Free the workplace romance. Let's go back to letting love connections happen at the office. It's funny.
All I hear about these days is the loneliness epidemic and how nobody socializes anymore and Jenzie isn't dating. Jenz isn't Here's a crazy idea. Stop being overly paranoid about power imbalances in one of the last places humans actually interact anymore and let people at work.
[cheering] [applause] I I don't mean literally have in the supply closet. Bill Maher just walked straight into one of America's most sensitive debates and kicked the door off its hinges. His argument is not that harassment should make a comeback.
It is that modern culture became so terrified of discomfort, rejection, and imperfect behavior that we started regulating connection out of everyday life. Dating apps feel miserable. Political differences are instant deal breakers.
Flirting can feel like paperwork with eye contact. Then everybody acts shocked that loneliness is spreading. Mar may exaggerate, but the pressure point is real.
What happens when a society gets better at avoiding risk than building relationships? Subscribe for more breakdowns like this because his next point makes the whole argument much harder to dismiss. I'm afraid Valentine's Day this year will just be another reminder of how brutal this lockdown has been for single people.
Over half of 18 to 34 year olds don't have a steady romantic partner and they're losing precious dating time. Women's biological clocks are ticking. Guys are balding.
In the last 50 years, the share of Americans who live alone has doubled. Which begs the question, if single people are such a large part of this country now, why do our political and economic policies always still revolve around families? That joke lands because single adults are treated like they are waiting in the lobby of real life.
Campaigns praise families. Commercial show couples, kids, and kitchens nobody can afford. Meanwhile, millions of people work from home, eat alone, and try to turn a profile into an actual connection.
We built a culture around independence, then seemed stunned when independence came with isolation. And as ordinary meeting places disappeared, the phone became the default. Mah thinks that substitution did not merely change dating.
It removed the social courage dating used to require. Because America always overreacts, usually on the side of too much safety. We did it with overprotecting our children.
We did it with because some people get addicted. For decades, no one was allowed to even smoke pot legally. And we do it with in Congress.
They already have a rule that says you can't date anyone in your own office. And now they're considering one supported by Speaker Mike Johnson that would ban members from dating any staffer from [music] any office. This needs one giant distinction.
Harassment is not romance. A boss pressuring an employee is not flirting. And retaliation after rejection is not a misunderstanding.
Those lines should be bright and enforceable, but institutions often answer a real problem with a blanket rule that treats every adult interaction like a potential crime scene. We needed a scalpel and grabbed a bulldozer. Protecting consent makes sense.
Pretending attraction can be deleted from a building does not. And on Capitol Hill, where work consumes nearly every waking hour, the contradiction becomes almost comical. She says no one who works on Capitol Hill should ever date anybody else who works on Capitol Hill.
Okay, but where else are they supposed to meet? It's where they spend all their time. They run home to get 4 hours of sleep, eat a toaster strudel, and run back to the office to write the actual bills that their bosses, the elected representatives, don't even read.
But AOC says there are a lot of fish in the sea. If someone is seeking a partner, we [music] don't need to necessarily do that here. Uh, no, you don't have to.
or whatever you want to do [music] that's consensual. And that's the point. Stop punishing all the people who want a consensual relationship because offices contain some male creeps as does everywhere in life.
Exactly. A rule can sound ethical in a handbook and absurd in human reality. Telling exhausted staffers to meet people somewhere else is easy until you ask where somewhere else is.
The gym they cannot reach, the bar at midnight, an app they swipe through over that toaster strudel. People connect through repeated contact, shared pressure, and seeing how someone behaves when things go wrong. A profile says somebody loves hiking.
A brutal Tuesday shows whether they are patient, dependable, and kind. That context matters. While there are plenty of fish in the sea, there aren't a lot of seas.
That is, not a lot of places to meet fish. [laughter] The workplace is where most people have always done it. It's where most married couples caught their fish.
Forbes did a study and found 43% of workplace romances ended in marriage. The other 50% 57% ended on the jumbotron at a Coldplay concert. Now, [applause] is the workplace the perfect place to be?
No. But what's better? Dating apps, bars, which are now places where people go out and yet somehow are still on their phone.
[laughter] The Coldplay line is savage, but the larger point is sharper. Work lets attraction develop through context. You see competence, humor, generosity, and character over time.
Apps give you six photos, three recycled jokes, and a prompt about tacos. Of course, office dating can get messy. Breakups can poison teams.
Gossip can spread and authority can complicate consent. So regulate the danger. Bar manager subordinate relationships.
Require disclosure where conflicts exist. Punish retaliation and protect reporting. That is different from declaring all chemistry suspicious.
Adults need guard rails, not a cultural restraining order. There is a difference between rejecting someone whose values genuinely threaten your life. Let me tell you folks, if the standards on the left are going to be this high and politics is going to be this much of a block, we're never going to win elections or have any more babies.
