I found this video on the alternately entertaining and infuriating Blue Pill subreddit, devoted to mocking Red Pill horribleness. In it, a perfectly nice young woman relates a comically terrible date with a dude who’s obviously been reading too many Red Pill/PUA websites.
Ironically, she went out with him because he sent her a note about Taylor Swift. I’m sure he thought it was a super-clever neg. Unaware that she was dealing with a massive shithead, she thought that he, like her, actually liked Taylor Swift. I guess that’s what she gets for not assuming that all guys are shitheads?
If you’re not into watching videos, a Blue Piller gives a detailed rundown of the woman’s story here.
The unfurtunate woman should probably send her douchebag date a link to the video below; I suspect he’d be horrified that some mean person had sullied his precious Nine Inch Nails (because you just know he’s a fan) by mashing up one of their songs with the terrible Taylor.
Oh, and while I’m at it, here’s an amazingly catchy NIN/Carly Rae Jepsen mashup, which I have to say is a massive improvement on the highly overrated NIN original. (Sorry, Dean Esmay, but it had to be said.) I’ve literally listened to it four times while writing/formatting this post.
zyvlyn,
While a lot of it could be standard-issue douchery, several of his tactics involving abrupt, confusing shifts in behavior feel very PUA. I mean, I know that non-PUA abusers also use unpredictable behavior to disorient, but they usually focus on changing *mood* unpredictably more than on doing things that are literally confusing like saying they’re leaving and then waiting for someone. Pretending to like Taylor Swift is also a weird bit of random dishonesty I wouldn’t expect from a manly man alpha male unless he read PUA, since otherwise I would think he’d just hate on T-swift openly.
@ PussyPowerTantrum I cannot figure out why it is but Youtube has a Gross imbalance of male users and most of them are MRA types. I don’t know what else to tell you. If youtube had more women on it I doubt this would happen.
daeros – I read recently that internet comments are 80% male dominated, apart from very specific sites. Certainly when I enter the fray that is youtube comments I often feel plunged back to teenage years, when the attitude of most men and boys towards me was disrespectful and often nasty.
I think that it puts women off. I certainly steer clear for a few days here and there, and I am a very confident and loud person. But whatever you are like constantly reading abusive comments aimed at you simply for stating an opinion or disagreeing with someone is unpleasant. I assume that a lot of it is done to stifle debate, and also to wield power. Some of the trolling is SO unpleasant I have a difficulty seeing a person behind those words.
It’s amazing how a video about a woman who outright refused to reward asshole-ish behavior can still be held up as an example of how women are shallow and prefer assholes and of how women are being awful because they want basic politeness and common courtesy and want their date to actually interact with them instead of staying on his phone the whole time and bragging about himself.
Also, don’t PUAs complain pretty regularly about how bitches always be texting?
@ellesar unlike a lot of the other youtube commentors I WANT women’s feedback and if they don’t like me I WANT to moderate and work on my behavior. It’s unfortuante that my tumblr account has kind of put off a lot of people because I overpost because I’d like to actually engage them.
zyvlyn,
What part of his treatment of this woman did not comply with redpill/MRA beliefs?
@alaisvex, you forget, men are texting because they have something important to say, women only text to shit test men.
I love both versions of Hurt. They are kinda bittersweet for me as I used to listen to them after self harming. Hearing them now reminds me of how far I’ve come and how I beat self harm.
I’ve always found it baffling that this seems to be unusual. In the mid-90s, when an IRA bomb was discovered in a phone box near the café where I was having lunch with my then girlfriend, the place was immediately evacuated the police. So we went to see a movie a couple of blocks away and then went back to the café to settle our bill – only to find that we were the only people who’d done this.
And because of this, they gave us a free cream tea with cake as a thank-you, so there was absolutely no downside – after all, we only paid the money that we were fully expecting to have to pay anyway.
Trent Reznor suffers from depression and anxiety disorders. While a fair bit of NIN is angsty, I don’t get that from Hurt, and I don’t think you can “read” any song from The Downward Spiral on its own, the album was designed as a piece.
Also, your favourite artist sucks, 😉
@Cerberus to be entirely candid with you it’s like you said, I don’t think I’ve ever been “punished” by women for being emotionally sensitive, crying or Doing anything that would “feminizie” me to the “homosocial culture.:
the bigger fear I have of being feminine has less to do with fear of female rejection and more to do with Fear of male violence for it.
and that doesn’t stop me. I’m not going to give up my close relationships with women because some asshole might try beating me up for it.
@cerberus evidneced too by the fact that the only people who ever seem to leave derisivie comments or imply I’m gay for being feminine are…men.
Huge NIN fan here 🙂 Well, huger fan in my (w)angsty teen years, but they still put on an awesome show (and IME have the most polite mosh pits!)
I didn’t hear that at all – I heard ‘you don’t have to put up with this’ and ‘don’t reward shitty behaviour’ which, in my teens and 20’s, was something I desperately needed to hear. My sister and I tell her step-daughter this all the time, and she’s finally dating a nice guy – an actual nice guy. I get where it could come off that way – her assuming he acts like this on dates because it’s paid off for him in the past, which isn’t necessarily true – but I still didn’t find that blamey on women.
