Johnny Caustic said:
This ties back to the fact that I found the seduction community back when everyone was big on aloofness, and how that b.s. held me back for years. I didn’t have the courage to face the “no”s, and the nonsense about faking disinterest gave me an excuse to be cowardly.
“the seduction community back when everyone was big on aloofness, and how that b.s. held me back for years. ”
That used to piss me off so hard. At the time I wrote what seemed like dozens of posts against the idea. If felt as if I was the only voice, stating the obvious, as loud as I could. It felt as if no one was listening. So incredibly frustrating. Yes, exactly. I knew how damaging that idea was. I fought my best against it, swimming against the tide, getting nothing but flack at the time.
Really fucking stupid idea. Heartiste is a good writer, but his promotion of narcissism and the dark triad by definition makes him not a good person.
I did a google search for xsplat aloof and there are many cranky posts. But this is the anti Heartiste meme post that really riled me up at the time.
Aloofness as ultimate game is stupid and toxic enough, but the fake-it-until-you-make-it confidence-is-king meme. Man. Eye rolling is not argument, so I wrote against that as best as I could at the time also.
Swimming against the stream. Never thanked. Barely noticed, or at least not much publicly agreed with at the time. But things did change. Heartiste’s ideas are no longer mainstream – the stream is now in my direction.
The Red Quest said:
Getting angry at people online seems like a waste of emotion. Reality offers useful feedback to those who believe incorrect ideas.
Having incorrect ideas is just human nature.
But sometimes people do what seems not much different than preaching for others to use crack cocaine, and try to build up a church of crack cocaine.
In such cases, it’s also human nature to have social concern, and to try to prevent a crack cocaine epidemic.
We are evolved to have social concern. It’s an emotion people don’t talk about much, but it’s very common. It’s similar to a sense of justice. We simply don’t like to see people causing harm.
And the commentor above mentioned that the incorrect ideas had a negative impact on his life.
It’s one thing to use crack, and be open and honest about it.
It’s another thing to preach using crack.
I’m a libertine and lean towards letting everyone do their own thing. But doing your own thing is not the same as setting up a Charles Manson church.
Some influencers, such as Roosh and Heartiste, rigorously police the conversations such that alternate viewpoints can not be expressed on their platforms.
Heartiste is well known to go so far as to actually edit peoples comments, such that the comments say different things than the commentor was trying to say.
He did this to my comments several times. This could not be apparent to the other readers, and he would not allow comments on his blog that called him out on this.
I’ve heard the same thing from many other people.
So this goes beyond having opionions and speaking your mind. It becomes much closer to brainwashing people. And this can cause real harm. It’s not theoretical.
Charles Manson didn’t actually do any murders, yet wound up in jail, merely for being influential.
It’s not just a game. It’s not just all live and let live, laissez fair. It’s very real cause and very real effect.
@theredquest, you’ve mentioned before that many of the people attracted to redpill and manosphere forums are there because of social deficits.
They are, in some ways, weak and vulnerable.
They can’t know what they don’t know. They are not in a position to judge for themselves, to pick and choose the wheat from the chaffe. They simply lack the life experience to be able to do so.
A persuasive writer can be analogous to a bully picking on a retard, if he is persuasive for personal gain.
You may have heard of a once popular character called Christian Mcqueen. It’s been said by some that he is in fact parasitical. https://www.rooshvforum.com/thread-45406.html
The weak in society need ombudsmen. There are predators everywhere, and the manosphere/redpill sphere is full of them.
It can take years and years for them to be caught out. By then so much real damage is done.
Random Xpat Rantings 
It appears to me that every single manosphere bigwig has larger than life flaws. Sometimes almost to the point of self-parody. I regard the bulk of it more as entertainment than useful information. That being said, I am deeply grateful for the IDEA that charisma can be a learned skill. That idea may have saved my life.
As for Heartiste and dark triad traits:
From my whole life I can only remember a few guys that had too much dark triad in them. (And at least a few women…) . Of course the worst of them are destructive far in excess of their number. But they probably aren’t well represented in Heartiste’s readership. Not too introspective, that bunch.
Almost all the guys I have known would, in my estimation, would become better men by being more brutally direct and honest and less polite; More self-interested and less angling to please some powers-that-be, be it teachers, bosses, family, or pretty women; More Machiavellian in sense of manipulating people in the service of achieving some productive end instead of manipulating people in an attempt to gain approval.
Narcissism, Machiavellianism, Remorseless anti-social behavior. In small doses these are the traits that make men effective. Without them nothing gets achieved.
I don’t think that it makes sense to hold Heartiste responsible for talking up behaviors that most western men are barely capable of summoning up the courage to actually engage in. And the guys that have too much of these traits aren’t going to change there behavior because of some blogger.
