One topic Gen Z doesn’t mind talking about is dating. Because of all its challenges, some say they are not choosing to prioritize dating, or they are just opting out entirely. To be fair, that is not the case for all of Gen Z. A decent number of twenty-year-olds do very much want to be in a relationship, yet they consistently remain single. A selection of the latter group have, in true Gen Z fashion, taken to social media to air their grievances, labeling themselves “the chronically single friend,” and their stories prove the dating landscape is rough terrain. I ran across the “chronically single” trending topic on TikTok a month or so ago. These single twentysomethings started making lists about the number of unhelpful (and generally obnoxious) comments people have made to them over the years — and they are over hearing them. In one of the most viral TikToks, a twenty-five-year-old listed a few of the pieces of advice she hears most often, including, “It will happen when you least expect it,” and “Stop looking and that’s when you’ll find it.” She explained, “I haven’t been looking. And it’s the not looking, I fear, that resulted in years of absolutely no contact with a man.” Source: TikTok. I do agree that sometimes the best thing to do is to take a step back, focus on yourself, and realign your priorities to know what you actually want in a potential partner. However, society’s push of telling women they don’t need a man has landed some women in this very predicament. This is a balancing act: It is wise to know what you want and be open to dating while also not making finding a significant other your entire life’s mission and fixating on it twenty-four hours a day. This 25-year-old continues, listing “You’re so lucky” and “Don’t rush it” as two more unhelpful pieces of advice. She concludes by acknowledging that when people set her up with someone, she knows they are trying to help, but she often finds herself in a difficult position when she ends up not being interested. She has a point. I don’t think setting people up is a bad move; in fact, it’s one way to actually help singles — so long as the two people getting set up share commonalities and have potential to be a good match. But just because two people happen to be single does not mean they will automatically have a connection.  WATCH: The Comments Section with Brett Cooper on DailyWire+ She ends telling fellow TikTokers that if they can relate, she’s sorry—and boy did they relate. When this video started circulating, it didn’t stop. One commented that she’s basically tired of focusing on herself. This is something people talk about after getting married and having children because they realize focusing on someone else is life-giving. In our narcissistic society, we don’t even realize how unhealthy and exhausting only focusing on ourselves is. Another commenter was aggravated over receiving contradictory advice: Source: TikTok comments. To her credit, advice-givers never quite seem to extrapolate the nuance about why singles should “stop looking” while simultaneously “put yourself out there.” If you want to be in a relationship with someone, being emotionally available and open to the possibility of dating is definitely smart, but that doesn’t mean you need to go on a date every single night of the week.  One other response to this chronic single situation hits on a truth that touches on many areas in life: If you don’t have experience in a specific situation, it might be hard to give actual, beneficial advice. Certainly, people are trying to be helpful by offering advice based on their own experiences. But when someone is actively attempting to get out of the chronically single status, that advice can sting. Source: TikTok comments. This trend is holding strong and the videos just keep coming. In another that went viral, a girl commented yet again on the “it will happen when you’re not looking” theme, followed by, “you have to put yourself out there.” These are by far the most commonly cited unhelpful sayings. Source: TikTok. Next, she names the “have you tried dating apps?” question to be in the unhelpful lineup. She sarcastically remarks that she’s “never thought of that foreign concept before” and then seriously states, “The dating apps aren’t it.” The apps have, unfortunately, gone downhill over time. They have great potential if they’re used properly, if you are intentional and honest. However, you can only control that on your end; on the other side, people may be simply using apps as a pastime, swiping right and left with no real intent — which seems to be what singles are experiencing now. She goes on to say that when people tell her she’s young and still has “so much time,” she disagrees. I appreciate that women are even mentioning the fact their biological clock is ticking. Years ago, that would have never even been part of this conversation, whereas now, women are openly saying they want to be married and have kids. This is a shift in culture, which is a really positive one for women. Most of these videos were posted by women, but there were some men that jumped in too. One, a twenty-eight-year-old guy, says he too is tired of hearing that he needs to put himself out there. While I don’t think this is the worst advice, I do think it should be followed up with an explanation of what that means. Source: TikTok. Not all of my generation necessarily even knows what it means to “put yourself out there,” let alone how to do it. We were raised online, our first dating experience was online, and our entire college experience was dominated by Covid, so a lot of Gen Z doesn’t know how to socialize in a way that opens the doors to dating. The reality is, going to bars likely won’t lead to a long-term relationship, whereas joining a rec league and making new friends you see on a consistent basis could lead to other connections. This man says he’s tired of hearing he should embrace and enjoy his time being single because he’s not enjoying it or having fun anymore. He is watching his friends get married and have kids, which he wants, but he just hasn’t found the right person yet. These are not people who are just looking for hook-ups; they are looking for long-term partners. They value having love and respect for the opposite gender, and by resurrecting these values, they are bringing normalcy and decency back to America. The comments went wild over this guy’s video: Source: TikTok comments. Interestingly, the last comment is from the 25-year-old single woman who got a jump on the beginning of this trend. This is definitely one way of “putting yourself out there” that I can get behind because, who knows, maybe these two could meet and bond over this. I am all in favor of a TikTok romance. The fact that this trend has become so popular makes it clear there is a need for some problem solving skills to be put into action. The advice these singles are receiving hasn’t been helping, so it’s time to think of an actual solution. More to come.

