Hookups and Hedge Funds
What's Wrong With Red Pill's Worldview, Part 3.1
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The masculine philosophy known as Red Pill has, unfortunately, taken the manosphere by storm. When I had first heard about the manosphere back in 2012, there was enough diversity that I hadn’t heard about Red Pill for a couple years. By the time I did, there were still many showing resistance, saying it was too resentful to be of any value. Ten years later many now assume Red Pill is simply synonymous with “manosphere”. In this essay, I am going to continue my exploration of this pseudo-philosophy by discussing the axiology or value system of Red Pill.1
If you’ve watched my last two essays, then you know I’ve already covered Red Pill’s ontology or model of the world, and their epistemology, or the way in which they come to know what is true or false. You won’t need to watch them to understand this one, but they will obviously help. Knowing the value system of Red Pill is important, but if we want to change it, we should at the very least understand the whole package.
To briefly remind you though, you need to understand that Red Pill believes that what is biological is what is most real when it comes to the human animal. Cultural influence is always secondary or inauthentic. This is a primary part of Red Pill’s ontology or model of the world. Secondly, their epistemology, is how they know what is true. They subscribe to a radical behaviourism where the only thing that really matters is what a woman does, rather than what she says. This is made even worse by the Post Hoc Outcome Bias, which says that if I believe something, and then got the result I wanted, that means what I believe is true. This faulty reasoning is used to justify their entire worldview.
You can see how, with their ontology and epistemology, Red Pill can keep itself trapped in very Closed worldview.3 With that said though, what I’d like to discuss now is Red Pill’s axiology or value system, and how that fits together with their model of the world and their way of coming to know what is true.
A Neoliberal Infiltration Through Red Pill
To understand Red Pill’s value system, you first need to understand how intimately woven it is with neoliberal rationality. My primary reference for this comes from the book “Undoing the Demos” by Dr. Wendy Brown, which discusses how the logic of neoliberal capitalism has infiltrated almost every facet of our culture.4 What she writes is so on the nose that her book may as well have been subtitled the Rise of Red Pill.
This is most clearly seen in her term “entrepreneurialization”, which essentially means that we as human beings have begun to define ourselves fundamentally as entrepreneurs. This is best captured by the following:4
“[Individuals] are configured […] as self-investing human capital. Human capital is not driven by its interests [...] Nor is [it] free to make its life and choose its values at will. Rather, human capital is constrained to self-invest in ways that contribute to its appreciation or at least prevent its depreciation; this includes titrating inputs such as education, predicting and adjusting to changing markets in vocations, housing, health, and retirement, and organizing its dating, mating, creative, and leisure practices in value-enhancing ways.”
In other words, you as a person are not able to live your life in the way you would want because you are forced by neoliberal culture to adapt yourself constantly to the market. This flies in the face of Red Pill’s advice that the Alpha male is one who both defines himself and is also able to become financially free.5,6 I do want to be nuanced here though, the point I’m trying to make is not to blanket denigrate anyone who tries to make more money as an unthinking sheep. Instead, my point is to be conscious, that when you try to make money within a certain market, you are conforming yourself and what you do to whatever is going to make money within that market.
This is how Red Pill construes romance with their idea of the Sexual Marketplace. Notice right there the neoliberal infiltration that defines everything, even love and relationships, based on market logic. As an Alpha male, you must increase your Sexual Marketplace Value, or SMV. You are in competition with other males to demonstrate your high value to women who are also judged for their own SMV, measured in their youth, beauty, and willingness to comply to you the man.1
In other words, who you are as a man must be defined by whatever earns you the highest SMV. This is interpreted throughout Red Pill as becoming freer as an individual, just as it is interpreted by neoliberalism. Except, this individuality is determined by the market itself rather than by the desires of the individual in question. They justify this neoliberal individuality with the idea of the invisible hand of the market. Dr. Brown has this to say about the invisible hand:4
“the market is itself true and also represents the true form of all activity. Rational actors accept these truths, thus accept ‘reality’; conversely, those who act according to other principles are not simply irrational, but refuse ‘reality.’”
