The demographic of young, lonely men has been endlessly speculated on. Why are there so many young, lonely men? We need to save these young, lonely men! Honey, come quick, I think there's a young, lonely man under our bed!

I was member of this demographic for the better part of my early to mid-twenties.

If there is any consolation for those depressing, isolating years, it is that I now have firsthand experience in a matter of important public discourse. As a second consolation, I’m now really good at positioning five screens all playing separate podcasts around me while I eat so it feels like I have friends.

"Lonely" is a very broad umbrella. Lonely men sort of have ranks, much like the volunteer militias many of them eventually end up taking part in. I was a gymcel: someone who sublimated sexual frustration into exercise. I didn't know I was a gymcel until I heard the term when I was twenty five years old. Sometimes you spend four years thinking something is a personality quirk that ends up being a diagnosable mental disorder--go figure. What interests me about my time as a gymcel was my media intake. I read several books and listened to countless podcasts during this period, and looking back at it, the degree to which I was reinforcing my isolated and emotionally-stunted lifestyle was shocking. The material I was drawn to at the time is what I want to write about here. There is an entire subgenre of self-help geared towards isolated young men that does not actually serve to help them round out their lives, but instead sends them deeper down the road of alpha brain, testosterone replacement therapy, and morning routines so constrictive they rival the schedule prisoners have in offshore enhanced interrogation facilities. It's a genre I refer to as Militarized Self-Help.

When you look at David Goggins, it almost takes a moment to register him. There is an uncanniness about the width of his shoulders coupled with the comparative narrowness of his head, it's like the statue of a head put on an exceedingly wide pedestal. An easter island head on an endless beach. He almost has a monk's disposition, but where a monk's face is calm and serene, David’s is always somewhat angry and aggrieved like you just told him there was no estimate on how long his connecting flight would be delayed. David is a holy man of sorts who pushes a brand of asceticism to the youth of America. Instead of walking on hot coals, he runs for hundreds of miles at a time and does thousands of pull-ups in the span of a day. He speaks very little about relationships and friendships, and when he does, he usually advises that you should not allow them to take time away from your pursuits as a high achiever.

In college, I loved David Goggins. I was already working out excessively, but he gave me the license to work out more. I was already isolated, but he told me isolation was good. David Goggins seemed to be a kindred spirit, which should have been concerning because he never seems to smile, laugh, or exhibit any of the normal human emotions one would associate with joy. Goggins and his supporters praise this lack of emotion, seeing happiness as frivolous and ultimately meaningless. To them, one should sacrifice happiness for the extremely meaningful pursuit of running really far and doing a bunch of pushups. There is this resentment in this sentiment that always comes through so clearly in the comment section under a David Goggins video. Basically, men who feel like society has given them no outlet can only find comfort in physical exertion to the point of self harm. Here are a few I found all under the same video.

David Goggins wasn't the only man I listened to for advice at this time. Jocko Willink and Tim Kennedy were also integral parts of my descent into cynical, self-flagellating destruction. Each of these influencers are ex-military, they all preached similar doctrines, and they were all extremely popular with young men like me. Each one has the body of a super hero and will often recite war stories with the mix of self-aggrandizement and false humility which is a hallmark of this sort of influencer. I don't use influencer as a pejorative here; that is simply what they are, and understanding them as such helps to understand their rise and popularity. There is an attempted smokescreen used in the self-help influencer space which is both common and effective: denying that you are a self-help influencer. These influencers do this because they want to separate themselves from the earth-mama yoga influencers who tend to be women and push Yoni Eggs instead of creatine and Black Rife Coffee. Both groups spend a lot of time preaching to people who already share their mindset, both groups offer a feeling of superiority through the acceptance of esoteric principles, and both groups can really ruin a gathering by getting five beers deep and telling everyone “No, you need to read this book with a clearly insane person on the cover, it changed my life.”

