Tag Archives: Matt Forney

The Recent Dustup

By now you’ve probably heard about the fight between SSM and her supporters and Lena and LGR and their supporters. If you haven’t my two most recent Lightning Rounds have the just of it. Other than posting the links, I’ve stayed out of it, and I still plan to. This is a catfight, why would any man involve himself in unrelated women’s conflicts?

I won’t take a side, but I will point a few things out:

1) To those Christians fighting this, what kind of witness are you being?

There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. (Proverbs 6:16-19 ESV)

Christians should be unified and avoid division. Rivalries, dissensions, and divisions are the fruits of the flesh. If you have grievances, keep it in the church and follow the biblically-established procedure for settling intra-church conflict. Our dirty laundry shouldn’t be aired for every non-Christian to see and mock.

How is any non-Christian in the manosphere/DE reading of this supposed to take Christians seriously if we engage in petty bickering over, what exactly?

I still have no idea what the actual issue at hand is.

2) This, as with most internet drama, is generally pointless and fruitless.

Has anybody taking sides in this mess actually met any of these people?

I’ve been reading SSM since her first blog, we’ve e-mailed once or twice concerning stuff on my blog; she seems nice, and in what she writes I’d say she’s right enough about 90% of the time. I’ve been reading LGR since her Salt blog and she also seems mostly on point. I don’t know much of Lena, but I did read 7Man’s blog before it went out a couple years back and I think she had something to do with that. I’ve been reading Matt since his IMF days; often disagree, but he’s entertaining and has a unique take on things.

But I’ve never met any of them. They could all be liars; they could all be saints. I don’t know and you don’t know. Matt’s sum total of evidence is anonymous commentary from anti-Christian, feminist nutjobs and a random obituary. The only particularly damning piece of evidence is SSM’s comment threatening to contact CPS, which SSM says was not written by her.

So, essentially, the entire debacle boils down to the words of anonymous commenters I’ve never met versus the words of a semi-anonymous commenter I’ve never met.

I’m sure further debate of this would be fruitful.

3) This demonstrates why women must be quarantined out of the manosphere. There can be no manosphere women, only women adjacent to the manosphere. If you let women be apart of a male space drama happens.

4) I am staying out of the SSM/Lena/LGR fight, but I will ask of Matt Forney, what the hell?

Other than the CPS threat, your entire article is based on the unsourced claims of feminist crazies. I know you’re a self-described troll, but really? What’s the point? Why get involved in women’s bickering? Especially when the evidence is so pathetic?

This seems to be a low-point for your blog.

So, y’all should stop your bickering.

Not Dead Yet

Both D&P and Matt are distancing themselves from the manosphere. I’m not going to bother with Matt’s criticisms, which focus on two particular bloggers, other than to say, why would a man get in the middle of a cat fight? But I would like to comment on two of the reasons Mike cites, not out of disagreement, but because it provides a springboard for my thoughts.

Secondly, there are too many frauds in the manosphere to count.

There are probably frauds in the manosphere, as in any other internet community. For reasons I don’t understand, some people like to lie to strangers on the internet.

But I think another problem is people thinking bloggers have some kind of great insight on what they write about, when they probably aren’t. “Authorities” on subjects usually have better distribution channels than small blogs in marginal internet communities.

Since the beginning, I’ve tried to be as honest as possible about myself (of course, everyone’s self-image departs from reality to some degree, although, I try to be as objective as possible regarding myself), but even so, I do still try to paint myself in the best light the truth will allow. This blog started as a self-improvement blog because I was an unhappy loser; I still struggle with self-improvement, but it has since moved on to other topics, because if it didn’t this blog would simply become a log of my progress on squats.

My blog is mostly me figuring things out for myself or sharing ideas I’ve thought of.

I’m use it’s the same for many in the manosphere, or elsewhere.

In some cases, the perception of fraud could just be some people attributing more authority to a person than they’d claim for themselves.

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Third, there are too many articles complaining about feminism.

This complaint and the related complaint of “everybody keeps rehashing the same things” are frequent around the manosphere.

We’ll deal with the latter first: the manosphere is primarily about self-improvement, but there is only so much you can say about self-improvement. How many different ways can you repeat buy Starting Strength and start lifting, eat better, and don’t be a pussy. At some point there’s simply nothing more to say that hasn’t already been said.

The manosphere’s well past the point of diminishing returns. Everything that needs to be said, has probably been said by someone else already. Each individual blogger is going to reach the point where they’ve shared all the knowledge of self-improvement they have.I most of my practical advice into a series of a dozen posts. Now, I’m sure I’ll probably be able to add small things in the future, but I’ve mostly blown my wad in that area.

After that point, it’s mostly repetition, but that doesn’t matter. The hard part of self-improvement has never been knowing what to do, everybody knows what to do: eat better, exercise, read more and better material, get some hobbies, and nut up and talk to that girl. Every blue-pill beta, every omega, knows they should do that. The problem isn’t knowing what to do, it’s doing it.

The repetition is necessary, because it motivates. I read the manosphere for a year and half before I started to life. I heard the message to lift uncountable times; but it wasn’t until the uncountable+1 times I read it that I actually got down to it and lifted.

All this repetition is needed more for encouragement and drive than for the actual knowledge itself.

In addition, new people are always cycling in and out of the manosphere. New people need to hear the basics just as much as those who’ve been here; what’s a repetition for some, may be new information for others.

As for the attacks on feminism, the answer is the same: you might have seen dozens of arguments concerning feminism, solipsism, the feminine imperative, hypergamy, and so on, but for most people, soft feminism is in everything they do and see; they have not been exposed to alternatives to it. People new to the manosphere need to discover these things as well.

Not to mention, that if we want to accomplish something for society rather than just getting our own, a sustained attack on false ideologies is necessary. We need to keep building our ideas, not just ourselves.

As well, sometimes you just need to vent and there’s nothing wrong with that.