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.
Michelle – you obviously know the anecdote of someone calling on Brummell and finding him amidst a pile of discarded cravats. “These are our failures,” said his valet.
Actually I blame Brummell for the transformation of the three-piece suit to something incredibly dreary by mid-century. A dandy whose reaction to being told how perfectly he was dressed was to snap, “I can’t be, because you noticed me!” ain’t no friend of mine. 😛
This suit would have looked amazing originally. It’s so horribly faded now, but it’s made from shot peacock blue and purple silk (the original colours can still be seen when the hems are examined). I can just see Sir Percy Blakeney, Bt, wearing it.
http://media.vam.ac.uk/media/thira/collection_images/2006AV/2006AV6247_jpg_l.jpg
I swear to Vulcan, some day I will go to Iceland…to bathe in their hot springs, to eat pumpernickel baked in the hot ground nearby, and to walk among people who are seriously progressive AND descended from actual Vikings, too.
Way more often than is healthy, that much I’m sure of. And I bet he’s miffed that women don’t also want to smell those stinky sack-nuggets of his, too. Most men are content just to give those babies a good soapy scrubbing in the shower, and most of the ones I know swear they feel more human afterwards. I don’t know what his problem is, but I pity any woman who comes within nasal earshot of him.
Re: skidmarks.
Why wouldn’t a guy have a problem with that? I mean, if you have so much STUFF on your bottom that you leave a trail of it behind on your underwear, all I can think is that you are doomed to a life of perpetual diaper rash.
Ow.
As for women’s “skid marks.” Well, we generally wear panty-liners and such, if we want to avoid such stains. And frankly, I have waaaayyyyy less issue with stains from accidental leaks, that are generally caused by the pad/tampong overflowing from a sudden gooosh of bloodflow than I have with streaks of fecal matter on the underpants that could only have gotten there if the person simply neglected to wipe after defacating. And unless they actually stick the underwear up in their crack, the only way the fecal matter would get onto it is if they had so much, or just rubbed around so much, that it leaked out from between the cracks, and I am so completely grossed out now, OMG.
I have had, on occasion, discovered that I did not wipe thoroughly enough. Not because of skid marks, but because of the sheer itchy-arse discomfort of the rash developing between my cheeks. And it wasn’t enough to leave skid marks, because I DID wipe, just not thoroughly enough.
The idea of a man actually being upset by the idea that he ought to wipe thoroughly enough to avoid skid marks just makes me think, “No wonder these guys are so angry all the time. Poor babies have chronic diaper rash! That stuff is a pain in the butt!”
Still, a little introspection should convince most of them that wiping is for their OWN benefit, not the ladeez.
And the horsies! The horsies!
Do you think maybe we’re watching a pick-up artist having a mid-life crisis (even though he’s probably not old enough mentally).
Oh yes, Icelandic horses. So cute, and so multi-talented, too! And Reykjavik, the cleanest capital city on Earth…
Fluffy horsie!
http://www.mybackgrounds.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Horses-Wallpapers-17.jpg
There are some nice natural hot springs you can bathe in out in Idaho. I went once and it was very nice. It wasn’t in a touristy area so my friends and I pretty much had the run of the place. Idaho isn’t as cool as Iceland and definitely not as progressive, but it’s easier to get to for those of us in North America.
I remember reading an article not long ago about some Viking artifacts being found that included pretty jewelry, mirrors and combs. Yet another supposedly primitive and savage group that paid attention to hygiene and grooming. Unlike our friend Roosh.
@emily goddess
Oh, remember the Lysol douche ads? I bet he’s never had anyone tell him he needed to squirt Lyson up his nether-regions in order to be attractive. Or, as in the ads, in order to save his marriage.
Arithia – mods can’t ban, and nobody’d get banned for disagreeing with one of us (we’ve both been in plenty of arguments here!)
I’m sorry you’re leaving.
Bina: I swear to Vulcan, some day I will go to Iceland…to bathe in their hot springs,
Eh, Rotorua, you can park your car and do it in picnic areas. Never seemed a biggie to me.
@kittehserf – He clearly has NEVER studied history. Oh, he may have taken history class, as a required course, but he never studied it.
Or watched a “costume drama.”
Or been to a classic art museum.
Or stepped out from under his rock.
Michelle – correct. He knows diddly squat about everything.
Arithia, I don’t think you’re a terrible person or anything, but at some point you have to recognize that online communities have cultures, and this one is (pretty) well reflected by our mods, and if you go against it you’re going to get some pushback. “Brain chemistry” remarks are going to get pushback, and rightly so.
