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19. Jacob Savage on (bad) millennial art, being good but not great, & the future of boys and men
50 Plays5 days ago
Jacob Savage is a former screenwriter, a freelance writer, and a ticket scalper based in Los Angeles. His essay, “The Lost Generation,” about the systematic discrimination of white millennial men in the industries of academia, media, and publishing, was one of the most talked about essays of 2025.
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Transcript
Introduction to Out of the Wild
00:00:05
Speaker
This is the Out of the Wild podcast with Ken Ilgunis.
Jacob Savage's Viral Essay
00:00:18
Speaker
Jacob Savage is a writer based in Los Angeles. Jacob recently wrote one of the most talked about essays called The Lost Generation in Compact magazine.
00:00:30
Speaker
In the piece, Jacob published statistics showing how, over the last decade, young white male professionals, especially in media, academia, publishing, and Hollywood, have been systematically discriminated against in hiring practices.
00:00:43
Speaker
The piece went viral, sparking debate about meritocracy, identity, and the professional fate of millennial white men.
Personal Reflections and Viral Fame
00:00:52
Speaker
Jacob, hello. Hey, Ken. Thanks for having me.
00:00:56
Speaker
How did you wind up in Scotland, by the way? ah That would take way too much time. But the short answer is while I was traveling, I met my wife and six months later we got pregnant. And I guess that meant and I was staying in Scotland.
00:01:14
Speaker
Maybe we'll go into the longer answer later. For sure. That's the short one. um So I guess let's just start with the basics. Like what what is it like to publish one of the most viral articles of the year?
00:01:28
Speaker
I mean, it was a little surreal, um you know, for like a week. It was also just as our kids' winter break was starting, um where we didn't have childcare for a couple weeks. so But it it was just sort of like a haze of responding to messages, like Googling myself. And um was very it was very surreal. I almost only feel like I'm kind of coming out of it right now and feel like a normal civilian again.
00:01:57
Speaker
um I'm happy to bring you back into the realm of celebrity yeah on my on my tiny podcast. um So um
New Opportunities and Past Struggles
00:02:05
Speaker
I don't know. like You kind of describe it as like ah almost like a shell shock, but was there anything...
00:02:11
Speaker
Really positive about it? No, was it was great. I mean, I got like people all wrote me being like, we'd love you to like write articles for us, you know, lots of, you know, different sort of opportunities, um which is great.
00:02:23
Speaker
um I got, you know, texts and calls from old friends who i hadn't spoken to in you know decades or more Um, no, it was really, um, it felt really, gratifying, I guess, you know, there was, um, it's weird that that's now like my professional identity instead of just being a screenwriter, which is all that I sort of ever wanted.
00:02:46
Speaker
Um, but I will take it, you know, you know what i mean? It's, it's, uh, it's, it's been a, it's been overall a very fun ride. Um, just need to sort of follow it up with something.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess, I guess, does it feel, you know, you didn't have the success you wanted in TV screenwriting. You write about that in the piece. Is this kind of like um validating in some way?
00:03:11
Speaker
I mean, I think it is certainly in the sense like i don't think um I don't think I'm a genius, but I also think I'm a pretty good writer. um And I think, you know, I've written some i've written some bad screenplays, but I've ah also written some really good ones. And I think the piece is in a way sort of like...
00:03:31
Speaker
this guy could have done it. um You know, you can't just sort of hand wave away like that in the same way that, you know, if, if, if I had not written a viral piece and was just had like a sub stack post about how um sad I was about my non-career, think people could make, you know, could dismiss me in a sort of different way than they
Book Expansion and Artistic Challenges
00:03:54
Speaker
are now. Yeah. Leave those essays to me. I think if I was like a head hunting literary agent, I'd be like, we're signing Jacob Savage. We're going to get a book deal. We're going to work on a book together. Has that happened yet?
00:04:10
Speaker
I've had, um, I've had conversations with, I think, uh, I think it's been two publishers and two agents. That's it. That's that's the full number of people who've reached out. Um,
00:04:22
Speaker
I'm thinking about whether I have a book in me. I'm not sure that I do, and I certainly don't want it to just be um sort of the article I wrote, but expanded to more industries. Because, you know, like the sort of, you know, by the time a book came out, say in two years, you know, this...