Country singer Dylan Marlowe is unsure why TikTok comments on his new song, which includes lyrics about God and guns, are being hidden on the social media platform, but he has his guess. The 27-year-old recording artist anticipated the song might be controversial when he posted it. He wrote in the social media caption, “This might get censored but whatever, this is one of my favorite songs on the record.” The video shows Marlowe strumming his guitar while sitting on a porch, singing “Stick to My Guns” from his first studio album, Mid-Twenties Crisis, which will be released on September 27.  He sings the lyrics, “I’m sick and damn tired of the man on the TV telling me how to live/and it gets a little old when you’re always getting told that you gotta do that and this/turns out there’s a lot of folks that don’t like all the things I love/good thing this ain’t for them folks.” It continues: “Yeah, this song’s the one where I stick to these boots I’m putting down/stick to this cross around my neck/stick to these roots stuck in the ground/way I was raised ain’t let me down yet/in a world that’s changing I sure as hell ain’t son/so I’ll sit right here with a rifle and a beer ‘til the good Lord comes/stick to my guns.” In a follow-up post, Marlowe shared his suspicions about what he describes as hidden comments on the song. “I don’t normally post things like this on TikTok but I posted this video the other day… went to bed, woke up, it said there was like 500 comments on this video. So, I go to check it out, and turns out that over, like, 400 of these comments have been like, disabled. Like, they’re not available to be on the post. And I don’t know why.” WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI The singer did not make specific accusations but wrote, “I have my guess” as to why the comments weren’t appearing. He went on to say he contacted TikTok to find out why the comments were disabled and hadn’t received an answer yet.  As of Wednesday morning, the original song clip was up to almost 200 visible comments. Marlowe’s followers flooded both TikTok clips with their messages of support. “The reason they aren’t showing up is the exact reason we need songs like this,” one person wrote. “You have the voice in more than one way. So proud of you, keep going, we’ll keep supporting you!!” another agreed. The Georgia-born recording artist has opened for big names in country, from Laney Wilson to Hardy, and was signed by Sony Music Nashville. Marlowe’s first number-one hit as a songwriter was Jon Pardi’s single, “Last Night Lonely.” “Mid-Twenties Crisis is a record I wrote in my mid-twenties, really over the last two or three years,” the artist said during an interview in July of his upcoming album. “There’s a bunch of songs that are going to be fun to play live. I also thought it was really important to make sure I had some deeper lyrics as well.”

A trans-identifying male runner from Italy will compete alongside women in the Paralympics in Paris. Valentina Petrillo, 50, began identifying as a transgender woman in 2018 and began taking cross-sex hormones the next year. He has claimed he knew he was female from as young as age nine. “I deserve this selection,” he told the BBC, adding that “everyone will have their questions,” but only a “minority” will understand his story. “The historic value of being the first transgender woman to compete at the Paralympics is an important symbol of inclusion,” Petrillo said. Petrillo will compete for Italy in the T12 classification for athletes with visual impairments. He was diagnosed as a child with Stargardt’s syndrome, a condition where people lose their central vision over time but often keep their peripheral vision. He previously competed in the men’s running category and won 11 national titles. Last year, he also won bronze in both the women’s 200 and 400-meter races at the Para Athletics World Championships. WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI This summer’s Paris Paralympics run from August 28 to September 8. The International Paralympic Committee allows each sport’s governing body to decide whether trans-identifying athletes can compete. For track and field that body is World Para Athletics, which says that anyone legally recognized as a woman can compete in the women’s category. Petrillo claimed his “metabolism has changed” since taking cross-sex hormones, and he is “not the energetic person” he once was. “As a sportsperson, to accept that you won’t go as fast as before is difficult. I had to accept this compromise, because it is a compromise, for my happiness,” he said. Asked what he would say to those who say his competing against women is unfair, Petrillo said, “This is not a lifestyle choice for me, this is who I am.” He also argued that the times trans-identifying athletes stood out for their sporting results have been “very few and far between.” The Paris Olympics is already in the middle of another gender-related controversy this summer after two boxers in the women’s category were revealed to have XY chromosomes. Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan were both disqualified from the Women’s World Boxing Championships last year after their chromosome tests came back as XY, according to the president of the International Boxing Association at the time. However, both boxers were allowed to fight women in the Olympics this year, and both won gold medals. Khelif won the welterweight gold medal on Friday after winning every round of every fight. Yu-ting won gold in the featherweight final match on Saturday.  

