20d • General discussion
Grumpy Young Men
I am a school teacher with 30 years experience and it has now become a pandemic: Moody and grumpy teenage boys who cannot and will not be reformed.
Here is my (growing) gripe list:
* Young men being real assholes these days
* Having no manners, no gratitude, no punctuality
* Not being able to admit that they don’t know everything
* Being moody ALL THE TIME
* Not showing respect when they’re talking to older men
* Inherent stupidity that they are not even hiding, they are flaunting
* Being upset about acting stupidly; not asking for advice
* Having a problem with being called ignorant even while they are actually being ignorant
* Not doing anything about anything
Firstly, what is it with young men today? You cannot blame your laziness, or your lack of action, or your anxiety, or your declining mental health, or your failure to move further than 10 meters at a time, on your childhood and abuse. I’m really sorry. These are serious matters and I know, I really know, what it is like to have personal issues that you’re dealing with. That is par for the course for most people – having really difficult issues to deal with from childhood … but it is not an excuse for having bad manners.
These days, if a young man has a set of good manners, I’ll sommer promote him. And if that young man has a smile on his face and moves with energy and good posture, he might even become the head boy of the school without having the ability to be one. That is how sensitive I am to these things. That is how rare it is.
It is as if our young men today are always in a bad mood. They are slouching, their pants are still hanging on their asses, and they are dragging their feet. Their shoelaces are untied. The pant length is either too long or too short. They refuse to cut their hair, they do not eat anything healthy, they drink no water at all and they want to sleep all day. They don’t speak properly, they don’t make eye contact, and they are really not interested in learning anything. They’ll probably talk over you while you’re busy giving them advice or they might lose interest completely and fall asleep in the middle of a lesson.
I am not saying everybody should be sitting at attention and saluting as they walk down the street (although that would be nice) but I’m asking the question: What is wrong with young men today? What is going to become of this world if men do not straighten their backs, drop their balls, and start talking properly (or speaking in a tone that sounds like they are speaking and not mumbling through life)? And then what?
Recent data show boys lagging girls from early school readiness onward, with lower reading and attainment scores and men now accounting for roughly 40 percent of university degrees in several countries. Surveys of men aged 18–29 find that about two in five agree they are inclined to think of themselves as failures, and large shares report that almost nobody knows them well or that they feel isolated. Labour-force participation among younger men has stalled or declined relative to young women, and a higher share of young men are neither in education, employment nor training. High daily gaming, pornography and screen time are common in the same age group and correlate with greater loneliness and lower real-world engagement. The classroom behaviour I see is not happening in isolation.
What upsets me is that there are girls having sex with these boys. In other words the gene pool is going to be weakened even further by these bad habits and poor behaviour and lack of engagement and proper decorum. Where will we end up?
Look I’m not saying everybody has to stand at attention and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed all day long. If you’re a teenager you have a problem with the hormones and the moodiness and there’s a gap in your brain. I know, it’s normal but there’s no reason for you to be disrespectful.
I find that people do not want to look up when they speak. I find that people speak when they’re supposed to be listening. I find that young men are laughing at other people in their face, behind their back, blatantly insulting people, and actually disrespecting and insulting people from both older and younger generations around them. They are being rude to women, being ungentlemanly, being completely disrespectful to everyone around them.
It’s like they’re entitled to be little shit gangsters that are afraid. I can’t stand it. If you’re going to be a gangster be a real one. Have a pair of balls. Walk up to someone and say what you think and then face the consequences. We are dealing with a bunch of hina’s and wild dogs and they are so weak they can’t even walk in a pack because they’ll start biting each other. I know I’m going low now but this is how I feel. What’s the solution? Where are we going to go? What are we going to do?