00:04:39
Speaker
pretty fast moving world. It feels like yesterday's complaint in some way. So even if I was really exhaustive and said, you know there are other industries I didn't cover like that, I'm very sure that this happened in as well, but it didn't feel um doesn't feel like that that's what I want to spend the rest of my life writing about.
00:05:00
Speaker
If that makes sense. I do have sort of, is it because you're kind of like wallowing in something kind of negative or it's i partly, but I think like, i think the article did a very good job of saying what I have to say about it. You know, I'm happy to fight with people about it. Sort of people who say like, Oh, it wasn't a big deal or it didn't happen. I'm happy to sort of like, you know, write a sub stack post and be like, this person's wrong or this person's an idiot.
00:05:26
Speaker
But, you know, I don't want like this is a beat that ah will hopefully expire at some point. But I just feel there's something not that interesting about just rehashing it um again and again, because I think the piece did lay it out pretty decently just in terms of like what had happened and how I feel about it um No, yeah but I think you're right. I don't think you can kind of make a book out of just this, you know, you know, going industry by industry or doing kind of like a UK or Europe chapter or anything like that. It would have to be kind of more expansive to the point, I think, where the kind of discriminatory hiring is just a chapter in kind of a larger book about men or something. I don't know.
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah, I have i have some like sort of random random, not quite fleshed out thoughts about millennials overall, not just white male millennials as an accursed generation.
00:06:23
Speaker
arm not, you know, i don't know if it's quite a book, but um there's some sort of swirling ideas I have about how millennial art has always been created with like the eye of some boomer or like vulture reporter looking over your shoulder. There's nothing that feels sort of organic. It feels like it's pre-written for an audience, which I don't think was, I think it's been true to some extent previously, but I think that millennials really sort of,
00:06:53
Speaker
were always looking over their shoulder in a way that made the creation of real art much more difficult. And when you say looking over your shoulder, are you just talking about like worried about their their job?
00:07:06
Speaker
Not worried about their job, but worried for approval. like the The idea is like like, I don't know, if you take, like say, like a Damien Chazelle movie, it feels as if that is not made... from like this Holy spirit that moves Damien Chazelle, it is made, um, because he's sort of imagining some boomer professor he once had. And like, will that guy like get my references and think that I'm smart. It just feels like that has infected a whole host of a millennial art and that, that kind of sense. Or how will the,
00:07:41
Speaker
the young, you know, woke reviewer at Vulture or New York Magazine react to what I am doing.
Audience Expectations and Artistic Creation
00:07:51
Speaker
You know, the point is you should, if you're like a real artist, you should just do your thing. and I'm not sure i I don't think I was ever a real artist, but i think there are real artists in the world. And my sense is that um there are very few of them who are millennials because they're you know They're just always, looking again, looking for approval before they start the the sort of creative process.
00:08:14
Speaker
Yeah. I almost imagine kind of like a minefield. you know You just worry about stepping on something kind of wherever you go. Damien Chazelle, he did La La Land. And i think I liked the Ryan Gosling movie about Neil Armstrong.
00:08:28
Speaker
Oh, a First Man. First Man was okay. um He did Whiplash. He did um Babylon, which was one of the worst movies. I haven't seen Babylon.
00:08:40
Speaker
I loved Whiplash. I would say that is kind of like an original... um No, but it feels studied. it doesn't feel as if that... that it's It's very competent and good, but it's it's like studied in a way that like um I think isn't necessary to the...
00:09:00
Speaker
um to the idea. that doesn't feel like um like he was in a frenzy and just the spirit. mood you know like Say like Bob Dylan in 1968, I don't care what I'm putting out. It it feels as if this is you know this is my first movie, this is my chance, I'm going to make this thing that has this appeal. It's all it's all much more studied than that, I think.
00:09:23
Speaker
Okay. I won't die on the whiplash hill, but I think I see what you're saying. There's like a lack of rawness and inventiveness and just like, fuck it. I'm, I'm making this, which I think we saw a lot more of and say like the seventies, um,
00:09:38
Speaker
Or even like Gen X in like the 90s. Yeah, even the 90s. Yeah, the 90s was a great decade for film. um Okay, yeah. I mean, the thing is, i don't like I don't know the age of every single director out there.
00:09:52
Speaker
So um I'll have to think about that some more. But feel anyways, um I'm wondering...
