I really related to your points about your views as a teenager. I grew up in a mirror image of that environment, fear mongering, christian persecution, etc etc. Very insightful writeup.
This is an excellent call to reality for an increasingly tiresome subgenre of Live Action Doomsaying. I will now turn away from the important part of the article, and towards Tucker Max. He's doing WHAT?! I always thought his spiral into madness would focus on either the exposure or debunking of sexual escapades.
I guess none of us are immune to the times. It feels like finding out Robert Hamburger joined the Heritage Foundation.
I interviewed Tucker Max once. At the time I was working for a blog that did humor for the legal community (I shit you not, that was the business plan). Anyway, I had to interview Tucker because he actually went to law school and the movie adaptation of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell was coming out.
After the interview, he invited me to the premiere of the movie and said to bring a friend. I brought my coworker. As soon as we got there we realized we had been invited to fill seats, that nobody at the premiere was actually a fan, and that his chief concern was making sure that the protestors outside the theater got coverage too (when your brand is misogyny it pays to have the right enemy, and some feminists were all too happy to play along).
I don't remember much of the movie... it was kind of whatever. But I do remember the after party. He was kinda toasted and he wobbled over to us to chat. We talked for bit and the long and the short of it was that the way he saw it, his bad boy image was just a hustle. Sure, there was some truth to his persona, but it was all calculated, and according to him, the schtick getting a little old. Or, maybe he was getting a little old.
Would I have predicted thatTucker would move along to a prepper hustle? Probably not, but only because Neil Strauss was already pivoting his brand in that direction at the time. Then again, Tucker's brand back then was kind of the cosplay version of what Neil Strauss was doing with The Game. Point is, in retrospect it seems entirely predictable that two dudes who got famous portraying a certain type of masculinity would pivot to a prepper bro aesthetic as they got older.
Tucker hated the pick-up artist scene (Neil Strauss excluded). The fastest way to get on his bad side was to compare him to Mystery or start talking about cold approaching and negging or whatever.
The whole point of PUA was that it was dateless nerds trying to get laid by hacking social interactions. That wasn't Tucker: he was just naturally good with women. He kind of existed in the same circles, but he regarded them as lame.
I think Neil Strauss may have been the same: he mainly valued PUA because it gave him material for a book, IMO.
That insanity is absolutely worth a Situation Normal riff. I always thought wearing the crown of the manosphere would be entertaining, if gaudy. I suppose it sits heavy on the head.
I could probably do an entire book about the heavy crown of the manosphere (god I love this name, and I'm totally stealing it). One of my first gigs was as a copywriter for AskMen.com. I think I wrote under 50-plus pen names when it was all said and done. After that I moved on to a reporter job at the second best trade pub in Porn Valley. And after that I spent some time writing features for Penthouse; none of them about sex, but all of them about being a certain kind of man. It was around that time that I met Tucker.
Tucker Max is close to being a diagnosable narcissist and he's admitted it several times.
His whole thing from day 1 is that he's an edgy maverick upstart who's going to overthrow the corrupt system. He had one early success that seemed to prove him right. In the early 2000s he posted his short stories on his website (after they were rejected by literally the entirety of mainstream publishing - he had hundreds of rejection letters), and they became a viral craze. He got a book deal off the back of that and sold millions of copies.
This success never happened again for him.
He started a publishing company called Rudius Media with the same "me against the system" ethos. It failed. He wrote and produced a movie about his stories. It bombed.
Since then, he's had his fingers in a lot of pies: entrepeneurship, angel investing, cowriting books. He's had mixed success. But always, there's the same tone in his writing. "The institution is corrupt. I'm a brilliant genius who's going to light it on fire and piss on the ashes."
He's a clever man in some respects and I've learned a lot from him. But it always seems to be the same thought process. "That stuff I was doing ten years ago? I was an idiot kid who didn't know what he was doing. Not like now. This time, I've got it figured out."
