What’s Wrong With Boys?

by on May 25, 2026 | 22 Comments

The attack perpetrated by two teen-agers upon a San Diego mosque, on May 18 of this year, is just the latest in a string of violent acts that include the assault on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (April 25, 2026), the murder of Charlie Kirk (September 10, 2025), the attempted assassination of President Trump (July 13, 2024), the attack on a Poway Synagogue (April 27, 2019), and the Sandy Hook school shooting (December 14, 2012) to name just a few high-profile examples. The list could be much longer. Further, this pattern is not new but arguably reaches back as far as the Columbine shooting on April 20, 1999. These attacks had certain features in common. They were committed by young men who are described as alienated from others, expressing a high degree of nihilism—”the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless”—and hatred for others.1 Another adjective that occurs frequently in this context is incel, which is short hand for “involuntary celibates.” Two 2023 papers explored the rise of incels and how they become “violent extremists.”2 Robert Green and Allan Palombi write about a “black pill pipeline,” by which incels gather in online forums to commiserate over their frustration with the world. Their study found “community members progress from a sense of solidarity to hostile radicalism, where violence is encouraged and sometimes carried out.”3 The members of these groups feel powerless and through their participation in these groups “conclude that their rage and powerlessness can only be relieved through violence….”4 Green and Palombi describe a process whereby members become gradually indoctrinated. They begin by “red-pilling” (a phrase borrowed from the film The Matrix) and end by “black pilling,” a “nihilistic state that often includes rhetoric advocating violence…as the incels’ only recourse against an unfair social order that renders them invisible or seeks their humiliation.”5 Miriam Lindner comes to similar conclusions but interprets them through the lens of evolutionary biology.6

Obviously, as in the most recent case, mental illness is a factor in such violence. One of the San Diego mosque shooters had been hospitalized before the attack for psychiatric issues and was known by the authorities to have threatened violence. Because of the possibility of an attack, his parents told the authorities that they had removed firearms from the house.7

There is another part of the story that hits close to home for those of us who confess the Reformed faith: two of these shooters were members of orthodox, confessionally Reformed congregations. As it happens I know both congregations and their pastors. These are not idiosyncratic congregations, they are not organized around any sort of ideology that might encourage young men to become violent. Both of them are ideal congregations demonstrating the marks of the true church: the pure preaching of the gospel, the pure administration of the sacraments, and the use of church discipline.8

How can it be that boys who have been raised in godly homes and churches, come to a place where they turn to violence?

Bad Company

The studies are right that the online world can be deeply corrupting. I believe now that hitherto I have not sufficiently appreciated the Apostle Paul’s warning, “Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Cor 15:33). Never has it been easier to find bad company. Before the smartphone and before the internet we had to look for it physically. Today, it is as close as the Discord app on one’s smartphone.

The potential for such corruption, however, does not come from outside of us but from inside of us. Our Lord said, “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person” (Matt 15:11). The truth about every man and all men, to borrow a phrase from the Remonstrants, is that the fall corrupted everything and everyone and especially us human beings. We speak of “depravity,” i.e., the corruption of all of our faculties brought about by the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve.9 We were created “good and after his own image, that is, in righteousness and true holiness” in order that we “might rightly know God” our Creator, “heartily love him, and live with him in eternal blessedness, to praise and glorify him.”10 By nature, however, after the fall, “we are wholly incapable of any good and prone to all evil.” This is true of us unless, by the free, sovereign grace of God, “we are born again by the Spirit of God.”11

The Apostle Paul warned Pastor Timothy that the sorts of things we have witnessed over the last twenty seven years are a mark of the last days, i.e., the days between the ascension of Christ and his return:

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth (2 Tim 3:1–7).

The language of verse two, “abusive , disobedient to parents, and the adjective ungrateful” and the phrase in verse three “without self-control” and, the adjectives from verse 4,”treacherous, reckless” seem apropos as does his warning about those who have “the appearance of godliness” but not its power. Where, before the internet, people may have physically crept into households today they do it digitally, via smartphones. “Always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” describes a certain type of social media user who may be particularly susceptible to being “black pilled.”

