The Cure for Male Loneliness
Now if someone could get on the case for Male Pattern Baldness...and I hope it's not pickleball!!!! š
I would generally consider myself āon top of trends.ā I know that there are two polar-opposite movies being released in theaters this weekend (the studiosā last-ditch attempt to take down Christian anti-child trafficking art for serious patriots, but theyāll never winā¦), and that thereās something going on about bananas, and that apparently people are in Italy alot. There are moments in which I falter, yes, but who among us? Last week, for example, a bunch of middle schoolers informed me that their slippers that looked like a bunch of golf balls glued together were actually a ātrend,ā and for that misstep I immediately went home and castigated myself thoroughly.
Things are not ācoolā or āpopularā anymore; they are āa trend.ā The implied word in the middle there is usually āTikTok,ā but I donāt want to send ByteDance any more ad revenue than they already pull inā¦and we receive a TON in click-through impressions and affiliate links here at Low Lift Ask! Itās insane! So if any menswear or heritage cookware brands want to get in touch, let me knowābut NONE for ByteDance. None. I wonāt even type the word TikTok here anymore. Thatās my solemn promise.
Hereās another thing thatās ātrendingā: talking about how fucking lonely and sad dudes are these days. Itās so embarrassingā¦as someone who has never felt lonely not once even for one iota of a second not once because I have so many friends and friends who are girls and a girlfriend and many acquaintances that always hang out with me, it breaks my heartttt! It does!
In some sense, the entire project of Low Lift Ask has been the cure to male loneliness. Every week we gather here to share our little jokes. We do this for you, subscribers who identify as male. But as Iāve (hopefully) made abundantly clear, I really do not want to be friends with any of you. Please leave me alone and do not fucking speak back to me. That being said, I feel it is my duty to be a supportive Substack writer.
Iāve decided to lay out some tips and tricks for you all here. I love to share my wisdom with the world, because Iāve learned and already know so many useful things, about sex and other cool things as well, and I just hope our subscribers donāt go out there and buy pickleball paddles because they think theyāre supposed to. You should do the following things first. Iāve helpfully broken them down by category:
āHEALTH AND BEAUTYā
. The āAnti-Wim Hofā
This is something I developed by myselfāinstead of cold 3-minute showers or whatever the fuck, you crank that shit up as hot as possible, see how long you can stand it (donāt use body wash or anything, the scalding heat will burn off any bacteria + skin/hair), and if youāre a pussy about it, get back in there the next day, champ. This will boost overall confidence and ability to withstand extreme temperatureāsomething that weāll need for our dire future!
. Midday Naps
Honestly, no one does anything during the hours of 1:30 - 3:30pm. Youāre not missing out on much human connection. The average Kerala man wakes up every morning, eats at least a pound of carbs, thereby rendering him useless for most of the day, wipes himself out at lunch again with another heaping mound of white rice, and then takes an impressively deep nap before afternoon tea time. This is the ideal human routine. If you do this, as a man? Youāll be fucking in no time.
. Having a ton of sex
I recommend fucking to anyone who tells me theyāre feeling lonely and spurned by the world, their inherent sociality levels whittled down to mere nubs by the advent of streaming technology and the digital escape. If youāre having a hard time making and maintaining friendships in our current desiccated husk of a communal landscape, I recommend having sex with various people.
. Mohawk
Get a mohawk. Robert de Niro had one in that one movie, but I recommend doing something much taller and sharper. I knew a guy in high school who claimed his sister Elmer-glued his hair every morning; he looked like the Shock Top mascot. Itās a conversation starter at the very least, and when you do finally let someone into the broken void that is your heart, you can let your hair down a bit.
. Do NOT get Covid
Duuuuuuuuuudeā¦this one honestly is hard to do, I know. But sometimes when you have Covid, you have to cancel on plans, and that means one less opportunity to forge an unshakable bond with another Man. Stay the fuck home, donāt see anyone, and donāt get Covid!