Millennial Male Literature and Politics
00:10:00
Speaker
you know, an article ah like yours goes viral. A book like Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves is hugely successful. You know, kind of this voice that can speak to kind of the millennial mind, especially like the white male millennial mind there's just not a lot of stuff out there in in fiction and tv and movies like i'm kind of starved for like fiction that speaks to my situation and all that and it's just there's just nothing there so i'm kind of wondering like are we on the precipice of like a men renaissance like ah a manissance for kind of like books like that like
00:10:44
Speaker
I definitely think it's possible. I think there there are some books that are slowly coming out that sort of deal with the internal consciousness of, like say, like a man who like lives in a liberal environment and like sort of natural both resentments and you know joys and whatever.
00:11:05
Speaker
i did really like um Sleepers by Matt Gazda, um which sort of takes place from that point of view. um like a doomed relationship in 2016 where the old, where the guy ends up kind of making some terrible decisions, um, kind of because of the suffocatingness of the larger sociopolitical environment.
00:11:30
Speaker
Um, But it's not directly political. And I don't think the truth is, I don't think any of these things should be directly political. But I agree with you. I've i've missed um just like some consciousness that feels like real and not um like that. They've smoothed away the edges.
00:11:48
Speaker
Yeah, that just that stuff doesn't doesn't exist or I'm just not aware of it. You you seem to be much more tapped into kind of the the literary world and scene than I am, but it's just it's just been a long time. and I always mention him in all of my podcasts, but one of my favorite essayists is is Tim Crider. He kind of speaks to my existence, but i mean I think he himself is probably Gen X. He's probably 20 years older than me, but um But yeah, it it feels like ah you know we've kind of been kept out of culture in many ways for the past 10 years or so. far So I feel like we're kind of teed up for something. And I say that with some self-interest because I have like two manuscripts in development that are just just ready to go if there's any if there's anybody listening.
00:12:39
Speaker
um um I mean, yeah. yeah where how what are What are the manuscripts? of my name The name of my podcast is called Out of the Wild. I've titled ah a manuscript the same thing. And it's kind of like a travel love life memoir.
00:12:54
Speaker
um ah Or to be cruder, like a pornographic autobiography but with with ah but no porn no porn in it. But I mean, like um like i'm I'm interested in just like...
00:13:06
Speaker
thinking about dating and marriage and having children and going through those experiences as ah as a millennial. And there's kind of, I mean, there's so many like books written about women and and love and sexuality and stuff like that. But you kind of have to go to a gay guy. You have to go to, what's his name?
00:13:27
Speaker
um ah The other savage, Dan Savage. Yeah. To get like really good commentary about heterosexuality. My other book, and I think this will interest you, and and maybe we'll touch on the politics later. I don't know if the title is The Progressive Man, which I am, or Liberal Warrior, but I kind of want to talk about what it's like to be kind of a progressive man in 2026, and what that's like to kind of be somewhat excluded from your political tribe, but yet hold on to
00:14:05
Speaker
um you know progressive values i mean just to be clear i'm kind of like a i'm not like a bernie sanders bro or cultist but i just kind of want those sort of policies i want like america to have the best of northern europe and western europe that's about as simple as i could put it how do you how do you describe your own politics I mean, my politics have evolved a lot. um I think I broke during COVID just like fully. um I think my politics are really honestly all over the place. um
00:14:37
Speaker
Like there's some issues that I'm like very left wing on and some that I'm very right wing on. awesome My overall, the zeitgeist that I felt, though, is, and it's not like about, you know, this last election, like I don't like Donald Trump. didn't like Kamala Harris. But you feel in your heart that if these people don't want you around and don't have like a space for you and don't know how to talk to you, it's a little bit, I feel, um beneath your dignity to be like, that's that's who I'm going to support.
00:15:11
Speaker
you know You wouldn't demand that like a black person in the 1950s support the the Democrats in Alabama because they had a better welfare overall.
00:15:23
Speaker
you know welfare plan overall You know what I mean? um So I don't know. My politics are sort of everywhere nowhere at this point. And I think that's true. I think of a lot of people that I know.
00:15:36
Speaker
Like I think all I think a lot of the true believers, which I think like a lot of like younger, like white male millennials were for what it's worth in Bernie and Obama. Like it's just like um part of it's getting older, but I think part of it is just you're not in the coalition anymore. So like what difference does it matter? What you have to say?
