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I saw a thread about Louis Theroux's manosphere documentary. OP relates his teen daughter's alleged words and experiences to make a point about healthy values and teen male behaviours. The current verdict is that boys should have their screen times monitored or limited so they don't get corrupted by the manosphere, and raise them with feminist values. Okay. I agree with some of this. There are certainly incel adjacent online spaces that spiral into nihilism and hate. There are teenage boys with zero offline male role models to mainline this stuff and end up emerging more bitter than buff. Parental gatekeeping of violent porn, gambling apps, or extremist political content seems like basic risk management. If your heuristic is “anything that makes my daughter feel existentially unsafe is bad for my son too,” the monitoring prescription follows naturally. And yes, the generational digital literacy gap is real. Parents are often shocked their kids know the lore. I'd go further, I'm in favour of a blanket social media ban until they (both boys and girls) turn 16.
That being said. This comes just one day after Clavicular's recent clip with Leela Saraswat went viral. FWIW the "boyfriend" commented on Instagram that it was an old prom pic and they weren't dating. But are we allowed to question what message women's questionable dating choices (made of their free will with no external pressure) send to young boys and girls? We have a clip of an (allegedly) attached woman melting for a high value male on camera, yet the discourse pivots to “protect boys from the manosphere”. Here's the truth nuke: Clavicular is not an incel. He is living proof of the sexual marketplace the manosphere describes, which is heavily determined by looks, money, height, race, social status, etc. He pulls taken women with minimal effort. Young men are not “corrupted” into noticing these patterns. They notice them first (through lived failure) and then find the subculture that names the pattern instead of shaming them for noticing. So what is the problem with the manosphere? That it spreads dangerous lies and radicalises young men into subjugating and even killing women? Or that the rhetoric makes women look bad?
If it's the former, I need to see some evidence. Netflix's "Adolescence" made waves last year for catching the so called andrew tate problem that's apparently radicalising 13 year old boys into stabbing their classmates. Never mind the fact that homicide rates in the UK have been trending DOWN over the years, particularly against females. Are we allowed to discuss the harm caused by manufactured hysteria? If it's the latter, then you’re not protecting boys. You’re just delaying the day they notice the discrepancy between official feminist sermons and observed reality. And when they finally do notice, they’ll be angrier for the wasted years. And manosphere critics would tell us they've been "corrupted".
Lastly, since #notallmen was mentioned as a gotcha, can I point out how this "collective guilt" only flows one way? If every man should feel ashamed about the manosphere because we share genitals with them, what about the (overwhelmingly male) miners, linemen, firemen, welders, construction workers, road workers, steel workers, etc etc who commit to physically intensive and dangerous labour everyday to keep your lights on? Do we all get a collective male labour paycheck for that too, simply because we share genitals with the workers in these vocations? You don't need to hold yourself to consistent principles if you have sufficient social capital, like feminism does.
I've seen clips of the documentary. Not going to watch it.
Just seems like your standard scare piece, like they moved on from climate change, declining bee populations, or unhealthy fast food meals, and now its the big, scary red pill men who are corrupting the youth and we should be having a satanic panic about it RIGHT NOW.
What just viscerally puts me off is how there is, apparently, no sympathetic examination of what exactly appeals about these guys. Sure you can kind of handwave it "guys want to feel powerful, superior, and important, and these are effectively con men who prey upon those urges." Fine. Whatever. What conditions in the material world are such that young men are looking to these men as role models, what is missing in their lives that they seek to fill it with this?
And I make this point semi-often... they always fail to offer up a competing vision of true 'healthy' masculinity that men should aspire to instead. Or to point out a non-toxic male role model that actually engenders the values they suggest men ought to seek to represent.
This creates an inherently muddled message to men. "DON'T listen to the siren song of red pill grifters, DON'T give in to misogyny, DON'T become a parody of masculinity. That's VERY BAD."
"Okay okay, but what should I do instead?"
"Fuck you, figure it out yourself or die alone."
It is a critical problem if you ask me. There are very VERY few well-known, popular male figures who espouse and represent a form of masculinity that demonstrates an appealing and attainable path an otherwise average guy can follow to get a meaningful, fulfilling life. Mike Rowe tries but I also just recently learned that Mike Rowe and his long term romantic partner ARE NOT MARRIED and DO NOT HAVE KIDS. Dude.
And I'll hit on it one more time: Charlie Kirk fulfilled that function pretty well and got murdered, in cold blood, in broad daylight, on camera and there has been no real replacement forthcoming. Yes I'm mad.
And young men by and large don't seem to want to outsource this stuff to social media or celebrities. They'd rather have a father figure (ideally an actual father) in their life to personally guide them on the path and demonstrate a healthy, successful approach to romance, business, family, life. And its the fact that society fails to provide that for millions of men that we find ourselves where we are.
