To Save the World, Save Yourself
Or, why DO men's self-improvement influencers tend to be right-wing?
I realize Substack is just OnlyFans for people with a rage fetish, but what I’m about to do here only works if everyone remains calm.
If you haven’t heard, political donors on the left are ready to throw millions at a personality they can turn into “the liberal Joe Rogan.” Or just a not-crazy Joe Rogan, an influencer who can relate to young dudes who like dude stuff without straying into “science is just woke propaganda.”
Fun fact: I fully believe there is an alternate universe where I wound up with that job a decade ago and if you’ve been following my career, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It would almost certainly have destroyed my life by now but if not, there’s one uncomfortable truth I’d be shouting into the mic every single day:
Saving the world and saving yourself are the same damned thing.
Before we continue, my new book is $2.99 in ebook form for the month of June. Click here or just search your device for I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom. Go check the reviews!
1. Actually, why is the men’s self-help space dominated by right-wingers?
Let’s say a co-worker tells you their son has really gotten into a men’s self-improvement YouTuber. You don’t want this teenager to get sucked down some kind of weird extremist pipeline, so you ask for clarification: What exactly does this masculine self-help influencer talk about?
“Mainly advice on fitness and finance,” says the parent, “and meeting girls, things like that. He likes to hunt, show off his cars, lift weights. He’s really big on personal responsibility and free speech.”
I think at this point, you would 100% assume the self-help guru is a right-wing grifter even though not one word about politics was mentioned, for the same reason you’d assume a jacked-up Dodge Ram flying an American flag belongs to a MAGA Republican. Even a cursory glance at the media landscape paints the picture:
The influencers giving life advice to young men tend to lean to the right and their audiences are becoming more right-wing as a result. When this is brought up on the left, they speak of brainwashing, of kids falling under the spell of lying charlatans who just tell them what they want to hear. And that’s definitely true!
Sometimes.
But then there’s this other thing, which is that if I offer tips on how an individual can improve their finances, health or relationships, then I’m also asserting that at least some of the world’s suffering is due to poor choices made by the victim. That assertion is inarguably true, but social media is mostly a place for arguing inarguable things. So if you publicly state that, say, DoorDash is a wasteful and inefficient use of a limited paycheck, there’ll be a wave of backlash from the left that adopts one or more of these four tactics:
A) Personally attacking the speaker, often by scanning their profile for hypocrisy (“This talk of financial responsibility is pretty rich coming from a guy who drives a Cybertruck!”)
B) Hiding behind a perfect hypothetical victim (“So I guess the disabled who can’t cook or leave the house should just starve?!?”)
C) Weaponizing the demographics of the speaker (“These upper class white men love to lecture us poors!”)
D) Implying that, due to systemic forces, personal habits play no role whatsoever in life outcomes (“Wages haven’t risen in fifty years, but my delivery burrito is the problem?!?”)
These are all just deflections to avoid addressing the simple truth of the initial statement, deployed in the name of advancing a belief that I think is not just wrong, but fatal to their movement:
“Any talk of individual self-improvement is just a distraction from the true goal, which is tearing down the system to replace it with one based on fairness.”
Because of this, any calls for dysfunctional individuals to get their shit together is now coded as right-wing, which is bad news for both the left and anyone with untogether shit.
2. Grifters are everywhere, but they’re not the whole story
I know what some of you are saying: “The reason you see such backlash to these stupidly obvious tips is that they’re at best bad faith attempts to shift blame, and at worst a strategy to rebrand fascism as self-improvement.”
I know and I understand. But the problem is the modern right has become very good at baiting the online left into taking positions the normies find ridiculous (“If I saw the police chasing an armed man down the street, I would help the latter get away! Also, I think owning rental property should be punishable by death!”). It’s true that, for example, right-wing influencers use violent crime as a racist dog whistle, but the entire point of the dog whistle is to trick the opposition into appearing to take a position that is repulsive to 98% of the population.