00:15:55
Speaker
I mean, when I think of some of my progressive heroes of American history, I think of like a like a John Brown or a Ulysses S. Grant or an Abe Lincoln. i I like the Civil War, as you can you can tell, but they kind of embodied for me kind of a progressive masculinity. they could be kind of They could have these universalist values, but they could also you.
00:16:20
Speaker
kill you And um I think that that know I'm not going to kill anybody or advocate for killing anybody, but I think there are masculine values that I feel like are inside of me and I can't get rid of, and I want to see them at least accepted on on the
Masculinity and Progressive Politics
00:16:40
Speaker
national level. So yeah, I kind of want... not just men to kind of be brought back under the progressive democratic fold, but but masculinity in some way.
00:16:52
Speaker
And not some really like diluted and pussified, you know, masculinity, but but the real stuff. But I think part of the issue is that, um and maybe I'll sound sexist saying this, but like,
00:17:07
Speaker
ah you know ah A whole plank of like what like liberals at this point believe is you know and is that there is no fundamental difference between men and women in like what they want to pursue, and their interests, in what... you know And it's just like ah absolutely not true. Do you know what I mean? it's there's there' is there There cannot possibly be anything less true. And that is, I think, at at the heart of a lot of the problems that we have right now. um
00:17:37
Speaker
It's not like any woman who wants to be like a cardiac cardiac surgeon and work 80 hours a week, power to her. most i just remember I read, there was a New York Times article like a month ago about how there are very few like cardiothoracic surgeons who are women um and how this is bad. And then you read the article and you see that like actually what this profession requires is that they spend 70 hours a week working, that they do not see their families um and has zero work-life balance, which is something that like for what it's worth, men are much better at dealing with than women.
00:18:12
Speaker
Like I could so If I had a business trip, which I i don't, but if i if I had to go to Europe for a month, I would miss my kids. I would call my wife. I would put them on FaceTime.
00:18:23
Speaker
It would not eat at me that I was not seeing my kids for a month. If that happened to my wife, she would lose her mind. and that's not And that's just like normal biological programming. Some people are exceptions on either side to that.
00:18:38
Speaker
But when you account for every difference in professions because of like... you know, some sort of sexism or whatever. Like that's such a big part of what the party is about now that I think it's going to be very hard for them to sort of roll that back.
00:18:58
Speaker
So there's like a fundamental distortion which kind of goes downriver and kind of affects everything. Right. And it's not, again, it's not to say that like every opportunity should be open to everyone, like in terms of, a e you know, but And this comes back a little to the article in terms of just like, what is the actual pipeline of like highly smart, like very successful female doctors who want to work 80 hours a week? Like, like there are not that many of them and that's okay. You know, like, know, so that, that's sort of where I think a lot of today's progressive world kind of starts breaking down a bit.
00:19:36
Speaker
with with people I know where I know these couples who are like, and you know, incredibly progressive. And then, you know, you look under the hood a little bit and it's like the guy doesn't know how to cook. He doesn't like clean.
00:19:49
Speaker
He like goes off and plays pickleball while like his wife is taking care of the kids. I'm like, I end up taking care of my kids like much more than that. And I wouldn't call myself progressive at all. But These people who would sit who would tell you that there's no difference between like the way that ah a father should interact with his kids and the way that a mother should interact with her kids, like then they just like go and reenact like whatever the 1950s stereotype is like in their own personal lives. Yeah, my wife is an extremely strong and strong-willed person, and we both kind of identify with like progressive stuff. But sometimes she's just like,
00:20:25
Speaker
I wish you were a banker and I could just be this housewife who just like potters around the house and bakes things. there's like a There's a fantasy there. But yeah, i no, I do think, and I don't want to come across as Jordan Peterson-y.
00:20:39
Speaker
um i think Jordan Peterson said some valuable things in kind of his early phase before he flew too close to the sun. Now I don't trust anything he says. But, um you know, back in like 2017, 2018, I thought he was saying some sensible thing.
00:20:54
Speaker
Just kind of this historical, what I think is distortion, where it's just been men against women or men dominating women from the dawn of time or the dawn of our agriculture or something like that. And just my own impression of human nature, just I just can't imagine that being possible.
00:21:15
Speaker
I mean, I think women have and are extremely strong people. And like, yeah, I think like we were farmers who suffered together, even if in law it did look far more unequal. But I think in practice, it was just families just working and loving and um struggling together. So I think this kind of this ahistorical understanding of of the sexes, yeah, that has a downriver effect as well.
