Recently, I posted an article on Victor Pride /Nick Kelly/ from Bold&Determined.com analyzing his metamorphosis.
The material spiked some interest and a couple of readers requested a similar post on RooshV – another pillar author of the manosphere who had a similar to Pride’s trajectory
Today, I fulfill that request.
I didn’t follow RooshV‘s prime as closely as Victor Pride’s because I wasn’t interested in pursuing women until later in life. Nonetheless, I’m familiar with his work and have the needed information to analyze his change of direction.
RooshV Was Smart and Educated
The first quality of RooshV that jumps out of the page is that he had a higher education (microbiology) unlike many other manosphere idols. He worked in a lab before his career as a pick-up artist [PUA] and author took off.
This quality separates him from people like Pride who painted college as a waste of time. [Pride was correct that college debt is evil, but education in and of itself is helpful and desirable.]
RooshV’s knowledge helped him position himself very intelligently on the scene. He wrote with a more advanced vocabulary and had something real to fall back on in case his blogging/vlogging/YouTube journey went bankrupt.
That said, in one of his early interviews, he expressed regret that he hadn’t quit his job a little earlier to pursue the manosphere money-printing route.
RooshV Was a Good Writer
RooshV had a neat and sharp writing style combining simplicity and directness with a touch of complexity.
He was a better writer than Pride fundamentally, but his writing didn’t generate as much hype and “motivational fire”.
In other words, RooshV was closer to classical music whereas Pride was a rapper.
The Empty Pursuit Of Women
Pride was a money chaser; RooshV was a pussy chaser.
RooshV built an empire on doctrines meant to produce sexual and love outcomes via well-calculated pick-up tactics. He traveled the world and experimented with both online and offline PUA.
He produced many books detailing his experience in different European countries. He spent years leveraging his U.S. passport and exotic roots in the hope of acquiring both love and sex.
Painful Realizations
Listening and reading RooshV led me to the following conclusions:
- RooshV Never “Banged”
Most people who can read between the lines (a.k.a. people who’ve fought a similar war) could see that RooshV’s pick-up career wasn’t all that successful. He wasn’t generating many positive sexual outcomes and some readers were even accusing him of writing “fiction” rather than reality.
Also, in many of his books, he is disarmingly honest and outlines his sad moments and failures himself.
- RooshV Became a Victim of the Perfect Girl Chase
I remember listening to one of RooshV’s podcasts where he was presenting the red flags that would disqualify a woman from being a good partner. If one were to apply his criteria, 99% of women would be disqualified.
Ironically, he reached the same conclusion at the end of his post. This is when I knew that he was pursuing women making less than 1% of the market share in his country.
And when you add his past and fame, it becomes abundantly clear that no woman matching his endless requirements would be willing to give him a chance.
In other words, his conquest had no legs to stand on. It was akin to doing natural bodybuilding and expecting unnatural results. You can train like that for 500 years without reaching your goal.
Complete PUA Burnout and Depression
As the years progressed, the PUA blogger warrior lifestyle intensified the fire surrounding RoosV’s psyche.
As I pointed out in the Pride post, blogging is fun only in the commercials. The reality is bleak and not nearly as alpha as they want you to believe.
RooshV did the following most days:
- Wake-up
- Stand in front of the laptop all day (consume and produce content)
- Maybe go to the gym
- Maybe go to the supermarket and open women only to get rejected
- Go back home and report to your followers
- Go to sleep
He was earning a lot of money during his initial phase (maybe more than Pride). The income was probably making up for the circle of depression in the beginning. But eventually, money can only do so much. Besides, he didn’t appear to be nearly as obsessed with increasing his bank account as others.
The Constant Criticism Didn’t Help
RooshV had a ton of fans and supporters, but the current narrative hated him with a passion.
He was suspended by multiple payment processing platforms; his site ReturnOfKings was destroyed; the UK banned him from entering the country…etc.
That struggle hurt his business and personal development immensely.
Ultimately, the accumulated fatigue together with the lonely lifestyle and criticism from normies started to severely affect RooshV’s equilibrium and trust in his blueprint and mission.
The Switch
Like Pride, RooshV had developed a lot of momentum in one direction. His entire life was dedicated to the manosphere – from his books to the last word on his sites.
But whenever you accumulate a lot of energy in one direction, you create an opportunity for the pendulum to swing toward the opposite end of the spectrum with an equal force.
A basic example of this phenomenon would be an obese person who suddenly becomes a health freak and starts focusing on living a healthy lifestyle with as much enthusiasm as previously invested in gluttony.
