The so-called pickup artists who inhabit a large portion of this thing called the manosphere are a strange bunch: They devote much of their life to figuring out ways to appeal to women they don’t like or respect.
Apparently, for most of those who actually are out there “picking up” women and not just boasting about imaginary conquests on the internet, the sex is good enough (for them at least) to make their otherwise joyless endeavor worthwhile for them. And if the sex itself isn’t that great, well, at least they get to brag to their internet friends about how they conned some hot “slut” into having sex with them.
But what happens when the sex begins to lose its luster?
Well, we get what seems to be happening with pickup guru Roosh Valizadeh, who over the course of the last few months has been chronicling what amounts to an existential meltdown in a series of embittered posts on his blog. Roosh may not be self-aware enough to realize that’s what he’s been doing, but it’s pretty clear from the outside that he’s beginning to sense the fundamental hollowness of a life devoted to pursuing women he hates.
In these posts, Roosh spells out in detail just how resentful he feels to have to make even a small amount of effort to convince women to come home with him. In one post I wrote about earlier, he laments that his pursuit of women has turned him into a “clown” performing for the women he wants to fuck.
We are not men in the traditional sense—we are clowns. With our tight game we have to be entertainers who create drama and excitement in a girl’s life, just long enough so that she spreads her legs and makes sexy noises, and even though she did commit such an intimate act with us, she will soon lose interest or simply get bored, and then move on to the next shiny cock that catches her eye.
Huh. She’s using you, just as you’re using her? Poor baby.
In other posts, he seems almost ready to give up the lifestyle he makes a living promoting. In one, he complains about “expending labor and much more money to lay” a young women who looked a lot like one he had previously dated. Or, as he so charmingly describes her, like “an inferior version of a girl I had let go.” He complains that all of his options look bleak:
Unless I’m looking at an easy one-night stand opportunity, it’s illogical for me based on my experience to go on a date with a girl for any other reason than to enter some type of relationship with her, something that I don’t necessarily want. Otherwise it’s a waste of time that provides me with nothing more than entertainment. Even a one-night stand has lost its luster since the quality will be modest at best and condom use will be usually required, decreasing the overall sexual pleasure. It’s clear to me now that I don’t want what I used to want (as much), but at the same time I don’t care for something deeper. I’m afraid I may have already extracted the most satisfying rewards women could provide me in life, and that this particular oil well in running dry.
Emphasis mine.
In another, he wonders if, to paraphrase the old song, this is all there is:
Mini-relationships and harem maintenance are nothing more than entertainment and serious relationships are drudgery, one step away from slavery. Both are unsatisfactory.
So what’s the answer? Is it eternal bachelorhood, of banging a handful of new girls each season, hopping from one new mini-relationship to the next, but achieving no depth or novelty in what you haven’t achieved before, or is it making what could be the biggest mistake of your life by knocking a girl up and riding the fatherhood roller coaster for the next 20 years? … Or maybe the answer is that the happiness I have sought in women can’t be achieved at all, and whether I ride the slut carousel or settle down with one girl, I’ll still end up asking myself, “Is this it?”
Again, emphasis mine.
It’s a good question, and one I’m sure a lot of these women you “bang” ask themselves after you roll off them and go to sleep. Or possibly even during the sex itself.
But the strangest of Roosh’s many laments comes in a post titled “Men Must Groom More Than Cats To Get Laid,” in which he complains, in all seriousness, about having to clean the shit off his own ass.
The thesis of this odd little post of his is that these days straight men, in order to appeal to women, “have to groom more than women of 30 years ago,” a sad state of affairs that he fears “must make us the most feminized men to have ever existed.”
To make his case, he presents a long list of “the acts of grooming I’ve done at least once in the past week.”
You may notice that, despite the length of the list, most of the items on it aren’t exactly onerous tasks; indeed, many are pretty much the minimum required to function in a civilized society. I’ve bolded a few of them that caught my eye.
