Generation Safe Space Is Having Less Sex: Thanks A Lot, Capitalism. (Seriously, Thanks.)

Millennials are making different lifestyle choices, and that's fine.



Millennials aren't having as much sex as older folks, which is cause for either widespread panic—ugh, kids these days—or a collective sigh of relief—yay, kids these days—depending upon what sort of moral panics one subscribes to.

The news comes courtesy of a study released Tuesday: "Sexual Inactivity During Young Adulthood Is More Common Among U.S. Millennials and iGen: Age, Period, and Cohort Effects on Having No Sexual Partners After Age 18." It contains a lot of interesting findings, but the big one is that people born in the 1990s are twice as likely to refrain from sex during their early 20s as members of the previous generation were. Older millennials*—those born in the 1980s—are having more sex than younger millennials, too.

It's not just that young people are waiting longer to have sex (although that's true, too: the percentage of high schoolers engaged in sexual activity has fallen from 54 percent to 41 percent over the last 25 tears). It's that people in their 20s who have had sex before—they aren't, say, morally opposed to premarital sex—are consciously deciding to pursue other activities.

Researchers note that there is an upside to all this: less people having risky, unsafe sex is definitely a good thing from the standpoint of fighting disease and preventing unwanted pregnancy. It also might reflect changing consent norms and the empowerment of women. Maybe fewer people are being forced to have uncomfortable or undesired sex.

Of course, the study has also produced some hand-wringing, according to The Washington Post:

But some experts are concerned that the drop-off reflects the difficulty some young people are having in forming deep romantic connections. They cite other reasons for putting off sex, including pressure to succeed, social lives increasingly conducted on-screen, unrealistic expectations of physical perfection encouraged by dating apps and wariness over date rape.

This generation has also grown up in an age in which it is possible to inflict suffering in ways that are both hidden and horrifyingly public, such as cyberbullying or posting compromising pictures online. In such an environment, young people have developed what some see as necessary defenses and others view as thin skin….

"On college campuses, you see older people scratching their heads about 'safe spaces.'?" Twenge said. "That's about emotional safety, this new idea of words being more harmful," referring to trigger warnings and other terms college-age people use to talk about potentially trauma-inducing stimuli.

Meanwhile, in efforts to counteract hookup and drinking culture, some campuses have begun instigating "yes-means-yes" rules stipulating that each step of a sexual encounter requires verbal consent.

For some, staying away altogether can feel less treacherous.

If millennials are having less sex because a cabal of vindictive university administrators—in service of sex-negative feminist activists—are teaching them to fear intimacy as part of some new wave of left-wing puritanism, then okay, this seems like a problem. And it does seem to be the case that kids today are being raised in a culture of stifling paranoia about safety: physical safety, intellectual safety, and emotional safety. We don't want millennials deciding not to have sex because they have been fed bad information and made to feel afraid when they shouldn't be.

That said, there are plenty of other explanations for why millennials are having less sex. As New York Magazine's Jesse Singal points out, millennials are delaying marriage and living with their parents longer—two lifestyle choices that decrease their opportunities to have sex:

Another factor has to do with the changing lifestyle of young people. "With more living with their parents even postrecession (Pew Research Center, 2015), young adults may have fewer opportunities to have sex. In addition, marriage is the traditional outlet for sexuality, and only 26% of Millennials aged 18–32 were married as of 2014, compared to 36% of GenX'ers (born 1965–1979) in 1997 and 48% of Boomers." So the odds that a young person is unmarried and living with his or her parents today is significantly higher than it was in the past, and that on its own reduces the odds that they will have had sex since turning 18.

There's another, less obvious reason—one libertarians ought to cheer. Perhaps it's the case that young people simply have better options for how they spend their time than members of previous generations did. It's no surprise that when the only way to pass the hours was having sex or reading by candlelight, people were having a lot of sex. But there's just so much more for the modern young person to do in a day (and night). Consider one such millennial's testimony, according to WaPost:

Noah Patterson, 18, likes to sit in front of several screens simultaneously: a work project, a YouTube clip, a video game. To shut it all down for a date or even a one-night stand seems like a waste. "For an average date, you're going to spend at least two hours, and in that two hours I won't be doing something I enjoy," he said.

