When I saw the headline on Return of Kings, PUA scuzzball Roosh V’s garbage site, I braced for the worst.
Men Benefit From Acting Potentially Violent And Explosive Around Women
Because the not-so-secret truth about domestic abuse is that abusive men do benefit in various ways from being abusive, just as bullies benefit from stealing other kids’ lunch money.
Happily, in this instance at least, Return of Kings refrains from explicitly endorsing domestic abuse.
It turns out that this post. by regular RoK contributor David Garrett, is mostly about running into people on sidewalks.
On purpose. To show what a total alpha badass you are. Or at least what a total alpha badass you are pretending to be.
As Garrett sees it, women go weak in the knees around “bad boys” because they think these “bad boys would be willing to use or have used physical force in expressing their badness.”
Trouble is, dudes who go around punching people tend to get punched back. So the real trick, Garret writes, is
to be seen as potentially violent and explosive, without the regular drawbacks of spending time in prison, getting badly beaten up by five other guys, or some other event you don’t particularly want to experience.
The key word is “potentially.” And in case you missed his point, Garrett repeats it, with the word “potentially” in bold:
There’s a distinction here, as you can see, between being violent and acting potentially violent around women and others.
So how do you convince the Hot Babes you’re potentially a big tough guy … without ever having to get into an actual fight to prove it?
Well, here’s where the whole “running into people on sidewalks” thing comes in.
If you want to be seen as a big tough guy who never apologizes for taking up space in the world, what better way to show this (in a reasonably safe way) than by running into people on sidewalks? Or at least by running into people you’re pretty sure won’t punch you for it.
When you walk in large cities, you might notice the propensity of people, especially young women, not to move around you when you’re walking towards one another. Sometimes they will deliberately try and cut you off, expecting you’ll concede space. Don’t. Aside from those with infirmities, the elderly or parents with young children, plough through.
Last month, one middle-aged woman … refused to make way … Oh well, my bag ran into her. And it hurt. Too bad for her.
TOTAL ALPHA MOVE.
Oh, and for maximum benefit, do this in front of the Hot Babes you’re trying to impress. I mean, duh.
When you’re with your girl, a female target or just female friends, try things like this out. There’s a time and place for etiquette and politeness but at least 90% of the time, barring those with mobility issues, it isn’t on the streets you walk.
You can also try getting mad at people who blow cigarette smoke in your general direction.
I also (calmly) confront those who blow tobacco smoke in my face accidentally, half- or full-daring them to try again (depending on whether I’m being sarcastic or plain condescending).
After explicitly telling his readers to do all this in front of “your girl, a female target or just female friends” in order to convince them in a low-risk way how potentially violent they are, Garrett assures us that he totally acts this way even when there are no HB8’s in sight.
If an alpha male falls in the forest, and there’s no HB8 to hear him, does he make a sound? Garrett says YES and pumps his fists.
Rather than being a staged action, it’s who I am, someone utterly repulsed by cigarette fumes. I would do the same thing alone or with a girl. … The context is more like becoming who you really are, rather than what society has demanded you be: the timid, ball-less gentleman.
Oh, but don’t do any of this with, you know, black dudes, or anyone else who might actually punch you.
I am going to suggest to you that making retaliatory or wisecracking comments to abrasive males in the projects of Detroit or the Bronx, or the non-tourist suburbs of Moscow, is maybe not worth the effort (or the dental bill).
I mean, BECOME WHO YOU ARE but only with people smaller than you, and who probably don’t have friends in the vicinity who might punch you. Seriously, you may want to stick to middle-aged women you can “accidentally” hit with your bag.
Because nothing turns the hot babes on more than a dude who “accidentally” hits middle-aged women with his bag.
@TheLulzWatch
Heyyyyy. That’s Riff Raff.
https://youtu.be/5tq89_rAu_s
@Alan, @fruitloopsie: Yup. Never underestimate a little old lady! They can run the legs out from under you with those wheeled walkers.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about the “women love assholes” myth. What Moocow and others have said is very true and very important, in terms of the ideological underpinnings. That’s probably 85%. I do think that it gets reinforced by observation because it’s easier to spot the bad than the good.
It’s easier to observe bad traits than good ones.. Suppose you’re out in public and you see two couples walking about. One is an asshole who rams people with his satchel. You see him and think “what an asshole.” One is a saint who volunteers on a crisis hotline on his time off from working for a nonprofit that feeds children. You see him and think “generic, normal guy.”
Plus, bad couples are more visible as couples. Many of the obvious ways people demonstrate their togetherness in public are kind of douchey. Sometimes you only spot a couple in the first place because the guy is jealous, possessve showoff. In fact, sometimes the couples you see aren’t even real couples.. The most skilled / most sinister PUAs and harassers can be mistaken for boyfriends from afar.
Also, bad men are more visible as individuals than good men. We spend a lot of time talking and thinking about assholes, both in the celebrity world and in our schools and workplaces. Thus, we spend a lot of time thinking about their relationships. If assholes are exactly as successful as everyone else, but we spend 60% of our time thinking about them, then it’s really easy to slip into thinking that 60% of women who date, date assholes.
I don’t know whether this is universal or regional or what, but when I was a teenager I often saw other teenaged and maybe 20-something boys kissing and holding (what I hope were) their girlfriends on the subway or in the streets, while the girls giggle, said “stop that,” and “fought back” with light fake punches. It was super gross. When I was 17, probably 90% of all real-life kisses I had seen (not counting between relatives, my parents, or my friends parents) were like that. If I had been romantically frustrated I could imagine concluding that I needed to act more like that, although it’s so distasteful I would never have tried it.
