There’s a lot that goes into picking the area you want to live in. But for the young men of today, cities are considered with one primary factor: What one feels the most “manly”?
This city discourse began after @Paragondisciple posed the question in a post on X. “LA is dead, Miami is gay, Dallas is demographically screwed, New York is too liberal,” he writes. “What is the best up and coming major city for a young man to build a life in.”
My initial reaction: What constitutes a manly city? Is it the number of steakhouses? Cigar shops? Prime fishing locations? Todd Snyder outlets? I don’t know, but a study conducted way back in 2012 ranked America’s manliest cities by “masculating” and “emasculating” factors. There’s quite a range.
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For masculating factors: Think the number of sports teams, monster truck races, American-made cars; places to bowl, fish, hunt and woodwork; BBQ and chicken wing restaurants — because eating bone-in wings and pulled pork is strictly for men, obviously — subscriptions to publications like Sports Illustrated or Playboy and perhaps the most outrageous of all: salty snack sales. I’m officially declaring that sweet treats are for women only from here on out.
As for the emasculating factors, cities dropped in their ranking based on things like how many minivans, “foreign cars,” coffee shops, home decorating stores and Vogue subscriptions there were. I find this hilarious, especially given how many men I have to listen to yapping on Zoom calls in cafes while I drink my coffee.
Based on that survey, some of the winning cities included Charlotte, Oklahoma City, Nashville and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It’s kind of an odd mix. San Francisco was named the most emasculating. But given that this is an old survey, my question remains: Where are young men looking to live right now, and why do men online find these places particularly manly? Looking at this X thread, you may never believe what one of the top responses is.
The jokes really just write themselves. Shiv Aiyar, according to his bio, “made millions in led gen” and loves shitposting on his X algorithm. He’s also from San Francisco, believe it or not. When someone responded to him pointing out that San Francisco isn’t an affordable city, this was his response.
It’s particularly interesting that wealth, taking various forms, seems to be an essential part of this piece. Sure, a lot of these guys seem to be looking to live in areas that aren’t necessarily “left-wing” or diverse in any means, but that feels less surprising than the overall essentialness that they must be in an area that secludes themselves from the “average” city dweller. They want to be the best of the best, whether that be in terms of money, smarts or status.
That last bullet goes on to say that the women are “among the hottest,” according to Fritz Johnson, an Arizona realtor, based on his X bio.
“True men of fine bloodlines flood the streets” is a creepy phrase and seems like a comment a weirdo character in The White Lotus would say.
The conversation has also been popular on TikTok, where the account @afraidofnowoman, which is an absurd username to begin with, started the same discussion.
Most of the comments on this one are making fun of the post. One user commented “have you tried losertown?” or my favorite: “Hmm maybe try LA or Miami? also perhaps Dallas or NY.” However, a handful of them did provide actual responses, some of the most frequent ones being Scottsdale, Nashville, Vegas and Tampa.
A lot of commenters in the TikTok brought up another valid point that many of these men don’t understand: The places they’re looking to live in are incredibly hard to find, given that most of their baseline criteria is not living somewhere “woke” because the majority of major U.S. cities lean democratic anyway. These men are also pretty clueless as to how unattractive most of their reasoning is here, but if it keeps them out of my city, I can’t complain!
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