It's not that he doesn't like women. "I enjoy their companionship, but it's not a significant part of life," said Patterson, a web designer in Bellingham, Wash.

He has never had sex, although he likes porn. "I'd rather be watching YouTube videos and making money." Sex, he said, is "not going to be something people ask you for on your résumé."

Living in a free society means letting other people make the choices that are right for them, as long as those choices don't infringe on anyone else's fundamental freedoms. Not everybody likes the same things. If some people want to have a lot of sex, but other people want to work on their start-up company, and still others want to just play Pokemon Go all day, that's fine. It's the benefit of a pluralistic society guided by classically liberal values—made possible, of course, by free market capitalism.

(*This millennial considers himself right smack dab in the middle of the pack, having been born on 8-8-88. Send birthday gifts to the Reason DC office.)

NEXT: Extremely Rare Deadly Balloon Tragedy Leads to Familiar Calls for More Regulation


  1. Whatever, more sex for the rest of us.

    1. If there were alt-text, it should read, “Robby and Lucy”.


  2. “less people having risky, unsafe sex is definitely a good thing from the standpoint of fighting disease and preventing unwanted pregnancy.”

    Come on, Reason, will you stop giving aid and comfort to the Religious Right?

    Everyone knows that widespread extramarital sex has no adverse consequences, and the only people who think differently are Sky Daddy aficionados.


    1. Next thing you know, you’ll be saying that children should be *taught* to avoid extramarital sex.

      1. Children shouldn’t be having sex, whether they’re married or not. Probably shouldn’t even be married.

        1. Oho! We have an anti-muslim bigot over here!

      2. Are you mixing up extramarital and premarital or just being willfully dense?

        1. Forget it, he’s rolling.

        2. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought extramarital meant outside of marriage. extra = outside.

          Am I assuming correctly?

          1. Oh, I see, OK, I was looking for a word that meant any sex other than the sex which occurs between spouses.

            Perhaps the phrase “fornication and adultery” covers what I mean.

              1. Much!

                I don’t think your anti-fornication stance is going to get much traction. Hell, even adultery is tacitly approved in many communities. I guess we’re all going to hell except for the pure-as-the-driven snow millennials.

                1. Not only do I lack the power to send anyone to hell, the good Lord doesn’t even consult me on who goes and who doesn’t…I can simply say what I have been taught, that the only unforgivable sin is despair.

                  Rico Suave simply noted the social benefits of reduced *non-marital* sex (whether extra- or pre-), and I was piping up to agree.


                    Tell it to the judge

            1. nonmarital

            2. “Non-marital” seems like it would do.

              1. I like extra-marital sex.

                Wait, I mean–

          2. No… if you’re not married, there’s no marriage to be outside of.

            Pre-marital has other problems, like the assumption that the people having sex will marry in the future. It really should be non-marital to catch everything. But people aren’t logical, especially about words and sex.

    2. Besides, it’s “fewer”, not “less”.

  3. This is the first thing millenials have gotten correct that I’ve heard of.

    Sex (like Valentine’s day, and diamond engagement rings) has been so widely overhyped and overvalued for so long.
    Finally a generation comes along that is poorer than the previous to get society back on course.

    1. “Sex (like Valentine’s day, and diamond engagement rings) has been so widely overhyped…”

      Speak for yourself.

      1. Don’t believe the commercials that say that “two month’s salary” is an appropriate amount to spend on sex.

        1. Don’t believe the hype that diamonds have any intrinsic value beyond getting laid.

    2. I think you need to fuck at least ten different people a total of about three or four hundred times in order to definitively say sex is overhyped. Otherwise you’re just cheating yourself.

      1. At 31, I’m amazed how little I keep track now.

        I only remember the good ones, the hot ones, the misperformances, and the gross ones.

      2. “I think you need to fuck at least ten different people a total of about three or four hundred times”

        Done and done. I don’t even take off my big yellow boots anymore.

    3. You say that

      But Goldberry is waiting…

      1. ding dong merry dong, I mean merry dol

        1. Oh, Lord, I just grossed myself out.

          1. ding dong the dildo!

            1. Wet hole, merry hole!

              1. Now I know how Mrs. O’Leary’s cow felt.

    4. I you think sex is overvalued and overhyped, I think you are doing it wrong.


    I hate to spoil the surprise, but: it’s a basket of fruit-sushi.

