Americans are fat.

Americans are fat because they eat too many grains and not enough fats. They eat too often and they don’t exercise enough. Their meat is contaminated and their processed foods are pumped full of high-fructose corn syrup. They are fat for a dozen different science-y reasons that boil down to a complete failure of the American intellectual establishment to teach Americans how to nourish and maintain their bodies.

But even though I’m a paleo-eating, intermittent-fasting, primal-workout loving alternative health junkie, I also have to admit that the American Obesity Epidemic is only partially caused by these factors.

• Americans eat too much bread? East Asians eat huge amounts of rice.
• Americans snack too much? Try and catch an Italian without a gelato cone or pastry in his hand.
• Americans eat low-quality produce and meat? Clearly you’ve never been to India.

I’ll say it again: This is not an excuse to ignore solid health advice. You should still be following the Scientific Paleo Fuck-You Diet.

But if we’re to explain the self-inflicted health crises afflicting Americans today, we have to acknowledge that many groups of people, with many different cultures and lifestyles, also have ‘bad’ diets, and they remain much slimmer and healthier than Americans. They could be healthier still. But the modern phenomenon of thousand-pound families trudging into TGI Friday and washing down livestock-sized meals with gallons of Coca-Cola is completely unique to post-modern America.

*

The problem isn’t food.

The American people are burying their confusion, discontent and spiritual malaise in food. They are cramming all of the ennui created by the end of the American Age into a little ball in the pit of their stomach, and they are smothering it with Hungry Mans, Doritos and Big Bacon Classics.

Why are Americans fat and sick? My answer is the same as that of Mark Sisson, Kurt Harris, Richard Nikoley, and Martin Berkhan.

But why are Americans SO fat and sick?

It’s the same reason they waste an average of four hours a day watching mindless television.

It’s the same reason millions of young men are dropping out of reality to play World of Warcraft and other life-replacing video games.

It’s the same reason they’re pushing themselves deeper and deeper into debt so they can buy shiny new electronics, McMansions, late model cars, designer clothes, foreign wars, poorly-conceived social welfare programs, and whichever other theatrics they can use to temporarily distract themselves from the collapse of their empire.

*

So what can we do about this? The health problem, at least. That one is simple: follow the Scientific Paleo Fuck You Diet. If you have the guts to consciously choose what you put in your body, you’re a step ahead of your neighbours. The mere fact that you’re reading this blog post is evidence that you’re past the point of sleepwalking through life.

As for the greater problems facing the United States of America in her autumn period — well, that’s a tricky one. But taking a bit of pride in our collective health and physiques seems like a good first step.

Cross-posted at Jonathan Frost.

The days of dishonest marketing are numbered.

What is dishonest marketing? Here’s an example:

• The Confident Man Project

Now, would I describe this website as shady? Maybe I wouldn’t go that far. I’d say there’s a chance the author really believes in what he’s doing, and that he’s really selling a good product. Hell, it might actually be a good e-book, well worth the fifty bucks he’s charging for it.

But the way he’s marketing himself suggests to me that it’s garbage. It suggests to me that his business model is based on finding stupid, weak people and separating them from their money. I don’t actually have a problem with this. I’m all in favour of transferring money and power from the stupid and weak to the powerful and the strong. The Confident Man or whoever he is, had the mojo to write a book, build a website, and hire some people to do the SEO and probably even write his articles. Respect.

I have no idea how well he’s doing, but given that he is ranking for a number of decent search terms, and his website strikes me as one that would do a good job of converting clueless men, I’d wager he’s built himself a nice little passive income vehicle. Respect.

Gratuitous picture of a hot girl:

So why is his business model dying? Let’s assume for the sake of this post that his fifty-dollar book is a turd. The Confident Man is a dying breed because he relies on unsophisticated internet users. He relies on people whose best idea for finding information on confidence is a Google search. In a word, idiots.

A non-idiot on the other hand, has more powerful tools at his disposal. One of the primary goals of this website is to serve as a hub through which readers can find information on a variety of important topics. The blogroll to your left, for example, is composed of a motley crew of non-idiots whose writing I read regularly. Ferdinand Bardamu publishes a weekly roundup of blog posts by non-idiots every Sunday. Delusion Damage operates a real-time RSS feed of non-idiots. In the course of a typical week, this group will write multiple blog posts that link to other posts and articles written by non-idiots.

