Edit 28th September - I realize that this piece didn't actually address what that "something deeper" really was, so I made an additional piece discussing the social atomization at the root of the gender radicalization of our times.
Blaming the redpill, and men's rights movements in general, for all that is wrong with young men these days doesn't explain why those people turn to such movements in the first place, and why those beliefs have such a stronghold in the current culture.
Leftists seem to have this view that people are essentially blank slates, perfectly malleable to their environments, and that if we got the right kind of belief inculcated in them, they would do no harm. As Lebezyatnikov says in Crime and Punishment 1: "Everything depends on what circumstances and what environment man lives in. Environment is everything, and man himself is nothing." They say that social problems come from certain "narratives" that spread "propaganda", which need to be fixed through "education"—another form of propaganda, but this one is good we swear. They don't leave any room for people's innate sense of morality, their innermost desires, their discernment, and the realization of their potential as individuals, no, it's always about the environment and how it shapes people.
Which, to be fair, is a major influence. There is no such thing as a fully liberated, sovereign, self-defining individual either. We are indeed reflections of our environment, far more than we would like to think, as can be seen by all the memes that young people nowadays mindlessly repeat, all the polarized political content that older people get outraged by and debate on social medias, and funnily enough, all the groupthink that we can find in the right-wing.
I have a problem with the leftist's view of people as blank slates because in the case of masculinity, it is abundantly clear that they do not recognize just how much men have a desire to strive for something personally important to them, and thus cannot see the (distorted) value that the redpill might provide to the lot of confused young men who have to navigate the insane culture war they were born into.
Real men, those who live from a core of integrity, sovereignty and morality, are not fine with going along with whatever social order comes along and promises them an easy life. Some leftists seem to have this implicit belief that the development of virtues is secondary to the task of creating a better social order, that if society were just right, which it never is of course, then many virtues would either be rendered obsolete, such as charity and empathy, since material needs would be rationally managed and distributed, or come naturally to us. The idea that virtues have to be developed individually, that people are born with a soul but need to grow it through their conscious life, that hardly finds its place in their worldview.
And yet this is how men are, and this is what the manosphere ultimately appeals to, though in a very distorted form of course. As Darren Allen writes, "Man is born incomplete, with an insensitive split, and must learn to become whole, in time."
Men want to excel at something, they have an innate desire to master themselves and their environment, which is where the hero's journey comes from. Where the manosphere goes wrong is that such a process of self-mastery must ultimately need to be part of a greater whole: a real, living culture for instance—unlike the aped cosplays of the past that the "trad" right create—or a loving community—some families are incredibly toxic environments and should be left as quickly as possible, family is not an absolute.
Without this process of self-mastery, men become slobs, purposeless, and ultimately, unlovable. Women can say and believe whatever they want, try to convince themselves and one another that it is fine for the woman to be driven and for the man to be more relaxed, that men cannot be reduced to what they can provide to other people, but they can never love a man who doesn't have any drive in him, because such a man is going to be indecisive and cowardly.
Women hate indecisiveness, whether they are aware of it or not, though any man who pays attention to their woman knows it, and no woman can respect a weak man, much less love him. They might have pity for such weak men, which manifests itself as mere sympathy, neither of which are love, because for a woman to love a man, she needs to feel safe around him so that she can remain present, and cowardly men do not inspire such feelings.
One thing to understand about women is that they are very reluctant to say any of the things I just mentioned, though they are obvious to any discerning man with a bit of experience in relationships. This is because women tend to be very agreeable 2 and do not like expressing any explicit rejection, so they will never dare to say to a man that he is a coward, or that his indecisiveness is driving her crazy, even though both of those things might be undeniable.
Because leftism tends to appeal to women, it thus becomes unable to express the unlikeable truth which might be necessary to the development of man, which is another reason why the right-wing, and various "manosphere" related movements appeal to men. No one likes being told that they are weak and cowardly, but it's better to hear that, and to be given some path forward, however misguided it might be, than to be told that you are fine as you are, for your lack of virtues to be appealed to, like a suffocating mother who doesn't allow her son to grow up.
The shadow of the left-wing is that it hasn't given anything to men that is worth fighting for. Institutions are so domesticating, and I would add humiliating, that self-respecting men want nothing to do with them. This is very likely why young men tend to do worse nowadays in school than their female counterparts, though no doubt that the rise of addictive behaviors such as video games, porn and gambling, have also greatly contributed to that.
Likewise, academia, the office and many other aspects of modern society increasingly find themselves filled with women, not really because women are becoming more competent at those things, but because women are better at staying in line and following orders, as obedience matters far more in the technological system than competence and intelligence, if those two qualities do not come equipped with it.
As mentioned in my piece on neutering environments, the modern world feels, to the men who crave for freedom and purpose, like a zoo, a cage that provides one with much comfort, but is utterly alienating and stifling to one's potential.
Men cannot be shamed nor oversocialized away from their hero's journey, otherwise they will reject whatever force attempts to do so, sensing that their energy is being restricted by it, which is why the left-wing has been losing so many men over the years. Of course the (modern) right-wing is hardly a better choice, especially the redpill and manosphere versions of it, but as is often the case, when there is a deep need that is unacknowledged, the grifters are the first ones to show up and provide an illusion of a solution. 3
The path forward is to acknowledge the shadow that the left, and especially woke, have produced, which is to say the domestication of men and the denial of their journey towards self-mastery (and even the importance of being a man at all, in the case of woke), and to promote healthy role models that can inspire young men towards virtues. The left is so obsessed with mere ideas and social orders that it hardly has any inspiring role models, whereas the right only has cruel, hollow men who get off their own power and likewise have little of value to say. This outrageous state in our culture is why the redpill ultimately exists, because there is a deep need for men to strive for something better, but they have no clear avenue to pursue it, and no clear model to draw inspiration from.
Denying such a need, and labeling the manosphere movement as "evil" or whatnot hardly solves anything, it will simply lead to pointless debates, or more likely, people retreating into their own echo chamber, making people by and large unable to understand one another. This is the increasing gap that we notice with the infiltration of the internet into general discourse: more polarization, and a growing inability for genuinely different people (men and women especially) to understand one another.
Instead of talking with one another, people judge, label and shame, and increasingly, it feels to me that one is not talking to someone at all, but rather witnessing someone talk to themselves based on some hallucination that was prompted on what you said. It's not just AI psychosis which is a problem, but human psychosis fueled by an inability to experience the other from within, and see the world from their point of view. I can hardly see any of this get better in the current state of affairs, but personally I am so tired of online interactions that I stay away from them and the madness that they tend to engender, and I suspect that this is a growing sentiment amongst people, including younger people.
1 From part 5, chapter 1. To be fair, we have here more of a caricature of the ideas that Dostoevsky writes against, rather than a nuanced view of people and society, but still, most leftists hold some version of that belief in their mind, whether they are aware of it or not, and a surprising amount of people these days believe in what would be considered in the past to be caricatural or absurd. Social media has been terrible when it comes to nuance.
2 Which is a good trait to balance out men, who can be oh so disagreeable for no good reason. If we only had the disagreeableness of men, and their oftentimes immature desire to have their own way, nothing would work out in social contexts.
3 Incidentally this is why "spirituality" is so pack full of grifters, fake gurus and cult leaders. They can sense the desperation and alienation in the broader culture, but they then use it to their own advantage, whether they are aware of it or not.
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Gender Masculinity Redpill Socialmedia Leftism
2026-09-17