āHOME OBJECTSā
. Carta DāArmenia ā Santa Maria Novella Burning Papers
I know Iāve already talked about these before here. I donāt give a shit. Iāll write about them again, I donāt care. Weāve created, for ourselves, a society that devalues face-to-face human interaction in favor of the constant churn of digital communication, and so one way to combat that is to combine pyromania with being a frag head. Stock up on these prohibitively expensive burning papers and let it rock, brother. Light them everywhere. Just light up wherever youāre walking around, in your living room, at the office, at your Third Place (Starbucks!!!!). Some men just want to watch the world burn, dude, and some men? They also want that world to smell so fucking goodā¦
. Personalized License Plate
Thereās nothing cooler. I think of all the investments that one can make (travel, mortgage, college fund, health care), personalized license plate ranks near the top. Iāve never seen one I didnāt laugh at. And half the battle in making friends is making a dude laugh while heās driving.
āBEING CHILL AND A GUY THAT FUCKING ROCKSā
. Just being normal
A lot of you could do with being a bit more normal. Thereās no more room in the world for weird, interesting, quirky people; youāre either monetizing your mental illness on the internet or youāre a straight up neutral entity moving through social situations harmlessly until a quiet death. I would recommend sanding down any of your more bumpier edges, things that make you unique or useful to the world, in favor of just kind of chilling out and taking it easy once in a while. Keep it tight, you know? Just donāt do all that weird shit and that should help.
. Making sure to have at least 20+ texting conversations going at all times
Stop what youāre doing (reading this) and do this right now: go through every single contact in your phone and just text them, āYooooooo whatās good homieā spelled and punctuated exactly like that. You will, at a minimum, receive a number of responses. Then, the game is as follows: do not engage with the physical world at all, and simply cycle through responding to each conversation one by one, so that you create an infinite loop of facile communication from which you can never extricate yourself, and it gives you the sense of being popular and connected and having a lot of social links, but in truth is just inane chatter that deters you from ever looking up from your phone. Get on this!!
. Develop the atomic bomb with your homies in Los Alamos, New Mexico at the US governmentās behest
Iām just kidding, guys. I saw Oppenheimer last night, and so I wanted to include something like this for the fellas. A little joke like this goes a long way to maintaining Low Lift Askās predictable and exhausting sense of humor. So let me have this one. You actually should not develop weaponry that brings about mass death and destruction at an almost inconceivable scale! Thatās how I should end this one, right?
. Semen retention
The weakest thing in the world you can do as a man is straight up cry; the second weakest is jacking off to porno. Stay away from porno. It drains the human male of his vital energy, thus weakening the entire species. Do notāI repeat, do NOTāsurrender your semen under any circumstances.
āSPORTS TO FOLLOWā
. Basketball
Self-explanatory. Itās cool and full of interesting characters, has a vibrant secondary media apparatus via Twitter, and features athletic feats that look way cooler on filmed cameras than most other sports. And in following basketball, you can develop parasocial relationships with various podcast hostsāisnāt that what this is all about?
. Golf
An easy way to make friends would be to continually sign up for 1-person tee times at popular hours of the day, going, āMind if I play with you guys?ā to a concurrent group of two or three, and then laying on the charm. You have only one opportunity at a first impression, though, and this means the opening tee shot at the first hole is make or break. You absolutely cannot shank the opening driveāif you do so, you might as well just pack it in. You donāt deserve the refund anyway.
. Our nationās politicsā¦..
Become a wonk! Iām a āwonk!ā Say the word wonk all the time. Junkie. āPolitics junkie.ā āDataviz nerd.ā Shit like that. Easy way to connect with the homies is to keep saying, āI donāt know, Chris Christie could make a surprise run for itā¦ā at every hangout. āWonk.ā
Thatās all Iāve got, really. The rest is on you. Thereās so much that is intangible, ineffable, unteachableāI have so many perfect and undefinable qualities that are genuinely impossible to translate via the written word, and so this is all I can do. Stop being so lonely, is all I can say. Just stop it. It was easy for me because Iāve always had so many friends and friends who are girls and girlfriend and unspoken sexual tension with people at various public places (airport, train station, bookstore, etc.) and unblemished childhood and sex. It must be hard if you werenāt born with those things. So yeah, just stop. Donāt be lonely. Be happy.
Ritamās Footnote
I love just not being lonely :)