I experienced the pendulum effect when I was a student. Up until the second part of 7th grade I had very poor results in school. But at that point, I went full nerd and reversed my itinerary.
People couldn’t believe it. I went from being the loser of the class to the guy with some of the highest grades. Ironically, that ended too, but that’s for a different post.
In the case of RooshV, the polar opposite of his previous lifestyle was righteous living as required by Christianity.
He went from being somewhat of a player (as mentioned earlier most people never fully bought that act) to a devoted Christian.
His previous lifestyle was murdered.
No more “bangs”.
No more weird approaches
Going to church as frequently as possible
Reading the bible and other religious books
Growing an “anti-PUA” beard
RooshV Didn’t Follow The Pride Way, At First
Unlike Victor Pride, RooshV didn’t label his entire work as of the devil. Instead, he removed the problematic elements. That included his most popular book Game – a best-seller filled with multiple “red pills”.
He also introduced a ton of limitations to his forums…etc.
For a long time, he kept spreading his new message to his previous audience (of course many people weren’t happy) via new posts, live chats, videos…etc.
His approach was better and more balanced. Instead of abandoning everything, he recalibrated it according to his new compass.
Why People Felt Cheated
Many of RooshV’s followers were sad and disappointed. They felt as if they’d lost a good friend. And to a large extent that was indeed the case. The old RooshV was dead.
The guy who was teaching them how to increase their odds of having sexual outcomes with random women transformed into a monk.
That would be the equivalent of injecting steroids into your body for decades only to become a born-again natural who denounces all PEDs.
Many of RooshV’s followers didn’t know what to do. Their hero and teacher was no longer invested in his previous principles. The switch initiated a ton of hesitation within RooshV’s following. Some coped via anger while others applauded him.
But it went deeper than that.
Men were losing faith in the entire manosphere. If the prominent figures like Pride and RooshV were retiring from the game what were the “foot soldiers” supposed to do?
Personally, I knew that another person teaching the same ideology with a different spin was going to fill the niche.
What niche you ask?
The male self-improvement niche.
The reason why people like Pride and RooshV became popular in the first place was the male struggle in the modern world. Many men live an alienated and lonely lifestyle because we are now on the so-called free market due to the Internet (dating apps) and globalization.
In the past, your competition were mainly the people you knew in person. Today, you have to compete against the entire world.
Dating apps illustrate this perfectly. An average woman can now register on a dating app and have a multitude of male companions to choose from. As a result, the effort needed to secure an average woman is much greater due to the never-ending competition.
Nothing is stopping an NFL superstar from signing on the same app and matching with a girl that would’ve been yours a decade ago.
And that niche is still present to this day. It’s even bigger than the days when Pride and RooshV were popular.
Somewhat ironically, the men filling it are also richer and more powerful than RooshV and Pride.
E.g., Andrew Tate and his group of alleged billionaires.
Full DELETION
Last year, RooshV went all the way and deleted his entire online presence including his website and the forums.
Then, he announced that he was working a “regular job” whatever that meant, and said goodbye to everyone.
Currently, he isn’t present on the Internet unless we count the short clips recorded by other people.
So, what caused this drastic movement?
- He no longer believed in the mission. He wanted to exit his previous existence. His willingness to abandon everything in the name of God was also a clear signal that he’d reached a higher degree of faith.
- He was tired of the Internet and computers in general. He’d spent his prime in front of a screen and probably wanted a break from digital slavery.
- He was no longer the young hungry guy willing to derail his entire existence and lifestyle to increase his chance of having sexual intercourse with random women.
- He didn’t want to fight his critics anymore. He wanted to escape his fame as it’d become more detrimental than helpful.
- He felt lonely as many of his online friends were gone. When you do this long enough, you have no choice but to witness people come and go. And that applies to your colleagues/competitors and followers.
RooshV Was a Victim of Self-absorption, Just like Pride
RooshV spent many years alone. When you are young, the idea of living on your own and having no one to answer to is cool, but as the years accumulate, that freedom transforms into loneliness and mental torture.
One of the reasons for that is the non-stop self-obsession. You become a victim of the intense modern individualism common for first-worlders.
The modern humanoid is 100% focused on himself and constantly tortured by self-improvement questions such as:
- Am I following the right diet?
- What are the best exercises for my biceps?
- What clothes should I be wearing?
…etc.
This type of obsession is tolerable until 35-40 at best. After that, your headspace becomes a personal hell in a compact form.