Out Of The Rabbit Hole

There is a saying online, “go touch grass.” It means, “you need to get offline and reconnect with the real world of sense experience.” In our time, as AI blurs the line between the online and the world we experience with our senses, especially for generations that have grown up with smartphones, gaming, and virtual reality, it is not clear that we all agree any more as to what counts as the real world. There is some good news in this regard. There are reports that there is a movement among some member of Gen-Z (or Zoomers, i.e., those born between 1997–2012) to switch from smart phones (e.g., the iPhone or an Android phone) to flip phones. They are recognizing that they are addicted to their smartphones because, as Rachel Hale writes (paraphrasing psychiatrist Yann Poncin), “smartphones impact the brain in three key ways: impacting productivity and prioritization, depleting the brain’s cognitive patience and threshold for tolerating frustration, and rewiring the brain’s pleasure pathways and dopamine release.” Poncin says

Your dopamine system, over time, over multiple events, is getting set in a way that to trigger dopamine release and a feel good release, you actually now need this phone, because nothing else in life is regularly going to give you that level of dopamine satisfaction.12

Hale reports that some Zoomers who are ditching their smartphones are deliberately working to get together, in the real world, to socialize. This is a very good trend. It has been clear to me for sometime that unhappy boys who retreat to their computers and phones, are more likely to go down the 4Chan, 8Chan, Reddit, and Discord rabbit hole, thereby reinforcing the misery of others and being taught by others to think of themselves not as sinners saved by grace but as victims of an unjust world. Boys who accept this narrative are heading for trouble. In this self-identity, the nihilistic incels overlap with conspiracy theorists, who convince themselves and others that “the Jews” are responsible for all their problems and for all the ills of the world.13 In other conspiratorial circles, MAGA is responsible for all evils.14

In general, boys need socialization with real people, in the real world. They need to be outdoors and active. They need to be accomplishing things. What they do not need is isolation and immersion in artificial online communities, which can be populated by people with whom parents would not want their children socializing in real life. It is past time for Christian parents to take control of their children’s online world. Your children will not like it but being a real parent is more like being a cop than it is being a buddy to one’s children. It is also time for parents to realize that college is no longer necessarily the path to social and financial success. In some cases, it may be a path to depression, isolation, self-hatred, and nihilism. Too many faculty and administrators who populate colleges and universities are themselves miserable. They see themselves as victims of an unjust society over which they are powerless and they seek to recruit young people to that view of the world. This is not true of all faculties and schools and there are still good places to send one’s children to college but they must be chosen carefully and they may no longer be selected principally on the hope that a prestigious degree will lead to prosperity. What does it profit a family if a child gains a prestigious degree and loses his soul? A two-year community college degree and an apprenticeship as an electrician or as a plumber may be far more beneficial for a young man than four years in college.

Boys need godly, mature men in their lives. Ideally, Dad should be the first of those.15  To know what a Christian man is, boys need a model. They need a father and other godly men to come alongside them to guide and correct them. I am deeply grateful for a number of men who invested time in me, who provided guidance, without which I might never have come to faith (thank you Bob Rung for speaking to me about Christ) and without whom I might not have learned what it is to be a Christian father. Without the society that adult male leadership provides, boys will be feral. They need to see responsibility and duty fulfilled and they need to be taught to take up their duties and responsibilities when it is their time. Underneath and behind the nihilism and despair fueling the rage that we see manifested in acts of violence is Narcissism. It is only when we realize that God put us here not to be served but to serve (Mark 10:45) that boys are properly oriented.