Jocko Willink and David Goggins have untold numbers of YouTube videos with titles like, "Building Unbreakable Discipline" and "Do It Yourself," which are primarily watched by men who already have ample discipline and already do everything themselves. These videos are not primarily for the slovenly, unmotivated hordes who need a guiding light to direct them out of their hedonistic lifestyles. They are made to reinforce the tendencies of overly rigid young men who see empathy as a feminist-marxist curse which will bring about a pagan apocalypse. They also reinforce the idea that people who are not hyper-motivated, regimented, and willing to crawl through broken glass at a moment's notice, are ‘soft.’ This idea hurt me most of all, looking down at people who took time to enjoy their lives. I saw students at my college who got together and had a few beers as weak, and that made me the perfect audience for Militarized Self-Help. I mean, do you think someone who doesn't already have a rigid mindset is going to buy a book with this kind of cover?

What I'm trying to say is, reinforcing your own world view isn't a strategy for self improvement--it's the opposite. It entrenches you deeper in preexisting patterns and tendencies. What most of the people who are purchasing books like, “You Can't Hurt Me” actually need is fiction. They need to get into the minds and lives of characters who aren't hotdog-skinned 50-year-olds fighting male pattern baldness brought on by massive steroid cycles. Reading books about how you're a bitch is actually a cowardly thing to do if you already think that about yourself.

Pushing yourself to read something that you think is frivolous is actually an act of bravery, because you’re pushing past mental boundaries set not only by yourself, but by society as a whole. I'm not saying things like discipline are bad--I have a morning routine and a workout regimen, and I've been doing Jiu-Jitsu for about ten years (I’m not that good, but I’ve recently started to hold my own against this 15-year-old in class who's been giving me problems.)

My issue is with a specific type of discipline being peddled like a supplement to men who don't need more of it. I was given the message that solitude, exercise, and hard work are what life really is, and if you stray from them you're being lazy. For me, that turned out to be completely untrue. Solitude and hard work came easily to me, because I never had to interrogate how I was feeling or deal with other people on an emotional level, which is what I was actually afraid of. If you think deadlifting 500 pounds is hard, I wonder if you've ever talked to a stranger at a party and tried to find something in common with them. Both are just as strenuous, though I’ve yet to see if the latter is helped by wearing a weight lifting belt. Anyone spouting that friends are a liability because they get in the way of your plans to conquer the world is a weird idiot. Do you know why people try to conquer the world? Because they don't have any friends. Friends are the whole point to this stupid life we're living, and no amount of push-ups or hack squats is going to make that less true.

Underneath all of these concepts of machismo and solitude is something even darker. The majority of these materials serve as a recruitment tool for the military. There is a reason most of the military influencers were in the special forces, even though the special forces make up a comparatively small portion of the military. Their recollections of specifically-targeted missions sanitize the reality and scope of war. Hearing Tim Kennedy recall his team killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a story which is wrapped in a tight bow, and doesn't mention the countless civilians killed by less targeted American action in the Middle East. I only became aware of the nefarious undertones of these influencers material much later, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I think about it.

The American Military Industrial Complex has many clandestine tools for recruitment, but I didn't know one of them was being used on me. At the time, I was already firm in my stance that American involvement in the Middle East was unjustified, and wrote off the actions of these men as good deeds done in a bad situation. But if I’d been younger when I was exposed to these messages, who knows what I’d have felt. The influencers I mention both directly and indirectly espouse the idea that the American Military is the gold standard for personal development. That’s not true; it's a specific organization with the specific goal to train soldiers. Looking at it as anything other than that is a patronizing fantasy.

I am now thirty years old, so I'm about five years removed from what I would refer to as self-imposed solitude. I try not to regret the days I spent listening to and reading material that reinforced my most harmful qualities, but it's a tall task. Recently, I've become an avid fan of fiction, and I've even started writing my own, and that feels like a big step forward. I've started to try to understand my emotions, and listen to my body instead of telling it to be quiet while I do 100 more burpees. And I've even started to learn how to try and feel where other peoples emotions are coming from instead of writing them off as weakness. My emotions are definitely still foreign to me, and I often wish I could go back to the days where if I felt something I would just hit a heavy bag for two hours straight, but that would be the easy way out. In the end, it really is all about being brave.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandonohue.substack.com/subscribe