"100 Men v A Gorilla" is a Metaphor For Insecure Masculinity

I don't fancy our chances against the ape, but a billionaire is no problem.

“Could 100 average men take down a silverback gorilla?”

This is not from some fringe-of-fringe fitness bro or misanthropic teen seeking the digital dopamine drip of virality, but is a question that has taken over the internet this week. The digital agora is alive with arguments. The simian is real in everyone’s mind. The 100 men are realer. And the most real, somehow, is the fantasy of dominance.

The “100 men vs. gorilla” meme is not stupid. It is freighted with meanings that are revealing. This is the whole problem with a lot of inane internet things. They’re Rorschachs. And what’s being projected here, in this hypothetical of one massive gorilla is not just “Could we win?” but rather Do we still matter?

At some deep, culturally encrypted level, American, late-capitalist, screen-addicted, internally collapsing masculinity is not sure it’s real anymore unless it’s in a fight.

We must address the gorilla. Not metaphorically, yet. The literal animal. Silverback. Genus Gorilla, subspecies Gorilla gorilla. An adult male silverback can bench press approximately 1800 lbs, has four-inch canines, can climb trees and tear them down. Its musculature is not sculpted from whey protein and rage workouts but from generations of surviving jungles, raising families, protecting territory, and being—as per the laws of evolution—an absolute unit.

Meanwhile, let’s look at the “100 men.” The average American man, BMI edging into the “maybe don’t run up a flight of stairs” zone, cholesterol warnings, a grasp of hand-to-hand combat that begins and ends with PlayStation, who once punched drywall in college and then iced his knuckles for a week. Despite knowing all this, a shocking number of people believe they’d win. Not just survive. Win.

What is this if not a truly poetic form of delusion?

You can’t beat the gorilla. Not individually. Not in a cage match. Not in a parking lot. Not even if you watched every UFC highlight on YouTube and did pushups until your arms cried. The gorilla is nature’s answer to your midlife crisis. But still, 100 of us? Surely, surely, we must be able to do something. If we all attacked at once. If we rushed it. If we had a plan.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

What’s fascinating isn’t the fight. It’s the faith. The belief, not even in one's own body, but in the group’s potential, provided it’s sufficiently motivated. And yet, in the same breath, most of the hypothetical strategists declare, implicitly or outright, that most men are weak. “They wouldn’t commit.” “They’d run.” “They’d hesitate.” "They'd get pulled limb from limb" Meaning: I could win. We couldn’t.

Which is to say, even when given the gift of 99 allies, the average participant in this thought experiment still centers themselves as the protagonist.

This is the masculine mind in late-stage capitalism: hyper-individualized, weirdly nostalgic, and in deep, unspoken mourning for a time when dominance—physical, financial, social—felt like a birthright rather than a vanishing dream. We have raised generations to believe that if they just try hard enough, train smart enough, manifest with sufficient tenacity, they could kill the gorilla. Get the girl. Start the company. Be the outlier.

But you’re not the outlier. You’re the average man. That’s the whole point. And this is what terrifies you.

There’s a symmetry here between the silverback and another creature of great myth and unexamined cultural power: the billionaire.

Both are apex in their domain. Both command awe. Both are the subject of memes, speculations, conspiracies. And both, critically, are assumed to be unassailable. The gorilla in the jungle. The billionaire in his compound, his Gulfstream jet, his shell corporations.

The billionaire is not a man in the traditional sense; he is an institution with a face. A colossus who has succeeded not in the arena of combat, but of abstraction: markets, extraction, policy, monopolies. And yet, as with the gorilla, we find ourselves—culturally, psychologically—bending the knee, convinced that they are simply better, built differently, maybe even benevolently.

But here’s the thing. The gorilla actually is stronger than you. The billionaire is not.