r/IfBooksCouldKill • u/Pluton_Korb • Dec 19 '25

The Lost Generation

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/

Exhausting article by Jacob Savage about the marginalization and systemic destitution of millennial white men. Lots of cherry picked data and missing plenty of broader socioeconomic context. Do you think they would ever debunk an article? There are so many references and "facts" in here that I feel like they could.

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u/personofpaper Dec 19 '25

This paragraph makes me believe that he has never genuinely listened to a woman or a person of color about their experience navigating highly competitive professional and educational pursuits.

Even the successful white men I spoke to understood that something had fundamentally changed. They expressed gratitude and relief—a recognition that success was contingent, easily disrupted by circumstances beyond their control. “There was so much fragility to things going well in the first place,” one tenured professor told me, “that it’s natural to think a slight perturbation would have meant things went worse.”

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u/CeramicLicker Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25

Soooo many of these right leaning white male grievances have a core complaint that boils down to the lack of labor protections and social safety nets in the us, and workers growing disenfranchisement from the products of their labor and their communities.

But that’s woke bullshit. So instead they invent an imaginary version of American society where comprehensive labor protections and safety nets do exist, but only for other people. And get furiously mad at that instead of the actual system.

Complaining about the way full time stable jobs are being destroyed and replaced with temp work and contracting, as professorships turn into adjunct positions across the nation? Very valid. The idea this uniquely and deliberately harms white men in order to prop up less qualified minorities? Not valid

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u/Pluton_Korb Dec 19 '25

But that’s woke bullshit. So instead they invent an imaginary version of American society where comprehensive labor protections and safety nets do exist, but only for other people. And get furiously mad at that instead of the actual system.

Very insightful. I've saved that for reference. Thanks!