Factually! with Adam Conover - Elon and Zuck are INSECURE Men

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are obsessed with proving they’re “real” men. That’s an issue with these two dangerous dorks—but more importantly, it reflects a larger crisis that’s impacting men across the country.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Get that Angel Reese special at McDonald's now. Let's break it down. My favorite barbecue sauce, American cheese, crispy bacon, pickles, onions, and a sesame seed bun, of course. And don't forget the fries and a drink. Sound good? I'm participating in restaurants for a limited time.

So you might have noticed that seated at Trump's inauguration were the three richest men in America. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. Combined, these three brologarcs have six testicles and $880 billion. That's nearly $150 billion bucks a nut. But have you noticed that these nerds look a little less dweeby than they used to? I mean, Elon was a balding code gremlin before his glow up. Bezos, once a simple dork, is today the most jacked

and taught 61-year-old on the planet. And just a couple years ago, Zuck was a pasty-faced robot glitching out before Congress, but now he looks like the most swagged out real estate agent in all of Orlando. He looks like a TikToker who quit his dad's used card dealership to do pranks with his boys. He looks like a piece of broccoli who got a Billabong gift card. There's something weird going on here. Why exactly do these guys have so much to prove?

Why does Zuck need to show us he's lifting big weights? Why does Musk need to tell us he's the world's greatest gamer? And why does Bezos desperately feel the need to share a shirtless selfie every 30 seconds? It's simply bizarre. These men have enough money to buy themselves limitless power. Hell, Elon used his money to cuck the president and destroy the federal government. But the one thing they can't seem to buy is a stable and confident sense of their own manhood. For some reason, that is not for sale. Why? Why are the most powerful men in the world constantly embarrassing themselves

by trying to prove how manly they are? Well, there's a powerful theory from psychology that perfectly explains this phenomenon. It's been validated in research from all over the world, and it shows exactly What drives these billionaires to ever more cringy attempts to demonstrate their masculinity? Like come on man And it also explains the crisis facing young men in America and exactly how our politics as a nation Have gotten so f***ed up. But before we get into it

I just want to remind you that I'm taking my big manly body on tour doing stand-up comedy right now. The Nihilism Pivot Tour continues at Talia Hall in Chicago on February 21st. If you're watching this video the day it comes out, that is today. The Wilbur in Boston on February 23rd, March 6th through 8th. I'll be in Burlington, Vermont. And then I'll be at the Leicester Square Theater in London in the UK on March 22nd, Amsterdam on March 26th, then Providence, Rhode Island, Vancouver, and Eugene, Oregon. Head to AdamKonover.net for all those tickets, and if you'd like to support this channel

directly, head to Patreon.com slash AdamKonover. So guys, I'm talking to my men here. Let's level with each other. Do you ever have that feeling? No matter how often you prove your masculinity, there's no guarantee that you're permanently part of the man club. No matter how long the arc on your football throw, how beefy your big boy truck, or how rare your fortnight skin, you have to keep performing your manhood all day every day or else risk it being questioned or

maybe even taken away. This attitude is so common, social media is full of videos telling us that even the way we sit needs to communicate manliness. This is definitely a more feminine way to sit, but a man who's masculine is going to take up space, right? Oh yeah, nothing's more secure and masculine than letting another man tell you how to sit. Well, there is a powerful psychological theory

that explains exactly why masculinity operates like this. It's called fragile masculinity. Now, before you kick my ass, let me just say, that's not saying you're fragile, you're a big strong man and I don't want any trouble. It's the structure of masculinity in our society that's fragile. In our culture, manhood is not something fixed that you get by virtue of being born with

a dick between your legs. Instead, it's a status that you need to earn publicly, and that means it's also something you can lose. That makes our social idea of masculinity a continuous source of anxiety for many men, which as we'll see, has serious repercussions. Now, just so you know that I'm not talking out of my unwiped manly ass, the theory... Alright, we could use that.

