It's a ridiculous time to be a man'

A group of male comedians is at the forefront of a new genre of social media comedy poking fun at our ever-shifting notions of modern masculinity

- By Matthew Cantor

"I'm gonna miss toxic masculinity," says the comedian Kiry Shabazz. "I feel like it's going to be in a museum someday.

In the ensuing standup routine, Shabazz describes a fight with a friend who, like him, is "doing the work" to be a better person. He called the friend several unprintable names: "I'm only calling you that because culturally that's how I know how to express myself." The friend's reply to the insults: "I hear you and I receive that." The whole thing, Shabazz says, made him "miss the good old days, when men handled beeflike men".

This encapsulates a dilemma of modern masculinity: how attempts at enlightenment battle with alpha-male impulses. On social media, the manosphere clamours for our attention, extolling traditional masculine virtues such as authority, protein powder and the stamping-out of empathy. Meanwhile, other voices call for a thoughtful, emotionally attuned understanding of manhood.

In short: it's a ridiculous time to be male. And that's good news for a new genre of social media comedy. If 2024 was the year of thoughtful masculine standup, 2025 was the year of the self-mocking man sketch.

Comedy has long found fertile ground in shifting notions of masculinity. But in the past few years, comedians have developed followings with short sketches that cast them as flailing young men stumbling their way through social situations that threaten their identities or expose them as clueless try-hards. And like all good comedy, they also expose a truth - in this case, about the absurd and contradictory experience of manhood in the 2020s.