I winced at the ‘like a queen’ thing, but I hate that expression. I know what she’s getting at, but ugh. I don’t want to be treated like a queen, just like a person with agency.
daeros – obviously you are aware that you are a minority?! I am glad to hear that women do not shame you. I certainly would never expect any feminist woman to shame a ‘feminine’ man. I have always held the view that the ONLY way to change gender roles and expectations is to accommodate ALL aspects of human expression – ‘feminininity’ in men, ‘masculinity’ in women, androgyny, gender fluidity etc.
@takshak: FWIW, I do like NIN enough to have a couple of the albums. “Hurt” just didn’t impress me the way the tracks off Pretty Hate Machine or Broken did. At any rate, Reznor noted that Cash pretty much took the song over from him…
@Orion and Lea
I’m certainly not suggesting he couldn’t be an MRA. His behavior is compatable with the disregard for women typically seen in MRAs, and he does some things which are suspiciously similar to PUA techniques, even if they could simply just be a result of self-absorbtion and douchiness.
I was just confused because I was expecting something more overt than that based on the description. In the end, it’s not a terribly important distinction to make. Whether or not he subscribes to the beliefs of the MRM, he still sounds pretty awful.
@ellesar I consider it progress when they think i’m “Whipped” I’ve done well. but anyways Yes I’m sadly aware of the fact that i’m a minority.
daeros – I hope you have good people around you who are less ‘traditional’ in their views.
I have the opposite – told that I scare men off, and I always think ‘ffs, just treat me like a person and I am NOT scary at all!’
@ellesar the best women always do, too many men for instance are afraid of women being financially independent. You can’t control the independent ones! oh no!
Cerberus: You are 100% right about that. I am transgendered and hence spent a lot of years pretending to be a male and fitting in. So I became very aware of what male group dynamics were (though I didn’t follow many of them, lol).
Far too many males will adjust their actions to fit in with male group norms. If that group is toxic towards females then that is what they will do. If that group is a bunch of bullying thugs, then that is what they will also do.
Common complaint amongst many females is their partner’s behaviour, who when they are alone together is kind, loving, supportive, etc, then with his ‘mates’ acts like a complete misogynist pig. I’ve seen that happen far, far too often.
The contradictory thing is that many males, caught in these kind of groups, will shout loudly about their ‘manly independence of mind’, while they are really just acting like total sheep.
People don’t realise how bad it can get and how susceptible many males are to this. I was on a very dangerous 4WD trip some years ago and the group split into all of them and me. Their dynamics were of acting like 14 year old kids with no thought to the situation and the extreme risks we were facing. The de-facto group leader was a neurotic mess, who panicked at one point and because of that they all panicked and then started doing suicidally dangerous and stupid behaviour. It was a miracle no one was killed.
And these were all 50+ males, successful, experienced and intelligent. It was unreal. And nothing I could do could shake them out of that. The need to fit in with the group norm was so strong to them that to achieve that they would do extremely risky, seriously life threatening actions. In simple terms they put their lives on the line.
I wasn’t going to and left them and here is the scary thing, they were furious at me and never, ever invited me on a trip with them again (not a loss to me).
So acting in toxic to females ways (like PUA) to fit in with a group should be of no surprise to anyone. And the groups will self reinforce and pay out/threaten/exclude others that deviate from the norm.
I sometimes get asked by genetic females about a guy they are interested in (leaning on my past male experience). The advice I always give is: look at their group of friends. If they are nice people then the individual guy could be a goer. But, if their friends are toxic, then even if the individual person is nice, then avoid them like the plague, because that group will influence them far more than you can imagine (plus look at where they are in the pecking order, see who is the group leader, and what are they like).
Yup. The rewards for shitheads like the one she talks about don’t come from women, but from other men. It really is a game to them, one that’s played against other dudes. The one who treats a woman the worst and still “gets” sex out of her (by whatever skeevy means) wins.
Which is why I found that whole “let’s go drink champagne on my roof” bit scary as hell. Dude, you only just met her, and already you’re trying to set her drunk? FUCK. OFF.
@Bina the worst part about the PUA material is it’s targeted at men but it thinks men are the type of creatures who don’t want a long term relationship with a woman. They just want to seduce them as quickly as possible.
@Bina Have you ever read any of it? It’s frightening. I mean yeah Sex is appealing I’d kind of like to have some at some point I’m not asexual but I mean I’m terrible at casual dating. because I can’t keep it casual to save my life. Ya’ll are just too addictive. Anyways I mean I was in a 3 year relationship when I was 13 over the interwebs and It !@#$Ed with me in later life because I just thought it was normal and I’ve frightened some women off because of how clearly things are never just hooking up with me.
I’m the type though that is usually more likely to scare them off in the first five minutes than in the following three years if I don’t mess up then.
I still like “Head Like A Hole” a lot, but I do admittedly have more fun listening to that remix…
Of course, it’s possible that rather than having had positive feedback for this stuff, this guy’s not been on many dates and effectively hasn’t had any feedback from women. The alarming thing about that idea is that he’s presumably got his ideas from PUA sites or something, and the feedback he’ll get from there is that he played the game almost right and needs to shell out for more courses. And naturally there are the MRA goons (in the comments of this very video, who’d have thunk?) who’ll give him props for disrespecting women on principle.
Tl;dr – I’m wondering if bad advice from other dudes is more of a risk for this stuff than positive feedback in terms of dating success. If so, I’m worried about the long-term consequences in terms of angry misled dudes mistreating women.