Tag Archives: Men

Addictions, Essays, Gambling, Psychology, Reviews, Society, Sports

THE LONELINESS BET

September 30, 2025 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

How microgambling apps turn male solitude into profit.

By Michael Cummins, Editor, September 30, 2025

The slot machine has left the casino. Now, with AI precision, it waits in your pocket—timing its ping to the hour of your despair.

The ghost light of the television washes the room, a half-forgotten Japanese baseball game murmuring from the corner. Alex sits in the dark with his phone held at the angle of prayer, the glass an altar, an oracle, a mirror. A ping sounds, small and precise, like a tuning fork struck in his palm. Next pitch outcome—strikeout or walk? Odds updated live. Numbers flicker like minnows. The bet slip breathes. He leans forward. The silence is not merely the absence of sound, but the pressure of who isn’t there—a vacuum he has carried for years.

The fridge hums behind him, its light flickering like a faulty heartbeat. On the counter, unopened mail piles beside a half-eaten sandwich. His last real conversation was three days ago, a polite nod to the barista who remembered his name. At work, Zoom windows open and close, Slack messages ping and vanish. He is present, but not seen.

He is one of the nearly one in three American men who report regular loneliness. For him, the sportsbook app isn’t entertainment but companionship, the only thing that demands his attention consistently. The ping of the odds is the sound of synthetic connection. Tonight he is wagering on something absurdly small: a late-night table tennis serve in an Eastern European hall he’ll never see. Yet the stakes feel immense. Last year in Oregon, bettors wagered more than $100 million on table tennis alone, according to reporting by The New York Times. This is the new American pastime—no stadium, no friends, just a restless man and a glowing rectangle. The algorithm has found a way to commodify the quiet desperation of a Sunday evening.

This isn’t an evolution in gambling; it’s a fundamental violation of the natural pace of risk. Pregame wagers once demanded patience: a pick, a wait, a final score. Microbetting abolishes the pause. It slices sport into thousands of coin-sized moments and resolves them in seconds. Behavioral scientists call this variable-ratio reinforcement: rewards arriving unpredictably, the most potent engine of compulsion. Slot machines use it. Now sports apps do too. The prefrontal cortex, which might otherwise whisper caution, has no time to speak. Tap. Resolve. Tap again.

The shift is from the calculated risk of an investment to the pure reflex of a hammer hitting a knee. Fifty-two percent of online bettors admit to “chasing a bet”—the desperate reflex to wager more after losing. One in five confess to losing more than they could afford. The harm isn’t accidental; it’s engineered. Rachel Volberg, who has studied problem gambling for four decades, told The New York Times that live betting is “much more akin to a slot machine rather than a lottery ticket.” It bypasses deliberation, keeping the brain trapped in a continuous, chemical loop.

And it isn’t marginal to the industry. Live wagers already account for more than half of all money bet on DraftKings and FanDuel. The slot machine has left the casino. It is now in the pocket, always on, always glowing.

The uncanny efficiency of the app lies not in predicting what Alex will bet, but when he will be weakest. After midnight. After a loss. After a deposit he swore not to make. DraftKings’ $134 million purchase of Simplebet, as reported by The New York Times, wasn’t just a business deal; it was the acquisition of a behavioral engine. These models are trained not only on the game but on the gambler himself—how quickly he scrolls, when he logs on, whether his bets swell after defeat, whether his activity spikes on holidays.

DraftKings has gone further, partnering with Amazon Web Services to refine its predictive architecture. At a recent engineering summit in Sofia, engineers demonstrated how generative AI and AWS tools could enhance the personalization of wagers. The same anticipatory logic that once powered retail nudges—“this user is hovering over a product, send a discount”—is now recalibrated to detect emotional vulnerability. In betting apps, the purchase is a wager, the discount is a boost, and the timing is everything: late at night, after a loss, when silence settles heaviest.

The AI’s profile of Alex is more precise than any friend’s. It has categorized his distress. Recent surveys suggest men in the lowest income brackets report loneliness at twice the rate of wealthier peers—a demographic vulnerability the models can detect and exploit through the timing and size of his wagers. Loneliness among men overall has risen by more than thirty percent in the past decade. An algorithm that watches his patterns doesn’t need to imagine his state of mind. It times it.

The profile is not a dashboard; it’s a lever. It logs his loneliest hours as his most profitable. It recognizes reckless bets after a gut-punch loss and surfaces fast, high-variance markets promising a chemical reset. Then comes the nudge: “Yankees boost—tap now.” “Next serve: Djokovic by ace?” To Alex it feels like telepathy. In truth, the system has mapped and monetized his despair. As one DraftKings data scientist explained at a gambling conference, in remarks quoted by The New York Times: “If we know a user likes to bet Yankees games late, we can send the right notification at the right time.” The right time, of course, is often the loneliest time.

Microbetting doesn’t just gamify sport—it gamifies emotion. The app doesn’t care if Alex is bored, anxious, or heartbroken. It cares only that those states correlate with taps. In this system, volatility is value. The more erratic the mood, the more frequent the bets. In this economy of emotional liquidity, feelings themselves become tradable assets. A moment of heartbreak, a restless midnight, a twinge of boredom—all can be harvested. Dating apps convert longing into swipes. Fitness trackers translate guilt into streaks. Robinhood gamified trading with digital confetti. Sportsbooks are simply the most brazen: they turn solitude into wagers, despair into deposits.

