem solving, and the female approach abhors this.
Like you, I've left my original field, and it's been a change for the better.
Oh yeah, this is definitely a bigger issue in these type of fields. The institutions have to operate properly if anything is going to get done. There's not as much opportunity to "go your own way" for the hard sciences.
Sure, we need to adapt to changes but I don't think do everything yourself, hope your video goes viral, spend time building your brand on the newest app,is a satisfactory. If someone wants to be a doctor or a woodworker or whatever they need mentors and working/learning opportunities. Ideally it should be similar for more creative work.
Very true. For creative work, I feel like that stuff is becoming more and more decentralized, much like everything else in those industries. So you might not develop a relationship with an editor at a publishing house, but you can develop one with another, more experienced writer who has navigated situations similar to the one you're in. Those people are out there, you just have to go find them.
Is this fair, or better than what came before? Not necessarily. It would be great if those types of patronage networks still existed. But unfortunately we have to play the cards we're dealt.
The science goes in experiments sussing out the achievments of other animal intelligences, that nobody learns to open a new box, unlatch a box wired shut unless they see it done by someone who looks like them? It is so far true of the great apes, that (again in experiments). If the world opens like a flower in front of them, unless they see one of their selfsame species eating the heart out of the floor, they donot go for it. The result of all the studies in imitation, there is no speculative imitation, only, and now I am extending this to us, -only the confidence we take from seeing someone we believe looks like us let us say _ Entering the field. These study synopses I take from frans de Waal. It sounds true to me. And so we say More power to women. DEI might have this science foundational...
I'm glad to see your nuance here, Peter - that while white males are and have been getting screwed by society that there were still opportunities if one had only grabbed them (I have my fair share of failing to grab my own), and that it's unhealthy mentally to wallow in pity so too much focus on it is a bad thing (as an aside, most of the "whites" you list in those percentages are Jewish, unless broken out into their own category).
I further appreciated your stress on the importance of being able to freely express one's creative gifts without waiting for approval by institutional gatekeepers, even if it doesn't come with status or monetary rewards. With this attitude one may work a normal job, express oneself creatively with one's free time, and not become jaded or bitter from not being allowed advancement by others. Listening to the spirit within without external strings attached comes with its own rewards...
Very good, articulate, nuanced piece. Enjoyed it. I understand your point of view here. It is, as you say, important to retain personal agency. That's why every time I write about this topic I directly state, 'I don't think white men are victims.' And I genuinely don't. On the flip side, as you wrote yourself: Clearly there is some discrimination going on and has been for a while now. But I'm not going to go out there and 'demand my rights' or something. I'm gonna write my way on Substack, publish honest writing, work hard and try to succeed on my own terms.
I appreciate your piece and Savage’s—I think you added something nice and actionable to the convo. The saying I use w/my 4 kids (right now usually regarding # or size of cookie allotments) is: life often isn’t fair or equal, but you have a lot of control over your life, and life is good. It’s not poetic but I think it covers a lot of bases!
I really appreciate your perspective, Peter. I'm a white guy who has tried to make it in the small press writer circles / academia and have had limited success. I've had to make peace with it all, and don't begrudge any individuals for their success, but I do wish I could feel as settled as you, though. While I think yes, it is up to me to do what I can to make my ambitions reality, "going your own way" is always mediated by the rules of institutions (like substack) and others in power every step of that way. The internet isn't free of bias and power brokers, and who you know/where you live/ your social and financial upbringing/your health(in my case) delimits what you can feasibly do at any one moment. When you add in a layer of bias against you, the odds often become grim.
I don't think this makes people victims, per se, but it does make them aggrieved. Getting over the distress of these messed up circumstances is definitely doable, but doing so often leads you away from your ambitions. We may be the captains of our own souls, but our bodies are the boats and for many in the "lost generation" there simply haven't been a lot of welcoming harbors. Some choose piracy as a result, but that seems the antithesis of why I wanted to be a writer and professor.
One major downside of the fall of gatekeepers is that there are no human beings to appeal to anymore, just lines of code on a server farm somewhere that make up the algorithm. It’s a very new and very weird challenge.
And you’re not wrong to struggle with this stuff. It takes some insane, zen-like patience to let go of expectations. I’m still in thrall to it in some ways, based on how frequently I’ve been checking my Substack notifications over the last 24 hours.
Great stuff man, totally connected, especially re my relationship to creativity/art after giving it up.
I pursued an acting career in NYC from 2008-2016 and had a different “problem”: too white to be Latino, too Latino to be the white guy. I would’ve kept going had I not gotten deathly sick from moving into a place with mold hidden from view, but that actually taught how fuckin’ random life really is, and how our perception of what is under our control if way off.