You can dip into the stats and studies, its beyond obvious that whatever impact social media influencers have on guys, you can assume there's double that impact occuring on the female of the species. Its not even really controversial to say that science confirms that women are more susceptible to groupthink, peer pressure, social shaming, and use conformity to maintain social status. Whatever you want to refer to the social mechanisms for consensus formation as, its women who are being guided by it.
Sabrina Carpenter gets thousands of women to sing a lyric about men being 'useless' and we don't get thinkpieces delving into what impact this has on impressionable young women.
And of course, if you're so worried about the takeaway men get from redpill culture, please, feel free to tell me how you think men should react to THAT. What exactly is the 'healthy' male response there?
Its like we have a culturally-enforced Women are Wonderful Effect. It doesn't matter if they're performing objectively anti-social, destructive behavior for all to see. Women can do no wrong therefore if women are doing it, it isn't wrong. If you say its wrong and level a critique, YOU are in fact the bad person.
So Louis Theroux tossing ANOTHER parcel of cultural baggage onto young men's backs is simply not going to help the situation much. And I daresay its emblematic of cowardice, to a certain extent. If he wanted to court controversy and invite discussion, do the approximate equivalent of this documentary on the female side, look into what they're pulling from tiktok, from the media they consume, and how THEY are being taken in by bad actors for personal profit at the expense of their mental health and relationship with the opposite gender.
I will now answer how to become a Man
At its root "healthy masculinity" is an existential crisis that every individual man sort of has to navigate on their own. You can take advice from others, and the path you follow will be similar to many others, but it will still be your own.
The question young men need to ask themselves and repeatedly try to answer is "What makes me feel like a man?" They need to find answers that they can believe in. Then they need to pursue those things and believe themselves a man by achieving them. Humans are social creatures and they pick up on the behavior and beliefs of others. Women will love the genuine "I'm a man" energy, almost regardless of where it comes from. Other men will pick up on it and respect you more. Young boys will listen to your commands.
It can be almost anything, but you'll certainly notice lots of trends and similarities. A man is a provider. A man is skilled at hard things. A man has a beautiful woman. A man is knowledgeable and intelligent. A man has a family. A man is powerful. A man is wealthy. A man has convictions. A man fights for a cause. A man appears effortlessly cool or funny. A man has a strong healthy body. A man is a good father.
The path to becoming a man can be given. Someone like Andrew Tate can get young men to believe that having beautiful women is what makes you a man, and he will teach you how to get those women. But its a weak path, for two reasons:
If you see being a man as having a beautiful woman, then you marry a beautiful woman and feel like the ultimate man. But slowly that woman ages, or her body is stressed and shredded by child birth. If she is no longer beautiful, are you still a man? No, you lose your man belief, and she notices and loses interest in you too. Both of you feel that the other has failed in the marriage, but you will both lack the words and ideas to describe it.
Instead you learn how to find many ways to be a man. A man is a provider, but what if you lose your job? A man has a healthy and strong body, but what if you get in a car accident and are maimed? This is why you must learn to forge a belief in yourself as a man for the things you achieve. A single path might become closed to you, so you need to know how to open new ones.
No it is not easy. Yes it takes a while. Yes the rewards are totally worth it.
Lets just take a quick audit, though.
Which of those things does western society actively deter and hobble young men from achieving these days? I'd argue almost all of them except the strong-healthy-body part, which is why so many men are now gym-maxxing, its the only unrestricted avenue left.
How much of the advice we do provide young men is actually outdated/useless under modern constraints? i.e. actively unhelpful and arguably setting them up for failure?
What if a prospective man surveys his potential paths to manhood, and concludes that the current structure of society is his primary obstacle to achieving it? What if he's correct?
What course of action does that man likely arrive at, assuming he doesn't give up and become a NEET on the spot.
And the whole problem with "the rewards are totally worth it" is that the big reward: wife, family, kids... those are objectively becoming less likely outcomes. Everywhere. So how do you convince these guys to get up and keep plugging away when they can observe with their own two eyes that it is increasingly unlikely that they'll get their preferred outcome unless something drastic changes?
Neither of these require any external input, western society does not deter or hobble you from doing them. It doesn't promote them, but that's the key underlying point. You need to do them on your own, because "figuring it out" is part of that skill. Competence is sexy.
Not going to weigh in on your other stuff because it's not necessarily wrong, but these two were glossed over and you are wrong about them.
Well that's two, then.
Of course, what's the incentive for doing them if the reward isn't there.