Beneath the betting slips lies a hunger for competence. Only forty-one percent of men say they can confide in someone about personal problems. Men without college degrees report far fewer close friendships. Many describe themselves as not meaningfully part of any group or community. In that vacuum, the interface whispers: You are decisive. You are strategic. You can still win. Microbetting offers a synthetic agency: decisiveness on demand, mastery without witness. For men whose traditional roles—provider, protector, head of household—have been destabilized by economic precarity or cultural drift, the app provides the illusion of restored mastery.

The sheer volume of micro-choices acts as a placebo for real-world complexity. Where a career or relationship requires slow, uncertain effort, the app offers instant scenarios of risk and resolution. The system is perfectly aligned with the defense mechanism of isolation: self-soothing through hyper-focus and instant gratification. The product packages loneliness as raw material.

The genius of the app is its disguise. It feels less like a gambling tool than an unjudging confidant, always awake, always responsive, oddly tender. Welcome back. Boost unlocked. You might like… A digital shadow that knows your rhythms better than any friend.

“The clients I see gamble in the shower,” says counselor Harry Levant. “They gamble in bed in the morning.” The app has colonized spaces once reserved for intimacy or solitude. Men and women report similar levels of loneliness overall, but men are far less likely to seek help. That gap makes them uniquely susceptible to a companion that demands nothing but money.

FanDuel actively recruits engineers with backgrounds in personalization, behavioral analytics, and predictive modeling—the same skills that fine-tuned retail shopping and streaming recommendations. There is no direct pipeline from Amazon’s hover-prediction teams to the sportsbooks, but the resemblance is unmistakable. What began as an effort to predict which blender you might buy has evolved into predicting which late-inning pitch you’ll gamble on when you’re most alone.

Some apps already track how hard you press the screen, how fast you scroll, how long you hesitate before tapping. These aren’t quirks—they’re signals. A slower scroll after midnight? That’s loneliness. A rapid tap after a loss? That’s desperation. The app doesn’t need to ask how you feel. It knows. What looks like care is in fact surveillance masquerading as intimacy.

For Alex, the spiral accelerates. Fifty. Then a hundred. Then two-fifty. No pause, no friction. Deposits smooth through in seconds. His body answers the staccato pace like it’s sprinting—breath shallow, fingers hot. Loss is eclipsed instantly by the next chance to be right. This is not a malfunction. It is maximum efficiency.

In Phoenix, Chaz Donati, a gambler profiled by The New York Times, panicked over a $158,000 bet on his hometown team and tried to counter-bet his way back with another $256,000. Hundreds of thousands vanished in a single night. After online sportsbooks launched, help-seeking searches for gambling addiction surged by sixty percent in some states. The pattern is unmistakable: the faster the bets, the faster the collapse. The app smooths the path, designed to be faster than his conscience.

In Vancouver, Andrew Pace, a professional bettor described by The New York Times, sits before three monitors, scanning Finnish hockey odds with surgical calm. He bets sparingly, surgically, explaining edges to his livestream audience. For him, the app is a tool, not a companion. He treats it as a craft: discipline, spreadsheets, controlled risk. But he is the exception. Most users aren’t chasing edges—they’re chasing feelings. The sportsbook knows the difference, and the business model depends on the latter.

Meanwhile, the sport itself is shifting. Leagues like the NBA and NFL own equity in the data firms—Sportradar, Genius Sports—that provide the feeds fueling microbets. They are not neutral observers; they are partners. The integrity threat is no longer fixing a whole game but corrupting micro-moments. Major League Baseball has already investigated pitchers for suspicious wagers tied to individual pitches. When financial value is assigned to the smallest, most uncertain unit of the game, every human error becomes suspect. The roar of the crowd is drowned out by the private vibration of phones.

Lawmakers have begun to stir. In New Jersey, legislators have proposed banning microbets outright, citing research from Australia showing nearly eighty percent of micro-bettors meet the criteria for problem gambling. Representative Paul Tonko has pushed for national standards: deposit caps, affordability checks, mandatory cool-off periods. “We regulate tobacco and alcohol,” he said. “Why not emotional risk?” Public health advocates echo him, warning of “a silent epidemic of digital compulsion.” The industry resists. Guardrails, they insist, would ruin the experience—which, of course, is the point.

The deeper question is not consumer choice; it is algorithmic ethics. Loneliness is already a recognized risk factor for cardiovascular disease and dementia. What happens when the same predictive infrastructure used to ship packages anticipatorily or recommend movies is redeployed to time despair? The failure to regulate is a failure to acknowledge that algorithmic harm can be as corrosive as any toxin.

At 2:03 a.m., Alex finally closes the app. The screen goes dark. The room exhales. The silence returns—not as peace, but as pressure. The television murmurs on, but the game is long over. What remains is residue: the phantom buzz of a notification that hasn’t arrived, the muscle memory of a finger poised to tap, the echo of odds that promised redemption.

He tells himself he’s done for the night. But the algorithm doesn’t need urgency. It waits. It knows his hours, his teams, the emotional dip that comes after a loss. It will tap him again, softly, precisely, when the silence grows too loud.

One in four young men will feel this same loneliness tomorrow night. The casino will be waiting in their pockets, dressed as a companion, coded for their cravings. Outside, dawn edges the blinds. Somewhere a stadium will fill tomorrow, a crowd roaring in unison. But in apartments like Alex’s, the roar has been replaced by a private buzz, a vibration against the skin. The app is patient. The silence is temporary. The house never sleeps.