That bit about believing that liberals hated Christianity really resonated. I grew up in a similarly conservative and religious environment and was very conservative even through college, and believing that we were fighting for our spiritual lives against people who hated us was such a driving factor. We believed liberals were addicted to sin and hated our goodness so they’d stop at nothing to dismantle our faith, even betraying our country so that godless communists could take over and tear our churches down. As a kid I wouldn’t daydream about fantasy battles between orcs and humans, I’d daydream about the epic last stand that the Last Christian City would make against the nonbelievers in the war that they would obviously eventually declare against us.
This article is a good reality check, though. I often find that, as a result of having been immersed in that ideology and understanding what fuels it, I have zero respect for it and very little tolerance for the people who are still in it. Which is great for making me feel superior but not so good for pulling other people out of it.
Well…when they SAY they hateChristians, some people are gonna believe them, because they haven’t realized that this subset of libs actually hates their parents.
And yes, everyone ELSE already knows your ilk has a superiority complex…kinda fun that you’re now admitting it.
As I remind you lot and the Christians, Christians don’t have a monopoly on fighting communism, on insisting on informed consent and wanting intrusive homunculi to stay off our lawns.
“Any hint of nuance or ambivalence is at best a sign of weakness, at worst an indication of monsterhood.”
I have really, really felt this, in a painful way, so I appreciate this post. I got kicked out of events and clubs because I refused to display pronouns when they were required. Clearly, everyone thought, I was disagreeing because I didn’t believe in politics around pronouns, and if I didn’t believe in politics around pronouns, I must hate trans people or even all left wingers. The actual reason was that I was in the closet, and wearing a badge with feminine pronouns made me feel terrible. I couldn’t tell anyone this because I wasn’t ready to come out.
So, knowing this now, do you speak out against the pronoun craze? Because there’s nothing more obnoxious and off putting than someone I just met asking me what my pronouns are
Yes and no. An individual asking, I’ve never had an issue with because before I was ready to change pronouns, people accepted it if the question is shrugged off with “eh whatever is fine” so I neither had to give dysphoric pronouns or commit to ones I wasn’t ready for, and now that I am out, it’s a very helpful question. I am happy with people trying to respect me.
The bigger issue is organizations requiring presentation, which I have spoken out about multiple times, requesting 1) that the organization asks first, not just assigning pronouns and 2) that “any” and blank are both options. I’ve received mixed feedback, but one of the orgs I participate in, almost half of our active members decided to put down “any” so it was a very popular suggestion there while also not alienating trans members that are out. The blank option DOES require people to act in good faith, because it would be pretty easy for a situation to occur where a trans person is the only person that doesn’t take a blank option even though nearly everyone Does have preferred pronouns and pronouns that are dysphoric/would make them uncomfortable, but that’s kind of the whole point here: that people can in fact bring a variety of perspectives to the table and still act in good faith.
It’s so nice to hear a voice of reason from time to time. It’s why I read Cracked back in the day and listened to the podcast, it helped keep me reasonable. Also, after years of consuming all of your content for free, I finally went ahead and bought all of your books. Now I’ll have something to do as I slowly starve to death in the post
I have to say, America has done trade business with so many international regimes that commit atrocities throughout the years, that the idea of being able to turn a blind eye to someone's beliefs so that they can provide for us should be old hat by now. Still, the main difference is that, say, China or Saudi Arabia do not directly make laws for us, at best only indirectly influencing our society via commerce, whereas if someone Red or Blue is providing you electricity and you don't agree with them, they still get to vote for the politicians that run America, and your obligatory patronage keeps them alive enough to do just that. I can't help but wonder if there is a third option, neither the meme-based "Cold Civil War" of discourse, nor a catastrophically violent actual Civil War, where America could perform a no-fault, amicable divorce, keeping Red's/Blue's politics out of Blue's/Red's laws while still maintaining a working relationship of basic interactions with each other. It would take a monumental restructuring of government and some kind of diaspora the likes of which haven't been seen in centuries, but it'd be preferable to bloodshed. As long as the Cold Civil War never leaves the meme-ing stage, it won't be necessary, but after something like January 6th, I worry that we've already entered the violent uprising stage, albeit small-scale and ineffectual, but it could always get worse.
