Nora Webb, Publisher 

Salt water sits at the center of “Good Boy,” the latest single from Paris Paloma (you might know her as the artist behind the TikTok-viral “Labour,” with its furious catalog of women’s labor and domestic inequities). Since “Labour,” Paloma has emerged as one of the most prominent new voices turning feminist critique into anthems; her songs travel quickly across social platforms because they balance immediacy with analysis: hooks you can shout in your car and lyrics that carry the density of scholarship. With “Good Boy,” she continues that project, widening her focus beyond domestic inequity to the broader machinery of patriarchal capitalism. 

As feminist scholars have been pointing out for decades, the patriarchy is a system that, like salt water, thrives on their thirst and has no intention of quenching it. Salt water draws the drinker in through its resemblance to water, but its chemistry guarantees dehydration that will eventually kill. Patriarchal loyalty functions similarly: men drink the rhetoric of wealth, the scripts of dominance, the posture of disdain for women, and corrosion circulates through their bodies.  

Paloma described this system as a trap in an Instagram video introducing her new song: “You’re lonelier than ever before. That’s not the fault of women. That’s the fault of capitalist patriarchy getting you caught up in this vicious cycle of submitting to it as a higher power.” The song is a message to men who uphold systems that would diminish them, who spend their energy defending billionaires and influencers. The lyric, “unrewarded for all of your defending / from your loneliness epidemic,” already signals this diagnosis in miniature. Her video commentary names the trap, while the song distills it into something unshakeable: loneliness as the inevitable condition of obedience to a system that loathes its own soldiers.  

The opening lines, “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down / I just didn’t expect them to be such losers,” make clear the tone that will drive the song forward. The apocalyptic meets the pitiful. A collapse is well underway, but its architects are losers, not heroes. The image comes into focus with her observation of the embodied “submission” of men scrambling for approval, which feels instantly recognizable in contemporary politics. The image could describe any setting where loyalty is measured in flattery and obedience, where success is the tiniest nod of recognition, a moment of tolerance, of delayed disdain.  

The refrain “good boy” sharpens the cruelty of this arrangement. Spoken as though to a pet, it infantilizes loyalty, strips it of its dignity. Paloma repeats the phrase until it becomes a grammar of control; praise that is not praise, recognition that doubles as humiliation. These men are “unpaid marketing departments for the power,” and the pat on the head is the only recognition of their devotion. Even that gesture carries contempt. From this point onward, the track is backed by the sounds of dogs barking; it’s a production choice that reiterates these men are being mocked by their own leash.  

The critique extends beyond ridicule though; at one of the song’s most poignant turns, she sketches the loss that obedience produces:  

“Burned your tongue too early and realised too late 

The tragedy of losin’ everything you’ll never taste 

The clearness of the river, the honey on her tongue 

Door opened to communion, bein’ your father’s son” 

The imagery shifts to sweetness, clarity, connection: water, honey, communion. These are the elemental forms of joy withheld by patriarchal loyalty; the figure of the “father’s son” makes inheritance explicit: men are trapped by their own choices, yes, but also folded into generational scripts that cut them off from intimacy as part of their conditioning. This climate of loss, of loneliness, has become fertile grounds for influencers who profit from disaffection. Figures like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson monetize male loneliness; they promise wealth, discipline, and even power. Ultimately, their language resembles empowerment but functions like salt water. Thirst and toxicity deepen with each swallow.  

Paloma catches that cycle mid-motion, turning it into sound. In the bridge, overlapping lines stack commands against fragments of the chorus. In the final moments, Paloma takes the role of observer and advisor, repeating the warnings of salt water and obedience. Male voices enter against hers, mocking with lines that undercut the chorus itself: reminders that no wealth has trickled down, taunts of “good boy,” even barking. Every layer remains distinct; the mix never collapses, but the design is to envelop, to surround. The sound places the listener inside the system Paloma critiques, where commands and condescension come from all directions, and where men voice their own subjugation. The effect makes the critique unmistakable: Paloma doesn’t need to ridicule them by the end, because the system’s training speaks through their mouths. In her commentary, Paloma reminds men that “you have more in common with everyday women than the billionaires and the manosphere ‘role models’ that you idolize and uplift with no reward.” The song ridicules and mourns in equal measure, capturing the pitiful spectacle of patriarchal loyalty and the sweetness foreclosed by it.  

The recurring line “even the dogs know not to drink salt water” lands as a taunt. It condenses the song’s critique into a final jab, mocking men for failing to see a truth so instinctive, it needs no explanation. I don’t anticipate those she calls out will respond well to the lyrics, but that is not its purpose. “Good Boy” is not a welcoming song in the spirit of Feminism Is for Everybody; it is a brutal indictment, written to sting. It stages the absurdity of kneeling before those who despise you and names the cost of doing so. The track stands as record and recognition of obedience: how it operates, how it corrodes, how it leaves men withering in loneliness and anger, cut off from the communion they might have shared.