I feel bad for Zoomers. They had it worse than me, an elder millennial. I only had to listen to Baby Boomers telling me what to do. They have to listen to Boomers, Millennials, and social media influencers doing it all day every day. This is a small story of, that fucking guy.
By the time they are old enough to understand these questions, men believe that they know the answers. Where am I? Say, in New York City. How do I know it? It's self-evident. What should I do? Here, they are not too sure — but the usual answer is: whatever everybody does. The only trouble seems to be that they are not very active, not very confident, not very happy — and they experience, at times, a causeless fear and an undefined guilt, which they cannot explain or get rid of.
Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point New York — March 6, 1974
Everyone loves to be Yoda. Hitting an arbitrary age, calling it the middle, turning around and telling a hypothetical young man in the pews your learned wisdom is an intoxicating nectar. I did not write this because of a specific social media online celebrity, because it is not just one. It is all of them. Women telling young women to never do anything for a man. Men telling young men to get a job in the mail room and work their way up. Right-wing men telling young men to find a wife as soon as possible. Left-wing men telling young men to … well I do not know what they tell men to do, as I am sitting too far from their side of the Assemblée Nationale to hear them.
It’s not advice, they aren’t wise, and I made a promise to my teenage self never to be that fucking guy.
That fucking guy
I was raised in small-town British Columbia. We had one bar, on the highway, beside our one liquor store. If we had a street light, it would be there. They would not serve kids booze, which was fine, as we could just loot our parents’ liquor cabinet and go drinking up the logging road on the mountain if that is what we wanted. The one thing they always had was a broken old man. He was drunk. He was old. He probably spent his whole life in that same small town and working the same job at the same mill from when he was my age. This man would see someone listening to him, grab him so he could not get away, and give out a penny’s advice for a dollar of time.
I was young, but I was not stupid. It was not advice, it was naked regret wearing a trench coat of advice. He would tell me of the grand things he did with his life, and he would look to me, because I could agree with him. He would tell me of all the regrets he had in his life. He could not actually call them regrets though. That would mean he had to admit he had them. No, every regret had a justification. Every regret was worded as a list of do and don’t do and never do what I did or make sure you do it when I did not have the guts.
I was naïve, but it was the first of only two times in my life where I told myself that I would never be that fucking guy. The second time? During my time in the Royal Canadian Navy when guys used to bitch and moan about their boss, their job, the sailing schedule and their fucking wife. They complained about it all. It was catharsis. They finished their coffee and went back to work. I saw that for an entire three-month sail and told myself I would never be that fucking guy.
I enjoyed both of those guys, giving me both of those lessons. I enjoyed them for the same reason I enjoyed seeing early Jordan Peterson. Not because I learned to clean my room, or go into the belly of the whale, or presuppose what the meaning of ‘is’ is. I enjoyed seeing early Jordan Peterson because I learned that I never wanted to be that fucking guy either was turning out to be great advice.
Clean your room became clean your bloodstream of Benzo’s (or benzi, I cannot be bothered to learn how to spell it).
Note: I had a whole list of the perversions of his 12 rules applied to his own life, but I am not here to shit on a Canuck; we have it hard enough lately. You get the idea. I even wrote my first book as a critique of abstract platitudes.
If you’re a Zoomer, I’m sure you see that fucking guy everywhere. I’m sure if you’re a Millenial, you’ve been that fucking guy and never realized it. You may even hate that fucking guy and never noticed you became what you hate. I still see that fucking guy talking to me, and I’m way too old for life advice. Yet they still give it, hoping I pat them on the head and call them a good, wise, middle aged boy.
Plato said “What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions.” 2,500 years ago.
I have come to realize I have spent a million words on the Red Pill, and they will be just as ignored, and not nearly as enduring.
The kids will be all right.