The assumption here is that because the things with the highest demand are the things everyone is choosing, these must be the things that people really desire. The invisible hand is the sum total of all these people making choices and thus deciding the true value of things. In the Sexual Marketplace, the invisible hand is deciding the true value of men and the true value of women. If you don’t conform to this idea, then you are simply denying the reality of things.
In this neoliberal capitalism, who you are as a person, what you do with your time, what you value, how you define the ideal partner, and what you do in the ideal relationship, all become defined by the invisible hand. This is what it means to be entrepreneurialized. You must view yourself as an entrepreneur with a full-time job and a side hustle, that either gets you a promotion or completely frees you from your job. However, no matter what your goals are, you must be thinking about yourself and your time as a thing to be invested in so that you can make more money or become more attractive in the Sexual Marketplace.
The Not-So Invisible Hand
So, your response to that might be, “That sounds exactly like what I want to do, because my goal is to become more valuable.”
If that’s your goal, then all the power to you. However, think about the consequences of turning all human beings into entrepreneurs competing with one another to become more valuable to the market. Firstly, part of how we’ve defined the invisible hand is that it is specifically in a free market. When people are free to make choices, the sum total of those choices is what people really, freely desire. That said, what is “freedom” when it is measured in our ability to make enough money to spend in a specific environment defined by a completely free and de-regulated market? Dr. Brown says:5
“[Students] pay the University […] not for the cultural capital, citizenship capacities, or abstract value of a college education, but for the […] future income it promises […]”
The assumption is that profitability is the best measure of a quality education. No, it is the best education for profitability in a specific economic system, not necessarily for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Embedded in the neoliberal value system, is the assumption that the invisible hand will choose the best, but it won't. It'll choose the most profitable, which means it will likely choose that which appeals to our lowest, most impulsive, most pleasure-seeking and pain-avoiding selves. Our decision-making as “individuals” is defined purely by what we “decide” to buy among only those things that corporations put in front of us, which are merely the things that make them the most money.
On top of that, in my video “Psychology of the Zombie”, I talked about liquefaction, or how we are all made hyper-individuals who are completely responsible for ourselves and our lives. Dr. Brown calls this responsibilization, saying here:4
“Responsibilization tasks the […] person with discerning and undertaking the correct strategies of self-investment and entrepreneurship for thriving and surviving […] As it […] denigrates dependency and practically negates collective provisioning for existence, responsibilization solicits the individual as the only relevant and wholly accountable actor.”
Again, notice whether or not there is an automatic agreement with this narrative of personal responsibility, like of course you are the only one who can be accountable or responsible for your own thriving and surviving. And yet, the problem I’m trying to identify is how for granted you take the valuing of a specific definition of “individual”.
Neoliberal rationality has infiltrated our culture so intensely, that when we try to point out the problems with how exactly it defines “individual”, the kneejerk reaction we all have is to say, “Well no that’s how things should be.” Recognize that this is a value system, it is an axiology, that is defined for you by neoliberalism. Should we not, at the very least, be aware of the potential consequences of that definition of the individual?
As individuals, you are responsibilized, made responsible for your own value to the market while the market is not made responsible for supporting the increase of your value. You yourself must find a way to pay for the education or training that will conform you to the person you must be to earn more money. And yet, the structure of the market itself means that only those who already have money are going to be able to afford what it takes to earn more money. Dr. Meadows calls this a success only to the successful feedback loop.2
In neoliberalism, this is what has not only accelerated increasing income inequality, but what has also come to control the invisible hand. How am I able to educate myself well enough to know what to do to earn more money, when I am competing with a collective of people with specialized task forces for researching and testing strategies, and then educating other elements of that collective in those strategies? That’s what a corporation does. It is a collectivist enterprise that closely guards its own interests and only invests in those it deems profitable.
That’s not a free market where equal individuals compete. That’s little ol’ you and I competing against each other, pretending like we’re not also competing against the entirety of Amazon, Tiktok, or whatever else. Often we’re competing through Amazon or Tiktok, making them wealthier and more capable of controlling the market. That’s not a free market, that’s clearly a market controlled and profited off of by these corporations. The tragic irony is that by de-regulating the market too much, by making it too free of government regulation, we’ve put the entire market in the hands of the ultra-wealthy and their hunger for higher and higher profits.