So for young men just coming onto the scene who aren’t familiar with all the subtext and gamesmanship, all they see is that one side seems to be totally rejecting objectively beneficial concepts like individual responsibility (“It’s secretly capitalist propaganda!”) free expression (“That’s just code for legalized hate speech!”) and patriotism (“Just another word for white supremacy!”). And here’s where my right-wing readers will say that the problem isn’t messaging, the problem is the left literally doesn’t believe in hard work or obeying the law, and they definitely don’t believe in self-improvement, instead embracing the bizarre belief that social stigma around a vice is always more destructive than the vice itself.
I don’t think this is accurate or fair. But I do think it is easy for an unbiased observer on social media—say, a young man new to politics—to get that impression and the left has to take responsibility for the impressions they create. An effective movement would not shy away from attacking unhealthy and destructive habits, loudly and at every opportunity. Not only is it weird for people to get angry at that, it shouldn’t even be controversial.
3. A movement is only as effective as its individuals’ collective habits
If I’m the liberal Joe Rogan, typing this from a much bigger house with a giant swimming pool I never, ever use, my central message is fairly straightforward:
There is no contradiction between improving the system and improving individuals, because it is literally impossible for dysfunctional individuals to run a functional system.
This seems insultingly obvious but it’s one of the most common fallacies out there, the implication that a relentless focus on getting fit or rich is a betrayal to the cause. If you have two groups about to face off in war (or sport, or business) and one side consists of relentless workers who are fanatical about discipline and efficiency, you would fully expect them to thrash an opposition whose leaders believe they have no right to judge any member’s lifestyle.
It is just factually true that if you want to defeat the bigots, then you need to be healthier than the bigots, in every way: mentally, emotionally, socially and, yes, financially. Whether you see the battle for the future as literal or metaphorical, there is no means of fighting that doesn’t depend on the relentless hard work of smart, talented, motivated, healthy, disciplined individuals.
So if one side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on the very concept of individual self-improvement, they’re going to win, because it’s going to be their people rising through the ranks of corporations, armies and police departments. They’ll be the ones accumulating the billions and dominating financial markets, they’ll have the most competent experts and lobbyists.
Therefore, any hope for a brighter future for the species does in fact begin with cleaning your room.
4. Protecting the vulnerable is hard work
“So you want to just throw all the sick and disabled under the bus by saying they have no value to the movement?” asks my imaginary leftist reply-guy. “That’s some Ayn Rand bullshit!”
I’m saying that making society better will require an unfathomable amount of labor, so if you want to welcome into your movement those who can’t work, then those who can have to work twice as hard. If you want the poor on your side, then those capable of generating wealth are going to have to generate a shitload of it. So what have you done today to help accumulate that wealth? “Acquiring riches is something only right-wing capitalists care about!” Then you’ve already lost. You think wars are fought without money?
I don’t even care how you’re choosing to fight, everything requires cash—politics, activism, mutual assistance. “But we want a world where that isn’t true!” I know, and accomplishing that will be the most expensive project in history. Wars cost billions, that kind of war will cost tens of trillions. Better get on that. Work more hours, take classes at night, learn how to invest, give the cash to the right causes. Get up earlier, work out, optimize everything, ditch anyone who drags you down. Make powerful friends. Become powerful yourself. The world is depending on you.
That’s what the liberal self-improvement guru would say, that the fascists love it when you sleep in, they celebrate when you waste your time on video games or dull your brain with weed and ruin your body with fast food. If future generations are suffering under climate disaster or right-wing authoritarians, they will not look kindly on how you chose to spend your time and energy. “But the game is rigged in the enemy’s favor! Most of them just inherited their wealth!” Then you’ll have to work even harder. Who told you this would be easy? Seriously, I want their names.