Finally, young men need the gospel. Addicted to dopamine hits, gambling, and porn, some of them despair of ever being free. They see themselves as so broken and so lost that they are beyond hope, beyond forgiveness, and beyond love. Many of these acts of violence are really murder/suicides. By doing them they know that they will be noticed and, in the sick society they have joined (and internalized) they even see themselves as heroic, as in the case of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter. When they do them, they know that they may be killed and they seem to want it. They need to hear the law, to learn the greatness of their sin and misery—most of them need little convincing about their misery—and they need to know that the grace of Christ is greater than all their sin, including their addictions. They need to know that impenitence is the path to hell but they also need to know that Jesus receives the filthiest sinner who turns to him in faith. They need to know that the church is not for the righteous but for sinners just like them. They need to know that there is hope for them, that “if God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31b). They need to know that, in Christ, we are a new creation (2 Cor 5:17)

There is a way forward. Our boys need not take this dark path but we must pay attention and know that Satan is like a roaring lion, prowling and seeking whom he may devour (1 Pet 5:8). We are in a spiritual battle for the souls of our boys and we need to respond with the weapons of the Spirit (Eph 6:13–18). We may be thankful that we have great and powerful weapons, like prayer, because the one who hears our prayers is most great and most powerful. We should take comfort that, in Christ, “you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

notes

  1. s.v., “Nihilism,” Oxford English of Dictionary, Third Edition
    (Oxford University Press 2010, 2024).
  2. Carrie Stetler, “Study Reveals How ‘Incels’ Become Violent Extremists” (September 20, 2023); Anna Lamb, “The Rise of ‘Incels’” (October 18, 2023).
  3. Stetler, “Study Reveals.”
  4. Stetler, “Study Reveals.”
  5. Stetler, “Study Reveals.”
  6. Anna Lamb, “The Rise of Incels.”
  7. Shelby Bremer, “Year Before Shooting, Father Removed Guns From Home of Islamic Center Teen Gunman” (May 22, 2026).
  8. These categories are drawn from Belgic Confession art. 29.
  9. Heidelberg Catechism, 7.
  10. Heidelberg Catechism, 6.
  11. Heidelberg Catechism, 8.
  12. Rachel Hale, “These College Kids Are Swearing Off Smartphones. It’s Sparking a Movement.” (USA Today, June 6, 2025)
  13. R. Scott Clark, “Conspiracies: The Temptation of Cultural Gnosticism” (November 17, 2025); R. Scott Clark, “A Major Problem With Conspiracy Theories (Part 1).“
  14. A man in my town was recently severely beaten by his neighbor apparently because the neighbor was offended by his display of American flags and pro-Trump signs. He pleaded not guilty yesterday to attempted murder among other charges. Update: The Escondido Police published a publicity release just now (approximately 5:00 PM May 25. 2026) notifying the community that Mr Sheron died today. On January 9, 2020, several members of pro-Trump rally were attacked by members of Antifa. Those Antifa members were prosecuted and, in 2024, several were convicted and some were jailed.
  15. R. Scott Clark, “Big” (January 20, 2014).

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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22 comments

  1. As I read your article, I kept thinking of my son. I read parts of it to my husband who agreed. Our 28 year old son came out as trans about 6 years ago or so. We were raised in the Reformed faith, and raised our 4 kids in it. We did our best as parents to bring them up to know and love the Lord. Of course we recognize that as parents we made many mistakes, but we earnestly strove to raise them faithfully.
    Our kids were born between 1996 and 2004, and were largely raised without social media. The youngest two had probably the earliest exposure to it. Yet, our oldest and our youngest are faithful Christians, both married godly spouses, and both live moral lives. Our middle two not so much. And yet, raised the same.
    Our son had 2 back to back concussions in grade 11, and “healed”, but at the end of his first year after high school, he had a couple car accidents and his concussion symptoms came back with a vengeance. That was in 2019. Despite advanced treatment, he never got rid of his headaches or light and sound sensitivity….bad enough that he cannot work a normal job, drive, or experience a normal social life. The result was isolation. And an online community through discord. He first started strong in his faith, sharing it in the gaming groups he was part of. Eventually they changed him. He’s never been athletic or buff. He’s tall and gangly. Never liked his body despite having a large group of godly friends and a family that loved him. He definitely was a boy in his interests….Star Wars and light sabers, Airsoft with his Dad, all things military (in a safe, informative manner), Lego of Star Wars, and Halo as he got older. So when he told us he had gender dysphoria, we were shocked. Despite all our best efforts, the encouragement from his friends to accept himself…..he became trans and is well on his way to surgery. I blame the isolation and online community which quickly became a large LGBTQ crowd.
    I guess what I’m saying is that what you wrote about how boys get to where they are in terms of black pillers, incels etc is almost identical to the transformation our son and others experience that doesn’t result in violence necessarily, but the outcome is just as hard for parents to see.
    We can do everything “right” in raising our boys. And have sons that turn out radically different, as our two sons have. (and I could rant about how social media played a part in our daughter’s change from a beautiful girl to one who drinks, does drugs, is sexually promiscuous and has cut off all contact with us and her siblings. But that’s a whole other topic, yet the outcome is the same for us….2 daughters raised the same, 2 radically different lives).
    Anyway, thanks for the article and reading my rambles.

