The Lost Generation: Woke DEI, the End of Meritocracy, and the Rise of Mediocracy

Jacob Savage’s recent article The Lost Generation presents data-driven, ironclad evidence that a coordinated purge took place against young white men. For millennials graduating college and attempting to launch careers, the professional environment shifted sharply between 2011 and 2013 as diversity hiring accelerated. Entry-level pathways that once operated on merit were increasingly constrained by demographic priorities rather than performance or ability.

Savage argues that this discrimination imposed institutional costs. He asks whether media is more trusted than it was a decade ago, whether Hollywood produces better films and television, and whether academia commands greater respect. His central question is whether excluding an entire cohort strengthened these institutions or hastened their decline once meritocracy was abandoned.

The phrase “go woke, go broke” is not theoretical. It has played out repeatedly across industries, from Bud Light to Cracker Barrel. Institutions that pander are eventually consumed. No matter how far left they move, it is never far enough. History offers a parallel. Communist revolutions, including those in China and Vietnam, ultimately devoured their own founders after branding them insufficiently radical.

Hollywood, long aligned with the Left, crossed a critical threshold over the past decade by embracing ideological conformity at the expense of talent and broad appeal. Movie theaters now struggle to stay open, an outcome few would have imagined thirty years ago, when conservative parents would have considered it unthinkable to boycott Disney or PBS over the values being taught to children.

The box office data reflects the collapse. In 2024, domestic revenue fell 21 percent from 2023, 45 percent from 2020, and roughly 60 percent from 2019, the last full year before both the pandemic and the full entrenchment of DEI mandates. Projected 2024 revenue stood at about $8 billion, down from $9 billion the year before. Outside pandemic shutdowns, this is the worst sustained performance in modern Hollywood history.

Disney’s losses illustrate the pattern. In 2023, The Marvels lost an estimated $237 million despite following a $1.1 billion franchise. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny lost roughly $143 million, while Wish, Haunted Mansion, and other releases pushed total annual losses toward $700 million. In 2025, Snow White, Tron: Ares, and Thunderbolts reportedly lost more than $100 million each, while Captain America: Brave New World barely broke even. Earlier failures included Lightyear, Strange World, Ant-Man: Quantumania, The Little Mermaid, and Elemental, Pixar’s worst opening in nearly three decades.

Non-Disney projects followed the same trajectory. Sony’s Madame Web collapsed in its second weekend, killing franchise plans. Drive-Away Dolls earned just $2.5 million on more than 2,000 screens. Warner Bros.’ The Flash lost an estimated $155 million. These were not isolated failures but part of a broader industry pattern.

“Woke” filmmaking follows a formula. Male heroes are replaced with “girl boss” figures, casts are assembled for demographic balance rather than narrative coherence, and social messaging takes precedence over storytelling. Race and gender swaps are imposed on existing characters, traditional masculinity is depicted as defective, and LGBTQ storylines are inserted regardless of narrative relevance.

The pattern is widely documented. Marvel increasingly sidelines white male leads. She-Hulk openly mocked male fans, while Thor: Love and Thunder reframed its protagonist as incompetent. Star Wars alienated its audience by dismantling core characters and failed to generate sustained interest in new series or merchandise. Disney’s live-action remakes, including Snow White and The Little Mermaid, prioritized ideological signaling over craft, with stars publicly attacking both the source material and the audience.

Audience rejection followed predictable lines. Viewers felt attacked rather than entertained as valued characters were degraded or replaced, and films framed audiences as moral problems rather than customers. One analysis described Hollywood as drawing a line between “us and them” and erasing half its audience. Quality also declined. As Savage documented, white men fell from 48 percent to 11.9 percent of lower-level television writers, with hiring driven by demographics rather than skill. The result was weaker storytelling, unrelatable characters, and franchises diluted by oversaturation on streaming platforms.

The contrast with successful films is stark. Top Gun: Maverick thrived by embracing traditional masculinity and craftsmanship. Oppenheimer approached $1 billion through serious filmmaking. Sound of Freedom exceeded expectations, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie succeeded as family entertainment. These films respected their audiences, focused on story, and avoided lectures.

Hollywood’s response has largely been denial. Executives blame the pandemic, streaming competition, labor strikes, superhero fatigue, or bad luck. Conservatives counter that 2024 had more wide releases than 2023, streaming already existed in 2019 when revenues were far higher, and the decline predates recent strikes. The simpler explanation is that audiences do not like the product.

The Lost Generation connects directly to this outcome. Hollywood reduced white male writers from nearly half of the talent pool to barely more than a tenth, made diversity the primary hiring criterion, and produced weaker content as a result. Audiences noticed and responded by disengaging.

The cultural divide widened. Remaining theater audiences skew toward upper-middle-class liberals who attend less frequently, while conservative, center-right, traditional male, and international audiences largely exited. Viewers migrated to YouTube creators, podcasts, older pre-DEI content, foreign entertainment, video games, and faith-based films.

Disney illustrates the decline. Beyond theatrical losses, merchandise sales fell, Disney+ lost more than a million subscribers, and theater chains saw stock declines tied to reduced attendance. CEO Bob Iger’s decision to scale back Marvel and Star Wars output amounted to a public acknowledgment of quality problems.

Politically, critics argue the post-2016 and post-2020 period accelerated the collapse. Cancel culture reshaped awards institutions, diversity mandates hardened into doctrine, and Hollywood positioned itself in open opposition to half the country. Conservatives disengaged first, moderates followed, and the industry retreated into an insulated ideological bubble.

From this perspective, the crisis is self-inflicted. Hollywood abandoned merit, prioritized activism over entertainment, imposed ideological conformity, and attacked its customers. The result was a weakened talent pool and collapsing quality. Some studios now appear to be pulling back quietly, but others argue the damage to the talent pipeline will take a generation to repair.

The conservative case holds that Hollywood systematically excluded white male talent beginning around 2014, abandoned meritocracy, alienated its core audience, and absorbed billions in losses as a result. With box office revenue still roughly 60 percent below 2019 levels despite normal operations resuming, the audience verdict is clear. Whether labeled “wokeness” or something broader, the timeline linking DEI implementation to institutional decline is difficult to ignore.

The Lost Generation has sparked discussion across the political divide, and for many conservatives it is a rare opportunity to publicly state what they argue has been obvious for years. Matt Walsh made the observation that in an era when people no longer read, it took a 10,000-word feature in a lesser-known magazine to force the issue into public view.

At the same time, Walsh criticized what he called the Compact article’s “permission structure,” arguing that it acknowledges discrimination while minimizing its duration, scope, and consequences. In his view, anti-white hiring practices did not begin around 2014 but long predate it, rooted in affirmative action policies, federal contracting quotas, and university admissions systems that have existed for decades. The post-2014 DEI era, he argues, merely formalized and accelerated trends that were already underway.

These policies, Walsh contends, produced downstream effects that extend far beyond employment. He points to declining marriage rates, delayed family formation, and broader social dislocation among working- and middle-class men who were systematically excluded from career paths that once supported stable lives. This argument mirrors the institutional collapse seen in Hollywood and media, where merit was replaced by ideology, audiences were alienated, and quality steadily deteriorated.