Because in this new emotional economy, silence is never a stop. It is only a pause. And the algorithm waits for the ping.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Addictions, Behavior, Essays, Social Media, Society, Technology

REBUILDING A BROKEN PATH FROM BOYHOOD TO MAN

August 14, 2025 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

By Michael Cummins, Editor, August 14, 2025

Imagine a world where, in a single decade, half the laughter shared between friends vanishes. Imagine a childhood where time spent outdoors is cut by a third and the developmental benefits of reading are diminished by two-thirds. This is not a dystopian fantasy. According to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in a “Prof G Podcast with Scott Galloway published on August 14, 2025, it is the stark reality for a generation that has been systematically disconnected from the real world and shackled to the virtual. “We have overprotected our children in the real world,” Haidt argues, “and underprotected them in the virtual world.”

This profound dislocation is the epicenter of a “perfect storm” disproportionately harming boys and young men—a crisis fueled by predatory technology, economic precarity, and the collapse of institutions that once guided them into manhood. It is a crisis, as a growing chorus of thinkers like Haidt, Brookings scholar Richard Reeves, and professor Scott Galloway have illuminated, born not from a single cause, but from a collective, intergenerational failure. It is a betrayal of the implicit promise that each generation will leave the world better for the next, a promise broken by a society that has become, in Galloway’s stark assessment, “a generation of takers, not givers.”

The Digital Dislocation: A Generation Adrift Online

The most abrupt change to the landscape of youth has been technological. Haidt identifies the years between 2010 and 2015 as the “pivot point” when a “play-based childhood” was supplanted by a “phone-based childhood.” This was not a simple evolution from the television sets of the past. The smartphone is a uniquely invasive tool—a supercomputer delivering constant, algorithmically curated interruptions. It extracts data on its user’s deepest desires while creating a feedback loop of social comparison and judgment, resulting in a documented catastrophe for mental health. It is no coincidence that between 2010 and 2021, the suicide rate for American boys aged 10-14 nearly tripled, according to CDC data highlighted by Haidt.

The Lure of the Manosphere

This digital vacuum has been eagerly filled by what Scott Galloway calls the “great white sharks” of the tech industry. The most insidious outcome of their engagement-at-all-costs model is the weaponization of social validation into a system of industrialized shame. “Imagine growing up in a minefield,” Haidt suggests. “You would walk really carefully.” This pervasive fear suppresses healthy risk-taking, a crucial component of adolescent development, particularly for boys who learn competence through trial, error, and recovery.

This isolation is especially damaging for boys who, as scholar Warren Farrell argues, already suffer from a crisis of “dad-deprivation” and a lack of positive male mentorship. “A boy’s search for a father,” Farrell writes in The Boy Crisis, “is a search for a purpose-driven life.” Into this void step not fathers or coaches, but the algorithmic sirens of the “manosphere.” These figures thrive because they offer a counterfeit version of the very thing Farrell identifies as missing: a strong, authoritative male voice providing direction, however misguided. Figures like Andrew Tate have built empires by offering lonely or insecure young men a seductive, off-the-shelf identity, often paired with dubious get-rich-quick schemes that prey directly on their economic anxieties. The algorithms on platforms like TikTok and YouTube are ruthlessly efficient, creating a pipeline that can push a boy from mainstream gaming content to nihilistic or misogynistic ideologies in a matter of weeks. This is not a moral failing of young men; it is the predictable result of a human need for guidance meeting a machine optimized for radicalizing engagement.

The Economic Squeeze: A Broken Promise of Prosperity

This digital betrayal is compounded by an economic one, as the foundational promises of prosperity have been broken for an entire generation. The traditional path to stability—education, career, family, homeownership—has become fractured. As Galloway argues, older generations have effectively “figured out that the downside of democracy is that old people… can continue to vote themselves more money,” leaving the young to face a brutal housing market and stagnant wages. He describes it as a conscious “pulling up of the ladder,” where asset inflation benefits the old at the direct expense of the young.

From Precarious Work to Deaths of Despair

This economic anxiety shatters the “get rich slowly” ethos and replaces it with a desperate search for a shortcut. And in 2018, the state effectively handed this desperate generation a loaded gun in the form of frictionless, legalized sports betting. The Supreme Court decision placed, as Reeves describes it, a “casino in everyone’s pocket,” making gambling dangerously accessible to a demographic of young men who are biologically more prone to risk-taking and socially more isolated than ever. The statistics are damning: young men are the fastest-growing group of problem gamblers, and in states that legalize online betting, bankruptcy filings often spike.

The consequences are existential. This trend is the leading edge of the “deaths of despair” phenomenon identified by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, who documented rising mortality among men without college degrees from suicide, overdose, and alcohol-related illness. Their research concluded these deaths were “less about the sting of poverty and more about the pain of a life without meaning.” When a young man, steeped in economic anxiety and disconnected from real-world support, takes a huge financial risk and fails, the shame can be unbearable. Haidt delivers a chillingly direct warning of the foreseeable consequences: “you’re gonna have dead young men.”

The Social Vacuum: An Abandonment of Guidance and Guardrails

Underpinning both the technological and economic crises is a deeper social one: the systematic dismantling of the institutions, norms, and rituals that once guided boys into healthy manhood. Society has become deinstitutionalized, removing the “guardrails” that once channeled youthful energy.

The Crisis in the Classroom

This is acutely visible in education. The modern classroom, with its emphasis on quiet compliance and verbal-emotive skills, is often a poor fit for the learning styles more common in boys. As author Christina Hoff Sommers has argued for years, “For more than a decade, our schools have been enforcing a zero-tolerance policy for any behavior that suggests boyishness.” The result is a widening gender gap at every level. Women now earn nearly 60% of all bachelor’s degrees in the U.S. Boys are more likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability, more likely to face disciplinary action, and have largely abandoned reading for pleasure. We are, in effect, pathologizing boyhood and then wondering why boys are checking out of school.