    Reply ↓

    • Dear Nicole,

      I’m very sorry. May the Lord grant you comfort in your grief and may he work in a surprising and wonderful way in the hearts and minds of your children and bring to reality the promises made in their baptisms.

      Reply ↓

  2. Mr. Clark—

    You wrote: “ How can it be that boys who have been raised in godly homes and churches, come to a place where they turn to violence?”

    I have been young, and now I am old, and I observe that no one truly knows what they believe until after they leave Dad’s/Mom’s house.

    Only in “the real world” are deeded thoughts, precepts, and “truths” tested, free of the “training wheels” known as our parents. What is found to be”work” is retained and the rest is discarded on the path to autonomy.

    Agree that the digital age has introduced some horrible influences, and subjected malleable young minds to almost insurmountable corruption. This is part of the warfare that engulfs every generation—only now it reaches into homes and hearts thru exposure to screens that begins very early.

    I caution against the notion that Reformed (or any other flavor of) theology provides “immunity” from the sinfulness of humanity (and I recognize this is the premise of your story—that the Reformed environment from which the shooters came did not preclude their “radicalization).

    I believe Dad/Mom/the family provide the last line of preventative measures in the appropriate (Godly) socialization of children. This is obvious given the demonically driven effort to destroy the chief institution of God for building clan, community, and society—family (corporately and one person at a time).

    The obvious solution is a life redeemed by Messiah. Christ is the Solution for everyone and everything.

    The reality is that redemption does not always come on “church time or schedule,” and we’re missing the point of family if we expect church attendance and denominational order to provide a preventative to sinfulness.

    The family is in the trenches. That’s where the battle is fought and won or lost. Unfortunately our Western world of faster, quicker, instant everything sorely works against the success of the family in training young people how to survive and thrive.

    I wish I could be more precise in providing a tactical strategy to increase the chances of victory, vis-a-vis the home and family (and by extension, the church). Again, we both know the ultimate Answer. But the contemporary battle for souls is more fierce, and bloody, and demonically driven than ever (that is not hyperbole).

    Press on.

    Reply ↓

  3. Great article

    We can’t change the world but we can change ours, one church, one class, one youth group at a time.

    Reply ↓

  4. Are there any covenant communities that seem to be engaging and discipling young men (boys) effectively/efficiently/properly? I hear of some “advertising with confidence” (think “Moscow”) but I wonder if there are any clear patterns that have evidence (long-term results) to back up the method.

    I wonder if there are more “generations in charge” that have been “lost boys” (Gen x and beyond) who want to lead well, according to Christ, but still aren’t sure how best to do it; compared to the men who have been shown and experienced a proper/effective upbringing?

    Reply ↓

    • Mr Carmen,

      I think many faithful churches in the Reformation traditions (Reformed and Lutheran) that are doing a decent job of discipling boys. It’s well to remember that it is a tiny number people who have committed these horrific acts.

      I don’t know that we need another new program (not that you are suggesting that we do need such) as much as we need to become aware of what’s happening around us (and in our congregations) so that we can address it properly. Spending time with our boys, paying attention to our boys, mentoring them happens all the time but where it isn’t we need to do it and we need to understand the potential cost of not doing it. If we’re not intentionally making disciples of our boys, someone else will be.

      As to Moscow, I could not recommend them as a pattern. There is a lot of talk coming out of Moscow and a good bit of PR but I have reasons to doubt the results on the ground.

