The ‘Manosphere’ Is Dead? Good – Let’s Celebrate!

Earlier this week Jack Murphy, a man who has been at the forefront of this space for a long time, both as author of Democrat to Deplorable, and as a regular speaker for the 21 Convention, put out a Tweet announcing the death of the ‘manosphere’. You can read it below:

I’d woken up blissfully unaware of this development, but as soon as I’d been appraised of the news by Jack’s tweet, far from grieving, I felt my heart lifting with a lightness that I had not experienced for some time.

If the manosphere really is dead then I hope that you will all join me in celebrating.

Before I explore this further, though, I should make it clear that this is not an essay that I’ve ever particularly wanted to write. Not because it involves the demise of a venerable and loved institution, but rather, because addresses a meta-level topic which is, quite frankly, of minimal interest to any normal functioning human adult male outside a very small coterie who spend far too much time online.

This is one of the many, many problems with the manosphere – it’s become self-reflexive. Its subject of interest is no longer helping men – which was surely the point in the first place – but itself.

Which is a nonsense.

The Manosphere

I guess I should now attempt to define precisely what ‘the manosphere’ is, for the benefit of those few readers who’ve stumbled across this and have no idea what the hell I’m talking about. Simply, the ‘manosphere’ (which, as has been pointed out frequently, sounds like a gay discotheque) is a very loose collective of men who, via diverse blogs, YouTube channels, Twitter accounts, forums, books and other platforms, share self-improvement ideas for other guys. These ideas are primarily (but not exclusively) about relationships with women, intersexual dynamics, dating, marriage, fitness, finance, business, motivation, confidence, as well as (increasingly) politics and religion.

By virtue of the fact that I have been writing about dating for the last few years, as well as general self-development and business, and because my audience is predominantly male, I have, I suppose, become a part of the manosphere myself. (Certainly, I was Chief Game Writer for Roosh’s website Return of Kings for several years, which more than qualifies me).

But my ‘involvement’ is indicative of the problematic nature of the whole entity, since I have very little in common with many of the ‘leading lights’ in the space, and have no desire to be associated with some of them at all, despite the fact we both target broadly the same audience.

I’m sure these guys feel the same way about me – which is exactly why thinking of ‘the manosphere’ as a ‘thing’ in the first place is a mistake. As I said, it is at most a very loose collective of guys tailoring content to a male audience. And that being the case, can ‘it’ properly be said to be dead or alive?

Take my content, for example. I’ve written eleven books (with the twelfth of the way), nine of which have been about game, with the others covering productivity and self-development. I’ve also written hundreds of articles about dating, both for ROK and for this site. Since all of this material has been aimed at men, my methods of promotion – Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and so on – have garnered a male audience who are interested in this content from me as well as from other creators in the space. In this way, I have (for some) been assimilated into the ‘sphere.

While I don’t have any huge problem with this, the fact remains that my work speaks for itself, with or without the meta tag. A guy is either going to pick up 10X Happiness, Zero Bullshit and get something out of it, or he isn’t. My being part of a collective or not makes no difference. And even if the whole ‘manosphere’ really did go up in smoke tomorrow I would continue to write my articles and sell my books to those guys who perceive value in them.

In other words, my relationship with my audience (or more accurately, my work’s relationship with its audience), while doubtless bolstered by my association with the collective, operates entirely independently of it.

And exactly the same can be said of any other content creator’s output – you either get something out of it or you don’t. Rollo’s The Rational Male series. Black Label Logic’s Gendernomics books. Tom Torero’s videos and Street Hustle book. They all either help you or not, regardless of whatever is going on at a higher level in the space.

Valuable Content

This is why I Tweeted something along these lines the other day: ‘the debate around whether the manosphere is dead is irrelevant. Guys will continue to seek out content that helps them regardless‘. What this means on a practical level is that I will still find The Rational Male a useful resource no matter how many times Anthony ‘Dream’ Johnson of the 21 Convention calls Rollo ‘a traitor’ or ‘the fraudfather’ These slurs – which, for the record, I regard as risible – are of no interest to me. If I want to better understand the workings of the sexual marketplace I will read Rollo’s work because he provides the best and most rigorous analysis of it on the market.

If Johnson, or one of the 21 Convention guys comes up with something better, then I’ll happily consume that as well.

This is an important point. All of us are consumers and in that role we are self-interested. If I want to learn how to fix a bicycle puncture I’ll search on YouTube until I find the best content creator on bike repairs that I can and watch their videos in order to solve my problem. If the solution presented works, I’m happy. The fact that there might be people in the background screaming that ‘the bicycle puncture repair video space is dead’ is irrelevant. I probably wouldn’t even notice. Because that is a meta-level issue which has no bearing at all on my very selfish problem.

Consumers in the men’s self-help space are no different. They come to the space with problems – with girls, fitness, and living a purposeful life – seeking solutions. Few are bothered about anything else. Which is why the recent furore around Rollo’s ejection from the 21 Convention is so ridiculous. Apart from a small number of people with too much time on their hands who enjoy the drama, the implosion and its fallout has provided precisely zero value to anyone.

It’s always important to think about the newcomer in any space – well, how is the new guy who just wants to get a girlfriend supposed to react to Tweet after Tweet of ADJ lambasting Rollo? How does that help him with his problem?

Just who is all of this stuff actually serving?

