There are fundamental and incredibly obvious flaws with the theory behind self-improvement. In the big scheme of things, self-improvement is nothing but a treadmill for keeping people engaged.
Here’s how the self-improvement money printer REALLY works:
Step 1: Find your target audience.
The target audience are people who aren’t happy and want more. Or in other words, pretty much everyone.
However, since we live in a gynocentric society that pleases women’s superficialities, the vast majority of candidates for self-improvement are men who can’t find a mate to reproduce with.
The average woman is worshipped and thus doesn’t need self-improvement nearly as much.
Step 2: Agree with your target audience and tell them what they want to hear.
During this phase, the self-improving guru appears concerned with the issues that his target audience is facing and becomes the voice saying the uncomfortable things that everyone else is running from.
Or in other words, the guru says: “Yes. Men are oppressed. It’s harder to be a man today. There are X,Y, Z problems…etc.”
With this move, the guru gains the trust of his audience.
Step 3: Give them hope
Once trust is established, it’s time to for the hope pill. No one wants to hear the truth if there aren’t solutions to it.
This is where the self-improver shows you what’s possible if you just work hard enough.
Step 4: Only a select few will succeed
The terms and conditions include a disclaimer.
The guru tells his audience that only those who work the hardest (a controllable but unmeasurable variable) will succeed. He does that to protect himself from backlash and to “stim” his slaves.
The guru knows that there are insanely important parameters besides effort but doesn’t acknowledge them because they would demotivate people.
Step 5: Sell them a product that allegedly leads to the ascension every man is craving.
The product is usually some retarded “course” made of cheap ideas that work only in 5% of the cases.
This shouldn’t be a surprise.
If something works, people hide it. No one with a successful business will go online and tell you their trade secrets.
Step 6: Repeat until infinity
And that fellas is how the “loser’s market” operates.
It’s a pyramid scheme or should I say an utterly genius self-fueling social machine.
Those at the top set the mindset principles for those at the bottom of the pyramid. The minions then fight to fulfill the requirements and keep each other in check while trying to do so.
Every new rule benefits those at the top who reinforce their power like a giant capitalist enterprise eating the smaller fishes via acquisitions while the plebs get more and more in debt in the pursuit of a pipe dream.
Male Tears
Women are affected by that nonsense too, but the self-improvement burden is mainly on male shoulders.
Why?
Cause women are born with social value whereas men earn it.
Women receive their advantage early in life whether they realize it or not. (Currently, many don’t get that.) Men may never receive an advantage, but if we do, it’s later in life (unless inheritance) and after years of struggle.
Allow me to clarify.
A 22-year-old slim girl with ADD, no education, living in her dad’s basement, and selling books in the mall has more social leverage and options on the dating market than a 38-year-old female with a Ph.D. in rocket science and a successful clothing line.
Technically, the 38y.o. has self-improved to the maximum while the 22y.o. has many levels to pass, but the painful reality is that the future fertility of a woman is extremely important for her romantic life.
The 22y.o. is in her prime and can date anyone she wants – men younger than her, same age or much older.
Who is the 38y.o. ultra-successful woman suitable for? Her success and age make her a lot less desirable. Yes, her success works against her as it shrinks the potential dating pool even further. A woman like that wouldn’t date the janitor. She wants Mr. Harvey Specter. But he, on the other hand, wants the 22y.o. girl.
Don’t hate me. As I am just the messenger.
However, if we flip the script the opposite is observed.
A 22y.o. male shoe seller living in his mom’s basement and “masterbating” for hours in his free time is a lot less desirable than a 38y.o. ultra-successful business owner. (Provided that the appearance of both is on a similar level apart from the aging signs).
So, in this case, the 38 y.o. male has benefited from self-improvement, unlike his female equivalent. He can date younger, the same age, or older.
And that’s why self-improvement thrives on male tears. The market is so big, that even FEMALE gurus try to infiltrate it. I don’t know their names, but I’ve seen women spitting “red pill” stuff in podcasts.