      1) Check out the history of the Kirk at Moscowid.net.

      2) Michael Bostick was member of of the CREC congregations (as I recall it was Christ Church) in Moscow, ID and a football coach and around young men in that world a fair bit and he raised an alarm a few years ago about what he saw. He spoke up about it on social media and later moved his family away from Moscow. He’s not on X any longer. I did speak to him directly about his experience.

      3) See also these resources about the experiment going on in Moscow, ID.

      Reply ↓

        • The ALERT program was founded in 1994 in Watersmeet, Michigan, by a man named Ron Fuhrman, who saw the need for a training program for young men not planning on college, but in need of physical challenges, discipleship, discipline, and skills. Needing larger facilities, the program moved to Big Sandy, TX, in 2000 – to an empty college campus.
          The program is nine months in length and has three phases.
          Phase One is Basic Training: 9 weeks of intense physical training, Christian discipleship, outdoor survival skills, and more. It is similar to military basic training, just no weapons, and strongly faith-based.
          Phase Two (optional) is 10 weeks of training in disaster relief skills: chain saw, search and rescue, rescue diving, fire fighting, first aid, and more, with usually a 2-week deployment to put those skills into practice. Deployments are usually tornado/hurricane/flood clean-ups, and frequently in collaboration with Samaritan’s Purse. ALERT provides the manpower; SP provides food and sleeping facilities. Both organizations are very happy with this teamwork.
          Phase Three (optional; also 10 weeks) is electives: Construction, Fire Academy, Technical Rescue, Aviation, Leadership and Communications, EMT, Advanced Diving, Missions, and Basic Training Cadre. Not all courses are offered every quarter.
          The program is for young men only. They must be 17-25 and must have completed high school. The application process is rigorous; you can view the application on the website.
          The young men graduate when they complete all three phases, and it’s a huge accomplishment. The have marketable skills, discipline, respect for authority, grounding in the Word of God, and a strong relationship with Christ. Such a graduation ceremony is coming up on Friday, June 5th, at 3:30 pm. It’s free and open to the public.
          But for anyone anywhere near East Texas, I invite you to what I call the “crown jewel” of ALERT: a **Basic Training graduation ceremony,** coming up this Friday, May 29th, at 3:30 pm. It, too, is free and open to the public. Outdoor PT and marching demonstrations begin at 1:30 pm. This will be the 74th unit to complete basic training. During these 9 weeks, these 30 young men have undergone a radical transformation in their demeanor, discipline, physical strength, and spiritual maturity. They memorize the entire book of I Peter during the 9 weeks and quote it in unison in the ceremony—for me, always the highlight of the ceremony. They sing two hymns, and they sound like a trained choir. I also enjoy the speech of the young man chosen by his peers to best represent them. Their families come from all over the country for these ceremonies, and it’s wonderful to see the reunions at the conclusion of the ceremony.
          It’s a privilege for me to be involved with this wonderful program.

          Reply ↓

  5. Another thing, can we stop already with the “ it may be a path to depression, isolation, self-hatred, and nihilism”. For the poor sheltered Christian parents who get a steady diet of rage-bait in their Christian social media cocoons, and shake their fist at the screen as Fox News plays all day, there has emerged this idea that college is a one-way track to your kid becoming a pro-Hamas socialist with blue hair and gender pronouns. This is nonsense. A tiny minority of college students of this type get 100% of the exposure in right-leaning information sources. But the truth is for every student like that from the gender studies department there is an *ocean* of other students who get no media coverage who major in business, marketing, finance, computer science, etc. who have ZERO connection to the “campus craziness”. Zero, zilch. These students keep their heads down, have a college life probably pretty similar to mine in the early 1990’s and graduate, entering the job market as the only ones with so much as a remote shot at a higher paying job. But those students don’t fit the rage bait narrative and so they get no coverage, it’s like they don’t even exist, despite outnumbering the colorful clowns in the social science department by vast, vast majorities.

    Please stop filling conservative Christian’s heads with the lie that college turns their kids into the cartoon characters that they see on #libsoftiktok. This is a wildly exaggerated (mostly social) media distortion.

