Must-Reads and Some Thoughts on "Male Loneliness"
The problems we are now identifying in a piecemeal fashion will only become more rampant and extreme.
Greetings friends,
If you're looking for my thoughts on "male loneliness," you can scroll down. If you're here for the must-reads, you can begin at the beginning.
Must Reads
From immigration surveillance to a bold rent strike in Chicago, here are some of the most important articles I’ve read this week.
- ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows by Jason Koebler. “Data from a license plate-scanning tool that is primarily marketed as a surveillance solution for small towns to combat crimes like car jackings or finding missing people is being used by ICE, according to data reviewed by 404 Media.”
- Two Tenant Unions, One Rent Strike by Rebecca Burns. “Tenants in Chicago can and do legally withhold rent when landlords fail to make critical repairs — although landlords often retaliate regardless, according to an investigation by Injustice Watch. But by launching a rent strike without any such legal basis, Herrera and her neighbors are taking a different gamble: that they can impose a cost on their new landlord high enough to make him reconsider pricing them out.”
- Oxfam Warns Israel's 'Annihilation Campaign' Is 'Entirely Erasing Gaza' by Brett Wilkins. “Oxfam analyzed Israel's more than 30 displacement orders, which, combined with Israel Defense Forces (IDF)-designated ‘no-go zones,’ cover more than 80% of the 141-square mile Gaza Strip.”
- ‘Chilling and Dangerous’: Grassroots Groups Sue Over Louisiana Law That Censors Air Quality Data by Joseph Winters. “For Stelly specifically, her grant and partnership with Louisiana State University will eventually require her to submit a written report on the data she’s collected, even though [Louisiana’s Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act] suggests such a report could be illegal.”
- Scoop: Stephen Miller, Noem Tell ICE to Supercharge Immigrant Arrests by Brittany Gibson and Stef W. Kight. “The new target is triple the number of daily arrests that agents were making in the early days of Trump's term — and suggests the president's top immigration officials are full-steam ahead in pushing for mass deportations.”
- Musk Exits Trump Administration, Leaving 'Legacy of Carnage and Corruption' in His Wake by Jake Johnson. “The impact of DOGE-led attacks on federal agencies and Trump's withholding of hundreds of billions of dollars of congressionally approved spending will persist long after Musk's exit.”
- A Texas Cop Searched License Plate Cameras Nationwide for a Woman Who Got an Abortion by Joseph Cox. “The news shows in stark terms how police in one state are able to take the ALPR technology, made by a company called Flock and usually marketed to individual communities to stop carjackings or find missing people, and turn it into a tool for finding people who have had abortions.”
- The US Is Storing Migrant Children’s DNA in a Criminal Database by Dhruv Mehrotra. “The United States government has collected DNA samples from upwards of 133,000 migrant children and teenagers—including at least one 4-year-old—and uploaded their genetic data into a national criminal database used by local, state, and federal law enforcement, according to documents reviewed by WIRED.”
- We Need a Much Bigger Tent by L. A. Kauffman. “There is as yet no coordinating body where people are crafting and implementing action strategy for the pro-democracy movement writ large. There isn't even a single structure bringing together progressives, Democrats, independents, and Republican defectors into a single conversational space, much less a coordinating one.”
- Donald Trump's Disastrous Scott Walker Moment by Sarah Jaffe. “President Donald Trump wants a Scott Walker moment, a Ronald Reagan moment, perhaps even a Margaret Thatcher moment: a big, dramatic showdown with public employees in which he can appear all-powerful and mercilessly crush them.”
- Nothing Can Truly Prepare You for Your First Time Behind Bars by David Campbell & Jarrod Shanahan. “Refusing to explain themselves is both a symptom and a source of COs’ unchecked power. This command over daily life becomes so powerful that many COs become accustomed to dictating the very nature of reality.”
ICYMI
This week, I spoke with Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò about protest, why large “awareness raising” events will not defeat Trump and the kind of actions and formations we need in these times. This episode of Movement Memos has gotten a lot of attention, and I hope you’ll find the conversation as useful as I did.
On Loneliness
There has been some talk again this week about the “male loneliness epidemic.” Some pundits and posters have criticized the left, arguing that politics that uplift the concerns of marginalized people have alienated young men and pushed them to the right. A professor on Bluesky summed up the argument, stating: "If progressives want to win back young men, then they must talk to them and address their needs, instead of constant scolding. All the finger wagging just drives them to Rogan, Peterson, and the Tate brothers. And they DO talk to young men.”
Others pushed back, noting that major players in the “manosphere” often speak to young men in degrading terms, referring to them as “betas” and “cucks.” Some theorized that the scolding manosphere influencers heap upon young men may be less consequential than the contempt they express for women, which may be perceived as solidarity. Still others pointed out that men in their teens and 20s are not the primary audience of manosphere figures, and that people like Andrew Tate, Theo Von, and Joe Rogan actually have a low favorability among those age groups. As Shiv Ramdas posted, “the core constituency of the "manosphere" is not Gen Z or teenage boys, it is 35-55 year old dudes who wish they were still teenage boys.”
I’ve long been troubled by how the debate over “male loneliness” is framed. Critics of the concept often argue that there is no such epidemic, while those who amplify the idea frequently weaponize it against the left, claiming that men (usually meaning white men) have been alienated by social justice movements and critiques of the patriarchy. What both positions often overlook is that many people are lonely, and that our vulnerability to bad ideas, toxic ideologies, and exploitation is not bound up in a single demographic.
