How much of "self improvement" is really just matching current male beauty standards?

[NoBiscuits]

When men realize money is attractive to women:
"I will have more money than the average man."

When men realize muscles are also attractive:
"I will have more money and be more fit than the average man."

Men then realize confidence is attractive too:
"I will have more money, be more fit, and have more confidence than the average man."

Then having interesting hobbies becomes the current thing, and everyone then adds that to the self improvement list as well.
etc.

Now there's a gigantic list of "self improvement" checkboxes to spend your time on, with many items on the list becoming more challenging to achieve as time goes on (eg. owning a car). We're at the point where learning about nootropics, jaw surgery, and face creams is somewhat common. The mantras that men are "transforming themselves" and "doing it for themselves" and "becoming men" will feel real (as achieving male beauty standards has become such a massive personal project in 2024). But "self improvement" is, ultimately, just matching the current male beauty standard and moving it to +1, is it not? It's just gotten hard to see under the massive list of current requirements.

The inspiration to this thread was hearing about how Rust recently became the official programming language of the US government (if you know, then you know). They used the last decade wisely, cooperated as a team, got funding and resources from the big fish, and are now managing something prestigious which secures their community stable, high income work + federal government authority for the rest of their lives. And they even got the satisfaction of purging out their straight white male compeitors in C, C#, and C++ from having a future.

There is/was a whole subsection of the internet for men (Manosphere + adjacent spheres), but it was mostly spent on just training men to become more attractive to women. Are we going to move on from this?

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

That depends on your motivation for improvement. Do you feel better about yourself when you improve yourself, or do you do it solely to be more attractive to the ladies?

It's just gotten hard to see under the massive list of current requirements.

Which requirements and who made them?

 

[NoBiscuits]

I think you're missing the point.

The point is that "improving yourself" is ultimately obscuring the real goal, which is to hit the current male beauty standards, and that the last decade of Manosphere has been pretty wasteful if this was the underlying goal (especially when comparing ourselves to how those who routinely boot us from polite society have been doing).

 

[CAPSLOCK BANDIT]

Self improvement is not a concept of comparison, but rather a comparison of concept... It's the fact that doing it is infinitely better than doing nothing, you may not find success with women but rather the realization that this pursuit is not a functional one, but rather a dysfunctional one when placed above all other things.

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

I think you're missing the point.
The point is that "improving yourself" is ultimately obscuring the real goal, which is to hit the current male beauty standards, and that the last decade of Manosphere has been pretty wasteful if this was the underlying goal (especially when comparing ourselves to how those who routinely boot us from polite society have been doing).

No, you're missing my point.
I've been improving myself all my life, but not to attain any beauty standards. That's a fool's game.

 

[NoBiscuits]

Sure. But is "self improvement" trying to reach male beauty standards or is it not?

Like, what are we trying to do?

We can obscure it all we want, but what's the bottom line here? Be hotter than the other guy, or at least feel better about ourselves for being hotter than someone not trying? To busy ourselves because it beats doing nothing?

The courtship between men and women today is a total disaster. Marriages are unstable, broken homes are common, women out-perform men on a regular basis professionally and socially, the official policy is gynocentrism, Our underlying problems come from the way we've been ruled for the last 60+ years. Our response is to, what, present ourselves well for maybe getting a piece of that rotten pie, hoping we don't get sick from it?

How about asserting ourselves as the ones who decide what goes in the pie to begin with? This beats out begging for a piece, does it not?

For the record, I'm not an incel, and I'm not talking from an incel perspective. I just watched a team of, quite frankly, fanatical re***ds score yet another victory on making the lives of me and my colleagues miserable. And I'm wondering what all of us kicked to the curb of polite society plan to do about it.

If in the (greater) Manosphere, the direction stays the same (ie. keep trying to match male beauty standards) while all this keeps happening, then sooner or later I'm going to ask hard questions. Why is it that when a bunch of insightful men come together online, we waste time on s*** that doesn't matter instead of organizing ourselves to be in a position where we call the shots on a large scale?

 

[CAPSLOCK BANDIT]

Sure. But is "self improvement" trying to reach male beauty standards or is it not?

Like, what are we trying to do?

We can obscure it all we want, but what's the bottom line here? Be hotter than the other guy, or at least feel better about ourselves for being hotter than someone not trying? To busy ourselves because it beats doing nothing?

The courtship between men and women today is a total disaster. Marriages are unstable, broken homes are common, women out-perform men on a regular basis professionally and socially, the official policy is gynocentrism, Our underlying problems come from the way we've been ruled for the last 60+ years. Our response is to, what, present ourselves well for maybe getting a piece of that rotten pie, hoping we don't get sick from it?

