Neil Strauss wrote about the "community" of men on USENET and local "lairs". The early RVF had a similar self-improvement culture and meetup camraderie. Citron exemplifies this ethos of doing work to help others by resurrecting this forum.
There was always a scammy commercial element. Ross Jeffries started alt.seduction.fast to market hynotic speed seduction. Despite mediocre results in 1998 (https://rooshvforum.network/thread-22635.html), Mystery charged for seminars in 2001. Roosh started to write a pickup book and sell pickup lines on the web before writing "Bang" at age 27, writing about sleeping with only 5-7 women per year. At least Roosh limited the commercial scammers on the forum.
Instead, the forum was infested with phonies and big baller trolls. Roosh banned discussion of P4P. But that just encouraged exaggeration, with guys reporting sex with dozens of foreign women using no pipelining and no language skills. Then there were guys like Vorkuta/The Fantasist/Mr. Bald lying and probably coercing drunk women. Roosh's bad "macho" writing contributed to this. Roosh faced a marketing conundrum, because he wrote about "numbers game", but needed to sell books. So he exaggerated the difficulty of seducing a willing woman. Unfortunately, his bad writing obscured the difference between seducing a drunk, tipsy women and exploiting drunk/semi-concious/unwilling women.
The problem is that successful guys get women/girlfriends/wives and leave the forum. Even travellers settle down. There were many competing forums: SoSuave, Roissy's comments, Rational Male's comments, Naughty Nomad, Christian McQueen's forum, Swoop The World. They couldn't attain critical mass. Roosh sustained RVF with content and viral hate-click marketing. But it is over now.
I suppose there are a few Incel, MGTOW, and feckless self-pitying Men's Rights forums I might have overlooked. No loss there.
There was always a scammy commercial element. Ross Jeffries started alt.seduction.fast to market hynotic speed seduction. Despite mediocre results in 1998 (https://rooshvforum.network/thread-22635.html), Mystery charged for seminars in 2001. Roosh started to write a pickup book and sell pickup lines on the web before writing "Bang" at age 27, writing about sleeping with only 5-7 women per year. At least Roosh limited the commercial scammers on the forum.
Instead, the forum was infested with phonies and big baller trolls. Roosh banned discussion of P4P. But that just encouraged exaggeration, with guys reporting sex with dozens of foreign women using no pipelining and no language skills. Then there were guys like Vorkuta/The Fantasist/Mr. Bald lying and probably coercing drunk women. Roosh's bad "macho" writing contributed to this. Roosh faced a marketing conundrum, because he wrote about "numbers game", but needed to sell books. So he exaggerated the difficulty of seducing a willing woman. Unfortunately, his bad writing obscured the difference between seducing a drunk, tipsy women and exploiting drunk/semi-concious/unwilling women.
The problem is that successful guys get women/girlfriends/wives and leave the forum. Even travellers settle down. There were many competing forums: SoSuave, Roissy's comments, Rational Male's comments, Naughty Nomad, Christian McQueen's forum, Swoop The World. They couldn't attain critical mass. Roosh sustained RVF with content and viral hate-click marketing. But it is over now.
I suppose there are a few Incel, MGTOW, and feckless self-pitying Men's Rights forums I might have overlooked. No loss there.