So, I am writing this post mainly to describe my experience from being part of the manosphere (red-pill, MGTOW, borderline black-pill) for a year. I've seen the Indian manosphere as well as Western manosphere, and was heavily brainwashed and indoctrinated by them.

For context, I am 19M from a small town in West Bengal, India. I joined the manosphere when I was 17, and left it about 6-7 months ago.

This was in 2024, when I had asked a girl out and got rejected. I was 17 at the time, and it was my life's first rejection (she had indirectly rejected me after playing a long game). So it obviously hurt, though it hurt a lot as it took me 1 year to move on. She basically rejected me and immediately chose another guy (visibly he had a richer father and affluent socioeconomic status, though I never interacted with him so I have no idea of his personality, but our mutual friends have described him as a jerk). While I was fuming with the rage of rejection, I came across red-pill content. This was a creator named FFW (those who know, they know; those who don't, it's better not to). He was the first red-piller I found, and I discovered him in 2023 actually, but only watched one video of him that got recommended to me. He got recommended again a year later, and that's when I began to watch him. He promoted severely problematic ideas regarding women, dating, success, and even championed homophobia and anti-LGBTQ sentiment (which I bought into, I was just 17, I didn't know much at the time).

After this, I found an Indian red-pill creator named Shaaringaton, who was an underdog when I first started consuming his content, he had less than 25k subscribers at the time (right now he sits at 400k-500k subs). He didn't openly promote equally problematic views like "women can't have male friends" and all (though privately he championed that, this will be discussed ahead in the story). I joined his Discord (this was all in 2024). Then he later launched his "paid moneymaking academy" named "Tribe Ultra", which I saw as a golden opportunity to change my life. My father had never really paid for any online courses and stuff before, but this time I asked him (since the price was also roughly $10-11), and this was the only time he agreed. I joined the academy (in 2025). Came across tons of stuff. Fitness, "looksmaxxing", social skills, "dating", and "tons of business models" (I am highlighting these specific categories in quotation marks because these contain the problematic bits). I had gone "Ghost Mode" at this time, just forcefully working for some quick money. And yes, I forgot to mention, I had completely become a radical atheist/anti-theist by this time. I was immature enough to not respect a No (internally) and instead blamed God for it, and became an atheist who actively hated him (though I never worshipped the Devil either).

Here, they promoted mewing and other pseudoscientific looksmaxxing practices (while mewing may not be completely pseudoscience, they claimed it will radically sharpen the jawline, which it obviously wouldn't). In dating, they promoted the regressive views like "women can't have male friends", "women should only cook, an independent woman is a potential cheater", basically all BS only. This was something I frequently debated about with other "alumni" (who were really just kiddos with no life who think themselves to be "cool" because they believe in misogyny). And their business models, man! These required more effort than a 9-to-5 job and made tons of money only in the short run, these weren't optimized for the long run. Stuff like YTA, IG theme pages, dropshipping, trading (which is not fake but incredibly hard to do for a layman and incredibly risky; I have a trader friend so I know), affiliate marketing, SMMA, other agency models, etc. Even their definition of success is quite flawed, they only consider being a billionaire to be success, and anything else or below is failure. If a person wants to be happy rather than rich and pursues his passion over a profitable path, this academy and entire community will call him a failure, even if he realistically achieved what he wanted (happiness). Such was the state here. Now, I don't claim that money is not important at all. Money surely holds profound importance. But basing and centering your life around some pieces of paper is a proven formula to burnout and a dull existence.

After this, one day (all of this happened in 2025), randomly on a chatroom in the server, while Shaaringaton himself was interacting, I randomly cracked a pun (which might've been funny based on the reaction of the other people), and that's when this dude noticed me first. He made me moderator (which was really just a formality and his way of inviting me to his inner circle). Then eventually he took my friend request, and I became part of his inner circle. This dude shared a lot of stories about himself with me, which really reveal the type of human being he was. For example, he shares an instance where he used to manipulate a girl he was in a relationship with, and he completely destroys and damages the girl with his actions. This is one out of many other stories he shared, and this is the only one I remember as this hit me hard (he shared these stories last year, for context, it's almost going to be two years since I committed to the manosphere).

I had also expanded my network within multiple circles simultaneously. I was part of this Indian red-pill community, I was also part of the Western red-pill community (FFW and many others), I never liked Tate as much (mainly due to his openly-misogynistic and racist comments respectively), and I even decided to run my own red-pill Discord server in the future after I got "success". I will admit, that ONLY one thing turned out to be good from all of this- that I tried a lot of stuff regarding business, and I learnt a lot about it, I learnt what NOT to do. That's the only good thing I got, everything else was just downright bad.