The Free Sexual Marketplace
Now, how does all of that relate to Red Pill’s value system? We’ve already said that they define romance as a Sexual Marketplace and they ground everything in biology. If something can be justified by their interpretation of evolutionary psychology, then that’s what’s most real. As such, if you assume that the invisible hand defines true value, then whatever gets you the most sex is what women and men truly like and must truly be. The acquisition of sex becomes the measure of value because the marketplace decides what is most sexually successful, which is rooted in our biology as human beings.
Notice the assumption that a successful high-value relationship is dependent on being the kind of man who has sex with the highest number of “high-value” – physically attractive – women. Corporations will put super-sugary candy on shelves and say, “if people buy it, that must mean that’s what they truly want.” Red Pill is justifying the current state of the sexual marketplace by saying that if it appeals to our most hedonistic desires for sex, then that must be what we truly desire, what will truly make us the happiest, and what we should truly aspire to be.
Dr. Brown once again criticizes neoliberalism for a similar mistake with the idea of benchmarking and best practices:4
“Benchmarking refers to the practice of a firm or agency […] studying and then importing the practices of other, more successful firms or agencies. In other words, benchmarks are set by industry leaders, and benchmarking represents the process of nonleaders understanding, distilling, and then implementing the practices that make those leaders successful. […] A key premise of benchmarking is that best practices can be exported from one industry or sector to another and that some of the most valuable reforms will happen by creatively adapting practices in one field to another.”
In other words, we have the industry of sex where the benchmarks and the best practices are what get the most sex from the hottest women for the industry leaders called Alpha males. These benchmarks and best practices are then taken from this industry and applied to the industry of love and long-term relationships in general. Unfortunately, this kind of marketplace logic for human relationships simply leads to the commodification of sex as a product to be bought and sold, rather than as an emotional connection to be created between two human beings. Dr. Valkenburgh has this to say about that:7
“[While the Red Pill subreddit] denies any needs for emotional connection, it encourages the pursuit of sexual relationships that resemble commodity relations.”
“It is plausible that these two ‘moments’ are internally related: the sidebar finds in neoliberal discourses a convenient framework for stripping intimacy from human relationships, such that commodified women no longer threaten any emotional boundaries established by [Alpha] masculinity”
“Thus, the sidebar’s contents can be plausibly understood as an attempt to use neoliberal economic discourses to superficially reconcile a powerful dissonance: when an unstoppable force—the need for intimate sexual connection—meets an immovable object—emotional rigidity—erotic energies can be displaced onto women who are framed as commodities, exchangeable in a sexual marketplace.”
In other words, Dr. Valkenburgh is highlighting how Red Pill uses neoliberal logic to strip human connection of any value other than the exchange of sex. As entrepreneurs, it is up to the Alpha male to invest in himself, conforming himself to this marketplace of nihilistic hedonism so that he can extract as much value as possible out of his relationships in the form of wanton sex with the youngest, most fertile, most beautiful women.
If you think that Red Pill couldn’t possibly think that relationships have such little value outside the acquisition of sex, here is what the Godfather of Red Pill has to say about women and love:1
“that unconditional male concept of love is rebuked by women’s, by-necessity, fluid and utilitarian concept of love.”
“This will sound counter to anything your feminine conditioning has ever taught you, but men are the True Romantics, women are simply the vehicles for that rarely appreciated romanticism.”
He doesn’t claim that men are capable of unconditional love, but that love always has conditions despite men hoping for otherwise. Fair enough. However, he adds the following:1
“Our girlfriends, our wives, daughters and even our mothers are all incapable of this idealized love. As nice as it would be to relax, trust and be vulnerable, upfront, rational and open, the great abyss is still the lack of any capacity for women to love Men as Men would like them to.1
“we ought to [realize] that a woman’s love is contingent upon our capacity to maintain that love in spite of a woman’s hypergamy. By order of degrees, hypergamy will define who a woman loves and who she will not, depending upon her own opportunities and capacity to attract it.”
“Marriage is no insulation from the sexual marketplace.”
“Women are dream killers.”