This inclination from certain liberals to always and immediately excommunicate [music] instead of communicate is what makes them so unlikable. You win. And by win I mean lose.
Christ. First we couldn't date people who had opposite political belief. Now we can't even date them if they have no opinion at all.
And rejecting someone who has not memorized the approved answer sheet. Online culture keeps flattening those into the same thing. A first date becomes a Senate confirmation hearing.
State your position. Use the correct language. Explain that old post.
One clumsy answer and the nomination is withdrawn. Real relationships require curiosity because people arrive unfinished. If your politics cannot survive a conversation over coffee, they may be less like principles and more like a security blanket.
Then Mar uses a young dator named Ben to show how absurd the test can get. It's enough to make you lose faith in finding true love on a reality streaming series. [applause] [cheering] Ben didn't say, "You know, I have thought about Black Lives Matter and I'm with Derek Schovin.
" No, he said, "I'm young and dumb and full of fantasy football stats. Could we just talk about it? " I'm sorry.
I'm not up to the part of my life yet where I give a [music] about the issues. Should he? Of course.
We all should do a lot of things. I should meditate and finish Moby Dick and learn to get to sleep without a gummy. [cheering] [applause] But maybe Ben hasn't turned his life over to being a social justice warrior yet because he's preoccupied with trying to get his life going.
Most people in their early 20s are still assembling the furniture of their identity and half the screws are missing. They are figuring out rent, work, confidence, family, and whether cereal counts as dinner. Expecting a complete political philosophy before the appetizers arrive is ridiculous.
Sometimes I don't know is not moral failure. It is honesty. A relationship can be where people challenge each other and grow, not a prize awarded after both pass the same ideological exam.
Purity tests do not always create better people. Often they just create better liars. Even the act of just asking a girl out is now seen by many younger people as overly aggressive.
[music] There's a feeling that the attributes traditionally characteristic of men are inherently problematic, which sounds a lot like men are born wrong. Type the phrase men are trash into Etsy and you can purchase a slew of swag with that phrase on it. When the Obama administration was trying to sell Obamacare to a skeptical nation, they made an ad featuring someone who became famous as Pajama Boy.
This is what they put out as an image of the perfect man. The only thing he loves more than affordable health insurance is his therapy cat and Emily in Paris. Mar is using a caricature and sensitivity is not weakness.
Therapy is not emasculation. Emotional literacy is a strength, but the complaint underneath the joke is legitimate. Confidence is not violence.
Decisiveness is not domination. And competitiveness is not automatically toxic. When every masculine impulse is described as a defect, some young men withdraw while others run toward online gurus who sell resentment as strength.
A culture that cannot distinguish healthy masculinity from destructive masculinity leaves the field open to people who are delighted to weaponize the confusion. Women have come a long way, baby. And the vast majority of that has been long overdue and very very positive.
But maybe in this one way you're a victim of your own success. [music] You can win the battle and lose the war if you herang men into becoming less like us and more like [music] you and end up with someone you have absolutely no desire to [applause] And that's not good for either of the 71 genders we now have. [laughter] [applause] That is the line that will make half the audience cheer and the other half sprint to the comments.
Mah paints with a roller because women are not one hive mind. Still, attraction is not an HR policy and does not always obey public slogans. Many people want some blend of warmth and strength, vulnerability and confidence, kindness and backbone.
We should not teach men to become emotionally numb. We also should not treat assertiveness as a character flaw. The goal is integration.
Capable enough to lead, secure enough to listen, and mature enough to hear no without collapsing. Dating from the phone took away any incentive for men to cough up the two things women want from them. Courage and communication.
[applause] [applause] the courage to step to her for real and demonstrate your desire enough to risk rejection and communication. Women are communicative creatures. Even when they're breaking up with you, they say, "We need to talk.
" [applause] We are endlessly hearing about girl power and being a girl boss. [music] Please, ladies, you let the technology play you and you got [music] punked by your phone. Of course, Tinder is every guy's dream, a hookup rolodex.
But it's the opposite of what you want. Intimacy, emotional availability, and being seen as a full human being. Apps promised efficiency, but romance is one place where efficiency can ruin the product.
They turned attraction into a slot machine with faces. Swipe, match, message, disappear, repeat. Every profile whispers that somebody better may be one thumb movement away.
Men can avoid approaching. Women can receive endless attention without receiving intention. Everybody gets options while fewer people get commitment.
The platform wins when you keep searching, not when you happily delete it. A relationship needs focus and patience. The phone trains the opposite muscle.
Browse, compare, and never fully arrive. Rise from the couch. Lose the cargo shorts.
Get a shirt with a collar. Brush the crumbs off your beard. Shave your beard.
And talk to a girl. [cheering and applause] [applause] Earn it. Earn being heroic by taking that long, brave walk across a room to ask [music] someone out.
