“Kids of Males” opens in a London café the place the purchasers are crowded across the TV, watching a information report concerning the demise of ‘Child’ Diego Ricardo, the final particular person to be born earlier than the infertility epidemic absolutely took over. Everybody within the store is devastated — although Diego hasn’t finished something outstanding together with his life, his mere existence was an emblem of the youth the world’s been slowly shedding, daily.

Theo would not care although. He is available in, will get his espresso, and walks out with barely a look on the TV. It may appear chilly, nevertheless it’s additionally the very factor that saves his life. Not more than 30 seconds after he leaves the café, pausing to pour some liquor into his espresso, the store explodes. Not solely is that this an efficient little bit of worldbuilding — establishing with out phrases that that is the type of society the place mindless killings can occur at any second — nevertheless it additionally makes a compelling argument in favor of apathy. Theo would not care about something, so he will get to reside one other day.

Even past sheer survival, Theo’s apathy is an comprehensible coping mechanism for the world round him. He misplaced his solely son in a flu pandemic. He cannot stroll down the road with out seeing or listening to some type of human rights abuse or excessive human struggling. There’s not a lot Theo can do for any of those individuals individually, not to mention all of them. Can you actually blame him for tuning all of it out? His perspective is only a barely extra dramatic model of what individuals do as we speak every day. It is the in-person equal of seeing a tragic information story in your Twitter feed and scrolling proper previous it.