I had also discovered more red-pill and even black-pill guys, like Chadtag and Sarthak Goel. This latter guy in particular, was the most problematic amongst all Indian manosphere influencers, as he actively promoted playboy lifestyle. Playing games with women, "making them chase", "domination" (which was outright weird and borderline k1nky), not being loyal to one woman, these're some views he promoted. I fell for it quickly. I tried too hard to imitate this (and obviously failed, but at the time I thought I am having success; I didn't groom well, dress well, carry myself well, and I thought I am "winning" when I was only being ignored more and clowned harder). The former guy on the other hand, promoted looksmaxxing primarily, and stuff like "if you don't have angular jawline, raised cheekbones or canthal tilt (whatever that tomfoolery is), you don't look attractive even if you're well-groomed, well-dressed, well-cared of and your hair nicely styled, having a hairstyle to make you look better in fact, means you're unattractive". BS advice as we all can see, but I didn't notice this at the time.

Meanwhile, I had made some friends in the Western red-pill comm., and 2 of them, along with me and another Indian red-piller, formed a group of ours (those 2 were from Turkey and Uzbekistan respectively, and devout Muslims, I mentioned this as it will be a relevant piece of information ahead, and not meant to promote hatred against Muslims). We were all working independently on "business" (which really was just models that required tons of effort but weren't long-term sustainable). These people had double standards. According to them, a woman can't have male best friends but a man can have female best friends. I didn't believe this though, I was more radical, I believed that both were wrong, woman having male friends as well as man having female friends (even though my own mother has male friends). I didn't know platonic relationships were a thing, I only thought all of it to be romantic.

I had then discovered a channel called "GRIM" (will not say the full name, those who know they know; those who don't, better not to), mainly through a collaboration they did with FFW. This was basically promoting red-pill through character roleplay, where a Finnish actor played the role of a Soviet-era mob boss who lived through 2 communist regimes (USSR and East Germany). The problem? They contradicted their own message. In a video, they were criticizing communism/socialism heavily, and promoting capitalism (this is where I got introduced to capitalist ideology, and I won't talk much about it or about my belief in these ideologies, better not to spark up unnecessary controversies). And then, many videos later, they talk about how Karl Marx was the people's savior, and it was the capitalists and elites who destroyed the ideology. See, self-contradictory. I don't care here whether you believe in communism or in capitalism. Just don't change teams abruptly like this, that's a self-contradiction. They also promoted absurd thoughts like rejecting modern medicine, modern entertainment, modern ways of living (some of which I agree is problematic, but complete rejection of modern ways of living will lead to nothing but social boycott, people don't wanna be with a jerk who lives like a 11th-century man in the 21st century). When I sometimes look back, I realize that I was really under some wrong influence.

I was also very radically anti-feminist (still am slightly anti-feminist as I've seen the evils of modern-day feminism and how it has turned into misandry, though not as radical, I don't necessarily disagree with gender equality or challenging gender roles, but I just don't wish to be associated with the feminist label or with feminist ideology, I find it problematic, at least today's version, which is the female version of red-pill). And yes, I was even partly a believer of MGTOW (though I didn't know it's name), though I never believed in "1ncel" stuff (I saw the word as an insult/cuss). I even started to live in total isolation from the outside world, instead spending all of my time on this echo chamber.

Back at the Indian red-pill comm., there came a new guy (whose real name I know, let's just call him Chris, that's his pseudonym), who was also Indian btw. He initially seemed friendly and all, but we will later discuss what he did (spoiler alert: he was the reason I quit the manosphere and started my detox from these ideologies). We used to hang out and play games a lot. He was a weirdo and had predatory tendencies. He used to casually joke about s*distic stuff and vi*lence against women, all under the guise of "humor". The immature me didn't initially find it problematic, and joked along. But he was also always subtly trying to get me in situations where I would be in trouble. He had a friend who called himself "Casino" and he was always in some sort of fight with me, though we eventually resolved conflicts but he was always being arrogant. I never realized. This continued, and eventually he made a few thousand dollars online (according to his OWN claims, he made $10k online, I highly doubt that, I am not saying anything regarding that). Meanwhile, I was *slowly* getting disillusioned with this alternate version of rat race where we chased a million dollars in unconventional ways. So, one day, out of nowhere, he basically humiliated me under the guise of sarcasm and satire. Even then I didn't understand, until another mutual friend explained (that mutual friend himself left the community after I left, and we're still in touch, we just reconnected after months). Then I broke apart from the community. I asked to Shaaringaton for a refund (luckily I got it, as latter members didn't get a refund, also fun fact:- he later dissolved the academy out of nowhere, basically eloping with the money paid by the toxic kiddos), and disconnected from them all. I still had a business partner from the same community (and our mindsets differed, as I wanted stability and looked up to polymaths as my role model, while he wanted aggressive scaling and looked up to multibillionaires as his role model, which is why we clashed too often), and this dude once said that all Indians are stupid (a cuss word was used instead of "stupid", which South Asians will know very well, I refrain from using it here, and I totally disagree with that framing of Indians as well). One day, when I was giving an explanation for something using simple layman language, he was reverting back to the same point which I was explaining. This repeated a couple of times, until I snapped and I explained him in my own style (aggressively, with a lot of cuss words), cuz man, I got triggered at the tomfoolery he was exhibiting. He then blocked me immediately, and I repeated the same.

