The male modeling world isn't just a few bad photographers — it's a system built to deliver young men to predators. Alan Ritchson describes being traded between clients and agents who knew exactly what they were facilitating. He almost grabbed a fixer by the throat. When MeToo exploded, he saw his own story repeated everywhere — but couldn't bring himself to go public.
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At 26:10 · chapter starts 24:20
With a full vocal scholarship and enough academic credits to stay in college, Alan chose to leave — and eventually followed a Miami modeling call that had been coming in for months. His father, who had sacrificed so much to give his sons opportunities, was furious. But the modeling industry delivered something far worse than his father's disapproval [1] — Alan Ritchson "The male modeling world isn't just a few bad photographers — it's a system built to deliver young men to predators. Alan Ritchson describes…" 26:10 . Alan describes a predatory infrastructure: models traded between photographers and clients who expect sexual access, agents who facilitate knowingly, and a system where saying no cost you the good work. He worked JCPenney's, which paid him without expectation. Everything else, he says, was the rest of the industry. When an agent sent him into an abusive shoot for the last time, Alan stormed straight to the agency, pulled the man out of his chair, and told him he would kill him. When MeToo exploded years later and allegations against photographer Bruce Weber emerged, he read account after account and thought: yes, that happened to me. He considered going public but couldn't. The story lands with a perfect symmetry: that same agent ran into him at the lobby of the Reacher Season 1 premiere, ebullient and oblivious.
Alan Ritchson described the male modeling industry as a predatory system where models are 'traded' between photographers and clients who expect sexual access, and agents knowingly facilitate it.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
Every person lives in constant tension between infinite possible selves and the finite, limited self they actually are. Tipping too far toward infinite possibility produces a loss of identity; too much confinement in the finite produces stagnation. Kierkegaard argued that this tension is never solved — only managed.
Standing outside a cold pool imagining reasons not to jump is the exact experience of pre-commitment anxiety. Once you jump, the shock passes and you wonder why you ever hesitated. The same mechanism governs every significant commitment in life — the dread is always on the outside, the relief on the inside.
Traditional societies had rites of passage that closed off childhood and opened adulthood. Modern society kept the in-between liminal phase but eliminated the ritual that resolved it. The result is 'emerging adulthood' — a decade or more stuck in the transition — engineered by rising education requirements, women entering the workforce, and delayed marriage.
When Mark Manson proposed to his wife, software he didn't know was running — the low-level assessment of sexual market value and other options — suddenly shut down. Commitment doesn't take freedom away. It trades optionality (freedom to do many things) for focus (freedom from distraction). John Dewey called these positive and negative freedom, and the latter is more powerful.
Mark Manson spent years as a location-independent digital nomad — always a new country, a new woman, a new venture. Then the diminishing returns kicked in: countries started feeling the same, dates felt identical, businesses all frustrated him. The cure wasn't more novelty. It was narrowing: one place, one person, one career.
Every meaningful commitment has a dip — an initial peak of excitement, a brutal trough of difficulty, and a second higher peak for those who push through. Institutions once kept people in the dip long enough to reach the other side. With infinite optionality and no institutions, everyone bails at the bottom and restarts the cycle of shallow first peaks.
Stage one — the aesthetic — is the default: chasing sensation, novelty, and keeping every door open. Stage two — the ethical — is learning to choose with eyes wide open, accepting the trade-offs. Stage three — the religious — is when a commitment becomes so total that it no longer feels like a choice. It just feels like who you are.
The ethical stage is rational commitment — you can explain your choices. The religious stage is when your commitment exceeds rational justification. You can't explain why. It just feels like it chose you. Kierkegaard called this the 'virtue of the absurd' — and it's represented not just in faith but in the entrepreneurs, artists, and athletes who can't imagine doing anything else.
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