The Death Of The Dude

There’s a new Japandroids song this week and it reeks. It’s one thing to be bad but forgettable (The band’s previous record) but to be bad, trite, and catchy is a crime. On a single so plainly pandering to get synced in FX’s The Bear, Season 4, the Vancouver duo imagine a scene of will-they/won’t-they romance in a Windy City diner with an omnipotent sage of a waitress serving our main characters’ coffee and doling out life advice. Spare me.

But where there’s Japandroids songs, there’s a foreboding energy of Dudes. There are Dudes who are looking to rock. Like the Bat Signal or a dogwhistle, the return of Japandroids got the long-dormant Dude out of hiding. Homosapiens Dudesrockus was hibernating like the 17 year brood of cicadas swarming cities and countrysides this summer. I’ll stop short of calling Dudes a plague, but the opportunity to hang out and make some noise does make for a pretty apt comparison to the cicada. Regardless, whatever it takes to get a guy out of his cave is worth looking at, but the Dude’s numbers are thinning. The Dude, as you and I know him, is dying.

I am a Dude. Maybe. I definitely was once a Dude. I was a Dude to the point that when I was asked to sit in on a meeting in the workplace where I’d be an authority on the topic, a woman I’d never met said, “When you told me that Jay was sitting in on this meeting, I thought it’d be a man and not just some dude.” I’m a cis male and haven’t ever presented otherwise, but she was right: I wasn’t a man. I was a Dude.

What is a Dude? Kel Mitchell and Less Than Jake answered this in a vague yet understandable way on their song from the Good Burger (1997) soundtrack. A Dude is someone who “Doesn’t care about this or that,” and is “Just hanging out and having fun,” perhaps “Partying on ‘til the break of dawn.” I write that with a good chunk of tongue planted firmly in my cheek, but it’s not wrong. The Dude is a millennial, apolitical, agender concept (“He’s a dude, she’s a dude”) but the community of Dudes isn’t exactly free of those constraints. 

The rallying cry of “Dudes Rock” feels so entrenched in my soul that I’m not sure when it started. It feels like Dudes have been Rocking since the dawn of time. What does it mean for a Dude to Rock? Again, it’s a bit of an apolitical concept. “Dudes Rock” was a phrase used often to show appreciation (sincere and ironic) for something usually harmless but overly complicated for simple results. Rube Goldberg contraption built to crack open every bottle in a sixer of Coronas at one time? Dudes Rock. Surge protector floating on two flip-flops in a kiddie pool so that you can watch the NBA draft on a 55 inch TV from the comfort of your backyard? Dudes Rock. Rippin’-ass guitar solos for no reason? You better believe that’s Dudes Rock. It’s the kind of playful masculinity that acknowledges the silliness of male ingenuity to solve problems that didn’t exist. Nobody needs to watch TV in the pool, but wouldn’t it be kinda rad? Yes, it would. (Author’s note: I watched NBA Summer League on a massive outdoor TV while sitting in a pool in Las Vegas and it was, without a doubt, one of the finest and most decadent moments of my life)

In the Guardian profile of MJ Lenderman, the artist brings up his music’s association to the phrase, “Dudes Rock,” and how he didn’t want his music to fit in a category that wasn’t inclusive. The flip side of cheering on male excellence is a bit of playful misogyny that often pits women (“Chicks”) as the opposition to Dudes Rocking. It’s often a low-stakes joke that has no consequence and portrays the woman involved as a rational, caring individual who is saving the Dude from the consequences of his own stupid actions. Dudes Rock is inclusive, to a degree. I’ve definitely said it to women. When Elliot Page came out as a trans man, memes were shared far and wide about dapping him up and welcoming him to a Boys’ Night gathering or cheering him on with a “Dudes Rock” of solidarity.

