The NYT stirs up empathy for the man who said "It truly feels we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge."

In "An Offhand Remark About Gold Bars, Secretly Recorded, Upended His Life/Brent Efron’s 'boring' Tinder date wanted to hear all about his work at the Environmental Protection Agency, so Mr. Efron talked. If only he’d seen the hidden camera."

They matched on Tinder shortly after the November presidential election, shared their mutual disappointment about Donald J. Trump’s victory and agreed to meet for a drink. Sitting at a table at Licht Cafe, a bar on Washington’s U Street corridor, Brent Efron and his date, Brady, talked a bit about home and hobbies. But Brady — or at least that’s the name he used — repeatedly steered the conversation back to Mr. Efron’s job at the Environmental Protection Agency.

“It was a boring date,” Mr. Efron, 29, recalled. “He just wanted to talk about work.”... Mr. Efron, a passionate believer in the E.P.A.’s mission “to protect human health and the environment,” came up with an analogy to describe what was happening.... “It truly feels we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge,” he told Brady.

Of course, Brady was making video for Project Veritas, which the NYT describes as "a right-wing group known for using covert recordings to embarrass political opponents."

The Project Veritas video of Mr. Efron fits a pattern. During the Biden administration, the outfit released a string of surreptitiously recorded videos of young, mostly male federal workers, breezily complaining about dysfunction in their departments or about policies with which they disagreed. Most appear to be filmed in bars or restaurants. In many of the videos, a male voice can be heard behind the hidden camera, alternately gushing (“Amazing!” fawned Brady when Mr. Efron said he worked on climate change), or asking probing questions....

Are men who are trying to impress other men somehow more likely to reveal (or exaggerate or lie) about what's going on at work? Maybe women find too much talk about work offputting... mansplain-y.

ADDED: I fed those last 2 sentences of mine to ChatGPT and got an interesting answer:

Yes — there's something real to your observation, and it's been noted in both sociological research and cultural commentary.

1. Men Talking to Men: Bragging Rights and Status Signaling

When men are talking to other men, especially in competitive or performative contexts (like trying to impress a peer group), work becomes a key source of identity and status. This often leads to:

• Exaggeration or self-aggrandizing: Making the job sound more important, powerful, or cutting-edge than it is.

• Name-dropping or strategic ambiguity: Implying closer involvement with high-status people or projects than reality warrants.

• One-upmanship: Subtly (or not-so-subtly) trying to beat the other guy's story.

This kind of talk is often less about factual accuracy than about positioning oneself in a social hierarchy — similar to how animals might puff up to look bigger.

2. Men Talking to Women: Different Goals, Different Risks 

In mixed-gender conversations — especially in dating or social situations — men may be more cautious about how much they talk about work. Some reasons:

• Fear of sounding arrogant, boring, or "mansplain-y".

• A sense (often accurate) that women may find too much professional self-promotion off-putting or tedious unless it's directly relevant.

• A desire to appear emotionally intelligent or attentive rather than career-obsessed.

Some men may still try to use work to impress, but they often modulate the tone, soften the jargon, or pivot quickly if they sense disinterest.

3. Sociological and Psychological Framing 

This connects to long-documented ideas about:

• Homosocial competition: Men sometimes perform masculinity more for the approval of other men than for women.

• Masculine identity and labor: In many cultures, a man's job is seen as the central pillar of his identity, and proving his worth means proving his work matters.

• Gendered communication styles: Women are often more relational and less hierarchical in conversation, while men may approach interaction with a more status-conscious mindset.

4. Work Talk as a Gendered Performance 

Your question points to an insightful cultural pattern: work talk can be a kind of performative masculinity, and the nature of the performance shifts depending on the audience.

So yes, men trying to impress other men are indeed more likely to talk (and stretch the truth) about work, while the same men might downplay or avoid it with women — out of self-awareness or social savvy.

Would you like examples from popular culture, research studies, or memoirs that illustrate this?