Watching self-proclaimed pickup artists and Men Going Their Own Way going at each other is vaguely reminiscent of watching Trotskyist sects fight it out over the precise lessons that true revolutionaries should draw from the Russian Revolution.
The fact that, in both Trot-fights and in the interminable online squabbles between PUAs and MGTOW, combatants agree on almost everything only seems to make them madder about the things they disagree about. Freud famously called this phenomenon “the narcissism of small differences.”
The latest skirmish between the forces of pickup artistry and MGTOW-ism was inspired by a Return of Kings post, published earlier this month, declaring MGTOWs to be a bunch of bitter whiners jealous of PUAs’ success with women,
RoK contributor Corey Savage acknowledges plainly that PUAs and MGTOWs aren’t really all that different at all.
All things considered, MGTOW, ROK, and other men’s groups have more things in common than the differences. We all recognize the disease that is feminism and we are all faced with the new realities that modern society has to offer for men.
But despite having basically the right — horrifically negative — views on women and feminists, Savage complains, MGTOWs are … a bunch of pussies.
MGTOW may have started with the right intent of defying the gynocentric system that exploits men, but it has quickly turned into a congregation of young men who come together to validate each other’s bitterness and frustration. …
I can somewhat accept bitchy behavior from feminists as they’re women, but to watch these “men” throw a hissy fit over articles on attracting women or becoming a better man (none of which they were forced to read) is both hilarious and cringeworthy at the same time.
In the comments, assorted RoK readers suggested that most MGTOWs are such pathetic losers that their much ballyhooed boycott of the sexual marketplace won’t even register with most women.
As someone called Ainigmaris put it,
The worst aspect of MGTOW that I have seen is the asserted belief that men withdrawing from the sexual marketplace to go their own way will somehow force change in women over time. That is so naïve, petulant and utterly blue pill, it is laughable. …
Unless you are getting the top 20% of males to MGTOW, women won’t even *notice* you have left the sexual marketplace.
Ainigmaris finished up with some thoughts on vaginas.
Also, there are legions of blue pills who will never abandon the quest for the Holy Vag. Women will continue riding the carousel until their loins are so epically stretched out that they slide right off and tumble into some stalwart blue pill White Knight waiting to hoist their pulped roast beef snatches up onto the highest of pedestals.
Philosoraptor41, meanwhile, suggested that MGTOW is little more than a “a cop-out/denial mechanism” for guys no women want.
[I]f someone such as the comic book guy from the Simpsons goes MGTOW, then it’s a cop-out on their part.
Why? It’s very easy to say “screw game and self improvement” if someone hasn’t ever succeeded.
The MGTOWs didn’t take these insults lying down. As MGTOW defender Matthiu Ryin sees it, it is the PUAs who are the true simp manginas (probably).
Are you f*cking kidding? Mgtow is populated by highly successful men who’ve had their lives ruined in divorce court. What exactly are you bringing to the table with any of this bullsh*t anyway? … No all you’re really doing is mocking and that’s what women do.. I mean you might just be a simp mangina too its pretty hard to tell the difference online … you haven’t addressed any of the issues mgtow addresses all you did was try to infantalize the entire movement. I think your website might be run by women.. just a thought.
In a followup comment, Matthiu insisted that the MGTOW reverse-Lysistrata maneuver is the only way to truly put the ladies in their place:
Why do women act the way they do now? Because of the way men act and let them get away with it. If we stand up as men they will have to change whether it’s logical or emotional or whatever. We’re supposed to be the ones setting the precedent anyway and somehow we’ve lost it and started giving women a voice and it’s infecting our minds to where we think a woman’s point of view is more valid than our own.
Enlishbob suggested that perhaps Matthiu was a teensy bit jealous:
You can’t get laid. So you pretend that you don’t want to get laid.
Matthiu in turn accused Englishbob of being “pussy whipped and controlled” by women and their hypnotic vagina powers.
Omg the you can’t get laid card.. please dude.. you’re showing your hand that you totally use pussy for validation.. and so you are pussy whipped and controlled. … You’re putting pussy on a pedestal and worshipping it for self validation and eventually when it gets pregnant you’ll just get mopped up in court and maybe even go to jail over it.
When “it” gets pregnant?
You put up with women’s head games and maybe are even a little bit of a bitch around women. … our whole society has been under mind control in the media for a long time to turn women into nasty people and make men subservient to them. … You have this vision of yourself as a man who does this and that woo woo but the reality is you just pick up after your women and they sit back and collect your money.
And so on and so on and so on.
