BY ZELDA SCOTT HEMINGWAY, EDITOR IN DESPAIR

ONCE UPON a time it was cars, then technology; now it’s plain despair. And not any old despair, hardcore kick ’em in the nuts male despair. And it’s shot to the top of the industry charts, and off, in the U.S of A.

When everything else is slowing, even reversing, male despair is rocketing ahead.

‘We can’t keep up with it,” said Dr Richard Hopeless, motivational coach at the Hopeless Foundation in California.

“It’s increasing by factors of ten. If it keeps going like this every man in America will be in despair. We’ll have to import men just to keep up with despair’s demands.”

Dr Hopeless said the causes of male despair were many and widespread. “Obviously there’s the economic causes. Once strong male occupations have vanished. Men take a lot of their self-esteem from their work. But there’s more. Many men are more and more saddened by the lack of women’s rights and female inequality in major sports, and all the LGBTQIA+ issues that just keep coming, fuckin’ pronouns in particular, yeah they’re a real concern for your average Nascar Joe; and climate change, of course, don’t forget that because it’s right on top of us, except it’s always ten or twenty years off; and the costs of streaming services and hookers and porn and beer, that’s all going up. What happened to bread a circuses? I thought we were the modern Rome? And then there’s divorce. Jesus, divorce. For the first time I understand the Catholic Church. And I’m a fuckin’ atheist. You know a recent survey has show that suicide has become preferable to divorce in America, for men. A man works hard, builds up a business, gets married, has kids, does his best to be a good husband and father, and then she leaves him, for another fuckin’ woman, and takes it all. Everything. I did my best. I do my best. Sorry, I’m straying. Look, how many divorced me does it take to change a light bulb? Hey, no divorced man ever got the house. You know, it all gets too much sometimes. Just too much.”