Red Pill v Trad  / Purple Pill

By now it should be apparent that I’m making a strong case for value over drama, and indeed, over a nebulous entity like ‘the manosphere’. Which leads me on to what might broadly be described as the trad / purple pill camp. Because let’s be clear: the schism we have seen erupt and then solidify in recent weeks has been between those who adhere to a belief that ‘red pill ideas’ (basically, Darwinian evo-psych) underpin sexual dynamics, and those who don’t.

What we have witnessed is a propulsive and violent uprising against what was the perceived established order – and this uprising has found its focus in an attempt to dethrone Rollo Tomassi as the ‘godfather of the manosphere’.

Now, let me be clear – as a good libertine I despise hierarchies and I do my best to ignore them. And so I am unsympathetic to the idea that Rollo was ‘the‘ leader in the space anyway. He is a great writer – but he is one of many. There is no structured lineage here – anyone can start a blog, anyone can hit publish, and everyone deserves a hearing if their work is good enough. 

But that said, here’s the thing – Rollo is without question the best in his field. There is simply no argument on that point. There are plenty of revisionists out there who claim that he has only refined what others have produced, or that Pook / Good-Looking Loser (?!) or [[INSERT YOUR PREFERRED GURU’S NAME HERE]] ‘was better anyway‘. But the truth is that no one has collated, synthesised and presented an understanding of the sexual marketplace in reference to the male experience better than Rollo, on his blog, and in his books. If anyone disagrees they are welcome to present a counter-example, but I’ve been around these parts for a while, and I don’t believe one exists.

Which leads me back to the 21 Con / trad / purple guys: OK, you have your scalp. Rollo has been removed from 21 Con. Now you are all crowing on Twitter about the death of the manosphere, of the ‘red pill’ and so on. So here’s my question: what do you have to offer in its place?

The difficulty for these figures is that Rollo has set the bar very high. The reason that Rollo is regarded as ‘the godfather’ is not because he is some megalomaniacal control freak, but simply because his work has resonated deeply with a great many men.

How many countless accounts have you seen of guys saying ‘as soon as I read Rollo’s work I thought “yes! Now I understand why she acted like that” / “why my relationship ended” / “why she cheated on me”, etc’?

And that spark of recognition has been extremely important for a great many men – that sudden realisation that one is not alone, that one is not going mad, that perhaps the messages that the mainstream media has promulgated were fallacious. And most importantly, now that one can see the situation clearly, one has a sense of how to proceed in an efficacious manner.

The point about mainstream messaging is key here, of course. The reason most men found ‘the manosphere’ in the first place is because the advice they got from the mainstream failed them, leaving them sexless and depressed, or divorced and depressed, or worse. What the red pill has provided them with is a new paradigm – a fresh understanding of those dynamics that affect the most intimate aspects of their lives.

Mainstream

In contrast, the trad / purple guys offer nothing that differs very substantially from mainstream advice. Read the Twitter feeds of prominent figures like AJA Cortes, Pat Stedman, Artful Future and so on and what do you get? Aside from belligerence and self-righteousness, it’s a fairly bland diet of ‘you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else’; ‘vet her carefully before you commit and monogamy will be a breeze’; ‘if you don’t commit, you are weak / broken’, ‘date for a higher purpose’; ‘marriage is right because it is for the betterment of society’ and so on.

These men are not necessarily ill-intentioned, but the problem is that the advice feels pretty much identical to that doled out to men by countless Hollywood movies, pop songs, romantic novels and MSM feel-good figures like Oprah, Dr Phil etc. And to recap, the reason a great many men sought out ‘the manosphere’ in the first place is because such advice led them to make life choices which did not end well for them.

Shorn of its red pill content, it’s very difficult to see the point of the 21 Convention in its current form – until ADJ pivots fully to politics, that is. In the past 21 Studios have put out some great videos, but of course it all comes down to the talent they choose to promote, or can attract. Why anyone would pay to see a group of cargo short-attired men fly the flag for female-approved dating advice is beyond me. George Bruno – apparently a leading light in the organisation – counsels men that they should get romantic and take their girl to the dance in order to enjoy a successful relationship. As nice as that sounds, if this is the intellectual level to which 21 Con now aspires I will reserve my $2499 for an event with a little more cerebral substance.

On a somewhat related note, if – as ADJ claims – he is now pulling ‘the manosphere’ in a new direction, then, given his recent bizarre and unprofessional behaviour on social media, I am inclined to run very fast in the opposite direction of whatever this new manosphere will be.

Others will agree.

Put Up Or Shut Up

Regardless, this purple faction must now put up or shut up. The time for empty platitudes and feel-good, fridge-magnet slogans has passed. If the ‘red pill’ is broken then what do you have to replace it?

As I Tweeted earlier: ‘People criticise the perceived myopia of red pill adherents, but it isn’t like that. Red pill ideas present a robust explanation for much that manifests in m-f relationships. When and if the purple pill / trad guys come up with something similarly rigorous I’m all ears’. 

It is no longer sufficient to say to men: ‘this red pill stuff is all jolly nihilistic. Follow us instead’. We need more meat on the bone. Guys need to understand the framework of what is being proposed. We need ideas, and we need to know precisely how they will help us to navigate the very real and pressing difficulties of maintaining m-f relationships of all kinds in the present day.

Well, apparently Pat Stedman is writing a book. Maybe that will shed a little more light on where these guys are coming from. In the meantime, I won’t be shedding any tears over the ‘death of the manosphere. Why any sentient adult man would want to be part of a weird internet boy’s club is beyond me. As always, I will simply seek out advice and information on those topics that concern me, and I will go to the authorities who, in my judgement, provide the best solutions.

And in that, you can rest assured, I won’t be alone.

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