This sort of internecine warfare amongst the internet’s biggest misogynists is such a pleasure to behold. Whoever “wins” this round in this interminable argument, we can rest assured that all the combatants are total and utter losers.
A wonderful example of Sayre’s Law: In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.
(Corollary: this is why academic politics is so bitter. Why, yes, Sayre was a professor of political science, why do you ask?)
Thank you, EJ!
(Welp. This is my first comment on this website.)
Hey guys, I was scrolling around the comments and I saw someone speaking about the “dark-triad” traits that people on the manosphere are supposed to develop. Can someone explain me what the “dark-triad” traits are?
I understand that it’s unhelpful to medicalize destructive ideologies, and that many PUAs are neurotypical. I don’t dispute the recommendation, but I’m confused by one statement.
Are there in fact people with ASPD “trying to live harmless lives?” I would think that trying not to harm others would be incompatible with the diagnostic criteria.
Hi Andy! Welcome. Please find yourself a gift basket of scented candles and misandry and pull up a hard chair!
(Note: I’m talking about psychology stuff below. Psychological disorders are mentioned. No armchair diagnosing going on here, just describing what I know about it)
The “Dark Triad” traits are narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. They’re studied in some areas of applied psychology as indicators for criminal behaviour and general jerkholishness. The three behavioural traits are, when found together, a fairly clear warning sign for “trouble ahead”.
The Dark Triad traits are also considered a core of the “Dark Enlightenment” philosophy, which is an alt-right collusion (confusion? contusion?) of libertarianism, scientism, nihilism, and monarchism. It’s the “intellectual” alt-right philosophy that considers the Dark Triad traits to be good, i.e. empowering. The philosophy’s basically grown around that.
Sort of reveals the world they live in. What’s considered a stable indicator for criminality, immorality, and evil in the world at large is considered by a large segment of the alt-right to be virtuous and commendable.
Yudkowsky, why did you go so wrong?
@orion. You can feel no remorse in hurting people, but not want to for logical, cognitive, or social reasons. You can be fine emotionally with hurting people but know that it overall makes your life worse.
Not only is it fun to watch them fight, it can be fun to not have an argument with them. A MGTOW is trying to have an argument with me elsewhere. He came stomping into a discussion to announce that child support amounts to child abuse with no further explanation. When he couldn’t, I said I wasn’t interested in having a discussion with someone who can’t even research up a decent citation, then asked if he had any hobbies. He lost his shit and hasn’t let up since. It’s been two weeks now. He just keeps going.
I’m just wondering if I’m going to get bored of saying irrelevant stuff like “I see you’ve spent the day online ranting. I had a nice, relaxing walk before coming home to grill some burgers” to him or if he’s going to eventually wander back to whatever echo chamber he came from first.
Hey @Scildfreja! I confess that I’m wholeheartedly thrilled with that gift! 🙂
Also, thanks for the explanations!
@Orion:
I went to university with such a person. He described it as a matter of having very harmful instincts which had to be overcome by being conscious of his actions. He wasn’t a bad guy except when he was drunk or tired, when it came through.
(Last I heard, he was working as a hedge fund manager, because if you’re really good at maths and have no sense of empathy, that’s what you do.)
An anecdote from first-person experience is not data, of course, but that’s the only encounter that I have knowingly had with a person with diagnosed APD, so it’s shaped my expectations.
@Scildfreja:
Thanks yourself!
Yudkowsky was never right except by default. Charitably, one could say that he is an object lesson in why good academics seek peer review rather than merely the applause of lackies and lickspittles.
Personally, I feel no desire to be charitable. The man is a con artist who makes a living repeating Peter Thiel and Ray Kurzweil’s own insecurities back to them. I can’t judge his AI work since I’m not an AI scientist, but his much-vaunted “timeless physics” is straight-up mush which should have been written in crayon. He’s no more worthy of serious consideration than Deepak Chopra.
In my opinion we shouldn’t be surprised that he went this wrong; we should be surprised that it took this long for us to notice.
@Saphira
Hobbies: Since when do they excite so much passion? So much controversy?
I know that you’re not supposed to bring up sex, religion, or politics if you want to get along with others.
The weather used to be an innocuous topic until climate change killed that. Thanks, industrialists!
And hobbies! You could get along with your neighbor by looking at her paint-by-numbers masterpieces or her collection of angels. Apparently in MGTOW circles, this is no longer the case. Has it spread beyond them? Thanks, woman haters!
I guess I’ll have to stick with my long, doting stories about the Cute Things My Cats Do.
PS: Saphira, I think this MGTOW is in love with you.