Yes, a formalized divorce/separation is IMO the only non bloody way out of this…but I don’t think Team Blue will let anyone leave. Their world doesn’t have an outside and even the ostensibly reasonable ones wanna convert us into them while talking about how awesome diversity is
I think "Team Whoever Is In Power Currently" wouldn't let the other leave. If the Blues have power, like they do now, and say Texas or Mississippi tries to secede, they'd be sending the troops there immediately. If team Red is in power and say California or Massachusetts tries to secede, they'd send their troops. I think it would be less about trying to convert people to their worldview and more about not trying to appear weak when the other side is trying to split.
It looks this way because this is how war in the 21st century looks. Digital misinformation campaigns, low intensity conflict, proxy wars. It’s a LARP to horde ammo and imagine it’ll turn into urban combat, but it’s pure cope to imagine it’s not already upon us.
Yes, both sides do this, but one side is far, FAR more guilty of this than the other. Go ahead and guess which side!
Issue is that the Left just doesn't have the same brainwashing apparatus (Fox News, conservative radio, Church, etc) that the Right does. That, and the extremes on the Left aren't as monolithic as the Right extremes.
Not surprised to find this braindead take. I must have seen a hundred comments all over the Internet saying: "yeah both sides are similar because we're all humans...BUT rightwingers are waaaay more likely to be brainwashed dumbdumbs".
You're kind of missing the point of the article, my friend.
Antifa members sent a homeless guy I knew death threats, and death threats are extreme pointed at anyone, not just homeless people of whatever political view. One of my family members was involved; we were terrified.
They are organizations, they have leaders and organizers. Saying that Antifa is an idea is completely dishonest. They have symbols, memberships, book clubs, multiple branches in different states, etc.
Those antifascists are communists or anarchists, not merely opposed to fascism. Boring taking points, bro.
They have FUNDING (bail money) and LAWYERS. Follow that food chain and you'll know just who owns and directs operations like "BLM" or "Antifa". Try the FBI and Soros-funded NGOs for a start. Then add in the law firms and the corrupt local and state police departments. Especially the FOP and the "Prince Hall" lodges. None of this alleged "left" movie production could take place without the salaries, grants, legal support and collaboration from police departments. Do a Google image search on "Derek Chauvin" and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.
Oh, I see, you're a troll. But I'll play along. Since you say they're an organization, go ahead and give me their headquarter/locations, hierarchy; along with names of their main leaders and how/where I can donate to them. If they're an organization as you say, it should be simple. Maybe your google skills are better than mine, since I couldn't find zilch.
My serious reply... sounds like you're scared of a boogeyman, same thing Pargin says is at the root of all this. Again, thank you for proving my point!
I grew so weary of the non-stop apocalypse movies/shows/etc over a decade ago (everyone's going to be the hero!) - but at the same time, those same fantasies inspired me to make a zombie flick that my buddies described as "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" crossed with "Return of the Living Dead" sprinkled with Coen Bros humor.
Jason, we MUST connect. I hit ur article this morning here (https://substack.com/inbox/post/41774853) I see no way to patreon or substack u to get these words in your face, so that's why I am trying X now to accomplish that. These techBros make it miserable to have real communication happen, but we know why, you and I and many of us here in the hinter Jungles of Nepal, Brazil, Thailand, etc. So please, let's connect somehow and have a real conversation about things, I would LOVE that.
I really related to your points about your views as a teenager. I grew up in a mirror image of that environment, fear mongering, christian persecution, etc etc. Very insightful writeup.
This is an excellent call to reality for an increasingly tiresome subgenre of Live Action Doomsaying. I will now turn away from the important part of the article, and towards Tucker Max. He's doing WHAT?! I always thought his spiral into madness would focus on either the exposure or debunking of sexual escapades.
I guess none of us are immune to the times. It feels like finding out Robert Hamburger joined the Heritage Foundation.
