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.
Exactly. For so many PUAs, winning at ‘game’ and getting laid amounts to conquering the ‘enemy’, and that’s why they want to do so even if they’re ceasing to enjoy it.
As for Roosh’s hygiene – yikes. Plenty of people have already outlined here why seeing basic hygiene as onerous duties is a problem, so I won’t bother, but I have to say that yes, I agree that Roosh needs some mental health support, preferably before he decides to do something drastic and awful.
It’s like:
Imagine I hate pottery. Like, I truly despise it and I deeply resent people who seem to enjoy pottery, to the extent that I tell myself they don’t really enjoy it, they just think they do because they’ve been duped by our liberal pottery-friendly society.
It’s not enough for me to just hate pottery from a distance while I get on with other aspects of my life. No, I need the world to know how much I hate it. Thus, I spend a significant amount of my time and resources acquiring the nicest vessels I can find – so I can piss in them and then throw them out the window. In fact, I actually kind of get off on doing this.
After a while, I get a reputation of being hostile to perfectly decent pottery, so a lot of outlets will no longer sell to me. I have to cast my net further afield to find good pottery and spend more money and time getting it home so I can piss in it. I get to the point where I’m often reduced to stealing it. But this doesn’t deter me. In fact, I write several books detailing the best ways to acquire pottery in various countries. I have a blog full of long screeds about how awful terracotta is and how great I am at pissing in pots. I have a small but fanatical following of people who also define themselves by their deep abiding hatred of/obsession with pottery.
But no matter how many pots I piss in, the world is still full of pottery of all shapes and sizes, and people who enjoy and appreciate it, and this makes me furious. I tell myself that these people are delusional and inferior – it’s impossible that they could actually be happy and fulfilled with a china ashtray on their side table. It’s impossible that all I could really want is a nice terracotta flowerpot for my window box.
As I hurl my latest urine-soaked purchase out the window, I get a brief surge of satisfaction as I hear it smash on the pavement, the cries of “Hey!” from startled passersby. But it recedes quickly. There’s barely novelty left in these little victories. Even putting on pants to head down to the local pottery store seems like a huge effort these days. Oh well. Time to get online and continue my research into countries where pottery is cheap and undervalued. I touch myself a bit at a picture of a particularly elegant Judy Greene bowl, but I’m not really feeling it. Maybe I could do a post about the top ten most disgusting brands of pottery. That’d really get some attention. I take a swig of coffee from my (tin) mug. “Is this it?” I think. “Is this really all there is?”
To clarify: I don’t actually think women are equivalent to pottery – but I needed to pick an inanimate object with no agency to fully get inside Roosh’s mindset.
I think it was a great image, tinyorc. The Rooshes of the world think all pots are chamberpots, too.
so by his logic women shouldnt have to groom either. i doubt women had smooth legs and fragrant breath 10,000 years ago. not to mention things like hairy toes and upper lip hair.
Yeah… This ideal is literally impossible to achieve, especially the parts about being thin to the point where no fat shows and having voluptuous curves and big perky boobs, which requires fat in the body. And of course there is the living hell of finding the golden ratio of “sexy” (she’s a coveted good but is owned by only one man), while not being “slutty” (she’s a used product) and “ugly prude” (she’s a bad product no one wants). Patriarchy is pretty ugly.
Bogdan: You mean this one?
From Shakesville: The Can’t Fucking Win List
What does that say about someone who wants the attentions of, and to have sex with, someone they don’t respect? It says they need a shrink. 🙂
Apart from the obvious fact that its WOMEN who have to do more (dont be too thin, dont be too fat, be sexy, yet dont be overtly sexual, be sexually innocent, yet have a sexual appetite, be a ‘good fuck’, but being that means you’re a slag, wax/shave armpit hair, leg hair, eyebrow hair, pubic hair- and act like it it doesnt take you a lot of time effort and pain- that you magically are just so- wear make up, without it you look terrible, but not too much or you are a fake barbie slag, dont be dumb, but dont be too intelligent or he’ll be threatened, same goes for any positive trait)……….
half the stuff he listed apply to women as well! At least certainly from him. Apparantly women only have to be thin- so he’s telling me he doesnt expect his partners to be clean, brush their hair and teeth, not smell etc|?