- Floss my teeth
- Brush my teeth
- Scrape my tongue
- Gargle with mouthwash
- Pluck extra long and curly eyebrow hair that began to obstruct my vision
- Trim my beard
- Shave my neck
- Trim ear hair
- Trim nose hair
- Apply baking soda to arm pits
- Apply and remove contact lenses
- Wipe my ass thoroughly
- Shower
- Stroke my balls with my hand and then smell it to ensure lack of odor
- Apply benzoyl peroxide to a pimple
- Apply lip moisturizer
- Apply face moisturizer
- Remove boogers and other debris form my nose
- Comb my hair
- Trim my sideburns
- Wash clothes
- Wash penis in bathroom sink after sex
- Trim my fingernails
- Trim armpit air
- Squeeze out blackheads on nose
- Remove residual sock fiber from underneath toe nails
- Remove ear wax using cotton swabs
- Remove eye gunk after waking up
- Dab off extra grease on forehead with napkin
That’s right. Roosh is literally complaining about having to pick boogers out of his nose and wipe his own ass “thoroughly” enough to keep skidmarks off his underoos. He thinks women are oppressing him by forcing him to clip his fingernails and brush his teeth.
A common belief in the manopshere is that women want masculine, alpha men, but what they really want is sexy clowns who are well-groomed. If you have bad breath, bad skin, or odorific armpits, you’re not getting far with women no matter how good your game is. The modern man has to essentially groom like women in order to attract them, because I highly doubt that tribesmen of ancient times cared if their breath smelled or not.
Your life has taken a wrong turn somewhere when you resent women for wanting you to smell better than a caveman.
H/T to @keithcalder for the graphic at the top of the post.
So, from that stupid list of what it takes to be an attractive man, and how irrelevant most of it is as far as I’m concerned …
Be ripped. Urgh, no thanks, I hate that sculpted look.
Have a stable job. ::snort:: Mr K doesn’t have any job, unless being servant to the Furrinati counts.
Be clean. This is even in question? But of course, it’s Roosh we’re talking about, so what an imposition. But I’ll take a man who liked his hour-long baths back in the day when bathing was Not Popular over one who’s whining about it now, even if everything else were equal.
Dress well. LOL Mr K looks good whatever he’s wearing.
Smell good. As in clean? Yes. Perfumed? Nah, not interested.
Be dad material. FUCK NO. Unless you’re talking about furkids, that is.
Pay for dates. ::snort:: Even if it were relevant, nope.
Be confident. Meh. I have no problem with uncertainty in someone. Confident as applied to men too often segues into arrogance. Mr K’s confident in a very low-key way; or rather, he’s content, and that’s all I’m looking for.
Have nice hair. As in, clean? Looked after? Gee, another great imposition. Yes, I like long hair on a man, but if I were interested in someone else, he could be bald and it wouldn’t matter.
And now, having read the post, I am laughing my head off with schadenfreude. Chickens coming home to roost, I’m loving this.
He really should give up and go be a hermit somewhere. He could avoid all humans and give up on all the shocking demands of basic hygiene.
How fucking ignorant is he to think men haven’t been cleaning themselves, not to mention doing a hell of a lot more, for millennia? Does he think the curls the Persian kings and nobles had set themselves? Does he think Egyptian men’s eye makeup applied itself, or that the all-over shaving required of priests then wasn’t real? Does he think the dazzlingly-dressed men of the upper classes across any number of societies and centuries didn’t spend a lot of time on their appearance?
He is so willfully stupid, it’s mind-boggling. But oh, I’m enjoying his misery. He deserves it all.
Is he saying that it would be fine if women didn’t do any of the things in his exhausting hygiene regimen? He’s totes cool if a gal lets her nose fill up with assorted debris?
I do feel pity for him, because he’s a pathetic creature; at the same time, I’m enjoying watching him become a cautionary tale and eagerly await his Dark Night of the Soul.
OMG I think Roosh is becoming Gollum.
So, Rooshie wants HB10s, but he doesn’t want to do even the bare minimum of grooming it takes not to totally repulse everything that has a pulse? I have just the song for him…
And at the rate he’s going, flies are all he’ll EVER attract.
Frootloopsie: We really need to teach people about female anatomy.
Ironic, given that at least 90% of the Internet seems to be dedicated to the topic.
I find his claim that men are being forced to be more hygienic or put more effort into their appearance due to women rather puzzling. Based on, y’know, reality…
It’s already odd that Roosh considers things like brushing your teeth or wiping your ass properly to be something horribly arduous (really?), but it seems like he’s incapable of even being aware of his surroundings too. I live in a fairly relaxed, incredibly progressive area where most people dress the way they want and it isn’t too uncommon to have latter-day hippies who haven’t bathed or showered in a while walking around my town. Nonetheless: women are still generally the ones who spend a good deal of time on their appearance than any guy I’ve come across, even here in NorCal. The same went when I was in SoCal too, and that place is a thousand times more superficial.
