Andrew Tate or Panda Express: Which Way Young Man?

What a fast-food debate tells us about masculinity, social class, and Spiritual Boomerism

Why do young men flock to online influencers?

Two internet furors this week shed light on this question. One is yet another round of controversy over Andrew Tate after he appeared on a big podcast. (Ben Shapiro provide some background on this if you are interested, but in brief, Tate is an extremely popular but very toxic influencer accused of sex trafficking in Romania). A large number of pastors and others were outraged about Tate, which of course they should be.

The second was a debate over whether young people - implicitly, young men - should lean into working in service class jobs. This was triggered when Chris Rufo suggested young people should get a job at Panda Express, where they can make $70K as an assistant manager and have a career path to store manager making $100K.

The Rufo Panda Express furor illuminates a huge range of complex and interrelated issues that are often overlooked in the simplistic debates over matters like whether to work at Panda Express. It even sheds some light on the appeal of Andrew Tate.

Should frustrated young people just take a job at Panda Express? There was a major online rift on this point, interestingly within the online new right/dissident right crowd. I always love it when controversies divide people in unexpected ways. It exposes fault lines we didn’t know were there.

In this case, the Rufo side basically argued that young men are entitled and lazy. They want to sit back and complain and demand high status and high paying positions be handed to them on a plate as a matter of entitlement. The other side accused Rufo and company of promoting the proletarization of young men, especially white men.

I don’t have a comprehensive, integrated answer to this myself, but there are a wide range of considerations that illuminate why debates like this have been such a huge part of culture and politics.

1. Spiritual Boomerism

The Chris Rufo position is an example of what Stephen Wolfe called “spiritual Boomerism.” This is Boomerism as a state of mind and style, whether or not held by someone of that specific generation.

It is very familiar to anyone who grew up in an evangelical church or men’s ministry. Spiritual Boomerism is the philosophy that underlies every hectoring “Man up!” lecture delivered by some traditional authority.

One definition of the Spiritual Boomer style: A person, typically a man, who has achieved high status/success/home ownership/secure retirement/marriage speaking down from his lofty heights towards those who don’t have them and saying something like, “You just need to do what I did when I was your age” or “You just need to stop complaining, get to work and pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

People appeal to Spiritual Boomerism because it contains elements of truth. If you want to succeed, you actually do have to work and work hard. Everybody has to pay their dues. You’re not entitled to success. Every generation has to earn it all over again. A lot of young men do need something of a kick in the pants. Having a job is much better than not having one. Previous generations were willing to do what it took - think about the Joads migrating to California in The Grapes of Wrath - in ways many young people today aren’t.

However, Spiritual Boomerism lacks empathy. It doesn’t have skin in the games of the people being talked to. It isn’t cheering them on and genuinely hoping that they succeed. It fails to acknowledge the role that good luck played in the success of the people delivering the lectures. It doesn’t truly wrestle with the changed circumstances and difficulties facing young people today. It doesn’t realize that the old success scripts don’t work in the same way they used to. It doesn’t give a practical roadmap to achieving real success.

That’s what online influencers provide. When he was emerging as a guide to young men, Jordan Peterson used to challenge them. “Clean your room, Bucko” or “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.” But he also made sure young men saw that he cared about them. That he understood their pain. That he was on their side. He didn’t just view them as the problem but as people who mattered in their own right, people whose hopes, dreams, plans, and aspirations mattered too.

Rod Dreher wrote about Peterson, after an incident in which a young, disturbed man at one of his events rushed the stage looking for help, “I was really moved by the way Peterson handled himself here — moved, but not surprised…Devoting hours to hearing him talk really did reveal to me why he has such a following, especially among lost young men. Whatever flaws Peterson has, he leaves no doubt that he really cares about the people he’s trying to reach.”

Online influencers also give a practical roadmap to getting somewhere. Rufo’s original tweet suggested someone who stays to build a career at Panda Express. Online influencers would talk about how you can use a boring job at Panda Express or elsewhere as a source of 9-5 income while you work on self-improvement, your side hustle, or launching a business. They’d probably also highlight how to use the 9-5 to gain skills that are transferrable to running a business. They might start with Panda Express, but they wouldn’t end there. They would talk about how no matter how low you are now, you can rise and become a champion. (Rufo himself - whom I generally like by the way - did later talk about how he used low wage work to help him produce his first film, but it got much less play than the original tweet).

Some of this is a classic self-help advice schtick, or even a predatory grift as with Tate’s “Hustler University” where the assignments were to post Tate video clips on Tik Tok. But there’s a way this can be done legitimately as well.

Whatever truth it contains, Spiritual Boomerism is a proven loser in actually getting young people to follow its advice. Few people respond positively to finger wagging.

2. Spiritual Boomerism is directed at white men only

While this debate was mostly talking about young people in general, it’s clear that the people being talked about are young white men. They are overwhelmingly the target of this kind of rhetoric - and they can see it.

Again, we’ve seen in this in the evangelical church, where men are told to “Man up!” but women are told to remember they are “daughters of King.”

