Don't blame women for men's loneliness. Blame capitalism [View all]

Don’t blame women for men’s loneliness. Blame capitalism
There’s a lot of money to be made off angry, isolated men

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published November 17, 2025 6:45AM (EST)


(Salon) Is Sam Altman trying to get men addicted to erotic chatbots in order to make money off them? That’s the strong implication of a recent New York Times op-ed by artificial intelligence researcher Steven Adler. In it, Adler accused the OpenAI CEO of ignoring “clear warning signs of users’ intense emotional attachment” to chatbots that claim to offer romantic intimacy. Instead, Altman’s main product, ChatGPT, is forging ahead with a plan to let the software pretend to be a user’s romantic interest, despite strong evidence that doing so will send “users down mental health spirals.”

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That may sound paranoid, but the grim truth is that this scenario reflects an alarming trend online: An increasing number of influencers, crypto grifters, “pick-up artists” and gambling websites have come to realize that male isolation creates incredible profit opportunities. It’s not just that they are making money off male loneliness. In many cases, capitalist predators are incentivizing young men to abandon the flesh-and-blood world in favor of staying online.

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As Jessica Winter pointed out in a recent New Yorker article about the masculinity crisis, even centrist and liberal men seem to believe the only solution is to accede to the belief “that men should still rank above women in the social hierarchy, just not as much as before.” She’s right that these arguments dehumanize women, who are full human beings and not emotional support animals for men. But it’s also doing men no favors to pin the blame for their problems on women. The fantasy that men can be restored to “provider” status over women isn’t just immoral. It could actually make things worse, as modern women want men to be partners, not a boss with whom they live and have sex.

Instead, it’s time to look at how male loneliness has been monetized by all manner of seedy actors who have every incentive to discourage men from making changes to improve their lives. Men’s ability to adapt to modernity is being stymied by propagandists and grifters, who persuade men to adopt anti-social behavior, because doing so is incredibly profitable. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/11/17/dont-blame-women-for-mens-loneliness-blame-capitalism/