Also important to mention, a controversy had happened involving a manosphere creator. This dude who went by the name "Soumil" or something, had made remarks about the facial appearance of a r4pe-and-murd3r victim. The victim was brutally r4ped and k1lled inside the seminar room of a hospital, and instead of paying condolences or demanding justice, this Soumil clown said that she didn't look good enough, and blamed the r4pists but for the wrong reason (I won't say it). Disgusting fellow. The controversy probably happened somewhere around this time only, and this dude had beef with Shaaringaton btw.

I still hadn't completely left. I was part of another smaller red-pill server (I was a lonely loser with no true IRL friends, my IRL friends at the moment were making fun of events that deeply hurt me, and I grew distrustful of them), whose owner was an Indian (and was born to interfaith parents). He promoted BS conspiracy theories, specially regarding Jews and Israel (mainly the theory that Jews control the world). And of course, the "women can't have male friends" mindset, that's like staple at this point. When someone used to bring that up, I used to cite my own mother's example, to which they said that my mother was an exception as she came from a different time, and none of today's women would keep it platonic (which I disagree with, as it's generalization, there were cheaters in my mother's time too, and there're women in today's time who can maintain genuinely platonic relations with guys while deeply loving one specific guy). I used to go back to that server and look whether I was being discussed or not, and well, I was. They were saying a lot of BS behind my back which they can **NEVER** say to my face (and I mean it, they don't have the guts to do it; they said stuff like "his game is over" and all referring to me), and they even talked very badly about my family, even misbehaving with people who genuinely cared for me and inquired about me. Also remember the 2 guys from Turkey and Uzbekistan respectively, whom I mentioned? I also mentioned they were devout Muslims. This is because when I revealed to them that I was an atheist (was initially scared to do so as God is very important for Muslims), they initially brushed it off, but later they pulled away even harder. I then left that group, left the Discord servers, and deleted the Discord ID that I used to communicate with the manosphere. I had actively left the manosphere here, while some ideological residue still persisted. I got incredibly lonelier, and therefore when I came back to theism (and then deism), I suffered a total mental health crackdown. I was having extreme thoughts, and I dealt with that alone (I couldn't really open up to anyone, lonely as I said, although I now have IRL friends and acquaintances but I can't open up as easily about stuff). But I went through it, and now I am in good condition. I fought it alone, and stood victorious, not acting on my extreme thoughts or impulses.

After this, I focused more on my happiness, on honing my crafts, on following my passions (got better at chess, guitar, recently started to write some rap songs too, and even learning a skill, but primarily for my passion and secondarily for the financial opportunities it can create as it is a skill that has real potential in terms of money, I even started to learn a language with the help of my college as they teach 3 foreign languages there and I chose Spanish), basically being a good person with an interesting life, rather than a jerk who only has money on his mind. I have also started to dress well, groom well, take care of my hair, smell well, even started skincare, developing social skills, working on body language, honing my crafts, and I am already feeling much more confident and good about myself from the attention I am getting from both men and women due to these small changes (this is also my opportunity to become more socially confident). My stance at this point is simple :- I am focused on living a fulfilling life where I do the stuff I love, have a diverse set of interesting hobbies and earning enough money from it to comfortably afford day-to-day expenses and sustain my modest living (I don't wish to be a millionaire, it's too much work, though I don't hate the wealthy, I just don't prefer to chase that life, I feel much more liberated when I know I am not chasing that life; and yes, the skill I am learning has real monetary potential, both in terms of employment and entrepreneurship, I've studied enough about the market, but passion is primary here, I can live on modest means too, I am from a small Indian town so stuff isn't as costly here as it is in big Indian or American metropolitans).

Though while the ideological residue persisted in my mind, I came across manosphere pages on Instagram, which promoted the same "push-pull and scarcity tactics" stuff, and idk why I tried it out this time on a girl I liked (who happened to give me similar signals though it turned out she was just being friendly), and when I did it, she pulled back instead of chasing me (I can't tell you how stressed I got, I thought I fumbled this, and even cried about it, I had basically cried after years due to this incident, this also strengthened my hate for the manosphere). I then actively blocked every manosphere page that got on my Insta feed (an active process, I still do this if red-pill or black-pill or MGTOW pages come around).

Today I am writing this story mainly because I was watching a reaction video, where the dudes were reacting to an Indian manosphere influencer named Dev Tyagi (who's basically Indian Andrew Tate, so you can already guess what type of a human being he was). His words were outright outrageous, as he spread a lot of insecurity, saying stuff like "your gf is gonna cheat on you with your best friend, don't trust any of them" (this seriously triggered me), and the evergreen manospherical thought of "women can't have male friends".