The Search for Structure

This deinstitutionalization extends beyond the schoolhouse. The decline of institutions like the Boy Scouts, whose membership has plummeted in recent decades, local sports leagues, and church groups has removed arenas for mentorship and character formation. From an anthropological perspective, this is a catastrophic failure. “Wherever you have initiation rights,” Haidt notes, “they’re always harsher, stricter, tougher for boys because it’s a much bigger jump to turn a boy into a man.” This journey requires structure, discipline, and challenge. Yet modern society, in its quest for safety, has stripped away opportunities for healthy risk, leaving boys to “just vegetate.”

Into this vacuum has rushed a toxic cultural narrative that pits the sexes against each other. But the hunger for meaning has not disappeared. Reeves’s powerful anecdote of visiting a Latin Mass in Denver on a Sunday night and finding it “full of young men, most of them on their own,” speaks volumes. They are not seeking chaos; they are desperately searching for “structure and discipline and purpose and institutions that will help them become men.” They are looking for the very things society has stopped providing.

Forging a New Path: A Framework for Renewal

Recognizing this betrayal is the first step. The next is to act. This requires moving past the gender wars and embracing a bold, pro-social agenda to rebuild the structures that turn boys into thriving men.

1. Rebuild the Guardrails: Institutional and Economic Solutions The most immediate need is to create viable, non-collegiate pathways to success and dignity. We must champion a massive expansion of vocational and technical education, celebrating the mastery of a trade as equal in status to a four-year degree. As Mike Rowe, a vocal advocate for skilled labor, has stated, “We are lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist. That’s nuts.” Imagine a modern Civilian Conservation Corps, where young men from all backgrounds work side-by-side to rebuild crumbling infrastructure or restore national parks—learning a trade while forging bonds of shared purpose and earning a tangible stake in the country they are helping to build.

2. Create Modern Rites of Passage: Community and Mentorship Communities must step into the void left by failing institutions. This means a national push to fund and expand mentorship programs. Research from MENTOR National shows that at-risk youth with a mentor are 55% more likely to enroll in college and 130% more likely to hold leadership positions. It means local leaders creating their own modern “rites of passage”—challenging, team-based programs that teach resilience, problem-solving, and civic responsibility through tangible projects. As Reeves bluntly puts it, “pain produces growth,” and we must reintroduce healthy, structured struggle back into the lives of boys.

3. A Pro-Social Vision: Redefining Honorable Masculinity The most crucial task is cultural. We must stop telling boys that their innate nature is toxic and instead offer them a noble vision of what it can become. We must define honorable manhood not as domination or material wealth, but as competence, responsibility, and protectiveness. This means redefining competence not just as physical strength, but as technical skill, emotional regulation, and intellectual curiosity. It means redefining protectiveness not just against physical threats, but against the digital and psychological dangers that poison our discourse and harm the vulnerable. It is a masculinity defined by what it builds and who it cares for—the courage to be a provider for one’s family, a pillar of one’s community, and a steward of a just society.

Conclusion: Repairing the Intergenerational Compact

We have stranded a generation of boys in a digital “Guyland,” a perilous limbo between a childhood they were forced to abandon and an adulthood they see no clear path to reaching. We have told them their natural instincts are a problem while simultaneously exposing them to the most predatory, high-risk temptations ever devised. This is more than a crisis; it is a profound societal malpractice.

The choice we face is stark. We can continue our slide into a zero-sum society of horizontal, gendered conflict, or we can recognize this crisis for what it is: a vertical, intergenerational failure that harms everyone. We must have the courage to declare that the well-being of our sons is not in opposition to the well-being of our daughters. As Richard Reeves has said, the goal is to “get to a world which is better for both men and women.” This is not a zero-sum game; it is a positive-sum imperative.

This requires a new intergenerational compact, one rooted in action, not grievance. It demands we stop pathologizing boyhood and start building the institutions that mold it. It requires that we offer our young men not frictionless temptation, but meaningful struggle. It insists that we provide them not with algorithmic influencers, but with real-world mentors who can show them the path to an honorable life.

The hour is late, and the damage is deep. But in the quiet hunger of young men for purpose, in the fierce love of parents for their children, and in the courage of thinkers willing to speak uncomfortable truths, lies the hope that we can yet forge a new path. The work is not to turn back the clock, but to build a better future—one where we finally keep our promise to the next generation.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Education, Equality, Essays, Men, Society, Women

Patriarchy, Feminism and the Illusion of Progress

July 25, 2025 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

By Renee Dellar, Founder, The Learning Studio, Newport Beach, CA

We often imagine patriarchy as a relic—obvious, archaic, and easily challenged. But as generations of feminist thinkers have long argued, and as Cordelia Fine’s Patriarchy Inc. incisively confirms, its enduring power lies not in its bluntness, but in its ability to mutate. Today, patriarchy doesn’t need to roar; it whispers in algorithms, smiles from performance reviews, and thrives in wellness language. This essay argues that Fine’s emphasis on workplace inequality, while essential, is incomplete without a parallel reckoning with patriarchy’s grip on domestic life—and more profoundly, without a reimagining of gender itself. What we need is a psychological evolution: a balanced embodiment of both feminine and masculine energies in all people, if we are to unbuild a system that survives by design.

In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” With that sentence, she shattered the myth of biological destiny. Womanhood, she claimed, was not innate but culturally scripted—a second sex constructed through tradition, religion, and expectation. Patriarchy, in her analysis, was no divine order but a human invention: an architecture of dominance designed to reproduce itself through social roles. Fine’s forthcoming Patriarchy Inc. (August 2025) echoes and updates this insight with sharp empirical rigor. In the workplace, she shows, patriarchy has not disappeared—it has evolved. It now markets fairness, monetizes empowerment, and offloads systemic change onto individuals via coaching, productivity hacks, and “confidence workshops” that sell resilience as a substitute for reform.

