Lost Boys

What happens when the average young man reaches the official age of adulthood at 21 years old? Do you ever notice how these modern-day, newly-emancipated males transform from relatively innocent, pimply, gangly, hormone-pumped, clueless, confused, and conflicted teens into just outright nasty boys?

I used to think that after the turbulent teens they would automatically morph into well-mannered and well-intentioned gentlemen out to discover their life’s purpose. Instead, what I have encountered were jaded, angst-ridden, ill-mannered twenty-something manboys in arrested development, who act like the world owes them a favor. Of course, there are nice young men to speak of still—charming young princes in love with life—but I would say that, easily, half of the male twenty-something population has given in to the dark side and walk around with a grudge on the world as big as their wounded egos.

I have pursued this line of thinking for a few years and most of the people who belong to the preceding generation with whom I had discussed the matter are as puzzled by this widespread phenomenon as I am. Many blame the solitude imposed by the virtual and the digital age on an entire generation starved of human interaction with the resultant deficiency in interpersonal skills.

These boys grew up with their thumbs glued fast to portable electronic games, their hands pounding keyboards and wielding joysticks, their ears plugged into IPods, their eyes pinned on monitors for their entire waking hours. I have heard of extreme cases where instead of dialoguing with their parents who are somewhere within the same house, they converse with them via Yahoo Messenger. While many lament the vanished art of conversation, wherein repartee, eloquence, articulateness, and wit are clear indicators of charm, intelligence and good breeding, all I ask for is some measure of decency.

When you encounter a young man in his late teens or early twenties, chances are, he is tuned out of the real world via his IPod, his cell phone, or his laptop. The few times that he is unwired he is oblivious to the world around him, bumping into people with nary a care, in fact, annoyed that those he bumps into don’t have the courtesy to step aside and give way. He is impatient—he needs to get whatever he wants in nano seconds—as fast as his MAC Book Pro processes information or as rapid as the internet access speed in whatever kbp promised by his service provider. They spit out nasty remarks at baristas at the coffee houses they hole out in, they eat their younger siblings for breakfast, they scoff and grunt at their parents and expect them to be grateful for the trickle of reactions they care to dish out, they forge and undo relationships with girlfriends via email or text message, and they lash out at any interruption that derails their connectivity to the virtual and digital world.

Do they ever snap out of that dark mood? Yes, they do, very late at night, or very early in the morning. Walk into any club or bar where these kids hang out and you will find a subculture of boys gone wild. All the repression caused by the restrictive and reclusive state dictated by connecting into cyberspace is unleashed during these weird hours where these boys drink to oblivion, scream, dance, and release all the pent-up energy and emotion that get pickled in their bodies during the day. Their moves and their speech seem like violently angry expressions of what had been brewing all day. For a few hours, they liberate themselves from the bounds of quiet cyberspace and immerse themselves in the hypernoise of an exaggerated reality, only to burrow again into their removed, solitary world at sun up.

A year ago, I was on an airport shuttle in Seattle. The bus was half full and the atmosphere, serene. Directly behind me was a manboy, twenty-ish, his ears plugged into an IPod and thumbing his PSP. I reclined my seat back as we rolled along to get comfortable and started reading a book when I felt pounding behind me. I turned around and saw him kicking my seat. I said nicely, “Excuse me, please try not to do that, thanks,” which only made him kick stronger. Then, in a raised voice he said, “Put your seat back up! Put is up; I need leg room!” The entire bus-load of passengers looked at him, which only made him shout louder, “Put up the seat.”

“No, thanks, I answered. I like it the way it is.” He then let off a barrage of expletives complaining of how cramped he was. So I explained in a normal tone that it was MY seat and I had the right to do with it as I pleased, that half the passengers on the bus had their seats reclined, and that no one else was complaining. After I turned back around and resumed my position, he raised both feet on my headrest hitting the top of my head in the process.

“Could you not do that?” I asked, trembling with anger.

He answered, “No, they’ll stay there until you put up your seat.”

“If you had asked nicely in the first place, you would be enjoying more leg room by now, but no thanks. The seat stays reclined.”

At this point, I was fuming and was ready for anything. When from out of the blue, somewhere off to my right, a huge man (over six feet and over 200 pounds), mid thirties, whom I oddly did not notice before, screamed at him in defense of me, “Leave the lady alone.” The manboy attempted to argue with him but the gentle giant said, “It’s her seat; if you have a problem move somewhere else. But leave her alone, you got that?” The manboy didn’t as much as breathe after the forceful dressing-down he got.

A few months ago, in a Makati branch of one of the popular coffee house chains,
a manboy entered—obviously twenty-ish, casually dressed in torn jeans, toting a laptop and looking for a table. There was a two-seater, which was occupied by an old lady whose companion was getting drinks from the bar. He nonchalantly slid onto the opposite chair, prompting the old lady to tell him that it was occupied. He played deaf and proceeded to set up his laptop, don his head phones and tune her out. The old lady took it all in quiet puzzlement. Her companion returned and seeing how the situation had turned out, tapped the manboy on the shoulder to explain how they were the rightful occupants of the table. The manboy totally ignored her; it was as if she were never there. It took several minutes and two guards to finally get the manboy out of their table.

There are many other similar stories, all involving callous, self-absorbed and down-right nasty manboys, who think nothing of such transgressions, conducting themselves in such a fashion, impatient to plug into their virtual world, resentful of anything that gets in the way, and unmindful of everything that happens in its wake.

What makes these manboys different from the rest of the male population who are all wired in just the same? I suspect it is the fact that from age 18 to the early twenties, when they become University students, fresh graduates, or neophytes in the work force, they emancipate themselves from the clutches of their parents. Parental control over time spent in front of the computer and in playing electronic games suddenly relaxes for college students, while for the new-hires, their new-found financial capability and purchasing power provide them deeper access into the cyber world, so they simply go nuts.

This mania relaxes after some time and this is when they revert back to their old, amiable selves. But until then, the general public has to grin and bear these misbehaving manboys.

It is, therefore, not any wonder why these young men behave the way they do. The thing is, I don’t think they’re even aware of it. We constantly complain but have we ever tried addressing the issue? The intention is neither to criticize their lifestyle nor to condemn their persuasion, we simply appeal to their sensibility. We wish for their reconnection to the world of their elders, their understanding of a time where human bonding was in ascendancy, if not that, respect at the very least.