Note: If you are used to short reads or prefer reading something catchy and/or very concise, almost click-bait material, then this is not a read for you. But if you truly want to understand some elements of what goes inside the brains of many, if not all young adolescent adult men’s brains, then this might be the place. 

Again, anything mentioned in this article can be deemed a generalisation, as every individual can not be boiled down to a common attribute or trait. Anomalies exist in every generalisation, but in this article I do not aim to address such anomalies, as addressing all anomalies would be time consuming. 

One final thing, the men up for discussion in this article belong to the Socio-Economic Class A and B, preferably Middle Class, Upper-Middle class and Upper-Class.

This might sound like a rant, with too many tangents, but I do not believe structure follows content everywhere. 

From TV show like Narcos, Suits, House of Cards, boys start idolising the main protagonists from an early age. Cigars, guns, nicely stitched three-piece suits coupled with low-pitched voices and corny intimidation techniques get many boys riled up. This is pretty common in patriarchal culture which the Pakistani semi-conservative society tends to lean towards. Let’s take an example of a young 22 year old Pakistani man Ali, who lives in Defense, Lahore and is obsessed with Narcos.

Ali’s father gave him the brand new corolla to drive around Defense, only on one condition, that he only takes it to the tuition academy (at first). Ali starts taking it to different coffee houses with his male and female friends. Ali starts noticing that the girls around him in these settings tend to give a lot of attention to Asim, one of his friends. Asim is pretty opinionated, and sometimes can be controversial. At the same time, many of Ali’s male friends also start giving attention to Asim, and this pushes Ali to do something. Now, Ali starts observing Pablo Escobar’s personality. He notices that Escobar from the TV show displays qualities of a very humble yet intimidating protagonist. The ladies love him, the men respect him, and he is a family man. This kind of combination is is what young Pakistani men tend to aim for, running in parallel with much of the things they learned in their cultural upbringing. After months of observing Pablo, Ali starts changing his personality to imitate him. He starts posting pictures with cigars, guns and large group photos with his male friends in three piece suits, with existential captions, that he googled up last moment. After 2 weeks of this new personality change, he starts noticing he also starts getting the attention that Asim was getting. But this time, the attention he’s getting is from men mostly. Why? Because men tend to respect a humble personality more than an opinionated one where as the girls within his same age range tend to get more excited by the opinionated version of Asim. Ali starts noticing this trend and then seeks to fix it, but the only problem is he would have to break his humble stride, and would have to be more controversial. Little does Ali know that Asim imitated his favourite TV show character eight months ago; Harvey Specter from suits. A Harvey Specter Pakistani clone in his mid-20s is more likely to appease women than men in general. Moreover, Asim observes the new personality change in Ali, and seeks to rectify his lack of male-peer respect by shifting his personality to a more humble side. Which brings us to the next point.

The most common personality combinations in Pakistani Men and the target market (Yep! this is Marketing 101) they try to address. (Note: Not all these combinations don’t apply to everyone as many anomalies exist.)

1. The Humble Religious Family Man. 

This type of man usually posts many religious quotes, says things like “Sir bas apki duaein hain” in response to a compliment, and displays characteristics mirroring someone who has wisdom beyond his years, even it is just a facade. He consistently uses religious arguments to make his point. For example, he is more likely to quote a hadith, but won’t get up to offer Asr, while sitting at a cafe with his friend.

2. The Knowledgable Power-Grab Man

This type of man is usually concerned with society perceiving him as knowledgable, and source of wisdom. He talks in riddles, and with statements that are more likely to be a verdict on any particular scenario. He might come off as condescending, and is usually questioned for his subject-matter expertise on any topic he is discussing. He is addicted to the respect of his male peers and uses it to capitalise on matters on which he does not have any control over. He is more likely to wear white shalwar kameez, with a black waist coat, and post a picture next to a Prado or a V8 with a caption “Alhamdulilah”.