Because that’s what will sicken your suffering grandchildren the most: all your endless, endless excuses. The way you clung to your fragility, exaggerated it, weaponized it, dedicating all your verbal and reasoning skills to the task of batting away criticism. The way you and your cohorts enabled each other, posting memes about how sometimes you’re a hero just for making it out of bed in the morning, nobody calling out the bullshit because they themselves wanted to snooze under the same blanket.
Get up. Now. That’s what I would say if I was That Guy. Your enemy is laughing his ass off, your descendants will spit when they hear your name. You’re not doing this for you, you’re doing it because the world needs you. Not tomorrow. Now.
5. There is nothing unmanly about being progressive
“Wait, are you actually pretending that the MAGA weirdos are a bunch of high achievers? They’re the side with the incel losers, the trailer park racists and illiterate fundamentalists who demand science classes teach Adam and Eve. Andrew Tate is a clown who got rich by scamming low-IQ rubes.”
Okay, then why are they winning?
It’s partly because there are certain things that young men tend to find cool and they are attracted to whoever promises success with those things. Andrew Tate is six different kinds of monster but teens can see with their own eyes that he is objectively successful in ways most boys want to be: he has money and muscles and cool cars and hot babes. Men on the left are required to say that those aspirations are disgusting and barbaric but then will quietly acquire the hottest girlfriend they can find and buy the coolest stuff they can afford.
That’s the part a lot of prominent figures on the left forget, which is that other humans can observe what they do. The normies notice when celebrities insist global warming is an impending apocalypse and then take weekly trips on their private jets. They notice when actors sneer at the right’s obsession with crime and then retreat to mansions protected by gates and armed guards. They notice when pop stars sing about the evils of greed while living the exact lifestyle as the oil tycoons and tech billionaires. They notice when prison abolition activists fantasize about seeing Trump behind bars. So I think we can forgive them for thinking everyone secretly has the same life aspirations but that only one side is being honest about it.
Instead, I think a liberal Joe Rogan would hold up examples of progressive causes advanced by unapologetically masculine figures and would relentlessly attack the fallacy that there is any contradiction there. They would talk about Teddy Roosevelt, a man who divided his time between hunting big game and hunting corporate monopolies, a man who fought for the preservation of nature because why should we let a bunch of corporate weenies rob us of the masculine experience of hiking through untamed wilderness? A manly man should be free to go swimming or boating without getting testicle cancer from toxic runoff.
LBJ pushed the government to the left in ways Bernie Sanders can only fantasize about and also loved to talk about his gigantic cock (he had to have his pants custom made). The labor movement was led by tough guys with rough hands who stood tall in the face of both beatings and bullets. These were men who were loud and angry and intimidating, driven risk-takers who sought to dominate their enemies. Call it toxic if you want, but that’s the kind of shit that saves the world and—I cannot stress this enough—everybody knows it.
It’s not toxic to unapologetically embrace ravenous appetites and grand aspirations, to relentlessly pursue greatness and directly confront your opposition. Greed is good, actually, if it’s greed for a more just world, for resources strategically sucked away from the robber barons and crypto scammers who would use them to burn down the planet. We want good people to start businesses so that they will treat their employees well and force the greed monsters to do the same or risk losing all their talent.
You want people on your side who look cool and live beautiful lifestyles because living well is by far the best advertisement for whatever group you’re in. That’s right, kids: you have a duty to present the best version of yourself, to make others want to be like you, to make it clear that being on the side of the good guys comes with benefits. Emphasize your strengths. Show off how hard you work. “I don’t want to make other people feel bad about themselves!” That’s nice, but you’ve misdiagnosed the illness. If you don’t give young men something to aspire to as individuals, then somebody else will.
6. Criticism is not enemy action
Anyway, that’s the kind of thing I’d say if I was the liberal Joe Rogan, a job that I cannot do because I don’t have his energy and hate talking to people.
