The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam celebrates the simple pleasures of
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread-and Thou
Reddit’s MGTOW contingent has a somewhat different notion of what constitutes the good life. It involves a motorcycle in one’s bedroom.
Last week, one Man Going His Own Way proudly posted the photo above to the MGTOW subreddit, where it received more than 80 upvotes and pretty much universal acclaim.
“People always ask when I would leave this ‘narcissistic immature lifestyle’ behind and just man up and get married already,” he wrote. “Why would I want to wake up to anything other than this in my bedroom???”
Replacing the wine, bread, and poetry of Omar Khayyam’s little scene we have:
- An air mattress
- A motorcycle
- A bigass flat-screen TV
- A Playstation 4
- Two video games
Replacing the tree, a Minecraft poster tacked to the wall.
Replacing “thou?” Whatever … that is on the bed, I guess.
You go, boy.
Is it just me or is that a really trash bike? Not something I’d want to show off and it’s in a room, lol. What, did he ride in like Fonzie or something?
I mean, if he’s happy, fair enough but that doesn’t exactly inspire universal jealousy. Maybe if he had a real bed, it would be rad?
lol MGTOWs
https://youtu.be/T1JO47zgtNU
Wait, does he live on the floor of a garage?
You call that a man cave? This is a man cave:
http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2012/08/bat_cave_theater_seating_2-610×335.jpg
Did he ride it into his room just for the photograph?
I’m reminded of that troll we had who doesn’t want to get married because wanting to live in a furnished home is indicative of female shallowness. If someone is happy living a very Spartan lifestyle, that’s just fine. But the attitude that women are horrible because we want to live somewhere that has a bed and a couch is just bizarre. Especially since most men want to have basic furniture too.
Is that a front door there on the left? This is his bedroom?
I know mature and anything-but-narcissistic people who have quite nice motorcycles in various places in their abodes.
It’s the pathetic comment that sets this fool apart from the rest.
That Man is Going His Own Way… away from furniture. Which if you follow the evopsych train of thought, means that he’s Going His Own Way and de-evolving back into a Neanderthal?
Am I thinking this through properly? My little lady brain cannot comprehend!
… Way to break the basement-dweller stereotype by literally living in a basement, dude.
I’m not quite sure what the point of this post is. That the guy is poor and therefore deserves ridicule? There are zillions of examples of MGTOW’s saying terrible things to choose from–if anything it’s laudable by the extremely low bar that they’ve set when they actually talk about going their own way.
(Also, before any trolls appear to shame us for making fun of this guy’s living situation: No. Mocking him for being poor or otherwise forced to live like this would be horrible, but mocking him for choosing to and bragging about choosing to? Fair game.)
Slow posting. Itsabeast’s post wasn’t there when I typed that.
Isn’t that what society says in general about people who are unmarried after the median age of marriage or married people who choose not to have children?
As a poor person who HAS lived in a basement, itsabeast, you generally don’t take pictures of it to brag about. Also, not many people living in crushing poverty have motorcycles, even crap ones. Broken cars we can’t afford to repair are much more common. A great number of us also aren’t MRAs or MGTOWs.
Seriously though, it’s wrong to furniture-shame this MGTOW if he’s happy with his bedroom the way it is. And it’s wrong of his RL acquaintances to try to nag him into marriage by calling his single lifestyle “narcissistic” and “immature”.
After all, if there’s one thing we’ve learned about MGTOWs from this website, it’s that they absolutely SHOULD be “going their own way” and leaving women alone. The inevitable consequence of any MGTOW being shamed or pressured into a marriage he secretly despises or resents is an unfortunate and unhappy woman bitterly regretting that she ever agreed to marry him.
MGTOWs: we think your choice of bedroom furniture is just fine and we are happy for you to be living your dream of a woman-free lifestyle. Well done, and please carry on.
My TV is bigger than that. I have more games too, and an actual bed. It’s so nice having an educated, independent spouse to share the burdens of life with. It seems like this man would benefit more from a dual income than he would going his own way. 2 WHOLE PLAYSTATION GAMES, WHAT A WINNER. I do not envy you, dude. Have fun going your own way, though.
Spot on. It takes a certain amount of privilege to boast about living like a poor person (but not really because he can afford a motorcycle and gaming console) in order to spite women. Plus, if his family and friends are getting on him for this lifestyle, chances are he comes from a more middle class socioeconomic status.
Granted, we don’t have that much information about him, but chances are he’s stubbornly sleeping on an air mattress because he’s rebelling against mommy.
hey, it’s one thing being poor and forced to live in a basement. Myself, I prefer attics. But my being poor resulted in preferring to ride an old bike instead of a motorbike, and taking over my parents’ old tube TV instead of buying a fancy-ass flatscreen. I was always a PC player, mostly because I got old PCs from friends who worked at public institutions or from my own University. Also, I got a fantastic big old mattress from a friend, and generally a lot of used furniture, often free. I buy books second hand, and have generally never spent a lot of money on furniture.
Nobody mocks him for being poor. We do mock him for being proud of an empty, materialistic lifestyle that’s clearly not one to be proud of.
Why would he need more than two games? He has Minecraft!
Well an a good air mattress can be better for your back than a regular bed. I had a rather nice one but the seam broke and I was too fat for it so the air kept slowly leaking out of it. We gave up and I now just have a Twin XL and box spring. (No frame. The cheap one we had bent, once again due to my weight. However it works for me and I kinda like it on the floor like that. Also I can’t kick things under it.) Of course I wouldn’t be bragging about it.
Yeah, I have to admit I don’t feel too good about this post. I mean, I guess the guy is kinda-sorta presenting his setup as some sort of awesome alternative to, uh, women, which would make it fair game for the blog, but it feels a bit too much like just making fun of a dude for the harmless stuff he has in his apartment. Kinda like itsabeast said above – I’d rather see people taken to task for what they say rather than what their bedrooms look like, you know?
You know, when one boasts of his lack of possessions, he usually does so with the implication (whether true or not) that his own life is so rich and colorful that he has no need for such things. Bragging about having very low standards for your possessions doesn’t have quite the same punch to it. I remember doing things like this when I was younger, telling people that I’d gladly live in a cardboard box if it had broadband. At the time I felt that this was some sort of rejection of materialistic comforts, but really I was just telling everyone that my own materialistic demands were different than theirs, not that they were absent.
I guess what I’m saying is that this is a picture of a sad room, and I have lived in some very sad rooms and never felt the need to brag about them to the internet.
I feel kinda bad for them. While they’ve aligned themselves with the kinda people who spew the kinds of quotes this site mocks, I mostly see someone trying to find a way to feel good about themselves in difficult conditions.
They’ve found a community that will pat them on the back for not marrying, which is one thing other people in their life give them trouble for.
Now, if there’s awful misogynistic gargling in their post history, the schadenfreude is easier to embrace, but… barring that, it’s just kinda sad.
David:
Maybe people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones?
You recently posted this video revealing that you are a middle-aged man who owns a futon. While that “bed” is arguably one step above an air mattress, most of us get out of the futon phase by 25. The apartment that you reveal in your video is pretty much indistinguishable from Motorcycle Man’s, except that it looks like less fun is had there.
I mean, aren’t you a MGTOW except for the voluntary part?
An air mattress on the floor, that looks really uncomfortable. I spent a few months staying with my mum trying to sleep and study on a futon, it played hell with my back.
To be fair to him, no one should be pressuring him to get married if he doesn’t want to, but why he thinks showing off his limited possessions should impress anyone is beyond me. If anything, maybe the fact he’s showing so little self care is the reason people are telling him to grow up?