3. The Opinionated Tainted Soul Liberal

This type of man creates a facade of a dark past, that he only reveals in the 6th month of a random conversation with a female peer. He looks up to Che Guevara, Kurt Cobain and his favourite movie is Pulp Fiction. He adores black and white photographs of old European Philosophers like Thomas Reid. He imitates Alan Turing from the imitation game, to give the perception that is a highly intelligent man, packaged with trauma from over the years. Therefore, he tries to come off as edgy in-front of people because he knows women love a man with a dark past and will get in the pursuit to cure him or get to know him, because of the mystery he has created. He is an activist on issues which don’t really concern him, which he read on the most recent facebook post, looks up the most basic definition of the issue on wikipedia and then resorts to picking a debate on social media. He gets a dopamine high from the attention and the intellectual credibility he gets from his peers in comparison to the  day job that he has, where he is depressed. His physique is more likely to lean towards a more scrawny side, and is more likely to have long hair and non-prescription glasses. He doesn’t really take care of his personal hygiene, because he read in some random Forbes article “Intelligent People Are More Likely To Be Messy”. He loves being the devil’s advocate, which to himself he convinces is because of his ability to spot loopholes, but at a conscious level, a result of his problems with authority and cis-gender men.

4. The Opinionated Tainted Soul Conservative

This type of man also has a facade of a dark past. He has many same characteristics as the tainted soul liberal except that he looks up to characters like Vito Corleone from the Godfather. He is relatively more quiet and discrete or that is what he wants people to know abut him because he once read an article on Reuters that “Intelligent People Are More Likely to Be Quiet”. You’ll find pictures of him at the gun range, or dark selfies with an Escobar caption or quote. He is also more likely to have a picture with his guy friends, standing in a straight line, in their Polo Shirts and Khakis, with the caption “Clique”. He has created this false narrative of him being in a clique that has power, almost like a gang of bank robbers in Southern Chile who are about to conduct a raid in Santiago.

5. The Silicon Valley Techie/Philanthropist

This type of man likes to think himself as a revolutionary like Elon Musk and/or Steve Jobs. He likes to convince himself that he has the cerebral capacity of Sir Arthur Eddington. He has watched too many movies such as “Social Network”, “Jobs” and TV Shows like “Silicon Valley” to create this perception of what a mad genius is supposed to look like. You’ll find him wearing a suit, with joggers underneath, some hundred lines of code running on his Dell Laptop, next to a red bull. Another thing that you’ll find about him is his obsession with motivational seminars. He’ll start a start-up on Day 0, and be giving seminars on “My Journey” on Day 17. When real word progress doesn’t seem to show, he resorts to getting quick dopamine injections from giving these motivational seminars to kids who have trouble thinking for themselves. But the problem is that he will work on a project code for 4 hours, and spend the next 8 hours talking to random girls on instagram about his revolutionary project for the privileged kids of Kalah Shah Kaku or something.

Ofcourse, there are many more combinations, but one does not have sufficient time and energy to go through each of those combinations. The above combinations are the most combinations observed in young Pakistani men of today. The problem is that, in their pursuit to be what they have in mind, they lose sight of the content, and more of the perception.

For example, men who try to give on an intelligent tech wizard type of vibe forget that wearing round non-prescription glasses and sneakers under a suit won’t do much, if you aren’t passionate about the problem that you’re trying to solve. For example, Mark Zuckerberg became an anti-social and reserved as a result or a by-product of his time invested in coding. But Zuckerberg didn’t wake up one day and decide “Okay, so to be considered a mad genius revolutionary, I have to be anti-social. So let’s try and create that perception”.

In the world of ever-lasting technological improvements, transfer of data and a cluster of information, it is easy to convince someone of what you want them to think about you. The problem with that predicament is that one loses the sight of a much larger issue. For example, men born in 1960s were in their 20s in the 80s. To prove they had done something momentous in their life, they had to work for years on a government post, without any sign of appraisal from their peers. Now-days, someone starts a start-up or a new job, and gets frustrated if he/she doesn’t get the acknowledgement he/she deserves. Because they want it fast. They like the idea of society falling head over heels as soon as they accomplish one minuscule task or goal. And once they get that acknowledgement or appraisal, they get addicted to it, and stop focusing on the larger picture and problems that matter.

They get hooked to what is known as the mentor’s complex, which is the consistent need to advise people on something. And this element is very common in young Pakistani men. Why? Because they are afraid to go home and look at themselves at the mirror. They look at their PKR 40,000 salary, and realise it isn’t fulfilling. They look to other options of social appeasement like giving motivation seminars, or taking pictures with guns and talking to women all night long on Whatsapp, on what seem to be intellectually deep conversations.