Recently, on the Joe Rogan show, Mark Zuckerberg announced the end of Meta's DEI initiative. He said that he came to believe that such programs "neutered" corporate culture—at Meta and elsewhere—and that his realization of this "neutering" developed as he became more engaged with "men in the mixed martial arts community."

FFS.

Honestly, I'm not sure I can even parody that posture beyond its own inherent absurdity.

Just think about this: Mark Zuckerberg, who clearly has never been very secure in his masculinity, starts hanging around big, burly men (many of whom are also deeply insecure about their masculinity) and finally "realizes" that the big, manly men are right about how big manly men need to stand up for manly manness and stuff. Then he goes on Rogan—a CLEARLY warped twerp in a hormone-augmentation suit—to bro with the bros about the new brotopia the bros are building by bro-ing together as bros.

Ugh. Sigh.

Sigh and Ugh.

This is a tragic window into how boys in our culture view—and later create—such a warped concept of manhood.

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Becoming a man is a harrowing journey, and it is one that not every boy achieves, regardless of how many trips around the sun they've made. I'm sure the same is true for girls becoming women or non-binary youth maturing into their fully adult forms as one, both, or neither gender—but I can't speak to those tribulations. My experiences, such as they are, derive from nearly 60 years in a cis-gendered male body and soul. But what I've observed and experienced during that journey centers around the necessity of actively CHOOSING the difficult transformation from boyhood to manhood by slaying, with conscious attention, the multiheaded dragon of machismo. And as far as I can tell, Mark Zuckerberg just never made that trip.

When it comes to actual manhood—or personhood, womanhood, for that matter—the measures are both standard and easily contrasted with childhood. As an adult, it is centrally important to treat other people with kindness, support, love, and the understanding that they are always moral ends in and of themselves, and never just means that you can manipulate to achieve YOUR ends. That's obvious, right? Kant dressed it up as the categorical imperative, but most grown-ups recognize it as the golden rule. Treat other people like you'd want to be treated. Don't USE them to get what YOU want.

Just, duh, be good.

The problem, however, is that children, out of fear, often target those they perceive as weaker children with violence and ridicule as a means of securing their own rank in a social hierarchy. When we, as adults, see that shit on the playground, we call it out and punish it. Moral adults generally recognize that when bigger boys beat up smaller boys, they are being jerks. Yet, within a boyish culture—despite the occasional punishments from teachers and parents—the shit works. The bigger boys who beat up smaller boys DO receive rewards for their bullying, and the smaller boys—like, say, a grade-school-age Mark Zuckerberg—learn that culture, and they adapt to survive. They learn that to protect themselves, they must either become bigger, meaner boys themselves, hide, transcend, or adhere to the local bully as a minion or a sidekick. We all know this. We lived it when we were children, and—if we want—we can watch it on the news in Donald Trump's America.

In many cultures around the world, there are ritual passageways OUT of that immature mindset, but there's not much of one in ours. In ours, those who DO transcend the bullshit do so by consciously walking away from the whole fucked-up system, and that act of self-liberation begins with decoding the bullshit and recognizing that the only way to break the bonds of boyhood is to depart the society of children by learning that love trumps oppression, kindness engenders growth, and that the blessings of community flourish only when you learn to shut the fuck up and listen.

Clearly, Mark Zuckerberg has yet to do that. Clearly, he still holds the trauma of being terrorized by bullies as a boy, and—despite his billions of dollars—he still only has one way to relate within what he perceives to be society, that toxic hierarchy of bro-culture. To use their own language, Zuckerberg is "cucking" himself to fit in. He's "cucking himself" by agreeing with the bullies and joining their ranks with hopes that he will receive the rewards of a dutiful, properly humbled weakling finally granted entry into the big-boys club.

It's tragic as hell, but in our current reality, angry boyhood is an ascendant philosophy. The Bros—Musk, Rogan, Trump, Zuckerberg, Hannity, Hegseth, Cruz, Carlson, Kirk (Charlie, not James T.), Ramaswamy, DeSantis, Paul, Bezos, and others—have seized majority control of the government, media, and tech. That they are now attempting to impose playground rules on the rest of us, starting with attacks upon people, institutions, and ideologies they perceive as threats, like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs within their spheres of influence, should come as no surprise. It's literally what we all learned on the playground.

Bullies will be bullies.

Our job, however, hasn't changed. At least not in my opinion. We still need to see the bully coming and use our mindfulness and maturity to confront their malignant infancy whenever and wherever necessary. And that should start by calling out Mark Zuckerberg in his own front yard. He's giving into his fears of being left out of the fun on the playground by the other boys, and that's just tragic for anyone, particularly with someone who has such privilege and capacity to overcome.

Truly, I feel sorry for him. I don't excuse his actions. I can't forgive his decision to "cuck" himself to Rogan and the mixed-martial-arts boys. I can't forgive his decision to "cuck" himself to Trump by dropping fact-checking from his platforms or vilifying DEI as the boogyman of corporate culture. He's 40 years old and has had PLENTY of time to leave the sandbox mentality behind.

Still, I do feel sorry for him.

I feel sorry that, at the midpoint of his life's journey, he's still so lost in childhood, still treating other people as means to his own ends rather than ends in themselves, and still humiliating himself in front of the class so that he can win the regard of the big, strong, boys whom he fears, never realizing that those poor bastards are also trapped—by their own fears—inside the same tragic system of playground morality.

It's a crying shame.

I hope he grows up soon, but I doubt he will.

Mark Zuckerberg will, in all likelihood, forever go to sleep at night as a frightened little boy.

Poor kid.