It’s similar in the broader world. There’s endless rhetoric, many programs, and big money devoted to encouraging women and minorities to elevate their sights, to go to college or grad school, to become one of the “women in STEM.” The talent and potential of immigrants are endlessly extolled. It’s only young white men who get these sort of lectures.

It would be interesting to see if the people talking about these kinds of jobs would be willing to qualify their advice to specifically direct it to young women, or the lower income minorities. In my experience, even conservatives only do this indirectly, such as by talking about the “culture of poverty.” But it’s notable that in this logic a young inner city black man who fails to exhibit what they call “bourgeois values” is in essence a victim of culture - an outside force he didn’t create and isn’t responsible for.

People are willing to admit to the role of outside forces and structures in shaping the outcomes of women and minorities in ways that they are not willing to do for young white men.

3. Social class is an important reality.

Yes, money matters—you need it for a house, for marriage prospects, for stability. But in today's America, social status also matters. Its importance has only gone up in recent decades.

Inequality and divergence have been defining features of our era. As economist Tyler Cowen put it, “Average is over.” This has produced a two tier environment in which the top 20-25% of society is doing very well, but the bottom 75-80% is struggling not just economically, but personally and socially.

This has bled through into geography. Charles Murray has talked about how America’s elite have concentrated into monolithically upscale “super zips.” Some regions like Nashville are boomtowns, while others like Flint are mired in decline and struggles. Back in 1990, economist Robert Reich labeled this “the secession of the successful.”

In a world increasingly resembling a barbell distribution of winners and losers, it’s critical to end up in the winning group. Taking a job at Panda Express puts you at high risk of being socially grouped with the losers.

For example, being the store manager at Panda Express might make you marriageable, but marriageable to whom? A man (or woman to some extent) in this position will be largely frozen out of marriage to someone with a college degree. Your marriage pool gets reduced to those without degrees. (And if you do have a degree and are working in a Panda Express, you are still going to be seen as a loser by a lot of women, no matter how much money you make. Maybe even if you own the franchise).

There are also career implications. If you have a job at Panda Express on your résumé after college graduation age, this will be a huge black mark in attempting to get any white collar or higher status job in the future. (Retail is actually the one industry where this might not fully be the case, as retailers put a high premium on store experience in hiring corporate employees. I’m not sure how this applies to the quick serve restaurant sector, however).

Also, the kind of middle class neighborhood in which one could afford to buy a home off an income of $80-100,000 is not what it used to be. As documented by scholars as diverse as Robert Putnam and Charles Murray, middle and working class communities are characterized by pervasive social dysfunctions such as unstable marriages, out of wedlock births, drugs, etc. The main reason to seek to live in a super zip today is to isolate yourself and your children from this kind of dysfunction. And again, if you don’t have a college degree and work in the service sector, this is your dating and marriage pool.

The type of small town environment I grew up in isn’t what it was then. Even if economically it is objectively more prosperous, socially it is a very different matter.

Let's be clear: Most Americans won't get college degrees. They'll work in jobs like retail, manufacturing, and distribution. These are honorable jobs that keep our society running. Working at Panda Express is dignified work.

But let’s not pretend that there aren’t profound, long term implications of ending up working at Panda Express compared to white collar employment. It’s completely understandable why someone would be hesitant to commit to a choice that has a high risk of permanently miring them outside of the upper middle class - and everything that comes along with that.

Conservatives who urge men to skip college, go into the trades, move to a small town or other such choices rarely reckon with or disclose the real implications of those choices.

4. Downward mobility

It’s difficult and painful to go backwards in life. Deflating your lifestyle or lowering your social status is very unpleasant.

Boomers did very well compared to their Greatest Generation parents. Lots of people raised in Boomer or Generation X homes got to experience the fruits of their parents’ upward mobility.

It’s completely understandable why someone raised in an upper middle class or solidly middle class environment would loathe the idea of downward social mobility. That’s a bitter pill to swallow.

Downward mobility is a reality of life. There’s something to the idea of shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. But it’s understandable why people would hate that or be in denial over it. Failing to show basic sympathy for why people would feel this way is another form of Spiritual Boomerism.

This is one of the outworkings of the dysfunctions of our society. Downward social mobility - the key word being social, not just economic - is a feature of today’s America.

Not only should we be aware that people are experiencing downward mobility, we should be aspiring for them to have upward mobility. The American Dream isn't just about your kids retracing your steps—it's about them reaching heights you never could. As John Adams famously wrote:

The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.

This is missing from Spiritual Boomerism, which at best wants new generations to retrace the same path as their own. We ought to be doing everything possible to elevate our people - and see it as a failure on our part if we can’t push the next generation to greater heights than we achieved.

I want to see Generation Z soar, not have to struggle for years to put in place a basic foundation on which to build a life. Again, we have to deal with reality. And for some people, that’s going to mean service or blue collar work. But we should at least be aspiring for people to reach great heights. There’s no sense of this aspiration for the next generation to have it better in Spiritual Boomerism.

Andrew Beck talked about this point as well, highlighting not just the social and economic aspects, but the spiritual ones of seeking higher purpose:

What is missing from this "job" discourse is a hard truth: Young men in the West want purpose and belonging more than anything else. A reason to work and live. They are not bemoaning purely a lack of possessions and absence of comforts, but of zeal.