Not to say we have no agency, we do to a very limited existent, but even had you started creating more online slop and that would’ve gotten you more popular, your art would probably be like most art today: shitty af.
Also, what happened to Savage happened to all millennials in almost every industry after the Great Financial Crisis: they were shut out of the economy. My problem with that article is that, relative to the damage done to his generation by the banks, and the politicians who aided and abetted them — including one Barack Obama — DEI aint shit
Lots of factors at play here. My favorite stat (I’m getting the numbers wrong but it’s directionally correct) is that in 1980 the average house was like $200k. If housing grew at the same rate as wages it would now be $400k and instead it’s $800k.
Prestige as a reputational Ponzi scheme is an incredible piece of writing.
Great analysis as always. I definitely felt this. But also like you, realized there were many pathways to success and ultimately failed at it. I also realized I just wasn't funny enough, and the funniest guys, as you note, were still making major waves.
Case in point. I remember meeting Ryan Long maybe in 2018 or 2019, he had just moved to the city. I was running shows at the Lantern at the time, a friend vouched for him, he was hanging out, so we had him host a show. It was clear from the get-go he had "it", whatever it is. I was not surprised when he quickly got many of the opportunities I was gunning for. First, regular spots at popular bar shows and lower level clubs, then the more "prestigious" clubs. All the while he was being super persistent for stage time (I know this, as he'd often nicely message me if I had anything coming up) and building massive YouTube following, skewering the very things that were supposedly preventing him from a career in comedy. I ultimately realized I didn't have whatever impressive thing he has, and that's what you need, and maybe it's a blessing not being afforded a career in comedy being third-tier funny as a opposed to top-tier funny.
Yeah that guy definitely built a huge thing for himself. Did not know about his persistence in the physical spaces, I always knew him as an online guy. Good for him for attacking it on all fronts.
Interestingly, your whole approach is about the same as the advice coming from the black economist, Thomas Sowell, to young blacks who face discrimination. Yes you’ll face barriers, yes you’ll be treated differently because you’re black, but your job is to brush that aside and make yourself undeniable, because if you can deliver the goods, nothing else will matter.
I mean, for me what I found so annoying about the debate was that critics of the essay constantly toggled back and forth between "no, that never happened, white men never faced any discrimination" and "of course white men faced discrimination, that's good, that's equality, that's how we heal the universe." A classic in the genre of "That's not happening, but that fact that it's happening is good."
Usually it involves several steps and a few weeks time, but they really speed ran the "It's not happening" to "It's happening and it's good" pipeline with this one.
Agree with you Freddie. See my comment on this about categorization and false dichotomies. We are in the era of foolish dichotomies, I think. I blame it on social media, of course.
First of all: sir, you are a bigot, a fascist, a coward, and a cuck. With that out of the way...man this mirrors my own experience with academia. Reading that Savage piece was like drinking some forbidden ambrosia: "Yes, my failures are not my own! The system was stacked against me! None of the mistakes I made were my fault!" Dangerous stuff to partake of. I think your analysis--that it was definitely a thing, but that it doesn't excuse the wrong steps I took--is exactly correct. And weirdly, keeping that in mind keeps me from becoming bitter.
HA! Oh yeah it's easy to fall into all of that. It's still important to call this all out for what it was in a broader sense, but yeah you can't let it drag you down and impact you more than it already has. That's like letting it beat you twice.
Thank you for a thoughtful, humble, and civil essay. It's in short supply. I do identify with the quote from the professor. It is what I am doing.
I was born in the thick of the civil rights era. In my neighborhood, I could (and did) get denounced and bullied for publicly consorting with black children. I would be called a "n_____r lover." You could type the missing 4 letters without worry, by the way. You could say them fairly freely to anyone in my neighborhood or family and they mostly thought little of it. Hard times. Good riddance.
The thing that eats at me a little (as a boy from the 60s) in this whole debate is how freely and unapologetically we make sweeping and categorical statements, for or against, "cis white men" and other demographic groups. "Privileged" or "marginalized"--two sides of the same coin? What do we think of the many people who don't fit into that false dichotomy?
The thing that always sticks in my throat is that way that the categories are used almost always (he says, hedging) without hedging or qualifiers (some, many, often, etc.) It is a convenience, of course, to talk about groups, and a political necessity. But it bothers me.
In the case of the "lost generation" the category is used to target (for expulsion or non-entrance). Sometimes it's used in a way that drifts easily into casual bigotry: "You WOULD say that, white man." Or, worse, a strain of self-bigotry: "Well, you know, I'm just a stupid white man."
