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The American Manly Man, known the world over for centuries of soaring bravado and gritty do-it-yourself ingenuity, passed away during the season finale of HBO\u2019s Girls<\/em>. He was 237.<\/p>\n His death was confirmed by American pop culture. The cause of death is still under investigation, as the U.S. Department of Health has not yet received the results of his toxicology testing. But (i) The Selfie, (ii) Michelob ULTRA\u2019s Fruit Infused\u00a0Pomegranate Raspberry, and (iii) eerily fatalistic intimations of the American Empire\u2019s mortality are believed to be preliminary suspects.<\/p>\n \u2019Twas the smartphone that killed the American Manly Man. <\/p>\n Necessity may well be the mother of invention, but modern inconvenience is the father of the app. The American Manly Man still did not stop to ask for directions. But only because he did not have to. Siri, his iPhone\u2019s female-voiced assistant narrated the entire way. Masculinity: there was an app for that. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Obama selfied while Washington froze. Actor Clint Eastwood, once the paradigm of steely machismo reserve, was last seen blathering to an imaginary president in a chair. Gone was the archetypal strong, silent type. By 2014, he was replaced by the iFaced up-talker, a la Valley Girl, (E.G. \u201cLet me take a selfie?\u201d). His effeminate last breath posted, Skyped, retweeted for all the world to see. <\/p>\n The American Manly Man made machine, and the machine, in turn, made the American Manly Man a boy. By 2014, the American Manly Man had devolved into a bespectacled Tech Boy. The once-stout Pioneer Age body of Davy Crockett slumped into the Tech Age mold of Mark Zuckerberg. In his natural urban habitat, he could be found stooped before a laptop grazing on Venti Frappucinos and Buzzfeed.com quizzes at the corner Starbucks. <\/p>\n The American Manly Man, circa 2014, spoke in tech jargon, not swagger. Statements were up-speak questions (E.G. \u201cIt has too many carbs?\u201d) Verbs were website names (E.G. \u201cGoogle that\u201d, \u201cFacebook her\u201d) or mobile applications (E.G. \u201cPayPal me\u201d, \u201cNetflix it\u201d. He used hashtags for punchlines. (E.G. \u201chashtag firstworldproblems\u201d to vent over the decidedly mundane annoyances of a hyper-connected world.) In 2014, the American Manly Man said \u201chashtag\u201d. And often. <\/p>\n FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) was a nearly certifiable condition for the Saturday morning dread that he, having stayed in Friday, experienced as he scrolled through his friends\u2019 Instagram accounts. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and other frothily valued social media platforms (before the Tech Bubble 2.0 burst in the mid-2010s) crossed a rosy-cheeked intersection of voyeurism and narcissism for the American Manly Man. <\/p>\n Social media\u2019s diaspora let American males peek into their friends\u2019 and celebrities\u2019 lives and photo albums in the name of vicarious living. It comprised a collective digitized fridge door of sorts, where he could wish someone a happy birthday, see who was hooking up with whom, and, sure, sometimes post about the less informative, too. <\/p>\n Historians would later note that the American Manly Man did everything on his smartphone, except, poetically, phone people. He did not call. That would be too direct. Probably awkward. It would certainly involve talking, anyway. So, he texted instead. Furthermore, no Millennial American male born after 1982 left a voicemail. He would generally silent his parents\u2019 call, ignore the voicemail, and then text what they called about in the first place.<\/em> <\/p>\n Besides calling, all of the American Manly Man\u2019s basic needs were met by his smartphone. For dinner, he scrolled Yelp, the user-generated online restaurant recommendation app, for the closest Thai delivery. For payment, he used Venmo, the friend-to-friend online money service. For dates, he swiped right on Tinder\u20142014\u2019s free dating app de rigueur,\u2014if he liked a girl. Left, if he did not. For boredom, he scanned his Yahoo fantasy football app\u2019s waiver wire for the Cincinnati Bengals\u2019 backup running back. For more boredom, he\u2019d flick through buxom supermodel selfies on Instagram. For yet more boredom, he\u2019d chomp through Candy Crush Level 33 or fling pixelated birds at castles in Angry Bird. For venting, he\u2019d riff on Facebook that he had placed his Thai order 30 minutes ago. <\/p>\n #firstworldproblems <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Catherine (Rooney Mara): So what’s she like?