A consistent criticism I’ve received over the years is that the Red Pill is so negative. Why cant the Manosphere just sweeten up? Its truth is definable and self-evident, but why can’t Rollo adjust the ‘tone’? I’ve lived and written through several waves of newcomers to the ‘sphere and in each generation the same want for a ‘kinder, gentler’ Red Pill is always there. The idea is that if you just changed the delivery of the truth it would somehow make it more palatable to a wider audience.
Who’s It For?
I want reiterate here that it’s never been my goal to write for an audience. Whether it’s writing on this blog, my books or when I’m discussing things on various podcasts my only imperative is to convey the information I think is relevant to the topic of intersexual dynamics. My obligation is to picking apart and considering as close as I can get to an objective truth. And I don’t do this by way of some sense of duty to objectivism – it’s just the way that’s always seemed most efficient to me to come to a usable truth. It’s pragmatism on my part, not dedication.
Yes, I know, true objectivism is impossible for human beings. Yes, I also know that even biases we’re unaware of will subconsciously influence our rationality. Spare me the classicist intellectualism, I’ve been at this long enough to have considered all that. But the fact that objectivism is never perfect doesn’t mean we should strive for our best attempt at it – nor replace it with moralism.
I don’t write for an audience. I write about what I see going on around me and I connect dots. Writers today, of all medias, will tell you to “give your readers what they want” if you want to be successful. Writing about uncomfortable truths that rattle people’s cages is counterintuitive to the write-for-success mindset. If you want to sell books, if you want to monetize blogs, if you want to get more channel subscribers you gotta give the folks what they want, right? That’s how most churches work today; cater the message to the congregation if you want the tithe checks to stay consistent.
And always write to appeal to emotions too. People don’t enjoy thinking, but boy do they ever love feeling something – particularly in an age when female emotiveness is the order of the day.
When I began writing regularly it was in a forum environment. We hashed out many ideas and weren’t afraid to get ugly. It was a necessary part of the process. There was no pretense of appealing to an audience for money, traffic or readership. The sole focus was debating the truth about a dynamic. That debate was always a hot kitchen, but the results were something greater than the process.
As a result my essays carried over a lot of the heat from the SoSuave days kitchen. I wasn’t writing to impress readers or increase traffic to the blog it was just to document and codify the objective truths I came to. There is no monetization and the comment threads have never been moderated (besides spam and trolls). Almost 8 years later my charter is still about the same objective debate.
The drawback to this commitment to objective truth is that it rarely appeals to emotionalism. No, it’s not the ‘tone‘ or the feel of the information being related that’s so off-putting – it’s the information itself, and how it makes one feel, that determines whether it’s perceived as positive or negative.
Feels Before Reals
Most people who are still plugged into the proverbial Matrix are living in a world that prioritizes feels before reals. The purpose of consuming really anything is to judge it by how it makes us feel; and especially so in an era defined by the female experience. Emotion always comes before reason in women’s natural, unlearned, interpretive processes. This is also extended to men who’ve been conditioned to prioritize emotions before reason. And this is exacerbated by their need to be better feelers, better emoters, than those other ‘typical’ guys if they want an emotional woman to ever bear their children at some point.
Anything that prioritizes reason before emotion will always run the risk of being perceived as negative. Even if the sum of the information is positive, the fact that you had to come to the truth by way of reason rather than emotion will make it negative.
If you used your head instead of your heart to figure something out, in Girl-World, at best it’s bad form. At worst, you’re a negative pessimists or a cynic.
Usually those designations are reserved for the men who make a habit of using reason to the exception of emotion to relate an objective truth that’s unflattering to the feminine. Again, it’s the information, not the tone, that’s offensive to the emotions-first prioritization. To the Blue Pill mind, any strong idea that conflicts with this prioritization is an affront to the personal investments they’ve made in ideas that it challenges.
So, understand, I’m not a negative person by nature. I’m an artist. Few people know that my 2nd degree is a BFA. I draw, I paint, I play four instruments, I used to do Shakespearean stage acting – I’ve even done children’s theater.
I fully embrace the emotional as a necessary part of the human experience – Hell, half of Red Pill awareness is acknowledging and confronting emotions. I’m certainly not a cynic or a pessimist. Anyone thinking so usually hasn’t read my work. I’m very much an optimist when it comes to creating a New Hope for men in a Red Pill paradigm. I don’t just stop at clinical realism and leave men hanging. I don’t subscribe to the ennui of the “Black Pill” – I’m certainly not absolutist or a determinist.
However, I also have a commitment and an obligation to objective truth in everything I write. Trust me, there are times I wish I could use my wife and my marriage as a ‘proof of concept’ example of how a Red Pill aware guy can make a relationship work today. But the objective truth would make me look like a charlatan if I tried to convince a man that marriage was at all a good idea in its present state.
That’s tough for me. I have had to hold back from posting pictures of my beautiful wife and daughter to prove something to truly negative naysayers. Ladies, you want me to write something positive about women? I love my wife dearly. She’s been a net benefit to my life for all of 23 years now. My daughter is a model. She’s feminine to a fault and she’s smart and ambitious. I would die for her, gladly.
But I never use my personal life as an example in my work for their protection, but also because I don’t want to lead men astray by in anyway implying that what I have is possible for them. And I’ve had men tell me that, “I want what you have.”
But I don’t make value calls. I consider information, I try to interpret it, and I present it in such a way that it’s useful to men where they’re at. I want to give you tools to use to build your own life, not mine.
Truth & Hustle
Admire the Hustle. We read this a lot in the Manosphere among the guys who fancy themselves entrepreneurs. I think one reason critics think the Red Pill is negative is because all they see is the Hustle. The Hustle has a way of becoming the whole point of anything.
I’m an abortion doctor, but I make six figures and I’m the best at what I do. No one will out-work me. Admire the Hustle baby.
When the selling is more important the the product itself, then you have problems. When the truth is less important than the Hustle inevitably our truth becomes the Hustle. There needs to be a balance and that’s getting harder and harder to find now.
We’re at a moment in the Manosphere where the truth is starting to get lost in the Hustle. I’m accused of it, or I’m accused of associating with ‘too much Hustle’. Well-meaning colleagues with too much perception and not enough information are feeling that salesmen care more about the sale than the product.
I hear you.
Let me finish here by reiterating that my obligation to objective truth will always be my motivation for doing anything I put my name on. It always has been. However, I have worked for amazing companies who sold things that people loved and enjoyed only to watch them crumble and die because the sales team assumed control of the ‘product’. The selling became more important than what was being sold.
My books, my blog, my appearances, every aspect of The Rational Male is my art. I craft each essay. It’s what I care about most. I will never allow the truth to be compromised by the Hustle. The Hustle is important, particularly when it’s about disseminating the truth, but it is secondary to the truth – even to the exception of the Hustle. Sometimes the truth doesn’t sell.
This Is Important
We are rapidly entering a time when our ideas will be vilified. Very soon the objective, life-saving, praxeology that is the Red Pill will be used as a label, as a synonym, for negative ideologies that never had anything to do with the Red Pill. And people who are all about the Hustle will gladly abandon the truth they’re selling now if it means the public opinion of it would compromise their Hustle. It’ll be less about what we’re discussing than how influential and how many followers the person we’re discussing it with has.
Others, those who were appropriating the ‘brand’, will throw the Red Pill under the bus to save their own necks. The coming storm is going to test the resolve of people who are all about the Hustle and all about the Red Pill. I know where my obligations lie, they’ve never changed.