WTF Is Going On In The Manosphere?

What's going on, team? Welcome back to the Mantalk Show. Connor Beaton here. And I've been getting asked a lot about different characters within the red pill space. I get DMs all the time from guys saying, what do you think of Rollo Tomasi? And what do you think of Fresh and Fit? And what do you think of this Donovan guy? What do you think of whoever it is, right, whoever the character is. And I've hesitated to actually get into this question for probably a few years now. You know, for those of you who don't know, Rolo Tomasi is somebody who wrote a book called the Rational Male. It's considered to be the sort of like, bible of the red pill community or forums. And I think, to be honest, like, I, I, I read it a number of years back to kind of get a sense of, you know, what this guy is putting out, what the red pill is all about. And what's interesting about that movement is that it's a kind of religion. You know, it's a form of almost like masculine spirituality, you know, like male spirituality. And I've hesitated to talk about any of these guys, whether it's Fresh and Fit and the guys there or somebody like Rolo Tomasio, this Donovan guy who apparently caught some slack a couple years ago. I don't actually know his first name. And I, you know, I've spent some time digging into their content and digging into their videos and, and listening to what they're talking about when it comes to relationships and women and how you need to operate as a man. And it's interesting, you know, I think it's interesting, I think that some of it is based, some of it is valid, some of it is direct. I think some of it gives men a good container or framework from which to operate from. The truth is that a lot of young men in our culture and society just don't have any real structure in their life. And so it gives men something to adhere to in terms of this is how you as a man should operate. And here's exactly how women are, and here's how women operate, and here's how what women want, and it's very heavily based in hypergamy. The whole central sort of thesis of the red pill ideology is hypergamy, which essentially, I mean, you can distill it down into many different parts, but the main part is that women will always search for and want men who have greater status than them, and they will always pursue men of status, right? Financially, socially, et cetera. And, you know, there's some merit to back that up. You know, there's, there's some, some research that people like David Buss have done that show that women are often wanting men who have resources, whether that's financial resources or resources in terms of their social network or clout or whatever it is. And you know, there's also some good research that's, that's starting to come out that shows that even, you know, when you take something like infidelity that women will, will be unfaithful. I think it's something like 70% of women will be unfaithful because they are trying to mate swap. And essentially what that means from, from the research is that they're looking for men who have a higher status or a higher social value, right? Maybe it's more money or more emotional intelligence or whatever it is that that woman perceives to be of value or status, and they will maybe be unhappy in their individual relationship or their marriage, and they'll start to look for a man who has a quote, unquote, higher status or higher value. Higher value. So there's merit in some of what the Red Pill crew are putting out. But I think that the Red Pill movement in many ways is a sort of more intellectualized version of, of the pickup scene. You know, all the big sort of like pickup movement really started to die down in culture and online, and it got replaced by a lot of this red pill ideology. And what's interesting is that the guys in the pickup space, you know, men like David d' Angelo or even somebody like Neil Strauss, you know, or Tucker Max, they've all kind of matured and settled down. You know, like Tucker Max has a wife and kids, you know, and lives on like a fucking ranch somewhere and runs a really successful company. Somebody like Neil Strauss, I mean, he, he talks about relationships all the time and, and is, you know, is in one. And I think he's a father as well. And so, you know, a lot of these guys have sort of matured, learned their lessons from the pickup world, realized that, that that way of living maybe isn't fulfilling, that you can say certain things to maybe hack female psychology or behave in a very specific way in terms of getting sexual attention or physical attention from women. But you're, you're not really going to get true intimacy. And you generally have to try and fit yourself as a man and conform into these very specific rules that don't leave a lot of space for who the fuck you actually are as a man. But all of those things aside, you could take all of those things aside, the good, the bad and the ugly about the red pill movement, you could take all those things. And none of those things are why I have been hesitant to address anybody within the red pill space, anybody within the manosphere space. And even when I wrote my book Men's Work, I specifically tried to stay away from those types of frameworks. And here's why. One, I think that we as men are logically looking for frameworks. We want structure, we want order. And for the most part.