It tears us apart. It divides us the way those white boys divided me from the little black boys I wasn't supposed to play with. I know I must sound terribly naive, but I keep wanting people to hedge more, to allow the possibility that, by barring cis white men at the door of Disney, Inc.--with the worthy goal of balancing the scales of social justice--we lost something, too, some diversity of experience and viewpoint that audiences could really benefit from.
Don't ask me what I think we should do instead. I honestly am not sure. Maybe go the Confucian "middle way"? Hedge a little? Don't push quite so hard down on the scale on the marginalized side?
The refusal to acknowledge how these types of policies could be wrong or have negative downstream effects is what gets me. "Reaping? Why would I give a shit about that? This sowing stuff rules!"
Yes, and as I watch the protests in Minneapolis, I think, "What horrors are we sowing?" But everything is all or nothing in times like these.
When I say to a younger person "My God you have no idea how bad it used to be! Consider yourself blessed to have to put that "micro" in front of "aggression." In my neighborhood, they just beat the shit out of you if you came onto our block." (And I got the shit kicked out of me, too, if I crossed the line.
Now I can imagine someone out there thinking, "So you are FOR racism, then?"
I was just telling my students today; it’s never been harder to break into industries and it’s never been easier to succeed on your own. It’s the paradox of our time that the systems produced by the gatekeepers to maintain their wealth also offer the prospect of independent from their control. I can’t get a job with YouTube, but I can post short films there and go viral without anyone’s by or leave.
They’re lucky to have you as their teacher!
There's a perception that this is limited to "prestige" careers, and technical professions are less effected. From my experience in engineering, this is not the case.
There aren't many women in engineering. What this means in practice is that women with very ordinary or even sub-par skill sets are heavily boosted. As an example, before a female co-worker was hired, I was already hearing how great she was from the hiring team, with the insinuation that her tech skills were better than mine. When she started working, I was assigned to help her with basic tasks such as tolerance stacks and the CAD system. By the time I left she was promoted to engineering manager (she quit within 2 months).
Women outside engineering are given a wide berth in meetings. If you find it necessary to disagree, you'd better have a diplomatic strategy planned out with the whole team in advance. A common strategy is talking over engineers, then when they attempt to interject, reminding them that a woman is talking.
If you look at big female led companies like GM, this is why they are struggling with design and quality problems. Conflict is an inherent part of problem solving, and the female approach abhors this.
Like you, I've left my original field, and it's been a change for the better.
Oh yeah, this is definitely a bigger issue in these type of fields. The institutions have to operate properly if anything is going to get done. There's not as much opportunity to "go your own way" for the hard sciences.
Sure, we need to adapt to changes but I don't think do everything yourself, hope your video goes viral, spend time building your brand on the newest app,is a satisfactory. If someone wants to be a doctor or a woodworker or whatever they need mentors and working/learning opportunities. Ideally it should be similar for more creative work.
Very true. For creative work, I feel like that stuff is becoming more and more decentralized, much like everything else in those industries. So you might not develop a relationship with an editor at a publishing house, but you can develop one with another, more experienced writer who has navigated situations similar to the one you're in. Those people are out there, you just have to go find them.
Is this fair, or better than what came before? Not necessarily. It would be great if those types of patronage networks still existed. But unfortunately we have to play the cards we're dealt.
The science goes in experiments sussing out the achievments of other animal intelligences, that nobody learns to open a new box, unlatch a box wired shut unless they see it done by someone who looks like them? It is so far true of the great apes, that (again in experiments). If the world opens like a flower in front of them, unless they see one of their selfsame species eating the heart out of the floor, they donot go for it. The result of all the studies in imitation, there is no speculative imitation, only, and now I am extending this to us, -only the confidence we take from seeing someone we believe looks like us let us say _ Entering the field. These study synopses I take from frans de Waal. It sounds true to me. And so we say More power to women. DEI might have this science foundational...
I'm glad to see your nuance here, Peter - that while white males are and have been getting screwed by society that there were still opportunities if one had only grabbed them (I have my fair share of failing to grab my own), and that it's unhealthy mentally to wallow in pity so too much focus on it is a bad thing (as an aside, most of the "whites" you list in those percentages are Jewish, unless broken out into their own category).
I further appreciated your stress on the importance of being able to freely express one's creative gifts without waiting for approval by institutional gatekeepers, even if it doesn't come with status or monetary rewards. With this attitude one may work a normal job, express oneself creatively with one's free time, and not become jaded or bitter from not being allowed advancement by others. Listening to the spirit within without external strings attached comes with its own rewards...
I'm living it every day! Not as glamorous of a lifestyle as my peers who made careers for themselves in comedy, but it has its perks.