The Online Companion to the The Freedom Twenty-Five Lifestyle Guide is also a wealth of good sources. It used to come bundled with the book itself, but my new publisher isn’t down with affiliate links. The result, for readers too cheap and/or destitute to shell out four bucks, is a bank error in your favour.

Taking a step back, what we have is a wide and growing web of non-idiocy, in which you can freely give away the benefit of your doubt, safe in the knowledge that in my opinion (which you presumably respect, hence your reading of this post) these people are trustworthy. More so, at least than whichever asshat spent the most on some Filipino Squidoo-article factory, and so ranks highly on search engines.

Forums are good for this too. The Roosh V Forum is full of legit guys and old posts. Reddit is also useful, if you use it for targeted searches and not funny cat pictures.

The Internet is a big place, and you shouldn’t spend much time on it without a tour guide. Smart people have tools, systems and resources that they depend on to keep stupidity at bay while they browse.

Compared to them, what can we say about the man who feels un-confident, Googles “how to become a confident man” or something similar, and then drops half a C-note on an ebook? Would you trust him to water a plant? No, you would not. He is beset by some combination of weakness, stupidity, gullibility and impulsiveness. This is why most products marketed and sold in a similar manner target the weak, stupid, and/or gullible.

As I’ve said, more power to the Confident Man. Someone’s going to come along and separate the fools from their fifty-dollar bills. Might as well be you. Disposable income has no business jangling around in the pockets of the unworthy. Whenever a dollar is transferred from a fool to one of his betters, the Universe smiles.

But I think his business model is dying. The stupid don’t know much, but they usually know enough to recognize superior intelligence and defer to it. As the Internet evolves, networks of trust are going to be expanded and refined. Soon, the idea of simply searching for something will seem backward and outdated. Users will demand trust and verification from their online sources, and tools will be created that provide them.

What does this mean for you, as a writer or an artist? It means you should worry about the quality of your content, rather than your on-site SEO and your squeeze page. It means you can get on with the business of creating useful, interesting and beautiful content.

Cross-posted at Jonathan Frost.

What’s the difference between a crackhead and a Yogi? Consider a few similarities:

• Both renounce all their worldly desires in pursuit of one all-important goal — Sahasrara/crack.
• Both are dirt poor, rail thin, and can be found panhandling all day.
• Both mutter and sing to themselves at uncomfortable volumes in public.
• Both give precisely zero fucks what the rest of the world thinks of them.
• Both will eventually die, and leave nothing behind.

 vs. 

The difference, of course, is that Yogis have devoted their lives to a spiritual quest for communion with God, with the Life Force that animates all beings, a quest that may one day lead them to the attainment of the highest level of human enlightenment and thus the blessed state of Nirvana. Crackheads are on a quest for crack.

Seems pretty cut and dried. Although we may have overlooked an assumption somewhere in there…

Such as, what if all this spiritual enlightenment whoop-de-doo is a load of bullshit?

Call me a skeptic, but… what if we aren’t all united in love and togetherness and so on? In that case it would appear that there are very few differences between hard-core Yogis and crackheads, except that the former are less likely to rob a liquor store or share an AIDS-infected needle. Meditation is free and doesn’t require a syringe.

I’m a strong believer in the value of meditation for improving your focus, self-awareness, and self-discipline. The physical practice of yoga can be an excellent and portable workout. But at the higher levels of devotion, Yogis are basically addicts whose drug of choice is the ability to consciously tap into the brain’s most potent pleasure centres and wallow in them at will. Yogis with many years of practice describe the experience as one of complete bliss, love, belongingness, one-ness with the Universe, and so on. In other words, they got their hands on some good shit.

If they’re right about the God, Enlightenment, Universe stuff — great! They’ve found God.

If not, then it appears they’ve hacked their brains to discharge a chemical cocktail of pure bliss on command. An impressive achievement, but not one that is materially different from that made by the first chemists to synthesize crack cocaine, meth or MDMA.

Cross-posted at Jonathan Frost.