We like the idea that there is some formula or some framework that we can abide by that we can just live for the rest of our life. If I just follow this framework and it'll bring me success, it'll bring me women, it'll get me money, and I'll just follow that and everything will be okay. And there's kind of this false sense of security and safety and a false sense of freedom that comes along with this structure. And that is really what the manosphere and the red pill is sort of promoting is this notion that if you just abide by this very specific way of living, then you're good as a man. You know, like, you're either going to get the type of woman that you want, or at the very least you'll be able to cut that woman out and you won't have to emotionally deal with it. And I think that it compresses masculinity and compresses a lot of men into this sort of small framework of what it looks like to be a man. And so that's one part. The second part is after watching a lot of their content, and this is, maybe I should have led with this, but after watching a lot of these guys, content, fresh and fit, Rollo Tomasi, et cetera, what I'm dumbstruck by is the amount of infighting, the amount of like trying to take each other down. I mean, it's so drama riddled that I'm shocked. I'm like, I'm shocked by the amount of immaturity. I'm shocked by the amount of reactivity. I mean, I watched a bunch of fresh and fit videos. I don't know the guy's name. I think it's like Myron or something like that. And he's just losing his shit half the time. You know, it's like interacting with like a teenage boy, you know, who just has too much testosterone and is taking fucking steroids and just wants to bang women and make money and drive a McLaren. And it's like okay, that's cool. And, and maybe that's good. And maybe that's appealing to guys that are in their 20s. And I get it. You know, I was the guy in his 20s who I wanted those same things. I wanted to sleep with a lot of women and, you know, drive my 5 liter Mustang and race my thousand cc motorcycle crotch rocket through the streets. And that's really all that I cared about, right? Make some money. And that was it. But it wasn't fulfilling and it wasn't rewarding. And, and so the big challenge is that I watch these guys content and I'm just like dumbstruck by the fact that these guys are like high school teenage girls constantly infighting with one another, constantly trying to take each other down and attacking one another. I mean, half of their content is just commentary on whether or not that other individual is alpha or not, and whether or not it's like this constant vying for status and positioning, you know, almost as if like they're the gorillas out in the jungle trying to prove which one is the most silverback, you know, which one is the, the prime alpha in, in the jungle. I mean, it's just insanity to me. And I look at all of the men that I'm surrounded by and I have really solid men in my life and none of us would do that. And, and I'm sure that some of these guys are friends with each other and I, I don't know if, you know, in their circles that, you know, they attack one another or not, but it's almost like when they run out of content to talk about their, their framework, their ideology, their very rigid doctrine that they're selling that you have to live into, otherwise you're a failure as a man and women are going to use and abuse you and kick you to the curb. When they, when they run out of content talking about those things, what they revert to are like these hit pieces, you know, trying to take each other down a peg. And, and I've been hesitant to even comment on it because I'm like, I don't want to get fucking sucked into this loop of these dudes who are, who are genuinely, I think, trying to help men, trying to support men, trying to give men tools and resources and a way of being, a way of living in the world that will be fulfilling. And you know, I'm just, I was hesitant to even put this out because I was like, well, I don't want it to seem like I'm being hypocritical and doing the exact Same thing that I'm criticizing them for. And you know, I'm not interested in any of those things. What I am interested in is why are those things happening? Why do those dynamics happen? Because what Franz de Waal talked about is that the most successful alpha males were within any chimp cultures are the ones that get social coherence and social buy in from the other males, from the other females, and that that type of leadership is what makes them alpha in the first place. Franz de Waal is the foremost primatologist pretty much in the world, you know, like, besides somebody like Jane Goodall. And he studies alpha males, alpha females. He studies mating within chimpanzees and bonobos and orangutans. And he shows and links how the mating structures between different forms of monkeys and gorillas, chimps, et cetera. He shows how those mating structures are very close and very similar to how we as human beings mate. And a lot of his work and a lot of his research ties in to what behavioral psychologists, social psychologists, social scientists, evolutionary psychologists take as a framework when they're doing their research. So he's kind of like the OG and one of the interesting things that he talked about was that the misconception of an alpha male, specifically within chimp culture, but also primarily within human society, is that the al. The. The. The alpha male is like this wildly dominant character. And that is a misconception. There are alpha males within chimp cultures with, within bonobos, within all of these different ape cultures that, that are dominant. But for the most part, if they are overly dominant and overly aggressive, they do not survive. They just don't survive. Because what ends up happening is that that creates social dissonance and a social ruptures within the actual tribe, whether, again, whether it's apes or, you know, whatever it is. And you can see this kind of breaking down within the online platforms, within the manosphere where guys are going after one another constantly. This version of being an alpha male, this version of how you need to live as a man in order to get through or survive, doesn't actually make for a good leader a lot of the time because you're constantly having to try and vie for position, assert your status and your dominance and your expertise or whatever it is that you have perceived is going to continue to uphold this notion