Funny how when we state something it's all Big Lebowski "Well that's your opinion, man." But when they state it, it's fact. I get this a lot when I push back on the "Reading is always political" crowd; I always get at least 5 comments "But reading IS inherently political" with no context or actual argument. At least the comments give me engagement
Boy, am I getting my money's worth. Thanks for your time and dedication. I think in one of your former lives, you must have been a Greek philosopher sitting down with your best students, teaching them how to think. Honestly, well done. Btw, I am 76 and I resist the temptation to type in all caps. I do not disparage my brethren who do.
You've accomplished one thing, at least, with your video and this essay: I have to watch Fight Club now and decide for myself. I'm 67 and hadn't bothered to watch it, having made the snap judgement, "Guys taking their shirts off and beating the shit out of each other -- yawn!" and never revisiting that judgement.
An observation: I covered high school sports for many years in a small county in Georgia. I became friends with the head football coach. Football is a surviving example of a male space (with the exception of a few girl kickers), in which older men first tear down and then build up teenage boys. The head coach in particular would almost foam at the mouth at times, using language his grandma would probably slap him for using. But guess what? It worked. At this high school, many of the boys didn't have a father or other male role model at home. The coaches were their father figures.
I watched the head coach get in kids' faces and curse them out for various reasons -- repeated mistakes they'd already been coached about, laziness, etc. But what was the ultimate goal? I would ask coaches in interviews what they wanted their players to take with them, aside from athletic skills, since the majority of them probably wouldn't play after high school. The answer was something like this: to be better citizens, better fathers, and above all, better men. Women flinch when male coaches yell in players' faces; those players keep in touch with their coaches and visit many years after graduation, in gratitude for both the tearing down and the building up.
Maybe there's something good about masculinity after all ...
Yes exactly right. Boys thrive with that kind of aggressive leadership in a way that girls absolutely don’t. As long as the boys are pointed at something, as in football, they become better as a whole, not just at the game
Congratulations, you've done what very few writers of long form content have done. You got me to read the entire article.
Sadly, I'm not a Gen Z or A. I'm firmly a Gen Xer.
May I add that reading long form essays isn't the only thing we've lost? We've also lost the ability to debate a subject without wandering off or devolving into a screaming match.
It shows up in politics all the time. We used to have debates that went on for several hours. Debates in which the two people showed their mastery of subjects political.
Now, it's all 45 second sound bites, or 150 characters, and they want yes/no answers, not ones that require thought and having to follow the other person's logic.
And yes, Fight Club is a movie about women. Norton must always lie to his girlfriend when he's been in a fight.
Kristin, having sat with this all morning I'm going to defend the Zoomers here — up to a point, at least.
The Anglosphere has inherited a cultural history that registers certain kinds of moralising as a failure before it starts. That tends to include moralising which targets consensual private conduct, which makes apocalyptic predictions, or encodes the status anxieties of its time. We'd agree that not all such moralising is conservative, but our history says that these forms have tended to age poorly.
Not all your moral fulminations are of this form, but one in particular is. Your status anxiety about white, Christian patriarchy and the role of women is so specific that even young Zoomers may intuit it. "Just your opinion" could mean many things and I don't read your comments outside Substack, but one thing it can mean is that in their view, the culture has already moved past your position and that fulminating about a personal movie interpretation from 1999 can't bring it back.
And I don't know if that *is* their position, but my day-job involves data and policy. From that experience I can attest that there's a huge difference between being able to construe an interpretation from cherry-picked cultural artefacts and having robust, independent evidence that admits no other interpretation. It's the difference between a policy 'could' and 'should'; between subjective inspiration, and objective falsification. The second doesn't preclude the first, but only the second makes for sound, robust policy.
So, to the extent that you're looking for change, that the change you want is expensive to some, and that you're asking future generations to shoulder the costs, you might need more evidence than what the movies of your era mean to you.
But that said, I think many of the topics you raise, need to stay open — which is why I'm warmly supportive of both your zeal and courage in raising what I realise is often socially perilous to raise.
The gender wars are all over the place, and I see loopiness in both sides. The long-term cultural direction of the Anglosphere is a legitimate topic. The role of Christianity in a multicultural, post-Christian world is concerning, and not just to Christians. What values we protect, derived from where, matter to all cultures of good will. The role of the Arts in a world where art is commoditised, matters. And the US is struggling with having lost (perhaps irrevocably) its hegemony, apparently without ever having fully understood what was valued across the hegemony, and what price other nations paid to prop it up.