Once upon a time, a handsome young gentleman named Frost wrote that quitting your job to travel might not be a the best idea for young men. Well, mea fucking culpa. If you have a boring job that you aren’t learning anything from, quit it tomorrow and buy a one-way ticket to Bangkok.

A lot of people will tell you that it’s an irresponsible choice, that you’ll regret it, and that you’re doing irreparable damage to your career. Maybe they’re right, but probably not. If you’re a typical paper pusher, it’s not like you’re learning anything new on a day-to-day basis anyway. Maybe you’ll hurt your career, but wait, don’t you hate your career? (Some people have interesting jobs that they really like and that are helping them build skills they can use throughout their lives. This post is not for them.)

Most intimidating of all, you’ll have a lot less money in the bank when you get home after not working and spending a ton of money for a few months or a year or whatever. Well so what? What do you need that money for? It’s not a rhetorical question. If you make smart choices in your twenties and develop yourself, you’ll earn so much in your thirties and forties that your future self will laugh at the pittance you scraped together.

So what’s that nest egg set aside for? A house? Fuck a house. Cheap apartments have roofs and heating, and girls will still fuck you in them.

If your job bores you, if you feel like you’re wasting your time, you’re probably right. That malaise is your body telling you that you’re stagnating and wasting away, no matter what your resume and performance reviews say. Listen to that message. Stop doing mediocre shit, and start kicking ass. During my one year of ‘wasting time’ traveling around the world, I’ve learned (or will learn):

• How to kick people’s ass via Thai boxing and mixed martial arts.
• How to focus my mind and become self-aware at an Ashram in Rishikesh.
• How to speak Italian, French and Spanish.
• How to surf.
• That my brother and I are fucking badasses who can walk a thousand kilometres in a month.

So, what the hell are you doing this year? Chances are you did something similar to what I did the year before my trip around the world, i.e. got a little bit older, a little bit fatter and a little bit lazier, wasting away in a bullshit job that never affected anything in the world outside my cubicle.

Or maybe you did something similar to what I did the year before that. I studied theoretical calculus, set theory and statistical methods, none of which I have ever come close to using in any practical capacity whatsoever. Just to be clear, I’m not knocking calculus for those whose jobs require it, and I’ll even admit that math can be cool and interesting as hell. But in terms of acquiring skills that would make me a better employee in my old career path, it was a waste of time.

And don’t even get me started on what a waste of oxygen I was in undergrad. I had little interest in anything I couldn’t drink, smoke, tackle or fuck, and I was still a keener by the standard of most of my classmates.

So my conclusion after traveling for six months is that I didn’t really learn anything or get anything done in my life until I decided to ‘waste’ a year of my life, and that’s when things started moving for me.

Caveats apply. Don’t go get fucked up in Ko Phan Ngan for 365 nights straight and come back all pissed because you’re still a waste of flesh. But if you set out with some goals and some discipline, traveling will turn you into a better man than shuffling TPS reports.

Cross-posted at Jonathan Frost.

Events occurred in the neighbourhood of White Oaks, Michigan last week, when a jolly squad of mischief-making troubadours came upon a Whole Foods at 9:18 pm on Tuesday of last week and allegedly caused eighteen shoppers to no longer be alive.

According to testimony by the one surviving shopper, who managed to conceal herself behind an upright display of locally-sourced quinoa bread, the trio of pudgy-cheeked mischief-makers brandished firearms as they made their way into the store, secured the exits, and ordered the shoppers to fall to their knees in a line, calling them childish names throughout.

The silly teens then slowly went from one shopper to the next, demanding apologies for the brutal, unprovoked, and cold-blooded murder of Trayvon Martin, pictured below, by George Zimmerman, a privileged white male who is white.

The apologies were apparently not sincere enough for the impish rascals, as they ended the spectacle by executing each of the alleged victims with a double-tap to the base of the skull.

The puckish rapscallions then fled the store, but they were apprehended later that night after having immediately uploaded pictures and videos to their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WorldStarHipHop accounts.

Police Chief and Michigan Law Enforcement Diversity Coordinator Martin Freeman issued a statement yesterday morning:

It is deeply inopportune that these victims were allegedly caused to no longer be alive by the regrettable and unacceptable actions of this gaggle of fun-loving runabouts. I wish to extend my condolences to the victims and their families, for the great inconvenience these events have surely caused.

