By: Nicolas Amerkahnian
*Parts of this article heavily blur the lines of satire and actual opinion
Just murdered another yerba mate so it’s time for a blog post. The Garden performed at the Catalyst on May 23rd. The show went smoothly. They played the hits – Banana Peel, All Smiles, Call This # Now – but something was off. At least three different people in the crowd had flashlights on looking for their lost Juuls on the ground. About 45 minutes into the show everyone started coughing. Half the crowd darted out the door – the other half unphased. Someone, whether intentionally or not, had their pepper spray go off in the middle of the crowd. It sucked. At the end of the show, twin brother leads Wyatt and Fletcher stepped off the stage and walked through the remaining crowd out the backdoor of the Catalyst. They were clearly frustrated by their audience leaving.
Watching the two model brothers with their dangling earrings and fishnet shirts walk out the door gave me the first half of a realization, however. The other half came last night when I was watching the music video, “Fake Love” by Korean boy band, BTS. It features the half dozen androgynous super boys in a variety of dramatic set pieces, ranging from explosive cityscapes to a room full of candy bars. The boys were dressed in extravagant blouses and made up to look smooth skinned – both boyish and ghastly. Earrings dangle from their ears, half obscured by the two-block mop top haircuts that they all dawn. Eerily like the boys in The Garden. This brings me to my realization.
Boys are back. Global culture has decided – men are out, boys are in. You may be wondering, “What does that even mean?” If men weigh in at 100% masculinity, boys land anywhere between 1% and 99% masculinity. With boys being back, it means it’s time to shave your beards and embrace any sort of androgyny you can. Sell all your stock in sports, uninstall Fortnite (or maybe install Fortnite, as actual 8-to-35-year-old boys do seem to love that game), whatever it takes to get rid of at least 1% of your masculinity. 2018 is the year of the dog, and the year of the boy. All your favorite alt-right heroes – Ben Shapiro, Paul Joseph Watson, Alex Jones, Jordan Peterson – seem to agree that masculinity is dead, at least that’s the headline that I read on the side of my Facebook newsfeed. So, the solution is obvious: embrace boy-dom like all the great heroes of our time, and many great heroes of the past.