Fag vs. Fag: The Manosphere/Neoreaction Spat

I didn't want to use TwitLonger for this, but I also didn't want to clutter up my blog with this bullshit, so here you go.

The so-called manosphere/neoreactionary spat is stupid, pointless and gay for these reasons:

1. The two groups agree on first principles.

I've stated this already, but the manosphere and NRx agree on something like 95-99% of the core issues: women acting slutty is a bad thing, the family is the bedrock of civilization, etc. Bryce Laliberte tried to convince me that the 1-5% where they don't agree is important, but I'm not buying it because of reason number two...

2. The parts where the two groups DISAGREE are almost entirely irrelevant.

The big disagreement between the manosphere/NRx is their RESPONSE to dealing with society. NRx thinks manospherians are evil degenerates who are accelerating the decline, manospherians think NRx are megavirgins who'd rather masturbate to the collected works of Hoppe than actually do something REAL with their lives. It's a conflict that is constructed on flimsy, false pretenses, moronic assumptions and doesn't survive contact with reality. Three points:

a) VERY FEW people who read manosphere blogs are going to become PUAs*/players/cads/whatever.

NRx seems to be under the illusion that game is some kind of magic method that can turn even the most hopeless basement dweller into the next Byron. Not happening. This is true not just with the manosphere but with self-help advice in general: the number of people who will actually internalize the advice and master it is miniscule at best. I'd break it down like this:

55 percent of men will read the manosphere and never implement any of its advice beyond the most basic changes at best.
10 percent will half-heartedly implement the advice, and when they inevitably fail, they’ll start crying about how game is a scam and lie.
30 percent will implement the program to varying degrees of success.
Only 5 percent will actually master the material.

http://mattforney.com/2013/08/05/what-if-they-had-a-sexual-arms-race-and-nobody-came/

A decade ago, the seduction community witnessed the same phenomenon. Guys would come it wanting to get laid right, left and center, but would drop out of the program the minute they nailed down a steady girlfriend. The number of men who stuck around long enough to become super-master-rama-lama-ding-dong PUAs was vanishingly small.

b) If you live without higher principles, you can and WILL be bought off.

Many guys in the manosphere don't want to think about higher principles, they just want to get their dicks wet (or whatever goal they have). That's fine... in the beginning. But eventually, you have to grow up. You have to start thinking about what principles you're going to live by. If you don't have any, you're going to fold at the slightest pressure.

I was discussing this with a friend the other day: many of the "principled" ideological cliques in this part of the Internet have a price. The white nationalist 14/88 types, for example? They can be bought. Their price is more white babies, and they'll do anything to get them: encourage women to poke holes in condoms, urge men to get married and risk losing everything in a divorce, etc. You can't found a society on that kind of consequentialist idiocy.

Again, I don't expect the 18-year old guys stumbling across the manosphere to immediately convert to Catholicism and devouring the collected works of Carlyle. If anything, that's kind of ABNORMAL for a young guy (I was reading Moldbug and Larry Auster when I was 19... yeah). But you need to think about this at some point.

c) Neither group has the ability to affect change in the real world.

This is the clincher, and the central reason why this spat is so fucking retarded. Aside from scattered media coverage, neither the manosphere nor NRx has made a significant real-world impact. They are, for all intents and purposes, solely Internet-based and therefore illusory to a certain extent. Both sides have advanced to meeting up in the real world, which is a start, but doing magic mushrooms in New Orleans or getting drunk in New York City does not a revolution make.

This is why the talk of "alliances" is so fucking goony; there's NOTHING at stake at the moment. To each other, we're just words on a screen. Aside from the guys I'm friends with in real life and/or Skype with on a regular basis, none of you impact my life in any significant way. Taking a "side" in this debate is as meaningful as choosing whether to play Terrorists or Counter-Terrorists in Counter-Strike.

As for my own personal view on this: I don't know.

That's it.

As I get older, I realize I know less about the world then I thought. I started writing regularly about these kinds of issues five years ago; my beliefs have changed and deformed since then to the point where 25-year old me barely recognizes the 19-year old me. I keep my mouth shut on a lot of these issues because I'm willing to admit that I'm not informed or confident enough to share an opinion. Per the Peter Principle, I've demoted myself back down to my level of competence: rustling leftist jimmies, literary criticism, and writing memoirs about the stranger events in my life.

When I read a blog or follow a writer, it's not necessarily because I agree with them, but because a) I think their writing is interesting/has something to offer me and b) I can imagine being friends with them in real life. Conversely, if someone has an obnoxious personality, I can't stand them no matter how much I agree with them. I would rather break bread with someone like Andy Nowicki, with whom I disagree with on a LOT of things but with whom I get along, than some manospambot constantly screeching about "HYPERGAMOUS SLUTS!"

I identify with the manosphere because I agree a lot of what its "leaders" advocate, because they're the kinds of people with whom I can break bread, and because as one of the 'sphere's "founders," I feel a sense of responsibility. I identify with NRx because I agree with much of what its "leaders" advocate and because they're the kinds of people with whom I can break bread. I don't see any contradiction in reading both sides, either philosophically or practically (since neither group can organize any real-world activity beyond simple meet-n-greets).

I don't know where I'm going to be in ten, five, or even two years, so I hoover up all the information I can find that might help me better form my own beliefs. If some people don't like my approach to things, that's their problem. I like to think my approach is a BIT more intelligent than going "HURR DURR YOU NEOREACTIONARY DORKS NEED TO GET LAID" or "HERP DERP TEH PUAS ARE BETA MALE DEGENERATES WHO SHOULD BE SHOT".

Tl;dr: You're all acting like a bunch of fags and I refuse to pick a "side."

* As an aside, could you NRx people stop using "PUA" as shorthand for the manosphere? Nobody in the manosphere identifies as a PUA and most of us mock them. PUAs are the skinnyfat doofuses who wear furry pimp hats and perform stupid magic tricks in rock clubs. In the year 2014, nobody with a sack does that shit.

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