“These are good kids,” he continued,”and perhaps the real tragedy is that they got wrapped up in something as seedy as this. We all do stupid things when we’re young, but the difference is that they’re going to have to deal with it for the rest of their lives, even after they get out of prison in four years. My heart goes out to the alleged victims, but I hope they remember they’re not the only ones this tragedy has affected.”

President Barack Obama postponed an 11th-hour summit meeting with Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin, in which he had hoped to mediate the escalating nuclear showdown between the two superpowers that now seems likely to incinerate the planet and render it uninhabitable by multicellular life, to weigh in on the case:

As we have seen in the past, there will be some who will see this great tragedy as an opportunity to rabble-rouse, to tap into people’s emotions, to play the political games of fear and hatred. De’Andre, Sparckle and Big Smoke are no different from any other loyal crew of goofy adolescents in this country, lighting off firecrackers behind the general store and stealing the bras from the girls camp across the lake. We must come together as a nation to condemn their thoughtless misdemeanors, and mourn the untimely deaths of the eighteen souls who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A legal defense fund has been set up for the three ittle-wittle boys, aged 28, 24 and 19, by the families of the Whole Foods shoppers caught in the crossfire.

“[Shooting victim] Seymour was a kind, charitable, understanding man,” said his wife Ava Smith, when asked to comment on her generous support of the defense fund. “He knows what kind of conditions these poor kids grew up in. He always wanted to see people coming together, rather than being driven apart. Donating our live savings to this defense fund is the best way I know of honouring his memory.”

Jason Kennedy, whose pregnant wife was also among the victims, is another major contributor to the defense fund: “Well, we’re Christians,” he said, “and I’m pretty sure that means we’re supposed to immediately and automatically forgive everyone for absolutely anything they do, no matter what.”

President Obama has also pledged to match all donations with a special disbursement of funds from the Department of Justice.

The Whole Foods location on Springbank Avenue will reopen for business tomorrow morning.

Cross-posted at Jonathan Frost.

I’m sitting in a dismal cafe in Udaipur, wilting in the scorching heat of summer in the Rajasthan desert. I’m surrounded by dust, feces, and hideous middle-aged women with bare midriffs, as is the fashion here.

I am thrilled to be alive.

Taking in my surroundings, there is only one thing to be happy about in this scene: my face is bathed in the soft blue glow of my open laptop, and I am draping fresh words across a blank page as fast as I can type them. Writing, I learned some time ago, is one of the few pursuits that can reliably move me to joy, no matter where I am or what my circumstances. I’m lucky for that.

I’m also lucky to have born when I was, quite late in the 20th century, as there has not been a more exciting time for writers since the invention of the printing press. The technological advances that make this blog possible are fundamentally altering the relationship between producers and consumers of art, the nature of cultural transmission, and perhaps even the political dynamics of the western world. Everyone and their mother already knows that the Old Media is dying, and the New Media is taking over, but not many have thought through the implications:

• What form will the Old Media’s fall from glory take?
• What will be the nature of the New Media that rises to take its place?
• How will readers find and consume literature in the new paradigm?
• How can young artists take advantage of these opportunities?
• What effect will the coming change of the cultural and intellectual guard have on the distribution of political power in the Western world?

It’s easy to miss when you’re caught in the middle of it, but make no mistake: the contemporary American mind is closed, dogmatic, ossified and choked by ideological cant. Its sources of information (K-12 schools, colleges, universities, mainstream media, publishing, and film) are all morally, spiritually and intellectually bankrupt. They have survived this long, in spite of their mediocre mendacity, simply because competition has been impossible, until quite recently.

The Internet has given us the opportunity to consider alternative sources of information. It has given us the opportunity to consider a new reality, hold it up against the one presented by Harvard, the New York Times and MSNBC, and evaluate them on their merits.

The best and most interesting writers of our era are going to practice their craft outside the strictly limited range of the subject matter and acceptable opinion in the traditional media enforces upon its artists. Mainstream book publishers, newspapers and magazines all have to stifle their artists. The blogosphere sets them free. Where do you think the talented, independent, innovative and unafraid will gravitate toward? As an artist, whose flag do you want to rally around?

