I came across this article today and I think it's worth a read. I spend a lot of time playing computer games and recently I've started watching anime (but I'm not and nor will I ever be an "otaku") and based on the people who I play games with and talk to almost every day what he writes in the article is depressingly accurate. Here are some of the highlights [quote]"Nobody in my generation believes they're going to get a meaningful retirement. We have a third or a quarter of the wealth previous generations had, and everyone's fleeing to higher education to stave off unemployment and poverty because there are no jobs. "All that wouldn't be so bad if we could at least dull the pain with girls. But we're treated like paedophiles and potential rapists just for showing interest. My generation are the beautiful ones," he sighs, referring to a 1960s experiment on mice that supposedly predicted a grim future for the human race. After overpopulation ran out of control, the female mice in John Calhoun's "mouse universe" experiment stopped breeding, and the male mice withdrew from the company of others entirely, eating, sleeping, feeding and grooming themselves but doing little else. They had shiny coats, but empty lives. ... The sexodus didn't arrive out of nowhere, and the same pressures that have forced so many millennials out of society exert pressure on their parent's generation, too. One professional researcher in his late thirties, about whom I have been conversing on this topic for some months, puts it spicily: "For the past, at least, 25 years, I've been told to do more and more to keep a woman. But nobody's told me what they're doing to keep me. ... Men are constantly told they should be delicate, sensitive fellow travellers on the feminist path. But the same women who say they want a nice, unthreatening boyfriend go home and swoon over simple-minded, giant-chested, testosterone-saturated hunks in Game of Thrones. Men know this, and, for some, this giant inconsistency makes the whole game look too much like hard work. Why bother trying to work out what a woman wants, when you can play sports, masturbate or just play video games from the comfort of your bedroom?[/quote]