Part One: The Birth of the Manosphere | BEHIND THE BASTARDS 

Kind of weird that John Wick has become the icon of the sigma male who willfully ignores women and stands outside of the sexual hierarchy, when his whole motivation from the start of the first movie is avenging the dog his wife gave him.

The way both Jamie and Sophie sigh with such a sense of inevitable fatigue when Jordan Peterson is brought up is just perfect

I really admire researchers who vocally walk back their older research when they do more studies that have different results. We need so much more of that.

Kind older women and/or queer nerds guiding younger nerds on the internet is such a wonderful dynamic. I've been on both sides of it now and the relationships can be so real and fulfilling.

Just started this one, critical support to all female combat aviators. Dogfighting is a lost art.

The thing about the old there are no girls on the internet meme is that back then most girls on the internet were harassed so persistently the moment they announced their gender that they started pretending to be boys or stopped going online. I remember going to a con around 2002 to meet up with a group of friends I had known online for years and thought were all boys and finding out that around 1/3rd of them were female.

Throwing into the mix, around the 50 minute mark: Yup, another one here that owes a fair amount to the furry community. I nearly went down into a really unsavory mindset/community shortly after college (Gamergate). While some of my retreat and learning was because those awful people took their mask off too quickly, an even larger chunk was because of how nice the furry community was to me. Yes, even in gently going, "Hey, you're being really stupid or hurtful, and here's why." From people willing to make friends with a stranger and just play a video game, to a mentor taking some college kid under his wing to help him learn to draw and paint or house them, all the way to deep political discussion and philosophical and religious talk. While there are also unsavory segments of the community--which I'm happy to say, in my angle within it, I see an overwhelming amount online pushing back against them trying to find foothold in furry--if it wasn't for them, I don't know where I'd be at right now. Bizarre on the surface, but filled with kindness underneath, in my experience.

Oof, I empathize with Jamie being in college when Gamergate happened. I lost a bunch of my friends at the time but I ended up gaining new friends by only hanging out with the GSA kids. It also finally motivated me to finally dump my terrible college boyfriend. It was a good time to learn who some people really were.

I think my favorite thing about Robert is that we shared a common path through the internet. As a reformed libertarian and proto-right-winger, it is so valuable to hear things like this unpacked by someone who took a similar path through the internet

I hadn't connected the dots on the "roleplay forums and elder furries positively shaping terminally online gamers" thing, but it checks out.

I was a teen in the 90's and a girl online, and in the IRC chat channels I hung out in from about 95/96 onward when I jumped in there were actually a pretty big number of women. I just was in places for vampire role-playing and SCA-type forums, where the ages were 16-60 and generally speaking the ladies in those places weren't in other communities because if we poked our head in and were treated badly we left quickly and warned each other off. I always find it baffling that the very first IRC channels, forums, etc that my noob self found were apparently such a big outlier and that supposedly there weren't many women on the internet. I seems it very much has to do with where one went rather than an overall thing. (Even all my WoW guilds I was ever in had a pretty good percentage of women in them, we learned fast to not PUG or maybe pretend to be guys sometimes if dealing with people outside of the guilds that were friendly to women in the rough early days IIRC.)

"Stop worrying about bone structure. Shower and learn how to cook," might be the best advice on the internet.

Oh my. The rabbit hole I fell down starting in 2011. Kent Hovind videos (while I was still involved in church life), "Illuminati exposed" shit, Tommy Sotomayor shit, TFL (true forced loneliness) shit, MGTOW/Red Pill shit, Paul Elam "I'll hang a jury to keep a rapist from going to prison" shit, Karen Straughn shit, Anti-SJW/Anti-Trans craze, Sargon phase, Stefan Molyneux phase, defending-Elliot-Rodger phase, in that order. Where I had to climb myself back out when I heard Paul Elam say "we have to eradicate the left", watched as all the respective groups turned to support Trump, and saw Tommy Sotomayor platform David Duke and not challenge him on anything. I'm shocked that I never fell for the nonsense Alex Jones would scream from the top of his lungs...And ultimately I'll never get those 5 years back. I still don't know how the fuck these thought-leaders convinced me that their objectives would help a poor, working class, queer Black man like myself. Still scraping that film off me and learning slowly but surely how to become a better person. Smh

The internet really is a crapshoot. I was a prime target for a lot of this incel/alt right nonsense… I even thought the edge lord pseudo intellectualism of Scott Adams was blowing my mind then… Then I met my best friend on a hockey website. She was like 15 years older than I was, survived a Christian fundamentalist household. She gently guided me to being human & helped me understand my own misplaced rage at being bisexual. This woman saved my life… all from across the internet. She passed in 2020. We had been friends for about 13 years by then. I miss her every single day.

