Inside the Manosphere, Public Disorder, Smoking
Wall Street Journal
I have a new piece out in the Wall Street Journal about the recent Netflix documentary “Inside the Manosphere.”
Louis Theroux Exposes the Manosphere Scam (alternate link here)
Excerpt:
A new Netflix documentary takes viewers into “the manosphere,” a loose network of YouTubers, podcasters, live-streamers and online pranksters. Those interviewed in Louis Theroux’s documentary, “Inside the Manosphere,” claim to teach young men how to become dominant, wealthy and irresistible to women. They pitch a specific idea about male worth. Women enter the world with innate value, they say, though they often contradict this by telling their followers to mistreat women. A man must earn his value, the logic goes, through money, sex and status. Otherwise, he is worthless.
This is a bleak message. It is also a brilliant sales strategy. First you convince young men that they are nothing. Then you charge them to become something. It’s one of the oldest cons in the world, updated for the age of the algorithm.
Read the whole thing here or here.
The Psychology of Morality:
My new lecture series “The Psychology of Morality” is now available exclusively at Peterson Academy.
I delivered six lectures in front of a live studio audience that explore the origins of morality. The course examines the distinction between moral philosophy and moral psychology, showing how emotions and intuitions often guide our judgments more than rational principles. It also investigates frameworks such as Haidt’s moral foundations theory and Gray’s moral dyad theory. The series also covers dark personality traits and their relationship with moral behavior, and concludes by examining the relationship between morality and happiness, sex differences in moral judgment, and moral development across the lifespan.
Enroll here for immediate access.
Here’s the trailer:
Links and recommendations:
The Contradictions of Thomas Jefferson by Edward Short
Follow me on Instagram here. The platform is less volatile and more chill than Twitter/X, so I post some spicier excerpts from my readings on my IG stories
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Three interesting findings:
1. For narcissism, there is evidence of assortative mating. In other words, birds of a feather flock together. People high in grandiose narcissism tend to be somewhat more likely to partner with people who are also high in narcissism. (source).
2. The ability to read emotions from faces peaks between the ages of 15 and 30. Perhaps because this is the period of life when people are most likely to be in search of romantic partners. Women at all ages are consistently better than men at reading emotions from faces. (source). Relatedly, from Dominic Cumming’s Substack: “Lee Kuan Yew was hugely lucky with his wife, Choo, who was extremely supportive and had great feel for people’s true motives/feelings. {Something I’ve learned over the years is how often some women reliably spot things that are hidden to men including myself — things like treachery, unhappiness, dislike between two people in a room.” In the 1960s, Lee (ordinarily an extremely savvy man) was unaware that his newly formed political party was being infiltrated by communist supporters of Mao Zedong. Lee’s wife explained to him that his supposed political allies were intending to use him as a moderate spokesman/frontman while they hoped to carry out a cultural revolution in Singapore.
3. Six key rules for maintaining a stable friendship. (source: Friends by Robin Dunbar).
The paperback version of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available.
If you have gained any value from this newsletter and want to support my work, please buy a copy today. For yourself. For a friend or a loved one. If you can’t afford it, please support your local library.
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Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)
Aella’s essay was like red meat 🥩 this week.