That's not me adjudicating. I'm just wondering whether your aim is a multigenerational conversation, or an approval bubble populated by Christian American conservatives of your generation.
Speaking as a creaking Gen Xer, it's not lost on me that you're experiencing a generation gap, and that your first instinct was to patronise the very generation you're entrusting to execute. Your points about argument are critical and I share those concerns, but did you begin by blaming the audience you tried to reach?
Ruv, thanks for taking the morning on it. I’ll take your points in reverse order, because the last one is the only one aimed at what I wrote.
Did I begin by blaming the audience? Partly, yes, and I said so in the piece: my first instinct was to be mean, and I wrote the article instead. The opening still has some irritation in it because annoying people should know they're annoying. But most of your comment is in answer to an essay I didn’t write. I’m not asking anyone to change the culture, shoulder a cost, or return to 1999. I’m describing something I believe to be true about men and women, which is that they differ in ways that show up reliably in how they build, cope, and bond, and I used Fight Club to illustrate it because that’s what the channel does. The movie is the vehicle. Your distinction between interpretation and falsification is correct and beside the point, because nobody proposed a policy.
I'm not really sure what you mean about the culture having moved past my position. Which position? That men and women are inherently different from birth til death and always will be? Or was it the later "men build for women" thing that was backed up by two different scholars? If the second, I assure you none of the "that's just your opinion" crowd made it that far into the video
Kristin, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I understand why, when you put such care into your work, and are so gracious by predisposition, dismissive responses can be frustrating.
But I want to be charitable to the respondents here, noting that they're not as articulate as you, because few people are.
Let's first acknowledge what *else* they know about you since that frames how they read you.
You're a self-declared Internet Moralist, whose tagline is "fiction isn't real, but it tells the truth". So you've inherited a burden here before you've even published an article: not just to offer opinion — to offer fact; and it has to be *morally actionable* fact.
In this case then, what are those facts? Well, it's not just what happened in a movie. Your last reply acknowledges more: that there are differences between men and women; they're not just preferences — they hold the status of natural laws; they're salient to how the movie unfolds; and you know what those differences are, and that they're immutable.
While few would deny that there are differences, it still invites the question: *how* do you know what differences are immutable and the product of natural laws vs what might be from temperament or culture?
Clearly, the movie can't tell you, because you're claiming that knowledge to justify your particular interpretation of the movie.
I don't think you answered that in your essay.
So the dismissal "This is just an opinion" might not only apply to your interpretation of the movie. It could equally apply to you not delivering on your brand-promise to build facts into robust moral obligations.
Against which, your audience includes Gen Zs inheriting over a century of thought and demonstrated role modelling that biological differences are *not* immutable impediments to varied social roles and behaviours.
Hence my earlier comment that they may feel the culture has moved past your position. They may be third generation descendants of women in pioneer roles, perhaps two generations descended of men who'll support them. They may feel from lived experience that this question is already settled, and that talking about a 1990s movie predating their birth isn't by itself, enough to reopen it.
They might be mistaken, but you might also not be reaching them.
I'm an OG Gen Xer (right at cusp of Boom/X) and love the analyses and essays you've been publishing. This one was especially interesting since the movie is one of my favorite. I hadn't considered it from the angle you presented and enjoyed that viewpoint.
In addition to being long-form, I'm certain another objection they have is your use of terminal punctuation is too aggressive. :)
🎤 drop. Very well said! To be honest, I haven’t watched your fight club video, but I have read some of your other longform content, and I have also seen the kind of responses that you were frustrated with all over the Internet and in real life! It is extremely frustrating when people dismiss a well-thought-out argument with that’s just your opinion or when they try to debate your point without understanding it or even attempting to understand it.
Exactly! Its like they think “well you should have made this into a tiktok if you wanted me to hear the whole thing.” They have no idea what they’re missing out out on and are angry at anything that introduces ideas that take longer than 90 seconds
I also think sometimes people get reflexively defensive when they are disagreed with, which I guess is understandable, but it almost seems like they are angry that someone simply has a different opinion…Or that they would have to actually put some time and thought into the reasons for their own argument.
Funny how when we state something it's all Big Lebowski "Well that's your opinion, man." But when they state it, it's fact. I get this a lot when I push back on the "Reading is always political" crowd; I always get at least 5 comments "But reading IS inherently political" with no context or actual argument. At least the comments give me engagement
Trolls seem to have disproportionate difficulty with the difference between "their" and "they're" etc, it's weird.