Is that too gross? This theory draws on decades of work in different fields. In 1990, an anthropologist named David Gilmore published a book called Manhood in the Making, and he found that in non-industrial and agrarian societies globally, manhood was a precious status that men had to earn. Depending on your culture, it might require killing an antelope, going through a circumcision ritual without anesthetic, or putting your hand in a glove filled with fire ants. Y-you know, just regular dude stuff. Other social scientists have since confirmed Gilmore's findings, and data from history,

psychology, sociology, and political science have all shown how widespread these beliefs are. A huge international study looked to see if fragile masculinity existed in 62 different countries and it found that men and women in hunter-gatherer tribes all the way to Nordic social democracies all see manhood as something hard to get easy to lose and that has to be proven in public. But we're talking about America right now so how do you prove your manhood in America? After all we don't have fire ant glove rituals. Well according to 50 literal years of research American masculinity and forces values like aggression, risk-taking, American masculinity, and forces values like

aggression, risk-taking, physical achievement, and competition. And let's be clear, those are good values in many, many cases. But, according to the theory of fragile masculinity, the more you express those values, the more you need to prove them in public, because once again, your manhood is always at risk of being taken away. And that explains what has been happening with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. We'll get to Elon in a second, but let's start with the Zuck. The man's got a wife, he's got kids, he's got literal billions of dollars, so you know he's a good provider. But still, Mark feels the need to constantly prove to the world that he's not a little bitch. So he's been reaching for the classic masculine value of aggression and getting super into mixed martial arts.

Ooh, very strong Mark. You would definitely protect your family from a clan of ninjas in a back alley. Now look, there's nothing wrong with getting in shape and posting your gains on social media. I'd do the same thing. Look, we're all just trying to get yoked for YouTube, baby. But getting in lethal fighting shape wasn't enough for Zuck. He felt the need to keep proving himself. Dude needed to show the world he was more than just the guy who added stories to Facebook, stories to Instagram, and stories to Messenger, and also WhatsApp status updates

that you can now post as stories back to Facebook. So Zuck showed up to a real UFC fight as part of the entourage of Australian featherweight Alexander the Great Volkanovsky. And there, in a desperate attempt to show us he's tough, he did this. When he looks at the polio, he's boxing heavy. So of course he's paid special attention to that. Last time he saw him, of course, was against Isla Mahajan. And he stepped up on short notice. Never has little brother energy been so perfectly expressed. Zuck can spend hundreds of hours and millions of dollars training,

but that doesn't mean he can actually join the cool MMA gang. Instead, they ignored him while he just nodded his head, making him look insecure and pathetic. In his attempt to demonstrate his masculinity, he put his masculine status at risk, and that is textbook fragile masculinity. The theory says that to prove your manhood, you have to publicly show some manly accomplishment,

but if you fail, you are seen as less manly. And thus the Zuck got cucked. As did Musk. See, Elon has also done the basic things that should demonstrate he's a man. He's made money and he's got children. Perhaps too much of both. The dude has 12 kids. Oh, sorry, make that 13 kids. From this lady, also from his wife Justine, his pop star Paramore Grimes, and an exec from the company he started to torture primates with brain implants. Yeah, yeah, that's real. I cannot believe that is real, but it is. The man quite literally has a harem. Hey, I guess if you can't find enough people to buy your shitty trucks, you could always grow your own.

But money and women and an arc full of bizarrely named children are not enough for Elon. To show the public he's a man, he seeks the respect of the toughest dudes on the planet. The gamers. You know, nothing says I'm a big strong man like having your assistant come in to light your gaming candle during your Twitch stream. Alright, well add the gaming candle back. Just add the candle somewhere. I don't want to get too Freudian here. Sometimes a gaming candle is just a gaming candle, but perhaps we can see a little bit of fragile masculinity in the fact that Elon keeps his huge, synthetic white shaft next to his gaming rig and that he requires someone else to light it up for him?