How about asserting ourselves as the ones who decide what goes in the pie to begin with? This beats out begging for a piece, does it not?

For the record, I'm not an incel, and I'm not talking from an incel perspective. I just watched a team of, quite frankly, fanatical re***ds score yet another victory on making the lives of me and my colleagues miserable. And I'm wondering what all of us kicked to the curb of polite society plan to do about it.

If in the (greater) Manosphere, the direction stays the same (ie. keep trying to match male beauty standards) while all this keeps happening, then sooner or later I'm going to ask hard questions. Why is it that when a bunch of insightful men come together online, we waste time on s*** that doesn't matter instead of organizing ourselves to be in a position where we call the shots on a large scale?

You should try condensing this down into an idea more palatable, of course everything is gonna seem half baked when your own ideas are half baked

 

[NoBiscuits]

You should try condensing this down into an idea more palatable, of course everything is gonna seem half baked when your own ideas are half baked

I don't know what you mean by this. What's half baked?

I've mentioned before what potential I see in the Manosphere here:

Are we (Red Pill) the bad guys?

The RP has become mainstream because of douches like Tate and Mystery, and not in a good light. Hell, when a woman in her 50s starts talking to me about "red pill" I know the cat is out of the bag. Couched properly red pill ideology can be consumed by most as common sense, the issue is the way...

www.sosuave.net

Recently, I made a list on a thread about what it means to be called 'successful' here:

What It Takes to Be Successful in the 21st Century

Todays century is competitive. I'm always saying to people who want to make it in life and be successful they have to compete with 7.95 billion people in this planet. You have to be exceptional at what you do. There is no other way. It does not matter if you go to American Idol and you win...

www.sosuave.net

I also have some posts giving my 2 cents on the definition of 'alpha male.' I admit the second link is wordy and unappealing.

WTF - Alpha male boot camp?

www.sosuave.net

Different definitions of "beta male" from different people

I've noticed different spheres in the manosphere define and rank beta males completely differently. For those coming from a more PUA side (most of this forum), there are only alpha and beta males. The beta male is seen negatively as a weak chump who gets settled for and pays the bills in a...

www.sosuave.net

The common theme among all these posts is that it decouples the goal of attracting women from our motivations, and they bring us out of this "individualist" frame to instead cooperate on achieving common ends (ie. get organized to achieve specific things that benefit society as a whole). The goal is to put more deserving people into positions of real social authority instead of the complete insanity we have now. The "more deserving people" are literally us who have watched said insanity unfold without ever being given a seat at the table. I'm tired of watching myself and my peers continuously take damage.

I wish those Rust devs were busy with going to the gym, eating the keto diet, having sex on Tinder, dealing with their boyfriends or experimenting with different face creams instead of crushing the future of C devs and securing high ranking leadership positions.

 

[CAPSLOCK BANDIT]

I don't know what you mean by this. What's half baked?

I've mentioned before what potential I see in the Manosphere here:

Are we (Red Pill) the bad guys?

The RP has become mainstream because of douches like Tate and Mystery, and not in a good light. Hell, when a woman in her 50s starts talking to me about "red pill" I know the cat is out of the bag. Couched properly red pill ideology can be consumed by most as common sense, the issue is the way...

www.sosuave.net

Recently, I made a list on a thread about what it means to be called 'successful' here:

What It Takes to Be Successful in the 21st Century

Todays century is competitive. I'm always saying to people who want to make it in life and be successful they have to compete with 7.95 billion people in this planet. You have to be exceptional at what you do. There is no other way. It does not matter if you go to American Idol and you win...

www.sosuave.net

I also have some posts giving my 2 cents on the definition of 'alpha male.' I admit the second link is wordy and unappealing.

WTF - Alpha male boot camp?

www.sosuave.net

Different definitions of "beta male" from different people

I've noticed different spheres in the manosphere define and rank beta males completely differently. For those coming from a more PUA side (most of this forum), there are only alpha and beta males. The beta male is seen negatively as a weak chump who gets settled for and pays the bills in a...

www.sosuave.net

The common theme among all these posts is that it decouples the goal of attracting women from our motivations, and they bring us out of this "individualist" frame to instead cooperate on achieving common ends (ie. get organized to achieve specific things that benefit society as a whole). The goal is to put more deserving people into positions of real social authority instead of the complete insanity we have now. The "more deserving people" are literally us who have watched said insanity unfold without ever being given a seat at the table. I'm tired of watching myself and my peers continuously take damage.

I wish those Rust devs were busy with going to the gym, eating the keto diet, having sex on Tinder, dealing with their boyfriends or experimenting with different face creams instead of crushing the future of C devs and securing high ranking leadership positions.

Half baked means not thinking your ideas through and putting the onus on everyone else, like I'm not going through 3 different threads on top of reading your already 8 paragraphs just to interface with some idea that you could easily boil down into a sentence or 2.