    1. So you missed out on being a Virgo by a couple weeks.

      1. I’m a Leo. Obviously.

    2. Robby’s office nickname: Flock of Seagulls.

    3. I’m planning on sending him a book on how to make COCKTAILZ. And hair product. Lots of hair product.

      1. How to make hair product?

        I think Crusty was a contributor to that book

    4. In the context of the article, porn website subscriptions and sex toys might be an appropriate gift?

      1. Who fucking pays for porn anymore??

        I used to think that either the internal combustion engine, or the transistor were the greatest inventions.

        Now I realize it is Pornhub.

  5. It contains a lot of interesting findings

    Of course it does.

  6. So basically there are tons of young women who are in desperate need of some AlmightyJB lovin’. Sweet! Que the Barry White music.

    1. Here ya go.

    2. An Almighty BJ for all AlmightyJB’s ladies, one could say.

  7. Robby, aren’t you horning in on Elizabeth Nolan Brown’s territory?

    1. I’m sure they have some sort of Venn Diagram stapled to the wall for such occurrences. Rico gets a pass due to the millennial angle.

      1. Negative, he only gets a pass because he mentions university campuses. That’s his Brot und Butter.

        1. Ah hell, you’re correct on that one. I forgot millennials are generally The Jacket’s hobby horse.

          Good save.

      2. Am I a millennial? Born in 1980. I sure as shit don’t feel like a millennial. Most definitely wasn’t raised in what I consider to be millennial culture. As a kid there was no home computer or internet, no cellphones, not even basic cable. Oh, and feelings. There was no sharing of feelings in my house. Germanic stoicism was the order of the day. You were allowed to express anger, that’s it.

        1. You’re Gen X. No millennial is old enough to be president. The oldest millennial would have to have been born in 1983.

          1. “You’re Gen X. No millennial is old enough to be president. The oldest millennial would have to have been born in 1983.”

            Actually the term specifically means those born in 1982. They were the high school class of 2000.

            The Gen Y was originally 1986-2005, Gen X 1966-1985, Baby Boomers 1946-1965. But the term Millennial, basically took over the Gen Y term due to the overlap.

            1. dammit.

              1. wait, if my GED is dated ’99 do I get a pass?

          2. whew.

        2. There’s a definite problem in the years that make up the Millennial generation. As you point out, people born earlier in it have completely different life experiences than people born at the tail end of it. Obviously every generation experiences that variation to a degree. But the difference in technology really makes a massive difference in this case.

          1. There does seem to be a huge difference between people born in the 80s and those born in the 90s. I sure don’t remember all this microaggression bullshit when I went college.

            Then again those memories are a little blurry.

            1. I think 2000 is a logical cutoff. In the 90’s cellphones were only just becoming a common thing. Many people still had to go to the library to use a computer. Households still had one TV.

              1. Households still had one TV.

                No. 2/3 of homes had 2+ by 1990

        3. It’s not your fault, Trigger Hippie.


    2. Are we gonna see some metal shit going down?

  8. I thought they were having less sex because the guys look really effeminate.

      1. hearing a modern young-women wonder why dudes are becoming so feckless (as though they’ve had nothing to do with the process) is rich.

        aren’t they the same ones turning every human expression into a potential hate-crime, declaring gender to be as formless as microwaved playdoh, and insisting that any sexual contact that doesn’t involve extensive permission-begging and groveling is equivalent to rape….?

        and then they complain that the boys aren’t as Masculine & Assertive, Spontaneous & Confident as they might desire?

        1. Blaming women for your insecurities? Typical. Hear us roar!

          1. I was blaming women for other people’s insecurities.

            1. Like he said.

    1. It was never a problem in the 70’s or 80’s.

          1. Sorry, I was focused on the 70s. Late 70s 80s went total homogeneous.

            1. lol and guys were still getting laid left and right. Although, it could be that Stickler may be thinking of the current;y-fashionable soft-butch androgyny rather than effeminacy as such.

              1. Ding! Ding! Ding! See post below.

        1. Is that a speed suit?

      1. Contrast Robert Plant and Pajama Boy, see what I mean?

      2. Do you mean it was never a problem because women at the time did not care if the man looked effeminate or that men were not as effeminate? If the latter I say look at the hair metal thing in the 80s.