Former (yay!) Toronto Mayor Rob Ford – truly alpha.
Robbo is not so much alpha as bowling ball. But no doubt this guy would idolize the fuck out of him.
Music video showing this amazing(ly dickish) alpha-male pick-up technique:
What is the orchestral bit being sampled?
According to Wikipedia, from this 1965 orchestral cover of The Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time”:
@Orion,
I think that you summed it up very well. Bad news, bad people, and bad relationships–all of those things are what gets attention. So of course people end up thinking that “all girls like bad boys” because the girls who stood out to them most were the ones who did get involved with assholes. Once you ask them why they say “all girls,” they’ll talk about this woman whom they used to know. Then you’ll ask them how many women they’ve known that got involved with a stereotypical asshole, and it usually turns out that they’ve only known one or two.
Also, bumping into people on the sidewalk is now AlphaAsFuckTM? At point does the redpill become self-parody? Is this author trolling Roosh and Co.?
Unfortunately, much as I’d like to believe that, the fact that he was gloating over hitting a middle-aged woman hard with his bag and fantasizing about he might’ve hurt her makes me think that this is still serious.
@Tracy – I saw that clip of Rob Ford set to the the chorus of Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” – must admit it made me giggle.
@Orion – I think you’re right about bad behaviour being more noticeable than good behaviour. And sometimes it’s more entertaining. But while people may laugh at witnessing Person A pulling an assholish prank on Person B, it probably won’t make them any more likely to be Person A’s friend.
Pushing people off sidewalks and such is only “attractive” in the sense that people will stop and notice it. It’s not likely to generate thoughts of, “Gee, this is a person I should spend more time with!”
@epitome of incomprehensibility,
@alaisvex – now, now, I am a serious person with serious thoughts and that did not make me giggle again just now. No way. No sirree.
I’ve lost my patience with the term “bad boy” a long time ago. It castigates women for men’s noxious behavior and at the same time makes it sound like those men are the equivalent of practically blameless naughty children. Non-MRAs don’t usually right out come out and say the main cause of abuse is women’s poor choices but they sure as hell suggest it with all this “women love a bad boy” crap.
Also, this may be the most Bristish intensive comment thread in the history of WHYM. I feel like getting some fish and chips or at least a bag of Minstrals (aka the greatest candy of the Western world).
Remember, only bump into people who are smaller than you. If you bump into bigger people, you’ll bounce off instead of sticking.
Yeah, “bad boy” ranges from dogs who aren’t quite house trained to serious criminals, that’s really not an okay thing. And I’m jealous of you Brits, I want real BBC damnit, not to jump on YouTube next morning before they can submit the copyright violation takedown. BBC! I would pay! Your rebellious child wants its
king’squeen’s programming!@Argenti Aertheri,
We also have to keep in mind that this is the manosphere that we’re talking about. Around there, “bad boy” just means “man who is more successful with women than me” or “man who is dating the woman that I want to have sex with.”
Is the phrase “bad boy” really that objectionable in itself? I’ve always thought Marilyn Hacker was onto something. Redpillers havea badly distorted view of real life and real women, but they didn’t invent the “bad boy” archetype, and one presumably needs the phrase or a good substitute for pop culture lit crit.
I always thought the Bittersweet Symphony video was making fun of the song. It’s all about not being able to change your course in life, everything is predetermined, you can never break out of your mold, blah blah, and there he is walking down the sidewalk bowling into people, climbing over cars, and not hearing the woman yelling in his face because he can’t deviate even a few inches from his path. Which is a perfect illustration of the way some people use fatalism as an excuse for dickish behavior – “Hey, it’s just the way I am, man. You’re the one who has to go out of your way to accommodate me.” The RedPill is supposed to be all about self-improvement, but all they do is sit around rationalizing jerkhood as Men’s Essential Nature and refusing to grow up.
@Moocow – That’s a really interesting point about visibility and attention being tied to masculinity. It explains why manospherians get so angry at what they perceive as “attention seeking” behavior in women. I guess the flip side is that women are supposed to be invisible and not take up space?
I’ve often wondered why men spit on the sidewalk (one of my biggest pedestrian pet peeves – it’s gross, unhygienic, and disrespectful, and why oh why do they wait until they’re right next to you to do it?). Maybe it’s another way of claiming attention and physical space? It’s as if these guys believe they have to be the biggest, loudest, crudest person around, otherwise they’ll lose territory.
Hey there all you East End folk! My partner lives in Wapping, so I was just in your neck of the woods this past weekend. I’m afraid you’d be quick to classify him as a gentrifier, but if you run into him, please don’t be mean, he’s a lovely guy and, at the very least, feels guilty for being part of the gentrification.
dumbassapostrophe
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/strife-official/images/e/e9/What_did_I_just_read-meme.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150603055142
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants,
Oh God, don’t give the redpillocks ideas. They’ll start advocating peeing on things to mark their “territory” next.
Ok, on second reading I realize that sounds classist and I really didn’t mean for it to. I was just making fun of myself and my partner for being begrudging players in the London gentrification game.
Looks like I de-lurked on the wrong foot. I’ll just go back to doing what I do best.