I do not know what it is like to be a Zoomer in 2025. I have met a few. I have talked to them. I am friends with their dads. They seem well adjusted enough. My one best friend’s kid is, as he lovingly describes, a ‘spoiled brat.’ This reminds me of him when we first met. They do not seem very different than millennials. The kid taught me rizz and cap and skibidi and I mapped the terms to charm, and bullshit and bad. Good bad or bad bad? Yes. The point is they are going to have a life largely like ours, flavored differently, and with a worse housing market than the one I remember growing up in. The only life lesson I could have given him that was worth hearing was to never expose him to
That fucking guy.
I met my girl when she was 19 and I was almost 30. We settled down when she was 23 and I had a few adventures in between. Am I going to tell some guy to do it like I did because that is the best thing he can do? Why? Does that help him? Is he actually going to be sitting there, having to choose between a girl eight years younger and her same aged sister who both want to settle down and buy a dog and start a family? No, of course not. Life does not work like that. If he is smart he will see that fucking guy routine for what it is, me asking a young teenager to validate my existence. Embarrassing if you ask me. Worse yet, what if he actually heeds my advice? He gets to spend the next ten years, a neurotic mess, asking for birth certificates, doing the math in his head, and shooting girls down for dates because they are inside the ‘window of opportunity.’
What I hate even more than the validation seeking aspect, even more than the sabotage of it, the disconnection to what life actually does. What I hate even more than all that, is the narcissism of it. I meet a lot of people, mostly online, who talk about their parents telling them to follow their dreams, and end up working at Starbucks, part time. I want to know, where were these baby boomer parents with opinions? Am I that rare in that I was never told a thing by anyone? Maybe I am. And here is what will really boil your noodle. Now that you know I was never given ‘advice’ from that fucking guy, is this my own moment of being that fucking guy? I guess that fucking guy is an eventuality, not a warning.
That fucking guy is everywhere. Millennials who tell parents to have their kids stay at home, help them buy their first house. Not because it is helpful to you, but because their piece of shit boomer parents told them to figure it out on their own. It is not advice, it is ‘fuck you, dad’ bumper sticker platitudes.
Middle aged women who tell young women to never do something or other because of a man. It is not helpful to you. But it is because Karen’s shitty ex husband remarried his secretary and left her with nothing but the house, child support payments and legal custody. It is not advice, it is ‘fuck your dad’ bumper sticker platitudes.
Right wing influencers telling young men to marry early, have kids immediately, do not worry about the money, you can figure it out later. Not because it is helpful to you. But because they either did it themselves, or regret not doing it themselves. It is not advice, it is that guy at the bar in small town BC, telling me how to live life.
Maybe their advice is great. Maybe the values they are preaching to you in 280 characters are valuable. Maybe if you had only listened you would have the greatest life right now and never have to worry about anything else, ever. That guy I told you about in the beginning of the story? He got addicted to crack and went to jail for murder, years later. I do not know why I am telling you that, but it seems relevant. No brand influencer will ever be held to account for the perfect implementation of his advice, should it not work out as he claimed. No one will accept the consequences for their advice. Even if they wanted to, it is not possible.
What do you think, if Mike Cernovich told you the path to fame and fortune was a job managing a Panda Express, that you get to sue for damages if it does not work out? Mike Cernovich does not care about you. Mike Cernovich cares about Mike Cernovich; and even then I am not positive that is true either.
The best you are going to get, and I am not saying it is good, only best, is someone letting you know where they are in life, how they know they got there, and what they are going to do with it. Three questions. They are not easy. They do not come with an ego. And most importantly they do not promise anything. Ikea instructions do not come with a promise of a kick-ass book shelf. They come with pictures, showing how the engineer put the thing together. You can build it as they did, you can hack your Ikea furniture (and many do) into some other cool thing. But you are under no illusions, your book shelf will rise and fall on your merits, based on your actions, and the only one responsible for that bookshelf is you.
The bookshelf, in this case, is everything. What kind of chick you want, when or if you settle down with her, if you want kids, a dog, both or neither. Rent or own, crypto investment or passport bro or corporate job or influencer or entrepreneur or startup founder or running a Ponzi scheme. No one is coming to save you, no one can be responsible for you, especially not that fucking guy.