@scildfreja
I have come across the ‘dark triad’ thing in real life. To meet a person so devoid of values and common decency was scary and pretty much made me believe in demon possession. Not meaning to be ableist but I have to say this, I’m not making excuses for their behaviour on account of them being ill. They were actually very, if not intelligent, devious. There are not only real psychopaths out there, but people (Dark Enlightenment types) who are proud of their psychopathy. They are Machiavellian and nihilistic, and see this as an end goal of their aspiration to be the Übermensch – Niezsche would have been appalled at how his ideas have been distorted and applied because he was not a Nazi.
Narcissism is a very common side effect of this psychopathy, and unfortunately most of the victims of narcissists are the kindest, most compassionate and introverted people. Narcissists like to gaslight and make their partner feel at fault, they cannot take any blame themselves. Victim blaming stems from the same mindset.
Sigh…
You’re not discriminating against the mentally ill, just comparing them to literal nonhuman monsters. Gotcha.
Can’t you move along already?
This is kind of when libertarians and objectivists argue with one another over minute differences, as well as becoming petulant when someone conflates both groups.
Well, yeah, of course that’s going to happen. Do you expect everyone outside your group to have encyclopedic knowledge about your group and those related to it? I’d also argue that if most people consider them one and the same – that’s more on those groups for expressing themselves so similarly than the average person for not being able to intuit such like magic.
Hell, as a Jew I’ve felt that way about most denominations of Christianity as well…
@Virgin Mary : I would resist the idea of calling them psychopath without an actual expertise. They may just want to look like psychopaths (as in, look like dark triad) to be cool. I know a lot of people who try to exagerate a trait of their public persona so much one could genuingly think they are unwell, while as soon as they aren’t under scrutiny they revert back to normal human being.
The worst example is a friend who is all “I am ultra-rational, emotions isn’t something I have, they would just cloud my judgment”. It’s not quite the dark triad, but he do have some quite antisocial behavior quite often, and he visibly shift out of them at time, when he is drunk or relaxed or in small commitee.
The open question to me being if someone can permanently worsen its (psychopathic|sociopathic|narcissic|other mental illnesses) tendancy by trying to overplay them.
@Croquembouche of Patriarchy
I remember mentioning ‘Ethan of Athos’ a few weeks back. Nice to see other people here familiar with the ‘Vorkosiverse.’ What sticks in the mind is Ethan’s rescue by the ‘Hygiene Cops’ biosecurity team. Farce and dry humour. Great stuff.
@ Victorious Parasol, @ Kevin:
I love the farce that erupts, totally logically and inevitably, in the Vorkosiverse in the midst of serious situations. I think A Civil Campaign was peak for me.
I gather LMB is kind of winding herself down to retirement, switching to e publishing at her own pace. I’d love at some stage to see another Vorkosiverse book that features the next Athosian and Cetagandan and Barrayaran and Cryoburn generations, but I can understand if she feels she has wrapped up the series at its logical endpoint and doesn’t want to start a kids-of spin off series.
@EJ, I hope your holiday is going nicely! I’d like to take a flight out to Somerset at some point; I have family there and have never visited.
Yudkowsky just makes me sad. He has some excellent writing on rationality, a field in which good writing can be sort of thin on the ground and, when it exists, is often too academic and unapproachable. He’s good with metaphor.
That said, though, all of the rest of his writing (and a worrisome chunk of his rationality stuff) groans with the weight of his ego. He’s confused, and his confusion always seems to favour the existence of the brilliant super-rational person, his thoughts on physics are confused and his thoughts on AI are both infuriating and dangerous.
He’s a very tight bundle of stereotypically male insecurities. He’s right, and anyone who disagrees is worthy of ridicule. He’s completely sold on his ideas because they are elegant, and they really are beautiful. I love his “Friendliness” principle and its implication for a self-leveraging intelligent system (even if those ideas are so tightly bound with Hollywood views on AI that it’s comical).
The problem is that his ideas are hollow. Just like the guys who love-love-love their theoretical physics but can’t follow the math, he has to rely on metaphor, and metaphor’s only good for explaining things to laypeople – you can’t build your theory out of stories. He despises the actual AI and computer science communities, and doesn’t use our tools. His ideas are castles in the sky, and some of them are pretty darn malevolent.
But there’s a slice of absolutely beautiful stuff in there. Real make-you-think koans on rationality that are simple, approachable, and poetic. That’s all I’m lamenting, that such nice and useful stuff has to co-exist with the mountain of cruft that is his work.