Statistically, even those who loved and reposted this article won’t read this far, so let me share a little something just between us, now that we’ve filtered this down to just the most loyal and patient:
Earlier, I said that this kind of criticism is met with four categories of attack but I actually left out the most common one, which is to accuse any critic of the left of secretly being an agent of the right. This is an offshoot of the tendency that got us into this mess, the habit of deflecting all criticism as aiding and abetting the enemy. “We have literal fascists conducting purges and you’re criticizing us for playing too much Baldur’s Gate?!?”
But this so dishonest that it’s not really worth rebutting and if you see someone trying it here, congratulate them on failing to read to the end. We’re all grownups, and we all understand that the coach screaming that you’re running the wrong direction is trying to help you win. It’s the guy telling you that you’re just fine the way you are, no matter how self-destructive your habits, who is steering you off a cliff.
And yes, all of this is relevant to the book, the one that is $2.99 in ebook form for the month of June. Click here or just search your device for I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom.
My personal anecdotal life experience has been that many liberals are “conservative” with themselves (working hard, limiting their resource use, always learning new skills) but liberal towards others, to the extent you indicated of not pushing for improvement or strengthening.
And many conservatives are liberal towards themselves and only themselves, insisting they got a hit when they were born on base, but pitching a fit at any indication that the games rules might change.
I don’t really view Rogan as a true right winger. He strikes me as a very insecure person who knows very little.
There is a fundamental truth in so much of what you are saying but I feel like there is one area I wish you could touch on more because you were so close to doing so.
Mainly, the untapped benefits of the left’s unique position to roll out a masculine expression and aggressive achievement standard that is rooted not just in a unified community but in the foundation of a unified self. And how much stronger that is. You began to show this with your examples of President Moose Man McBigSchlong, but there is such a deep well of untapped material here that I wish more people (who weren’t me—a female) would dive into.
There is such a misunderstanding on the extremist right and in toxic masculinity circles in general that to be capable of “masculine work” or “hardcore effort” you need to shut off and compartmentalize all aspects of yourself and deny aspects of yourself—and that this act is somehow proof of inner “strength.”
I was a wellness coach for over a decade at in a highly competitive corporate engineering office. Type A’s everywhere.
And let me tell you. This whole “compartmentalized man” bullshit is so far from the key to strength that it is viscerally enraging for me to hear anyone try to sell the idea. Real men broke trying to uphold this “ideal,” both while working at a desk and while working out in the field.
You want to know who managed to NOT have a mental breakdown when things came down to the wire? Who stayed calm under fire? Was it the guy who denied himself constantly? Sure. Maybe once.
But you want that guy to do that more than that? Good fucking luck.
You get two, maybe three massive project fails max before big man is out with burnout or down permanently from a heart attack.
The people that lasted? They didn’t shy away from shit. They didn’t block shit off-conflict, emotions, family, vices, community, health. They found balance and practiced flexibility within themselves and with their own desires, needs, and faults. THAT is resilience. You don’t pretend problems don’t exist and put up a wall. You fucking face them and either put up a wall with a DOOR together or make it unnecessary.
You don’t take a bullet and pretend you aren’t bleeding until you collapse if you want to win a war.
You take a bullet, and then strategize when, where, how, and why you are going to deal with it and you hope you know yourself well enough to choose which option will let you keep advancing for longer. The left is better equipped to provide that.
They got all that “woo-woo” EQ support and know how that when balanced PROPERLY actually bolsters men and masculine expression in a way that makes it long-sustaining, and yet still allows for the conscious choice, physical capacity, and mental discipline to go nuclear (and recover) if the situation requires.
The extreme right requires everyone to run on the dice-roll of black and white thinking: go nuclear or you are weak.
I wish more people would recognize that the masculine and feminine natures are just that, natures. The expression of BOTH of these natures is essential for every human and should be in balance and capable of being in flow so that it can be drawn and shifted to different ratios to meet the needs of whatever situation is at hand.
Anyhow. I liked your article a lot. It just made me think of these things. I fucking hate posts without nuance and was so happy to find yours had loads of it, so thank you for being awesome like that.
Sorry for my ranty tangent.