You seem manic.

 

[BaronOfHair]

When men realize money is attractive to women:
"I will have more money than the average man."

When men realize muscles are also attractive:
"I will have more money and be more fit than the average man."

Men then realize confidence is attractive too:
"I will have more money, be more fit, and have more confidence than the average man."

Then having interesting hobbies becomes the current thing, and everyone then adds that to the self improvement list as well.
etc.

Now there's a gigantic list of "self improvement" checkboxes to spend your time on, with many items on the list becoming more challenging to achieve as time goes on (eg. owning a car). We're at the point where learning about nootropics, jaw surgery, and face creams is somewhat common. The mantras that men are "transforming themselves" and "doing it for themselves" and "becoming men" will feel real (as achieving male beauty standards has become such a massive personal project in 2024). But "self improvement" is, ultimately, just matching the current male beauty standard and moving it to +1, is it not? It's just gotten hard to see under the massive list of current requirements.

The inspiration to this thread was hearing about how Rust recently became the official programming language of the US government (if you know, then you know). They used the last decade wisely, cooperated as a team, got funding and resources from the big fish, and are now managing something prestigious which secures their community stable, high income work + federal government authority for the rest of their lives. And they even got the satisfaction of purging out their straight white male compeitors in C, C#, and C++ from having a future.

There is/was a whole subsection of the internet for men (Manosphere + adjacent spheres), but it was mostly spent on just training men to become more attractive to women. Are we going to move on from this?

Same way women who desire high quality men have to learn the following:

That's just reality, for both sexes. Somewhere around 2016, entirely too many of us were hoodwinked into believing that unless we create a Utopia, where everyone can have a great life, no matter how much(or how little)effort we exert in the pursuit of such an existence, all is lost

And that gender really does exist

 

[BillyPilgrim]

No OP, we need MOAR treadmill

 

[NoBiscuits]

Half baked means not thinking your ideas through and putting the onus on everyone else, like I'm not going through 3 different threads on top of reading your already 8 paragraphs just to interface with some idea that you could easily boil down into a sentence or 2.

You seem manic.

Then don't read it and also don't comment. Like, really. Please don't. I don't appreciate using time to convey ideas clearly just to get psychologized by someone who didn't want to to spend the 50 seconds to read what was said.

My idea seems half baked because you literally didn't read it or any of the reasoning that went into it. That's all it is.

A 250 page book can be read in a single afternoon. This thread is, what, the two typed pages total? Idk what to tell you.

 

[CAPSLOCK BANDIT]

Then don't read it and also don't comment. Like, really. Please don't. I don't appreciate using time to convey ideas clearly just to get psychologized by someone who didn't want to to spend the 50 seconds to read what was said.

My idea seems half baked because you literally didn't read it or any of the reasoning that went into it. That's all it is.

A 250 page book can be read in a single afternoon. This thread is, what, the two typed pages total? Idk what to tell you.

So because you can't explain your ideas in a well and thought out way, I shouldn't participate? Good luck with that.

Ironically, I'm probably one of the only posters on here that would actually engage with you on some pieces of this however your ideas are so jumbled and lacking cohesion, they are hard to interface with, but just glazing over it, the theme seems to be some thing about men organizing and the reason men don't organize is because other groups and even institutions feel threatened by organized men and try to attach labels to them like incel, patriarchy, list goes on which follows the members of these groups into their own individual personal lives and I don't feel like being grouped together with these people myself.

Anyways, good luck with you whole "We need to copy the Rust devs!" or whatever, I've added you to my ignore list so you can freely be as mentally ill as you like unimpeded by reality.

 

[NoBiscuits]

Literally didn't read anything, made his own assumptions to fill in the blanks, and then got mad at me because what he made up in his head didn't make sense. Then psycholigizes me as having a mental disease.

Unbelievable.

I think I'm done with this thread.

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

I think I'm done with this thread.

Well... maybe if you're done quarrelling you can answer my questions?

That depends on your motivation for improvement. Do you feel better about yourself when you improve yourself, or do you do it solely to be more attractive to the ladies?

Which requirements and who made them?

I'm all for personal growth, but I don't do it because it makes me more attractive. Same with motorcycling, reading, martial arts, et cetera. I do that because I enjoy 'improving myself', but I don't do it to attract women. I haven't gone without sex since I was seventeen. I've had to prevent several women from moving into my apartment. I don't need to become more attractive.

And then you're talking about:

Now there's a gigantic list of "self improvement" checkboxes to spend your time on, with many items on the list becoming more challenging to achieve as time goes on (eg. owning a car).

Who made the list? You let others dictate what you should improve upon? Can't think for yourself?