This was my experience with The Manosphere, and I can say, I am liberated from it. I feel confident as I freed myself from the chains of these toxic ideologies and a toxic echo chamber, which promotes nothing but toxic masculinity, misogyny, materialism, and being evil. This was just my rant.

Genuinely asking becausz i'm struggling rn. I keep asking chatgpt but he gives me obvious things such as "your worth doesnt depend on what other thinks" yeah no shit dude im asking HOW do i get out of this mindset?

I think many guys were maybe in my case some time ago so i wanted to hear if you have genuine advice.

The problem i got is that its not only me that is thinking like that but the SYSTEM thinks like that. Not only we view worth as your social success, how popular you are etc...but for men, there's really an intrinsec competition between every men for who is getting the most girls, who is the most handsome, tallest, most muscular etc... the most admired men today are men such as Jacob Elordi, Michael B Jordan, Henry Cavill.... men's attractiveness is so much valued by society

It doesn't help when for example you open Tiktok, see some handsome guys, open the comments and see girls leaving suggestive comments. I know its sometimes played off as jokes/memes but still, hurts to not get that kind of attention and not feel worthless in front of these men...

But i mean you can always be an outlier and not thinking like the system. For example society wants us to get richer and richer yet i do not care about that, all i want is being comfortable enough. So i guess i could think the same with attractiveness and looks? But how? Because i know that your money doesnt equate your worth but looks is much more...complicated idk.

I know some answers will come such as therapy, and i guess it can be a solution, but right now i'm in a situation where i honestly think to stop seeing my therapist because i am a bit too ugly to seeing her but idk.... +she wants to do EMDR to me which is maybe a bit not adapted because honestly i dont think i got some kind of traumas...ive been a bit bullied at middle school but not really hard....

I know hobbies will come out and i guess thats right but can you really base your entire existance and worth on your hobbies?

After experiencing constant rejection from 18 to 22, I decided I'd take a break from dating until I felt like I more comfortable with myself and develop myself a little more. So I started my journey of self development and prioritizing my relationship with myself over dating. I didn't try to date. I wanted to, but any time I felt the urge, I just reminded myself of how my early adulthood was and that would likely be the same outcome if I wasn't in a significantly different place than when I started.

I think I did a lot. I got my dream job, got my masters, am making plans to get a doctorate, bought my own place, paid off my car, found hobbies and a lot of friends, I went to therapy from 23 to 25 and made a lot of progress there, and built a life I am really proud of. I tried to get back out there last year around the time I turned 28 and to my surprise, in the last year it has been constant rejection just like when I was young.

I only just recently discovered the red pill, and I don't buy into it fully, and I take issue with people who are misogynists, but I feel like there's a great deal of truth. I also look at my friends and their dating trajectories. I put in 7 years of work on myself and that changed nothing. I don't know a single one of my friends who did the same or has achieved the same. I'm viewed as the "successful" one in my friend group, where most of them are struggling actors and performers and yet they're all in long term committed relationships and have been in long term committed relationships before the ones they're currently in.

Most of them were in their first relationships at around 18-20. And yeah those relationships ended after a year or two, but not firery blow up end, just simply, after growing they were no longer compatible and life trajectories took them different ways. They didn't need to get their lives together or work on themselves. They just existed as they had been. Maybe some matured a little, but not with therapy, or self work, or any of the stuff I did. Just natural maturing as they aged.

So then I'm left like "well, during all this time I thought I was supposed to be self improving, it seems like no one else did it, and they were having a lot more fun and were happier during it". I know people will accuse me of doing self improvement for women, but I think that's inaccurate. I did it for numerous things. I had numerous goals I wanted to achieve and one was to be in a healthy place to start dating. I feel like I wasted my youth reading self help books and doing mindfulness exercises and it just meant nothing.

I don't really know how to feel about it but I feel bad. But I'd like to know, am I just not seeing it? Am I not seeing the years of self improvement being done? Am I just worse off than most people that I needed to do it, and even after doing it, I'm still not in a place where I can date?

basically the guy I’ve been dating for almost a year has said many red pill adjacent things but I don’t necessarily feel like his actions follow. For instance, when we first met he says he likes “submissive and quiet women” yet I am quite opinionated, liberal and outspoken. I come to find out his ex before me was also the same way. When I bring this up later on in our relationship he says he wouldn’t want someone who is “too subservient” and he likes that about me and wouldn’t want to “dim my light”. He says that hopefully a good man will find a woman to “obey him” and marry. He refers to Christianity in the Bible saying women need to be submissive to their husband, and claimed to be really focused on exploring his faith yet since we met he hasn’t been back to church once. I feel like when he says these outlandish comments sometimes it just sounds like he spits out what he’s seen online but doesn’t actually believe them (but maybe he does?) he has invested and given me money to start up my own business, has put himself into therapy because I told him he needs too if he wants to better himself and make the relationship work and he has followed through. I not sure if I’m just ignoring all the blaring red flags.