An attractive man has to have ONE of the following things to be considered attractive in our culture: money, good looks (obviously, same goes for women), intelligence, talent or status. And increasingly, just nice clothes, which is strange,
Benedict Cumberbatch is lusted over by many women. How are women like Beth Ditto treated in comparison?
In all honesty, trying to deal with women at all is pointless. It leads to nothing but pain. Deal with them as you must deal with everyone, but don’t try to seduce them and don’t even pretend to do it. Just do something useful with your life instead. The barbarian mentioned in this article is not only wrong about how to get women, he’s wrong in wanting women in the first place.
Haha the site’s about self improvement, game, and being a man. He doesn’t hate women, he resents most of today’s women for what they’ve become. Entitled, lazy, over weight, dull, and clueless. All we want is a healthy relationship between the sexes. It’s funny how writers like this get their panties in a bunch and get angry over the fact that someone is exposing them for who they are.
Ah yes, “self-improvement” and “game.” Things like “showering,” “wiping your ass,” “brushing your teeth,” and “trimming extra-long eyebrow hair so it does not obstruct my vision.” Ah yes, and women who expect men to perform these basic hygiene tasks that everyone does on a daily basis to ensure cleanliness are “entitled, lazy, over weight, dull and clueless.”
Sure. Roosh complains about having to wipe his ass, and we’re the ones who are “angry” and “have our panties in a bunch” over being “exposed for what we are.”
Whatever, dude.
Do PUAs really not mind if a woman is dirty and stinky as long as she’s not fat?
What does a woman’s weight have to do whether or not her relationship is healthy.
How is trying to sleep with as many young women as possible while simultaneously pining for virgins and calling non-virgins sluts, whore, cum dumpsters etc. a healthy relationship between the sexes? The notion that women are wrong to say yes to sex and wrong to say no to it is NOT healthy.
Resentment necessarily implies a sense of entitlement. You don’t resent me for having a cookie if you don’t feel like you are entitled to have a cookie.
Women are not Roosh’s rightful property, and neither are they yours. It is not a sign of a “healthy relationship” to expect women to modify themselves to please your boner.
Okay, I know I’m commenting on a very old post, but this is the first time I read it, and I can’t believe no one commented on the fact that “Apply and remove contact lenses” is on his list. Putting in and taking out your contacts isn’t an “act of grooming!” That’s something you do so you can fucking SEE!
@brian I suppose he might be complaining that he has to wear contact lenses as opposed to some electrical tape repaired specs or such like. Girls seldom make passes at men who wear glasses… that sort of thing.
But yeah…
Anyway, so much of this is basic self care… I only ever resent doing this stuff if I’m deep in a bout of clinical depression.
The guy is a c**t.
Why obsess about him?
He’ll get to die lonely, that’s a given.
At best, he’s a lesson to women what a douche-bag is like. At worst, he’s a waste of space.
Move on …
I really feel sorry for Millennials. At least GenX had Chuck Palahniuk.
But you know, if the prospect of mainstream life has become so dreary to this guy that he no longer wishes to engage in even the most basic of ADL to function in normative society, then perhaps he should take a page from Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, skip grihastha, and go on the path of the vanaprastha or sannyasa already.
Surely if the women he is bedding are ‘sluts’ then there is no technique necessary to get them into bed?
No, at worst he’s literally an admitted rapist and ignoring him allows him to continue to operate as such. Ignoring the problem is saying you’re okay with this happening.
Yeah. Screw those little whiney-pineys who have to dodge my car because I let a long eyebrow hair obscure my vision and let eye gunk seal my eyelids shut. If they don’t like how I drive, they can just stay off the sidewalk.
“Pluck extra long and curly eyebrow hair that began to obstruct my vision”
I have never ever had this problem. WTF is with this untrimmed hedge of a man.
The baking soda to the armpits thing is really a burden. On a hot day you break out in muffins. But that makes it imperative to remove that armpit hair. Considering there are YouTube channels on popping blackheads, Roosh has a potential gold mine.
Funny and a little sad how the feeling of love is so alien to him that he describes it as a “weird urge.”
I have never heard of this guy… but I LOVE the comments people are leaving here! Sex-bot, chrome plating your cock, pedazzled! (I’m still giggling over LeftWingFox’s comment about “excessive knob polishing and disco balls”. ) Thanks for helping me to be able to laugh at this today.