    College professors despots have been edge-case leftists for MANY decades. This is nothing new. And yet for all those decades, colleges turned out durable majorities of Americans who go onto some kind of a successful life, occupying a political identity that’s somewhere between center-left and center-right, where the majority of Americans remain.

    Reply ↓

    • Paul,

      I think you’re trading in stereotypes re homeschoolers. I’ve taught elite (Ivy League and Oxbridge) university grads and homeschoolers. My homeschooled students are often the brightest, most well read, and have the best critical thinking skills in class.

      As I said below, I think you’re underestimating the success the radical left has had in corrupting every department and every discipline in the universities. As I mentioned earlier, things seem to be a little better in the STEM departments but that is changing too.

      I reflecting on what the universities are saying about themselves. I read the trade publications and I pay attention to the trends. My experience of students and my work as both an administrator (part of which was as the Accreditation Liaison Officer and the Chief Academic Officer) and as a prof has required me to pay attention to what’s happening.

      The pro-Hamas riots were not isolated and they weren’t small. Jews on campuses across the Ivy Leagues reported a dramatic increase in violence and hostility. The congressional hearings exposed the inability and refusal of university presidents to deal with the radicalism that has overtaken not just the Ivies but also Big 10 and even Big 12 (land grant!) universities and other regional schools and even small colleges.

      My profs were mainly old-fashioned liberals but as a poli sci major I was assigned to read the Communist Manifesto several times. Once was enough, thank you. Deconstructionism swept through Universities in the West from the mid-80s and left wreckage in its wake. Where I thought that the fall of the Berlin Wall would be the death nail for Marxism on campus it turned out to be the seedbed for a sweeping takeover of the campuses by the Marxists. I was completely wrong. Deconstructionism is dead and it’s been replaced by versions of Marxism. Most of the profs aren’t liberals any more. Look at the surveys of religiously and culturally conservative faculty on campus. Where they exist they keep their mouths shut. They know what will happen to them if they speak up. There are a few outstanding exceptions to the rule but those exceptions test the rule. They don’t invalidate it.

      You should talk to kids in the business colleges on campus. I have.

      Reply ↓

  6. “It is also time for parents to realize that college is no longer necessarily the path to social and financial success.” — while it’s true that a college degree is no longer a guarantee of financial success, it remains, for the most part, the only chance one has at financial success. Without one a person doesn’t even have a shot at being considered for the jobs which pay the most. Industries that take all the chips off the table — tech, media and finance are populated nearly 100% by college grads. Unless a guy is ambitious as a plumber, builds a plumbing company and has six other plumbers working for him, he’s going to be in the same paycheck to paycheck existence (if he’s in or near a city anyway) as anyone else these days making $75,000 a year. It’s sad, but it’s probably not a coincidence that men only get 40% of the college degeees now and so many of them have become dejected losers who have given up on life. Without the college degree, they bump into these invisible glass ceilings in life, go from one dead end job to another and ultimately find that video games in Mom and Dad’s basement are better.

    This os not the time to discourage men from going to college! This trend that we are seeing 60/40 women/men college degree needs to be reversed. Unless we want so many men in our country to become sort of a permanent underclass.

    Reply ↓

    • Paul,

      I’ve been in the higher ed business for 31 years. Things have changed dramatically. The universities particularly have largely given up on what used to be understood to be education. This isn’t to say that it’s not happening in STEM-related departments but even then education has been heavily politicized. The liberal arts colleges in universities are smoldering disaster areas. I’ve been preparing students to enter PhD programs for most of my time in higher ed. I no longer encourage most of them to enter PhD programs. The expense and the suffering are no longer worth it. The education business is in serious trouble financially. The bubble is bursting. Christian colleges, which have been financially marginal, are collapsing. Universities are under tremendous financial pressure and many of them are teetering on the brink.

      Employers are increasing unimpressed by BA degrees because they’ve seen the product. I’ve been teaching the product of the universities and I’ve seen a dramatic decline in the product and it’s only getting worse. Students are not learning things that were once considered a prerequisite for leaving Middle School and high school.

