The other night, Matt linked me to Return of Kings, and informed me that it was quickly gaining traction in the world of angering feminists around the internet. If you shy away from the word feminist for some reason, it may also anger you if you respect other humans in general.
When Matt first linked me, I saw some post about why women look better with long hair and thought, “Who the fuck cares? I too think women look better with long hair, but I understand that this is not always the case nor does it mean that others have to agree with me.” But then I continued reading. The focus of this post, “A Simple Tweak to Help You Crush Women and Life”, is only the tip of the atrocious, misogynistic iceberg, but just look at that title. How could I not write about it?
You can have a look at “Why Famous Men Become Outspoken Feminists,” to see what I mean when I’m telling you it only gets worse. Hint: the answer is not because these famous men think women should be treated equally.
The heart of the article. You know, if the heart was made of nasty pond scum:
This article aligns fairly well with Bad Romance Advice, Good Times, but it goes beyond that into life!advice territory as well. The main thrust of “Crushing Women and Life” is that you should always push harder for what you want, demand more in order to gain the most that you possibly can from any situation. That sounds like decent advice on paper, but let’s look more closely at how Jefe tries to sell us on his plans to crush women and life.
Before we proceed, though, I’m just going to affirm your suspicions. Yes, the author’s name is simply “Jefe,” which raises the question, does this asshole fucking think he’s Cher or Madonna? Does he even think he’s Drake? Come on, asshole. Okay, moving on.
Multiple Choice Questions:
Jefe is a big fan of audience participation, which I can respect given how often I like to put polls in my posts.
Given this is Bad Romance Advice, Good Times, let’s start with the most, er, romantic section of this post, which also happens to be the first. Depressingly, this section is entitled “Gaming.” Mull that over as you read his advice.
You’re at the bar, talking to a hot girl. It’s going well. You can either:
a. Keep talking.
b. Ask her for her number.
c. Start touching her.
You fucking put the answer in bold, Jefe. You didn’t even let me properly think about the situation before spoiling the results!
Also, that answer sounds pretty aggressive and actually creepy in this situation, buddy. You’re going to add a clarification like, “Touch her arm,” to make this okay, right?
Here the most aggressive move is touching, and is also clearly the best.
Guess not. Instead we’re moving onto the next multiple choice question. Maybe this time he’ll actually let me guess?
Now you’re talking and touching. You can either:
a. Keep talking and touching.
b. Ask for her number.
c. Kiss her.
Not only is it in bold again, it’s the same letter as before! What kind of a multiple choice question is this? Why even present the choices like this. Lazy, is what it is. I mean, he could have at least put in a joke answer like, “Ask her to explain the plot of The Notebook to you.”
The final question of “Gaming,” follows the same tired form as the other two, leaving no room for the reader to do any guesswork.
Again, option c is the most forward. After you kiss, you can either:
a. Keep kissing.
b. Ask for her number.
c. Try to get her to leave with you.
When you think about it, it’s apparently foolproof. At this point you’re definitely going to get her number, so why not push for more! There is absolutely no way she could resist your aggressive touching.
At this point you’ll definitely get her number, but chances of her flaking when you text her later are high. Yes, chances of her going home with you are lower then getting her number. But even if she rejects the advance, she’ll still give the number– you don’t lose anything.
It’s basic math, you guys. There are no other possible variables do this whatsoever!
Always pushing for more will get you more. I know it’s obvious in gaming situations and when it’s spelled out like this, but men tend to be pussies anyway. I’ve never regretted getting rejected for pushing the envelope. However, I’ve definitely regretted not pushing the envelope and just getting a girl’s number when far more was possible.
It’s not all as blatantly sexist as “Gaming”:
The next two sections also follow the same faux multiple choice format, but they’re focused on things like salary negotiation and selling his services as a personal trainer. I think he just wanted to brag about the fact that he’s a personal trainer, so he pretended he wanted to teach us how to sell things. It’s possible he also wanted to make sure we understood that “gaming” women is on the exact same level as salary negotiation and selling gym memberships. Any real man knows that.
The salary negotiation provides some decent advice under the layers of overly “masculine”, hard-ass comments.
When you ask for option c [which is asking for 15,000 more than was initially offered] you give yourself the best chance to make more money. The only thing you risk is coming off as slightly arrogant, but more likely a good negotiator– something to respect. They aren’t going to retract the offer. But they are going to give you close to the max they’re willing to, at least.
Seriously, the second two sections are basically fine. His bravado is annoying, and I hate that he’s like, ” THIS IS WHAT MAKES YOU A REAL MAN! NACHOS! FOOTBALL! NEGOTIATION!!” But his ideas aren’t inherently bad or even new. They’re the same advice a lot of people would give you about these things, just presented in a gross package that I’m depressed I opened because inside it was just fucking Cheerios, and I’d thought if I went through all the trouble of getting through that nasty packaging, at least inside would be something interesting. At least give me chocolate Cheerios, you know?
What I learned:
I cracked the code halfway through writing this article. Jefe thinks if he gives us this aggressive, hard sell on his ideas, we may come away agreeing with at least some of it. Well, shit. It kind of worked. I did learn a thing or two about negotiation. Guess that makes me a pretty masculine man, huh?
Join me next time when I discuss Jefe’s book, especially the multiple 5 star reviews it’s received. According to “Return of Kings” it’s apparently a best seller? The fuck? We need to take a break from attacking people who tell women how to be “real women” and defang these guys who try to teach other dudes how to be “real men.” They are just as damaging to humanity.
