@GayLubeOil Ideally, the American right, center, and left should be named the libertarian, liberal, and socialist movements, respectively. At least from a universal sense, if we use the biblical days and the days of dark age empires as the metric for what's non-liberal. The whole world is liberal compared to ancient humanity because ancient humans had to worry about having enough to eat and not getting killed in war. Being liberal is a luxury of not having to worry about survival. Nobody has time to question the God Emperor's right to rule when he's too busy plowing fields trying desperately to not die.

American individualism is "conservative" because it hearkens back to the values of America from when it was established a mere two and a half centuries ago. A bunch of equalist progressive Christians fled from conservative established Christianity to start a country. So for America, that's their conservative traditional values. Individualism is the traditional conservative core of the USA. So in the eyes of this very young country, that's traditional. While modern progressive socialism is a deviation from what's "conservative" to the USA.

@itiswr1tten @itiswr1tten Old GLO was funny as heck. And all about the fitness. I think in one of his old posts when he was first starting out with the Skype thing, he said the guy on the other end was sipping whiskey, trying to have one of those affectations of manhood moments as he conversed with a manosphere guru, and he hung up on the guy because every idiot knows alcohol is the antithesis of getting fit.

I think too much manosphere is bad for guys. They start out normal with decent ideas, then end up going off the deep-end. The unknowns become radical MGOWS or incels. The knowns have crazy transformations, like when Athol Kay went back into the woman-pleasing camp the second he made book money, Heartiste turned racist, Roosh went crazy for Jesus in a Jew-hate Mel Gibson style, most of the MRA knowns burst into tears on camera the second they had a woman pretending to be on their side, Rollo turned incomprehensible in his writing and became a drama queen, the whole convention crowd devolved into dick waving.

I don't know if too much manosphere is making men crazy, or if crazy is actually the right destination. Too many guys who spend too long thinking about this stuff end up radical in very similar ways. Two ways, really. They enter backslide and become the womanly drama-queens many of them probably used to be, or slide headlong into paranoid conspiracy nutjob alt-right race-war jews-did-it-all weirdness. Stick a guy in the manosphere for too long, and he's going to end up in one of those two places.

@Caldero It's a question of goals. For example, there are these weirdo MGTOW guys out there who are hideously unfuckable both for appearance and social reasons who proudly declare: "What? You only have sex every other day and not twice a day? And your girlfriend is a 7 instead of a 9/10 or 10/10? That's stupid! If you don't have sex twice a day with a harm of 30 plates who are all 9/10 or hotter, who just show up at your house for sex without even having to go out for drinks first because investing anything at all in women is stupid, then you should go MGTOW! Women aren't worth it!"

It's a weird all or nothing mentality. The way I see things, if some unfuckable, stinky fat fuck drops from 300 pounds to 200 pounds, gets a job, moves out of his mom's house, and gets himself a fat girlfriend, that's amazing! Sure, he shouldn't stop working, but holy shit, good for him.

That was the original red pill subreddit. Slightly below average guys who couldn't get laid and needed to be told how to become average or better to become fuckable.

Now, we have some other weird all or nothing thing going on. "What? You get laid, are professionally successful, have cool skills and hobbies, and have turned from an unfuckable antisocial loser into somebody worth a shit? But you don't know about the Jews! And the degenerate society! You haven't overthrown the clown world!" Well...no, but still, if a guy goes from an unfuckable, unemployable, boring-ass loser to a guy who makes money and gets laid, good for him anyway.

@GayLubeOil You know, you kind of have me nailed down pretty well. I'm an upper middle class white guy, raised by upper middle class white parents. I was one of those guys who did great in school without lifting a finger because I'm smart and grew up in the suburbs going to good schools. I lived a pretty charmed life until I didn't. Eventually, I got to a point where coasting wasn't getting me jobs or opportunities, and being a smart awkward nerd wasn't getting me girlfriends. I learned the hard way that despite growing up special, I was now below average. Below average face, below average body/fitness, below average social skills, not good at anything but being nerdy.