Men ARE in fact deterred from traditional paths that would lead to knowledge. A properly motivated guy can learn all he wants through self-driven research and reading and discussion... like we have here. He just won't get the official 'certificate' that signifies he is intelligent and knowledgeable.
But he will not earn much respect merely for his intelligence and knowledge unless he can convert that into money, which is also made very difficult these days.
And becoming skilled at 'hard things' ultimately depends on what barriers exist to acquiring the skills. And what, precisely, do we consider 'hard things' in terms of skill?
Existential self-satisfaction and discovery. Needing to be rewarded for doing/knowing/being good at things is the behavior of a child or a dog. Part of being a man is cutting your own path in the world for yourself, not because other told you to, rewarded you for doing so, told you: "you were are a good little boy", etc.
Yes, collectively society can be at tension with the individual in conferring certification of competence, and even that certification can degrade in actually being a clear signal of competence. Doesn't make that competence any less masculine.
For some things sure, but I disagree its difficult. Yes somethings like being handy around the house will not get you money, but being able to do them on your own displays competence, saves you money. People absolutely will respect you for it.
Idk, figure it out, its a personal journey towards being competent. For some its being handy, woodsy, crafty. For others its great partner dance skills. I don't know of anyone who has ever thought that being a Renaissance man was a negative. Giving people a template to follow destroys the credibility of the signal. You need to figure out what "being skilled or being competent" means to you on your own.
Cutting a path TOWARDS what?
There are some things that have to be terminal values or objective, or close to it, for people to keep charging on. Call if 'purpose,' or call it will to power, call it whatever, but there's some world-state, some emotional state, some actual place on the map that one is striving towards. What is the long-term payoff in this life?
I have engaged in a lot of 'discovery' over the past 10 years. Introspection, outrospection, research, experimentation, trying things, failing, and sometimes succeeding.
And it turns out that the factors that gives me the highest amount of existential contentment and self-satisfaction are having an attractive partner that loves me and having a genetic legacy in the world that I can expect will outlast me.
Bar none. I've had the experience, and I can say with zero doubt the happiest days of my life were having a woman that I expected to marry at my side. I am not guessing, I've been there, I know how it feels, I know how motivating it was, I can remember how happy it made me.
Likewise, turns out one of the most important things in my life is my little 18 month old niece. I can only imagine how important a child who is my direct genetic lineage would feel.
Amazingly, I also noticed that these are the exact things that the modern world has made much, much harder to achieve, for completely structural/economic/political reasons that are beyond any individual man's control.
I suspect I'm not the only one who has come to this sort or realization. Far from it.
Yeah sure. 10 years training Krav Maga 5 of those years teaching it. I can probably physically dominate on the order of 95% of the male population. If mating rights with local females came down to a contest of physical violence, I'm likely winning a whole harem for myself. But no, society is not (currently) arranged that way. How is it arranged?
Acquiring that skill was a hard thing. Maybe someday I'll have to us that skill. I'd love to never have to physically harm someone, but the capacity to do so is good.
But... why spend time building such skills. I point towards my earlier self-discovery. If I can't find a loving partner, if I can't pass on my genes and raise and protect children of my own, what in all that is good and holy do I do with these skills? If I'm destined to be alone for my whole life then I'm missing something that I am PAINFULLY AWARE would make me happier and more content.
And if developing further skills isn't appreciably increase my chances of getting this, then the motivation to put in the effort is simply not there.
Incentives exist, incentives drive behavior no matter your philosophy on the matter. If there's some reward for a behavior, you get more of it. Full stop.
And the current incentives are lacking for going out and doing 'great things' for a world that isn't going to let you achieve the favorable outcome that most people are biologically wired to desire.
Like, dude I don't, and most guys don't need someone holding their hand every step of the way. But support, positive reinforcement, and constructive criticism are sort of necessary. Rome wasn't built by a bunch of individual dudes self-maxxing. It was cooperation, coordination, building through team efforts (and some slavery), working TOGETHER rather than just saying "I dunno, you go figure out what you want to do." In short, men helping men figure out a unified purpose, and driving in unison towards that purpose for decades on end.
And when they didn't have enough women to go around, they banded together and guess what they did. And presumably your philosophy would approve of such path-carving. It shows gumption.
But it'd really help to make the whole process easier if we can at least agree that the social baseline is in fact slanted against men, and the factors that enabled and encouraged men to succeed not even 50 years ago have been knocked out from under them. AT LEAST BE HONEST ABOUT THE MAGNITUDE OF THE TASK, and then we can maybe acknowledge that solving it/overcoming it will require some serious cooperation between men, not just a bunch of individual guys wandering around 'figuring things out' ad hoc, with most of them failing, individually.
So, how can you cooperate/coordinate with other men to improve things?
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