One purpose of my new blog will be to act as a resource and gathering place for independent-minded authors and artists seeking to find an audience and make a living (or better) in the wild Western frontier of the 21st century literary and cultural renaissance. Young artists, you know this in your gut: the soil of print media and the big six five publishing houses is going fallow. Your future lies in your ability to create good content, get that content in front of your audience, and if you so choose, monetize that audience through fair, transparent and mutually beneficial relationships.

Aspiring authors of the alternative blogosphere, consider this a call to arms. Let’s start conquering the world.

Cross-posted at Jonathan Frost.

Remember to read Part 1 and Part 2.

It’s never fun to watch your heroes fall. I have zero shame in admitting that, for many years, Tucker Max was a hero to me.

At the age of 20, when I first came across Max’s website, I was already a hard-drinking, skirt-chasing asshole. I didn’t need someone to teach me that those choices were OK.

But at that point in my life, I had stopped reading, stopped writing, and in a lot of ways, stopped thinking. I was living an unexamined life, largely because that’s just what a cool guy does in college. Life was fun, but I was incomplete.

At a first glance, Tucker Max had some funny stories. As I read more though, I noticed that they were peppered with references to literature, history and science. Slipped in behind all the stories was a reading list that kept me busy for the better part of a semester, and reawakened a habit — compulsive reading — that has benefited my life more than any other.

I had already figured out that I didn’t need to apologize to anyone for being an asshole. But I hadn’t realized that I didn’t need to be ashamed of having intellectual interests. Ironically, Tucker Max didn’t teach me that it was OK to get drunk and hook up. He taught me it was OK to read books that weren’t in my course syllabi and write for my school paper. For that influence, I will always be grateful, regardless of what the man has become, or will become.

But let’s take a step back, and consider the recent twist that Tucker Max’s career and outlook appears to be taking.

From 2002 until 2008 or so, Tucker Max was a cult hero to millions of college-aged American men. He achieved this status by writing stories about his adventures as an asshole completely unconcerned with the feelings and expectations of those around him. Who are the interesting characters in this story?

Tucker Max’s answer is that he is. Hence, psychotherapy, introspection, and ruminations on how his alcoholic mother and absentee father lead him to lead the life he did.

But explanations that centre around the experiences and characteristics of Tucker Max ignore the real story: the legions of young men who followed him. Did they all have absentee fathers, etc, as well? No? Then perhaps the Tucker Max phenomenon is better explained in broader terms — what is it about our culture that made Tucker Max a star?

• Why are Millennial men so eager to jettison society’s expectations of them?
• Why are they spending their early twenties in a haze of boozing, partying, chasing slutty girls, becoming pick-up artists, and playing video games?
• How would Tucker Max have been received in virtually any culture outside of early 21st-century America? What is it about the present that makes us uniquely receptive to an ethos of nihilistic hedonism?

These are big questions. Tucker Max 2.0 doesn’t seem to be interested in them. And that’s fine, I suppose. I wish him all the best, with his yoga and psychotherapy. It’s just disappointing to see that one of the first distinct voices to truly speak to the young men of the 21st century is putting down his pen.

Cross-posted at Freedom Twenty-Five.

This is the boilerplate on TuckerMax.com. It hasn’t changed since I found the site, sometime in 2005:

I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead.

But, I do contribute to humanity in one very important way. I share my adventures with the world. They are known as…The Tucker Max Stories.

At the start of his writing career, Tucker Max — or at least the slice of his personality that he portrayed in his writing — was the ultimate embodiment of raw, unfiltered id. He completely rejected the social and moral constraints that society tried to impose on him — on all of us — and lived his life according to no laws other than those which the natural world imposed on him.

As I explained in Part 1, this was the core of his appeal to my generation. Young Millennial men had been offered a bum deal of a social contract, and it’s no mystery that the first man who gave us permission to leave it on the table sold two million books.

So, what does a man who has completely rejected society’s expectations look like?

Well, that really is the question of the hour. Possibly of the decade. Tucker’s answer was to get excessively drunk, mock idiots and posers, etc. Was such a lifestyle immature, pointless, and self-destructive? Sure. But it was preferable to the emasculation prescribed to my generation by mainstream culture. Tucker Max’s fundamental message is that there are alternatives to obedience. You don’t need to spend your life tip-toeing around the self-serving expectations of others.