<\/p>\n Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix): Well, her name’s Samantha and she’s an Operating System. She’s really complex and interesting…<\/p>\n Catherine (Rooney Mara): Wait… I’m sorry. You’re dating your computer?<\/p>\n Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix: She’s not just a computer, she’s her own person. She doesn’t just do whatever I say.<\/p>\n Catherine (Rooney Mara): I didn’t say that. But it does make me very sad that you can’t handle real emotions, Theodore.<\/p>\n Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix): They are real emotions! How would you know…<\/p>\n Spike Jonze\u2019s Her<\/em> (2013) best streamed the American Manly Man\u2019s interconnected loneliness and technical dependency on the big screen. Set in 2025, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), an introverted romance letter writer, falls in love with Samantha, his operating system (sultrily voiced by Scarlett Johansson) before \u201cshe\u201d spurns him for a higher operating system intelligence. <\/p>\n By 2014, Hollywood\u2019s villains were no longer the dwellers of caves or dingy Russian boxing halls but the skinny denizens of Internet cafes. They were mastermind coders who no longer threatened with bombs or bullets but cables and emails. <\/p>\n In the James Bond franchise reboot, Skyfall<\/em> (2012), disgraced Double-O-agent-turned-nefarious-hacker Silva (Javier Bardem) boasts of the new world order, where data felled governments: <\/p>\n Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem):\u00a0Destabilize a multinational by manipulating stocks? Easy! Interrupt transmissions from a spy satellite over Kabul? Done! Rig an election in Uganda, all to the highest bidder.<\/p>\n ?James Bond (Daniel Craig):\u00a0Or a gas explosion in London?<\/p>\n ?Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem):\u00a0Hmm. Just point and click.<\/p>\n Raoul Silva harkened to the age\u2019s new most feared foes: Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, physically rootless but digitally connected refugees, who browbeat governments and corporations with the threat that anything they said\u2014could and would\u2014be used against them in the court of public opinion. <\/p>\n Hollywood\u2019s greatest hero, too, dealt in more RAM, less bam, by 2014. Cultural backlashes to steroids and HGH in sports shriveled the rock \u2018em sock \u2018em American jingoism of 1980s and 1990s cinema. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, once the rippled poster men of 1980s and 1990s testosterone but now faded, swollen anachronisms, wheeled out for today\u2019s forgettable, recycled summer sequels (E.G. The Expendables III<\/em>; Rambo V<\/em>). Less punch, more punch line.<\/p>\n The brawn of Superman<\/em> and the athleticism of Spiderman<\/em> paled in the box office next to technical wizardry of Ironman<\/em>. Actor Robert Downey Jr. modeled billionaire playboy and possible drunk Ron Stark off PayPal\/Tesla founder and tech billionaire impresario Elon Musk. <\/p>\n Yet even Ironman<\/em> rusted next to a teenage girl adept with a bow and arrow. Jennifer Lawrence\u2019s The Hunger Games: Catching Fire<\/em> singed Ironman 3<\/em> in the box office as the highest grossing domestic movie of 2013 ($415 million).<\/p>\n Back in my day<\/em>, curmudgeonly Baby Boomers griped, we had to walk 10 miles uphill both ways to school<\/em>. Back in my day<\/em>, cranky Generation Xers lamented, we had to blow on our Nintendo 64 cartridges to make them work<\/em>. Back in my day<\/em>, Millennials would soon vent to their children, you had to plug in your electronics make them charge<\/em>. <\/p>\n In the American Manly Man\u2019s defense, he couldn\u2019t help it. He was a product of his environment. Every successive generation enjoys nicer innovations than its predecessor. If the latest innovations did not boost quality of life, they would not be the latest or most innovative anything. By 2014, the American Man more than anyone else enjoyed the Apples of technology\u2019s exponential curve. <\/p>\n Even if he did not always savor it.<\/p>\n Please check back for RIP The American Manly Man (Vol. 2): Michelob ULTRA\u2019s Fruit Infused\u00a0Pomegranate Raspberry. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The American Manly Man, known the world over for centuries of soaring bravado and gritty do-it-yourself ingenuity, passed away during the season finale of HBO\u2019s Girls. He was 237. His death was confirmed by American pop culture. The cause of death is still under investigation, as the U.S. Department of Health has not yet received […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":549,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Selfie<\/h2>\n
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