I don’t have a solution but I have a few suggestions. It’s been occurring to me for the last few years to build some kind of adventure that kids can go on while they’re still at home. In other words it’s called the Youth Adventure Forum. It is basically a set of tasks that kids must do in the form of:
* challenges
* online activities
* offline activities
* service activities
* doing all kinds of menial tasks to prove that they can and are not too proud
* studying tasks
* washing the dishes
* hanging up the washing
* volunteering
* reading something that’s not on TikTok
* stuff like that
Similar short wilderness and challenge programmes for adolescent boys already exist; they remove phones, require real tools and shared physical work, and report that participants leave with a clearer sense of what they can finish and greater trust in the adults and peers around them. I’m building this as I’m speaking to you and I’m going to spend the December holiday trying to develop something useful. I would love to know what your thoughts are.
So here's my suggestion of the initial list of tasks that should be included in this youth program. I would love to hear your thoughts and maybe we could build this together.
- Finish one household job (dishes, washing, room tidy) without being asked, and show the result.
- Complete a short study block or revision task before any phone or screen time.
- Do a simple service or volunteering action (help a neighbour, pick up litter, assist at a school event) and report what was done.
- Read a chapter or short piece of non-algorithmic material and say one thing learned from it.
- Complete a small physical or practical challenge (carry something heavy, repair a minor item, cook a basic meal) and note how it went.
Volunteer and service work
Young men need to get out and do something for other people, not just sit and wait for the world to sort itself out around them. Volunteer work and service force you to show up, look someone in the eye, and finish a job that is not for your own entertainment. Help at a school event, pick up litter in the street, assist an older neighbour with a task they cannot manage, or spend a few hours at a local project. Do the work, report what you actually did, and come back the next week. It is ordinary, it is visible, and it is one of the fastest ways to stop being a passenger in your own life.
Character building
Character is not a slogan, a workshop, or a feeling you get after watching a video. It is what a young man actually does when the work is boring, when nobody is clapping, and when it would be easier to walk away or make an excuse. It shows up in small, repeated actions long before it shows up in any big speech about values.
Start with the basics that have almost disappeared. Look people in the eye when you speak to them. Answer in full sentences instead of grunts. Arrive when you said you would. Tie your shoes, wear pants that stay up, and stand as if you are not already defeated. These are not style choices. They are the first signals that you are willing to be taken seriously and that you take other people seriously. A young man who cannot manage his own posture and speech has no business claiming he is ready for anything harder.
Keep going when the task has no audience. Finish the dishes without being asked a second time. Hang the washing properly instead of leaving it in a heap. Complete the revision before the phone comes out. Tell the truth when a lie would get you out of trouble faster. Admit you do not know something instead of inventing an answer or getting angry at the person who noticed. These are the ordinary tests. Pass enough of them and people start trusting you with larger ones. Fail them repeatedly and every later complaint about not being respected is just noise.
Respect is not automatic and it is not the same as being liked. It is earned by treating older people as if their time and experience matter, and by treating younger people and girls without contempt or performance. That means listening when someone is speaking, not laughing at someone to their face or behind their back, and not treating every request as an insult. A boy who can only be decent when he feels like it has not built character; he has built a mood.
Service and responsibility accelerate the process. Doing something for someone else—helping a neighbour, volunteering at a school event, picking up litter, assisting with a real job—forces you to show up, follow instructions, and see a result that is not about your own entertainment. The same applies to physical challenges and practical skills: carrying weight, repairing something broken, cooking a basic meal, reading material that was not chosen by an algorithm. Each finished task is evidence that you can be relied on. Each unfinished one is evidence that you still cannot.
Character also includes the ability to handle being corrected. Most young men today treat any suggestion that they are wrong, lazy, or unprepared as an attack on their entire existence. The ones who improve are the ones who can hear “that is not good enough” without collapsing into sulking or rage, then do the next version better. Pride that refuses ordinary work or ordinary feedback is not strength. It is just another way of staying stuck.
None of this requires saluting in the street or pretending every day is a military exercise. It does require treating basic reliability, effort, and respect as non-negotiable rather than optional personality traits. A young man who can be trusted with the small things—time, tools, other people’s tasks, his own word—is already building the only kind of character that actually lasts. The rest is talk.
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Grumpy Young Men
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