It’s important to reject the simplistic narratives of Spiritual Boomerism and engage more seriously on these issues in ways that take account of the truth that’s in those narratives, but also recognize the complexities of life and society today. And ways that have a sense of empathy and genuine concern for the young people in our society, their preferences, ambitions, and experiences. Rather than just telling them to Man up!, how can we actually help them get there?

Why do young men flock to online influencers?

Two internet furors this week shed light on this question. One is yet another round of controversy over Andrew Tate after he appeared on a big podcast. (Ben Shapiro provide some background on this if you are interested, but in brief, Tate is an extremely popular but very toxic influencer accused of sex trafficking in Romania). A large number of pastors and others were outraged about Tate, which of course they should be.

The second was a debate over whether young people—implicitly, young men—should lean into working in service class jobs. This was triggered when Chris Rufo suggested young people should get a job at Panda Express, where they can make $70K as an assistant manager and have a career path to store manager making $100K.

The Rufo Panda Express furor illuminates a huge range of complex and interrelated issues that are often overlooked in the simplistic debates over matters like whether to work at Panda Express. It even sheds some light on the appeal of Andrew Tate.

Should frustrated young people just take a job at Panda Express? There was a major online rift on this point, interestingly within the online new right/dissident right crowd. I always love it when controversies divide people in unexpected ways. It exposes fault lines we didn’t know were there.

In this case, the Rufo side basically argued that young men are entitled and lazy. They want to sit back and complain and demand high status and high paying positions be handed to them on a plate as a matter of entitlement. The other side accused Rufo and company of promoting the proletarization of young men, especially white men.

I don’t have a comprehensive, integrated answer to this myself, but there are a wide range of considerations that illuminate why debates like this have been such a huge part of culture and politics.

1. Spiritual Boomerism

The Chris Rufo position is an example of what Stephen Wolfe called “spiritual Boomerism.” This is Boomerism as a state of mind and style, whether or not held by someone of that specific generation.

It is very familiar to anyone who grew up in an evangelical church or men’s ministry. Spiritual Boomerism is the philosophy that underlies every hectoring “Man up!” lecture delivered by some traditional authority.

One definition of the Spiritual Boomer style: A person, typically a man, who has achieved high status/success/home ownership/secure retirement/marriage speaking down from his lofty heights towards those who don’t have them and saying something like, “You just need to do what I did when I was your age” or “You just need to stop complaining, get to work and pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

People appeal to Spiritual Boomerism because it contains elements of truth. If you want to succeed, you actually do have to work and work hard. Everybody has to pay their dues. You’re not entitled to success. Every generation has to earn it all over again. A lot of young men do need something of a kick in the pants. Having a job is much better than not having one. Previous generations were willing to do what it took—think about the Joads migrating to California in The Grapes of Wrath—in ways many young people today aren’t.

However, Spiritual Boomerism lacks empathy. It doesn’t have skin in the games of the people being talked to. It isn’t cheering them on and genuinely hoping that they succeed. It fails to acknowledge the role that good luck played in the success of the people delivering the lectures. It doesn’t truly wrestle with the changed circumstances and difficulties facing young people today. It doesn’t realize that the old success scripts don’t work in the same way they used to. It doesn’t give a practical roadmap to achieving real success.

That’s what online influencers provide. When he was emerging as a guide to young men, Jordan Peterson used to challenge them. “Clean your room, Bucko” or “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.” But he also made sure young men saw that he cared about them. That he understood their pain. That he was on their side. He didn’t just view them as the problem but as people who mattered in their own right, people whose hopes, dreams, plans, and aspirations mattered too.

Rod Dreher wrote about Peterson, after an incident in which a young, disturbed man at one of his events rushed the stage looking for help, “I was really moved by the way Peterson handled himself here—moved, but not surprised…Devoting hours to hearing him talk really did reveal to me why he has such a following, especially among lost young men. Whatever flaws Peterson has, he leaves no doubt that he really cares about the people he’s trying to reach.”

Online influencers also give a practical roadmap to getting somewhere. Rufo’s original tweet suggested someone who stays to build a career at Panda Express. Online influencers would talk about how you can use a boring job at Panda Express or elsewhere as a source of 9-5 income while you work on self-improvement, your side hustle, or launching a business. They’d probably also highlight how to use the 9-5 to gain skills that are transferrable to running a business. They might start with Panda Express, but they wouldn’t end there. They would talk about how no matter how low you are now, you can rise and become a champion. (Rufo himself—whom I generally like by the way—did later talk about how he used low wage work to help him produce his first film, but it got much less play than the original tweet).

Some of this is a classic self-help advice schtick, or even a predatory grift as with Tate’s “Hustler University” where the assignments were to post Tate video clips on Tik Tok. But there’s a way this can be done legitimately as well.

Whatever truth it contains, Spiritual Boomerism is a proven loser in actually getting young people to follow its advice. Few people respond positively to finger wagging.

2. Spiritual Boomerism is directed at white men only

While this debate was mostly talking about young people in general, it’s clear that the people being talked about are young white men. They are overwhelmingly the target of this kind of rhetoric—and they can see it.

Again, we’ve seen in this in the evangelical church, where men are told to “Man up!” but women are told to remember they are “daughters of King.”

It’s similar in the broader world. There’s endless rhetoric, many programs, and big money devoted to encouraging women and minorities to elevate their sights, to go to college or grad school, to become one of the “women in STEM.” The talent and potential of immigrants are endlessly extolled. It’s only young white men who get these sort of lectures.

It would be interesting to see if the people talking about these kinds of jobs would be willing to qualify their advice to specifically direct it to young women, or the lower income minorities. In my experience, even conservatives only do this indirectly, such as by talking about the “culture of poverty.” But it’s notable that in this logic a young inner city black man who fails to exhibit what they call “bourgeois values” is in essence a victim of culture—an outside force he didn’t create and isn’t responsible for.

People are willing to admit to the role of outside forces and structures in shaping the outcomes of women and minorities in ways that they are not willing to do for young white men.

3. Social class is an important reality.

Yes, money matters—you need it for a house, for marriage prospects, for stability. But in today’s America, social status also matters. Its importance has only gone up in recent decades.

Inequality and divergence have been defining features of our era. As economist Tyler Cowen put it, “Average is over.” This has produced a two tier environment in which the top 20-25% of society is doing very well, but the bottom 75-80% is struggling not just economically, but personally and socially.

This has bled through into geography. Charles Murray has talked about how America’s elite have concentrated into monolithically upscale “super zips.” Some regions like Nashville are boomtowns, while others like Flint are mired in decline and struggles. Back in 1990, economist Robert Reich labeled this “the secession of the successful.”

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