It may be good that you’re leaving if you can’t deal with that. On the other hand, if you’re thinking about staying, I tried to assemble the collective wisdom about this stuff in the Welcome Package:
https://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/
Saying “this guy is depressed, he needs to get help” doesn’t mean being sympathetic towards him, or discounting the wrongness of his misogyny. It’s just recognizing certain traits that indicate a downward spiral. And in the case of someone as bitter and hateful as this person, he could become a danger not to himself but to other people. Just think about all the male shooters who acted like this before they turned guns on people.
@Arithia:
…. What?
“Hey, don’t say there’s something blanket wrong with his brain chemistry, it’s pretty easy to slip into being an insult”
==
“Making up grand assumptions about your behaviour and attributing it all to malice”
Goodbye, best of luck with your life and your living, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
@LBT
It wasn’t a year for me, but there was a brief period when I would literally scour the parking lot for pennies, and take them in to the cafeteria to ask them to be changed for quarters, so I could wash my clothes.
I found that washing clothes by hand in the laundry room of a mountain state in the dead of winter meant freezing my fingers off, because the water was so frickin’ cold. Also, in that particular area, it was “a thing” to steal other people’s laundry, so I had to literally hang around and WATCH IT DRY on the line. So, those quarters were a big deal for me. I wound up doing my laundry in the dead of night, in order to have the laundry room (in my dorm) to myself, so I could zone out, but the sound of the door opening would wake me up and I could guard my clothes.
Not as bad as your situation, of course. Still, I sympathize. I did the old hang-stuff-up-to-air-out-then-wear-again thing, a lot. Actually, my mother insisted on it, when I was younger, and we had little money. I didn’t like it, and she would insist that if the clothes weren’t visibly dirty, they needed to be aired out and worn again. I’m ashamed to admit that a FEW of the stains were purposefully inflicted, so I could put the clothes in the laundry. I didn’t get it, at the time, but I learned, when I was on my own at college. Oh, yeah, I learned.
Also, wash out the underwear in the sink, and dry it in the hand-dryer. Yep, done that, too. Heck, you can do that at many stores, gas stations, etc. It may be embarrassing, but it’s free, and amazingly, people do not *actually* die of embarrassment.
However, I’m grateful for the experience, because I know that if I ever did have to rough it again, I’d be capable, thanks to various tricks I learned, as well as knowing that I CAN adjust my comfort level to my current situation and environment. I may not be the “survivor” type, but I do have more survival instinct in me than I used to think, back in my more pampered, childhood days. And while I would miss my luxuries, I would at least recognize them AS luxuries, and not necessities.
OH, and who was it up-thread with the fridge-horror about hand-washing? OOOOOH, man, so true!
Given that he probably expects his partners to suck his dick, it’s pretty thoughtful of him to make sure his balls don’t smell. I’ve been with guys who could have used that bit of advice. It’s just that he seems so put out by having to do it.
@kitteh
Oh, I have to watch Life of Brian, now.
@kittehserf
Oh, yeah! The Regency clothes! Did you ever see the musical stage-play of The Scarlet Pimpernel? There is a wonderful song there about why men should wear flamboyant outfits, and the clothes they show off! OOOHHHH! I hope my local theater does it again some day.
I appreciate the clean look of “man in suit,” as my sister calls it, but I must confess that seeing a man in lots of colors is a real turn on. Mind you, I never liked the ridiculous fashions, such as collars so high that a man couldn’t turn his head. I’ve done the “batman” routine since my third accident, and I hate having to move my whole body, just to look to the side. For someone to do it for the sake of fashion just irks me.
But the pinks of fashion, back in the day, were a glory to behold. I wouldn’t want to smell them. Too much perfume makes me ill. But to behold them, from a safe distance? Oh, yes.
What I would like best is a combination of the pink and the dandy. The art and color of the pink, combined with the hygiene of the dandy. Yep. That would be nice.
Wait, did I just describe Louis?
Oh lawd, I didn’t realise Skidmark Steve was Steve Bee!
@Bina
Don’t forget their cool mythology, which is hardly ever told in “the western world,” which, oddly enough doesn’t seem to include anything south of the equator, but does include some areas in the eastern hemisphere. That phrase has never made sense to me.
But anyway, Iceland sounds really neat! I’d go there and listen to stories, as I soak in the hot springs, and I absolutely adore pumpernickel bread.
Also, “The Scarlet PUMPernickel!” is a favorite of mine.
The horses make me think of 80’s glam rockers.
I had a layover in Iceland when I went to Paris but unfortunately didn’t have enough time to leave the airport. I did buy some amazing extra dark chocolate at the duty free shop though. It was one of the best things I ever ate. If I ever somehow have both the money and time to get back to Europe I plan on flying Icelandair again but this time leaving a day between flights to explore Reyjavik.*
* Yes, I had to look up how to spell that.
Now time for some Bjork