At that point, focusing too much on yourself is a form of regression. You are no longer learning anything useful. You’re simply re-reading a book that you’ve already analyzed 1000 times. The only way to upgrade at that point is to aim higher than yourself.
RooshV didn’t have children at the time and his new mission provided an opportunity to escape his personal hell.
Why We Miss Them
On many occasions, I’ve experienced nostalgia for some of the old content creators (not just Pride and RooshV) that disappeared from the scene long ago. Sometimes I even use the web archive website to read their old work.
Why? What makes them so special?
It’s a bit like passing next to your old school. It’s not different than the rest of them, but it’s special because you were there. You feel it closer to your heart…
That said, another reason would be the lack of relatable figures. As I said before, people like Andrew Tate are not relatable to guys like me.
Also, it seems that the manosphere has moved to YouTube and TikTok whereas the crowd of RooshV and Pride preferred text materials in the form of forums and blog posts. I am the same way.
Truthseeker, people are waking up to the fact that Brad Pitt wasn’t natural in fight club I always knew since there were scenes were he had an androgenic shoulders popping out. People are also realising that you can be underweight example 5’11 155 pounds 70kg and not be natural like Brad Pitt. It’s in the forum here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nattyorjuice/comments/mbzvve/redpill_brad_pitt_was_not_natty_in_fight_club/
I was banned on reddit and decided not to participate on the platform. I am boycotting all big tech companies at the moment.
But I will make an account and will analyze the post.
I don’t see the point of this reddit post or your comment. Maybe Brad Pitt wasn’t “natural”, so, what’s the big let down? The whole point of the natty-or-not format is to understand whether something is achievable naturally or not. Being around 70kg very lean can be achieved by someone standing around 1.80cm without the usage of anabolic steroids, end of story.
btw thruthseeker already made a post about it: https://nattyornot.com/example-physiques-achievable-naturally-without-steroids/
As someone standing 5,10 ft tall (1.78/9 m. Not 1.80 m but pretty close lol) who has been always around 60 kg and 70 kg despite not training intensely or following a diet, I can certify this.
Each body is a different world and, for some guys like me, the struggle is to actually gain weight after a certain threshold rather than losing it. Brad Pitt’s physique in Fight Club seems achievable to me without artificial hormones or steroids. How easy or difficult would it be to keep depends on one’s own metabolism.
Yet another case where the image presented on the internet is absolutely nothing like reality. What a shock.
Really though there is almost nothing on the internet that’s true to reality. Guys like this are more a kin to victims of the falsehood of internet persona. He believed the hype and thought he would try to live the lie. As always, this was unsustainable; a fool’s errand from the onset and he arrived at the logical conclusion.
You can also add the casino slot addiction in the form of short videos (reels, TikTok…etc.) to the equation. It’s hypnotizing.
Roosh’s forum became a religious extremest site with only hard core Orthodox Christians accepted.
I was banned on the forum simply for telling the guys that Trump was not going to be declared the 2020 winner election winner a month after he lost.
He is simply a case of an extremist who converts to another type of extremism as the pendulum swings. Who knows what he will embrace next.
I wasn’t part of the forums. Thank you for providing this clarification.
Truth Seeker
The conclusion is;
You cannot fill the emptiness inside you with – women, money, etc. We are lost souls guided by a system that hates us, and they encourage us to do evil things to ourselves and others, and they award us with material things, as if they really mean something!?
He had a legitimate conversion to Christianity as many of us have had. The new believers are often unbalanced and fanatical until the reality of how hard it is to live in this fallen world. I’m happy he left his boring, lonely degenerate lifestyle. Nothing sadder than an old PUA playing the same old lame and lonely game
In my late 20s (I’m 30 years old now) I kind of experimented with PUA concepts and lifestyle as a way to fill a void. Soon I reached the conclusion that it is pretty unsustainable even for an extrovert.
I’m more on the introvert side, but the demands and nonsensical expectations PUA involves would quickly drain even the most social guy. It could only somehow work if you have a lot of money and free time to spare, but even then hedonism gets old and unsatisfying sooner than later for people who, deep inside, want something deeper than just quick pleasure.
Thanks brother for the article.Really good in the money.Kelly did the same thing went dark online and he works as carpenter with his father.This idea of been in front of computer screen all day long sucks.Also you should write of exposed of Andrew Tate.This guy had been on the market for a long time and one time he used to sell expensive red pill courses.
Truth Seeker,
I’ve reached the same point as Roosh right now because I realized that:
– I haven’t made any progress at the gym for the past 3 years because I don’t want to juice.
– Chasing women takes way too much time and energy.
– Making more money requires me to do things that I consider immoral.
