For the last few decades anime has been feeding young men a diet of perfect girls, perfect romances, and perfect lives where loyalty, purity, and meaning are taken for granted. When you grow up with that as your baseline, how can the real world not look like a sick joke in comparison?

The average guy raised on this stuff is taught to expect devotion, softness, and idealized feminine beauty. Instead he finds hookup culture, economic precarity, and women who see relationships as transactional. He’s taught that hard work and virtue will earn him recognition and love, but in reality it earns him a mediocre paycheck and maybe a Tinder date with a single mother if he’s lucky. The gap between the dream and the reality becomes unbearable.

So what happens? A lot of these men retreat. They become NEETs, locking themselves away with their screens because at least the fiction never betrays them. To them, life isn’t worth living if the promises of youth are just lies, and women aren’t worth interacting with if every encounter only reminds them how far they fall short of the fantasy.

The question is: what are the social ramifications when an entire generation of men decides reality isn’t worth participating in? What happens when millions of young men give up on women, families, careers, and society itself because the illusion was sweeter than the truth?

Anime utterly ruined zoomer men. They all expect to become strong, rich, or whatever literally overnight without effort and get a harem of woman with exaggerated over the top personalities exaggerated ideal bodies that never age or look old despite being old. Instead of accepting reality a lot of them just hole up in their room rotting away watching their “waifus”. This is sad what’s going to be the end societal response? Society can ignore a generation of men who just won’t do anything.

How can real woman compete with this?

Nearly half of men under 30 have never approached a woman, and it’s not just social anxiety—it’s a full-scale hack on male reward circuits by anime worship. Look at Nezuko from Demon Slayer. She’s a demon but hand-crafted to exploit our parental and romantic drives: oversized expressive eyes, flawless complexion, a bamboo muzzle that silences conflict, and unwavering loyalty that unleashes demon‐level strength to guard her partner. She never complains, she never negotiates, she never shows doubt. Every transformation scene and cute chibi moment is a slot machine of dopamine—studies in neuropsychology show variable-ratio reinforcement schedules create the strongest habit loops, and Nezuko’s narrative surprises mimic that, so real human interactions feel glitchy and dull.

Psychologically, this hyperidealization warps men’s perception of relationships. The brain prioritizes predictable, curated fantasy over unpredictable but growth-rich real intimacy. Instead of building social courage, many guys simply log off IRL, sink into virtual echo chambers, and let their twenties evaporate. Expect birthrates to crater, loneliness and social-isolation epidemics to surge, social capital to erode, and escapism economies to skyrocket.

What happens to a society when half a generation of men decides women aren’t worth the effort anymore?

Nearly half of men under 30 have never approached a woman, and it’s not just social anxiety—it’s a full-scale hack on male reward circuits by anime worship. Look at Nezuko from Demon Slayer. She’s a demon but hand-crafted to exploit our parental and romantic drives: oversized expressive eyes, flawless complexion, a bamboo muzzle that silences conflict, and unwavering loyalty that unleashes demon‐level strength to guard her partner. She never complains, she never negotiates, she never shows doubt. Every transformation scene and cute chibi moment is a slot machine of dopamine—studies in neuropsychology show variable-ratio reinforcement schedules create the strongest habit loops, and Nezuko’s narrative surprises mimic that, so real human interactions feel glitchy and dull.

Psychologically, this hyperidealization warps men’s perception of relationships. The brain prioritizes predictable, curated fantasy over unpredictable but growth-rich real intimacy. Instead of building social courage, many guys simply log off IRL, sink into virtual echo chambers, and let their twenties evaporate. Expect birthrates to crater, loneliness and social-isolation epidemics to surge, social capital to erode, and escapism economies to skyrocket.

What happens to a society when half a generation of men decides women aren’t worth the effort anymore?