00:21:46
Speaker
Oh, sorry. and i just Back to your point about your sort of travelogue book. I do think, you know, everyone's like, there's no... There used to be a place that published stuff like that. It was called Vice, and then they got canceled and completely changed. you know It's crazy to sort of go back and just think about like what a distant um universe the world was 20 years ago. like Tucker, Max, Vice. like I was never even really into that stuff, but like plenty of people were. It was like allowed.
00:22:15
Speaker
it got basically completely wiped off the fit that sort of genre and culture got wiped off the face of the earth in five years. And how much of that was like cancel cancellations and kind of public disapproval versus just kind of the market saying we don't want this stuff? do you have any idea about that? Vice was definitely a case of like, I mean, it was, they overexpanded, but they basically hired, you know, they came under fire in the early 2010s and then they hi they like stopped doing like toxic male content. you know, the New York Times would have an article, I think every six months about how awful Vice was until Vice stopped being awful.
00:22:55
Speaker
um And, you know, but at the same time, like, I don't know, maybe the mark, I'm sure the market changed in some form. Yeah. yeah And it's kind of like, why hasn't kind of something popped up to serve that previous market? And maybe what that is, it's just like podcast culture. Maybe that's. Or the or the or the sludge of Twitter. do you know what I mean? There are plenty of like hilariously misogynistic accounts on Twitter that like, if you want your fix, you could probably find it oh
00:23:26
Speaker
So you're asking me about kind of my book ideas on this related to the subject. I'm curious if if anything's kind of floated through your mind about kind of a TV script, kind of like the lost generation TV show. Has that gone through your head at all?
00:23:45
Speaker
No, because it would just be it would just be a guy sitting in his bedroom and picking up his kids. I mean, it would be like an OK, like very tiny indie movie. But I don't think. I don't think the dramatization of it is, i think, you know, like there's like a novel there if you can get into like some real interiority.
00:24:05
Speaker
um But I don't trust myself to write a good novel and I don't want to spend five years of my life writing a bad one. I'd still so like i still like someone to write the the TV script for that. Because it has kind of like a ah full Monty kind of feel to it.
00:24:25
Speaker
Well, you have you ever seen have you ever seen The Front? um No, what's what's that? It's a Woody Allen. it wasn't a Woody Allen movie, but Woody Allen was in it. um It's about the blacklisted um writers during the 1950s. And Woody Allen plays this like schlub who ends up, he's like not a communist. So he is in the good graces of the studios and they all um give him money to sort of submit their scripts to the studios.
00:24:54
Speaker
um So he he becomes their like conduit. And I think you could probably do like a remake of The Front, except it's like the black woman. that that makes that's That's funny. that that makes a lot That makes a lot of sense. I don't know. I don't, yeah.
00:25:08
Speaker
So I think that would be the the yeah that the sort of hijinks TV or movie version. Oh, man. If any TV execs, there's no TV execs listening to this. so There's none left. It's just robots at Netflix now. It it kind of got me thinking about like stories about failure or pivots.
Themes of Failure and Alternate Incomes
00:25:31
Speaker
And the two ones that came to mind, one I love and one I haven't really seen is Inside Llewyan Davis, the Coen Brothers film. Did you see that one? love that movie. It's like my favorite one of theirs. Yeah. I loved it. And like, is there a better movie about failure or just quitting? Like, I can't think of that. no. But the thing that like, oh man, I could go into that movie forever. But you that last scene, like right before the end, he's at the club and he's like yeah this The haunted specter of Bob Dylan has been haunting whole movie.
00:26:05
Speaker
And he's been doing his version of Fair Thee Well, which is like very good. But then like Dylan is doing it in the background at that in that last scene, and it's just better. And you hear it in the background as he like gets the shit beat out of him. And it's just like...
00:26:21
Speaker
I think the lesson of that movie um is you can either be a genius and do whatever you want, like Bob Dylan, or you can be like the Justin Timberlake character and sell out hard.
00:26:33
Speaker
But what you can't be is a purist and just good, which is what he was. like and that was the that that was like like The tragedy of him was that he was just very good, but not but also a dick and also not playing the game right.
00:26:47
Speaker
And at that level, you have to make compromises. It's a movie that's kind of gone through my mind a bit the past few years because I've i've been in despair.