On the whole "capitalism acts almost like a gestalt entity in the way it reacts to critiques" there's a great line about this from Disco Elysium: "Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would *critique* capital end up *reinforcing* it instead."

This sigma male thing is just astrology for men who can't shut up about how much they hate astrology.

"I grew up on the internet...it's been...it's been weird to watch this happen." As someone who is 32 in 2023, I feel this statement. Haven't finished the video, don't know where he's going with that statement, but it feels like it accurately describes my feelings regarding several internet-related phenomena. I remember being thirteen and thinking it was all just games. I didn't participate to the fullest extent, but I frequented message boards where people did and said some pretty messed up stuff. I guess, as a kid, I assumed we'd all grow out of it. It never really occurred to me as a child that people were serious more often than they were joking. Then I started seeing manifestos that listed my old message boards as frequent places of discussion. As inspiration. My god, I dodged a bullet. Ironically, moving to the other side of the globe may have helped me break out of that place. Isolation gave way to online gaming, which could have gone South quick, but I happened to make friends with more progressive gamers. Not the best people, but at least they weren't actively posting about race wars and genocide.

On the "bone structure" thing, it's a way to ensure they can blame their lack of likability to a thing they can't change, absolving them from having to ever try to be better people, which is hard. It's laziness and insecurity.

"Furry/dragon fetishists" Please let him know that the technical term is Scalies.

What I don't get is that like.. if we are going to play by the rules of the "alpha/sigma/beta" bros, then as far as I can tell, having to always inform everyone that you're "an alpha" is like... literally the _least alpha thing one could possibly do._ I mean think about it: if you were super badass and confident in your extreme manliness (😂), why would you need to make sure that everyone else in the room agrees that you're Mr. Top Dog Head Honcho? A confident person wouldn't give a shit because they know who they are, and another person's opinion doesn't change that. These guys are constantly putting themselves on blast, letting the entire world know that they're profoundly and tragically insecure. Pretty sure that's the exact opposite of what they were going for, whoops 🤷‍♂ edit: the other thing that bugs me about the whole "Men's Rights Movement" is that they've clearly realized that societal gender roles are completely arbitrary.. but then instead of following that thread to it's logical conclusion, they double down on traditional gender roles. WHY?! HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN? They're so close and yet so far :/

Schenkel and Mech's research, given that it was wolves in captivity, is very similar to the Stanford prison experiment, with many of the same problems.

The fully self-unaware Smegma Male

I remember the internet of 1999. I was a girl terminally online at that time and somehow missed this all burgeoning. I remember being confused when I saw the complaints that there were no girls online, and identified myself as one immediately and then got *interrogated* about it and doubted because I didn't type like a girl (?) whatever that even MEANT. i dwelled on how to appear more feminine online. Today-me cringes at that very idea.

This whole bit about people who had their childhoods in the 80s and 90s is getting real personal, real quick.

Sigma males is basically the manosphere admitting that it sucks to get arbitrary ratings from other people.

These guys don't seem to understand they're pushing a contradictory framework where 1. All women are emotionless economic actors with perfect rationality to maximize profits, and 2. All women are emotionally chasing men based on ephemeral criteria which cannot be understood rationally. It's like they take these two most extreme archetypes which each represent maybe 2.5% of women, and then use that as their basis for predicting the behavior of 100% of women. They seem to be advocating for a balanced mindset, yet ignore the vast majority of women who already do have a more balanced mindset, and who measure things both practically and emotionally to try to make the best long-term decisions. Plus, these guys are 100% trying to "monkey branch" to better and better conquests of higher "status" for their own social and economic gains, so even their apparently valid critiques of these extremes are somehow never directed at themselves or their own culture where this is seen as ideal "Chad" behavior. A thorough mess of pseudo-economics, pseudo-psychology, pseudo-biology, and overall pseudo-intellectualism.

