George Hahn

After watching the film, Jessica Gross wrote, These influencers aren't providing a template for a virtuous life.

They are shills for an attention economy grift.

Tragically, there's never been anyone so adept at grifting the manosphere than Donald Trump.

He claims to be concerned with the plight of young men, an admirable aim of the manosphere, but peddles a loud, crass, and ultimately bogus version of masculinity in service of his own enrichment, at the expense of his marks.

In my book Notes on Being a Man, I offer a vision of masculinity that emphasizes the roles men can play as providers, protectors, and procreators.

Some people have pushed back, arguing that my framing overlooks men who don't fit easily into those categories.

Fair.

Here's a simpler framework.

Men should add surplus value.

Give more than they take.

Leave rooms, relationships, and institutions better than they found them.

That's the whole shooting match.

Try to absorb more complaints than they levy.

De-escalate conflict and notice people's lives without needing to draw attention to their own.

Another takeaway from Thoreau's work, calm and intellect trump physicality and aggression.

The documentarian is slight, awkward, and owns the room.

His honest, unafraid queries are never mean-spirited, and when his subjects turn on him, he just takes it, see above, as he knows he's right.

I wish I'd learned earlier in life that being a man means occasionally absorbing a blow without responding to restore some fucked up sense of equilibrium to the universe.

Final Takeaway

Ideology isn't what's driving the manosphere.