I'm a 25 year old man who wasn't attractive enough to women to find a romantic connection. I would consider myself a guy that really does struggle. I am also fascinated with incels and red pill stuff from a political standpoint. I wrote a couple papers in my intersectional politics classes in college and for some of my courses for my Poli Sci masters on specifically how the growth of manosphere ideology is impacting the political alignment of young men.

Something I feel that I constantly see that gets my goat is how the immediate response to young men who struggle to date is frequently that they're likely secret misogynists.

I don't mean people saying "You struggle to date? Well it's of course because you hate women". It's more people implying that the only reason they are sad or upset is because they feel entitled. Or because they just want a woman to use for her body. Or because they want a maid.

I take issue with that because it implies that men are not also emotional beings with desires for companionship, that our desire for partnership is purely because of the patriarchy and when we feel emotions or express vulnerability it's because of a patriarchal desire to prove we're men by having sex and dating. It strips away personhood from men and replaces it with a caricature.

Men are human beings capable of emotion and capable of love, just as women. And just as women can get frustrated by struggling to find the right match in the sea of attention that is often vulgar, men should be allowed to express negative feelings if they are upset because they feel undesirable or unable to meet someone interested in them.

If someone's actually clearly a misogynist, of course, but frequently it feels as if the immediate assumption is misogyny and not the fact that we are also people.

So what?

On average you're gonna live for 75 to 80 years. That is a lot of time. Lets say you drew the short universal luck straw and you just won't meet your person. So what? Relationships are time consuming and tons of hard work. There are times where the person you love the most will cut you the deepest. There are times where you will be tested to your limit. There will be times where you feel the worst loss you've felt in your life. All because of them.

Meanwhile if you are single for the rest of your life, you have the entire world at your finger tips. You wanna drop everything and go backpack europe? Go ahead. No partner to tell you no. You wanna spend every free second you have playing video games, reading, working out, or whatever else. Go ahead, you don't have to dedicate that time to anyone.

Life is full of riches and treasures that make it complete. Good friends, good wine, and some good books are enough. I don't date, I saw the landscape, tried my hand at it, and realized it just wasn't for me. Now I'm 25, single, my sex drive is going away due to age and to some medication I've chosen to take so I'm not worried about that, I don't have to please anyone other than myself. My life is better. I craved love so much but when I accepted it's just not for me, my life improved 10 fold.

I’m 21 and graduating college soon and realized I never went on a date. I have a job lined up so I guess i’m not doing too bad though. From asking online and my friends they said that the problem is that I don’t go out and am a bit asocial. To be honest I basically dont go out at all and try to keep to myself. I very seldomly go to parties or bars but it usually doesn’t amount to anything. I’ve posted my face a few times and I know I’m probably not attractive but people tell me I’m not that bad looking. My question is that even if I was pretty asocial and didnt go out, wouldnt I at least have had one date from someone expeessing interest in me? Being approached or a girl randomly starting a conversation with me, etc and the problem is just that I’m not attractive enough? Or is being asocial and not going outside a big killer

What would identify as the one moment where you started to question "pill"/manosphere ideology? or did you always have underlying doubts/suspected it was a coping strategy on some level? What began your journey outward? If a person sees a friend spiraling into that and everything you say just makes him double down, what approach would you recommend to try and get them to start questioning, based on your expereince?

(Note, not a pill guy myself but did have a friend who went down his own misogynistic spiral and everything I said made it worse)

​

Everything was going fine until, in a scene from X-Men, Jean Grey said to Logan: "Girls flirt with the bad boy, but they marry the good guy." I hate that character. I hate the idea that if you’re a "good guy," you won’t be loved.

Things were fine until I saw that scene. 😭😭

Okay so my dad, brother, and uncles are all currently getting red pilled and I'm freaking the fuck out. All of them are saying some really transphobic and misogynistic shit and I could really use some advice on how to get them to snap out of it

I keep reading about it but am not sure what exactly it is. About how guys should appeal to it and if they did they would get a ton of compliments and attention. I think my outfit got complimented once by a girl 2 years and honestly I thought it was not that good at all. I’m trying to sort of pin down what the “female gaze” is exactly so I can be less unappealing to women. I normally don’t dress or present myself in thinking on how this would maximally appeal to women as that seems a bit odd but maybe I’m thinking about it wrong. The most I’ve gotten from “female gaze” is more soft looking, more kind and open, not flexing your muscles or looking scary, “grown out” hair, accessorizing, skincare, better dressing / clothing in the way that “women like”(i dont really know what this means)

1. Doesn't have children

2. Still fertile

3. Kind

4. Attractive enough in my eyes

wtf is this? dating sucks

30f wondering if my 33m bf of 2 months is doing this on purpose or just blunt/messing with me?

\\\[30f\\\] wondering what my bfs \\\[33m\\\] trying to do here

I’ve been dating a guy for a couple months. He makes me laugh and I enjoy his company but something just feels off.