I was one of those girls on the internet in those "no girls on the internet" days, and yeah, I never self-ID'd as AFAB because I didn't want to be treated to "tits or GTFO," literally the only thing boys in those days could think to say. So yes, I did not enjoy the same internet, but it's all there was, so.

i will say, as a transfem person, i get where incels are coming from with the bones thing. i feel like my bone structure makes me look too masculine and that makes me sad. but the key phrase there is “i feel like.” many people have said i have a very androgynous appearance and shouldn’t worry at all. it’s a personal anxiety that i notice because of dysphoria, but NOBODY ELSE CAN TELL. this is what the incels need to realize. no one cares about a few millimeters of bone

Jamie going "bleck" every time Robert says Manosphere is a relatable mood. xD

The guy who attacked the clinic has a whole bunch more wrong with him than just the domestic violence stuff. He had been planning that attack for several years, and decided to do it only o when he was sure he was gonna die soon. Source: I was in a cell in the same block as him as he was in the process of being convicted The man was so sure everyone was going to listen to his story and sympathize with his reasons because he felt nobody was gonna hear him about the "abuse" he suffered.

Love this. Just wanted you to know I don't ignore multi-part shows, but I wait for the last to drop before I binge them all. The wait is unbearable for me otherwise. Just a small aside if you're a metrics watcher.

Re: "there are no girls on the internet," as a former girl who was on the internet at the time, a lot of girls/women passively or actively concealed their gender in online forums to avoid the harassment that Jamie and Sophie mention. While a non-zero number were people who were exploring trans identities, sure (myself included), I feel confident saying the vast majority were cis women just trying to avoid harassment.

I cant get enough BTB. Thank you for posting these on YT

A fun fact - the woman used in all those edgey tRiGgErEd pictures was speaking out in favour of men's rights at the time. Basically in line with the intro that toxic attitudes exist on both sides of the argument. It's a bit sad to see men mock someone who was at that time an ally to them.

I think furries are chill because part of the process of developing a fursona is that it allows someone to experiment with aspects of themselves they might not have been otherwise comfortable with.

The sigma phenomenon is honestly so funny to me. These guys really went 'shit, in our bullshit system the top guys are popular and liked, but everyone hates us and thinks we're losers!. Should I change my behaviour? No! Actually I am a super special different boi that is just as cool as the alphas!'

Damn, this is super interesting because I got with at least a couple girls during my college years thanks to the internet, because we were using instant messaging (before texting was a thing). It made communicating less high-stakes and allowed me to craft my responses so I sounded as good as possible, and it still amazes me to this day that I was ever successful talking to these women. Granted, those relationships went nowhere but it’s fascinating how the early internet had so many possible iterations…

I'm so upset that they skipped the description of omega males because now i'm deathly curious what it said about those but theres no WAY i'm letting that into my search history

...Robert opening the podcast with using the rhetoric of the typical right-wing grifter (twisting words in ridiculous ways and talking over the other) was uncannily accurate. We should probably be happy he's a bastard who likes actual journalism.

I've been saying for a year or so now that a "sigma grindset" is a verb describing when someone takes a clip of Peaky Blinders or Breaking Saul or whatever where a character says something tough sounding, and then sets it to the song "Devil Eyes" by Hippie Sabotage and uploads it to RU-vid Shorts.

I dunno if this will get talked about at al but whenever I hear the manospere talking about alpha or omegas I cannot take it seriously because alphas & omegas are a part of a super popular gay fanfiction smut trope called omegaverse.

As a huge Lily Simpson fan it's so so weird hearing you bring her up in your podcast as a new listener.

I have, against my will, been forced to behold the physical form of Robert Evans

I generally like all these episodes. But this one had me saying out loud “that is really interesting” many times. Well done.

Is it different in the US? In Canada we have paternity leave. The only catch is that only one parent can claim maternity/paternity leave.