The aversion to menial, purposeless work for the sake of a modern middle-class lifestyle has been trending upward since the early 2000's. [Note: among progressive women as well as conservative men - ed.] It is perhaps why the elder generation—the largest generation ever—has spent so much energy trying to supplement the Western workforce with men from less developed societies who strive and sacrifice greatly to obtain a slightly elevated standard of living. That elder generation worries that no one will maintain what was built by their fathers, who sacrificed so much to get to where their children could be at ease and enjoy the spoils. But a large cohort of men from these younger generations wish to build upon that foundation and ascend higher than their forbearers.

What "success" means for a young Western man, however, is the freedom to do something they care about—something they can pursue and sacrifice for… to be zealous! Gaining independence gives them bandwidth to seek this path of ascension. It is a desire for spiritual fulfillment they act upon, not one for material possessions. We must address this vacuum of zeal in our work and pay more heed to those desires of spiritual fulfillment in our men.

Part of being a man is to face the world as it is rather than as we’d like it to be. Sometimes, we do have to suck it up and take a terrible job we hate. Sometimes we don’t have, and may never have, the opportunity to pursue higher purposes.

But we should at least recognize the goodness and legitimacy of having the desire for those things.

5. Changing generational preferences

Lots of people operate on the assumption that younger generations have, or should have, the same preferences as their own. But every generation has a different set of preferences, and it’s not all bad for them to pursue theirs.

Let’s remember, the Boomers were very different from their own parents, and the preferences of the Boomer generation massively reshaped society. We should expect that this process is only going to continue.

I will give one example: young people seem to put much more stress on having schedule flexibility than having a “steady job.”

I talked to a consultant who did interviews of employers and residents in an industrial city. Owners of manufacturing companies there said that it was difficult to recruit young workers. This included companies with excellent pay and benefits. One of the firms was a unionized manufacturer with pay of around $90,000 a year.

But the young people in that community don’t want to work in a factory, and they don’t want to be tied down to a clock punching schedule. Their preference is to drive for Uber or Doordash, where they can make money on their schedule.

That sounds nuts to me. But who am I to tell them how they should live their lives? If they are working and paying their bills, do I really have standing to tell them to take that factory job? The idea of having some autonomy and a gig that allows you to make cash but also the schedule flexibility to be working on your own business or creative endeavor can actually make a lot of sense. Maybe they’d actually rather deliver for Panda Express than manage it.

Older generations can have a perspective on the choices younger people make, but we have to be willing to understand, acknowledge, and respect their perspectives and preferences as well.

Guys like Tate or others of his ilk are tapped into young people’s preferences and what they want to hear. That’s why there are so many popular “hustle bro” podcasts. I’ve heard my Uber drivers listening to them. It responds to the cultural orientation of this younger audience.

6. The cultural contradictions of immigration restrictionism

It tends to be dissident right types who reject the idea of working at Panda Express. Yet this is the group that is most hostile to immigration and supports mass deportations.

In this world, native born Americans, including white men, would have to be doing a lot of the low prestige, lower wage jobs currently performed by immigrants. And I’m not just talking about assistant manager. We’re talking manning the deep fryer.

Now, in a zero immigration environment, many of these jobs would simply disappear. Much of the vast array of personal and household services provided to the upper middle class would just go away if there weren’t underpaid, exploited immigrants to perform them. But we’d certainly still have a wide range of service jobs.

Idaho is one of America’s least diverse states. I’m always struck when traveling there how service jobs that are mostly done by immigrants and minorities in other places are done by white people there. For example, when I’ve stayed at the Monarch Motel in Moscow, the housekeeping staff was made up of young white women (who appeared to be college students).

It’s very interesting to see that many of these are jobs Americans will do in the right circumstances. At the same time, if you want to stop immigration, Americans are going to have to do them.

These people have not reckoned with the full implications of a hard restrictionist position on immigration.

From Panda Express to Andrew Tate

There’s a path from Spiritual Boomerism to the rise of men’s influencers like Tate, just as there’s a path from society’s unwillingness to address legitimate populist concerns around immigration, trade, and wars to populist political eruptions.

As I said in my recent podcast with Matthew Continetti, I see populism as a societal warning indicator like the oil light in your car. If the oil light comes on, you’ve got a problem you need to fix. If you don’t fix it, you’re going to end up with a much more serious and expensive problem. The populist solutions may not be the right ones, but the problems are real.

There’s a similar effect at work in the men’s influencer space. The rise of these people is telling us something is wrong in how society and its institutions relate to young men. But there has not been any correction, so things progress towards the toxic.

It’s important to reject the simplistic narratives of Spiritual Boomerism and engage more seriously on these issues in ways that take account of the truth that’s in those narratives, but also recognize the complexities of life and society today. And ways that have a sense of empathy and genuine concern for the young people in our society, their preferences, ambitions, and experiences.

Rather than just telling them to Man up!, how can we actually help them get there?

Cover image: Panda Express in Hell’s Kitchen NYC by Ajay Suresh, CC BY 2.0