Sunday Essays #1: It's cringe to have a boyfriend now?

We've outdone ourselves with this one.

Oh man.

Sometimes things happen in the cultural zeitgeist that launch a thousand thinkpieces.

You don’t always want to chase the trend, but every so often one hits a nerve deep enough that you have to weigh in yourself.

That’s exactly happened this week with British Vogue’s tactical nuke of an article:

Much as I don’t love the term unpack, there’s…a lot to unpack here.

Sure, I’m not a dating woman, but I still consider myself pre-qualified enough to speak on this.

I’ve spent a lot of time as a boyfriend in this life, (probably a lot more than the average bear) and it dates back a long ways now.

Also, and this might shock some people (though you guys shouldn’t be too surprised), I’ve had a Vogue subscription for years.

Yeah, that Vogue…and yes, I even have the tote bag they used to give out to new subscribers.

The tote bag has been with me long enough that it once made me look pretty cultured, but here in 2025 it apparently makes me a “performative male,” whatever that means.

It’s a major bucket list item, far-fetched as it may be, to have dinner with Anna Wintour (racing with Anja Rubik…).

Anyway, Vogue.

The gravitas of the September issue, the Super Bowl-level cultural importance of the advertisements, Vogue is a case study in and of itself (clearly).

{You might ask why I never gravitated toward GQ.

I tried, it just never did it for me. I respect a few of their writers, like Jake Woolf and Emily Sundberg.

However, their overall vibe is a bit too catered to the “coastal urban man-child who gets his flu shot because his nagging mother told him so” type dude, in my opinion.

When you’re trying to channel the greats in your own little way (guys like Alain Delon, Paul Newman🐐, or the modern golden standard Jacob Elordi) you really don’t care about Russell Westbrook’s tunnel fits that look like he’s dressed for Easter Mass in 1978, or about having a closet full of “sick Jordan’s bro!!” when you’ve been out of PE class for over a decade.}

(I’ll let you guys decide for yourselves)

Back to the Article in Question

As a writer, straight up bashing another author just makes zero sense to me.

That’s not what we’re doing here, nor is it even necessary as I think Ms. Joseph actually does a lot of things well in her Vogue piece.

She references the changing of cultural norms, the effect of the increased presence of our digital selves, and the calamity that comes with deleting an ex off of social media.

The latter part hits home, as it’s a path I’ve traveled more than a couple of times.

You know the feeling- when friends’ WAG’s (often with nothing better to do) notice via their scrolling and stalking that a certain someone is absent from your recent posts and stories.

The token poking and prodding of your boy ensues, who then pulls you aside and needs to know details ASAP to appease the evergreen curiosity stewing at home:

“Hey, you’re not seeing so-and-so anymore?”
“Nah man.”
And that’s really it.

Is it awkward? Sure.

Is it part of the game? Yes.

Cost of doing business, so to say.

Anyway, it’s understandable that there’s an inherent aversion to this, especially amongst the younger generation and women in particular.

The social risk in the digital town square that comes with a long-term relationship can be a strong burden to bear from a person just starting to find out who they are in this world.

Tie that into the fact there’s the ubiquity of hookup culture and unlimited options for those that have access to it (dating apps and social media pour gasoline on this) and it becomes easier to understand the trepidation when it comes to showing a relationship online.

It’s how we got to the current meta of soft launches, hard launches, and situationships.

There’s also a prescient point made by Joseph, in that many women don’t feel as if they need a relationship to “complete” them, so to speak.

Anybody who has read this ‘Stack for more than a week knows we love authenticity and agency over here, so this was definitely an appreciated point.

Now, if so much of the article did land and resonate, what is the issue?

Well, there’s the oft-used used phrase the medium is the message.

I’d say in this case, the issue lies in the interpretation of the message, coupled with a lack of intellectual effort.

TikTok Brain & Taking Headlines to the Comment Section

Any TikTok creator will tell you the current average attention span is less than two seconds long.