The vast majority of men don't have to fight wars anymore or hunt for food. And Lord knows there aren't any real Lokis or Green goblins to fight. The one place you can step up and show courage is this.
Be a hero to women. Show yourself. [applause] Show yourself.
You still have an ounce of courage in your by risk. [laughter] by risking rejection and going up to a girl. The delivery is ridiculous, but the advice is basic.
Participate in your own life. Put on clean clothes. Leave the house.
Make eye contact. Say hello. Accept that rejection is survivable.
And courage means asking respectfully, not refusing the answer. A confident man can hear no, smile, and keep his dignity. The goal is not harassment disguised as persistence.
It is rebuilding social nerve. You cannot form a relationship without giving another person the power to disappoint you. That vulnerability is not a flaw in romance.
It is the entry fee. Temptation Island is the show where hot people dating hot people are in search for hotter people. Contestants only have two emotions, horny and crying.
[laughter] And the whole point of the show is you can always do better. Every contestant begins their journey. by saying the same thing.
I love what I have with Trevan, but I wonder if there's someone more perfect for me. [laughter] There isn't. That newole in the tank top is the same as your the tank top.
[applause] This This is a real problem in our society. Looking for an excuse to dump [music] someone, someone good, because there must be one more perfect. That mentality escaped reality television and became modern dating's operating system.
Filters, rankings, and recommendations teach us to treat people like products that should arrive perfectly optimized. But a strong partner is often not the person with the flashiest specifications. It is the person with whom trust and effort accumulate over time.
You do not uncover a flawless soulmate behind the next swipe. You build a bond through thousands of unglamorous choices. Sometimes the new person in the tank top is simply a fresh set of problems with better lighting.
But I get what he's saying that he wasn't getting what he needed from a woman, so he's getting it from a server farm in Chungdu. [cheering] [applause] Look, it's not it's not for me. But can I really sit here and tell you that the old way [music] where men are from Mars and women are from Venus and where you have to kiss a lot of frogs and where half the marriages end in divorce.
[music] Can I really say that really worked so well? No, I can't. I can't blame kids who look at their parents and see broken families and fighting and cheating [music] and dad daydrinking in the garage and mom sitting on the dryer in a house coat eating pie with her hands.
Here, the argument stops being funny. Artificial companions offer what isolated people struggle to find from humans. Attention without rejection, conflict, compromise, or inconvenient needs.
A program never gets tired, changes its mind, or asks you to grow. That may feel safe, but it is not reciprocity. It is emotional room service.
The danger is not that machines become perfectly human. It is that exhausted people decide imperfect humans are no longer worth the effort. A person can misunderstand you.
A program can be tuned to agree only one can teach you how to love. People aren't always attracted to their co-equal. [music] We're not robots.
What we are apparently is lonely. There is a loneliness epidemic out there. It is widely reported.
[music] A morning consult poll found that almost four out of five young adults consider themselves lonely and have trouble forming relationships outside of their home. And that certainly seems the case in the incest porn I watch. If if loneliness is destroying our health, causing depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and shortened life expectancy, it's just not helpful to be criminalizing the pool of eligible [music] mates, that is the workplace.
Does anyone really think that swiping right on some rando because he has nice hair and he's posing in front of a Dodge Challenger is a better way to meet someone than at the office? This is Mar's strongest point because every social rule has a cost. Rules against coercion and retaliation protect people.
A culture of universal suspicion can also make decent people afraid to initiate anything. The answer is not turning the office back into madmen. It is adult standards for adult behavior.
No pressure, no retaliation, no hidden conflicts, and no pretending that a polite invitation is identical to abuse. People will connect wherever they spend time together. We can manage that reality responsibly or drive it underground and celebrate a cleaner policy manual.
Maybe let's all try a little more romance and a little less hypocrisy. You know, we hate it when people have in the office, but you know what TV show? We love [music] The Office.
[applause] The most popular sitcom of all time, reproduced all over the world, and the entire show is an HR department's worst nightmare. Everybody is eithering or trying to everybody else. And it doesn't make anybody low-key scared.
[cheering] Jim and Pam, Jim and Karen, Michael and Jan, Michael and Holly, Erin and Gabe, Erin and Andy, Erin and Pete, Ryan and Kelly, Angela and Andy, Angela and Dwight. That contradiction is Mar's case in one punchline. We binge stories about co-workers falling in love, then design workplaces as though attraction can be deleted.
His point is not that every office should become Tinder or masculinity means acting like a caveman. It is that intimacy feels dangerous. People feel replaceable and social courage feels rebellious.
We need boundaries that target coercion without criminalizing chemistry, grace for imperfect people, and adults who look up from the phone. Is MAR diagnosing the loneliness crisis or romanticizing the past? Should workplace dating be normalized or does the risk outweigh the reward?
Drp your take in the comments. Hit like and subscribe for breakdowns. Society cannot swipe its way out of loneliness.
Eventually, somebody has to walk across the room and say hello.