        1. Yeah but every song was about pounding vag so it all evens out.

          1. Not all of them; “Kickstart My Heart” was about getting saved after a drug overdose.

          2. As someone who prefers some metal in their well, metal, I always figured all the attempts you refer to as an examplr of repeating a lie long enough and people start to think it is true.

            1. ^^THIS

              Iron Maiden doesn’t equal Poison.

  9. On the one hand, this means millennials aren’t breeding and will soon die out. On the other hand, nature abhors a vacuum…

  10. iGen? iGen?!

    No. Just, no. We are not going to name an entire generation after a fucking Apple product. Fuck that.

  11. Gotta put porn at the top of that list.

    If we had ubiquitous free porn of every description (and some that is just beyond description) instead of a few purloined magazines and maybe a look at a flick once every year or two, maybe we’d have been content with less sex too.

    Virtualizing relationships certainly seems plausible…. chat with this set of folks, follow the lives of a different set of folks and masturbate to the sex lives of a third set of folks…. it checks all the boxes that a real relationship checks, even if it is a shadow of the real thing.

    1. That can’t be understated.

      If the Lion’s not hungry, he don’t hunt. In fact, haven’t we been treated to articles about how some women were finding it difficult to ‘catch a man’? Hell, there was that whole Norwegian phenomenon of young women having children on their own– not because they felt empowered by state-sponsored fertility treatments, but because they couldn’t find a man interested in marriage and children. One woman interviewed even intimated that young men were only interested in XBox.

      Having sex sans relationships is the raison d’etre for most men.

      1. Agreed. Not to mention that feminists have made relationships about as hostile to men as possible without veering into Valerie Solanas territory. There’s a distinct “all men are pigs” vibe I’ve noticed in the public discourse combined with the more traditional “men exist to provide for me” entitlement mentality. That certainly doesn’t apply to all or even most women, but it’s prevalent enough and the risks are catastrophic enough that why should you bother with a relationship unless she’s really impressive out of the gate?

        Let’s face it…most people we date end up being unimpressive and the date goes nowhere except for those that go nowhere after some sexual activity. The horror stories we hear about false rape allegations and a judicial system and media heavily stacked against men make the smart play opting out entirely and finding something else to do with your time until someone comes along who is clearly worth your time.

    2. Porn is giving men the upper hand. As Bill Burr says, when your LAYdee is wrong you gotta stick to your guns even if she is withholding sex. You go rub one out. Be a man.

      1. “Porn is giving men the upper hand”

        I see what you did there…

      2. Here’s the man. If Trump laughed at himself like Burr does after he says something stupid, he’d win in a landslide.

      3. …upper hand…stick to your guns…

        So. Many. Abstract. Euphemisms.

    3. It’s how the world is going to end. This is just a taste of what the future is going to look like, at some point in the future everyone will be too busy masturbating to some sort of virtual reality sex that they won’t bother making babies by having the real thing.

      This is how the world ends folks, not with the bang of a thousand nuclear weapons going off, but with the sad pathetic self-pleasure of some pajamaboy getting spanked by his virtual reality mistress.

      1. but with the sad pathetic self-pleasure of some pajamaboy getting spanked by his virtual reality mistress.

        Is that a bad way to go though? The virtual reality mistress doesn’t play the “does this go here?” game.

      2. Do you really think that in the future, babies will still be made in wombs or require anything besides some cut and paste genes?

        That being said, people will hopefully be having too much fun to want any of the smelly like varmints around. What an immediate improvement to society. All that will be left is for statists to be so hooked on VR pr0n that they never come out of their cave again.

        1. A future where all babies are made in a lab, or everyone goes extinct due to chronic masturbation? Frankly I would prefer the atomic bombs, at least when the dust settles there’s a chance to rebuild, and it a far less pathetic way to go.

          1. You don’t have to worry about the human race ending in a whimper due to baby-making becoming unpopular. Even if the vast majority of society decides that babies are too much trouble, that just means they cede the future of the human race to the small segment of society that still goes through the trouble of making and raising kids. Since religious people tend to have more children (in the US, religious people have a birthrate above replacement rate and non-religious below) and over half of all people retain the faith of their parents, there’s a good chance that a general decline in fertility rates will in the long run produce a rise in religiosity. If the future is dominated by fundamentalists of every stripe you still might get your preference. And of course, all future libertarians will in some way or another be related to that sloopy guy who always seems to be having babies.