Boy, am I getting my money's worth. Thanks for your time and dedication. I think in one of your former lives, you must have been a Greek philosopher sitting down with your best students, teaching them how to think. Honestly, well done. Btw, I am 76 and I resist the temptation to type in all caps. I do not disparage my brethren who do.
We all appreciate the lowercasing 😆
You've accomplished one thing, at least, with your video and this essay: I have to watch Fight Club now and decide for myself. I'm 67 and hadn't bothered to watch it, having made the snap judgement, "Guys taking their shirts off and beating the shit out of each other -- yawn!" and never revisiting that judgement.
An observation: I covered high school sports for many years in a small county in Georgia. I became friends with the head football coach. Football is a surviving example of a male space (with the exception of a few girl kickers), in which older men first tear down and then build up teenage boys. The head coach in particular would almost foam at the mouth at times, using language his grandma would probably slap him for using. But guess what? It worked. At this high school, many of the boys didn't have a father or other male role model at home. The coaches were their father figures.
I watched the head coach get in kids' faces and curse them out for various reasons -- repeated mistakes they'd already been coached about, laziness, etc. But what was the ultimate goal? I would ask coaches in interviews what they wanted their players to take with them, aside from athletic skills, since the majority of them probably wouldn't play after high school. The answer was something like this: to be better citizens, better fathers, and above all, better men. Women flinch when male coaches yell in players' faces; those players keep in touch with their coaches and visit many years after graduation, in gratitude for both the tearing down and the building up.
Maybe there's something good about masculinity after all ...
Yes exactly right. Boys thrive with that kind of aggressive leadership in a way that girls absolutely don’t. As long as the boys are pointed at something, as in football, they become better as a whole, not just at the game
Thank you, Kristin. I enjoy your 'long form' arguments. :)
Congratulations, you've done what very few writers of long form content have done. You got me to read the entire article.
Sadly, I'm not a Gen Z or A. I'm firmly a Gen Xer.
May I add that reading long form essays isn't the only thing we've lost? We've also lost the ability to debate a subject without wandering off or devolving into a screaming match.
It shows up in politics all the time. We used to have debates that went on for several hours. Debates in which the two people showed their mastery of subjects political.
Now, it's all 45 second sound bites, or 150 characters, and they want yes/no answers, not ones that require thought and having to follow the other person's logic.
And yes, Fight Club is a movie about women. Norton must always lie to his girlfriend when he's been in a fight.
But then, the first rule is there for a reason.
We don't talk about fight club.
Getting someone to stay to the end is the greatest compliment 🙏🏻
Kristin, having sat with this all morning I'm going to defend the Zoomers here — up to a point, at least.
The Anglosphere has inherited a cultural history that registers certain kinds of moralising as a failure before it starts. That tends to include moralising which targets consensual private conduct, which makes apocalyptic predictions, or encodes the status anxieties of its time. We'd agree that not all such moralising is conservative, but our history says that these forms have tended to age poorly.
Not all your moral fulminations are of this form, but one in particular is. Your status anxiety about white, Christian patriarchy and the role of women is so specific that even young Zoomers may intuit it. "Just your opinion" could mean many things and I don't read your comments outside Substack, but one thing it can mean is that in their view, the culture has already moved past your position and that fulminating about a personal movie interpretation from 1999 can't bring it back.
And I don't know if that *is* their position, but my day-job involves data and policy. From that experience I can attest that there's a huge difference between being able to construe an interpretation from cherry-picked cultural artefacts and having robust, independent evidence that admits no other interpretation. It's the difference between a policy 'could' and 'should'; between subjective inspiration, and objective falsification. The second doesn't preclude the first, but only the second makes for sound, robust policy.
So, to the extent that you're looking for change, that the change you want is expensive to some, and that you're asking future generations to shoulder the costs, you might need more evidence than what the movies of your era mean to you.
But that said, I think many of the topics you raise, need to stay open — which is why I'm warmly supportive of both your zeal and courage in raising what I realise is often socially perilous to raise.
The gender wars are all over the place, and I see loopiness in both sides. The long-term cultural direction of the Anglosphere is a legitimate topic. The role of Christianity in a multicultural, post-Christian world is concerning, and not just to Christians. What values we protect, derived from where, matter to all cultures of good will. The role of the Arts in a world where art is commoditised, matters. And the US is struggling with having lost (perhaps irrevocably) its hegemony, apparently without ever having fully understood what was valued across the hegemony, and what price other nations paid to prop it up.