Armchair psychoanalysts, feel free to pop off in the comments. But even worse, it turns out that Elon the gamer god is a total fraud. Gamers watching him stream Path of Exile 2 noticed that Elon appeared to have no idea what he was doing despite claiming to be one of the best players in the world. Redditor started tracking his noob behavior and eventually figured out that Elon was boosting, meaning he was paying someone else to play the game for him to level up his account. It's not a hurricane machine conspiracy theory. It is beyond a shadow of a doubt true that Elon Musk does not play this game.

Dude, there is just nothing more pathetic than lying about how good you are at a video game. Trust me, I learned that at a sleepover when I was 13 years old. Dude literally could have sent $100 to every teenage boy in America if their approval was that important to him. Just like Mark Zuckerberg, Musk sought out to prove his masculinity and in the attempt forfeited it. And again, that follows from the theory of fragile masculinity. Manhood is something that you need to earn by publicly proving yourself, and that means it's also something that you can publicly lose.

So what happens then? Once you have embarrassed yourself before the public and you look like a little tiny baby boy Well, if your identity is based around conforming to the masculine stereotype Research again shows that when you fail to live up to that stereotype All you can do is double down and risk embarrassing yourself again. The research on this is nuts It shows that men whose manhood is threatened tend to respond with aggression. They literally start drinking more, they punch harder, they take more financial risks and they show less support for gender and social equality. They even get more enjoyment

out of sexist and anti-gay jokes. In other words, men who feel insecure about their manhood because it is being threatened, literally compensate by becoming even more ludicrous stereotypes of masculinity. And it's important that we understand something here. Both Musk and Zuck have their masculinity threatened constantly. Even on Musk's own platform X, the one he spent $44 billion to buy, he is repeatedly humiliated. You know how we know that? He literally tweeted,

I am constantly insulted on this platform. Oh, buddy, that's sad for you, man. Oh, I don't wanna feel bad for this guy. And it's not just X. In 2022, Elon went on stage during a Dave Chappelle show, and at that show, he was booed by the crowd for 10 minutes. ["The Big Bang!" crowd cheering and applauding!] Controversial, buddy.

What expected this, were ya? Oh, no! It sounds like some of them people you fire are in the audience. Now you know someone with a stable sense of their own masculinity might persevere in the face of that kind of public hate, but Elon is not that someone. The boos were so upsetting to him that he locked himself in his office at X with employees outside concerned that he was going to harm himself. What could be more fragile than having a breakdown after getting heckled at a f***ing comedy

show? If you want to see how I react to getting heckled, come see me on the road. Head to adamkhanover.net for tickets and tour dates. Both Elon and Zuck are trapped in this cycle of humiliation where they feel the need to prove their masculinity, fail publicly to do so, and then double down, lashing out in ever more aggressive, stereotypically masculine ways. So seeing through that lens, it shouldn't be surprising when Elon Musk tweets that he's gonna impregnate Taylor Swift, or cosigns a tweet suggesting that women shouldn't vote.

Or when Zuck cuts DEI programs at Metta, removes content protections for LGBT people, or goes on Joe Rogan, the most masculine podcast hosted in Texas' gayest city. But I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung towards being this somewhat more neutered thing. And I didn't really feel that until I got involved in martial arts. Dude, I thought you were a powerful CEO.

You're telling me you'd take one jujitsu class in a strip mall and change the entire way you run your business? That's pathetic. Your problem isn't masculinity. It's that you stole our data and your metaverse sucks. And I'm sorry, you can't complain about your corporate culture not being manly enough when nearly two-thirds of your employees are already men. Then, as in any conversation between two real manly men, hunting came up. And Mark brought up his favorite weapon, the bow. Although my favorite is bow.

Bow and arrow. I mean that's, I think, like the most, that feels like the most kind of sporting. Hey, that's cool as hell. Killing an animal with a gun, easy, but using a bow and arrow, that's personal, visceral. That is the most manly way for men to hunt. Unless, of course, you're lying about it. What kind of bow do you have?