That was the message that resonated with millions of young men (and women) during the height of Max’s fame. It was a message many of us desperately needed to hear.

But now Max has retracted that message, and replaced it with an ethos of apology, submission, and approval-seeking. He is sorry for what he’s done! It’s not his fault, his family was mildly dysfunctional! He’s undergoing psychoanalysis to address his issues!

More generally, he is done with giving the middle finger to mainstream society. He is ready to tuck his chin down, avoid the hard questions about the culture that made him a celebrity, and live out his twilight years chasing wheat grass shots with hot yoga classes and blurry-eyed, quivery-lipped talk therapy sessions. He is returning to the mainstream media, hat in hand, begging for forgiveness in the most fashionable way – striking the pose of victimhood. Switch out a few details in his Forbes interview, and he could be mistaken for a repentant Lindsay Lohan.

Why the switch?

I’m no psychoanalyst, but here’s the theory I’m working with until something better comes along:

At some point over the past five years, Tucker Max gave up his faith in himself. His first book, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, sold 1.6 million copies. For a relatively unknown internet writer, this was ridiculously impressive.

After that:

1. He started Rudius Media. It folded.
2. The IHTSBIH film bombed, losing six million dollars.
3. Assholes Finish First sold a quarter as many copies as IHTSBIH, “…around 1.6 million for the first one, and around 400,000 for the second.”

Other than that, I don’t really know what Tucker Max has been working on over the past decade. Maybe he has ongoing projects that he keeps to himself, but he has been poison to pretty much everything he’s (publicly) touched since IHTSBIH. I don’t know how he’s doing financially, but G Manifesto makes a pretty convincing case that his bankroll might be getting thin.

Whatever the details — Tucker Max followed up the initial success of his first book, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, with a string of cataclysmic failures that shook him to his core.

IHTSBIH was supposed to be the humble beginning of Tucker Max’s career. Instead, it was his peak. The unstoppable force of Max’s ambition ran up against an immovable object — the cold reality of the anticlimactic follow-up to his initial success. He didn’t survive the ensuing collision.

Stay tuned for Part 3.

Cross-posted at Freedom Twenty-Five.

Tucker Max had the opportunity to be a spokesman for a generation.

He had the opportunity to lend his voice to the revolt against the effeminization of North American men, and maybe even lead a 21st-century revival of classical masculinity. Instead, he is pissing that opportunity away in the hopes that he’ll earn a morsel of approval from the gatekeepers of mainstream culture and literature.

The sad part is, he’s not even selling out. He’s trading principles, honesty and consistency for nothing. He will not reap money, power, or fame from his transformation into an emasculated poof. Tucker Max is ignoring his opportunity to be a part of history, and his only reward will be a well-deserved slide into obscurity.

The Rise

You probably already know Tucker Max. If you’re a North American male born in the 1980′s, you almost certainly know Tucker Max. But just in case, here’s an abridged CV:

Tucker Max is the author of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, Assholes Finish First, and the upcoming Hilarity Ensues. Each is a collection of stories from Max’s debaucherous young adulthood. He’s a smart guy, his life has been pretty hilarious, and he’s a good writer.

But funny stories about debauchery alone could not explain the massive, cult-like following that sprung up around Tucker Max. At the peak of his popularity, he was a household name on American college campuses, and his first book tour filled up auditoriums across the country.

The lasting appeal of his writing was the underlying philosophy woven into it: an ethos of complete and total rejection of society’s expectations. This, not cheap frathouse humour, is what explained Max’s fame.

His success raises an interesting question: why were young men in the late 20th century uniquely primed to be drawn to a personal philosophy of unbridled nihilistic hedonism? Why did they need a role model to give them permission to live, as Max suggested, unconcerned with the expectations of others?

The short answer is that late-20th century Western culture is extremely hostile towards the values of classical masculinity. Male role models in pop culture are either effeminate prigs or clueless buffoons. Schools are replacing the competitive environments men thrive in with quiet, heavily-structured self-esteem factories that cajole little boys into acting like little girls, while drugging those who can’t be so easily tamed. The American economy is shedding jobs in manufacturing, mining and the trades, prodding men into white-collar docility. College curriculas demean men as oppressors, potential rapists, abusers, and generally the source of all the world’s problems. The men of the Millennial generation are surrounded by people, publications and media that belittle and insult them at every available opportunity. And still, there are no shortages of parents, teachers, employers, pastors, girlfriends, writers, and TV producers, who insist that the postmodern man fulfills his manly obligations to this same society.

