Modern men are disillusioned. Wherever one turns, there is a crisis of masculine leadership. To whom do men turn for advice, for guidance; what is the modern rule book explaining how to date, how to dress, what heroes to admire, or villains to fight? All were questions once resolutely answered by strong masculine archetypes from warrior kings to Church Fathers, town sheriffs, and ferocious fathers. In a new world turned upside down by woke-feminism, father-less households, soulless bureaucracy, a hyper-competitive sexual marketplace, and saturated with Instagrifters selling the rags-to-riches dream, how does one become a successful, masculine man? Indeed, what does masculine success even look like?
For over a decade now, men have sought answers to these questions from influencers. Understandably, young men in the city are whiplashed in the frenzy and who could blame them? Getting in line to become a neutered executive sitting atop a Fortune 500 company, securing academic tenure, or minting senior partner at a law firm after decades of slavish servility are no longer inspiring paths. Men know that if you endeavor to climb the corporate latter or pursue a career in medicine, government or any one of a thousand traditional 9:5 tracks to coveted suburban McMansions, selling out to company men, masking one’s true individuality, and becoming a non-threatening beta-bureaucrat are pre-requisites for entry into the game. As a result, men are turning away from traditional authority figures, safe paths, and embracing new ones.
Forging a New Path
It started on YouTube, the erstwhile free domain where creators and followers could connect beyond mainstream society’s watchful and increasingly hostile eye. Influencers of all stripes bonded with legions of men who flocked to unfiltered, raw, and entertaining content like bees to honey. Some influencers were academics like Jordan Peterson, philosophers like Stefan Molyneaux, investors like George Gammon, some reviewed tech like Marques Brownlee, some independent film makers like Casey Neistat, some gamers like PewDiePie, some comedians like Joe Rogan, others focused on style and fitness, like Alpha M. Whatever the case, the new marketplace of digital dads exposed men to a new world beyond the grind and new formulas for how to get there.
Men in the city concluded that escaping into entrepreneurial freedom, winning financial independence, or achieving influencer status was a man’s only hope for something better.
Men in the city concluded that escaping into entrepreneurial freedom, winning financial independence, or achieving influencer status was a man’s only hope for something better. So, the entrepreneurial rush was on. The craving for new authority figures, new mentors, and new paths to riches unfettered by political correctness or bureaucratic emasculation gave birth to something heretofore unknown – the manosphere. Online gurus like Rollo Tomassi, Corey Wayne and Richard Cooper outlined a new masculine ethos, new frameworks to guide men in the city through a more complex, competitive, and precarious modern environment.
The rise of the manosphere is a tremendous collective mental leap, a higher consciousness for most men. Reorientation tends to come in stages, and it has for frustrated young men. New rules for modern dating emerged with The Rational Male (2013) – an exposé on hypergamy – the evolutionary-underpinnings of female nature. The second stage saw the emergence of the manosphere – online forums for men in crisis: divorced men, single men, Men-Going-Their-Own-Way (MGTOW), involuntary-celibates (INCELs), and average guys looking for answers. Stage three has become the entrepreneurial fetish. While its credo might be “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” (50 Cent’s 2003 Album), men are learning that corporate slavery and beta servitude are not enviable life paths.
Adjustments prescribed by the new masculine ethos have been urgent and sweeping. For most of us, the way we date, interact, network, and make money has fundamentally changed (read more here), necessitating adaptation worthy of a chameleon. A complex new global sexual marketplace of dating apps, acrimonious intergender politics, passport bros, and Instagram DMs similarly required completely new methods for how to compete, win, and how not to lose in a game where status is everything. Frame (positional dominance), fitness, game, style, social proof and of course riches are all core competencies every man is racing to display however they can. Even outmoded marriage laws – derived from past times when women did not work – are now potential legal weapons of mass destruction for unsuspecting high-value-men who fall victim to divorce. Just ask Jeff Bezos.
The Rise of Top G
While men are benefitting from a heightened awareness courtesy of the manosphere, their carnivorous appetite for leadership has reached a critical mass. What was once a very marginalized silo in obscure chat rooms, subreddits, and Patreon groups is bursting into the Mainstream. Certainly, polemical figures like Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan and others have highlighted shifts in intergender politics, some have dared to push back on the woke mob. Then Andrew Tate – AKA "Top G" – changed-the-game.
The rise of Andrew Tate – kickboxing champion and Instagram celebrity – is transforming the manosphere into a movement.
The rise and fall (he was recently imprisoned in Romania) of Andrew Tate – kickboxing champion and Instagram celebrity – is transforming the manosphere into a movement. In a flash, Tate became the most googled man on the internet and his TikTok shorts went viral. Like him or hate him, Tate’s rabid irreverence for political correctness, woke-feminism, and big-tech censorship combined with clever marketing blasted through mainstream gates. Like the disruptive electoral success of Donald Trump, the sold-out stadiums attending Jordan Peterson lectures, and the massive popularity of Joe Rogan, all of whom are rebeling against the power structure – what Tate calls the Matrix – he is resonating with the most depressed and spring-loaded force on earth – frustrated young men – and doing so with mega-impact. (See video below)
Tate’s electrifying effect suggests that the manosphere is approaching its next phase; it is becoming a cultural movement. The fact is that men today are awakening to an era of grift. Grift in politics, grift in the board room, grift in the media, grift on Wall Street, grift in sports. Grift has always been profitable but today it is a scalable business model, especially inside legacy structures where bureaucracy rules over humans, not the other way around. Society – that vague term referring to a complex of government institutions, universities, film and literature, and celebrated public virtues – actively preach a woke-feminism that shames or censors men for being men.
Tired Illusions and Neo-Masculinity
What’s next is the million dollar question? Playwright Arthur Miller, famous for Death of Salesman told us that “an era comes to an end when society's basic illusions are exhausted.” I can think of no better descriptive for today's men in the city than exhaustion; most are emotionally and spiritually spent, including some of the most accomplished men. Desperation for freedom, for better lives offering meaning and purpose, and space to be and say what you think has produced a cultish fad for influencers like Andrew Tate.
Social media is amplifying a deeply rooted psychological need for masculine figureheads inside a dangerously rudderless society sorely lacking strong, galvanizing leadership or direction. We should expect the drum beat of resistance to grow not deaden until a new order emerges, one redefined by new values and philosophies divorced from the past. Ours is a generation of change, which often comes at the end of eras and cycles. My forecast – the age of kings has returned!
More to follow on men, the city and Neo-masculinity.