First he almost never compliments me. He says he is not a verbal affirmation guy, and he shows care through action. Totally fine. He takes me on lots of nice, expensive, elaborate dates but he is rich so not sure that actually means much. However he has no problem saying mean things to me. We banter and mess with each other a lot so I’m wondering if I am overthinking it or he is purposely trying to chip at my self esteem. Last night he told me his least fave thing about me was how I have hairs on my upper lip sometimes. I tried not to react but a tear did stream down my cheek. He then became very attentive and affectionate. He also was telling me he doesn’t like my belly ring and how defined my abs are. He also wants me to remove one of my tattoos.

Another time we were working out at our shared gym and I couldn’t get two pull ups. I joked that it was bc he was taking me out to so many nice restaurants and was making me fatter. He said “you are getting fatter, but that’s not why.” For context I am absolutely nowhere near fat and have visible abs. Which he once told me were less defined.

Another instance is he took me on a super fancy vacation and I forgot my face wash. We went to the desk to ask for some. The guy working said “we have regular and blemish control” and my bf said “oh get her the blemish control”. I am not someone who struggles with acne aside from the occasional pre period pimple or two so this was really odd. I laughed it off.

I brought it up to him last night in bed after his comment about my mustache. He said he is just messing with
Me and only says those things because they are so totally not true. And if they were he wouldn’t say them. He also said he doesn’t feel the need to compliment me bc I am full of myself already, and that it’s a good thing. He said he thought I would have no insecurities. For reference I am quite good looking and he is above average but we are mismatched in that department. He is wealthy and funny and I enjoy him a lot and find him attractive, but physically would be considered by most out of his league.

Am I reading into it or is he trying to knock me down a few pegs? And why? I totally could be dramatic but last nights convo left me very confused.

I was never considered ugly in those environments.
Rated back then 6,5/7 and had possibilities also in high school.
But I looksmaxed a lot since then, now I’m at least 7,5 and i receive a lot of approaches.

But I feel even more like an incel than before.
Women don't want anything serious with me; the only ones interested are just looking for hookups, and that’s not what I want.
I spent years improving my appearance, finances, and status to find love, yet I’m just as alone as ever.
In fact, I feel truly bad right now because, after years of being brainwashed into believing that looks would open every door for me, I now feel cursed and unlovable.

And after years of hearing about hypergamy—convinced that, thanks to a mathematical equation, I could had any girl ranked lower than me—I end up seeing couples where she’s a 7 and he’s a 4. Meanwhile, I’m above a 7, yet I can’t even find a 5.

Hi, I’m the 18-year-old guy who left the manosphere. I’ve made friends—both guys and girls—at school; people are kind and have welcomed me. A girl took me into her friend group; she already has a partner, and while I don’t feel distrust toward her, I do feel it toward other girls—though, thankfully, it’s not as intense as it used to be.

I’d like to know what you all think. I’m going to therapy and improving, but the wound hasn’t fully healed yet. I feel sad because the girls I like either have boyfriends or aren’t interested in me. My reaction to this feeling is to shut myself off. When I see an attractive, well-educated woman, I get the feeling she wouldn’t be interested in me. I want to change that.

I’m a 30M straight guy really struggling in the dating world. Between dating app fatigue, meeting women who don’t want to settle down and just the general awkwardness/breakdown of meeting people in real life, I have been feeling so frustrated lately.

My Instagram and YouTube feeds have become full of “dating” advice videos or videos such as
- Why do men not approach anymore
- Women’s standards are too high
- Why are men not going to dating events
- Why women don’t think logically (and how to manipulate them)

I know it’s all bullshit, but part of me kind of likes it because I think it validates my frustration and resolves me of blame.

I want to be a chivalrous gentleman out there in the wild.

How can I completely detach from this bs online and be more confident out in public?

I'm 25 and I have absolutely zero romantic experience. I never went on a date, hugged, flirted, or held hands. I grew up very quiet, had social anxiety throughout school, and was very awkward as a result of it. I'm in a much better position now since I'm becoming a teacher, but I feel some level of hopelessness.

I always disliked the gender role in our society that the man has to approach the woman or else nothing will ever happen. To me, it feels like nothing about you or your personality/qualities matters at all anymore if you are shy or come off even a bit awkward. I never approached a girl or asked anyone out before. But I often feel like if I was the woman version of myself I would have at least experienced something in my life.

I talked to my therapist about this and he genuinely felt stuck on how to respond to it. He said something along the lines of that societal norms are what they are and tried to encourage myself to get myself out there.

I live in one of the most socially progressive cities in the world. I've had 2 nonbinary friends who were female and I've seen them get boyfriends who initiated and did everything first.

I don't want to participate in hookup culture or anything, I just want a girlfriend and know how it is to be loved for who you are. Maybe I'm pressuring myself to have to follow social rules and appear socially smooth perfectly. I'm already 25 and I already feel behind, I don't want to wait until I'm 30 to have the social ability to get a girlfriend.

