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The Puer Aeternus Era
Here is a Maureen Dowd podcast where she is talking about the first few weeks of Trump 2.0, and she mentions this term “puer aeternus,” which is basically some variation on man-child, Peter Pan Syndrome, boys who never grow up but still get power, etc. She talks about it in the context of Silicon Valley “bro-ligarchs” sitting in the first row of Trump’s indoor inaugural, but honestly, I think you could apply the idea of “never growing up” to wide swaths of society beyond simply the rich. Some have called this a “failure to launch” problem.
The term quite literally means “eternal boys,” I believe.
It’s easy to look at a guy like Zuck, who got into wake-boarding and cage-fighting after becoming a girl dad and now looks like he does regional sales for energy drinks, and think, “Yea, that’s an eternal boy.” Same with a guy like Musk, who has been in board rooms for decades and knows the general rules of civil comportment, yet is questioned about a potential Nazi salute and responds by tweeting a bunch of Nazi jokes he likely got off ChatGPT Version 1. Those guys seem like eternal boys, absolutely, and they were both in the front row at the inaugural, so I understand why that’s a common visual and parallel to draw.
