So one public-spirited gentleman who calls himself retturd has a question for the alpha dudes of the Ask The Red Pill subreddit: Is volunteering seen as blue pill? Retturd assures the assembled color-of-pill experts that “I love volunteering and helping people in general.” He just worries that being so helpful might be seen as terribly beta.
The regulars assure him that volunteering is perfectly fine for alphas. As long as they’re careful about just who they are helping. Helping old dudes and learning from their old-school alpha ways? Perfect. Helping poor people? Not so much:
Also, helping kittens is right out, unless you’re Elon Musk. Or at the very least a sharp-dressed swole dude.
DO YOU EVEN LIFT KITTENS, BRO?
@paradoxical… that list of ‘hobbies that turn men off’ – are the same list of hobbies that would turn me off someone’s CV if they listed them as their interests or, fair to say, if I saw it on an online dating site. Except for one. Volunteering. But it would totally turn me off if I just saw ‘volunteering’ – I’d want to know what they were doing. Because if someone listed volunteering generically I wouldn’t believe them.
I think I’m going to save this to link to every time I encounter someone claiming that these people are the true egalitarians, etc. “I am currently helping some people less fortunate than myself but if you strangers think that makes me “beta” I’ll totally stop because priorities.”
Once again, MRM misses the boat. I think a lot of these guys are suffering from missed social connections (I mean obvs, a lot of them are pretty toxic). Loneliness and lack of connection is a killer. Volunteering in a way that helps you build social connections and gives you pleasurable feedback from helping others is good for your health (and it’s a good thing to do). Instead of hating on others, if they really wanted to help men, they’d be encouraging them to live full lives – yes, helping themselves, but making connections and serving others.
Sport (apparently fairly alpha) volunteering in particular has some research behind it to show that it reduces depression, improves health outcomes and makes people feel happier and more resilient. This is currently my volunteering effort and it’s incredibly rewarding. I get back far more than I put in.
@Moggie:
People caring about one another is totally beta.
…
I’ve just realised something. If you replace the word “beta” with the word “gay” in MRA writings, it reads far more naturally.
Fancy that, it’s wrong to help the ones who need the most help. I just love how they shit on poor people. All I have to say is, may the day come where you find yourself in poverty and no one is around to help.
karma is a bitch, you’ll see.
Wow! I think this “alpha” thing has gone too far these days. I saw a video on youtube not too long ago where a guy showed you “how to sit like an alpha male.” Isn’t the biggest “alpha trait” not to actually tell people you’re an “alpha male?” 😛
Wait, I thought poor people (specifically poor men) were poor because women were too busy milking every dollar from them in alimony and child support. Now suddenly they’re just lazy and unwilling to change?
“Alpha” was always rotten. It was built on foundations of internalised misandry, self-loathing and victim-blaming, and nothing built on such foundations can ever escape them. It has not been corrupted: it is corruption.
“Alpha” is a toxic meme. Anyone who argues in favour of it is prioritising dominance over morality, which is unacceptable.
“Alpha” isn’t going too far. It’s just showing its true colours.
The one consistent thing about reactionaries is that the narrative is fluid and changes to suit whatever they’re talking about at the moment.
I’m reminded of an ex boyfriend of mine. He liked to drink wine, and we would always share a bottle over dinner. Then we went for a weekend away with his sports club (it was a disaster) and all of a sudden I was trying to get through a bottle of rose by myself because he couldn’t be seen drinking wine in front of his beer chugging buddies. Nothing says ‘manly’ like being afraid to drink something you enjoy for fear of what others might think of you. He also refused to visit Kew Gardens with me because ‘flowers are gay’.
Being an alpha is SO limiting.
snorkmaiden – the beer may have been strategic – if you try to compete on volume with wine, it’s a sucker bet. Pints of wine will lay people out (I’ve seen it). You can argue that it’s a stupid culture, and perhaps it is, but it’s one that many people, myself included, enjoy. And just because you enjoy wine doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy beer. Beer is good for you (I’m told by unreliable sources).
