Roosh is not as big a loser as the Daily Mail claims

I never thought that I would publicly defend Roosh, but this post will amount to at least a partial defense of him. What happened was that the Daily Mail recently posted a scathing article in which Roosh was ridiculed and depicted as a loser. Some people sent me gleeful emails pointing me to the Daily Mail article Not so cool now! Pro-rape pick-up artist pictured in a sweat-stained T-shirt at the door of his mother's home (where he lives in the BASEMENT!). Just look at it:

This article is nothing but a hatchet job, though. Let's just get one thing out of the way first: I don't know about Roosh's statements about legalizing rape. If he indeed wrote that it should be legal to rape women on private property, he may want to get his head checked. I do know that he wrote that he raped several women. Whether this is true is another story. It's quite possible that he only makes such statements in order to appeal to his sexually frustrated audience, and to gain notoriety.
Let's have a brief look at the roughly ten years of Roosh the Internet has witnessed: he quit a corporate job, and has been cashing in on selling pickup guides to gullible men. Had he just written a few books, this would not necessarily make him stand out. However, he most likely realized early on that he won't be able to plausibly and profitably write about pickup in his 50s, so he branched out and started covering other topics, such as the state of the Western world, feminism, and anything else disenfranchised and sexually frustrated men may want to use as an excuse for their perceived failures. From what I gather, he is a typical case of the blind leading the blind. He can barely get laid in the West, or anywhere else, really, but somehow managed to find the admiration of guys who get laid even less. This is no easy feat.

Roosh made a risky gamble. Having a decent corporate job was not good enough. On the other hand, sustaining yourself as an author is not particularly easy. Thus, he chose to use notoriety as a means for getting attention. After all, you are not going to get much traction if you tell the world that you can't get laid in 2/3 of the countries you visit, and in the rare instance where you do manage to get a "flag" you end up writing a book praising that country. His bet was that he would get a lot of attention by making crass statements about women and Western society in general. This certainly gets some attention. Heck, he has been on national TV. Guys who don't like to hear that looks, money, status (and location) is what gets you laid end up thinking that Roosh understands their plight. There are millions of such guys around.

On the other hand, some parts of the Internet may not look too kindly upon a guy who makes highly questionable statements online, and promotes clearly misogynist views on his sites. As a highlight, look up posts like "5 Reasons To Date A Girl With An Eating Disorder". You  wonder what kind of people Roosh associates with. That article has over 3000 comments, and was picked up by several big online brands. What could be bad about notoriety, then? As it turned out, Roosh has taken it too far. Apparently he is getting death threats nowadays. Having beer thrown in his face, which got mentioned by sites like Vice or the Huffington Post, was comparably minor in comparison. We can safely establish that the online persona Roosh has primarily been spread through notoriety, and proudly wore the label of being the world's most infamous misogynist.


You may not like what Roosh is doing, but you should not believe the depiction of the Daily Mail that he is a broke loser who lives in his mother's basement --- even if he really is living in his mother's basement at the moment. His books have been sustaining him for years. His marketing strategy certainly is dubious, but, in economic terms he is hardly a loser. It's not as if he is living off food stamps or trying to make ends meet as a barista. My best guess is that Roosh has enough money to live very comfortably in an Eastern European country. He most certainly also has enough to comfortably sustain himself in any Western country. Besides, it's not as if he is keen on knocking up some broad and be her life-long meal ticket. Thus, for his level of ambition he has most certainly done very well for himself: he has no financial worries, does not have to bother with a day job, and can spend his time more or less as he sees fit. He has furthermore achieved a rather unusual level of personal freedom. I would wager money that he makes a lot more than than anybody below executive level at the Daily Mail, and most if not all feminists who bitch against him online.

But what about the backlash from the public? Well, that's the negative aspect of his notoriety. Roosh quite clearly painted himself into a corner. With his public exposure, and his writings, there is very little chance that he will ever make it back into corporate America. This fact is key for understanding his behavior. Quite frankly, I am reasonably certain that it eventually dawned on him that there is no way back, so instead of doing damage control, and trying to return to a more mainstream career, which is something he apparently decided against, he doubled down again, and again, and again. Quite possibly he enjoyed increased revenues through book sales that came from increased media exposure. Yet, this golden goose laid a couple of foul eggs as well. It is quite remarkable that there are nowadays posters warning the public that he is a sexual predator:

How is that for having a bad reputation?

This leads to the question how Roosh will ever get out of the mess he is in? Frankly, I don't think he really wants to. He will lay down for a while, and once the death threat subside, he will put up another self-congratulatory post up in which he describes how he raped another "dumb bitch" in some third world country, and his audience will eat it up. You may not like what he is doing, but, in financial terms, he is certainly not a loser.