To be fair I was neutral on this social construct and culture, but I have asked countless people to provide ANY polls or stats on this "science", but LITERALLY no one had done so.

So the conclusion I have come up with is it's misogynistic made up nonsense from Paul the Apostles letters/manuscripts & internet/red pill culture.

The reason that I have changed my position to anti-anti promiscuity is because whenever I ask questions for how it does matter, all men can do is spout the same parrot words without elaborating anything like: "Pair bonding", purity, chastity." But they're literally just words 🤨.

Which just means I moved on from the Red and Black Pill things. I just wish I got off them sooner. I used them as a cope mechanism that ruined my life.

I'm asking because my distrust of women came from the combination of red-pill rhetoric, misandrist rhetoric, and examples that seemed to reinforce each other.

For those of you who left the red-pill community, were you able to get past that distrust, or is it still there?

Just came back from a Contiki trip where I had a fling with one of the loveliest women I've ever met in my life. We got along extremely well and I would date her if we didn't live on the opposite sides of the world.

Having that relationship was really important for me to learn about women and dating dynamics. I even thanked her afterwards for being patient with me and helping me grow as a person, as I am someone who has never had a proper relationship before due to porn addiction and the red pill ideology that I got sucked into (that I've recently been to therapy to get out of).

Personal Context (background):

I've always been a fairly highly strung and anxious person. My mother had a lot of anxiety when I was growing up and passed it onto me unfortunately. When I was 14 years old, I got bullied badly because of the dumb shit that I did and insecurities that made me terrible at dealing with banter and standing up for myself. I carried this lack of self-esteem with me into Uni, and it caused issues when trying to find a partner. Due to this loneliness and lack of ability to get my needs met in a healthy manner, I turned to PUAs to try to understand how to "get laid". When this deliver the results I wanted, I turned to the red pill.

For the last year, I have been living in a rural community for work, trying to get skills that make me employable. I have done this successfully, however, while living here there hasn't been a lot to do and many of the women on dating apps out here have kids, which I really don't need at this point in my life, so I spend a lot of time online and gaming. The social isolation of a town that is very tight knit and hard to break into takes your mind to dark places, so I've been trying to avoid toxic online communities like the plague, given they did such a number on me mentally in University.

Since living in the country, I have developed a much more relaxed and positive outlook on life. Those that I surround myself with never talk politics, are not very politically correct and aren't very opportunistic/calculating/manipulative like a lot of people in the city.

Story begins here:

I have just come back from a Contiki trip. These are trips where a bus full of young people between 18 and 35 will spend up to three weeks touring a foreign country on drunken sex-filled escapades. The people who go on these trips tend to be highly extroverted people from the Anglosphere nations, however, can include people from anywhere.

I was a bit cautious about dealing with wankers and drama on the trip, so made a deliberate attempt to steer clear of it. I have always had social anxiety, however, ironically I've also always been a very social person based on my upbringing (my parents were very social, so it rubbed off on me). I went in with the mentality that it would be a boys trip, but given the ratio was 3 girls to 1 guy, I thought that there was a good chance something would happen. On the very first night I went to a baseball game and sat next to this girl who seemed really lovely, however I was so jetlagged that I didn't really talk to her much at all. Honestly I was so jetlagged that I didn't even feel nervous sitting next to her, I was too busy battling myself trying not to fall asleep, but I went to the game to keep me awake until an acceptable hour.

Over the next three days I went into "boys trip" mode - hanging out with my mates for most of the trip, having laughs, sinking piss and starting funny english football chants on the bus. I mingled with girls from time to time but I wasn't that concerned with getting laid. One was a country girl who lives near me. She was a lovely girl but I wasn't really into her like that. Hope we can be friends in the future. I saw that cute girl (that I sat next to at the baseball) again at a group dress up party and ended up going back to hers for a "cheeky snog". She didn't want to have sex so I respected her boundaries.

I saw the "cool kids" making out with women who were all very attractive, however this girl that I was with was also very attractive. None of them worked out, but we did. It made me wonder, how the how did I land such a catch?

I would reflect on my time with her and wonder what she saw in me despite being fairly overweight. However she told me that I was a very social person and she would be always laughing at my jokes (or at me - who cares, a laugh is a laugh!). She mentioned how she was amazed I could talk to anyone and how she was was insecure because of how reserved she was - to which I said that her quiet confidence in her self was what made me so attracted to her. She's not an "in your face" person, she isn't an insufferable loud mouth, she is just happy with who she is and doesn't feel the need to be loud. But she said she wanted to be more social.

She told me she also liked me because her Ex was always afraid to be adventurous, preferring not to dance and not to mingle with others but instead stand in the corner of the room, where on the other hand I would often dance to music like no one was watching and wanted to mingle with others, despite my social anxiety (which I would prefer to power through anyway).

She did admit to me that she got the "ick" at a few of the things that I did, however, she was so attracted to my positive traits that she was able to let them go. There were a few other things that annoyed her, however, we were able to communicate and clear the air and move on.

