I wonder where the entry point to that community is. Day to day, the only places I hear about it are articles like this and magicians pissed off about PUAs making them look bad. It is the subculture even Comic Book Guys don't feel bad about mocking, and it's been that way almost as long as its been around. So where do you hear about it in a context that makes it sound like something worth looking into?
Okay. I've known two. Importantly, I knew them both before they became PUAs, I know them both now that they are no longer PUAs, and I met both of them socially with no involvement from the Internet. The two have a few commonalities: - cloudy relationships with their parents, characterized by absent/disciplinarian fathers and love/hate relationships with their mothers - keen interest in bodybuilding and other masculine pursuits, such as powersports - gregariousness to counteract inner shyness - both are "all hat no cattle" type people (although I'm fond of them both, they're big blustery pussycats) - overemphasis on the physicality of women, limited experience with the reality of a relationship with a genuine human of the opposite sex - credulity towards written advice simply because it's been written - would be or had been catfished (hard) I can't characterize all the men who become PUAs the same way. I only know the two. I've interacted with a few online (back in the glory days of Reddit I attempted to negotiate a non-aggression pact between TwoX, RedPill and Mensrights) and while I can easily see them slipping into the same paradigms, I have no way to confirm. In both cases, they started espousing and practicing archetypal PUA behavior after meeting someone at the gym. In both cases, they found a spotter with a lot more game than they had. In both cases, they had been recently dumped by canonically important girlfriends. And in both cases, they were willing to spend cash money on seminars and reading materials in order to "find more success with women." This was the early '00s, mind you - prior to Neil Strauss. For all I know, they were swimming in that soup back when it was pure and undiluted by the half-hearted flailings of The Internet. As friends to both of them (neither know each other; at the time they lived a hundred miles apart), both were eager to enroll me in their wisdom. That's part of the whole "red pill" mythos: they had learned earth-shattering Illuminati-grade secrets and while they protected the gnostic mysteries of their craft, they very much wanted their friends to revel in their same exploits. It's like the Masons - to be one, ask one. One of them went through his PUA phase while I was single. The other went through it while I was with a girl (who turned into my wife some years later). As such, I paid a lot more attention the first time and saw that the song remained the same the second time. The vector is decidedly word-of-mouth. It is passed from one awkward male with poor understanding and regard of women to another. There needs to be a pattern of misunderstanding, a streak of desperation and an inadequate emotional intelligence and empathy in order for the seed to take root. But if all of those characteristics align, the proselytization and inclusiveness of the culture becomes self-sustaining, at least for a time. That time is governed, I believe, by the ascribant's latent humanity (or lack thereof). One of my friends foreswore all PUA-related approaches and philosophies upon finding himself profiled on DontDateHimGirl.com. I'm not sure if it was seeing himself objectified and denigrated for base characteristics that did the trick, or if he simply decided that his reputation mattered more. Either way, he entered into a long term relationship that led to marriage a few years later. The other joined the movement after finding himself incapable of dealing with a bad breakup, which eventually led to a relapse in his alcoholism, the loss of his medical practice, his declaration of bankruptcy and a year-long fascination (and practice) of vagabonding. I would describe both as "joiners." I would not describe myself as such. When the PUA philosophy was explained to me, it went something like this: "The secret is that women want to be treated like shit." "Uhm... they don't though." "Secretly, they do. The ones you can fuck at least." "That gets all over you though, dude." "Yeah but I'm getting laid a lot." "But you're really unhappy." "But I'm getting laid a lot." "How much did you pay for this?" "I got a deal. Jared's really cool. You should talk to him."I wonder where the entry point to that community is.
A lot of similarities as well with Nietzchen philosophy that is often appealing to young men - not much of a leap from Nietzche to the red pill. The idea that there are no ideals or universal moral frameworks and fulfilment comes from having the strength to reject Christian-Platonic social morals, embrace your fate for what it is - warts and all, then have the will to attain personal power and creative expression. Society be damned.
I am not sure. I think if one followed Nietzche's rejection of ideals and embrace personal power it would be necessary to at least pity and even disdain those who don't. Especially if they seem more content within the accepted social-moral framework than one feels. One would have to dismiss them as pathetic sheep. To acknowledge their view as a legitimate alternative would totally undermine one's justification to act like a self serving, arrogant ass.