Another thing about Elliot...I heard about what Elliot did before I ever 'saw' him. I've always had a soft spot for twinks, and Elliot was exactly that (and right up my alley), and it broke my heart when I saw his face because this was clearly a guy who might have been gay or at least bi, needed to unlearn all the shit he was on, and just come out and start dealing with the real life problems and concerns to become a better man. *(like I did and am still trying to do)* I had that "i'm not gay" phase too, where nobody asked that and I told them that when talking about difficulties of attracting women back before I came out (because I had myself convinced that I was straight). Smh

I too was lifted out of online toxicity by kind wholesome furries! And now I spend time on the chans trying to do the same. A little bit of love, kindness, compassion and hope can go a looooong way.

"Dragon roleplay" yea that's exactly where the women on the internet were

The description of "deltas" and that it's "the most common one" seem like its tailor made for lonely dudes to latch on to as an entry point.

Yay for We Hunted the Mammoth! Where the Manosphere is tracked and mocked.

Holy crap its on RU-vid now!!!

Might I suggest instead, "Death to the False Emperor"

Somebody tell those freaks that John Wick had a wife.

So glad that Ted "Theodore" Beale shows up in here.

Fun fact: dragon furries sometimes go by "scalies" 👍

I sold my soul to my friend Marty in 4th grade. He had a turkey bacon pesto sandwich and it looked super tasty. I do not regret it at all, my soul isn't even worth a saltine cracker :)

Stay strong jamie ❤

Found out I'm a Goofy male today. Rarest of all males

Is that what robert Evans looks like? Not at all what I imagined

Gammas coming after Deltas? These people couldn't even remember in what order the letters of the Greek alphabet are arranged!

yes capital can be considered life form, the underlying material of capital is humans, just as the underlying material of human conscious is neurons, and all the way down to atomic structures. Both an atom and a dollar are not "alive" but are part of living processes

Oh man, I was on the Adult Swim message boards during all this history, I knew better than to go to SA or 4chan. I was a 16-18 year old punk, not some sicko.

Throw away your whole Greek alphabet. People don’t want alpha versions or beta versions or sigma versions or omega versions. They want the Full Release Version, the Release to Manufacturing Version. The mature, fully developed version, ready to take on the real world with courage and compassion and kindness.

This is a tough listen for me. I think under modern parlance I'm considered an incel, grew up a socially isolated nerd, and perhaps under different circumstances I could've become a radicalized sociopath like those discussed in the episode. It just so happens that I turned all my rage and bitterness and loneliness inward to myself, instead of outward to women. I also support bringing back fedoras. I grew up watching old movies, dammit, I want to wear a trench coat and a fedora and wander rainy night streets.

Why is John Wick a sigma male? The dude had a wife.

It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog 🐩

41:31 "more valuable to do that than create more value under capitalism." Depending on your propaganda consumption, some public figures would suggest we sacrifice our lives for the economy. (Glenn Beck during the pandemic)

4:25 I had actually just finished listening to the Nestor Makhno episodes for the first time shortly before this episode was uploaded, so I think I manifested this. You're welcome everyone.

Well shit now i lost the game. Thanks guys.

The cherry-picking of the “Alpha wolf” thing is pretty on-brand. Just look at how the same people use *half* the “bad apples” phrase. Or the bastardization of the “Bootstraps” myth.

What server, Robert?

In addition to taking a shower and learning to cook, I would include getting a dog (or cat).

Around the time you were encountering women in there 30s on the internet that helped you I came out as trans in my 20s thanks in part to help from a 30 something year old lesbian on a small Internet forum for a fetish I didn’t even have. 30 something year old Women on fetish forums are a force for good (the forum had a good SFW roleplaying subforum that a friend from another forum I was on invited me to join).

Lily's never heard of the manosphere AND she's never seen a John Wick movie!? Not very sigma of...her..

I'm a little younger than Robert, but I was a girl on the internet back in the 90s 00s days and I wouldn't admit to being a girl if you paid me. As soon as you say you're a girl you will be doubted, harassed endlessly, and at the same time creeped on. It's a very odd combo. I think the only places girls were girls were Gaia and Neopets. But basic html forums. Boy mode. Mmos. Boy mode. And a lot of the shit like tits or gtfo on more hostile boards just plain made me and other girls not want to be on them.