What makes Fine’s critique vital is not merely that patriarchy persists—it’s how it thrives beneath the very banner of equality. It now cloaks itself in metrics, missions, and diversity gloss. Corporate offices tout inclusion while continuing to reward masculine-coded behaviors and promote male leadership: 85% of Fortune 500 CEOs remain men. Patriarchy, we learn, is not a crumbling wall—it is a self-repairing system. To dismantle it, we must go deeper than metrics. We must examine the energies it suppresses and rewards.

Masculine and Feminine Traits: A New Grammar of Justice

To understand the psychological mechanics of patriarchy, we must revisit the traits society has long coded as masculine or feminine—traits that are neither biological imperatives nor moral absolutes, but social energies shaped over centuries.

Masculine traits are typically associated with competition, independence, assertiveness, strength, and linear action. Taken too far, they veer into domination.
Feminine traits, by contrast, are linked to empathy, care, intuition, collaboration, and receptivity—qualities that bind rather than divide.

These traits exist in all people. Yet patriarchy has historically overvalued the former and devalued the latter, punishing men for softness and women for strength. A just society must not erase these differences but balance them—within institutions, relationships, and most importantly, within the self.

Simone de Beauvoir: The Architecture of Otherness

De Beauvoir’s diagnosis of woman as “Other”—the deviation from the male norm—remains uncannily relevant. Today’s workplaces replicate that Othering in subtler ways: through dress codes, tone policing, and leadership norms that penalize feminine expression. As Fine notes, women must be confident, but not cold; nurturing, but not weak; assertive, but not abrasive. In other words: perfect. The corporate woman who succeeds by male standards is often punished for violating feminine ideals. The double bind remains—only now it wears a blazer and carries a badge that says “inclusive.”

Friedan, Domesticity, and the New Containment

In 1963, Betty Friedan exposed what she called “the problem that has no name”: the stifling despair of suburban domesticity. Today, that problem has been rebranded. The girlboss, the multitasking mother, the curated freelancer—each is sold as empowered, even as she shoulders the same disproportionate domestic load. Women continue to dominate sectors like education and healthcare, often underpaid and undervalued despite being deemed “essential.” These roles, Fine shows, are praised symbolically while marginalized materially. Even progressive policies like flexible hours and parental leave frequently assume women are the default caregivers, reinforcing the burden Friedan tried to name.

Millett’s Sexual Politics: The Myth of Neutrality

Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics reframed patriarchy as institutional, not interpersonal. Literature, law, and culture all naturalized male dominance. Fine brings that lens to the boardroom. Modern hiring algorithms and promotion pathways may appear neutral, but they are encoded with values that reward masculine norms. Women are urged to “lean in,” but warned not to lean too far. Diversity initiatives often succeed at optics, but fail to shift power: the faces at the table change, yet the hands on the levers remain the same. As Fine argues, equity requires more than visibility—it demands structural rebalancing.

Lorde and the Failure of Inclusion Without Power

Audre Lorde warned that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Too often, DEI programs use those very tools. Difference is celebrated, but only within safe boundaries. Women of color may be promoted, but without adequate mentorship, institutional backing, or decision-making power, the gesture risks becoming symbolic. Fine channels Lorde’s insight: inclusion without transformation is corporate theater. Real justice requires not just a change in personnel, but a change in priorities, metrics, and values.

Gerda Lerner and the Machine That Adapts

In The Creation of Patriarchy, Gerda Lerner traced patriarchy’s roots to law, religion, and economy, showing it as a machine designed for self-preservation. Fine updates this metaphor: the machine now runs on data, flexibility, and illusion. Today’s labor markets reward 24/7 availability, mobility, and presenteeism—conditions often impossible for caregivers. When women enter male-dominated fields, prestige and pay often decline. The system adapts by downgrading the value of women’s gains. Patriarchy doesn’t just resist change—it mutates in response to it.

The Invisible Burnout: When Women Do Both

As women are pushed to succeed professionally, they’re also expected to maintain responsibility for domestic life. This dual burden—emotional labor, mental load, caregiving—is not equally shared. While women have been pressured to adopt masculine-coded traits to succeed, men have faced little reciprocal cultural push to develop their feminine sides. As a result, many women are performing two identities—professional and maternal—while men remain tethered to one. This imbalance is not just unfair—it is unsustainable.

Men Must Evolve Too: The Will to Change

Cordelia Fine joins American author, theorist, educator, and social critic bell hooks in arguing that men must be part of the liberation project—not as allies, but as participants in their own healing. In The Will to Change, hooks argued that patriarchy damages men by severing them from their emotions, from intimacy, and from ethical wholeness. Fine builds on this, showing how men are rewarded with status but robbed of connection.

What does transformation look like for men? Not emasculation, but evolution:

Self-awareness: recognizing one’s emotions, triggers, and limitations.
Self-regulation: managing impulses with maturity and intention.
Self-compassion: replacing shame with acceptance and care.

These are not feminine traits—they are human ones. And leaders who embody both emotional intelligence and strategic clarity are not only more ethical—they are more effective. Institutions must reward this integration, not punish it.

From Balance to Redesign: What Fine Urges

Fine’s prescriptions are bold:

Assume all workers have caregiving roles—not just mothers.
Redesign success metrics to value care, collaboration, and emotional labor.
Teach gender equity not as tolerance, but as a foundational moral principle.
Foster this evolution early—at home, in classrooms, in culture.