Lenderman’s music has some Dudes Rock elements, surely. There’s guitar solos and rockin’, stompin’ tunes that sound at home on a pontoon boat. There’s a whole song about the theory that Michael Jordan was hungover in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals and not just sick with food poisoning. Getting too drunk and being hungover the day of a majorly important event in your career is a Dudes Rock moment in and of itself. The song ends with a testament to the solidarity of Dudes: “Yeah, I like drinkin’ too.” Lenderman touches on the dark side of Dudes Rocking as well. Dudes who’ve Rocked too hard, perhaps. His new single, “She’s Leaving You,” is a funny but brutal portrait of a newly single man. This is the consequence of Rocking forever. It’s a lonely road and it’s one Dudes need to be prepared for. The Dude cannot rock alone. It's Dudes Rock, not Dude Rocks.

As the Dude dies out en masse, being a Dude can be lonely. I can speak to it firsthand. There’s not a lot of places for Dudes to find community that aren’t the internet or a dimly-lit bar. There are spaces for Men, but there aren’t really spaces for Dudes. There’s a difference between Dudes and Men. Dudes are people of any gender who aren’t too caught up in the whole gender divide as a whole. Men, on the other hand, are often pretty attached to the idea of being a cis man and using that as their only identifying factor because that’s all they have. The Manosphere of the internet is built entirely on the fact that these guys have nothing to offer the world except their mastery of outmoded forms of masculinity. Men seek acceptance and validation from other Men. Dudes, who don’t really care about gender, aren’t seeking community in the same way, and that’s why the Dude is dying. Yes, both of these people are manchildren, but there’s no common ground. The Dude is concerned with having a good time, while the Man is occupied thinking about being a Man, which manifests rarely as Andrew Tate and more often as a Conner O’Malley character, dead-eyed in a Target aisle and resented by his wife.

There’s not a Dude community in a traditional sense, but the Dude community often comes together when the moment calls for it. Whether a professional wrestling jobber posts a GoFundMe or two Canadian guys say they’re calling it quits after seven years between records and minimal touring, Dudes will be there. Even if the music sucks. Sure, I see the new Japandroids song as a failure, but idols of Dudedom have failed us so many times before. Think of Seth Rogen, whose career went from “Goofy Stoner” to “The Considerate Cannabis Enjoyer” as he started wearing flowier clothes, got a haircut, and made smoking accessories for homeowners. FX’s The Bear, while not a person, was an idol for Dudes like Ryan Gosling’s character in Drive (2011). It showed a way to be and, at the very least, a way to dress. The newest season of The Bear was a failure for Dudes because it just wasn’t very good or compelling. Nothing happened. Nothing was won or lost. Dressing cool and searing steaks meant nothing. A Dude needs something as a goal to emulate. Without cool new Dudes as an object of aspiration, and a rejection from the person who seemed like the savior, Dudes have no North Star and are lost in the dark. 

Nobody killed the Dude, he’s just dying out. The Dude is old news. The new cool people are less concerned with the gender binary than ever before. The Dude was always going to die. The Dude was an evolution of The Chill Bro from HipsterRunoff-era internet. No amount of new Menzingers albums was going to save The Dude from his fate. 

What’s next for the Dude? That’s hard to say. Steven Hyden’s Patio Hall Of Fame series on Twitter is a place where Dudes of all ilk seem to gather and share their “Hell yeah, brother”s like a Dudes Rock retirement home. Hyden’s picks are sometimes Dudes Rock adjacent but are always just good, chill records meant for having a good time. I haven’t read it yet, but Hyden’s new book on Springsteen gives me thought of one path that Dudes may walk: The Dude, embracing maturity, may become a Dad and walk the bridge into becoming a Dad Rock guy, once derided but now aspirational. Dad Rock has a spouse, kids, a home, all things that feel out of reach for the average Dude. To a Dude, Dad Rock could be Springsteen but maybe it’s Soundgarden or Wilco. Maybe a Dude becomes a Rockabilly Guy or a Harsh Noise Dude. The point is that Dudes are dying out but they have to go somewhere, and the mass exodus of Dudes, without a guiding light, is going to be an interesting thing to watch and deserves so much better than that new Japandroids single as its exit music.

I leave you with a video of a guy stacking beer bottles with a Bobcat excavator and my most somber "Dudes Rock" ever. Thanks for reading.