Very good, articulate, nuanced piece. Enjoyed it. I understand your point of view here. It is, as you say, important to retain personal agency. That's why every time I write about this topic I directly state, 'I don't think white men are victims.' And I genuinely don't. On the flip side, as you wrote yourself: Clearly there is some discrimination going on and has been for a while now. But I'm not going to go out there and 'demand my rights' or something. I'm gonna write my way on Substack, publish honest writing, work hard and try to succeed on my own terms.
I do have an instinct to complain and chimp out more, but it just doesn't feel like the right move for me personally. Just a gut reaction.
Excellent essay!
I appreciate your piece and Savage’s—I think you added something nice and actionable to the convo. The saying I use w/my 4 kids (right now usually regarding # or size of cookie allotments) is: life often isn’t fair or equal, but you have a lot of control over your life, and life is good. It’s not poetic but I think it covers a lot of bases!
How lucky are we to have any cookies at all
Indeed!
This is a stand-up thing to write; doesn’t matter if I agree or not. Good advice to your kids, too.
Law of Merited Impossibility
I really appreciate your perspective, Peter. I'm a white guy who has tried to make it in the small press writer circles / academia and have had limited success. I've had to make peace with it all, and don't begrudge any individuals for their success, but I do wish I could feel as settled as you, though. While I think yes, it is up to me to do what I can to make my ambitions reality, "going your own way" is always mediated by the rules of institutions (like substack) and others in power every step of that way. The internet isn't free of bias and power brokers, and who you know/where you live/ your social and financial upbringing/your health(in my case) delimits what you can feasibly do at any one moment. When you add in a layer of bias against you, the odds often become grim.
I don't think this makes people victims, per se, but it does make them aggrieved. Getting over the distress of these messed up circumstances is definitely doable, but doing so often leads you away from your ambitions. We may be the captains of our own souls, but our bodies are the boats and for many in the "lost generation" there simply haven't been a lot of welcoming harbors. Some choose piracy as a result, but that seems the antithesis of why I wanted to be a writer and professor.
One major downside of the fall of gatekeepers is that there are no human beings to appeal to anymore, just lines of code on a server farm somewhere that make up the algorithm. It’s a very new and very weird challenge.
And you’re not wrong to struggle with this stuff. It takes some insane, zen-like patience to let go of expectations. I’m still in thrall to it in some ways, based on how frequently I’ve been checking my Substack notifications over the last 24 hours.
Great stuff man, totally connected, especially re my relationship to creativity/art after giving it up.
I pursued an acting career in NYC from 2008-2016 and had a different “problem”: too white to be Latino, too Latino to be the white guy. I would’ve kept going had I not gotten deathly sick from moving into a place with mold hidden from view, but that actually taught how fuckin’ random life really is, and how our perception of what is under our control if way off.
Not to say we have no agency, we do to a very limited existent, but even had you started creating more online slop and that would’ve gotten you more popular, your art would probably be like most art today: shitty af.
Also, what happened to Savage happened to all millennials in almost every industry after the Great Financial Crisis: they were shut out of the economy. My problem with that article is that, relative to the damage done to his generation by the banks, and the politicians who aided and abetted them — including one Barack Obama — DEI aint shit
Lots of factors at play here. My favorite stat (I’m getting the numbers wrong but it’s directionally correct) is that in 1980 the average house was like $200k. If housing grew at the same rate as wages it would now be $400k and instead it’s $800k.
Prestige as a reputational Ponzi scheme is an incredible piece of writing.
Great analysis as always. I definitely felt this. But also like you, realized there were many pathways to success and ultimately failed at it. I also realized I just wasn't funny enough, and the funniest guys, as you note, were still making major waves.
Case in point. I remember meeting Ryan Long maybe in 2018 or 2019, he had just moved to the city. I was running shows at the Lantern at the time, a friend vouched for him, he was hanging out, so we had him host a show. It was clear from the get-go he had "it", whatever it is. I was not surprised when he quickly got many of the opportunities I was gunning for. First, regular spots at popular bar shows and lower level clubs, then the more "prestigious" clubs. All the while he was being super persistent for stage time (I know this, as he'd often nicely message me if I had anything coming up) and building massive YouTube following, skewering the very things that were supposedly preventing him from a career in comedy. I ultimately realized I didn't have whatever impressive thing he has, and that's what you need, and maybe it's a blessing not being afforded a career in comedy being third-tier funny as a opposed to top-tier funny.
Yeah that guy definitely built a huge thing for himself. Did not know about his persistence in the physical spaces, I always knew him as an online guy. Good for him for attacking it on all fronts.
Interestingly, your whole approach is about the same as the advice coming from the black economist, Thomas Sowell, to young blacks who face discrimination. Yes you’ll face barriers, yes you’ll be treated differently because you’re black, but your job is to brush that aside and make yourself undeniable, because if you can deliver the goods, nothing else will matter.