@Virgin Mary,
While I wasn’t there so can’t say whether this person actually had any of the Dark Triad traits, I’d be really hesitant to make that sort of diagnosis! People have a tendency to attribute to personality what ought to be attributed to situation. Like – if you’re speeding in your car, it’s because you’re in a situation that warrants it – late for work, no one else is around, etc. You make an excuse. But if you see someone else speeding, it’s because of their personality. They’re just a speeder, with all of the associations of recklessness and carelessness that implies. It’s a well-known bias called the Correspondence effect, Attribution effect or the Fundamental Attribution Error.
It’s really, really easy to do this when we see people doing something we don’t like. Again, I don’t know the specifics of the situation you were in, but I’d be really hesitant to attribute personality traits (like those in the dark triad) to that person.
You’re right that there are people out there who are proud of their nihilism, but that’s not the same as having a mental illness at all. That’s just being a selfish jerk.
(
and, uh, sorry for piling on but I just have to run through the list here…
– people in the “Dark Triad” tend to come off as very charming and decent until you get to know them deeply, not devoid of values and decency;
– human beings can be monstrous all on their own, demons not required;
– there’s no good correlation between malevolence and mental conditions;
– having a mental illness does not prevent someone from being intelligent or ‘devious’
– psychopathy is not a psychological condition, it’s a term used in popular media and some criminal justice assessments. Narcissism is not a side effect of psychopathy;
– If you mean Antisocial Personality Disorder instead of psychopathy (which is fine, terms are just words after all), narcissism is not a side effect of ASPD, though they do often co-incide
)
I feel for you – it’s really tough discussing this sort of thing without falling back on the way it’s normally discussed. Even our language is confused – we can’t talk about Narcissists clearly, since that could refer to either selfish narcissistic assholes or it could refer to people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder of some variety. They aren’t the same, and they aren’t interchangeable.
So please don’t think that I’m just laying into you with nit-picking! I’m trying to help make what you’re saying clear, so that your comments don’t hurt our friends with mental conditions of various shades. I’m sorry if I dug a bit too deeply in trying to do so. These are hard topics to discuss.
re: Yudkowsky,
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1471010150-20160812.png
@Scildfreja:
I was in Paris! It was great! In the course of ten days I saw 109 French flags, 51 European flags, 4 Portuguese and 3 American (plus trace elements of many other flags)! I also saw lots of good architecture and some excellent museums. Best of all, I saw La Défense. La Défense makes me happy in a bone-deep way.
I write this on the coach home, in fact.
Let us know if you ever come over to the UK. Somerset isn’t too far from where Alan and sunnysombrera are based IIRC so we might be able to have a UK mammoth-meet in your honour.
Re Yudkowsky:
You can feel sad about him if you like. In my opinion, the world is not so starved for writing talent that we need to seek it in dime-store messiahs and Dunning-Kruger poster boys.
That said, because even a stopped clock is right twice a day, I find his idea of the Rationalist’s Taboo to be very useful. I’m just ashamed of admitting that it came from him.
@Vorkosigan types
A Civil Campaign is one of my favorite books of all time. Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance is also way up there for me.
If you’ve read Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, it seems like LMB is definitely winding down. It’s very contemplative,. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, I really enjoyed it, and I have really appreciated how the series has evolved through genres.
@EJ : amusingly, the general french opinion on La Defense is that it’s ugly as sin, but practical. Maybe it’s the engineering feat who made you happy ?
@scildfreja
Sorry about my post. It is a hard thing to discuss.
During my time with this person, I suffered depression and genuinely thought I was losing my mind. He was always trying to come over as sweet and charming, but used that old trick of giving and withdrawing affection, and ‘punishing’ me if I did not do what he wanted. He liked to use the silent treatment (sulking and being anti social) as punishment, so I the end I had to apologise to him for upsetting him when I’d done nothing wrong. I have learned enough now to see these traits in others, and not to get drawn into their lives and dramas, because I end up being the one who suffers.
@Virgin Mary:
Hugs. People who manipulate affection and give it in a conditional manner are the absolute worst. I’m sorry that it hurt you that much and really glad that you survived it.
@Ohlmann:
I’m an admirer of Paolo Soleri and I have a weakness for planned, modernist urban utopias so… yeah. It’s my version of Architecture!Disneyland.
@Virgin Mary, <3
I totally get it. I've been through relationships like that, and my sister is just now pulling herself out from a guy who did that to her for ten years. They have two children together, so it was incredibly difficult. No judgement here, an you're very strong to have been able to pull yourself away from that. It's a miserable way to treat someone, and you didn't deserve it. I'm glad you're out and that you can identify it quickly.