            1. Third world women are more positive about being pregnant, so we should just require them to be surrogate mothers for American babies if they want to come here. And if they have a miscarriage we fucking deport them.

        2. No shit, we won’t even need Wimmenz to carry babies.


        3. Artificial womb is a hard fucking problem. If it weren’t, somebody would have solved it already. Riddle of steel, etc.

          1. vat-grown meat comes first, further development will lead to the womb. also, nice job describing the invention of anything. They’re all hard fucking problems until somebody solves them, that’s why invention is so valued.

            1. My point is that that one’s been pursued for a long time with plenty of motivation. It’s not like radio or compact discs or penicillin or sippy cups, which just fell in the inventor’s laps.

          2. Human flight is impossible. Cars will never replace the horse. No one will ever have a computer in their home. I can go on, and on, and on.

    4. If there is one downside to all the free internet porn available now, its the nostalgia I have for the fact that my kids won’t have the joy of finding that one Penthouse in the trash or that their buddy found and gave them that feels like you found the Holy Grail. Or trying to see the occasional boobie through the lines and snow on the cable channel that your parents don’t get.

      I can do whatever I want to our wifi at home, and I am pretty sure, my 14 old boy will be able to bypass it at will. So frankly, I don’t put parental settings on. My wife does check is computer’s history (and phone’s) at random, but obviously that is frivously easy to erase.

  12. Maybe millennial men are panty-waists.

  13. I don’t understand millennials. When I don’t feel safe around a woman I deflate her and toss her in a dumpster. Then I go online and buy another girlfriend. It’s so simple.

    I need to go on YouTube and make money off of my knowledge.

    1. OK, now my coworkers are probably wondering why I’m laughing so hard right now. Starting to get weird looks.

  14. My niece, god bless her, is a train wreck millennial. She posted on FB something to the effect of, “I can’t find anyone. I guess I don’t deserve to be happy.” Of course all her friends chimed in with, “Any man would be lucky to have you.” I’m looking at her self-absorbed life and thinking to myself, “Not true at all. Lose some weight. Stop posting Bernie memes. Keep a fucking job longer than 6 months.” Yeah, but I don’t want to be that uncle. Just glad my generation didn’t have social media around to broadcast all our idiotic thoughts to the world.

    1. Keep a fucking job longer than 6 months.”

      What Millennial is old enough to have a job longer than six months? As I read your sentence, I fully expected to read “6 weeks”. At that early an age, 6 months is pretty decent.

      1. How can a millennial have a job for 6 months? Aren’t they no longer millennials when they finally emerge from their parents basement at age 40?

        1. That’s why the jobs numbers are so depressing over the last 5 years. How often do you hear some Obama fan screaming, “The unemployment rate is 5%!”. Point out that all the job growth is going to the 55 and over group and that 25 and under unemployment is increasing and the answer you get is the Pelosi, “Well that just means they have time to do other things, like writing poems.”

          1. When I was at the office today, I don’t think I saw anyone under 50, all day, seriously. There are some people in my office under 40 that show up a few times a week, but they’re the minority. Not one person in the building is in their 20s.

            1. Not one person in the building is in their 20s.

              Same here. There’s a few in their 30’s and 40’s, a shitload of people in their 50’s and early 60’s, but pretty much no one under 30.

              1. Sounds about the same as my workplace.

                I guess the 20 something are all home painting and writing poetry.

                1. We’ve got a few interns in that range. You can tell because consonants are as rare as hen’s teeth.

                2. Do you work in an unskilled/entry level job? If not you’d expect there to be older people there.

                  The places I worked in my 20s were almost all people my age.

            2. What’s an under 50 human? I thought humans were born with gray hair and smell of impending death. I’m in Japan though, so there’s that.

            3. Yep. I work in a department with 14 people. I’m younger than all but two of them, and I’m 39.

            4. My personal demarcation is that you’re a Millennial if you played Nintendo as a child, either SNES or Nintendo 64.

              1. Er, wrong thread. Meant to go further up.

              2. What about just NES?

              3. GenX kids played Nintendo.

                1. GenX kids played Atari.


                  1. As an aside, I think that is problem with defining GenX. I was born in 1969 so I was near the leading edge. But someone born in 1979, will have had a very different set of memories and experiences in their youth.