I guess my point is that if Roosh believes that the most basic ways to clean one’s self is “too much” while still nonetheless claiming women don’t have to do “anything” – even though it could take little more than stroll through an area with human activity – it’s difficult to not see that as a big disconnect with reality.
Also, what is WITH this idea that basic hygiene = vanity and self-centeredness? This is not the first time I’ve encountered this idea from chucklefucks on this site, and I really don’t get it. I mean, I’ve got all the fashion sense of a brick and live on denim and plaid, but when my roommates told me my room was getting stinky, I IMMEDIATELY washed FUCKING EVERYTHING right then and there, because just because I’m fashion-dumb doesn’t mean I should be the Roommate from Hell! Jesus!
(That said, it was a pretty harrowing realization, to find that I picked up some really bad habits during the Homeless Year regarding laundry. What can I say, getting my hands on fifteen quarters at a time meant I rewore shit a lot.)
Gah! Should proof-read more…
“I guess my point is that if Roosh believes that the most basic ways to clean one’s self is “too much” while still nonetheless claiming women don’t have to do “anything” – even though it could take little more than stroll through an area with human activity TO PROVE OTHERWISE – it’s difficult to not see that as a big disconnect with reality.”
pillowinhell! Hi, how’ve you been?
LBT: At this point, it’s kind of like, what do you want, Roosh?
Someone to blame, LBT, someone to blame.
RE: Phoenician
Well, as an earlier commenter put it, wherever he goes, there he is…
This reminded me of the old John Mellencamp song:
Maybe he should have listened to more 80’s rock …
The ancient Romans had bathtubs the size of swimming pools, and the water was often perfumed with attar of roses, to boot — even for teh menz. What the hell does he think those aqueducts were built for…just to impress ladies with quasi-phallic architecture that also happens to flush a cloaca? Sheesh.
I wish him self awareness.
Roosh should hang out with this guy.
(Just kidding. That guy seems cool and happy with his life. I wouldn’t inflict Roosh on him.)
@bekabot
This formulation is … not ideal, to say the least. You’re framing this as though women need only sit back and reap the propositions rained down upon them, and choose the one that suits them. The reality is very different. When men are active and women are passive, women can say yes or no but only to the options that someone else has presented to them. In the past I’ve analogized this to being at a buffet, but the woman has to depend on someone else to bring her food, she can’t just go up and select something for herself nor can she ask directly for what she wants. She can accept or decline what someone brings to her, but if she isn’t brought something she likes she can’t just go and get something else, and if nobody brings her anything she’s screwed.
That’s the opposite of empowering.
I don’t know what kind of world you were in when you grew up, but in my world the young women had elaborate rituals for how to suss out and attract the young men they liked. They had to communicate (indirectly, usually through a chain of multiple friends) to the fellows that they wanted to be asked out – they could not go up to the buffet, and could not ask for what they wanted brought to them, and had to pantomime it and hope the message got through. Sometimes the message got through and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes it got through but the young man wasn’t interested. There was really no way for her to be sure: did he know, and just wasn’t interested back, or had the message not been communicated properly? Many late-night phone conversations grew out of that kind of anxiety and uncertainty. It was all very much like some kind of group performance of sympathetic magic.
This experience does not in any way mesh with your phrasing, that men are forced into a particular role but women have it made. When one of these men got the word that a young woman wanted him to ask her out, it’s not like he was coerced into it. He was “in the position to accept or decline.” He was also in the position to ask out someone who had not sent him that kind of coded signal. The young women did not have this second option.
I mean, the whole idea that women don’t compete with each other for men is just false on its face.
Arithia, why do your feelings matter but mine don’t? You said you didn’t insult anyone, but I sure felt insulted, and I don’t appreciate the implication that I wasn’t sincere in saying so. You didn’t just suggest that he had a mental illness, you said there was “something wrong with his brain” – they may mean the same thing to you, but to me, one carries an implied judgment. Maybe you weren’t being judgmental, but plenty of people are when they talk that ways about mental illness, and since I don’t know you from Adam I had no way of knowing where you were coming from there.
