Thursday, August 04, 2016

The Angry Man Boys: A Subset of the Precariat

Kunstler has described this kind of angry young man years ago. From a comment at NancyNall.com:

I worry, in my area, about the Angry Man Boys. AMBs to save me some typing. They are visually recognizable from across the parking lot of the big box store or the mall entrance for the 24plex. They generally have close cropped hair or shaven heads, but a jutting beard. They tend to stick to leg tats, because many of them work tech or support or somewhere that neck tats create issues; many have sleeve ink that’s “in process.”

The AMBs wear loose t-shirts, usually with some kind of tribal or techy theme, and long floppy shorts, and shoes that are velcro strapped usually — because the AMBs are almost without exception very, very large. Not strong, though I’d be nervous about having to get into any kind of physical conflict with them, but wide and getting wider the further down you go from the shoulders.

They have the angriest car stickers. Pee boy is passé, theirs are everything from “Molon Labe” (in Greek) to stick figures having intercourse, but Trump bumper wear is becoming common. These are not the vehicles with the NRA Life Member decals, but they do have Texian flags with M-16 outlines in place of the Gonzales cannon; they sport the Gadsden flag in bright yellow and a spitting rattler; they are now showing “This is MY family” stickers with different size and type guns lined up in family groups like the stick figure and Mickey/Minnie or zombie motifs you more often see.

The AMBs usually don’t have family, they don’t tend to have girlfriends, and when they do they are large and equally discontented looking. But usually it’s a solo or pair of AMBs you see, peering about with a distinct air of unhappiness, their natural squint reinforced and emphasized by a variety of triggers in their environment. [...]

A follow-up.

1 comment:

Hattie said...

It is a subset. I like that word, "precariat."