Gosh. I didn't get to do it this season, but, um... Do you know the company that makes it? Not off the top of my head. I have a few. Oh, you have to know. Yeah, no, this is embarrassing. This is embarrassing. Um... I can get you hooked up.

Yeah. It works. I mean, why lie about this? Why? It's like Mark caught a stomach bug that makes him incapable of holding down his own dignity. He just has to barf this embarrassing shit out. It is utterly humiliating. But you know what? It's also typical. Musk and Zuck aren't outliers. See, as much as I like to make fun of these guys, it's not entirely their fault.

Fragile masculinity is something that society does to men, that it inflicts upon us. I mean, hell, our own families do it to us. Elon is this way because he was bullied and abused as a child, first and foremost by his macho, overcompensating, flailing businessman of a dad who, quote, never tired of telling Elon how worthless he was. I know, I'm sorry, I made you feel bad for Elon Musk, but that is the truth. Fragile masculinity is not a mystic force of human nature,

it's a set of ideas that is transmitted from person to person, from shitty dad to pathetic son. And even though Musk and Zuckerberg are the most privileged and powerful people on the planet, they have been absolutely warped by it. At the root of Zuck's decision to allow abuse and harassment of vulnerable people on his platforms, or Musk's efforts to destroy the mechanics of American government from the inside, are these dudes failures to be the men they imagine themselves to be. It's just sad, frankly, but you know, these guys are billionaires, so they're gonna be

fine no matter what, no matter how much they embarrass themselves, they'll be okay. But when this dynamic happens to real men in the real world, it makes their lives worse. It often kills them, and it explains the fascist turn in American politics. See, our American concept of masculinity, again, is centered around independence, competition, and achievement, all good qualities, if you can achieve them in a secure way. But by those terms, many young American men

are objectively failing through no fault of their own. First, our schools are leaving men behind. Their dropout rates are higher and their scores are lower than women. And while they were just as likely to graduate college as women 30 years ago, now women have left them in the dust. And it's not just school, it's in the economy itself. Young men are working less than they did in the dust. And it's not just school, it's in the economy itself. Young men are working less than they did in the past and their wages are stagnating, especially if they don't have college degrees. And remember, college is expensive in this country, so many men can't access it. The world has literally changed around American men. Our economy is no longer structured so that an average

guy without a college degree can get a good job to provide for his wife and family. The jobs that these men used to get are simply gone. And that's why young men are also living at home at a way higher rate than young women. Unsurprisingly, young women are not super excited about shacking up with young men who are less likely to have completed their education, gotten a job, or live on their own. And consequently, young men are way more likely to be single and way less likely to have sex their education, gotten a job, or live on their own. And consequently, young men are way more likely to be single and way less likely to have sex than they used to be. Men also experience higher rates of loneliness, drug abuse, and suicide.

I mean, men commit suicide nearly four times as often as women. Just about every social indicator looks worse for men, and that is a serious problem. By the way, those last stats are from our sponsor USAFacts.org. If you want real data straight from the government, they're the place to go to. And you know what? In a time when it seems like no one can agree, it's really critical to have useful and reliable data that you know is straight from the source. And USAFacts.org has been a fantastic

resource for us when we've been writing and researching these videos. So check them out, USAFacts.org. It's a phenomenal resource. The crisis that men are facing isn't just bad for our health and our wallets. It also harms men's image of ourselves, and it plays right into the fragile masculinity trap. If you're not able to earn a living or find a partner, that literally threatens your image of your own manhood. And that forces you, once again, to double down. And that has had a powerful effect on our politics. Research actually shows that the more insecure you are as a man,

