Joshes, Jareds, and Jakes of the world: rejoice! It’s going to be a good summer for basic dudes who favor Patagonia vests and work in the finance sector. For starters, there’s the earworm song that has gone absolutely viral on TikTok. The lyrics—“I’m looking for a man in finance, trust fund, 6'5", blue eyes”—are what my mind replays over and over as I close my eyes to sleep. There was that viral article from the girl who said she was marrying older but really just married rich, plucking her husband out of Harvard’s business school. Rupert Murdoch—not exactly a finance guy, but certainly a master of the universe—just had his fifth wedding at the age of 93. (Congratulations, king.)
The return of the finance bro is also a sign that the era of the tech nerd, exemplified by Mark Zuckerberg, has come to an end. Sam Bankman-Fried nailed the coffin shut for the cargo shorts–wearing, boy-genius crypto set. Look to the bit characters in The Social Network to see what’s coming down the pike: the strapping, tall, Winklevoss twins. They made their money in crypto, but unlike the techy SBF, have cast themselves as twenty-first-century financiers. They’re both six feet, five inches. They’re medaled rowers, not amateur MMA fighters. And yeah, they don’t live in a compound in Hawaii, but they managed to scrape together over $5 billion between the two of them. And ladies, neither of them is married.
The finance bro has been much maligned: he is basic, he wears a fleece vest, he probably talks in incomprehensible corporate jargon. But hey: at least he has a job. He isn’t, like a huge number of men in his cohort, depressed. He might even have hair, and he certainly didn’t spend this past spring sleeping in a tent.
The archetype took a hit with American Psycho, and then the financial crisis, but the finance bro is now in his metamorphosis, offering a few things to the American dating public that they forgot they needed: stability. Predictability. The kind of virility that doesn’t need saunas and cold plunges and dopamine fasts to regulate.
So, which way, urban Western woman? An SVP with no salary but promising stock options in a buzzy start-up that’s going to shutter next week? A coder for Big Tech whose job is about to be hoovered up by artificial intelligence? Another Ivy-credentialed filmmaker who forgot his wallet? Or the sweet-enough guy—and it doesn’t matter how, and you won’t understand it, so don’t bother asking—who makes the money rain?
Suzy Weiss is a reporter at The Free Press. Read her piece, “Hurkle-Durkle Is the New Way to Self-Care Ourselves to Death,” and follow her on X @SnoozyWeiss.
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Only problem is that finance people get paid according to their proximity to a giant stream of money instead of to their actual productivity or to the products they bring to market and sell. :\
If it equates to stability, yes.