That's not me adjudicating. I'm just wondering whether your aim is a multigenerational conversation, or an approval bubble populated by Christian American conservatives of your generation.
Speaking as a creaking Gen Xer, it's not lost on me that you're experiencing a generation gap, and that your first instinct was to patronise the very generation you're entrusting to execute. Your points about argument are critical and I share those concerns, but did you begin by blaming the audience you tried to reach?
Ruv, thanks for taking the morning on it. I’ll take your points in reverse order, because the last one is the only one aimed at what I wrote.
Did I begin by blaming the audience? Partly, yes, and I said so in the piece: my first instinct was to be mean, and I wrote the article instead. The opening still has some irritation in it because annoying people should know they're annoying. But most of your comment is in answer to an essay I didn’t write. I’m not asking anyone to change the culture, shoulder a cost, or return to 1999. I’m describing something I believe to be true about men and women, which is that they differ in ways that show up reliably in how they build, cope, and bond, and I used Fight Club to illustrate it because that’s what the channel does. The movie is the vehicle. Your distinction between interpretation and falsification is correct and beside the point, because nobody proposed a policy.
I'm not really sure what you mean about the culture having moved past my position. Which position? That men and women are inherently different from birth til death and always will be? Or was it the later "men build for women" thing that was backed up by two different scholars? If the second, I assure you none of the "that's just your opinion" crowd made it that far into the video
Kristin, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I understand why, when you put such care into your work, and are so gracious by predisposition, dismissive responses can be frustrating.
But I want to be charitable to the respondents here, noting that they're not as articulate as you, because few people are.
Let's first acknowledge what *else* they know about you since that frames how they read you.
You're a self-declared Internet Moralist, whose tagline is "fiction isn't real, but it tells the truth". So you've inherited a burden here before you've even published an article: not just to offer opinion — to offer fact; and it has to be *morally actionable* fact.
In this case then, what are those facts? Well, it's not just what happened in a movie. Your last reply acknowledges more: that there are differences between men and women; they're not just preferences — they hold the status of natural laws; they're salient to how the movie unfolds; and you know what those differences are, and that they're immutable.
While few would deny that there are differences, it still invites the question: *how* do you know what differences are immutable and the product of natural laws vs what might be from temperament or culture?
Clearly, the movie can't tell you, because you're claiming that knowledge to justify your particular interpretation of the movie.
I don't think you answered that in your essay.
So the dismissal "This is just an opinion" might not only apply to your interpretation of the movie. It could equally apply to you not delivering on your brand-promise to build facts into robust moral obligations.
Against which, your audience includes Gen Zs inheriting over a century of thought and demonstrated role modelling that biological differences are *not* immutable impediments to varied social roles and behaviours.
Hence my earlier comment that they may feel the culture has moved past your position. They may be third generation descendants of women in pioneer roles, perhaps two generations descended of men who'll support them. They may feel from lived experience that this question is already settled, and that talking about a 1990s movie predating their birth isn't by itself, enough to reopen it.
They might be mistaken, but you might also not be reaching them.
I'm an OG Gen Xer (right at cusp of Boom/X) and love the analyses and essays you've been publishing. This one was especially interesting since the movie is one of my favorite. I hadn't considered it from the angle you presented and enjoyed that viewpoint.
In addition to being long-form, I'm certain another objection they have is your use of terminal punctuation is too aggressive. :)
I will never understand their hatred of punctuation lol
It's causing me no end of frustration in my Swedish course...they have an unnatural aversion to commas. It's maddening. LOL
I want that picture of Tyler and the Narrator as a poster.
Say what you will about David Fincher, he, or his cinematographer, has an incredible eye.
🎤 drop. Very well said! To be honest, I haven’t watched your fight club video, but I have read some of your other longform content, and I have also seen the kind of responses that you were frustrated with all over the Internet and in real life! It is extremely frustrating when people dismiss a well-thought-out argument with that’s just your opinion or when they try to debate your point without understanding it or even attempting to understand it.
Exactly! Its like they think “well you should have made this into a tiktok if you wanted me to hear the whole thing.” They have no idea what they’re missing out out on and are angry at anything that introduces ideas that take longer than 90 seconds
I also think sometimes people get reflexively defensive when they are disagreed with, which I guess is understandable, but it almost seems like they are angry that someone simply has a different opinion…Or that they would have to actually put some time and thought into the reasons for their own argument.
Had a string of posts on X this week regarding art and AI which popped off.
Dealt with the same issues you described in your post. People can’t argue and their refutes are plain lazy.
Even got a few “that’s your opinion” replies.