[Days of Broken Arrows]

(04-15-2014 01:00 PM)Faust Wrote:  

This actually hurts to read, a little, because I owe all these guys a good deal despite having never met them. I'm a big blog-reader, because I can speed-read and I'm always starved for content, so I know all these people through what they've written.

• Matt Forney is one of the people who got me into the manosphere to begin with, back with his old "In Mala Fide" blog. He and Heartiste were the two people who totally changed my worldview. Thanks to him, I am completely different person than I was five years ago. Without them, I quite possibly would've married (And since at the time I was a fat guy with nothing going for me, I would've ended up paired with a human warthog.)
• Bronan the Barbarian got me into exercising. I was a morbidly obese slob before I started reading his blog, and after a few months of his "No excuses, get to the exercise bike, fatty," posts, I had lost something like 40 pounds.
• Danger and Play got me into juicing, and into lifting weights. His writings always had an attitude of SUCCESS around them, like you were reading something from a man who had it made in life. I was a regular reader of his for a long time. It sounds rather pathetic to say this in public, but I always wanted to be like him, and that inspired me to better myself.
• DannyFrom504 I owe an incredible amount to. I don't want to go into details, because I'm embarrassing myself a lot already, but though he almost certainly has no idea about it, he quite possibly saved my life. Beyond that, his writings about game always had a certain air of fun about them that I think is sorely missing from the manosphere. He gives off a vibe of someone who enjoys talking to women, and teasing them, and interacting with them. A lot of people around here have a view of modern women that's best described as contempt, bordering on hatred. I say this not to diss people, because hell, after some of the encounters I've had and the things I've seen, it's almost impossible for me not to hold it myself. But Danny always seemed to be having a good time when he talked about the way he dealt with people as he went through his day. He's always talked openly about his PTSD, and the things he's seen in his life and the effect they've had on him.
  
  

Now, maybe these online personas are bullshit, like Forney says. I've never met any of them in person. Maybe Danny doesn't have the success with women that he claims. Maybe DangerAndPlay is a fat guy working the counter at a 7-11, who comes home and writes about an elaborate fantasy life. Maybe Matt Forney is actually Nancy Pelosi's alter-ego. I don't know, and to a certain degree I don't care. I owe them all a lot.

...and I'll add that in a larger sense, all the infighting is causing us to become like Jezebel. Someone on here (I forget who) recently mentioned the difference between us and them is their constant fighting. Well, the difference is becoming smaller.

Here is the way I see it: quality wins out in the end. Writers delivering BS blogs ultimately lose their audience or have commenters devoted to them and them only.

So, where the attacks on Danny, Sunshine, Minter, etc. might have been right in the micro sense, in the macro sense I think they may harm the manosphere (or whatever we are) for several reasons:

1). Outsiders who stumble on us with some sympathy might get driven away because they're turned off or confused.

2). More men will be paranoid about sharing for fear of getting outed or attacked. This, in turn, will make boards like this useless since sharing experiences are how we learn (and we're not getting that anywhere else in the media).

3). Solidarity is being lost. I always had the sense that "I might not be anything like these guys in life, but we all have the same mindset." That feeling is eroding quickly.

4). Petty, Jezebel-like insults are becoming the norm. While I don't excuse the examples about Danny504 calling people at weird hours, etc. I say BFD that Danny504 is short (for example). So is Neil Strauss. Should we start giving hell to bald men too...just because? This is getting into catty female territory.

5). The most important one: Larger issues will take a backseat. People are drawn to gossip and soap operas. But what else is going on while we're addressing this?

Here's what. In my corner of the world, women are now Tweeting a hashtag called #WhyIDidntReport in which they express regrets about not telling authorities about various "male transgressions." We should be writing posts on how this is the new version of the '80s Recovered Memory witchhunt -- which got innocent fathers imprisoned. But here we are instead.