Some of The Red Pill stuff doesn't compute with me because, in my universe, average guys do just fine. There I was, a socially-awkward skinny as hell guy with a funny face who barely passed college and couldn't find a job. I was below average, but hit the gym until I wasn't. I'm not buff and amazing, but I look fit. Maybe slightly above average. I worked on game, I worked on my social life in general, worked my way from the ground up in my industry, and now I do okay. Low six figures in corporate-land, a good friend group, and girls like me. Below average face, slightly above average body, below average social skills, slightly above average professional success. Overall, I'm damn average.

So the Red Pill notion that average guys are screwed is just weird to me. I was below average and couldn't succeed at anything. Now I'm average and I do. Five years ago, I'd be a Red Pill poster child.

But now, apparently, we're at war with society? Society works just fine. If you're average or better, you can make money, make friends, and get laid. If you can't find a job or can't get girls, that's not the evil degenerate society at work. The jews and feminism aren't out to get you. It's because you're below average.

These kids preaching against the degenerate society are like the MGTOW weirdos who jump ship the second they find a fat girlfriend. Once they finish college and get a job and money and a girlfriend, they'll grow out of this war against society thing.

@thechinaman It depends on the book and on the person. Some modern, punchy, self-help opinionated book written for the masses is definitely toilet reading. In fact, setting aside a two-hour block to sit and slowly digest and contemplate it is a total waste of time. But a dense philosophical work from many centuries ago might need a little more time and thought.

Also, different people read differently. A 50 year old guy who made the mistake of double-majoring in creative writing and philosophy, went to law school where he had to read 200 pages of cases and legal texts every night, and is an avid reader who goes through a book every day or two can probably read a dense book and get it fairly easily. A 19 year old C-student who read Harry Potter when it came out but since then the only things he's read have been on the internet needs to teach himself how to read for content before he can just whip through books.

There was allegedly a time, back before things got modern, when men (at least in some cultures) were touchy-feely with each other in a non-gay way, cried about things, and were emotional and sensitive, and so on. These bonds of love between men were considered strong and manly. There was also allegedly a time when men were strong, stoic, didn't emote like women, handled their shit, only cried when it was extremely serious, and were masculine - completely different from women in the way they feel and process emotions. This individual strength was considered masculine.

The modern, libera/feminist viewpoint in 2019 is that when men act conventinoally masuline and fairly non-emotional, this is a farce. It's a fragile man pretending to be masculine by putting on a mask, when really, on the inside, he feels and emotes just like a woman. The idea is that "real men" cry, express feelings, and emote just like women and aren't afraid of beng open with their feelings, being vulnerable, etc. And any man who isn't this way and acts conventionally masculine is fragile and cowardly and probably afraid of other men calling him gay or something like that.

There is a conservative viewpoint (bordering on conspiracy-theory/paranoia among the more extreme fringes) that society feminizes men, either as a by-product of extreme liberalism or even intentionally as some kind of wicked social machination to control the world. That men are naturally conventionally masculine and more stoic/less emotional, but are fed shitty food and raised and taught nearly exculsively by women and fed liberal/feminist ideas their entire lives, to the point where they grow up wearing a modern-man mask and emoting like women.

Men are probably somewhere between the two extremes. The emotionless super-soldier and the scrawny bisexual feminist nu-male who cries if the breeze is too cold are extreme characatures. Men feel emotions, of course, and express their feelings in various ways. But we still feel them and process them differently than women do. But probably not actually in a robotic, ultra-stoic way.

Is the emotive man who's touchy-feely with other men in his tribe, that forms strong bonds of love with men and women and expresses himself emotionally without regret closer to the natural state of masculinity? Or is the individually strong, stoic, island to himself man who handles his business and processes his emotions inwardly closer to true manhood?