The whole 'capitalism functions like an AI' is a bit overly sensational and, I think, a little 'jungian' in nature? It's a bit like saying 'evolution' == 'intelligent design' simply because there's a process of selection occurring and assuming selection must be due to intent. A less sensationalist way of describing it is that capitalism operates like a simple algorithm that discourages behaviors that interrupt capitalism and encourages behaviors that perpetuate capitalism. It's just another way of looking at something that we already knew. To be fair. That's absolutely all forms of large enduring social movements. Most successful religions, for instance, propagate certain memes of social conduct and the sects that lose these traits tend to be winnowed away.

my fedora is the nice hat i where when i have to go to something formal and i need a hat because im bald

Yo, I totally get how pickup artistry was a demeaning thing, and going out to just insult women is a terrible way to live your life. I never got into that kind of thing, but it was more than just dudes trying to get laid. I say this in only positive light, women start off light years ahead of men, as girls, women mature faster, girls are far more emotionally intelligent, girls discuss relationships far more than boys. Then imagine being me, an incredibly naive guy, stunted view on relationships due to growing up in a church, with social anxiety. Suddenly there are guys TALKING about these things, discussions that women naturally have, have to come out in a very manufactured way in the form of a book lol. Women run circles around men, lets be honest, and even if it's framed wrong, at least people were discussing these things. I don't think women can truely comprehend how clueless I and many men actually are lmao and suddenly we were getting the right info in the wrong format of pick up artistry. Also, the podcast is talking about negging, which is an eye-rolling tactic, but don't pretend like women don't have their tests and situations they put men through haha. In case you are wondering at all, no, I never liked manipulating people, nor posted to 4Chan (I try to stay off FBI watchlists), nor went out for one night stands, nor peacocked around. In my 30's, I spent my 20's developing myself because I had a lot to work on, but I'm in a great relationship now. I would suggest a few books that are better to start with than pickup artistry related: "Influence: The psycology of persuassion", "Atomic Habits", and of course "How to Win Friends and Influence people".

@Behind the Bastards I'm an American and just love my Canadian naturally more progressive podcasts. We need your love and support as our neighbors that most of us never drank the maga punch and wanted Bernie and over 40.

Gimme a sip a' that Gamer Sludge (TM)

What's wild about the wolves thing...like why are we basing our behavior to them? Shouldn't it be to our closest animal relatives...chimps?

Furries saved me from being a garbage person too!

I’ve read way too much a/b/o fiction and let’s just say it comes from similar sources with very different outcomes

The internet has spawned a lot of stupid ****ing movements over the years.

Assuming a false identity online... who would do that... oh wait.... from day 1 that was me. Also, this all sounds so familiar yet foreign.... It's amazing what a good support and good family can bring to the table. (And no I ain't talking the Right wing ideal here... cause ALL of those... well, they don't function as far as I have seen....)

...and the rise of fascism.

Well - there's appropriate leave for having just given birth, and there's appropriate leave for new parents. And it's hardly unfair for a birth mother to get both and a father only the latter!

Did Robert just give a new job to the Turks from FFVII ?

👍

GQ, Esquire, Field and Stream, too

Alpha-Beta Males Theory. A theory based on data and fact from highschool tv drama scenarios. God damn its tiring.

That's my cat's motto!🐈

Why don't incels know the order of the Greek alphabet?

Sigma wolves also go by their scientific name of lupi mortui, which is Latin for 'dead wolves'

Well to be fair wolves in captivity are probably a better analog for humans than wolves in the wild. Something something Foucault.

Not just women..marginalized people

Sigma male is the macho equivalent of calling yourself agnostic. "I'm spiritual and enlightened, without buying into the SYSTEM like all the other sheeple, maaaaan!"

Did Cathy come out, yet?

The "Capitalism is a misaligned artificial intelligence" thing is something I realized independently about two years ago. Really helped transition me out of transhumanism and into communism too.

Shoutout from the furry community. You're welcome!