I made the mistake of clicking the link to the website and reading 2 or 3 articles. I am a dragon sized ball of fury.
I had the exact same experience. Why do people actually LIKE this shit?
The problem I have with “game” is very specific. It’s not that it’s disrespectful, or even that it doesn’t work (although even the leaders admit that it’s about as effective as a placebo: http://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/game-cures-cancer/).
The problem with game that I have specifically is that it’s immoral. Okay, touching a woman to build attraction is an old tool that dates well before game was codified. They just state it in a weird, vaguely creepy way. The problem is that game involves presenting a false image of yourself to somebody in the hope that you can get something out of them – in this blog’s case sex, but I’ve seen game blogs devoted to long-term relationships as well.
And RoK takes it to its absolute moral extreme. They actively encourage lying throughout the site if it’ll help you get what you want. They all but actively call men to seek vengeance on women for the perceived wrongs against them (I’ve actually seen game blogs call for this EXPLICITLY – it’s called black knighting, if you want another useless bit of trivia to bring out at boring parties). They look at women through this weird lens where a woman is apparently “solipsistic” in nature, ignoring the fact that we have no reason to believe it’s a specifically female issue.
I appreciate the rather nerdy concept of trying to game the system to gain the upper hand regarding relationships, but ultimately I see it almost always manifests itself as instructions for how to start and maintain a deception, and I think it’s more ideology driven than fact driven.
HEY GUYS: Did you enjoy my guest post? Are you amused by my comments? Are you really, really bored and on the internet? Click on the link in my name to find “Bellomy Overthinks Everything”! My new blog! So I hopefully will finally start to remember NOT TO CONNECT to my other blog now!
I do what I call “philosophical reviews” of things, which means there’s a lot of me trying to sound clever. It’s more amusing than it sounds. It updates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Read it when you’re done with BBGT and join the fun, in a loose sense of the term!
Whoops, the URL is wrong. My blog is bellomyoverthinkseverything.wordpress.com.
But…I wanna click the link for the other one…
I’m with you, Bellomy. There’s something really icky to me about that kind of manipulation. It goes well beyond putting your best self forward and not being completely 100% “real” until someone gets to know you better, and it goes beyond following tips like touching her arm as a way of flirting. The way they treat “gaming” women is gross and dehumanizing.
I somehow ended up on that website a few months ago, and found myself reading a list of articles with titles like, “Why you should date an anorexic girl” and “how to know if a girl is a slut.”
After I finally forced myself off of the internet, I had the strongest need to stab someone with my nail file. Before you argue that teenage girl nail files are not at all sharp, this is my nail file: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-WQ5wXsXwDxM/UiV5hNLvTXI/AAAAAAAAA68/OdkbLOqHl_k/s640/blogger-image-2115893052.jpg
I didn’t even get that far into this cesspool, but I’m sure I’m going to keep coming back for more articles to rant about.
Your nail-file looks like a terrifying shank that would have been featured on Orange is the New Black. Or even Oz.
He was inspired by an even bigger douche’s book http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1438214235?ie=UTF8&force-full-site=1&ref_=aw_bottom_links check out kindle book bang’s sample
I feel like I may have to do a reading of this book for the blog. My god!
Read some of his blog and now I need to poke my eyes our!
That site isn’t just insulting to feminists, it’s insulting to all human beings. How can anyone read something like that and not see it for the demeaning bullshit it is?
Wow…I should have listened when people said they were balls of rage after looking at this site because OMFG I seriously want to cut someone now. I just..GRRRRRR. I can’t even handle this.
DO NOT READ “Women are Lying When They Say They Want ‘Equality'” unless you want your head to explode in anger. ESPECIALLY the comments after it.
I’m going to have to just start a new feature called “Bad Return of Kings, Good Times”
I’ve read a few of his articles when it blew up on Facebook. I was hoping it was a fake website, but I haven’t been shown that it is. I’m sure I know a few people who would agree with it too. *shivers*
I missed the blowing up on facebook, which is probably a good thing in hindsight. I got to spare myself more rage blackouts.
The thing is while some of the articles are blatantly horrible crap, some of the articles have these grains of truth in them that are just shrouded in creepy, awfulness. Even the one about why celebrity men are really feminists has some truth to it. They completely miss the mark on what a feminist is, but they’re right about why famous men can’t be honest about what they find attractive in a woman – for some reason a lot of women (mostly teenage girls) take it REALLY to heart. I’m pretty sure I did a bit at that age when I was super insecure. I want to talk about that in more detail in the future, but yeah. I could see why someone might be like, “Oh, that was an okay point he made.” But I don’t understand people who would actually really get behind these articles.
I just read the article titles and couldn’t force myself to go any farther. The really bad thing is I know people who think like this and would be all, “Yeah masculinity!”
I feel a link between “gaming” and “bagging”. You hunt for game and then bag your prey.
I recently came across Return of Kings when they were saying not to listen to a girl saying no. If you are a man and not a pussy apparently you will always get the yes because somehow you think the word no is the word yes. Also women are sluts if they sleep with people but men are not… I think this is promoting gay loving? Which is great but I imagine is not their aim…
Oh yeah, and they claim there are masses of false rape claims. This is definitely not true and there are consequences for a woman if she lies – she can go to jail. The only reason to hold back from raping people is apparently they might falsely claim they were raped from ‘their hurt feelings’. These people may actually be worse than the fictional characters would be at real life 😐
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