This is not incremental reform. It is a new architecture: one that recognizes care as central, emotional labor as valuable, and balance as a mark of strength.

Conclusion: The System That Learns, and the Refusal That Liberates

Patriarchy has endured not because it hides, but because it learns. As Simone de Beauvoir revealed its ontological design, and Gerda Lerner its historical scaffolding, Cordelia Fine now reveals its polished upgrade. Patriarchy today sells resistance as a brand, equity as a product. It launders its image with the very language that once opposed it.

We no longer suffer from a lack of critique. We suffer from a failure to redesign. And so, as Audre Lorde warned, our task is not to decorate the master’s house—it is to refuse it. Not through token representation, but through radical revaluation. Not through balance sheets, but through balanced selves.

To dismantle patriarchy is not to flip the power dynamic. It is to end the game altogether. It is to build something entirely different—where human worth is not ranked, but recognized. Where power is not hoarded, but shared. Where every child, regardless of sex, is raised to lead with empathy and to love with courage.

That future begins not with a program, but with a decision. To evolve. To balance. To refuse the illusion of progress and demand its substance.

RENEE DELLAR WROTE AND EDITED THIS ESSAY UTILIZING AI

Addictions, Essays, Gambling, Psychology, Reviews, Society, Sports

“The Sports Betting Myth” And Modern Masculinity

July 17, 2025 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

In today’s sports betting universe—where billion-dollar algorithms collide with basement-level psychology—risk has become religion. It is a seductive theater of dopamine and data, and nowhere is that spectacle more vividly embodied than in the persona of Mazi VS. Profiled in The New York Times Magazine in July 2025, Mazi—allegedly named Darnell Smith—didn’t just place bets. He curated a mythology: diamond chains, exotic cars, ten-leg parlays worth tens of thousands. The “Sports Betting King” wasn’t selling picks; he was selling the illusion of a reclaimed life.

The Gambler as Influencer

But behind his designer façade lies a bigger story—one that exposes a nation of young men, displaced and disillusioned, grasping for control in an economy built not on probabilities, but on personas.

Mazi’s rise wasn’t just a fluke—it was the inevitable lovechild of two American obsessions: celebrity and gambling. Since the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in 2018, sports gambling has gone mainstream, now legal in 39 jurisdictions and growing faster than almost any entertainment sector. The American Gaming Association reported $149.9 billion wagered in 2024 alone.

In this new order, Mazi emerged as an archetype: part digital shaman, part Vegas prophet. His Instagram feed reads like a declaration of invincibility. For his 2.5 million followers, it isn’t about win-loss records—it’s about belonging to something exclusive. He doesn’t promise financial success; he promises masculine resurrection.

As influencer and actuarial bettor Ryan Noel observed, Mazi doesn’t just sell picks—he sells a coded fantasy of dominance, control, and unshakable self-belief. And for countless young men, that fantasy is not just appealing—it’s life-preserving.

The Illusion of Expertise

Welcome to the tout economy, where gambling influencers promise the moon and never post the losses. Mazi’s claim of a 70% win rate would be statistically Herculean. Even elite professional handicappers hover around 55%—and they grind, quietly and obsessively, like actuaries of human folly.

Industry watchdogs, including the American Gaming Association, have flagged the lack of accountability among pick-sellers. A 2024 ethics report recommended mandatory transparency: clear disclosures, performance tracking, and consumer protections. But few touts comply. The image is what sells, and in the influencer age, curated wins matter more than actual truth.

Amanda Vance stands as one rare exception. A female capper with over half a million followers, she posts her losses with unflinching honesty. But as she knows all too well, in a marketplace addicted to illusion, transparency remains an anomaly.

The Parlay Trap

If Mazi is the avatar of sports betting glamor, then the parlay bet is its beating heart. Multi-leg wagers with slim chances and massive payouts are engineered to elicit fantasy. And for young men aching for impact, they do.

Parlay betting now accounts for 30% of wagers, up from 17% in 2018. They’re fun, fast, and nearly impossible to win. Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG), warns that parlays and live betting formats trigger sharper dopamine spikes—creating cycles of compulsive behavior particularly prevalent among Gen Z men.

A 2025 study from the University of Chicago found that parlay and live betting formats elicit greater emotional volatility, impulsivity, and perceived entertainment value among males aged 21–25. These formats aren’t just risky—they’re addictive by design.

In 2023, Credit Karma reported that 28% of Gen Z male bettors had borrowed money to continue gambling. Parlay bets were most frequently cited in rising credit card debt and emergency loan requests. These aren’t merely wagers—they’re escape hatches.

The Displaced Male Psyche

Scratch the surface of America’s sports betting boom and you find something deeper: the cultural disorientation of young men.

Richard Reeves, in his landmark book Of Boys and Men, describes a generation slipping behind—educationally, emotionally, economically. Women now earn nearly 60% of college degrees. Male labor force participation is in long-term decline. Suicide is the leading cause of death among men under 35. The rise of single-parent households, now at 37%, has only sharpened the collapse. Boys raised without fathers are statistically more vulnerable to unemployment, addiction, and incarceration.

Professor Scott Galloway has sounded the alarm with characteristic bluntness: “No cohort has fallen further faster than young men.” He warns that this crisis isn’t just economic—it’s existential. Young men are four times more likely to die by suicide, three times more likely to suffer from addiction, and twelve times more likely to be incarcerated than their female peers.

Disconnection from purpose and diminished status leave many seeking alternate arenas for validation. In this context, sports betting offers a dangerous placebo. It promises status, autonomy, adrenaline—a sense of winning, even when there’s nothing left to win.