      Universities have become incredibly hostile to boys. What was once a small collection of angry women, in one office, is now the administration in many universities. Boys rightly feel unwelcome at university. This isn’t new. Camille Paglia was pointing this out years ago and it’s only become worse.

      As to the job prospects for boys in the trades, talk to Mike Rowe. He says that the need for tradesmen is huge and those jobs/careers pay a lot more than Starbucks. As to tech jobs, I know fairly well a young man who skipped college, took some courses in computer security and is now a DOD contractor with a security clearance making a lot more than he would have (without the accompanying outrageous debt) had he attended university.

      Reply ↓

      • I am 51. I have many friends with kids in college. Perhaps this group skews toward an upper socio-economic level. In every case I can think of, the kids in college are studying business, marketing, computer science, finance or perhaps some other major that reeks of practicality but that’s another discussion. I have had many conversations with these parents because this is a topic that I’m keenly interested in and a story that I follow closely. In every single case, these children of my friends and all of their friends have a pretty “normal” college experience and see college as a stepping stone into a world where they even have a shot at a high paying job. Sure they might have some professor who is all hot and bothered about some woke topic and you might have to dance around a little bit to accommodate the professors sensibilities but this is just par for the course now, students are quite used to it and students who are serious about entering a job market where the best jobs are even a possibility, they learn to dance around those sensibilities with little effort.

        I have many friends who work in different fields in NYC as I worked there for many years and keep in contact. There are industries now that literally hoard all of the high paying jobs — tech, media banking/finance, law, medicine and various other STEM related fields. And you know what every single person who works in this fields, or at least works beyond the mailroom has? a college degree. As I said earlier, and you are right, a college degree isn’t a guarantee of a high paying job but it’s the bare minimum to even have a shot at the industries which hold the most plum jobs.

        Employers may not be ‘impressed’ with BA degrees, but at this time, the ease of applying to many jobs quickly and efficiently is unimaginable. But submitting resumes digitally, people can apply for 100 or more jobs in a day. This results in employers getting dozens and dozens of applications sometimes hundreds for a job opening. The way you narrow down the huge number into a more readable number is practically cruel, like, uhm, what kind of idiot would use this font, he’s out, type of cruel. When there are 75 people that you are competing against, 66 of them have BA’s what do you think is the easiest way that the employer (and, increasingly an AI pre-filter) is going to eliminate the first group of nine on the very first pass and not even give them a second more of attention?

        I’ll tell you another thing. The 60/40 ratio of F/M college degrees that we have now, wait until it’s 70/30. Let’s see how many losers are in their parents basements after that. How many men will be emasculated by higher educated women who run laps around them on the track as they increasingly make up the only group capable of qualifying for the best paying jobs.

        I’m not saying this is going to be easy, but men need to not roll over and play dead and they need to reclaim their place in this equation, to me anyway, being the plumber and playing servant class to an increasingly female professional class who earn 5X times what the plumber makes, uhm, sucks. This will only continue to erode M-F relations, deteriorate marriage and birth rates, and other related problems. When that ratio goes to 70/30 there will be way, way more shooters than there are today.

        I guess the alternative is to just put your hands up in the air and say “well the feminists won, too bad for us” and have the prospect of being a man in our hyper competitive society just be part of a sort of managed decline.

        Reply ↓

        • Paul,

          I’m not saying that no one should go to university. I’m not saying that no young men should not go. I am asking parents to question the assumption that it’s the only path to prosperity and stability. It isn’t.

          Not everyone can work in the trades. Not everyone has those abilities but experienced, skilled tradesman are making a very good living. There’s a huge demand for them. Further, the guys who are going into the trades are making a lot more than the typical liberal arts grad. Someone in the trades, who didn’t accumulate 100,000 to 200,000 in debt, is much better off than the barista paying down $250,000 in debt.

          As to the financial crisis in the academic business read The Chronicles of Higher Education. It’s the cover story of the latest issue.

