I recently saw a very provocative TED talk by Philip Zimbardo titled, The Demise of Guys. He starts off by stating “Guys are flaming out academically, they’re wiping out socially with girls, and sexually with women. Other than that, it’s not much of a problem”.
He goes on to add that some of the reasons for this are a new fear of intimacy – intimacy means a physical, emotional connection with somebody else, especially with somebody of the opposite sex who gives off ambiguous, contradictory, phosphorescent signals. This fear is due to social awkwardness and difficulty in understanding the language of face connect – the non verbal and verbal sets of rules that enable you to talk to somebody else comfortably. The assertion is further developed with Zimbardo asserting that guys prefer male bonding over female mating due to an overdose of internet use leading to ‘arousal addiction’, which can come from excessive gaming and pornography.
Most of his observations are from the US and Canada. I hope for the sake of both men and women in India, that this malaise hasn’t affected the Indian male. View the short TED clip and let us know what you think.