This displacement is increasingly visible in online male subcultures, where sports betting sits beside crypto trading and influencer hustle culture. Each promises mastery and escape; each delivers volatility and entrapment. Betting is not simply entertainment—it is becoming ritualized identity construction, especially among those who feel culturally erased.

The Gamification of Risk

The machinery that fuels Mazi’s illusion is not just psychological—it’s technological. Betting apps have evolved into hyper-engineered interfaces designed to mimic the addictiveness of social media platforms. Real-time odds boosts, push notifications, in-game betting prompts. Everything is frictionless.

The Mintel US Sports Betting Market Report confirms that young men dominate this ecosystem, preferring mobile-first, real-time formats tailored to keep them engaged—and spending. The North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology calls it “engineered addiction,” comparing betting apps to TikTok in their manipulation of attention, emotion, and behavior.

In this marketplace, boredom is monetized. Depression is gamified. And vulnerability is no longer a liability—it’s a business model.

Recent FTC consumer behavior surveys note that behavioral nudges in betting apps mimic the same reward reinforcement loops used in slot machines. Losses are reframed as near-wins. Personalized promotions respond to user emotion, time of day, and prior loss streaks.

Galloway warns that “sports betting is a dopamine IV drip for young men who are already in deficit.” He argues that constant stimulation rewires the brain’s reward system, making real-world achievement feel slow, unrewarding, and irrelevant.

When the Slip Comes Due

The financial cost is staggering. The Credit Karma Gambling and Debt Report revealed that in states with legalized online betting, personal loan applications surged 27% within three years. Men aged 18–34 in low-income ZIP codes saw the sharpest declines in credit scores.

Meanwhile, most states invest little in recovery. An Urban Institute study found that over 80% of states spend less than $1 million annually on gambling addiction treatment—while collecting hundreds of millions in sportsbook taxes.

Some researchers have begun to describe this model as a “reverse welfare state,” where public revenue is extracted disproportionately from vulnerable populations without equitable reinvestment in care.

By 2030, the U.S. sports betting industry is projected to reach $187 billion, according to Grand View Research. But at what cost? As one analyst put it, “This isn’t gambling anymore. It’s commercialized chaos.”

Masculinity, Myth, and Market Collapse

Mazi VS doesn’t just sell picks—he sells reclamation. His persona weaponizes a narrative that many young men crave: that masculinity is a game, and he knows how to win.

This is part of a broader digital drift. From crypto evangelists to motivational “grindset” YouTubers, the internet offers a smorgasbord of male-centered identities steeped in risk, bravado, and defiance. The American College Health Association warns that men are disproportionately less likely to seek mental health support, often citing stigma and alienation. For many, the betting slip feels more empowering than therapy.

It’s a dangerous illusion. And Mazi—whether by design or accident—became its prophet.

He is also not alone. Dozens of similar figures—less flamboyant but equally influential—sell picks, promise systems, and curate opulence. They represent a growing cottage industry of digital masculinity coaches masquerading as analysts.

Galloway has called for a cultural reckoning: “The single point of failure when a young boy comes off the tracks is when he loses a male role model. If we want better men, we need to be better men.”

The Collapse

When Devin Gordon pressed Mazi on his records, earnings, and clientele, he deflected. Shortly after, he vanished. In May 2025, law enforcement arrested a man named Darnell Smith—allegedly Mazi VS—on 14 felony counts of identity fraud.

One of his so-called clients admitted he’d never purchased a pick.

But Mazi’s potential fraud isn’t the most chilling part of this story. It’s the market that allowed him to flourish—a system where opacity is profitable, fantasy is monetized, and oversight is nonexistent.

The UNLV Gaming Law Journal has called for urgent federal reforms: mandatory registration for touts, independent performance audits, and enforcement mechanisms for deceptive practices. These calls echo growing bipartisan concern in Congress, where legislation to classify tout services under federal consumer protection statutes has gained momentum. Without such safeguards, illusion remains a legal product.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), meanwhile, is debating whether prediction markets like KalshiEX should be classified as gambling—creating further uncertainty in an already chaotic field. Without coherent federal guidance, patchwork laws leave consumers exposed and platforms unchallenged. The most dangerous figures aren’t illegal—they’re just unregulated.

Betting on Broken Promises

Mazi VS was never just a gambler—he was a mirror. In him, men saw not only the collapse of regulation, but the collapse of meaning. His story is a parable, not of deception, but of demand. Young men didn’t fall for his curated success because they were naïve. They fell for it because they were starving—starving for role models, for certainty, for something that looked like victory.

This is the true machinery of sports betting: not algorithms or apps, but psychology. The reels spin inside the minds of those sidelined by institutions and sold dreams in downloadable formats. And the industry, from Mazi’s Instagram feed to billion-dollar betting platforms, has capitalized on that hunger.

Professor Scott Galloway puts it starkly: “Young men have become the most dangerous cohort in America—not because they’re violent, but because they’re untethered.” And when a generation becomes untethered, spectacle becomes sanctuary. Even when that sanctuary is rigged.

The Mirage Economy thrives on that detachment. It isn’t just betting—it’s bargaining. A silent negotiation between ego and emptiness. Mazi VS wasn’t merely offering picks. He was offering men permission—to believe, to belong, to matter.

But belief built on illusion always collapses. The real wager isn’t whether Mazi’s slips were fake. It’s whether our institutions, our culture, and our conscience will keep allowing systems like his to flourish unchecked.

Because when identity becomes currency and masculinity becomes a marketing strategy, the house doesn’t just win.