It’s why we educate ourselves on hooks, perfect angles, and gotcha moments in order to reel in a viewer who would otherwise keep scrolling to the next cat video, GRWM, or whatever else there may be.

It’s the TikTokfication of the brain.

We have shorter attention spans than ever before.

(Cue Andrew Tate… Your mind has been FRIED!!)

Naturally, in this climate, social media took the title of this article and ran with it, assessment of content and nuance be damned.

It’s a big ask in the year 2025 to have people read an article, dissect it, and take it point by point to form their own opinions.

I’m a writer. I would know this.

The modern way is to just take what you see from a juicy headline and quickly spend the time you should spend analyzing and instead use it to infest comment sections left and right, armed to the teeth with opinions yet with none of the intellectual labor of loading the metaphorical gun in the first place.

Naturally, this is exactly what occurred with Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?

The headline masterfully curated to stoke sociocultural fires was taken at face value.

Everyone gleaned the same thing:

Boyfriends were now embarrassing, boyfriends were now cringe.

It went even deeper than this, of course, appealing to the ever-present divide that we see in our everyday lives.

“Having a boyfriend feels Republican”

^ That was an exact quote the author extracted from a young woman who was interviewed in the article.

It’s tired, it’s sad, it’s the same old trope:

“Gasp! The bad people! Oh no, tell me I’m nothing like them!”

This is where the article and its ensuing reactions completely jump the shark.

Aside from the usual attempted unpersoning of half the nation (are we really still doing this), it reeks of coastal elitism and in-groupism that frankly pollutes our social culture.

These are the same girls who would look at you blankly for a whole ten business seconds when you ask what’s wrong with people having different political beliefs….then proceed to spend the night bedrotting and anonposting to r/NYCinfluencersnark roasting some poor girl (who’s got the balls to put herself out there and build a brand) all because she applied her foundation wrong in her last IG reel.

It’s all so truly upside down.

Anything popular culture and mainstream media tried to pump into young girls’ brains these days seems to boil down to this: don’t be cringe and don’t be a Republican.

How many of these types will find solace in the fact that, come age 40 with no family or children, at least they never tried hard at anything and didn’t vote for President Trump?

If the trends continue like this, we will one day find out.

Probably won’t be too pretty.

Let’s Get Out in Front of the Backlash

We often discuss in here about being kind and listening to people from all ends of the political spectrum.

This is a core belief.

I have friends with crazy viewpoints of all kinds, and I’d never cut somebody out based on what they believe.

That being said, I can only be honest about my experiences.

To do so otherwise betrays this publication entirely.

The blunt truth in my experience is that it’s the people who self-proclaim as the most progressive often have a seeming allergy to debate.

An M.O. of labeling and mocking those that disagree, then sprinting in the other direction.

They seem to believe this suffices as discourse.

It doesn’t.

This is being brought up because:

A. I don’t believe in echochambers in either direction, and

B. I can already hear the counterpoints being screamed in my direction:

You’re just interested, as a man, in controlling our bodies!

We don’t need men to be complete! (already went over this one)

What about the far-right, they said XYZ!

So maybe it’s time we establish some ground rules here, as well as peek over the fence.

Personal Proclivities and a Look at the Other Side

I understand different “eras” of life, as we call them now.

I’m in my Healing Era ✨ is a common refrain. It’s an understandable one, too.

Lots of people are in a stage of focusing on business or an aspect of life and don’t want to commit to a relationship they can’t give their all to.

Trust me, I get it- I’m in that very same season right now.

Bodily autonomy and deciding one’s own life path in my mind’s eye is a birth right.

It’s not about pushing people who don’t want to be tied down into relationships.

This isn’t one of those trad-adjacent get married and have children right now!! salvos that overpopulate the X timeline.

That side, however, did have a lot to say.

Let’s take a quick look at that and why it had an effect.

