Ezra Klein

He has talked about how he couldn't possibly have a girlfriend because of the lifestyle he now leads.

He – it's like we have taken the urge and severed it from the purpose.

And so we have turned it pathological.

Like, I watch him.

I don't think what he's doing is good for him.

I don't think it's what attractiveness means.

And I worry about –

all these young boys who are now growing up in an online environment where they're being told this is what it means to be attractive.

I don't think this is what women find attractive, but it's cleaved off from all these other things that make somebody a compelling person, their warmth, their imperfections also.

And I'm also, I will say this, that I think that the idea that liberalism broadly had so little value to say about what it meant to be a man or a boy for so long.

And we created this sort of social media world and often partnered with the people running it.

Mark Zuckerberg, a liberal in good standing for many years, and abandoned kids into this farm of extremism.

And they just created a space where any of this could thrive, where there wasn't a better competitor to it.

And there's a lot going on in society.

None of it's monocausal.

But I really worry about this world in which this is what is passing for self-help, because I think if you followed it,

You would not help yourself.

You would make yourself into someone much worse.

And many people are.

And that is a failure not of these trolls, but a failure of the mainstream to actually have a vision of human flourishing and self-improvement that feels vital to people.