In Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” But in the real world, exceptional people are exceptional. If you say “off the charts” often, there’s something wrong with your charts.
I knew he was a clueless tool when he used the expression “off the charts” three times in one hour.
The grindset is a contemporary ideology of self-exploitation disguised as strength, deeply tied to the aesthetics of the “sigma male” and to new digital forms of patriarchy. It promotes the idea that human worth depends on productivity, economic success, absolute emotional control, and the ability to work endlessly, turning vulnerability, rest, community, and tenderness into signs of weakness. Beneath its rhetoric of discipline and power often lies a profound inability to relate healthily to pain, fragility, and human interdependence.
“That’s the grindset, brother. While weak men sleep and complain, sigma males stay disciplined, work in silence, suppress emotions, and build power while everyone else wastes time chasing comfort.”