The part that amazed me the most was about 1/2 through the trip, when a bunch of new people joined the tour. One was a very physically attractive, 6ft3 man who worked in disability support. The girl I was seeing was sitting alone (at this point I cluelessly didn't know she wanted me to sit with her). This man decided to sit next to her which caused me great anxiety lol. The trip leader wanted the people who had been on the trip since the start to move seats and mingle with new people. The girl I was seeing was two rows ahead of me, and I didn't want to spent the entire 6 hour bus trip watching anxiously from behind them, so I decided to move to the front of the bus and meet new people. I sat next to this bloke from my hometown and we had a good chat. I wanted to include the other new people in the conversation as they were kind of just sitting there twiddling their thumbs as no one else moved. Then one of the new girls came up to me and started talking to me. I am on about 5 hours sleep at this point and she was just kind of talking at me for about 30 minutes. Bored, I looked back at the girl I was seeing and I can see her looking at me and laughing with the guy. Fair to say it was the most painful 6 hours of my life.

Funny thing was that the girl I was with had strong character, so it never made me THAT ANXIOUS. I knew that I got along with her better than any other girl in my life, that I made her laugh a lot and that I had a lot of great traits. She also didn't strike me as someone who wanted to sleep with a lot of different people on the trip (not that there's anything wrong with that, it would be like judging a sex worker in a brothel), but rather one who wants to build something deeper with one person. She would also text me during the trip, meaning she was clearly thinking about me.

Later that night, I hooked up with her. Afterwards I asked her how the new guy was. She said "heh, he's funny", to which I asked if he was her type. She said "oh god no, he's a total knobhead! Too tall for me anyway". I was blown way by this, because my whole life I thought that women loved taller. I then asked "but he's conventionally attractive is he not?" To which she replied "is he? I don't find him that physically attractive". She then asked me about the girl I was talking to on the bus, said "you two seemed to be having a good conversation, are you into her?" after which I replied "god no, she literally talked my ears off for 30 minutes straight while I was on 5 hours sleep, I've never been so bored in my life. Seems nice but not for me". She then said "you never turned back to look at me though?" to which I said "yeah, because it was causing me too much anxiety lol, I had to force myself not to look back". I cannot stress how much this whole interaction changed my perspective on women and what they are looking for in dating.

It made me realise how bullshit the red pill is: are there some women who are only looking to date the hottest, sexiest man they can find? Yes, however, out of a bus full of 45 people, there was probably only 3-4 who fit this category (i.e. maybe 10% at the max).

I've found that the vast majority of women want a guy that is one or more of the below:

a) very social

b) has a good personality and a positive outlook on life

c) is funny

d) isn't emotionally volatile and can take feedback in good faith

The amount of men below six foot, pudgy and not super attractive who were finding success with women because of their great personality was mind-blowing.

There were women on the trip who were talking about their standards and that they hadn't found a man who were worthwhile enough for her to take time out of her day for them. This statement did ick me out a bit, not because it's not valid, but the way it was said felt very arrogant (it feels like the female equivalent of Clavicular saying that most people aren't worth spending time with). However even this girl was just 1 person out of the 45.

This trip reminded me of one thing: the best cure for the red pill is to be social and connected within a community. Red pill captures those with low self esteem and poor social skills. If we are to help young men to get out of the red pill, we need to encourage them to socialise so that they are forced to reality test their ideas against reality - which is usually much more benign and forgiving than what internet conspiracies/ideologies will suggest.

How can I call out and help someone who is in the manosphere come out of this thinking?

Red pill guys often say that women only like one kind of guy, and looks are the biggest factor. I don't believe this, but I have my own "women only like one kind of guy" and it's not only guys who are tall, handsome, and rich (though those things certainly don't hurt). I feel like women only want guys who are super social and charismatic, who are extroverted and outgoing. I have my circle of friends and there are some women in there, but I feel like they are just not seeing me the way I want to be seen. Women might say they are okay with shy introverted guys who are like this, but what they really mean are guys who are attractive who have the same qualities. I know a guy has to do something and he can't stay at home and play video games and watch porn all day. I know that physical attraction does matter and looks are not nothing. It's just that everyone's idea of what is attractive is different. I know that I have improved a lot in the last few years talking to women and becoming friends with them. I've gotten dates off of dating apps.

Maybe I'm just imagining there is some reward I get when I reach a certain level, that when I improve enough I will unlock the relationship achievement. Red pill is steeped in this formulaic thinking. I am still wondering how much social value I need to demonstrate to get a woman to see me romantically. I do all right socially. I have a circle of close guy friends, and I am working on expanding my connections with men and women. I am a quiet thoughtful guy by nature, and I often don’t talk unless I really have something to say. I notice when I am not trying people tend to gravitate towards me, but by no means am I the life of the party. I am slowly learning to accept my quirks and love myself, but i honestly still have some RP thinking I need to root out. I am in therapy right now and I’ve seen some progress.