Link (Archive)
The upshot of all of this is there is a good chance, this holiday season, that you will need to purchase a gift for what I like to call a Broken Man. You know the type: He’s mainlining podcasts, addicted to YouTube, and extolling the virtues of an all-beef diet, all while packing eight Zyns a day. He’s glitching out before your very eyes, but Broken Men deserve our love just the same. So, here’s a gift guide for the Lost Boys in your life. May god have mercy on their souls.
No further elaboration necessary. You can get LED glow-in-the-dark truck balls now, too. They are flexible enough to be fastened to the back of bicycles, which means they’re also suitable for the eco-conscious broken man in your life. What a world we live in.
The Fragile Masculinity Gift Guide
Men are not OK. This has been one of the most important stories in America—and the world—for the past decade, at least. And if there was a chance to pivot away from this diabolical bifurcation of the genders that has Andrew Tate and Charlie Kirk serving as the bannermen, we have squandered the opportunity until 2028. The voting patterns, information streams, and overall temperaments of men and women have rarely been more sequestered from one another, and that simply isn’t a sign of a healthy society. Welcome to the wilderness, America. Make yourself at home.The upshot of all of this is there is a good chance, this holiday season, that you will need to purchase a gift for what I like to call a Broken Man. You know the type: He’s mainlining podcasts, addicted to YouTube, and extolling the virtues of an all-beef diet, all while packing eight Zyns a day. He’s glitching out before your very eyes, but Broken Men deserve our love just the same. So, here’s a gift guide for the Lost Boys in your life. May god have mercy on their souls.
A Little Trees Car Freshener
You know what exudes positive masculinity? A tiny felt tree, hanging from the rearview mirror of a Jeep Grand Cherokee, or perhaps even a Honda Accord. Broken men are notoriously difficult to buy stocking stuffers for, and I guarantee you that a six-pack of these bad boys will evoke fond memories of their uncles and older cousins of yore. If nothing else, it will give them something to focus on while they sit in the garage for five minutes after coming home from work, engine still running, struggling to make sense of where it all went wrong. I especially recommend this if you can find the “Fresh Shave” flavor. Nothing like the scent of talcum powder to pull you back from the brink.
“Ceremonial-Grade Cacao”
Random, I know, but this suggestion comes straight from Sacred Sons, a men’s liberation collective that—as far as I can tell—aims to concoct nontoxic male bonding by sending a group of dudes to the wilderness where they can scream into each other’s faces. I don’t get it, but I get it. The company is selling “ceremonial-grade cacao,” which they claim will balance your blood sugar and improve your iron levels. (Surprisingly, both of those claims are broadly true!) There is no mention of what the “ceremony” in question here entails, but they do offer this in the product description: “Connect with your previous intention/prayer, speak aloud what wants to be spoken, then inhale, sip, exhale and watch your prayers float up to the ether where all things are possible.” I’m sure the slowly disintegrating man in your life can figure out what to make of that.
Carly Rae Jepsen’s E·MO·TION on Vinyl
Just trust me on this one. As Eric Thurm once saliently noted in the dearly departed Mel magazine, the Carly Rae Jepsen fandom demographic is evenly split between women, queer people, and the saddest, straightest, baldest 36-year-old dudes you’ve ever met in your life. Throw on “Warm Blood” around a broken man and they’ll begin to emit beams of light. Sounds like the perfect way to spend Christmas morning to me!
A Custom Set of Poker Chips
The total foreclosure of the American dream—and its downstream effect, the flatlining of masculine dignity—is, in my mind, singularly responsible for the two prime interests of the broken man: crypto bullshit and gambling, which are more or less the same thing. How can you safely encourage these predilections without greasing the wheels for his ongoing journey to darkness? Simple, buy him a set of custom poker chips, emblazoned with whatever suits your fancy. Maybe they could be topped with the stat lines of various circa-2005 running backs that always seem to bring a smile to his face. Or, I don’t know, the phone numbers of the kids he needs to call. Whatever the case, these chips will certainly move your broken man to play more home games, where he will certainly be less at risk of losing his shirt.
Truck Balls
No further elaboration necessary. You can get LED glow-in-the-dark truck balls now, too. They are flexible enough to be fastened to the back of bicycles, which means they’re also suitable for the eco-conscious broken man in your life. What a world we live in.
Beef Liver Supplements
Screw multivitamins, or fish oil, for that matter.Real broken men know the only pill they need to pop in the morning is a dehydrated hunk of beef liver, encased in a grody capsule. Look, despite its adjacency to Alex Jones types, beef liver is pretty goddamn good for you—providing a rich shock of protein, iron, and B vitamins. There are worse food cults for your broken man to subscribe to, is what I’m saying, and those pills should fit nicely into a stocking.
Horrendous Male Jewelry from Etsy
As I wrote over the summer, male jewelry is in the midst of a renaissance, and the fastest way for a man to self-actualize—or at least get back in touch with his sexuality without scaring anyone—is to wrap some gold around his neck and hit the streets. But are you wary about the price of precious metal? Or, perhaps, does your broken man wish to maintain the plausible deniability that he’s not trying too hard? Easy, buy him a couple chintzy $20 chains from Etsy and see what suits his fancy. Is your broken man a Cuban Links guy? Only one way to find out.
