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.
Is my name on the Feminist Blacklist or something? First I miss out on all the sweet government money given to feminist like myself and now I find out that I wasn’t given ‘the perfect hygiene all the time’ trait too? What did I do wrong?
Nearly all of the ablutions mentioned are self-benefiting hygiene. If he doesn’t want to wash or trim his sight-obstructing rogue eyebrow hair or keep his teeth and gums healthy and not-stinking, then he should find a woman who isn’t bothered by a man who looks and smells like shit. I suspect he wouldn’t accept a female companion who walked around with even just a few day’s worth of sleep crust build-up around her eyes.
Ooh, I love hot springs. I used to go regularly when I was living in Santa Barbara. There are hot springs way up in the mountains, as well as an AMAZING natural hot spring in Gaviota right off the highway (though you have to hike a ways). I would love to go back one day, but I had some bad experiences in SB and am worried about being triggered, even though it’s been 10 years. :/
Now that I’m back in Northern California, I would love to go to the hot springs in Big Sur, but the 6-mile hike gives me pause.
AK has some nice springs! I’d recommend Manly; Chena is too close to the big town, so all the tourists use them. It’s got a few too many comers and goers…
Plus, Manly has these awesome greenhouses hearted by the springs, so you’re sitting, surrounded by plants, even though it’s 50 below outside.
Michelle
ROFL no, unfortunately! The cleanliness, yes, at least when he was at court (imagine those guys on campaign – argh). But he only dressed up when he had to, for grand occasions. For the most part he dressed as plainly as a soldier, which of course he was.
The glorious clothing certainly describes his sons – still does, those boys are a pair of peacocks, I swear – but back in the day Louis XIV was not, alas, Mr Clean. He was more like grandfather Henri, smelly enough that Mme de Montespan doused herself in sinus-killing perfumes, just as Marie de Medici had in her day.
Some men-in-suits look splendid, I agree, though so many don’t that … gah.
High-necked fashions … oh yeah. Like the “father-murderer” collars of, what was it, the 1840s? So much starch in pointy collars, ow. Or the millstone ruffs, though at least they had amazing clothes to go with them, for the most part. Even the falling bands of Louis’s adulthood were pretty uncomfortable, since the doublet collars were stiffened with card and came right up under the jaw. He still won’t wear high collars of any sort.
I haven’t seen the musical of Scarlet Pimpernel – I didn’t know there was one. Though I’m not a theatre-goer anyway, it’s too blasted expensive here. Last play I went to was War Horse, which was SO worth it; I thought it much more effective than Spielberg’s film.
Do you know the Anthony Andrews Pimpernel film? That’s the one I love. Those clothes! Jane Seymour’s WIGS!
@kitteh
Oh, I LOVE the Anthony Andrews Pimpernel. For me, it was the first, and although they changed a few things from the book, they kept the heart of the matter.
The A&E version, however, not only wound up killing a character who had his OWN book, later in the series (WTHECK?!), but also made the Scarlet Pimpernel out to be some sort of Batman, with his tools and gadgets. Sorry, but Sir Percy was awesome because of his mind, and his sheer audacity. He did use stage make-up and costumes, but no clever tools hidden in his high collar. UGH. I still can’t watch that thing again. I don’t care who’s in it.
As for the stage play, it’s a musical and it’s just brilliant! Funny, heart-wrenching, at times, and there is a song there, that the villain, Chauvelin, gets to sing, that just sends shivers down my spine, and gave me a huge crush on the actor playing the part.
See, the thing is, bad boys can be really sexy, even if you know they are bad boys. And that song really works it.
But Nice Guys (TM) rejoice! She picks the Nice Guy (who has been treating her poorly, because reasons, that actually do make sense, if you see the show or read the book), instead of the sexy bad guy. Because the bad guy is BAD. And she chooses him before she finds out that Nice Guy (TM) hubby is actually…
Wait, is there anyone on this thread who hasn’t read the book, or seen a movie or play version? Ummm… Spoilers.
Sorry.
You might try searching for it on You Tube. But if you ever do get the chance to see it live, I definitely recommend it.
Thank goodness, our local theater is a not-for-profit, and so it costs about the same as a night at the movies. The tickets are more than movie tickets in our area, but the concessions are $1.50. And it’s in the round, up close and personal. I mean, there are only four rows in a couple of sections, and three in the rest of the sections. It’s that small. And in my opinion, that is the ONLY way to watch a play. I mean, I’ll still watch plays at the convention center, but the Plaza is just so much better, in my opinion. You feel so close, and invested. And they can even interact directly with members of the audience at any time, without any disruption caused by leaving the stage to get there.
I had fun with that production, because I assisted in some last-minute sewing of the costumes. It was amazing how simple they really were, but how complex and beautiful they looked under the lights. Really good costume design.
Well, that soundtrack is definitely going back on my playlist for my next knitting session this weekend. I haven’t listened in a while, and now I’m craving it. LOL
@kitteh
I didn’t know that. That’s really great! I mean, yeah, sometimes there are reasons to dress up, but too many monarchs and nobles and the like tend to spend oodles of money to dress up all the time, while their people are suffering, and that money could have been better spent. Or, at least, don’t rub the people’s noses in it.
And there was a lot of peer pressure to dress up, I’m sure. It takes guts for someone in that level of power to say, “No, I’ll dress like a soldier, because king or not, that’s what I am.”