But refusing to visit Kew, that is pretty silly. Although these days the entry price is so high, I’d expect rides for that kind of money.
@Rugbyyogi, I’m smiling at the thought of pints of wine. A wine themed drinking competition would be truly hardcore. At the time I was more annoyed because suddenly I was in a position of trying to finish a bottle of wine myself or see it wasted, had I known he wasn’t going to drink any I’d have had vodka instead like all the other girls.
The prices at Kew are ridiculous, I blame that tropical storm back in ’87 where loads of their trees were uprooted, before that they only charged a token 1p entry. But for the record, we would’ve got in free, I had guest passes.
According to Bernard Cornwell, the Duke of Wellington’s army were issued a pint of wine per man every day as part of their rations. Allegedly this was seen as one of the main reasons to join the army.
I remember the token access prices at Kew Gardens! Sadly, though, their research and conservation work take a lot of money, and their funding is a mess:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/04/kew-funding-is-recipe-for-disaster-warn-mps
If you pay for “friend” membership, you get free access year round, plus access to various other gardens around the country. I must admit that I haven’t visited for a few years, but I keep my membership paid up because of the work they do.
And flowers are not gay. Some of them are asexual.
Nothing says confidence and mastery like crowdsourcing your morality.
Having an inner sense of self: meh.
What other guys are doing with their dicks: Serious Business.
Now I’m wondering what old timey pickup tactics would look like. Back in the days when fedoras were standard male attire, did PUAs peacock in stovepipe hats?
Strutting your stuff, pre-Great War era:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Churchill,_uniform.jpg
(Bonus points if you know who that is.)
(To clarify: that person wasn’t actually in the military. They just liked to wear the uniform to look good.)
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/humanscience/images/1/19/33_elizabeth_upset_Pride_and_Prejudice.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20071128194951
Mitchel:
Is that where you sit with your legs ninety degrees apart, as if to send the message “I have dangerously unwieldy genitalia”? Annoying as hell on public transport, when they’re next to you and encroaching on your space.
@ EJ (the other one) it’s Winston Churchill. No idea how I knew that!
In my mind, it’s NOW OFFICIAL!
Speaking as a middle-aged guy, I can assure you that anyone with even the hint of the concept that helping poor people and kittens could affect the image of how masculine he is is not so much a “normal, decent, self-respecting man with strong backbone” (my phraseology) as someone who is a bit strange. I wasn’t exactly the most secure in my masculinity (if defined as “social domiance”) when I was in my 20s, but I never went THAT far.
@ Maggie I saw an article somewhere about someone who was arrested for ‘man-spreading’ on public transport. I also read a hilarious article about a woman who had taken to sitting on people on the tube if they were man-spreading over more than one seat and refusing to move.
@limesweet
If that’s WC then EJ is wrong. WC did serve in the military.
@Maggie
Funny you should mention that. My friend told me not too long about how annoyed his girlfriend gets sitting next to “alpha males” on public transit that like to take up a lot of space.
I don’t recall him saying anything about 90 degree angles. It’s a guy wearing sunglasses indoors sitting on a couch that talks about 3 “dominant alpha male seating positions.” He says most men are “beta” and sit like women. He also says to never lean on an armrest. And, finally, he talks about how you can easily shift from position to position if you arm or leg gets tired.
How sad it must be to walk around all the tie obsessed with with that Alpha-beta bullshit. “Hmm, these socks are kind of beta…but then, the confidence to wear them is ALPHA! I can’t decide.” “I want some coffee, but what if people see me put sugar in it?? They’ll think I’m beta.” “My sister is moving…is carrying large things Alpha enough to make up for the beta-ness of helping out a woman??”
You know what’s really Alpha? (Nothing, probably, since it sounds bogus to me, but let’s pretend.) NOT GIVING A SHIT WHETHER PEOPLE SEE YOU AS ALPHA OR NOT.