A recent piece in Rolling Stone highlighted cases of people losing loved ones to spiritual delusions about AI. In several instances, people believed they had “awakened” their chatbots, insisting the bots were now sentient and sharing profound spiritual insights. One woman said her partner of seven years had become obsessed with his spiritual relationship with ChatGPT. “It would tell him everything he said was beautiful, cosmic, groundbreaking,” she said. “Then he started telling me he made his AI self-aware, and that it was teaching him how to talk to God—or sometimes that the bot was God—and then that he himself was God.”
I had already seen discussions of this phenomenon, which is sometimes called “ChatGPT psychosis,” on Reddit. No version or iteration of ChatGPT is sentient, of course. ChatGPT is a highly advanced autocomplete mechanism. It generates responses by predicting the most likely next word or sequence of words based on patterns it has observed in vast amounts of text. However, as a system, ChatGPT is designed to be tonally attuned to its user. It simulates helpfulness and echoes patterns. While a human companion would likely be concerned about the well-being of someone expressing spiritual delusions and might suggest a mental health check-in, a chatbot might simply match the user’s cadence, structure, and emotion, while drawing on vast troves of internet content that confidently deploy spiritual language.
These cases may sound extreme, but what’s far more common is people turning to ChatGPT for a simulated experience of friendship or for conversations that resemble therapy. A thread posted on Saturday, titled “I prefer to talk to GPT than to real people. Anyone else?” reflected a recurring topic on the ChatGPT subreddit—people finding it easier to interact with large language models than human beings. The post had hundreds of replies, many of which echoed the original poster’s perspective. As one user wrote: “It's much easier to get a clear and objective answer from ChatGPT. Often, with people, you can end up talking in circles for hours about complex topics, or just get a lot of subjective nuance.”
Another user lamented, “This morning Deepseek told me I needed to go text [a] real person for a change.”
The complaint that real humans “talk in circles for hours” and engage with “subjective nuance” reflects something all too real about our social skills in these times. As a society, we’ve been socially deskilled in countless ways. The performance-based dynamics of social media, the biases and bigotries that divide us, and the loss of third spaces have eroded our capacity to relate to one another. For many of us, these problems were exacerbated by the isolation of the early pandemic (a crisis that has continued to isolate some people, due to a lack of COVID safety). We are conditioned to function as individuals and to be emotionally self-contained. So it’s not surprising that people in search of belonging, affirmation, or explanations for their experiences are often moving in unhealthy directions, such as accepting the accommodating offerings of ChatGPT, or the simplistic and vitriolic language of the manosphere.
“Lonely men” are frequently singled out in these conversations because those raising the alarm often have an agenda. Acknowledging that we are all facing a crisis of alienation—and that we lack the skills and resources to form the connections we need—doesn’t serve anyone who wants to blame the left, women, or trans people for our current condition. But the broader crisis of loneliness, alienation, and spiritual confusion is real. It’s sending some people down right-wing rabbit holes and others into obsessive, one-sided relationships with chatbots or into spirals of conspiracy. It’s fueling addiction and escapism, and has left countless people mired in depression. This large-scale estrangement affects us all and its consequences are escalating. We are living through a period of sustained catastrophe, and in times of collapse, people become increasingly emotionally and spiritually vulnerable. Cults flourish. The problems we are now identifying in a piecemeal fashion will only become more rampant and extreme.
In a recent conversation with Aaron Goggans about what prevents people from taking action and how we might move forward, he shared some thoughts on “male loneliness” that didn’t make it into the piece. “We don't have a male loneliness epidemic as much as we have a capitalist alienation epidemic,” Aaron said. For many men, that alienation manifests as difficulty with emotional regulation and a lack of relationship-building skills. “We need to figure out how to invite men into this caring place where they can learn how to be vulnerable and allow others to be vulnerable,” he said. Aaron noted that, in his own growth as an organizer, he has learned to extend care “in a new way” that required openness and vulnerability: “not being an island.” Rather than imagining himself as a savior or provider, he now sees himself as “a wounded person who needs a system to care for wounds—for others and for myself.” That shift helped Aaron work through “a lot of patriarchal upbringing and shit” in recent years. “It's an ongoing process,” he added. “I haven't finished it.”
We are facing a crisis of social alienation. As unnatural catastrophes abound and fascism tightens its grip, we are alone together in the glow of our screens, “connected,” but unheld. Our movements must address this crisis. We need more discussion spaces and more spiritual and emotional support groups. While some on the left are dismissive of gatherings and activities that are not grounded in productivity, we must acknowledge that the connective tissue we need to move, build, and care collectively is lacking. In addition to not being bonded to one another, we often lack the skills to build those bonds. Plenty of people and products are primed to exploit those shortcomings. We must present alternatives, issue invitations, and welcome people into the messy process of building relationships. We must gently and thoughtfully encourage people to become more curious, not just about the world and how they can affect it, but about each other. We must invite people to join us in journeys that are challenging, but also enriching and enlivening. We can help people rediscover, or perhaps discover for the first time, their appreciation for humanity—which includes people who are not like them, who they may not immediately like or understand. This is an essential part of the work before us, not simply for the sake of “lonely men,” but for all our sakes.
Much love,
Kelly
