Rest in Peace, Manosphere (Guest Post by Shackleford)

Roughly a decade ago, some anonymous guy started a blog called The DC Bachelor. He lived a typical Washington DC life: 9-5 job, then bar hopping in DuPont Circle and Adams Morgan trying to pick up girls. He claimed to have extraordinary success with women, but there was little evidence that he was doing better than the average guy living the same lifestyle. The blog itself was mostly standard Mystery Method game philosophy in a re-packaged form, but it had an interesting distinction: the inclusion of heavy scare tactics regarding uber-alpha male boogeymen. If you did not imitate the dominant behavior of these men, the DC Bachelor maintained, then you are a beta.  And if you are a beta, then you would lose out in the competition for women against this alpha man.


The alpha boogeyman established a new game tenet.  Whereas previous forms of PUA primarily targeted hopeless men who had little success with women, DC Bachelor's brand of PUA also targeted men who had experienced some form of success.  It went after the average man, saying "you may get dates, but I get better quantity and quality by acting more alpha than you.  Adopt my methods or every girl you date will ditch you for me or someone like me."

The DC Bachelor had a regular commenter who jumped on this fearmongering alpha/beta distinction and rode it ridiculous heights, continually cherry-picking from evolutionary psychology studies to emphasize the idea that females have a primal urge be with this alpha boogeyman. He maintained it is a woman's natural desire to be in an alpha male's harem (the 80/20 theory), and that women are driven to crush weaknesses by cuckolding or humiliating beta males.  This commenter also made himself out to be a veritable god with women, the embodiment of all this aforementioned alpha behavior. Soon, this commenter started his own blog, called Roissy in DC.

In reality, Roissy was just another regular DC bar hopper like the DC Bachelor (who later revealed himself to be Roosh), but that didn't stop him from being completely delusional. In Roissy in DC (now Heartiste), Roissy took the extreme version of evo-psych alpha/beta scare tactics and added a combination of hard-right politics and Steve Sailor racial HBD science. Does this now sound completely incoherent to you? Welcome to the manosphere.  

Incoherent is the key word. Roissy, Roosh, and all the subsequent copycat blogs all had a design for life that basically meant acting like an obnoxious, thuggish frat guy. But whenever evidence was presented to them, especially to Roissy, that guys who didn't act this way also got chicks, the manosphere would backtrack and redefine the definition of alpha from a dominant caveman dude to that of a guy who can score lots of girls, regardless of looks and behavior. The guys who look like pussies and don't use game but still get laid, therefore, are actually alphas. But these "alphas" are also pussies, Roosh and Roissy said, so you shouldn't act like them. Act like a dominant caveman.

The anti-feminism and racial politics would garner Roissy and the manosphere a larger audience for a temporary point of time, but it was inevitable that the jumbled game philosophy that was at its core would be its undoing. Although Roissy was not involved in the embarrassing DC meetup, his fingerprints are all over the pathetic thug behavior of all the major players in the post-Roosh/Roissy generation of manosphere bloggers. These guys prioritize the imitation of dominant meathead behaviors over actual success with women.  In fact, it's evident that they have little success at all, but it was surprising just how sloppy and clueless a blog like University of Man could be in blatantly revealing that reality. Generational rot indeed.

The biggest smoking gun, however, was the deflation of the Alpha boogeyman concept.  These guys certainly act like super-alphas storming around ready to take your woman, but their results are no better than the average man they abhor so much.  In fact, they are probably worse than average, if you took 15 men with no knowledge of game and dropped them into a bar crawling scenario similar to that of the Manosphere DC meetup. Imitation of behaviors can't invent attraction.

After the the DC Meetup got slammed, the University of Man shut down, and it's now evident that the manosphere is dying.  Let's look at the evidence:

• Roosh has transitioned to a lifestyle blog: returnofkings.com.  In his writings, he has continually distanced himself from Roissy and barely believes in game.
• Roissy dances in the corner alone. MRAs have disavowed him, and the current generation of gamers doesn't like his racial politics.  
• The next generation of manosphere bloggers are realizing the lameness of the cause and are dropping like flies.  University of Man is dead.  Another blog, Alpha Persona, closed recently.

These quotes from the closing post of Alpha Persona are very telling:

It just isn’t what it used to be anymore, though. A lot of readers are keyboard warriors, a lot of readers are just looking for a place to be angry, and the number of you who actually practice this shit and work on yourselves and try to be better is frighteningly slim.

There have been too many game blogs for a while now. I get this email all the time, “Dude, I’m starting a game blog – help me out/link to me/help me name it/come up with a gimmick?

The facade is now gone, and the manosphere stands exposed for what it is:  absent the evo-psych window dressing and racial science, it's just the avocation of a 20-something frat boy lifestyle, with meaningless distinctions like wearing a suit and sex tourist traveling. Every guy who goes out and approaches girls on a Saturday night now thinks he can be an expert. The headless chicken remains of the manosphere will have dozens of blogs of this type, but no more relevant ones. It's just a small, insignificant world, much like it was in the beginning with the DC Bachelor.  Full circle.