Basically, I reach the cracking point when it comes to self improvement and can’t believe that my whole life has been a lie.
I still don’t believe in getting married and raising children, or becoming religious because neither my parents nor the religious people around me were sane.
How would you go about exiting the individualism hell and the profound sadness that arises after you realize that life sucks no matter what you do? Some people navigate towards stoicism but I’m not sure if it’s more self improvement.
Please share your insight and some resources if possible.
Train same muscles many days in a row and you see progres.
Truthseeker, am I missing something or are there no dates on your articles? There aren’t any on the comments. Is there a reason for this? I for one would prefer to know when you (or someone else) wrote something. Should be an easy fix. Cheers.
I’ve thought the same thing often. It’s probably the only “bad” thing I have noticed here 🙂 Sometimes it would be also nice to compare your articles release dates to those who are trying to steal your content.
My css file is all messed up. It has an insane amount of lines and I need to fix it.
That’s really not a big issue, you’ve already delivered millions of times whit great content which is far more important. I certainly can’t complain much, because my experience with css-files is only few lines long 😀
Dude, nobody misses that asshole. Absolutely nobody. He had nothing of value to say.
You either forgot to mention or you didn’t know that he changed right after his sister’s death. He was very close with his sister, to the point that when one of them cried the other one cried too.
Someone said nobody misses him but I miss him. Roosh is a treasure. I hope he’s fine. God bless him.
Please do one of these about Roissy, from the extinct blog Heartiste.
I was also deceived by satan to follow this sinful worlds standards seen in movies. God had mercy on me when i repented and was baptised and I was born again and it’s even now scary to think about still being stuck in wanting to sin because that was my life. Find Jesus ppl, this world is not what it seems. Sin leads to hell! Even looking at a woman not your wife with lust is a sin, but in this world it’s as common as breathing, just horrible.
I was active on Roosh forum, but never really bought into the PUA lifestyle, I did buy prostitutes in Asia and such, which most of these guys did, but lied about.
In any case, I agree fully on your overall premise. Us older millennials have turned out to be in many cases, the stories of regret and warning, of what the online libertarian ends up as, a lonely, halfway mentally ill person. It was all a false dream.
The problem though is that the real world isn’t better. If anything I just see us as the canary in the coal mine. As you correctly point out, Tate is even worse, he’s a complete fabrication, a piece of shit, a psychopath who rises to the top.
And what do Zoomers spent their time on? They are as obsessed as we were, just with shitcoins, rizz and right wing politics. They think Instagram is going to save them. They don’t go to Asia to get laid with prostitutes, but to take pictures to convince some 5/10 to sleep with them back home.
We’re all fucked, well not all of course, but the online people like me. We thought we could run from the world, hide from it, break the rules, but we couldn’t. I can see why christianity is a refuge. I have also found some peace in faith, though not as extreme as Roosh, which I found very offputting, but I do believe in God and Christ and I had some experiences to think it’s real.
What I regret the most is not having children. I hope I can have some, someway. Let me advice anyone reading. If you can have children, have them, as soon as possible. It’s the only thing worth spending a life on. Otherwise you’ll chase meaning the rest of your life and while you might find some and teach it to others, you’ll suffer immensely in the process.
I’m not that old yet (just starting my 30s), but I can relate with you about your thoughts of having children.
The older you get, the more you realize you need to leave some kind of legacy behind because you won’t be (and want) to be in this world forever. Having children is probably the natural answer to such urge, but there are some caveats. Your experience as a father will be defined by who you choose as your partner, and if you choose wrong, it might turn into a living hell for you (and your son/daughter) worse than staying single.
One should be always open to such possibility, but not seek it recklessly.
This is also so very true. And the fact that we change during our lives makes this very difficult. I know a man who has always changed his woman after 20 years. It’s like clockwork, it just happens. Of course that’s already a very respectful number especially nowadays. And in that time, you probably have been able to raise at least somewhat functional kids, which is a positive. But yeah, things can turn ugly, easily actually. A friend of mine used to say that “a childhood trauma is a common finding”. Often it is like that, almost like risk regulation.
As an older millennial, I don’t really know nothing about any of these things. But what you said about children is beautiful. For the longest time in my life exercise was my safeguard. It always seemed to help me from going totally fucked. But when my kid was born this changed, and my kid is now the safeguard. The worst days in my life I can tolerate because of my kid. Although I’m still a fuckup, I feel like I can’t just appear as total depressed shithouse in front of my kid. My regret is that I didn’t have children when I was younger, and I didn’t have more of them.