Sadly, self-improvement is a bit like a game of musical chairs – no matter how hard you work, you may end up without a chair. And even if you get a chair, you can lose it (e.g., your business going belly up like a restaurant during COVID).
Losers Are The Best Clients
Naturally, there are more losers than winners. It’s just mathematical. A team can only have one captain. And the winners are hard to sell to because they know the tricks or simply don’t care about your offer.
So, naturally, the self-improvers focus on the losers.
The losers are hungry for lies and have money to spend (the irony).
And what do you do when you run out of losers?
You gain some by making as many people as possible feel like losers.
The Tate clan does it best right now. A video of him will be thrown at your face by the algorithm sooner or later and in many cases, it either explains how awesome he is or directly or indirectly implies that you suck.
He brags about his stupid cars and tells you how you need 100 years at your wage slave job to afford them.
Even a legit millionaire would feel poor when he is confronted by a guy who has a car collection that costs 30 million or something.
Self-improving and Dating Apps Have a Lot In Common
Self-improvers need more losers than winners. In the same way, dating apps need more single people than couples.
However, there’s a difference.
Dating apps have full control over their algorithms and take advantage of them by controlling who they show and don’t show to you.
If dating apps want to help you, their algo will do its best to show you the most likely matches for you. Instead, it does the opposite so that you stay longer on the apps and pay for premium features.
Self-improving gurus do something similar not exactly because they’ve planned to but due to the impotence of their product.
They simply don’t have a magic formula. The only value of their work is generic basic advice (e.g., write your goals on a piece of paper).
So, they keep you poor, simply because they don’t know how to make you rich. And that outcome works just fine for them.
– the Natty Professor
More irritating than finding those gurus on the internet is to meet someone in real life who tries to become your guru and tries to make you feel like rubbish in order to “get you out of your comfort zone” (the effect is enhanced when the individual is taller/broader than you…). Ultimately it’s better to simply be aware of your own weaknesses and strengths in order to gain the most of any given situation, *within the limits of course* than simple being played as the fool/loser aiming for self-improvement crap.
You’re abusing the term “pyramid scheme”. It’s not like any scam with an element of social marketing is a pyramid scheme. A pyramid scheme is a scam where each victim attracts new victims (knowingly or unknowingly). If there isn’t a mechanism that causes each and every victim to attract new victims, it’s not a pyramid scheme. Self-improvement “courses” are a plain old scam where the scammer has to actively work to attract each and every victim. Self-improvement course are, in fact, quite the opposite of a pyramid scheme: after attending the course a victim often realizes that the teachings don’t work, simply because the results never come. So the victim will never recommend the same course to others. It’s an anti-pyramid scheme, albeit still a very profitable one.
As much as I agree with most of TruthSeeker’s criticism on current trends like this, you are right. He has been using “pyramid scheme” often lately to call out things that, while indeed misleading and scammy, don’t fit the true definition of a pyramid scheme.
To be fair, sometimes I’ve done it too. It’s easy to rely on buzzwords to give a name to something you disagree with or don’t like, but we can do better than modern progressives/normies and their indiscriminate misuse of terms such as fascist and, more recently, incel.
“You gain some by making as many people as possible feel like losers.”
You nailed it. I’d dare to say most of the “customers base” of the self-improvement gurus actually fall in this group and are not real losers.
In fact, the majority of guys I met during my self-improvement phase a few years ago were (and I hope they still are) completely functional young men with good, stable jobs and life situation. They simply were tricked (like I once was) into believing they were worthless just because they didn’t fulfill social expectations like getting a girlfriend/wife, which are often overrated and nowadays distorted to unrealistic levels thanks to social media. None of them had real drug addiction or other similar issues destroying their lives truly warranting a “savior” to come to the rescue.
Another way to attract losers is to start spewing religious vomit.
Nice work..thanks teacher…
Hey man, I just remembered this site. Your post helped me lose 34 pounds in 3 months 7 years ago and also helped me build significant muscle naturally and be able to do dips and pull ups for the first time. I’m fat again of course due to life issues but I’ll get back on track.