An Ohio-based medical provider has been accused of engaging in illegal discrimination with several race-based programs, according to a federal civil rights complaint filed Wednesday.  The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) filed the complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over two initiatives from the Cleveland Health Clinic focused on providing medical care solely to “racial and ethnic minorities.” The complaint was filed on behalf of the group, Do No Harm, an organization dedicated to depoliticizing medicine. The initiatives in question are the “Minority Stroke Program” and the “Minority Men’s Health Center.” The complaint says that both programs “have discriminated, and are currently discriminating, against certain members of Do No Harm,” which WILL says violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Affordable Care Act. “Race discrimination is a defining feature of these programs; and this discrimination is present and ongoing,” a copy of the complaint shared with The Daily Wire says. “Everyday people in search of help — regarding stroke and other cardiovascular conditions, men’s health conditions, and mental health issues, and encountering Cleveland Clinic’s racial preferences for its special programming — are faced with the fact that the clinic does not view, prioritize, promote, or otherwise care for all patients equally, in the same manner, without regard to race.” The Cleveland Clinic has over 48,000 employees across 14 affiliated hospitals and 20 family centers in northeast Ohio. It also has several affiliated hospitals in Florida and a cancer center in Nevada. The Clinic did not respond to a request for comment. The complaint was filed as part of WILL’s “Equality Under the Law” project, which challenges diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs across the country. According to the Cleveland Clinic, the minority stroke program is “focused on preventing and treating stroke in racial and ethnic minorities” and increasing “stroke awareness among minority groups in order to lower stroke rates and improve stroke outcomes.” The minority stroke program was launched in 2019 and has expanded to specifically target parts of Cleveland “where 90% of residents are Black,” according to the Clinic.  The Minority Men’s Health Center is focused on “minority health concerns,” and says it helps doctors “more effectively address health disparities in minority populations.” The complaint says that the racially focused aspect of the programs takes away from the focus of medical care.  “Instead, a racially motivated focus has infected these programs — creating a racial dichotomy under which patients are prioritized and cared for, and displacing the otherwise laudable goal of helping humanity equally, without regard to one’s race,” the complaint says.  In a letter to officials at the Cleveland Clinic notifying them of the complaint, lawyers with WILL said that they would withdraw the complaint if the clinic opens up its programs. “Should you determine to revise these programs to remove their racial motivation and focus in favor of an approach that equally prioritizes, promotes, pursues, and includes all patients, without regard to race in compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws, DNH will immediately withdraw its complaint,” wrote lawyers Cara Tolliver and Daniel Lennington. Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the chairman of Do No Harm, told The Daily Wire that the initiatives would lead to a lack of trust by patients for the system.  “This is just wrong. I think it’s important that they have outreach,” he said. “But to start separating people based on race and having them go to one clinic if they’re black and another clinic if they’re white is not a good idea.” He added that these kinds of initiatives were being introduced for executives to virtue signal and coming down from DEI offices. Goldfarb said that he expects the complaint to be successful, citing a recent settlement the group reached with the Association of University Women, in which the university agreed to stop excluding white women from being eligible for certain awards.  “We’re going to fight with them,” Goldfarb told The Daily Wire. “We’ll go right to the highest courts in the land if we have to because these programs are wrong.”

A post shared on Facebook claims the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps purportedly indicted 2024 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Verdict: False The claim is false and originally stems from an August 9 article published on the satire site “Real Raw News.” A spokesperson for Navy JAG denied the […]

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