I interviewed Tucker Max once. At the time I was working for a blog that did humor for the legal community (I shit you not, that was the business plan). Anyway, I had to interview Tucker because he actually went to law school and the movie adaptation of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell was coming out.
After the interview, he invited me to the premiere of the movie and said to bring a friend. I brought my coworker. As soon as we got there we realized we had been invited to fill seats, that nobody at the premiere was actually a fan, and that his chief concern was making sure that the protestors outside the theater got coverage too (when your brand is misogyny it pays to have the right enemy, and some feminists were all too happy to play along).
I don't remember much of the movie... it was kind of whatever. But I do remember the after party. He was kinda toasted and he wobbled over to us to chat. We talked for bit and the long and the short of it was that the way he saw it, his bad boy image was just a hustle. Sure, there was some truth to his persona, but it was all calculated, and according to him, the schtick getting a little old. Or, maybe he was getting a little old.
Would I have predicted thatTucker would move along to a prepper hustle? Probably not, but only because Neil Strauss was already pivoting his brand in that direction at the time. Then again, Tucker's brand back then was kind of the cosplay version of what Neil Strauss was doing with The Game. Point is, in retrospect it seems entirely predictable that two dudes who got famous portraying a certain type of masculinity would pivot to a prepper bro aesthetic as they got older.
Tucker hated the pick-up artist scene (Neil Strauss excluded). The fastest way to get on his bad side was to compare him to Mystery or start talking about cold approaching and negging or whatever.
The whole point of PUA was that it was dateless nerds trying to get laid by hacking social interactions. That wasn't Tucker: he was just naturally good with women. He kind of existed in the same circles, but he regarded them as lame.
I think Neil Strauss may have been the same: he mainly valued PUA because it gave him material for a book, IMO.
That insanity is absolutely worth a Situation Normal riff. I always thought wearing the crown of the manosphere would be entertaining, if gaudy. I suppose it sits heavy on the head.
I could probably do an entire book about the heavy crown of the manosphere (god I love this name, and I'm totally stealing it). One of my first gigs was as a copywriter for AskMen.com. I think I wrote under 50-plus pen names when it was all said and done. After that I moved on to a reporter job at the second best trade pub in Porn Valley. And after that I spent some time writing features for Penthouse; none of them about sex, but all of them about being a certain kind of man. It was around that time that I met Tucker.
Tucker Max is close to being a diagnosable narcissist and he's admitted it several times.
His whole thing from day 1 is that he's an edgy maverick upstart who's going to overthrow the corrupt system. He had one early success that seemed to prove him right. In the early 2000s he posted his short stories on his website (after they were rejected by literally the entirety of mainstream publishing - he had hundreds of rejection letters), and they became a viral craze. He got a book deal off the back of that and sold millions of copies.
This success never happened again for him.
He started a publishing company called Rudius Media with the same "me against the system" ethos. It failed. He wrote and produced a movie about his stories. It bombed.
Since then, he's had his fingers in a lot of pies: entrepeneurship, angel investing, cowriting books. He's had mixed success. But always, there's the same tone in his writing. "The institution is corrupt. I'm a brilliant genius who's going to light it on fire and piss on the ashes."
He's a clever man in some respects and I've learned a lot from him. But it always seems to be the same thought process. "That stuff I was doing ten years ago? I was an idiot kid who didn't know what he was doing. Not like now. This time, I've got it figured out."
That bit about believing that liberals hated Christianity really resonated. I grew up in a similarly conservative and religious environment and was very conservative even through college, and believing that we were fighting for our spiritual lives against people who hated us was such a driving factor. We believed liberals were addicted to sin and hated our goodness so they’d stop at nothing to dismantle our faith, even betraying our country so that godless communists could take over and tear our churches down. As a kid I wouldn’t daydream about fantasy battles between orcs and humans, I’d daydream about the epic last stand that the Last Christian City would make against the nonbelievers in the war that they would obviously eventually declare against us.
This article is a good reality check, though. I often find that, as a result of having been immersed in that ideology and understanding what fuels it, I have zero respect for it and very little tolerance for the people who are still in it. Which is great for making me feel superior but not so good for pulling other people out of it.