          Is it possible to find a college of business that isn’t insane? Yes, but everyone has to take Gen Ed courses and the Gen Ed courses are increasingly taught by purple-haired transgender or people who are are queering gender in some other way. This is the reality of college life. It’s like a cult. Some people are able to navigate the cult, some people are able to get their minds right after they leave the cult but some people never make it back to reality.

          If someone wants to work in a field that requires a BA or a BS, then, of course, they need to get that credential but a lot of those jobs are about to disappear. People who can do things with their hands aren’t going to be as easily replaced.

          Mostly what I’m doing is warning parents not to be naive, not to assume that the university to which they’re sending their child is the same institution they attended. It isn’t. It’s gotten worse since my children graduated 10+ years ago.

          I’m not giving up. I’m enthusiastic about some experiments like the University of Austin, where they’re trying to preserve a classical liberal education. Hillsdale and Grove City are still offering a classical liberal arts education. What Ben Sasse was trying to do at U of Florida was positive but who knows what will become of that project? St John’s College has been pursuing the Great Books project for decades. The University of Chicago is pushing back against the craziness but how long it will last and how sincere it is remains to be seen.

          The notion that a college degree is essential to all success in the world was never really true. It was a self-serving myth pushed by BigEd especially during the Obama Admin (who essentially turned the BigEd into a political client), who went all in and radically changed the financial incentives. Students and schools spent borrowed money like there was still a baby-boom (as if they hadn’t murdered 60-70 million babies). I know of one case where a student (not one of ours) who had borrowed (last I knew) 750K with no intent to pay it back and no likelihood it would ever be repaid. The genius educrats who run the ed biz refused to see the demographic boulder rolling down the hill. To switch metaphors, they’ve taken two poison pills simultaneously: 1) they gave up on education thereby diminishing the incentive for intelligent parents to continue investing in an ever-increasingly expensive product (see below); 2) they killed the demographic goose that was laying the golden eggs.

          College costs have considerably outpaced inflation. In 1984 I think I was paying $30 a credit. That same credit now costs $259. According to the inflation calculator, that credit should cost $96.00. The lowest estimated coast of attendance for a student living on-campus, paying in-state tuition) at Nebraska is now north of $28K. That’s about 120K for 4 years for a middle-of-the-road education at a publicly-funded land grant institution where most of the intro courses are taught by grad students who, frankly, don’t know much and whose attention is understandably on their dissertation, not Greek Mythology 101.

          Reply ↓

          • Let’s try a little thought experiment: let’s get into our imaginary car and go to just about any city in America. In that city, let’s drive over to the nice side of town, where the neighborhoods are incredibly safe, the schools are the envy of the whole city. The people there live in beautiful homes and drive nice cars, but organic eggs for $12 a dozen at weekend farmers markets and take their kids on nice vacations. When the price of gas goes up they don’t miss a beat. What percentage of these folks here have college degrees? I’m going to guess a number really close to 100%. Or is this the part of town where all the plumbers live? (Or the baristas? 🤣)

            Now let’s get back into the car and drive over to that side of town where things aren’t so nice. Where men drink cheap beer in sad bars that play a lot of country music. Where an increasingly large number of kids are homeschooled (and not vaccinated for things like measles, because, you know, that weird guy that you follow on Reddit surely knows more than your family doctor). Here the kids get hand-me-downs and their parents are strongly attracted to populist political movements. These are “America’s forgotten men” who “had their lunch stolen from them on the playground by *the elites*”. When the price of eggs or a gallon of gas goes up by a buck these people are over a barrel. What % of these people have college degrees? I’m thinking of a number that is probably very, very low.

            Is this all just a weird coincidence?

          • And I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that those people on that nice side of town didn’t go to Hillsdale or Grove City.

  7. There is much truth/evidence for what you have written about these mass-shooters. And now the govt wants to build many AI centers that are so loud their hum can be heard long distances. People who live in the vicinity of AI centers hear the hum non stop even within their homes with doors and windows shut. I am sure it will be driving many people crazy!!!

    We have to be proactive and tell our community leaders NO to AI centers.

    Reply ↓

    • That sounds sort of like the prospect of shoveling snow during a blizzard. good luck getting that genie back into the bottle.

      Reply ↓

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