A fair contract confers both rights and duties to each party. But the social contract that Western society offers the men of my generation is so one-sided, it should come as no surprise that the smarter and more self-aware among us are choosing to abrogate it. It should also come as no surprise that Tucker Max — one of the first men of our age to publicly toss off the shackles of society’s expectations, and write competently about it — achieved the fame and influence he did.

Tucker Max was the right man, with the right message, at the right time. Perhaps even more importantly, he was the first to leverage the Internet to bypass the politically correct gatekeepers of the traditional publishing industry.

The Fall

So what became of Tucker Max?

What became of his message, that our society fails to offer smart young men an option in life that beats getting wasted and chasing tail?

What became of the man who was going to shake up the literary world, smash the rotten publishing industry, and lead a 21st-century intellectual movement to rehabilitate and redefine masculinity?

If you haven’t already seen it, read this ten-page interview of Tucker Max in Forbes.

For starters, he’s retiring from writing about sex, drugs and rock and roll:

“I publicly, explicitly retire. I want to be free to move on with my life, and I think the way I have to do that is to set a public end to this.”

OK, cool. Tucker does not want to continue getting blackout drunk and chasing slutty teenage girls into his forties and fifties. No surprises. I’m twenty-six, and even I’m ready to slow it down a notch.

But what direction will Max take his writing in, now that he is past debauchery?

Might he be tempted to reflect on why his writing attracted the attention of so many young men? Will he try to offer an alternative to booze and sluts? Better yet, will he devote his attention to understanding the problems with our society that have resulted in a majority of men pissing away their early twenties drinking, partying, getting high, and playing video games? Will he ask why young men are eager to take a pass on marriage and monogamy, instead choosing to live lives of one-night stands and pickup artistry?

In a word, no.

Rather than mature and evolve into an effective adult male role model, Tucker Max has chosen to have an Oprah moment:

“I know some of the stuff I did is, um, beyond the pale or f***-up sometimes, or mean to other people or destructive to myself. But I still did it anyway.”

…

“I understood intellectually in my twenties that this had something to do with unresolved parental, emotional issues. But I didn’t process it. I could look at other people and see these kinds of issues playing out in them, but I didn’t apply it to myself, because that’s the hardest thing to do for anybody. I couldn’t do that then.”

…

“I was a ridiculous narcissist in my twenties. It’s not even that I didn’t care about other people. It’s way beyond that. I just didn’t even understand that other people even existed or mattered. I do not believe I was a true NPD [narcissistic personality disorder] in the clinical sense. But, dude, I was close.”

…

“I ended up hurting a lot of people and not even realizing it. Because of that narcissism, I didn’t connect well to other people. I used a lot of people a lot of times, in ways I didn’t understand.”

…

“Listen I’m 35 now, I can look back on my writing and I can say this. This is something I’ve never really said before in public or admitted on the record, and I’ll admit it now: I didn’t realize this when I was writing it, but I think if you read between the lines a little bit, in between all the bravado, you can see a lot of self-loathing.

“I knew it was inevitable that I would have to look into this stuff eventually. In some vague sense, I understood the whole time that a lot of my extreme acting out came from unresolved emotional issues. And I knew deep down at some point I was going to have to face them.

“So many people describe my book as just pure id. What I’m trying to do now is to connect my ego and my superego to my id. I’m trying to understand, why was I doing all this stuff? Why was I acting this way? Through understanding all of that, you start to resolve the underlying problems that you’re acting out, in a healthier, more productive way.

“And I’ve found that, what I now want the most in a woman is—I want a partner. I want someone who is my partner in life. Who supports me, and I support her. I can share all my experiences in life with her, and she can share hers back with me. Not only do we love each other, but we accept, embrace, nurture, and care for each other.”

Break out the violins. Tucker Max was a jerk because his f-f-family was m-m-m-mean to him. He’s sorry for what he’s done, and perhaps now that he’s in therapy to talk about his feelings, the world will realize that his life up until now has just been a great big misunderstanding, and maybe Simon and Schuster will offer him a six-figure advance to write about the joys of his simple life of health shakes and yoga.