      1. But think of all the young Hollywood starlets of the 80s and 90s that would have had leaked nudes.

        1. My imagination stripped them all a million times over.

        2. 1980s Hollywood starlets got nude on the big screen.

    3. Yeah, but I don’t want to be that uncle.

      The uncle that taught her to turn her life around and be a happy productive member of society that her parents failed at making? Yeah, wouldn’t want that.

    4. My niece turns 22 in a few weeks and just got engaged.

      And she’s a college graduate and as far as I know has a job in her field (actuary).

  15. I left my office-job and now I am getting paid 98 usd hourly. How? I work over internet! My old work was making me miserable, so I was forced to try something different, 2 years after…I can say my life is changed-completely for the better! Check it out what i do…


  16. Generation Safe Space Is Having Less Sex

    Geez, I wonder why. Campus ‘rape culture’, safe spaces, Title IX Nazis, microagressions, consent agreements, lifetime sentences for teen sexting. Plus, last but not least, it would mean having sex with other millenials.

    Well, at least we can be thankful they won’t breed. Now all I have to do is outlive all the little shits and I will finally see the libertarian moment!

    1. I mean, as long as I outlive all the baby boomers too.

  17. I never trust any of these survey type things.

    “Hey kids, tell us if you do drugs, we promise you won’t get in trouble.”

    1. Back when I was in high school, no one answered them truthfully, but I seriously doubt that if they did, they would have ever seen any trouble for it. Today? No one in their right mind would answer truthfully to anything they could use against you.

  18. Nothing a few months at Uncle Warty’s Epictetus and Squat and Lovin’ camp won’t fix. Sign your kids up today, parents.

      1. Didn’t New York ban him from playing PokemonGo?

    1. Um…right. I don’t have children. Not anymore. Took them camping and accidentally dropped them in a lake.

      Thanks for the info, though.

  19. Wow, and I thought I was the only one complaining that women my age don’t put out. Well, can we at least legalize prostitution already for those of us who aren’t asexual?

  20. But there’s just so much more for the modern young person to do in a day (and night). Consider one such millennial’s testimony, according to WaPost:



    He has never had sex, although he likes porn

    Well, there’s more things that the modern young person can watch other people do. Don’t pat yourselves on the back for the monumental achievement of watching LEDs for hours on end — looking for ways to have sex is about as human as it gets and nets you some unique experiences out there in the real world. When it comes to acedia and luxuria, I regret a lot less of the latter and a lot more of the former. Willingly choosing to burn out your eyeballs watching another person’s life over having sex is the hallmark of a loser and makes me wonder how honest that kid is being with his self-satisfaction and life choices.

    1. Clearly, we need a national sex initiative.

      1. If people aren’t doing it enough then subsidize it, if they’re doing it too much then tax the shit out of it. At least that is how our betters in Washington seem to think.

      2. So Japan is our future…cool!

      3. We have 4 SCOTUS justices who would consider a law requiring everybody to hire a prostitute to be valid under the Commerce Clause.

          1. But remember, Kagan said that you don’t have to eat the broccoli, just buy it.

    2. looking for ways to have sex is about as human as it gets

      Umm, no, it’s not unique to humans. Almost all animals are out looking for sex.

      1. I never said it was unique to humans. Pedant harder

    3. An 18 year-old virgin!?? THE WORLD IS GOIN DOWN THE SHITTER!

    4. I demand that you start liking what I like, or you’re a loser and your self-satisfaction is a lie. It has been decided by me, and I can decide how other people think and feel.

  21. In a more prosperous economy, more people would be having families. Since we live in a more regulated economy people are having less children, due to the fact that it is more expensive to have a family, unless you are on welfare.
    You do not have to be religious to see the results of having a bigger Government over a bigger Society.

    1. Okay for you Aborto freaks pout there. In a prosperous economy there will be fewer abortions.

      /throws grenade

      /runs out of the room

      /hides in corner

      /put fingers in ears

      discuss =)

      1. Other things being equal, probably you’re right.

    1. I dunno. If I’m standing in line anywhere it seems like just about everyone but the people with gray hair are buried in their phones.