The Neil Strauss book "The Game" is pretty well known inspiration for virginal adult men who have no game ie. confidence or personality. /r/theredpill is very popular although I would not recommend looking into it. And there are plenty of gaming forum boards etc that foster that type of discussion. I also see telephone post ads all over the place. In Toronto PUAs have been an issue in the downtown core. The biggest downtown mall has had a major problem with PUAs going in en masse to practice their artistry. Oddly enough, if they only tried a few blocks west in the dance clubs of the Entertainment District they would probably have more success but perhaps lack the funds or confidence to do so. A guy named James Sears/Dimitrious Sarafopoulos aka Dimitri the Lover, a former physician who had his licence revoked for sexual assault, runs lots of social media and will even teach you to be as awesome as him for a fee. His latest tweet sums up how he misunderstands relationships: "Open relationships are the best BUT BE DISCREET! Every one I had was sexually, emotionally & spiritually fulfilling TILL MY GF's CAUGHT ME." He apparently thinks that an open relationship/polyamory is not something that is a mutual decision.
I'm aware of /r/theredpill. I know there are places where these people gather. That's not what confuses me. What confuses me is how people get drawn to them. What confuses me is that I have never heard anyone say anything positive about that stuff outside of their communities. I am not quite the target audience, granted, because I've never had a problem talking with women, but I'm in the same neighborhood. I'm a nerdy guy who spends a lot of time on the Internet. I am probably more like your average PUA than not. It seems like I should come across whatever draws people in at some point. I never do. I have seen more people advocating for monarchism than I have seen mens' rights activists in the wild. I know people who seriously believe FEMA runs concentration camps, the moon landing was faked and 9/11 was an inside job and will go on at great, tedious length about their evidence at the drop of a hat, but I don't know anyone who buys those just-so stories about evolutionary biology and gender roles. I have a half-dozen Julius Evola books passing acquaintances have given to me insisting they'd blow my mind, but no one has ever so much as recommended The Game to me. I have been pitched all sorts of batshit, but I have never heard anything good about this stuff without going out of my way to see where they're coming from. That's what confuses me.
I think I can posit a reason, as I knew someone who read The Game and followed through on it. He was one part douchecanoe, one part dumb and two parts lonely. After reading it he became the jerk that one can reasonably expect. Which, in his case, meant that he appeared to be more assertive and confident while also acting like more of a dick. So he had some success with it. My guess is that the being-a-jerk part did nothing while the confidence-can-be-faked part did all the heavy lifting. He went on to preach about it to other guys - "hey, look at all the girls I'm talking to now". Granted, this was a few years ago, before /r/theredpill was even a thing. I still think word of mouth from close friends is how ideas like this spread. If I see a guy friend of mine suddenly doing well dating and he says he holds the key to success, I might be inclined to believe him.
Never heard of Evola. From what little I have seen just now (which is little), he would seem to appeal to male college PUAs and MRAs. But is the "thinking man's" Neil Strauss and being a MRA/PUA is not the primary focus of his writing. I do not know anyone that has any interest in PUA theory, legos, Star Wars, white supremacy theory, the Illuminati, pokemon, chess, cryptic crosswords, furries, heroin, reptiles, etc. There are many of people out there that do but there are so many people that we do not always meet them and even if we do we self-select our friends/acquaintances. We all like different things for different reasons and are drawn to and choose to hang out with those with similar interests. It seems that the primary characteristic that you do not share with PUAs is the desire to downplay the intellectual and emotional intelligence of women and a desire to exploit and manipulate them.
I so didn't mean to send you down that rabbit hole. Evola was the philosopher who was opposed to fascism because it wasn't far right enough. He's worth knowing about in a "wow, that guy existed" sort of way, but not beyond that. Which was my point, that I probably obscured by using personal examples. We don't just get exposed to things because we hang out with people like us and people like us like those things. . I made an example of similarly vile books without thinking to describe them as such, and you went and checked him out. You don't have any interest in a long list of things, but I bet you've had more than a little exposure to most of them. You are aware of white supremacist theorists, none of whom you're likely to encounter without wandering pretty deep into Wikipedia, or having a brighter-than-your-average white supremacist rant at you for a while. Either one will show you how people who get into white supremacy through theory do so; Evola being handed out at underground-or-whatever-we're-calling-it-now music events, the Turner Diaries being handed out at gun shows, probably others being handed out to other communities. There are groups doing outreach; go where the angry white people are, hand out books some of them will get curious about. Most don't get read, some number know the book and want nothing to do with it, and some smart-but-not-too-smart angry white people read the book, have the wrong sort of epiphany and share it with their friends. And so you get people who should be too smart to be white supremacists but are, and everyone else learns to recognize and ignore them. A couple of people reading this in chatter tomorrow will probably remember mayonesa from reddit. That's comprehensible. I don't wonder where the smart, bookish, vocal racists come from. I wonder where these guys come from, because the manosphere looks to be mostly talking to itself, and outsiders talking about it are not sympathetic.