Not likely, though. Stay tuned for Part 2.

Cross-posted at Freedom Twenty-Five.

Raging narcissist that I am, one of my self-indulgent Google alerts led me to this post by JW Black (read it first) here at In Mala Fide. I typed out a pretty lengthy reply, so I thought I’d paste it up here for all and sundry to read. 

Greetings from Sihanoukville, Cambodia!

This is an excellent post. There are indeed a large and growing number of websites out there that purport to teach you how to make money online by – teaching others how to make money online! Gary Vaynerchuk, The Art of Non-Conformity, Advanced Riskology – all of these guys are worth a read, but I take them with a grain of salt. Check out Dan Andrews’ Tropical MBA and Sean Ogle’s blog for examples of guys who are living the 4HWW dream by doing something other than blogging.

As for me, I’m certainly not making enough money off of book sales and affiliate commissions to live the international playboy lifestyle, but I am making enough to travel slowly and like a bum. And this is despite:

1. Having written a far inferior book than I could have (I still think it’s pretty good, but the 2nd edition will be radically different).
2. Doing an absolutely piss-poor job of marketing it.

I’m coming to the end of my fast-paced ‘vacation’ month of traveling, and am looking forward to putting down some roots for a few months in various cities and grinding out F25 2.0, a new book, and a few other projects that I have a lot of confidence in. By the end of it, I think I’ll be able to say that I am making a good-to-great living from anywhere in the world I want to be, doing something I love. It’s taken (and will continue to take) a ton of work, but it’s possible.

As I said though, I agree with a lot of your points. Leaving the desk job grind isn’t easy – I wrote shitty stories, articles and blog posts for years before I created anything that anyone wanted to read. Even still, I’ve only ‘made it’ by a laughably easy standard.

I also 100% agree that you should always try to avoid burning bridges whenever possible. In my juvenile angst phase, I flirted briefly with the scorched earth approach to my old job. Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed and the door back to that life is still wide open. I’m (perhaps irrationally) confident that I will make it as a writer, but even if I don’t, I’ve got an alternative to giving handjobs for crack in a back alley somewhere.

But all that said, I think you are too pessimistic. I come from a lower-middle class background, and went to the Canadian equivalent of a tier-2 state school for undergrad, and that has certainly closed a few doors for me in life. Even though I did my post-grad at a fairly elite school, I went something like 0/100 in my job applications to the elite banks and consulting firms in the world. Many of the traditional, 20th-century paths to wealth and fame are closed to me.

But alternative careers don’t have the same barriers to entry. On the Internet, no one knows that you’re a dog – or that you went to public school. The only real barriers are a lack of intelligence and conscientiousness. Not to be a dick, but I consider myself smarter than the vast majority of people, and I have taken a few tests that back my assessment up. If Tim Ferriss were honest, he would include the disclaimer that his advice is only useful for 120 IQ-plus folks, but do you need connections and an IV league degree to start a website? Nope.

Anyways, I can hash out my reasons for why I think the 4HWW offers a valid alternative to men like us, but at the end of the day, I rest my case on this: I have met dozens of guys out here in Asia who REALLY ARE living incredible lives with location-independent businesses. I’ve met a few each with their own information products, artists, adsense-generating website builders, SEO guys, writers, poker players, rental property managers, and so on.

I’ve also met quite a few who are traveling on a budget and making ends meet by taking on jobs bartending, working for hostels, deckhands, ski instructors, and even a few tradesmen. I would put these guys in a different category as the true location-independent crowd, since they still often have to work for 10-30 hours a week, but it’s a valid alternative to 9-5 regardless.

This post is a useful counterpoint to the relentless enthusiasm of the majority of lifestyle design writers (including Ferriss), but like them, you go too far. Connecting technologies really are changing the workplace, and many established industries (publishing, music, film, advertising, sales, politics) are going to be radically upset in the coming decades. There’s a lot of opportunity for smart young people with an ability to ignore conventional wisdom (hey there, IMF readers!) to build empires in those fields.

Cheers,

Frost

Cross-posted at Freedom Twenty-Five.