Exit the Plantation
How the quiet withdrawal of men reshaped everything no one wants to admit.
As a society, we are cooked. So cooked.
It should be clear to anyone not trapped in an ideological bubble that the paradigms society once relied on, built around the covert contracts1 older generations of men had put in place, no longer work.2
It should also be clear that, thanks to YouTube, a younger generation of men has emerged, determined not to make the same mistake. That realization usually hits after they search for videos on how to get over a breakup, or why, despite doing everything right (a mindset shaped by those same covert contracts), they still can’t get their wives to have sex with them. That search usually leads them to The Black Phillip Show.
The Black Phillip Show was a radio program hosted by Patrice O’Neal on Sirius XM in the mid-2000s that became a viral hit on YouTube in the early 2010s. It was a brutal deconstruction of modern relationships, ripping apart the myths men were taught to believe—like covert contracts—and exposing how women manipulated men without consequence by using master morality under the cover of plausible deniability. Patrice delivered it without apology: unsentimental, sharp, and grounded in experience. He took live calls, tore apart weak logic in real time, and gave men a way to see through the noise that had kept older men stuck in slave morality.
Fast forward to the mid-2020s, and shows like Black Phillip had multiplied—so much so that, based on exit polling, young men across all races and ethnic backgrounds had become part of the swing vote in the 2024 election.3 They weren’t swayed by campaign ads that would have normally played on ingrained covert contracts, telling them to vote for a female candidate just because it would benefit the women in their lives or improve their chances of getting into a relationship.
Shows like Black Phillip taught young men to mirror how women approach relationships—through master morality—by prioritizing their own happiness and putting themselves first. As has been made clear in the screenshots, the Harris campaign ignored those men, even though, if they’d done any outreach, they would’ve learned their demands were simple: better economic opportunities. Young men want jobs that will put them on equal footing with women.4 (In trying to solve 20th-century problems, the pendulum has swung so far that many men now feel marginalized to the point there’s a glaring disparity, which has left many women saying there are no viable men to date or marry.) Ironically, those jobs would also turn them into the providers my generation—Gen X—programmed them to be.
It’s not just The Black Phillip Show. Since its publication in 1999, The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene has guided a generation of young men in how to protect themselves while navigating personal and professional relationships.5 Law 13 teaches that when asking for help, one should appeal to self-interest, never to mercy or gratitude.6 And enough men understood that everything coming from the Harris campaign ran against their self-interest. Every appeal made to men ignored issues that actually mattered to them—mental health, becoming more economically viable so they can, if they choose, start a family, or getting fairer outcomes in divorce if marriage falls apart. Instead, it was all framed around how voting Democrat would help the women in their lives or, as that Pop the Balloon–inspired campaign ad claimed, make them more attractive to a prospective girlfriend.7
At the time of this writing, ICE is running rampant across the country because, according to progressives and feminists, Latino men refused to vote for Vice President Harris because she's a woman, and Black men failed to stay on code for the Democratic Party—choosing, they claim, a felon and sexual predator8 instead. The outcome, they say, is their fault.
But as the screenshots I’ve included in this post have shown, if any outreach at all had been done—anything aimed at helping men stuck in their algorithmic bubble see the bigger picture while actually addressing their concerns—I’m certain we’d have a President Harris today.
No election is ever won by pointing out the flaws of a candidate, even if he’s a convicted felon.9 Elections are won by addressing the concerns and issues that matter to the different voting blocs that form a winning coalition. And because, in the final week before Election Day, the Harris campaign chose to hold celebrity-stacked concerts—like the one on election eve featuring Megan Thee Stallion, Fat Joe, and Katy Perry—masquerading as campaign events for voters they already had locked up (Black women), instead of going on podcasts inspired by Black Phillip and speaking to men directly, they left a vacuum. The Trump campaign filled it, and now we have what we have: a dystopian nightmare sliding toward Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale.10
Because feminists and progressives have labeled masculinity as toxic, the kind of unapologetic strength men once brought to the world is now shamed by society if it isn’t tempered with vulnerability™.11 Young feminists and progressives now try to define positive masculinity as men in their “baby girl era.”12 And with chivalry, the biggest covert contract of them all—killed by women themselves—that strength is no longer used to uphold or reinforce feminine power. It’s gone. The younger generation of men has learned to ask the same questions women have always asked of themselves:
What’s in it for me?
Based on the screenshots, nothing.
Young men have left the plantation.13
The term “covert contracts” was popularized in Dr. Robert Glover’s No More Mr. Nice Guy to describe unspoken, unreciprocated expectations men hold in relationships.
Social and gender dynamics built on those contracts are breaking down in the 21st century.
See 2024 presidential election exit polls from Pew Research and CNN, particularly regarding age and gender-based voting trends.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Pew show increasing gaps in workforce participation, education, and income between men and women under 30.
Greene, Robert. The 48 Laws of Power. New York: Viking Press, 1999.
Ibid., Law 13: “When asking for help, appeal to people’s self-interest.”
The Pop the Balloon campaign ad featuring relationship-based messaging was criticized on social media for its patronizing tone.
See screenshots of Twitter commentary and public reaction posts appended in this essay.
Historical precedent: even candidates with criminal records can win when opposition fails to address voter concerns—see Marion Barry, Donald Trump.
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, depicts a totalitarian dystopia; invoked here to underscore authoritarian trends.
“Vulnerability™” is a satirical nod to the commodification of emotional openness in mainstream discourse.
The phrase “baby girl era” originates from TikTok slang and has been adopted in progressive gender discourse to redefine masculinity in soft terms.
“The plantation” is used metaphorically to signify controlled environments of servitude, referencing the cultural meme of ‘leaving the plantation’ to reclaim male autonomy.