Alex Kazemi’s Y2K period novel reminds us the manosphere is…

Mas­culin­i­ty is hot right now. And not hot in the desir­able sense, but in the pub­lic out­cry – let‘s write one mil­lion think­pieces about the impacts of pornog­ra­phy, video games, and Tik­Tok on the psy­che of young boys – sense.

With the rise of the ​“manos­phere” and the bal­looned pro­files of its influ­encers, such as Jor­dan Peter­son and self-pro­claimed misog­y­nist Andrew Tate, it can seem as if Gen Z and Gen Alpha boys are fac­ing unique­ly mod­ern pres­sures that are lead­ing them towards anti-fem­i­nist, anti-women ideals. Netflix’s UK smash hit Ado­les­cence, which fol­lows the after­math of a school­boy who mur­dered a girl after being deemed an incel, has like­ly been 2025’s biggest tele­vi­sion moment, so much so that Prime Min­is­ter Keir Starmer backed the series being shown in schools to ​“help stu­dents bet­ter under­stand the impact of misog­y­ny [and the] dan­gers of online radicalisation”.

And there is some truth to that. But Cana­di­an author Alex Kazemi’s nov­el New Mil­le­ni­um Boyz, which was pub­lished in the UK for the first time last month, makes for an impor­tant revi­sion in the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry. Set in 1999 in afflu­ent, sub­ur­ban Amer­i­ca, it fol­lows a group of teenage boys – Brad Sela, Lu and Shane – who set forth down a trag­ic spi­ral of cru­el­ty and one-upman­ship, in a dis­qui­et­ing reminder that tox­i­c­i­ty in teenage boy­hood is by no means a new phenomenon.

Their lan­guage is casu­al­ly hor­ren­dous – enough to make sea­soned queer­phobes and xeno­phobes in the present wince – while their atti­tudes towards women are arguably worse. Set with­in the Columbine, MTV mono­cul­ture, fin-de-siè­cle con­text, though, even though it is shock­ing, there are relat­able reminders of the cul­ture of the time, which has been pushed deep into amyg­dalae as the Y2K era cul­ture goes through a nos­tal­gia-tinged renais­sance. With Kaze­mi hav­ing ded­i­cat­ed his wak­ing hours trawl­ing old mes­sage­boards, libraries and inter­net archives, it’s his­tor­i­cal fic­tion at its most gut­tur­al and unnerv­ing. We caught up with him to find out more.

You were born in 1994, right? So you would have been six years old at the turn of the mil­len­ni­um. What made you want to explore the lives of boys a decade old­er than yourself?

First off, I was very fas­ci­nat­ed by the [cur­rent] culture’s fix­a­tion on the Y2K era. It’s like the most ref­er­enced and rumi­nat­ed time space, and it’s very glam­ourised. Like in the Char­li xcx and Troye Sivan song ​‘1999’, [the lyrics are]: ​“I just wan­na go back.” And then I was see­ing the rise of Andrew Tate and this dis­cus­sion around mas­culin­i­ty, and I was like: ​“Okay, let’s maybe look at the root source of what it was like when I was a child, how the world was, and how did that affect boys born in ​’94, ​’95.” I saw that I grew up in a hyper-accel­er­at­ed ver­sion of this cor­ro­sive, poi­so­nous kind of white mas­culin­i­ty, which is now roman­ti­cised and fetishised.

I was try­ing it as an explo­ration project, but it start­ed when I was 18 dur­ing the Tum­blr era, when I had a viral man­u­script. It was a 10-year adven­ture, and when the pan­dem­ic hap­pened, I was forced to go through all my notes and frag­ments. With the Red Scare blow­ing up and the apa­thy that we were see­ing in the polit­i­cal dis­course of peo­ple in the arts and fash­ion world, it was a per­fect storm for the book to final­ly be released.

Have you heard of Ado­les­cence? It was a mas­sive thing here in the UK, so much so that the prime min­is­ter said that he sup­port­ed it being shown in schools.

Yes, and I felt very vin­di­cat­ed when I saw it. It was exact­ly the torch I want­ed to see to start these dis­cours­es and con­ver­sa­tions. The 2000s were full of media dis­sect­ing the lives of teenage girls – 13, Mean Girls, etc. – but we nev­er looked at how cru­el and bitchy young men are.

The boys in your book egg each oth­er on a lot, and do things they might not otherwise.

Because they are also chil­dren, right? Teenage boys are chil­dren and they’re learn­ing how to man­age their emo­tions and feel­ings, and I, from my own expe­ri­ence of being a teenage boy, remem­ber watch­ing my friends crum­ble and break down. I don’t know if there was abuse in the house­hold, or just whether at points being 16, 17 was just so emo­tion­al­ly apoc­a­lyp­tic, but I remem­ber being like: ​“Well, why is this not in movies we watch? Why do we not have a mir­ror of how we actu­al­ly are?” So I felt like when I was writ­ing the book I want­ed, to make sure that we showed the moments of walk­ing home from school, hearts to hearts – it’s kind of like real­i­ty TV but also stylised and satirical.