A Glimpse at the Right

If there’s the classic progressive hivemind with its phobia of debate and intolerance of any sort of consequence, naturally there was going to be the right-side overcorrection to balance things out.

In its freakout, there were claims that the Vogue article was anti-natalist, anti–nuclear family.

As with deleting your ex off your IG being “embarrassing”, there is hint of truth to that, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

In many ways, perhaps the modern right and right-adjacent communities’ thinking helped create pieces like the Vogue Boyfriend article at hand.

Red-pill communities, religious guys interviewing OF girls on podcasts for the spectacle of it all…it’s worth a thought.

Lest we forget, this side has lost the plot in its own way.

Just take a look at the “tradwife” movement.

The tradwife aesthetic genuinely freaks me out, even in the odd moments it’s actually authentic.

(I’m talking literally makes the hair on my arms stand up freaks me out)

There’s something awfully culty and Harrison Butker-core about watching some girl churn homemade butter on TikTok and lecture her audience on “submitting to their man”.

When you see this type of content, how we got here starts to make a lot more sense.

sorry, just keeping it real.

Give Love a Chance!

Shoutout Cameo.

The point I’m trying to get at it here in the indulgence of cultural analysis isn’t about what to do, rather it’s about what to be open to.

Again (beating a dead horse here), you can’t tell people what to do, how to live, who to date.

As long as minors and animals aren’t getting hurt, who really cares?

But when we start cutting off or frowning upon the possibility of romantic relationships, one of life’s most enthralling, self-educational, and important aspects, we’ve lost ourselves.

You see this phenomenon, the drastically different encampments of beliefs and lifestyle, viewpoints on dating and relationships that are miles apart.

Many see divide.

I see it all as a cover.

And when do you use cover?

When you’re scared.

What Are You So Afraid of?

Romantic relationships are inherently risky.

They’re also as old as time.

We’re all here as a result of them-some that lasted for decades, some that are still going, and some that only lasted for a night.

Nonetheless, they predate us by millennia and will outlive us by millennia as well.

So why the obsession with what people are doing on the micro level?

Is it the fear of ending up like the “hometown Facebook” people?

Cheap suits and prom-adjacent dresses at catering hall weddings, Mickey Mouse ears and New Balances (not the cool ones) at Disney World…the world needs hometown Facebook people.

I saw on Facebook the other day an old colleague of mine from my first part-time job who has purple hair married a girl with… purple hair.

At the risk of sounding like your grandmother, every pot has a cover.

There are couples that bond over anything and everything.

I mean, there are probably couples out there that are Satanists, for crying out loud.

At least they’re giving it a go.

(Satanism is the one belief I gotta disavow, tho).

Maybe you want to have a blood-grafting ceremony with your one and only (which I oddly find super cool and romantic), à la Jim Morrison.. who cares?

Find somebody who’s down and go for it.

The beliefs, lifestyles, and systems are myriad, but the underlying energy of giving it a shot remains.

There’s no cringe in that, even if it falls out.

I’ve even said before that I’m not in a dating mode right now.

That being said, even in my stubborn idiocy, if I were to meet someone who really blows me away, then hey, we’re rolling with it and seeing where it goes.

The Cringey Outro

So, is deleting old photos of an ex because you had the guts to put your heart on the line cringe in the grand scheme?

Is posting or talking about somebody you truly love on social media really cringe?

Is the quest for love, (or the conquering of the quest for love) one of our most innate drives as humans…cringe?

I say no.

How about letting a potentially beautiful, flourishing relationship pass you by because you wanted to fit in at the Digital Cool Girls Table, backed by logic from a MSM legacy platform funded by the very same multinationals that profit from your solitude?

Well, that, my dear reader, would be cringe.

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Written with a whole lotta love this time,

John Abbate

2.11.2025

P.S. if any of you make an album called The Digital Cool Girls Table, you owe me royalties.