Turning the Camera On

On ceding the digital ground

Almost exactly halfway through Netflix's "Manosphere" documentary, our host Louis Theroux is on a return visit to the home of Harrison James Patrick Sullivan (AKA HSTikky Tokky). By this point, Theroux and Sullivan have abandoned any pretenses and begin to engage in a series of escalating moral debates. Theroux pushes Mr. Tikky Tokky on his many contradictions and how he markets products to his audience (in this case, porn) that Sullivan openly admits are extremely harmful.

“Why not just uplift people?” Theroux asks. “Not pander to their worst impulses. Actually encourage them to make the right choices.”

“It’s a good question,” Sullivan says as he seems to genuinely reflect on his answer. “If I’d just done good things, I would never really have blown up on social media in the first place . . . If I just thought I don’t want to upset anyone . . . then I would not be where I’m at right now. I’m not living for other people. I’m living for myself.”

Say what you will about HSTikky Tokky. And believe me, there’s a lot to say. But that right there is an honest answer if I’ve ever seen one. It’s the answer most powerful and amoral (or immoral) leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, or JD Vance don’t have the guts to admit to themselves or the public.

I pick those three leaders because they are about my age. And right now, they are our generation’s legacy. As I’ve pointed out in earlier pieces, us older Millennials inherited an anti-sellout ethos from Gen X yet embraced unbridled sell-out-ism. Our leaders, for the most part, continue to conceal their nihilism beneath a packaging of morality. Old platitudes like “saving the world” (that were so deftly mocked by HBO’s Silicon Valley) have given way to a pseudo-intellectual macro-bullshit explosion of Andreessen-esque tropes about the heroism of technological progress and the villainy of those who seek to slow it down. That techno-optimism would be more sellable if it wasn’t mixed with craven regulatory capture, rent seeking, and political corruption (at home and abroad) — forces that do little to further progress and do much to enrich a few at the expense of the many (including smaller upstarts).

Zuck, Altman, and Vance are just the most extreme examples. But the rot goes deep and implicates most of us. Our generation has presided over the (near) complete disintegration of any remaining institutional, communal, and moral tissue. For kids growing up, they have very few role models around who speak a deontological language — a fancy way of saying “do the right thing, even if it costs you.” I don’t think we’ve done nearly enough to articulate, defend, and model a coherent moral code. We jockey for the right school in the right neighborhood — knowing in our hearts that money and property value shouldn’t dictate a child’s future. We talk of equity yet itemize our taxes and pay as little as we can legally get away with. We abandon public service to take high-priced jobs for companies that undermine the public good. We left our hometowns and optimized away any friction. We stare at our phones all day and curate our lives to impress long-lost classmates we will never see again.

Perhaps you are the exception to those trends, and for that you should be applauded. And if so, you are in a lonely and precarious position. The generation that came after us is a logical extension of the example set by our most prominent and powerful members. Gen Z just pretends less. The broccoli-haired influencers in the Manosphere documentary, obscene as they may be, are our creation. They are seizing on the very moral vacuum — the very incentives we’ve designed and embraced ourselves. And they seem to be entering a world where there are even fewer obvious avenues for purpose-filled work as AI eviscerates entry-level jobs and casts uncertainty on many of those roles that do remain.

What are we to do about this? The vibe of this Substack has been very analog, very “back to the land” — but that instinct is more about the life I prefer than it is about the fights we have before us. You can move to the country, trade a cell phone for a landline, and grow your own food. That may actually make you happier and maybe even will make your kids more grounded, but it won’t solve the wider crisis. Maybe the larger battle can’t be won, in which case that path makes a lot of sense.

Yet if we cede the digital ground, we are all but guaranteeing a worse future. The Manosphere documentary makes clear we can’t ignore the conversation happening on the platforms we hate. And it’s pushed me to think we need to consider a different path. One in which we embrace the tools of social media, AI, YouTube and TikTok especially, and use them to articulate a different path. To bring more of a Mr. Rogers/Bob Ross energy.

This is a cousin of the 50/50 approach I’ve been wrestling with. What if we develop a deep and meaningful offline life and then bring our lessons and experiences to the online world. There are examples of folks who do this well. Ryan Holiday is a great example. He reads and writes more than I do in an even more analog setting, writing out his key takeaways on notecards in an office above his bookstore in small town Texas. He’s used that offline time to write a series of books that are deeply grounded in practical values and virtues. Yet he also spits out a steady stream of social content: podcasts, YouTube videos, newsletters, Instagram Reels. If Holiday was only one of those halves, his legacy would be a fraction of what it is. But the combination brings exponential impact.

We need more Ryan Holidays. And we need even more engaging and experimental voices. The voices of the Manosphere (and its many equally disturbing cousins) are entertaining and energetic. And you get the sense that while some sincerely hate women, Jews, gays, and minorities — there are many who are merely lost and playing a part and getting away with it because not enough of us are out there bringing the heat, building audiences and showing them just how hollow and sad their lives and worldviews are.

I have to say, this is an unsettling conclusion. I wish I’d lived in a generation where the courageous thing to do was to storm Normandy or drive down to Mississippi to accompany a civil rights worker. But we don’t choose our time or our tools. For me, that means cultivating a deep and moral offline world, then starting to turn the camera on myself, get a bit tacky (cringe as they say), master AI and other powerful tools that scare me, and sacrifice the peace and quiet I’ve grown to love but that isolates me from the world that needs every last one of us.

(Written by a human, edited with Anthropic)