I have a pet theory about "manosphere" guys or incels or Pick Up Artists, or Alpha Male Influencers or whatever iteration of this bullshit we’re on right now. This stuff isn’t new, it’s been part and parcel of the internet since we got off AOL.

That theory is this: The most successful ones give the worst advice.

It's easy to prey on young guys who aren't feeling "Manly." This is a problem that existed before the 1950s or 1870s or whatever mythic era your weird flamboyant misogynist claims to want to return to. A lot of young guys want help "getting women." That's another ancient phrase with a lot to unpack, as they say.

For most young people, finding dates and a partner is a tough, if fairly straightforward experience: Get your own place, get your shit together a tiny bit, have something appealing going on, don't be an entitled dick, eat some vegetables, go on a lot of bad dates, get shot down a lot.

If that was your YouTube channel, a young person would come in, take your advice, and move on with his life. There's no reason to keep coming back for more extreme versions of this, there’s no need FOR more extreme versions of this, this is not a formula that "drives engagement"

It would work, or it would not, and young people would not return. You might have a mildly successful side-gig as a “life coach.” You would be unremarkable to the internet, to the algorithm.

Consider then, if you were a Pick Up Artist telling young men to “neg” women. To demand respect as an “Alpha Male.” To shun any woman over 25, to accept only the narrowest standards of beauty.

You would instantly create an undatable, unfuckable man. He would need more advice. He would need more extreme versions of advice. The advice would be outrageous, terrible. Terrible people would share it among themselves as good advice. Normal People would share it to dunk on it.

Ninety nine out of 100 of their friends would consider it a noble dunk. One of them would think “wait, I wonder if this works.” He would search the Google, and find those terrible people from before, conspiring on some forgotten website, talking about this “forbidden genius.”

If this seems outrageous, consider the trend of terrible tiktok “chefs” who create monstrosities of scooped up velveeta and raw meat on a countertop. They don’t do it because it’s good. They do it because you watch it, you share it, you comment on it and make amazing reaction videos.

Success for the Alpha Male Influencer is not “getting his followers laid.” It’s “getting his followers to send him money.” Just like success for the countertop taco lady isn’t “good tacos,” it’s “millions of views.”

Sell a man a fish, you make a buck. Teach a man to fish well, he'll give you some fish. Teach a man to fish like a fucking flailing freak who baits the hook with wire egg beaters and throws his line into the trees, and he’ll need to buy fishing gear every day of his life.

I do not for one moment think that the brickwits of the manosphere are being outrageous and sexist for the purpose of creating dependent pay pigs. They are not that smart. But evolution is at play, those who make money and have the most demented followers, those are the ones we see, the ones who make the news and get invited to C-PAC.

Evolution is misunderstood by many, most people seem to believe in a sort of Lamarckian Inheritance: That a group will need a feature, and then that feature will then arise in the future. This is partially due to the way in which our education system fails to teach evolution very well, but also because our cleanest examples of hereditary change are all artificial selection. The Farmer wants a bigger cauliflower, he culls the small and breeds the large.

Natural selection - be it of antlers or podcasters - is different. To view evolution you must turn back the arrow of time, with bones and fossils and genetic clocks, and know that an almost infinite combination of varieties are not here, they are gone, they had no change in their children in mind, and if they had, they had no way to effect it, and if they had, they did not know what the future would bring.

We know that the near future brings the year 2023, a nice future-sounding number, one with the portentous number “23” - 23 Skidoo, kids. Enjoy a something I promised this week: A little audio reading. I go all out on the accent and throw a lot of extra sauce on the pronunciations.

This one's special for the newsletter crew. Share it if you want, though. Let people know what they're missing out on.