I take the tube to work most mornings and I have a genuine question: where are all the young men?
I'm not standing there with a notebook counting heads (can count in my head) but after enough 8 AM commutes you start to notice things, and the thing I keep noticing is that the carriage is overwhelmingly young women. Like 60 to 70 percent of my age bracket on any given morning, dressed for offices (really well), headphones in, clearly going somewhere with purpose. The rest are older professionals who've been doing this since before I was born. But guys my age? Nowhere. I'm starting to feel like I missed a group chat where all the lads collectively agreed the Circle line at 8:47 wasn't for them and just didn't add me.
I don't think they're all working from home either because let's be honest we all know what “working from home” means for most 22 year olds and it involves a lot more PlayStation than PowerPoint. I think a big chunk of young men have just quietly opted out of the kind of work that requires you to put on a shirt (or a leather jacket if you are me) and be somewhere at 9 AM. They are doing trades or gig work or drop-shipping or “building something” from their bedroom, which sometimes means building a real business and sometimes means watching YouTube videos about building a business while telling their mum they're nearly there.
Meanwhile the women in my generation have showed up. Got on the train & went to the office. Started learning how things work from the inside while half the boys were still trying to figure out if crypto was coming back.
Social capital is built in person. It's built by showing up consistently and being known and being trusted, and you simply cannot build that from your bedroom no matter how good your WiFi is.
And I keep thinking about what this looks like in ten years because social capital is built in person, it's built by showing up consistently and being known and being trusted, and you simply cannot build that from your bedroom no matter how good your WiFi is. There's going to be a generation of young women who spent their twenties in the rooms that matter, building relationships and getting promoted, and a big chunk of their male peers were somewhere else entirely doing something that might have been brilliant or might have been absolutely nothing but either way doesn't compound the same way.
I'm 22 and I'm probably wrong about most things but I know what an empty train carriage looks like, and right now it looks like a lot of young men are missing a game they don't even know is being played. The train's leaving. Literally. And lads are falling behind.
Aryan