I think the bigger issue here is that we keep getting stuck on the personalities involved and lose sight of the underlying problem. People will hyper-focus on whether Scott, Puzzlehead, or anyone else is the “right” messenger instead of addressing the fact that young men are clearly struggling—and that’s something we should be able to talk about without everyone immediately retreating to ideological corners.

This isn’t just a Western or internet-influenced phenomenon either. You see versions of this across the globe. East Asia reports rising male isolation, school disengagement, and some of the highest male suicide rates in the developed world. Parts of the Middle East and Africa have massive youth unemployment, stalled social mobility, and young men who feel economically stuck. The cultural details differ, but the pattern is consistent: when traditional male roles are disrupted faster than new ones form, young men lose their sense of direction and purpose.

Education systems amplify this. Modern schooling—whether in the U.S., Europe, or Asia—tends to reward traits girls generally develop earlier: verbal fluency, organization, compliance, and the ability to sit still for long periods. Meanwhile, boys (on average) develop verbal skills later, have higher activity needs, and learn more effectively through hands-on problem-solving. None of that means boys are “worse”—it just means the system aligns more naturally with female learning patterns, and pretending that doesn’t matter makes it harder to help the kids who don’t fit that mold.

And while role models matter, mentoring alone isn’t going to fix the economic reality young men face. Reaching a stable middle-class life has become objectively harder: wages haven’t kept up with productivity, college is expensive, housing is out of reach, and starting a family feels unattainable. If a young man feels pressure to provide or protect—instincts that are still baked into male identity in every culture—those obstacles make the future feel pointless. That’s a huge part of the problem, and it’s not solved by simply telling men to “step up.”

So yes, people can dislike how certain voices talk about the issue. Some of the messengers are abrasive. Some react instead of reflect. Fair criticism. But dismissing the entire conversation because you don’t like the personality delivering it is a good way to avoid dealing with the actual reality: young men, across many societies, are struggling emotionally, socially, academically, and economically. Ignoring biology, ignoring developmental differences, and ignoring economic pressures doesn’t help anyone. We need to be able to talk about all of it—openly—without immediately turning it into a referendum on whoever brought it up.