Nobody seems to know what a man is supposed to be anymore, but plenty of people are very confident about what he’s not allowed to be. Strong but not intimidating. Confident but not assertive.

Wokeness didn’t arrive with solutions. It arrived with rules. Not the useful kind that keep society functioning, but the kind that exist solely to catch violations. It’s less a worldview than an enforcement mechanism, staffed by people who finally found a way to feel important without building, fixing, or risking anything.

Hollywood has never lacked opinions, but it used to hide them behind good stories. Now it skips the story, clears its throat, and lectures you directly like a substitute teacher who learned everything from Twitter five minutes ago. The movies are worse, the speeches are longer, and the people doing the scolding somehow remain the least self-aware humans on the planet.

The most remarkable thing about the Epstein mess isn’t the crime. That part is depressingly familiar. Power attracts predators, money buys silence, and institutions circle the wagons when exposure threatens the wrong people. No, what’s impressive is how the biggest open secret of our lifetime has somehow remained permanently unresolved, like a true crime podcast that forgot the ending on purpose.

The modern Karen isn’t born, she’s activated. All it takes is a mild inconvenience and a surface-level understanding of policy. A line that’s moving too slowly. A price that didn’t match the imaginary one in her head.