00:26:59
Speaker
um you know, there was, I had a good career going for seven years and then like I couldn't get any magazine articles. Yeah.
00:27:10
Speaker
no one was interested in my my book ideas anymore. So it was kind of like three things at once. It was kind of a career despair. It was a financial despair and kind of an existential despair because it's just like, what am I?
00:27:24
Speaker
and And I reflected on Inside Lwayne Davis because I was just like, at what point do I quit? at one point, like do I just like move on to something else? And for for me, it's it's a little bit different. like i am student i'm I'm studying psychotherapy and I just got a part-time job for next week. So i'm I'm pivoting, but I also still want to be a writer and I'm still kind of clinging on to to to the hope of reentering kind of traditional publishing someday. Did you did you have despair?
00:27:56
Speaker
ah Sure, yeah. I mean, I would ah just be like, I don't think I can sit here and scalp tickets until... you know I'm 65 and eligible for social security.
00:28:10
Speaker
um i think it depends. I think once you have a family, there is like a certain satisfaction if you have a job that like at least pays for your family to live, that that's the thing that you do and that's okay. And it doesn't have to be the thing that you love.
00:28:27
Speaker
But I mean, if you're not even like making that an amount of money, of course, there would be like a ton of despair. you know, there's despair, even if you're just doing the soul sucking thing for six hours a day.
00:28:38
Speaker
But at least then, you know, you're paying, you're helping, you're paying for your house, you're paying for like, this you know, school, there were like a lot of moments when you're just like, why am I here? Like, why am I doing this?
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah. do you Can you think of like a a peak of that or I guess a nadir of that? like A real real low point? I think it just i think it just comes, like for me at least, because like I've this whole time just been scalping tickets on the side, which is like, like not like I make a decent living doing that.
00:29:10
Speaker
um It's not like i can't i can you know we can afford like upper middle class things. like we're not rich I'm not rich, but... it's It's not like you know there's like a three-week period where I'm trying to get a job and no one will write me back and that's the end of the world. It's sort of just like some days you're just like, this is so boring.
00:29:27
Speaker
like How can I do this for like the rest of my life? i don't Yeah, for me, it wasn't like... Because it's not sort of directly correlated with like any money existential money stuff.
00:29:38
Speaker
It's more just like, how do you feel that day? So I don't i don't think there was like a moment where it kind of crested or... Gotcha. I haven't i haven't heard you talk about ticket scalping. Like, are you like standing outside of stadiums or is this more of like computer scalping? It's all computers. It's like pretty simple and boring. But, you know, if you see something sells out in New York.
00:30:03
Speaker
But it hasn't gone on sale in Chicago and Los Angeles yet. You buy tickets to it and then you hope to sell them for more. see. Okay. So it's kind of like investing, taking like small risks. Yeah. and No, I would sometimes be like, I'm playing for pennies. I should have just gone to Wall Street or whatever after college. I'm literally paying playing for pennies ah instead of...
00:30:26
Speaker
dollars And that's, is it is it legal or illegal? It is. It's all legal. A sort of useless um arbitrage skill.
00:30:37
Speaker
It's not that hard, but I should have like an online course where I... Okay, yeah. well I fool people into paying me money to teach them nothing.
00:30:48
Speaker
We're kind of talking about how work're we felt during this period. I felt like I was disoriented for for much of it because it was just like, I didn't know what was going on. And I'm talking about you know the overzealous discriminating in publishing. It's like, am I lazy?
00:31:06
Speaker
Or is it just that the publishing industry is contracting? is there some discriminating happening or am I just really mediocre and uninteresting? So you kind of have to ask yourself those questions, but the answers um still now, like I don't know what they are. So I'm wondering if the word disorientation resonates with you.
00:31:31
Speaker
um I think I felt kind of like a ah very intense... disorientation a little bit, um just like the feeling of like banging your head against the wall.
00:31:43
Speaker
You know, i I would occasionally like talk to people I knew who had just, you know, who weren't white men who had just, who were smart, but who had just moved to Hollywood and like had gotten money or a job.
00:31:55
Speaker
And you just be like, like, you know, good for you. But like, what, what am I, you know, this is, I remember going once, my wife is a costume designer. i went to like a wrap party for something she was working on and a couple of the younger writers were there and they were literally just the the, like they got the job just because they were the people who metooed Louis CK.