    2. What a couple of dumb chicks.

    3. A friend took his girlfriend to a Yankees game, and told me a story about the game that started with : “So we were on our phones when…”

      You are at Yankee Stadium! The ticket was very expensive! Pay attention!

      1. Those fuckers don’t even know how to get drunk, and watch a baseball game.

        1. Soon their phones will be inobtrusively installed in their skulls. It will appear as if they’re looking right at you, but in fact they’re watching a cat video beamed directly into their brain.

        2. Who wants to watch baseball?

      2. Don’t worry they have put up more netting so you don’t have to pay attention anymore.

    4. I don’t know about you, but i find that whole thing (being so obsessed with your gizmo while out in public) sort of simultaneously embarrassing and insulting.

      The fact is that no one is that important or busy that they need to be paying attention to shit every 20 seconds.

      and generally people are having trite, small-talk conversations *with someone not even present*… instead of having their trite, small-talk conversations with the person right in front of them. the fact that its so easy for everyone to mutually ignore one another at their convenience just strikes me as solipsistic, anti-social, and juvenile.

      Its like you have a 4yr old and you’re constantly telling them to “look people in the eye, say hello to my friend _____, stop picking your nose” instead of just staring into space and wandering in circles? Only these people are adults, yet i have the same feeling of wanting to take their phone away, throw it down the sewer, point at their “friend” and say, “See this person? Talk to them. Pretend to have some social obligation to acknowledge each other’s importance”

      1. Do you have any message to kids regarding your lawn?

        1. if they step in dogshit because they’re too busy to look where they’re going, i will laugh.

      2. Why should they?

        It’s profoundly unnatural for human being to live in the extremely crowded enviroment of the modern world. Or as Heinlein put it: “Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.”

        That people use technology to try to avoid stressful excessive human contact is entirely to be expected.

        1. That people use technology to try to avoid stressful excessive human contact is entirely to be expected.

          I’m not talking about people ignoring each other on the fucking subway, i’m talking about people out having dinner/out at a bar/sitting in the park where 3 out of 4 is playing with their phone.

          1. People out having dinner/at a bar/sitting in the park are also under crowding-stress, even if they’ve been convinced by New Soviet Man Urban Human propaganda that those high levels of human contact are normal and desirable.

            The traditional response to that stress is to drink lots of alcohol as a tranquilizer. Focusing on ones phone is likewise only a palliative, but I can’t say that it’s a worse one.

            1. “Crowding-stress”

              Adding to the list of millenial-quirks =

              Pathologizing any behavior people criticize as the product of some novel psychological problem.

              See, they’re not actually shitty people rationalizing their shitty behavioral characteristics.

              These are rational adaptations to *stresses*. Yes, sure, 1000s of years of people before them dealt with these same things and weren’t solipsitic douchebags… but that’s no reason to pick on kiddies!! They have toys now, and if you make fun of their toys, they will try and shame you for being insensitive to their “condition”.

        2. IDK, “restaurant-sized crowd” doesn’t strike me as “excessive human contact”

        3. And don’t give me this “profoundly unnatural” bullshit.

          People have lived in crowded cities for since Roman times and its not like some new fucking social-pressure which only the advent of the iPhone has been able to alleviate

          I’m not even certain that this self-involved behavior is entirely unique to cities either – its just that its more noticeable.

          If you need a goddamn electronic gizmo to hide from the world, there’s something wrong with you – not the world.

        4. Heinlein was a little too witty there. Loads of insect species do just that, as do rabbits and rats.

        5. But why would you go out on the town with a group of friends to avoid excessive human contact? Chilling at home texting your friends with the TV on in the background would seem to be a much more efficient, less expensive way of accomplishing the same thing. Unless home is an apartment with paper thin walls, I guess.


        Even if they’re wearing these?

        1. Well at the very least you could point and laugh

        2. I don’t want to know what brought you to that website.

          1. Gay friend of mine. He was mocking it. There is hope.

      4. Who said the person next to you is automatically your friend?

        1. Do you know what “Obtuse” means?



  23. I wan’t to put a bullet between the eyes of every panda that won’t fuck to save its species.

    1. Pandas are the millennials of the animal world. Lazy, sexless, non-threatening and cute.

    2. Well what do you expect out of a species that tries to go full vegan, from full carnivore.

    3. Pretty sure the Japanese would fuck if the govt hadn’t screwed over the young. You don’t get to a population of 120 million in a country that small without a healthy sex drive. Problem with the Japanese is they do correct things when it gets too far out of whack, but often it comes with a lot of murderin’ and xenophobia.

