Black Pill and Modern Men

The “male loneliness epidemic” posits that men, especially young ones, are intrinsically alone. The working theory is that women are to blame. I’ve been lonely before, sure, but I’ve never found a convincing way to pin that feeling on half the human population. Besides, this particular song and dance has been around forever. Literature is full of it: sirens luring sailors to their deaths, Odysseus detoured by Circe, Paul D. undone by Sethe. Stories where a woman, or the idea of a woman, becomes the obstacle a man must overcome, the force that breaks him down so he can be reforged into something greater. Today, that same pattern shows up in the digital self-help warrens, where rejection and temptation are tools to be better.

I’m mostly discussing the Black Pill community, or as it’s better known to its consumers, the BP community. In their essay, “Misogynist Incels and Male Supremacism”, Megan Kelly, Alex DiBranco, and Dr. Julia R. DeCook describe the BP community as:

“…[accepting] the Red Pill view of society dominated by women but rejects individual-level attempts such as learning game to achieve a sexual relationship with women as misguided, asserting that only change at a societal level has the possibility to be effective. Black Pill adherents believe that looks are genetically determined, and that women choose sexual partners based solely on physical features (“lookism”), so whether or not a person will be an incel is predetermined.”

While this description does get to the basics of how the community operates on forums and more deep-rooted incel communities, it fails to examine how the community at large operates on less radical social media, such as TikTok. On TikTok itself, it’s hard not to scroll without seeing a popular new format where men post to the song ‘tower of memories’ by ivri. The lyrics used in the video are “I’m right where you left me/The tower of memories” with a before picture when the man was presumably recently broken up with, and an after picture where the man looks better, i.e, skinnier, more defined, but also better lighting and angle of photo. Of course, there’s nothing really wrong with these posts, other than being a tad dramatic and immature, but it’s important to understand where these posts lead and come from.

Upon watching a few of these posts, the algorithm begins to assume you’re into them, whether you stopped to hear the catchy part of the song, lingered to mock the melodrama, or were genuinely moved by the transformation arc. Soon enough, TikTok decides you want more videos of men changing, looking better, feeling better. And ignoring the obvious homoerotic undertones, it makes sense: there’s a large contingent of men, probably the majority, who are self-conscious and want to change something about themselves.

This is where the BP community slips in. What begins as innocuous self-improvement content starts curving toward a more fatalistic worldview. You’ll be introduced to “mewing,” a kind of orthodontic pseudoscience promising a sharper jawline. Then come the supplements, conveniently sold by the very people insisting you need them. And eventually, you encounter the community’s rating system, with its taxonomy of male features: “sub-5,” “normie,” “troglodyte.” A whole vocabulary designed to rationalize your insecurity.

Popular creators who espouse these views are guys like Clavicular, who tell you to bonesmash, quite literally micro-fracturing your bones to promote a greater jawbone and facial structure. And Cookie King (I know), who was once a pudgy young man, who, through looksmaxing (or just losing weight), now looks better. Cookie King himself acts as the main gate down the BP pipeline, as most of his previous content was comical ‘POV’ content. If you want to take a wild guess, yes, these guys are racist and, at the very best, idiots, with Clavicular recently joining Adin Ross’s SSB crew of streamers and wearing a hat with the N-word on it while debating another member of SSB on what the best race is. Cookie King has videos with ‘King of the Groypers’ Nick Fuentes. Both of these guys make boatloads of money off being dumbasses and promoting a worldview that asserts young men are being attacked and guys named Clavicular and Cookie King are there to help.

A lot of these problems young men have seem to come from a dialectic of both hating women and being utterly obsessed with them. To form your mindset and goals around women and getting women, despite also parroting views that they are intrinsically evil and have no contrition about their behavior towards men. Of course, it’s all a bit immature and can be written off as juvenile delinquency, but there is a world where these kids grow up with no pushback on their views. It’s sad to imagine a fifteen-year-old in the throes of puberty who thinks he can’t get girls because he doesn’t mew enough, and not just because he doesn’t know who he even is yet.

As someone who is in his early 20s, I’m lucky enough to have grown up in a world where this slop wasn’t available to me. Believe it or not, but I have held hands with a girl, despite not being the best-looking guy. Perhaps, and I might sound crazy here, it’s because I’m able to talk to girls without worrying if they notice that I haven’t been taking my ashwaganda supplements. The main thing is that this BP mindset conditions you to think about far more variables than there actually are. Are you nice? Are you funny? And importantly, do you think about women as people? I wish I were preaching to the choir here, but with such a large community prevalent here, and people profiting off this community, it’s worrying to think about the implications. I fear that most of this comes from a lack of a support system.

I’ve had relationships end, but in those times, I didn’t seek help from internet gurus who told me it was because I was a sub-5 primate. I reached out to friends who actually have a vested interest in seeing you get better. Guys like Clavicular don’t give a fuck about you and actually benefit from you not getting better. How else will he sell his brand as the savior of young men from evil vixens? But, your friends, the people who know you and importantly like you, will be there for you when it gets tough. It becomes hard to focus on women when you’re laughing with your friends. It becomes hard to remember mewing when you are halfway through a beer, watching a football game with your friends. 

The answer to stop this whole thing isn’t to effectively rewire the thought process of these young men, but to make them realize there are other things out there. Maybe the saddest part is how small the fix actually is. Just the ordinary comfort of being around people who don’t see you as a project. The BP worldview can’t account for this because it has nothing to sell you afterward. But friendship, inconveniently, is free, and it ruins the whole economy.