I really don’t think your defensiveness and accusations are proportionate to the criticism you received – which btw was pretty mild compared to the way some people react to (real or perceived) ableism around here. You said something that hurt me, and I told you so. I’m sorry that I hurt you back, but you don’t have the right to tell me that I wasn’t hurt or that I had no right to say so.
The aqueducts were built to mess with the minds of the People’s Front of Judea.
Not gonna lie, if there were such a place as heaven, I would imagine it being a hot springs hotel. I have been able to go to one once, and it was AMAZING. I am only sorry that hubby has never been. I suppose the closest local equivalent would be a hot tub or heated pool, but it doesn’t compare. I’ll take the faint smell of sulfur over the reek and residue of chlorine any day of the week.
Ow, wow.
This guy never heard of Beau Brummel, who was known to spend hours dressing every day. It was such a production that other men, who hoped to emulate his style, including the Prince Regent of England, asked to watch him dress. And he let them. He went through an average of a dozen neckcloths every day, because he wasn’t satisfied with their perfection when he tied them. The folds had to be just so, and if they weren’t exactly right, he’d start over with a new one. It could take him an hour, just to put on his tie. And that was just getting dressed every day. For a special occasion, it was more. Oh, and he had to change for dinner, as well.
My favorite from his list is this:
Note, please, that this eyebrow hair was not removed for the sake of the women, but because it was obstructing HIS vision. But he still blames women for it.
All together, it would seem this guy spends about as much time PER WEEK on dressing and grooming as Beau Brummel spent per day, just getting dressed.
BTW, Beau Brummel was the head of the “dandy” movement. That is to say, though, not that he was one of those men with the lace cuffs and ruffs and fribbles. Nope. He was one of the first to get away from that fashion. He instituted the fashion of the simple black suit. Well-tailored, rather than gaudy colors. Also, he instituted regular bathing, rather than pouring on the perfume. And he was attacked for it. A dandy then was a man who cared very much for his appearance, but the image people get when they hear the word is actually that of a “pink.” And the dandies were considered MORE masculine, not feminized, as Roosh would have it.
Yet, he’ll say that all a woman has to do to be attractive is “not be fat,” whereas a man has to do such horrible, onerous tasks as brushing his teeth, and plucking that one hair that obstructs his vision.
Yeeeeeah.
Fixed that for you. You might want to update your meme to reflect that women are expected to bathe, as well. Just sayin’.
Also, he thinks that parenting lasts for 20 years.
Talk to MOST parents, and they’ll say that you never stop caring for, worrying over, and helping your children. Yes, you stop actually physically raising them, but they’ll always be your children, and you don’t just stop loving them, guiding them, praying for them, etc., because they turned some magic number.
He’s probably just talking about legally mandated child support, I suppose.
Well, I’ve done all the expatiating I’m going to do for one day. I’m forced into the position where I say “you seem to have read into what I wrote a whole lot of things I didn’t put there” (so did alaisvex, but I had more energy at 4:00 PM) — but, since I’ve never been convinced by arguments like that one I’m not going to make one of them. I’m going to be as brief as I can be.
1. I don’t think that men are forced into a particular role but that women have it made. Both sexes (IMO) are forced into roles and the roles are often uncomfortable.
2. Sure the position (the female position) of watchful waiting is not empowering: it was never meant to be.
3. Women have developed elaborate rituals to help them deal with men. Men have developed elaborate theologies to help them deal with women.
4. No doubt I come up with lots of formulations which aren’t ideal, but ideality (or perfection) is not my goal.
5. And my God, did I ever not say that women don’t compete over men.
Once again, best I can do.
@leftwingfox
BWHAAAAHAHAHAAAA!
From Roosh’s linked article, the final paragraph:
Let me just repeat something here:
Of that whole list, THAT is what he picks as an example? Seriously? Just how often does he smell his balls, I wonder? More often than he brushes his teeth? Because I would have gone for “brushing my teeth” or maybe “wiping my ass,” as the thing I’m surely not going to cut back on.
“smelling my balls.”
Yeah, he’s a keeper, alright. Oh, wait. He doesn’t want to keep, or be kept. That’s too beta, and wouldn’t be “profitable” to him.