It collects what’s left.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Arts & Literature, Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine- January 30, 2023

January 23, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The New Yorker – January 30, 2023 Issue:

The Mayor and the Con Man

Bishop Lamor Whitehead and Eric Adams stand while speaking at a bar.

Eric Adams’s friends and allies have puzzled over his relationship with Lamor Whitehead, a fraudster Brooklyn church leader.

After Bolsonaro, Can Lula Remake Brazil?

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, photographed by Tommaso Protti.

Following a prison term, a fraught election, and a near-coup, the third-time President takes charge of a fractured country.

What’s the Matter with Men?

A girl leap-frogging over a boy in a superhero costume.

They’re floundering at school and in the workplace. Some conservatives blame a crisis of masculinity, but the problems—and their solutions—are far more complex.

News, Podcasts, Science

Top New Science Podcasts: Higher Covid-19 Severity In Men, Bacteria Tracking

Audio June 4, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

First up this week, Staff Writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about how male sex hormones may play a role in higher levels of severe coronavirus infections in men. New support for this idea comes from a study showing high levels of male pattern baldness in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Next, Jason Qian, a Ph.D. student in the systems biology department at Harvard Medical School, joins Sarah to talk about an object-tracking system that uses bacterial spores engineered with unique DNA barcodes. The inactivated spores can be sprayed on anything from lettuce, to wood, to sand and later be scraped off and read out using a CRISPR-based detection system. Spraying these DNA-based identifiers on such things as vegetables could help trace foodborne illnesses back to their source. Read a related commentary piece.

Clothing, Fashion, Interviews, Podcasts

Podcast Interviews: GQ Creative Director Jim Moore – His Four Decades Of “Hunks & Heroes”

Audio March 28, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Monocle 24 “The Stack” speaks with creative director Jim Moore about his latest book ‘Hunks and Heroes: Jim Moore – Four Decades of Fashion at GQ’.

GQ is revered globally as the ultimate style guide for modern men, and Hunks and Heroes is an epic journey into the world of men’s style as told and edited by Jim Moore. He began his career at GQ as an intern in 1979 and has since played a pivotal role in reshaping men’s fashion during his nearly forty-year tenure at the magazine. From discovering new designers, distilling the latest men’s trends, and extolling fashion advice and critiques in his popular online video series GQ Rules, to Channing Tatum wearing a “JIM F&%#ING MOORE” T-shirt, Moore’s influence and impact on men’s style is unequivocal.

In these pages, Moore takes us through forty years of men’s fashion: featuring the most iconic GQ fashion looks, the magazine’s unforgettable covers and editorial shoots, essential styling tips like how to dress up denim or style a khaki suit, insights on developing your own personal style, and stories showcasing Moore’s knack at reworking the look of everyday men the magazine literally pulled off the street. This volume features 250 of Moore’s iconic men’s fashion photographs produced with internationally renowned image makers like Peggy Sirota, Craig McDean, and Inez & Vinoodh, and includes seminal GQ images of cultural icons such as celebrities, athletes, and politicians. This is the must-have style bible for all readers interested in men’s fashion, style, culture, and celebrity.

Health Infographics: The Most Common Types Of Cancer In U.S. By Gender

February 3, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide among middle-aged adults. However, deaths from cancer are catching up in high-income countries according to a study recently published in the medical journal The Lancet. Researchers calculated that cancer kills about twice as many people as cardiovascular disease in more developed countries. Globally, cancer could become the leading cause of death in just a few decades, the study said.

Health, News, Studies

New Study: Nearly 50% Of Americans Will Have Obesity By 2030, 25% Severely Obese (NEJM)

December 19, 2019 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

From a New England Journal of Medicine online study release:

The findings from our approach suggest with high predictive accuracy that by 2030 nearly 1 in 2 adults will have obesity (48.9%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 47.7 to 50.1), and the prevalence will be higher than 50% in 29 states and not below 35% in any state.

Nearly 1 in 4 adults is projected to have severe obesity by 2030 (24.2%; 95% CI, 22.9 to 25.5), and the prevalence will be higher than 25% in 25 states. We predict that, nationally, severe obesity is likely to become the most common BMI category among women (27.6%; 95% CI, 26.1 to 29.2), non-Hispanic black adults (31.7%; 95% CI, 29.9 to 33.4), and low-income adults (31.7%; 95% CI, 30.2 to 33.2).

Although severe obesity was once a rare condition, our findings suggest that it will soon be the most common BMI category in the patient populations of many health care providers. Given that health professionals are often poorly prepared to treat obesity,²⁷ this impending burden of severe obesity and associated medical complications has implications for medical practice and education.

In addition to the profound health effects, such as increased rates of chronic disease and negative consequences on life expectancy,^25,28 the effect of weight stigma²⁹ may have far-reaching implications for socioeconomic disparities as severe obesity becomes the most common BMI category among low-income adults in nearly every state.

Exercise, Health, Studies

Health Studies: Eating After Exercise Found To Burn “Twice The Fat”

November 28, 2019 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

From a New York Times online article:

The riders who had pedaled on an empty stomach, however, had incinerated about twice as much fat during each ride as the men who consumed the shake first. The riders all had burned about the same number of calories while pedaling, but more of those calories came from fat when the men did not eat first.

Those riders also showed greater improvements in insulin sensitivity at the end of the study and had developed higher levels of certain proteins in their muscles that influence how well muscle cells respond to insulin and use blood sugar.

Working out on an empty stomach could amplify the health benefits of the activity, according to a well-timed new study of the interplay of meal timing, metabolic health and moving. The study, which involved sedentary men and moderate cycling, suggests that whether and when we eat may affect how exercise affects us.