Well…when they SAY they hateChristians, some people are gonna believe them, because they haven’t realized that this subset of libs actually hates their parents.
And yes, everyone ELSE already knows your ilk has a superiority complex…kinda fun that you’re now admitting it.
As I remind you lot and the Christians, Christians don’t have a monopoly on fighting communism, on insisting on informed consent and wanting intrusive homunculi to stay off our lawns.
I also grew up this way and changed my thinking. It's possible, but not always easy.
“Any hint of nuance or ambivalence is at best a sign of weakness, at worst an indication of monsterhood.”
I have really, really felt this, in a painful way, so I appreciate this post. I got kicked out of events and clubs because I refused to display pronouns when they were required. Clearly, everyone thought, I was disagreeing because I didn’t believe in politics around pronouns, and if I didn’t believe in politics around pronouns, I must hate trans people or even all left wingers. The actual reason was that I was in the closet, and wearing a badge with feminine pronouns made me feel terrible. I couldn’t tell anyone this because I wasn’t ready to come out.
So, knowing this now, do you speak out against the pronoun craze? Because there’s nothing more obnoxious and off putting than someone I just met asking me what my pronouns are
Yes and no. An individual asking, I’ve never had an issue with because before I was ready to change pronouns, people accepted it if the question is shrugged off with “eh whatever is fine” so I neither had to give dysphoric pronouns or commit to ones I wasn’t ready for, and now that I am out, it’s a very helpful question. I am happy with people trying to respect me.
The bigger issue is organizations requiring presentation, which I have spoken out about multiple times, requesting 1) that the organization asks first, not just assigning pronouns and 2) that “any” and blank are both options. I’ve received mixed feedback, but one of the orgs I participate in, almost half of our active members decided to put down “any” so it was a very popular suggestion there while also not alienating trans members that are out. The blank option DOES require people to act in good faith, because it would be pretty easy for a situation to occur where a trans person is the only person that doesn’t take a blank option even though nearly everyone Does have preferred pronouns and pronouns that are dysphoric/would make them uncomfortable, but that’s kind of the whole point here: that people can in fact bring a variety of perspectives to the table and still act in good faith.
It’s so nice to hear a voice of reason from time to time. It’s why I read Cracked back in the day and listened to the podcast, it helped keep me reasonable. Also, after years of consuming all of your content for free, I finally went ahead and bought all of your books. Now I’ll have something to do as I slowly starve to death in the post
CWII wasteland, so thanks for that!
This Big Butt thinks this article was great and I want to show this to everyone.
"Civil War preenactor " made me laugh very hard.
Having fun comparing your observations with Richard Hofstadter's in The Paranoid Style in American Politics, written half a century ago. Hoo boy.
[and now back to chewing the carpet]
I have to say, America has done trade business with so many international regimes that commit atrocities throughout the years, that the idea of being able to turn a blind eye to someone's beliefs so that they can provide for us should be old hat by now. Still, the main difference is that, say, China or Saudi Arabia do not directly make laws for us, at best only indirectly influencing our society via commerce, whereas if someone Red or Blue is providing you electricity and you don't agree with them, they still get to vote for the politicians that run America, and your obligatory patronage keeps them alive enough to do just that. I can't help but wonder if there is a third option, neither the meme-based "Cold Civil War" of discourse, nor a catastrophically violent actual Civil War, where America could perform a no-fault, amicable divorce, keeping Red's/Blue's politics out of Blue's/Red's laws while still maintaining a working relationship of basic interactions with each other. It would take a monumental restructuring of government and some kind of diaspora the likes of which haven't been seen in centuries, but it'd be preferable to bloodshed. As long as the Cold Civil War never leaves the meme-ing stage, it won't be necessary, but after something like January 6th, I worry that we've already entered the violent uprising stage, albeit small-scale and ineffectual, but it could always get worse.
You're describing the troubles. Lots of low level fighting for a long time based on historical grievances.