00:32:19
Speaker
And I was like, why you know, like why? Like, like, like this is like, it just made you feel like it didn't matter what, you know, and you're like, you keep you keep trying, you keep trying.
00:32:34
Speaker
um Everything seems both closer and further away than um it really is. i Yeah. I think I would feel aggrieved. I think I'd feel bitter. I'd feel resentful. I'd be angry at the world because there's just kind of,
00:32:51
Speaker
almost nothing you can do about it. like what What do you think about that question? Because, well, one, there's kind of like an individual, what can you do about it? anyway Whether that's pivoting to something else.
00:33:03
Speaker
Is there even a question of what can we collectively do about it? like What are our options here? Is there Supreme Court decision that needs to be reversed or like a class action lawsuit? like Have you thought about that?
00:33:18
Speaker
ah yeah I mean, not in terms of sort of direct um personal legal ramifications, but I think they need to they need to drag all these people in front of congressional subcommittees, get everything on the record that happened, get discovery, and and make them stop doing it.
00:33:39
Speaker
Because short of that, I think this will, in diluted form, continue forever.
Publishing Industry and Creative Struggles
00:33:44
Speaker
um And I mean, I don't think we're at the peak. I think people can again hire like white guys sometimes. But I think there is still like this overwhelming feeling that it would it would still be better if you didn't. Yeah. So collectively, I'm not sure. I think one criticism or critique that I've gotten is like, well, you know, you were just trying too hard to work within these institutions. You weren't an artist enough. If you had been, you would have just been making your own shit. And sure, that's true. But like, it doesn't.
00:34:13
Speaker
me you know ah The point of being like a novelist or a screenwriter is to get your stuff in front of other people. you know If I were like a YouTube creator and got 600 views, it's like, who cares? Or if I wrote a novel that no one read because I self-published it.
00:34:32
Speaker
And in a weird way, I think the current environment has gotten... ah almost more monopolistic in terms of people being able to get their stuff seen.
00:34:44
Speaker
but It's never been more important to have a big five publishing contract then it than it is now. Because otherwise, literally no one is going to see your stuff. I mean, I guess there's the you can always just have a sub stack and get you know thousands of people and work incredibly hard and then still sell 500 books.
00:35:02
Speaker
For me, a lot of my anger comes not from the fact that this happened. I am angry that it happened, but more from the fact that like I do feel that i wasted 10 years of my life.
00:35:13
Speaker
um And if they had just told me in 2014, from now on, 5% of TV writers will be white men. Most of those will be Nepo babies. Good luck.
00:35:26
Speaker
um you would have gone out i would have been like fuck it i'm gonna go work in tech i don't care like like uh to not have no or to deluded myself into not believing that that was happening to the extent that it was was partly my fault that that's where like my greatest resentment at this point comes from that's one of the interesting things it's just like yeah I am of the publishing industry. You know, I occasionally write for a newspaper or magazine. I've published three books, but I actually have no idea what's happening in the publishing industry.
00:36:00
Speaker
You know, like I don't know what editors are talking about, what publishers are talking about, what agents are talking about. um And I think that's the case. It seemed like the case with you. Like things were happening all around you, but but you didn't know about it it. It can be very difficult when you don't have the information right in front of you.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah, know I know. think it was. um And, you know, in in terms of where we go from here, you know, people, I think, yes, like you parallel institutions will slowly be created ah if to meet a market need, but that takes five, 10, 20 years.
00:36:37
Speaker
I'm not, ah you know, I don't think most of us are operating on that sort of timetable. We need to like, we have families, we have to pay the bills, we have to, you know, And I will say like there's one other element to it that I think like isn't thought about, which is sort of like the top 2% still got through. It's like, did they like you don't you know, some people, a few people still got through. I'm not sure that was the top 2%. And also the top 2% changes when you like don't give people the opportunity to write their first novel. Usually your first novel is not your best novel.
00:37:09
Speaker
But if you're like a real genius who would write a brilliant first novel, you probably are working um like meta doing like ad sales because you want to, you know you saw the right, you're smart enough to see, have seen the writing on the wall and you wanted a good life. There's this idea. Everyone has to be like a true artist or so devoted to their profession, like at all costs. But no almost no one is actually like that.
00:37:37
Speaker
um if that makes sense, like is willing to just like eat nails for 10 years or 15 years. I just got a job this week. I'm going to be a group fitness trainer to music.