A girlfriend of mine complains to me about the guys who send her ridiculously sexual texts or unsolicited dic pics and the like. “Why would he DO THAT?” He does it because sometimes it works. And he doesn’t need or solicit advice from Heartiste. Women have taught him all he needs to know.
I’ll come back to your comment later, but my first impression is that you are saying that no one really took what Heartiste said seriously or at face value any way, so he couldn’t really have influenced people negatively.
But you’re also saying that they took him just seriously enough such that they could take away a “no more Mr. Nice guy” message.
I didn’t read the No More Mr. Nice guy book, but glanced over their forum. My takeaway was that you can learn boundaries without any reference to dark triad traits or to aloofness.
I agree that Heartiste did have quite a lot to offer.
I still disagree that his worst ideas were not both toxic and influential.
[quote:xplat]I still disagree …. his worst ideas were … both toxic and influential.[/quote]
Certainly some truth to this. His blog was a bit schizophrenic on the personal and civilizational cost of debased morals and behaviors; at the same time lamenting the loss and ‘enjoying the decline.’
There are a small number of – lets call them theories – that I take as markers of intellectual unseriousness; Ie. Anyone who goes on about the impending doom of global warming, about Astrology, about the conspiracy by the [special group] to secretly enslave the planet… I just stop listening.
Heartiste skated about the periphery of some such topics which I consider silly at best, and destructive at worst. But he generally did so in a fashion that was usually entertaining and sometimes informative.
[quote] his promotion of narcissism and the dark triad by definition makes him not a good person.[/quote]
I was trying to say that if you are preaching to a group of Casper Milquetoast types you need to emphasize how important it is to become even a little bit sharper. And its not exactly dangerous to whittle a sharp point on a ripe banana. Now if you were preaching to a population of maximum security prison inmates it might be inappropriate to push them in the dark triad direction. But thats not Heartiste’s audience. His audience wears sweater vests, and has trouble speaking words that are not ‘yes dear,’ ‘love you honey buns,’ to the women that own them.
The sharpen a banana is a great metaphor.
What you are saying makes a lot of sense, but I believe the premise is flawed.
Because:
1) his audience is uncontrolled. It’s neither a laser focused target nor a random cross section of society
2) as for the vocal target audience, some are a bit autistic, and some do lean dark triad. I know that some do lean dark triad because sometime around 2012 on the RVF forum a poll was done for result that members received on a psycology test for dark triad traits. The forum skewed very very heavily dark triad. Crazy dark triad.
2a) For those that lean a bit spergy, leaning your underdeveloped social skills dark triad isn’t exactly the same as sharpening a banana. Sort of it is. It’s more like sharpening it with chunk of frozen arsenic. Yes, the banana will get more sharp, but it will also become a poisoned banana.
At the top of this blog post is a direct quote from someone who said that his personal development was stunted directly because of memes promoted by Heartists; or because of one of the memes, the Aloof meme.
I’ve heard quotes from other people who claim they lost several years of personal development because of wrong headed manosphere memes.
I hear similar things fairly often.
And what about the guys who never even come around?
People who lean cluster A schizoid insecure attachment style use the memes to bolster world views that re-inforce their pathological ways of avoiding intimacy. The RVF was vcery very pathological in promoting “pumping and dumping the bitches and lizards.”
Sharpening bananas? More like training up a bunch of youths into a similar, toxic mindset, that will directly stand in the way of personal growth.
But I think the fact that Heartiste did have a lot of value to offer might make it impossible for us to do anything but talk past each other.
Because people like to sum up the value of a writer as either a yes or a no.
I got a lot of value from Heartiste, for several years, and believe he did contribute positively to my own personal development.
But I still believe that it’s very important to be very vocal about the floaties of baby poop that are in the bathwater. Some very DANGEROUS and toxic shit. DO NOT EAT THE SHIT.
But forums nearly always become echo chambers, and blog forums more so. People follow. People are followers. It’s very very rare for dissent to happen or be tolerated.
Which exacerbates the problem.
Then when you get heavy handed moderation on top of the self censoring, you get literal brain washing.
The reach of the “red pill” is no longer small.
When you tweak a small growing oak, it will grow up bent.
It’s very important how this oak tree grows up. I’m still surprised so few people seem to notice or care about that.
TLDR; damaged and ignorant people are not merely weak. They are in need of special education; extra attentive education.
They are the least able to pick out the wheat from the chaffe. The most vulnerable to being led astray.
We underestimate them at our peril. It’s not just about mass shootings.
There are already mass social movements of underdeveloped personalities causing horrible havoc. Look at universities and Google culture.
Do we want a similar mass movement of incorectly educated red-pillers wreaking havoc?