Yes, a formalized divorce/separation is IMO the only non bloody way out of this…but I don’t think Team Blue will let anyone leave. Their world doesn’t have an outside and even the ostensibly reasonable ones wanna convert us into them while talking about how awesome diversity is
I think "Team Whoever Is In Power Currently" wouldn't let the other leave. If the Blues have power, like they do now, and say Texas or Mississippi tries to secede, they'd be sending the troops there immediately. If team Red is in power and say California or Massachusetts tries to secede, they'd send their troops. I think it would be less about trying to convert people to their worldview and more about not trying to appear weak when the other side is trying to split.
The red base rather wishes California would just secede already and would likely have a YUGE party 🤷🏻♀️
Not so for the blue base 👁
But yeah, politicians don’t always represent or respect the base, soooo it all gets stupid
We’re already in a civil war.
It looks this way because this is how war in the 21st century looks. Digital misinformation campaigns, low intensity conflict, proxy wars. It’s a LARP to horde ammo and imagine it’ll turn into urban combat, but it’s pure cope to imagine it’s not already upon us.
Excellent article and incredibly similar to my experience growing up in Middle Tennessee.
Yes, both sides do this, but one side is far, FAR more guilty of this than the other. Go ahead and guess which side!
Issue is that the Left just doesn't have the same brainwashing apparatus (Fox News, conservative radio, Church, etc) that the Right does. That, and the extremes on the Left aren't as monolithic as the Right extremes.
Not surprised to find this braindead take. I must have seen a hundred comments all over the Internet saying: "yeah both sides are similar because we're all humans...BUT rightwingers are waaaay more likely to be brainwashed dumbdumbs".
You're kind of missing the point of the article, my friend.
Thank you for proving my point with the personal attack.
And my point was that the article glosses over MY point. The examples given of the extreme Left are far more anodyne than those of the Right.
Yeah Antifa and BLM are totally normal and calm organizations.
Those aren't *actual* organizations with any sort of structure. They're affinities. Also, being against fascism isn't really all that extreme, IMO.
Antifa members sent a homeless guy I knew death threats, and death threats are extreme pointed at anyone, not just homeless people of whatever political view. One of my family members was involved; we were terrified.
They are organizations, they have leaders and organizers. Saying that Antifa is an idea is completely dishonest. They have symbols, memberships, book clubs, multiple branches in different states, etc.
Those antifascists are communists or anarchists, not merely opposed to fascism. Boring taking points, bro.
They have FUNDING (bail money) and LAWYERS. Follow that food chain and you'll know just who owns and directs operations like "BLM" or "Antifa". Try the FBI and Soros-funded NGOs for a start. Then add in the law firms and the corrupt local and state police departments. Especially the FOP and the "Prince Hall" lodges. None of this alleged "left" movie production could take place without the salaries, grants, legal support and collaboration from police departments. Do a Google image search on "Derek Chauvin" and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.
Oh, I see, you're a troll. But I'll play along. Since you say they're an organization, go ahead and give me their headquarter/locations, hierarchy; along with names of their main leaders and how/where I can donate to them. If they're an organization as you say, it should be simple. Maybe your google skills are better than mine, since I couldn't find zilch.
My serious reply... sounds like you're scared of a boogeyman, same thing Pargin says is at the root of all this. Again, thank you for proving my point!
The left has CNN, MSNBC & universities 🙄
Thank you for this, more than I can say.
I grew so weary of the non-stop apocalypse movies/shows/etc over a decade ago (everyone's going to be the hero!) - but at the same time, those same fantasies inspired me to make a zombie flick that my buddies described as "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" crossed with "Return of the Living Dead" sprinkled with Coen Bros humor.
Jason, we MUST connect. I hit ur article this morning here (https://substack.com/inbox/post/41774853) I see no way to patreon or substack u to get these words in your face, so that's why I am trying X now to accomplish that. These techBros make it miserable to have real communication happen, but we know why, you and I and many of us here in the hinter Jungles of Nepal, Brazil, Thailand, etc. So please, let's connect somehow and have a real conversation about things, I would LOVE that.