by Donnie Darko

This post was written on July 28, 2020.

Regretful Roosh

Society’s anger began the decade pointed at the financial sector, but quickly manifested itself (and escalated) into a more damaging form by the decade’s end. Before 2010 it appeared you could live as you please, even if you wanted to write a blog or post images of your life on Facebook. That all changed in our decade and regular people became the target of mob anger. Nobody’s experience mirrors these changes and the cultural themes emerging better than an obscure blogger out of the US, known as RooshV.

Probably best remembered today as one of the most hated people on the internet (at least for those who know of him), it didn’t start out that way for Roosh. Throughout the 00’s he happily blogged away about his single lifestyle. It was extremely trendy back then for “lifestyle” blogs. His was not uncommon. It was also an era of the pick-up artist or PUA. Roosh even garners mention in wikipedia’s history of the PUA, which is remarkable considering his humble beginnings as a young man out of DC blogging about this weekend adventures with his “wingmen”.

“Pick-up” art was a lifestyle that was launched into the male stratosphere by the book The Game, first published in 2005. I, personally, don’t know a man that didn’t read that book. What was once a dark and underground art, had become insanely mainstream. I would cringe as I overheard guys throw out lines from the book at my (then) girlfriend (I can’t remember, I think it was the palm reading tactic). It soon became common, more common than you might think, for men to sign up and pay thousands for “game bootcamps”. If you were to walk around any major city, particularly in Europe, around 2012 you would have spotted these camps in action. Seemingly normal men receiving instructions from another guy, with the appearance that crosses Marilyn Manson with ‘N Sync, on how to approach strange women in the street, and then the latter would observe the former nervously execute his learnings. I witnessed it myself several times in Budapest and dozens of times in Central London.

Roosh managed to capture a more thoughtful and less douchebag niche within this growing market, and at the right time. He wrote books about the subject and appeared to attempt a Charles Bukowski-style that emphasised sexual themes. He quit his job, ended his anonymity with a new blog, traveled the world and eventually settled in Europe. The remainder of the decade would be cruel to him. The culture of today’s society was sown in quiet corners of the internet. It was there a conflict started between the offended and the offensive. Smaller media outlets started to get increasing word of Roosh in 2015 as his following and social media profile increased. Media outlets started to comb through Roosh’s blog posts and books. They then blasted their opinions about his work through the microphone of Twitter. Roosh had intended to write to a niche audience of men, almost speaking to them as guys would chat in private – among friends. The internet quickly became a place where you can no longer do that. Roosh would be the example.

In a world where everything you put on the internet leaves a footprint forever and Roosh being an unknown entity writing words people do not like, it was only a matter of time before he would be opposed. What was surprising was how quickly this small and targeted opposition could accelerate its influence to ensure its objectives. The blogger became a test case for cancel culture in the mid-2010’s. By early 2016 Roosh found himself being protested everywhere he went, banned by local governments, written about in any english-speaking country (and not positively) and have his home address doxxed. Governments were spending time and words to attack this guy that started out as writing a blog for a small community of powerless individuals. Remarkable.

Time moves fast and what was seen only a few years earlier as an innocent and fun way for guys to meet girls, quickly became a creepy and sleazy lifestyle that is frowned upon by society. He had blogged away for years earning income from advertising without any visible boycott. Suddenly everyone turned on him, from advertisers to blog comment hosting platforms. The verdict of Roosh was quick and decisive. Whether you agree or not with his writings and beliefs, there is no doubt that his detractors were trying to “cancel” his means of earning a living. They succeeded.

After 2016 the PUA world entered a quick decline and if it does still exist, it is in a much quieter and darker part of the internet. Its product is not as reachable on the internet today. Roosh’s main PUA blog community shut down in 2018 and now the man himself has undergone another transformation. He found god.

Roosh, almost unbelievably, now appears to regret his lifestyle of a decade prior. His beliefs may not have changed much, other than following religion rather than a seduction rulebook, but his lifestyle has. He no longer advocates the art of attracting women for short term pleasures. Instead he advocates a traditional lifestyle, a chaste existence.

Yet Roosh’s experiences highlight something in the macro. The financial crisis made people angry. This anger was already moving away from the big banks and towards each other on University campuses by 2015. It would have been absurd for any of my friends to spend their time trying to stop someone writing a blog that isn’t that widely read, but the younger generation are different. If it was too difficult to protest bankers into prison, perhaps it is worth testing methods on their own peers. Social media was their new tool. It contributed towards the cancellation of an entire lifestyle for Roosh. His response has been to swing to another extreme, something that today is thought almost extinct – religion. Roosh was early to adopt the blogging and marketing of a PUA full time lifestyle as a response to modern western society, does Roosh’s transformation foreshadow anything for the future?

If men were so eagerly willing to follow pick-up culture to deal with insecurities, will they now turn to religion as they experience today’s “cancel culture”? Are we entering an age where society will move from one extreme to another? We might laugh at that thought right now. Yet in 2000 many would have laughed at the idea of men paying thousands to listen to a guy tell them how to attract women in the street. Just over a decade later nobody was laughing about it. It became the front line of the culture war.

As I see it, the last decade was a social and cultural earthquake. Out from the explosion of high finance anger was stirred. Initially it may have manifest itself in opposition to the powerful, but this quickly changed. Anger was no longer aimed at hedge funders or politicians, but at what a person believed or how they lived. Not just rich bankers or celebrities, but everyday people. This form of protest was building slowly and quietly, and although appearing very real to the likes of Roosh, its methods and consequences has only recently become visible to the main public. Divisive politics being fought in the open now takes things to a new level. The culture war is about power. It appears there are angry forces that have been emboldened. Social themes and protests build quietly in small segments of the population, but they are indeed ignited by the world of finance. COVID-19 may not be a “financial crisis” like the situation in 2008, but it is a crisis with financial consequences. How much more frustration and suffering can people take? Where will this all lead?