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Notes -
The Nick Fuentes interview with Piers Morgan was a good demonstration of how boomers do not understand Gen Z rhetorical tactics at all. One example is the “agree-and-amplify” strategy.
This strategy came from The Red Pill/PUA community. The idea is that girls will try to throw you off your game by making some unfounded criticism, to test how secure/powerful you are as a man. It’s called a “shit test.”
The “agree-and-amplify” strategy says the best approach is to do exact that. Example: Girl says “Wow that’s a big truck, are compensating for something?”
Loser response (no getting laid): “No, my penis is slightly above average! I just like trucks!”
Agree-and-amplify: “Hahah yeah, micropene. 1 inch. It’ll have you screaming tho.”
The latter projects confidence, she knows your joking of if she believes you, you can neg her about it. She made it sexual and gave you an opening. Etc. All in good fun.
Fuentes did the same thing repeatedly, and Morgan just does not grasp it at all.
For example, paraphrasing:
Morgan: “Are you racist?”
Loser response: No, I have friends who are black! I just think [crime statistics]!
Morgan: Sounds like you’re racist.
Game, set, march. Better is the Fuentes agree-and-amplify:
Fuentes : “Haha yeah. I don’t want any black people around”
Morgan: [clutches pearls]
Fuentes: I have black friends though. They are also concerned about [crime statistics]
Morgan: But you said you were racist!
It makes it feel like Morgan is not in on the joke. It denies his moral frame that any hint of racism = bad. He needs to come up with a more concrete argument. When he instead tries fails to re-establish the frame through repetition, it doesn’t land.
I was reminded in a way of the classic Charlie Kirk owning libs on campus. The key is that the libs did not really come into the bait understanding Kirk’s beliefs or tactics, but Kirk understood theirs inside and out. This let Kirk win easily every time.
Morgan is a wiley veteran and won some parts of the interview. But overall he did not know how to handle Nick’s tactics at all.
In the end, it is turning into a debacle for Piers Morgan. As the dust settles, he comes across as the evil defender of a decrepit regime going after some dude’s dad. He was forced to pretend to not understand basic statistics, causing him to appear either stupid or malicious, depending on your gullibility. In many ways, he was the perfect heel employing dirty tactics to get an edge.
And to make matters worse, his decision to focus on the Catholic Nick’s virginity has backfired horribly, with everyone learning about his wife cheating on him with everyone from internet randos to the literal pool boy. How true are these accusations? I honestly don’t know, but they are already cemented into the hivemind’s collective beliefs.
I could really never stand the rambling nature of Nick’s show and never watched more than five minutes, but I agree with most of what he said on Tucker and Piers. On my scorecard, total groyper victory. Curious if others agree.
Just to nitpick: the Red Pill/PUA community, to the extent that it actually existed*, was pretty much a GenX phenomenon, and a ‘90s/’00s phenomenon in particular. All the prominent PUAs are GenXers. I’d be surprised to learn that there are any GenZers out there with any familiarity with it. According to Wikipedia, Morgan was born in 1965, so he’s more of a GenXer than a Boomer. I’d guess he’s more likely to be aware of Red Pill stuff than a young homosexual like Fuentes.
*In a practical sense it’s dead. I discussed it here.
I don't think so. All of these things existed before. For instance the PUA community has perfect overlap with rockstar or yuppie lifestyle from 1970s and 1980s. And of course the archetype is way older than that such as a dashing American soldier picking up young desperate girls in occupied Germany using chewing gum, can of beans and coffee, or even in 19th century literature where young noble or soldier picks up local village girls doing the deed in haystack, and leaving them with bastard babies. Or you can go even earlier with literature of conquistadors and pirates and sailors having harem of wives and lovers in every port - the OG "passport bros", such as no other than Hernán Cortés who allegedly killed his own Spanish wife for nagging him about his harem of lovers and concubines, and for being too low status as an official wife for his elevated position. Andrew Tate is just a pale image of this Chad. It is all over the literature either as a cautionary tale, but also as a tale of promise for young brave men.
It still is structurally quite different. PUA is based on the idea of a stranger seducting women entirely with social trickery. This wouldn't have worked historically; Men in a social group generally guarded the women against strangers, and the women themselves were often even more wary of strangers. Inside a social group where everyone knows everyone else already, PUA falls apart as well.
The examples you cite have primarily two mechanisms they used: Actual status, and (the threat of) violence. As a peasant, you couldn't openly dismiss a noble unless he very blatantly broke with established rules, the way you would with a stranger. The social status itself also, of course, made the nobles more alluring for the women, and peasant men that would otherwise guard them also might try to curry favor with the noble instead. Not to mention that more critical literature of these individuals often strongly insinuates that their allegedly awesome powers of seduction was to a large part just plain prostitution. This is proven at least partially true by what frequently followed; A peasant women with an accepted noble bastard child would usually get an alimony that far outstrips any other stream of income usually available to her. But also for sex more generally, if a noble offers a women coin upfront, and the sexual encounter is revealed against their wish & expectation, both parties can save face by claiming that it actually just was a seduction. The women becomes a hapless victim, the men an awesome seductor. Much better than a whore & john.
For the soldiers/conquistadors/pirates etc. taking advantage of their physical power, almost everything above holds true as well, just that the arrangement is usually less voluntary in nature.
I agree on 70/80 rockstar/yuppie life. Male hippies, even if they have a different political connotation, behaved in practice quite similar as well. It's all imo quite evidently downstream of the sexual revolution. PUA simply couldn't exist without it.
Thanks for the reply; I was about to make largely the same points but you were faster.
The explanation is much more mundane, I think. "American soldier picking up young desperate girls in occupied Germany using chewing gum, can of beans and coffee"? Well, yeah. This was happening during a famine. Elaborate pick-up skills weren't exactly needed.
Rockstars? A very tiny minority of the male population. Nothing to conclude about it in particular. There will always be men who stand out of the crowd for whatever reason, and will thus command a disproportionate amount of female attention. Nothing new about it.
The yuppies, as far as I know, were also a strictly GenX phenomenon, by and large. No argument about that on my part.
I'd add two more caveats. PUA as a phenomenon specifically entails men codifying pick-up artistry and teaching it to other men.
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