Pressure is right! And didn’t the courtiers look down their noses at someone who wasn’t interested in dressing up OR chasing women. Louis didn’t splash money about, except on things like the court ballets. Those he loved – he wrote his own, he did choreography, and danced multiple roles (which most of those appearing in them did, I think – imagine the hubblebubble backstage). But he pared his court down to a few hundred people in the late 1630s, when the war was really starting to bite, and put a fair chunk of his personal income into charity. Not that he was fussed about other people getting masses of money from the state: look at the preferments and endowments he sent Cardinal Richelieu’s way. He was absolutely loaded, and iirc was the second-richest man of the Ancient Regime, surpassed only by Cardinal Mazarin.
Heh … one bit of pressure that didn’t work was the Cardinal trying to get Louis to spiff up the royal household. He had the sort of beautiful furnishings and stuff you’d expect, but it was shabby (no wonder, given how many dogs he had). The Cardinal wailed in his Testament Politique that people were always astonished that the most powerful king in Europe lived like a slob. Louis paid exactly zero attention to this. XD
Alaisvex: I can add a few Things to that list. Being beautiful isn’t enough, a woman must also be feminine:
never swear or raise her voise
always wear high heels(and walk like a supermodel in them)
be a virgin until marriage
live with her parents until marriage
Don’t be a prude in bed
Cook and clean
be obedient and Humble
always be a Financial burden to someone else
always be pregnant and don’t have periods
look like your 16-year-old-self even after giving birth to several children
Forget about contraceptives(they’re only for sluts who wants to sleep around with no consequenses)
Don’t get STDS
and most importantly; never say anything like: “women are human beings” or “not all women are the same”. It Means you’re a FEMINIST!
“Louis paid exactly zero attention to this. XD”
Oh, I really like him!
Leah – spot on, I’m afraid.
[mock hipster]
Volcano tourism? I visited Iceland before the country was cool.
[/mock hipster]
IDK, maybe he feels ball sweat is the critical link in his personal hygiene, meaning that if he showers often enough to keep the balls clean, other parts will also be clean enough.
Years ago on a Finnish forum there was a commenter with the byline (freely translated) “With clean balls and a sincere mind, everything in life will work out”. I suspect Roosh has failed at least one of these criteria.
Arctic ape, I’m genuinely confused. Did you just call me a hipster, and mock me? How very odd.
Anyway, I’m more interested in the history and mythology than volcanoes. I’ve never had any desire to get near a volcano. They’re scary.
Clean balls protect you from accidents, natural disasters, wars, and the inhumanity of other humans? Wooooow! They’re magic!
@Bina
I went to Iceland a few months ago and it was amazing! Surprisingly enough, we never made it to the geothermal pool or any bathing hot springs (it was cloudy and rainy and kind of cold most of the time we were there), but we did get to Geysir (the original spouting hot spring) and you just had to stand near one of the hot springs to warm up. I was much more excited about the mountains than the hot springs, though. We spent a few days in þórsmörk, hiking near Eyjafjallajökull and it is stunningly beautiful.
It was also really strange being there so close to the summer solstice because it never actually got dark.
Michelle, I made a joke on an imaginary hipster caricature, as was a popular meme some time ago. No offense to actual hipsters, except the more obnoxious ones.
Yeah, who’s the barbarian, again? I think pretty much every primitive culture has left behind evidence that grooming and primping are pleasant pastimes. If Rooshie thinks women should be wildly drawn to his stenches, he’s very much in the minority.
I’ve been wanting to go since taking Old Norse at uni, and learning that Iceland is the one European country where Christianity never really bothered trying to stamp out the Old Religion, so you’ve got actual, bona fide hereditary pagans living there. Once, on my blog, I even mentioned an Icelandic priest who cast a ni∂ against Ronald Reagan for warmongering on their soil, and got a comment back from an Icelander who was that priest’s nephew! Cool doesn’t even begin to describe that…
Arctic Ape. OK. It’s just that I have no idea about hipster culture, never cared, and never thought ill of them, anyway, so I just didn’t understand if you were joking at me, at hipsters, or just somewhere in our general viscidity.
Also, I’m tired.
It’s not that he thinks that women in cultures not impacted by feminism like stinky, unwashed men, I don’t think, more that he feels that in a properly organized (ie, not at all feminist) society women would be forced to accept men’s stinky balls and soiled asses and pretend to like it, because we wouldn’t have any other options. As usual, it’s the fact that women are allowed to make choices and that means that they’re able not to choose him/other PUAs that upsets him.
About combs during Viking age and later – antler combs are very common archaeological artifacts in Scandinavia, Baltic and Slavic lands, found both in male and female graves.
I actually did a research on antler combs from post-viking period (9.-12.C.) graves of a small ethnic group called Livs and was surprised to find that there have been much more combs found at the male graves than female (statistically significant difference, as my research altogether covered 178 combs). Of course, it doesn`t mean that women were more neglectful than men, the reason is that skilfully carved antler combs were much more expensive than wooden alternatives, therefore they indicated wealth and possibly status too.
Drdg – that’s interesting!
Were the graves in a condition to preserve wooden artefacts? I know little survives from that period in many English graves from the same period, unless they’re in very wet ground.
To kittehserf
That`s right, in Latvia we have the same problem, very little wooden artifacts from those periods are preserved. No wooden combs have been found in Latvia, but we have good analogies from Novgorod where plenty of wooden combs were preserved (dated since middle of 10th C.).
I’ve got a paperback copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel stashed away somewhere where I can’t get to it (not without doing a lot of digging first). It’s an old Signet edition, but not old enough — at least it’s not old enough for me now; I bought it before I got into serious book collecting. If I were to replace it I’d go for a first edition, first printing.
But that’s beside the point. Which is that I’d just like to say that the descriptions of clothing in that book are resplendent and that there are loads of them.