An empirical study on Italian manosphere:

1. The Red Pill seems to get little unique recognition and is synonymous with incels.

2. Incels represent a critical entry-point into other manosphere communities (consistent with low romantic success driving men into the manosphere).

3. PUAs (pick up artists) have low centrality and node weight. They are kind of their own thing and not closely related to participation in other manosphere communities.

4. High overlap between communities, such that some can’t be easily categorized (blue in the network chart)

As I have written in the past, the manosphere has drifted away from male self-improvement, how to be more “alpha,” and the PUA or dating-focused communities of yesteryear.

Now the manosphere is mostly male social justice grievances.

Keywords across communities: PUAs are still talking about seduction and dating, incels are talking about the redpill.

MRAs are defined more by what they are against than what they have to offer - it’s predominantly ranting about feminism.

There is something sinister about expressed resentment and dislike of “normies.” Real antisocial vibes. Even more so than the “anti-Karen” discourse. With Karens, the debate is over if an enforcement boundary is overstepped. Maybe a real debate can be had in some of those cases.

With resentment toward normies, it’s simply a dislike of actual normal people. Yet normal people are the backbone of society. A lot of the time it looks like the useless fringe complaining about the people who actually make things function.

Hating the normal has always been a trait of losers and outcasts. It’s an immediate red flag. It’s general negative emotionality and also specific hostility toward both the mundane and the wholesome.

It’s the mindset of the unpopular kids in high school who couldn’t play sports or make it into clique groups and so, resenting their peers, experiment with every bizarre ideology and identity that the less popular adolescents do.

Delinquents think this way, they also hate the normal and society around them, but delinquents aren’t even at the bottom of this youth hierarchy. The ones at the very bottom don’t get into gangs or really edgy youth subcultures. They get into sneaky and covert ways of lashing out. Maybe they adopt a victim mentality and embrace some kind of social justice ideology where the normies (see: normal society) are oppressive. They fantasize about social collapse or revolution as their anti-normie revenge. Maybe they just become online trolls. The Internet gives them a way to lash out without any possibility of repercussions (and indeed the modern use of “normie” arose from these kinds of communities).

There is a sort of narcissism in the “anti-normie.” They feel superior, but it’s the very fragile superiority of the narcissist who isn’t recognized as superior by anyone else. They don’t get their narcissistic supply from the world around them very often. They feel very smart - their beliefs and hobbies are so much better than the normies, too! Of course anime is better than Friends. Why yes, your fringe political beliefs would totally make society better than that thing everyone else voted for. The normies don’t see the secret truths in all of the conspiracy theories that they believe; normies are very dumb but the anti-normie is very wise.

They have never had their IQ tested, but they are very certain they could not possibly be “midwits,” even if every life milestone they have experienced is associated with lower or average intelligence. If a psychologist looked at them and said “mental illness” the psychologist would just be dismissed as a normie psychologist.

They are misfits and will relate to the aesthetics of cultures and times not their own, because they don’t thrive in the here and now. This is the “men looked better in the 1920s, I should buy a fedora” effect. But it also manifests in social desires: “we should live like we did in the 1920s because I would thrive more in that environment and culture than I do now.”

They will relate to past misfits, too, and make them their heroes. This is also a narcissistic fantasy. “Actually Napoleon wasn’t a normie, see how smart the non-normies are, just like me.” In reality the normies, however, aren’t even exclusively average people. They are also the typical overachievers. When I looked at the lives of the recent Nobel Prize winners, they were every bit as normie as you might imagine. Wife, kids, house, and dogs.

And that’s the general rule for the normie: the normie is the functional and productive member of society. The further one drifts from the normie, the less likely they are to thrive. This is what fuels resentment of the normie. They see the wife, kids, dog, career, and lifestyle of the normie and think, “I want that, but I don’t have that.”

Who is the normie? To this person, “heteronormative male college kids.”

Teenager posting about his parents on the nihilism subreddit, of course, hates normies:

New article and survey results:

The most and least attractive male hobbies to women, out of a list of 74 hobbies.

We also compare how well men predict which hobbies are attractive to women.

First up in a 🧵 most attractive hobbies:

The least attractive male hobbies to women:

The hobbies that men and women agreed upon the least as being attractive to women:

We tested the “alpha widow” phenomenon (basically rumination over exes and desire for past casual partners).

Turns out it’s rare - and men are more likely to ruminate over exes, fantasize about past partners, and compare current partners to exes!

Thread with results. 🧵

We made a scale with three subscales.

Items were derived from red pill influencer descriptions of “alpha widows.”

These assessed:

1. Thinking about past casual partners.
2. Comparing current partners to past partners.
3. Ruminating over exes.

Most men and women scored very low, but men scored consistently higher across our three scales.

Comparing exes with current partners:

Just in time for National Orgasm Day, Caitlin and myself have new research up on the orgasm gap and short-term partner traits. Results in this thread. 🧵

First, the orgasm gap:

Men experience more orgasms in casual sex, especially during a first encounter.

Women who have an orgasm with a short-term partner are more likely to go on to have sex with them again in the future.

So - that first encounter matters!

Why is this? Overlapping hypotheses for the evolution of the female orgasm is its role in mate selection and mate retention.

Orgasm can help you select and retain good mates.

Alternative visualization:

Revisiting beauty standards, many female fashion trends do not make women more attractive to men - and actually make them less attractive.

Men do not demand (or even like) these. In some cases they may appeal to a niche, but tend to impair attractiveness more than enhance it. 🧵

Nope men aren’t demanding that. Lowest on the list:

Occasionally I read women say, “men do not need to look like a jacked and lean male model to attract a woman, therefore men face no beauty pressures.”

This is true - but also of women. You don’t need lip fillers or a BBL. In fact in many cases these make you less attractive.