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Watching Quietly

If women want to understand men, they shouldn’t read women’s magazines; they should read men’s magazines.

Some years ago my RPG hobby demanded long hours of dull, repetitive computer-work. I scavenged a second monitor from somewhere, and stuck those long, dull, 40-minute Youtube videos on in the background.

Anyone which I agreed with seemed nauseating, because they never agreed with me for the right reasons, and never went through theory. Theories about how Jews come from space, Gamergate enthusiasts, and men’s rights activists comprised about half my listening time (most of these shows may as well be podcasts - I can’t imagine anyone really looks at the talking heads).

Some of the MRA lot sounded like genuinely nice people, even if they overall political theory wasn’t great.

Some months later, Glasgow’s trendy student scene shouted for action, pushing back against the evil Roosh V, who would soon descend to give a talk on how to bang women. Placards poised, they send rants across Facebook (which was the style at the time), oozing with disgust and ready to break up any potential gathering of people who hoarded advice on getting laid from Youtube.

At this point I recalled an interview with the ‘Honey Badgers’ (an MRA group) and Roosh V. He outlined how his experience has turned into tactics:

1. He wrote an inflammatory piece.

2. People misquoted it to make click-bait articles.

3. 99% of people reading thought he was a dick, but 1% went to the source (his site) and found he’d been misquoted.

4. Some of that 1% stuck around, and subscribed, broadening his user base.

All he needed was to be heard, and the misquotes would follow, then the arguments. Invariably one person would attack him for being a bit rapey, but with a poor understanding of his work, while another would poke holes in this poor understanding of his work.

At this point, I tried to explain to the progressive crowd the plan, and found myself surprised by how incapable these apparently educated people were of parsing a single thing I said. It wasn’t a matter of disagreement, but repeating the notion that they were challenging, rather than supporting him.

I wouldn’t recommend watching this crap in general, because it’s very tedious. But I’d certainly recommend listening to people who are wrong, or crazy, or even dangerous.

I don’t have the ear-time for this nonsense any more, but I think I can talk to people with crazy ideas much easier than most people from my lefty, enlightened, and pompous University background.