00:37:52
Speaker
Oh, nice. it kind of goes back to my full Monty thought because I'm going to be barely clad in clothes dancing around in front of a bunch of ladies. um But ah it's not kind of where I i saw myself at 42.
00:38:08
Speaker
you know When I was an undergrad and... thinking about being a writer. I had kind of high aspirations for myself. And, you know, now at 42, I'm, uh, I'm a student, I'm, I'm back in student debt. Like this is, this is not where I wanted to to be. So, so yeah, I don't know what I'm saying, but yeah, all that information would have, would have really helped me kind of plan out stuff better, I think.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yeah. But you know, like, And then like hopefully, and I think you probably will land on your feet in one form or another, but it doesn't you know give you back all the time that you like didn't, and it sucks. yeah yeah Yeah, it makes sense. And I guess like one way, like i'm I'm wondering like how i should kind of how people in this situation should think, how should how they should feel, how they should...
Embracing Outsider Identity
00:38:58
Speaker
B, because I'm someone who doesn't like to wallow or be in a kind of a negative state for a long time. ah you know I'm kind of ready to kind of embrace the role of of underdog and you know get into a rocky montage and and write that book or or do whatever.
00:39:16
Speaker
And i was I was speaking with my friend Rob, who's a writer, and he's like, just embrace it. like You're an outsider. You're an ah outlaw now. This is kind of what we were meant to be. What what do you what do you think of that? And um I'd like to ask kind of two parts to that question. is Is that one way to think about it, or does that feel like artificial coping to you?
00:39:40
Speaker
I think that's fine. you know I think it's really whatever gets you through the night, as John Lennon said. But like I think there's a fun in it. you know I think there's something, you know if if it really doesn't matter, you know you can, in the in a sense, you know do whatever you want creatively or you know try to do whatever you want creatively. Yeah.
00:40:03
Speaker
I mean, I think, for instance, like part of the reason, like if I had got had any success, there's no way I would have written that article um because that would have jeopardized my position in some way or another.
00:40:16
Speaker
So it does give you a freedom to operate that maybe you wouldn't have like within the institutions. Only you could have ah written it because you're kind of an expert, but you're outside of the institutions. right The ticket scalping gives you actually a ton of freedom, doesn't it Yeah, no, it did. i think that that was that was like an important element. like If I just even had like a little bit of hope of getting like a Hollywood job in three months, or if I had had one, you know then i don't think there's any way I could have written that the way that I wrote it
00:40:50
Speaker
You know, if like a woman says, I'm a feminist, um nobody bats an eye.
Podcast Conclusion and Subscription Pitch
00:40:56
Speaker
That's completely accepted and and normal. But if a man were to say, I'm ah a masculinist or, you know, whatever the analog to feminism is, you know, you're instantly seen as like a right-wing nut or a buffoon or a wimp or something. In other words, it's really difficult to talk about and to kind of stand up for for men's rights. And if you do, if you write a book like of boys and men and you give a talk on it, you have to do all like these things
00:41:26
Speaker
uh ritualistic preambles and throat clearings about how advocating for men's rights is not um the same thing as calling for the revoking of of women's rights and you see like richard reeves and scoffed out galloway doing this stuff all the time so that what we're talking about is like the art of rhetoric and persuasion how conscious were you about about tone I think tone was very important. And I think like part of the reason the article did what it did is like obviously like there's been reporting on this before um and sort of putting it all together. i addressed, I think, in my head as I was writing it, like a convincible liberal who like exists in the real world but who didn't think this was a problem.
00:42:12
Speaker
I mean, it turns out, you know, the people on the right like loved it. But I think part of why it was so successful is because it was not geared towards people who already believed me um About my central claims and part of doing that, I think, was was threading the needle.
00:42:31
Speaker
Hey folks, thanks for listening to my chat with Jacob Savage. This is the end of the free version of the podcast. If you want access to the full version, we got another 20 minutes or so, go to my Substack page and become a paid subscriber.
00:42:47
Speaker
Jacob and I, we talk for another 20 minutes or so. We talk about the difficulty of standing up for men's rights just because of the optics of it. We talk about who should be held accountable for discriminatory hiring practices, how discrimination may end in the future, and Jacob gives us a book recommendation.
00:43:08
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
00:43:27
Speaker
This was the Out of the Wild podcast. Original music by Duncan Barrett. For more episodes, subscribe to my sub stack.