that you're some alpha. It's not dominance and aggression. It's not that they are the most sought after, the most viable mating candidate biologically. It's actually that they have figured out how to become the sort of Social lubricant within the culture. Now, yes, if a young male steps out of line or challenges him, that male, that sort of quote unquote alpha male is going to defend himself. But the thing is that we, more often than not, what ends up happening is that the tribe comes to that individual's defense, right? He doesn't have to just fend for himself. He's not, it's not just like a, you know, two men enter, one man leave or two chimps enter, one man leave, one chimp leave, like Mad Max situation. It, what, what ends up happening is that the community steps in, the, the, the tribe steps in to defend that alpha male's position. Because most people know that that social coherence, and most and even chimps know this, that social coherence is likely. I think what the data is showing is the ultimate form of status, social cohesion. If you can create social cohesion, if that is a skill and a trait that you have, that, that skill and trait is the ultimate form of status. Because within chimp cultures and within human cultures, we. What do we know about chimp cultures and human cultures? It is incredibly, incredibly difficult to create social cohesion. It is easy to fall into this dramatic bullshit where people are rallying against each other and raging against each other and calling each other out and trying to take each other down and trying to socially degrade the other people. And all of that nonsense actually just contributes. It might get clicks, you might get views on YouTube, you might get downloads on your show, but for the most part, it actually doesn't lead to a cohesive society. And so the men that are able to create social cohesion, the men that are able, especially right now in our time, where everything is polarizing, where, where it's so easy for people to become dysregulated and lose their shit online and attack somebody else and defend themselves and whatever else happens when somebody's trying to come at us. The men that are able to produce some kind of social cohesion, number one, are going to live a much more peaceful life. Just plain and simple. They're going to live a much more peaceful life. And secondly, they will have an asset, a trait, a characteristic that actually makes many more people value them within our culture and our society. And I think that when I look at the next generation of men that are coming up, I think that the men who are strong, who are grounded, who are smart, who are, who understand social dynamics, but who are able to regulate themselves regardless of who's coming at them, whether it's the Extreme left trying, you know, the. The sort of like, woke ideology trying to cancel you because you're a dude or whatever it is. You said something about something that the woke ideology disagrees with. You know, whether you had a conversation about vaccines or trans kids or whatever it is, right? You stay grounded in the face of that. Or it's the extreme right that's coming after you for having progressive ideologies or beliefs, you know, treating people as people and letting people, you know, get along and whatever it is. Being able to stay grounded and be the social. Not just lubricant. I don't know why I'm saying that word so much. It's like very sexual in nature, but not just the sexual lubricant, but actually the social. Not sexual lubricant, social lubricant. That was definitely a Freudian slip. But not just the social lubricant, but also the social binding. If you can be the stitching between the right and the left, between the polarization that is happening within our culture right now, if you can be a. A man who is a voice and stands to say, okay, we have to find some common ground. Because the. The truth is that ruptures happen, whether it's in an intimate relationship between two people or two communities or whatever it is, groups of people, groups of political ideologies. When you get too far apart, that's where ultimate ruptures happen, right? That's where divorces happen. That's where breakups happen. That's where families are torn apart. That's where communities are torn apart. And that's ultimately where civil wars start to take place. And you can either be a man who is contributing to the dysregulation, the disparity, and the pulling apart of our social fabric, which it's very easy to do because it gets a lot of attention online, or you can be a man who is committed and dedicated to speaking out against that and is a stand for social cohesion. And being a stand for social cohesion in a time right now with all of the complexities that exist is incredibly hard. It is incredibly hard. And that's why it produces a very high status. That's why it produces a very high value. Value. Because you are standing for something. You are a symbol of something that is very rare within our culture and that a lot of people are having trouble doing. So I'm curious to get your thoughts. For good, for bad, for worse, you know, whatever, wherever you stand on this conversation, whatever you think. Again, I'm not hating on any of These guys, I think people like Rolo Tomasi. Rolo Tomasi and the fresh and fit guys and whoever it is, they have valuable content. You know, they really do have interesting things to say and they're very smart. And I think that they've helped a lot of men. And so this isn't me saying, you know, screw their content or screw them or anything like that. I think I have a very deep respect for the amount of men I think that they've likely helped and served. I'm simply just shocked by the notion that all of this in group fighting is happening. And it's a misconception on what it means to be red pill even, I think, you know, to even be an alpha male. I don't think that this type of dramatic behavior is in any way representative of what these men talk about. So that might make me subject to attack and that's okay. But I'm curious to get all of your thoughts. Have you heard of, have you watched any of this content? Have you seen any of this? What, what's your take? Comment below? What do you think I should talk about next? Anything in this area. And as always, don't forget to like this video, share this video, man it forward with somebody that you know is going to be interested in this conversation. And until next week, this is kind of Beaton signing off.