Younger man, Generation Z according to marketing groups who invent new generations every 10 years, have a lot less interest in dating than in years past.

It could be that they feel besieged in culture. When sociologists blame the "Johnny Bravo" cartoon, which caricatured masculinity by having him get dunked on by women every episode, for toxic masculinity, you know we have a cultural militancy problem.



Today, they are told to get written consent. Nothing kills romance like knowing the other person is checking off predatort prevention boxes before a kiss.  Or waiting for you to go in for a kiss without written consent so they can call you Johnny Bravo and cancel you on Twitter.



That, coupled with dating apps and the rise of "foodie call" fake interest so they can go out to dinner, mean psychological landmines are all over the place.(1)

It used to be a lot simpler in the past. Just try alcohol. 


I don't know how accurate this is, but it has an air of 'truthiness' and for most people that is good enough.

Yet even that is not reliable any more. Young people have listened to us state plainly for 20 years that alcohol is a legitimate class 1 carcinogen. Not 'weedkillers suggested to cause cancer' which is good enough epidemiology for San Francisco juries, alcohol is the actual number two lifestyle killer behind cigarettes. The booze industry got a free pass decades longer than cigarettes thanks to the American Medical Association being the grateful recipient of copious amounts of alcohol industry funding, and having an irrational grip on American health policy since 1970, so whereas cigarettes did not get 'use in moderation' velvet gloves, whisky has. 

So young people have dumped drinking also.(2) 

No more "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" libido-driven decisions or making bad choices thanks to booze? It may result in the genius world as imagined in 1960's "Beyond The Time Barrier", except a few decades late.(3)

NOTES:

(1) I am with them on not wanting to bother but my reason is simpler. I am a widower and not motivated to get back down to dating weight.

(2) Next, they may learn that a new car 'loses 25 percent of its value driving off the lot' because they are overpriced by 25 percent. That is because new car dealers fly giant American flags and claim to be capitalists, like dealerships that exploited buyers for $35,000 over MSRP during the COVID-19 pandemic, while their entire business model is socialism. They lobby to keep government laws in place mandating that consumers must buy new cars from them; to protect consumers from those evil car companies who would otherwise compete to be affordable the way televisions do.

(3) In "Beyond The Time Barrier", an Air Force pilot took off in 1960 and landed in 2024. We had colonized space but a cosmic plague hit earth and made women mute. Except a commie lady who moved to Texas. He decides to return with a hot mute girl to the past to prevent the plague and they pull his return with basically a crystal ball and a metronome.



In actual 2026 we still can't even go back to the moon and we have to tell people not to eat Tide pods.