the more you support tough guy right-wing policies. Which is why it should be no surprise that so many young men turned sharply towards Trump this election. If turning to Magus, who's the masculinity of a billionaire who got his feelings hurt by a pro gamer, well, it must do the same thing for an unemployed 25-year-old with no job prospects in a changing economy. That's why Trump's campaign was awash in hyper-masculine images, like this one. And if that seems like a childish version of masculinity it literally is. In the case of Hulk Hogan it's literally for children. Eat your vegetables brothers! But at least it's something. Republicans went

out of their way to bring the campaign to young men. They targeted them where they were watching UFC, listening to Dude podcasts, and going to college football games. But what did young men get from the Democrats in 2024? Oh, an invitation to coach Waltz's roof to clean his gutters while he delivers a lecture about enthusiastic consent. That's worse than f***ing nothing. Thanks a lot, Mr. F***ing Feeny. Young men are in a crisis. That is our social and economic reality. And if we do not address the source of that crisis,

it will continue to be inflamed by the same compensatory power fantasies that have melted the brains of Zuck and Elon. And to do that, you know, young men, yes, need new forms of media that actually speak to their problems and give them proper role models of what a healthier version of masculinity could look like. Plenty of people have made that argument, but more importantly than that, they need actual policy that actually addresses their problems. We need more male teachers for struggling male students.

We need to help men get and keep jobs by promoting the hell out of vocational training and making it, guess what, free so people can actually access it. And we need to make sure that those jobs, when they get them, are stable, good-paying union jobs that actually provide them a life. And when it comes to addressing the unacceptably high rate of male suicide, we need a serious and sustained public health response. Policy is not enough by itself. We also need to change our concept of masculinity to not be so f***ing fragile. And you know what? That is possible. Because while fragile masculinity is seen in societies around the world, different societies

buy into it more or less. And you know what makes them buy into it less? Gender equality. That's right. Countries with higher levels of gender equality have lower levels of fragile masculinity, have more secure masculinity in their male populace. Yeah, it turns out that oppressing women and queer people

doesn't strengthen your manhood, it only makes you more f***ing insecure. Kinda makes sense, right? I mean, guys who are secure in their masculinity are generally less likely to bully a gay teen in the cafeteria. And that means that we are not stuck. We can escape the trap of fragile masculinity by treating everyone in society with fairness and empathy. And that means that when these supposed tech visionaries embrace the dumbest version of

masculinity and use it to overthrow our government and make it less fair, they're not driving us towards the future. They're grasping at the pathetic past and keeping themselves imprisoned. But you know what? There's a big bright world outside of those bars. One where you can have all of your masculine virtues like bacon burgers, naval history podcasts, and chopping wood with your shirt off. And one in which healthy aggression and competition are valued as

the virtues that they are, but also one in which your masculinity doesn't depend on the approval of others, but is secure in itself. So you know what? I think we need to thank Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, because in their pathetic, grasping insecurity, it turns out they're actually the perfect people to teach us the truth about fragile masculinity and how it imprisons us and to help us chart a path out. Go for it guys keep embarrassing yourselves in public it's pretty fun to watch I want

to see you guys windsurf I want to see you try to do porn and be bad at it I want to see you go to a biker bar smash a bottle on the table and challenge those dudes to a fight because you know what you'll get the shit beaten out of you but all of us will laugh and we'll may or may not test their general trivia knowledge. Whether it's one of my sworn enemies like Brittany Broski or Drew Fualow or my actual biological mother Kelly, my guests and I are just after the truth. And if we find it great, and if not, no worries. So subscribe to So True on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, or wherever you get

your podcasts and watch video episodes on the So True with Caleb Herron YouTube channel. New episodes drop every Thursday. Love ya! Hey, it's Nicole Byer here. Let me ask you something. Are you tired of endless swiping on dating apps? Fed up with awkward first dates and disappointing hookups? Girl, same! Welcome to Why Won't You Date Me, the podcast where I figure out love and how to suck less at dating. Each week, I get real with comedians, friends, and celebrities about their love lives.

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