The mistake Tomassi makes is that he recognizes that the idealized Romantic Comedy version of love isn’t real, but that completely collapses love into market logic. Women are hypergamous, which means that they are always after the higher value male. If you want to keep your partner’s “love”, you have to conform yourself to the sexual marketplace or else she’ll leave you, your kids, and your years of marriage for that more Alpha male.
Of course, there is some truth to this. There are some women who will leave a good man for undeniably horrible reasons. And, obviously, if you stop working, play video games all day, and expect her to wait on you hand and foot, then she’s likely going to leave you in that situation as well. So yes, there is a standard you must conform to in order for even a good partner to stay with you.
The issue is when we assume that all of that works exactly like a marketplace. We assume that the benchmarks and best practices of casual hook-ups with the most promiscuous “high-value” people completely define human love itself. From there, we can only understand love as mechanical and utilitarian. There is no longer any higher form of love that exists outside this market logic. There is nothing creative, collaborative, meaningful, or fulfilling in relationships, unless you as a man conform to a specific market defined by nihilistic hedonism.
This all places a demand on a man to become a rich, muscular, and borderline narcissistic social manipulator so that you can ensure your hypergamous woman won’t cheat on you. This combines with the success to the successful feedback loop I mentioned before, where only those who are already wealthy enough to get the education and training they need can actually conform to this definition of the ideal man.
The men who best conform are those like Rollo Tomassi, Fresh and Fit, and Whatever, who all become wealthy enough to create podcasts and marketing campaigns to get their Red Pill philosophy out to the world. They invite OnlyFans models onto their show to add sex appeal, and so that they can teach men that women of today really are hypergamous sluts with ridiculous standards. They stimulate desire for these women while at the same creating a scapegoat for their audience’s displaced anger. This in turn fuels their desire to dominate women, creating the first-person experience of what the Red Pill worldview claims they ought to feel toward women.
In this way, they determine the shape of the dating marketplace, just like the ultra-wealthy who determine the shape of the “free” market. We also can’t forget that these ultra-wealthy corporations, who make even the wealthiest Red Piller pale in comparison, are also the ones creating the social media platforms and dating apps that feed off of frustration, outrage, and sex, giving more evidence and credence to the very ideas that Red Pill advocates for.
The point is that every man who watches Red Pill is forced into an understanding of love that places pressure on them to conform to the neoliberal Alpha male ideal. Every failure in the financial and sexual marketplaces confirms to them that they’re too beta to become an Alpha. This breeds resentment at the world, women, and biology for placing such harsh demands on them, which prevents them from even trying to meet women. Or, if they do, they carry all the Red Pill baggage that has them aspire to be unfeeling and incapable of truly connecting with a woman. From there, the only path forward is to simply try harder to become an Alpha male.
This is the neoliberal foundation to the axiology or value system of Red Pill. Now, these videos were getting way too long so I decided to start breaking them into smaller parts. In the next video, we continue the discussion of their axiology with the androcentrism that leads to the misogyny we’ve all come to know and love Red Pill for.
Until then, thank you so much for your time and attention. Please hit the like button and subscribe for more conversations on masculinity, psychological development, and the cultivation of a personal mythology. Thanks again, and all the best to you on whatever journey you find yourself on.
References:
1 – Tomassi, R. (2013). The Rational Male. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
2 - Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in Systems: International Bestseller (D. Wright, Ed.; Illustrated edition). Chelsea Green Publishing.
3 – Beck, D., & Cowan, C. (2005). Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change (1st edition). Wiley-Blackwell.
4 – Brown, W. (2017). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Reprint edition). Zone Books.
5 – Destiny (Director). (2023a, January 2). Destiny Puts Fresh N Fit And Sneako On The Spot w/ Tough Questions [Video recording]. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=FaP_7hq6mmU
6 – Destiny (Director). (2023b, May 11). Sneako DESTROYS The Redpill Godfather On Fresh N Fit [Video recording]. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=l1a1Wy4gues
7 – Van Valkenburgh, S. P. (2021). Digesting the Red Pill: Masculinity and Neoliberalism in the Manosphere. Men and Masculinities, 24(1), 84–103. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X18816118
We’ll discuss his capitalization of Men in the next essay…