      1. Murder and xenophobia? Do you mean to say the Japanese are *white*?


        1. That’s the meme in Asia. Japanese are white. Chinese are the Mexicans. Flips* are the Blacks. I don’t what the Koreans are.

          *Don’t know if Flip is considered racist. Will enroll in a class if necessary*

          1. The Koreans are the Irish of Asia. PJ O’Rourke said so.

    4. I wan’t

      You people deliberately do this to drive me up a wall, don’t you?

  24. I am going to recommend, sight unseen, these Dave Barry columns about the recent political convention.

    If you are not completely amused, please contact Mr. Barry for a full refund.

    1. The baptismal water slide was a joke in a Bob Marlette cartoon – Jim Bakker was sliding into the Jordan river during Christ’s baptism.

      The point was to use the imagery of a water slide and baptism to show Bakker’s lack of Christian reverence.

  25. Tonight is a night for /invasion Blood and Pissing people off. =)

    Time to play the Game.

  26. Thanks to Bill Clinton, what we used to call sex is no longer called sex. That’s why teens aren’t having as much sex, because blowjobs aren’t sex.

  27. Honest to gawd, this is really bad news. Late teens and 20-somethings should be fraking everything that slows down. That age is (should be) a period of exploration. I’m not saying ‘be stupid’ or ‘be unsafe’ or ‘be a pig’, but enjoy the banquet! Sex is something sacred, but in the sense that life is sacred, not skydaddyinanightshirt sacred. Get your fill while you can, because as a baby-boomer, I can guarantee them that the time will come when you won’t want, or be able to. The saddest thing of all would be to get to the end and say “I wish I had….”

    Carpe diem! Live, and learn!

    1. “as a baby-boomer, I can guarantee”

      That members of other generations are hanging on your every word, yearning to receive the wisdom you impart?

      1. I have no such delusion. I’m just commenting to the rest of the old farts that I believe comprise the commetariate that these kids don’t know what they are wasting.

        Just sharing my sadness with my cohort, not my wisdom the next generation. They will have to learn that by themselves; it’s the only way.

        1. I’m sorry, I was just busting your balls, but in a totally non-sexual way, of course.

          1. Damn, that could have been one of those growth experiences I was talking about.

    2. p.s.

      The kid in the pic is scrawnier than my Chinese colleagues who survived Mao’s cultural revolution. Eat something for crying out loud, and I don’t mean her! This whole generation either looks like escapees from Auschwitz or Jackie Coogan.

    3. During a conversation with a coworker years ago he told me a story about some advice he gave his nephew. ‘Fuck anything that moves. You see a rat, you fuck that too (motions fucking a little rat) and you throw in the corner when you’re done.’

      What a scream.

  28. Good grief. Sex is never over rated. I had well over a hundred notches before I was 25. Then I became a serial monogamist and now for the last 20 years a true monogamist. Sex has only ever gotten better and there should always be more of it.

    *I was always creeped out by the popularity and acceptance of violence in entertainment vs the relative taboo of sex.

  29. Sorry I’m late, everyone. I was having lots of sex and lost track of the time.

    The preceding statement has been rated as “true” by Hillary Clinton.

  30. iGen? I hope that doesn’t catch on.

  31. This is why we need open borders, so all those Mexican and Muslim rapists can fill in the sex gap.

    8-8-88 was the luckiest day according to Chinese tradition. The Beijing Olympics started that day, hundreds of thousands of Chinese couples got married, to capture the good fortune.

  32. It also might reflect changing consent norms and the empowerment of women.

    That’s an interesting way to say “having your life ruined by a false rape accusation because you didn’t text her the next day”.

  33. FWIW, I’m a millennial and can’t relate to any of this…

  34. These articles are why it is so hilarious whenever Robby tries to pretend he isn’t intimately involved in breeding the Trump supporter mindset.

    He obsesses over this stuff, then uses it to slake the thirst of the alt-right grievance monster, which finds 19 year-olds on college campuses feeling offended to be The Most Oppressive Thing Ever.


    Would that be (cis-)male tears?

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