PALO ALTO, Calif. – Excessive video gaming and online porn consumption are turning an entire generation of young men into “impotent fatties, loser geekoids and candy-ass nerdos” according to Felipe Zamboni, a famously goateed psychologist, author and professor antiquas at the University of California at Middlefield and Embarcadero (UCAME).

Zamboni first came to prominence in the early 1970s when he co-authored a study about the psychological effects on a group of college students when they were told it was totally OK to act like a complete dickhead to a group of other college students. The landmark study, which came to be known as the “UCAME Dickhead Experiment,” quickly became standard reading among academics, pseudo-intellectuals in need of something impressive-sounding to discuss during first dates and irritating know-it-alls in the workplace.

As part of the research for his new book E-Masculated: Buy This Book RIGHT NOW Or Your Sons Will Become Abject Failures and Total Pussies, Zamboni’s team from UCAME analyzed the results of more than 20,000 surveys completed by “introverted shut-ins, gadget geeks, keyboard warriors and other cellar-dwelling dweebs” who played more than 35 hours of video games and watched more than 15 hours of porn per week.

“What we found was, by comparison to the virile, strong, heroic and exceptional men of my generation — the ‘greatest generation’ as we are quite correctly called — the young men of today are lacking in confidence, functioning testicles and crucial, life-sustaining machismo,” Zamboni said in an interview with The Daily Apocalypse. “Frankly, between their rampant Porn-Induced Erectile Dysfunction, stupid androgynous haircuts and crippling collective lack of fashion sense, it’s a wonder any of these chumps ever get laid.”

Asked what he makes of statistical trends suggesting the current generation of men might be less violent and less inclined toward alcohol and drug use than previous generations, Zamboni scoffed at the notion the metrics represent any kind of good news.

“It’s hard to beat, rape, smoke or drink when you’re down in the basement, sinking ever deeper into the sofa cushions while your unbathed body slowly recedes beneath a thick layer of empty soda cans and Dorito crumbs,” Zamboni said. “After a while, these lard-ass losers simply become too obese to get out the front door, much less summon the requisite manliness to assert themselves sexually or criminally.”

Asked for evidence of the widespread failure of young men, Zamboni cited college attendance statistics and noted men now represent slightly less than half of all students, calling it “a subject of immediate and grave concern.”

“On the one hand, fewer male students definitely makes for a better ‘pole-to-hole’ ratio at frat parties,” Zamboni conceded. “However, the fewer males in attendance, the less likely any of them will have any flunitrazepam handy, which is an obvious impediment to success in sexual conquest. And without the nourishing effects of successful sexual conquests, male confidence declines, eventually leading to calamities like reduced attendance at tractor pulls, declining sales of Budweiser and a dramatic proliferation of competitive cooking programs on cable television.”

While Zamboni’s study looked at video gaming and porn use as the primary vectors of emasculation, he said it would be a mistake to look at these two elements as the only factors involved.

Asked what effect excessive video gaming and porn viewing might have on young women, Zamboni showed somewhat less concern.

“At the risk of appearing dismissive or seeming like I’m only concerned with the wellbeing of young men, fuck all those bitches,” Zamboni said. “I mean seriously; all anybody cares about any more is women and girls. Why don’t women earn as much as men? Why are there all these sexual double-standards where it’s good to be a promiscuous man but a promiscuous woman is a slut? Why is it OK for men to be fat but not women? Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch — it’s all they do, and men are suffering deeply because of it.”

Beyond the obvious concern young men are becoming a bunch of dickless, joystick-fondling cyber-weasels, the greater threat is “a total collapse of our traditional and highly successful social structures, gender norms and cultural institutions.”

“The whole world is upside down, I tell you,” Zamboni said, “and our meticulous, painstaking, survey-results-reading research at UCAME indicates porn, single African-American mothers, female history teachers, Fox cartoon sitcoms, Call of Duty and the National Organization for Women are the primary reasons for the cultural inversion that now imminently threatens to destroy thousands of years of righteous male dominance.”

According to Zamboni, there has been a “systematic exaltation of women and degrading of men” over the past several decades, wherein “all things masculine are thoroughly demonized, while all things feminine are celebrated as bastions of goodness and light” — a perspective shared by his younger associate, Dr. John Peter “Battle Bot” Koppenhaver.

“It used to be that men ruled the world — as clearly we should — and women stuck to things women are good at, like knitting, cooking and pleasuring men on command,” Koppenhaver said. “But now it’s like if you punch one mouthy chick in the face one time — because when you got home from a hard day at the psychological survey research lab she kept talking about her stupid yoga class instead of sucking your cock as you very politely and respectfully asked her to do, like, 20 fucking minutes ago — all of a sudden you’re the bad guy.”

The good news, Zamboni said, is there’s a clear antidote for the ills of excess video gaming, online porn consumption and Top Chef viewing.

“First, everyone must buy my book,” Zamboni said. “Not just buy it, but read it from cover to cover and follow all the advice therein. Then you must immediately preorder the sequel, E-Masculated 2: So You’ve Decided NOT to be A Complete Failure. Also helpful would be throwing out your son’s video gaming console and replacing it with the complete works of Ernest Hemingway.”

(Image: Ernest Hemingway, 1935)