Don’t underestimate the weak. If the point is that people can to some degree change (charisma can be learned), then people can also certainly be twisted.
I’m no fan of the concept of “toxic masculinity”. But if there is any grain of truth in it it is that there is such a thing as toxic humanity. And toxic humanity is actually dangerous.
Just look at history. Or current events. People are dangerous. Groups of people more so. ESPECIALLY groups of weak people. Most especially groups of weak people.
I saw this today, and immediately remembered that you were banned from Roosh’s forums for advocating exactly what he’s enforcing now.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx0HjkEh_fC/
I suppose it’s better late than never, but he did cause a lot of damage before his recent conversion.
I still struggle to understand people. There are a few newly coined words, which are new useful memes. One is “normie”. Another is NPC, or non-player-character. Another has to do with confusing role play for real life due to social ineptness, I think… I forget the name of that one.
I’ve heard that there are biological big reasons that separate the highly creative from the normies. There seems to be classes or castes of humans, who have a very difficult time imagining what it could be like to have the others experiences.
I can’t wrap my mind around the attitude of following that is so prevalent on the RVF.
How they not only put up with the heavy moderation, but embrace it, and, here is the crazy part, how so many so easily flip flop right along in lock step with the leader.
I’ve never been any sort of follower. That sometimes doesn’t work out well in the short term, as I’m less socially agreeable, if being agreeable means accepting conventions and norms.
But the flip side of being overly agreeable seems to me a highly dangerous state of affairs. As exemplified in the group-mind think we see on college campuses.
Roosh kept banning and banning and getting more famous so he could replenish the forum users, and seems to have cultivated a group of extreme followers.
As for his turn to “God” (I put it in quotes because it will be a personal subjective experience, not a turn to a “thing” that we can know what he is experiencing), I’m of mixed opinion.
As a guy with a long and deep history of contemplative study from a mostly Buddhist background, I tend to be snobby toward theistic approaches that emphasize dogma. It’s too easy, too certain, and too busybody. Also lacks the transformative tools required for great change – deconstruction and meditation for example. On the other hand, I have no idea what’s his subjective interpretation or personal path. Maybe that particular baby and bathwater is better than his last baby and bathwater. He talks about it as a type of evolutionary journey, so, that sounds positive.
And while his new approach does cut off some of the sickness, it also cuts off some of the insight.
I prefer a transcend and include attitude. Being so polar and extreme is not conducive to wisdom, in my opinion.
But for him, and how his mind works, it may be a better option.
Here’s the thing. Roosh leans cluster a paranoid schizoid. This means that he is not able to process some of his own emotions, and will deny them or project them out, sometimes as a twisted version.
So before he would deny any desire for intimacy. Then project out all sorts of reasons why he was denying his own desire for intimacy onto ills of society and women.
So his brain simply has a terribly difficult time knowing what his brain is thinking and feeling. That’s biological and hard wired, and that’s the hardware he’s working with.
What is the best software for that hardware?
He seems to think he’s found a better software.
That would not be the software optimal for how my brain works. I’m highly sensitive to my emotions and near constantly in a dance of mutual respect with aspects of my self some call the “subconscious”. I have a high tolerance for ambiguity and have learned to stare at death while still choosing to create meaning.
I’ve long had faith that in the long run, truth is the way to go. Roosh has decided that “the black pill” is too nihilistic, and he can’t psychologically handle all that despair. He is turning to a ready made constructed meaning to retreat from the truth of death.
I’ve found that you can stare death down, over and over, and that you wind up being able to create meaning still. You just choose love, because why not? Just because love is meaningless, doesn’t mean it has to be meaningless TO YOU. You can simply choose it to be meaningful. Create your own families. Contemplate and choose your own morals. They probably will wind up being very close to the common sense morals we were evolved to have, because we are evolved for those morals to make us feel the most content.
If you can hold the more and more facts together in a coherent way, that is the direction of truth.
Religion often decides that truth gets in the way of contentment.
But some of us have a high tolerance for ambiguity and can stare nihilism down, and AT THE SAME TIME create meaning. We don’t have to run from death first. Don’t have to invent sky fairies first.
In my thirties I visited the Denver art museum and was very dissapointed. I had a disagreement with my date as to the exibits. They were all about deconstruction. She found them insightful. I found it amazing that people still considered deconstruction so relevant. That’s old hat. Of course as a Buddhist, to me, with years of rigorous training in deconstruction, it was old hat.
Deconstruction is simply a childs (or twenty-ager’s) new trick. The interesting work comes AFTER deconstruction. It’s construction. It’s MAKING beauty and art and love and worlds.
I consider it very lazy though, to not even bother with deconstruction, and to instead simply adopt dogmatic worlds. That is not insightful, and can be very damaging and harmful when contexts change and your dogma can’t keep up.