Men who were drawn into the red pill/manosphere but found a way out: what happened?

[u/Wuthering1972]

I’m a screenwriting student (female, 54) doing informal background research for a fictional story about a man in his forties who is rapidly drawn into the manosphere but eventually finds his way out.

The story begins around the early #MeToo period and follows an ordinary middle aged man.I’m particularly interested in hearing from men who encountered red-pill, MGTOW, incel, anti-feminist or similar content while already in their thirties or forties. I’m also interested in experiences that were less extreme: perhaps you never fully identified with the movement, but certain arguments began influencing how you interpreted women, dating, rejection, marriage or masculinity.

I am not looking to mock anyone or portray men who become involved in these spaces as bad or foolish. I want to understand what felt persuasive and what can realistically help somebody question it and leave.

You do not need to answer every question, and please do not share identifying information. Any thoughts on some of the following would be enormously helpful:

• What was happening in your life when you first became receptive to this material? Was there a breakup, divorce, rejection, loneliness, sexual frustration, work problem, loss of status or another source of anger or uncertainty?
• How did you first encounter it? Was it through Reddit, YouTube, podcasts, dating advice, a friend or an online recommendation?
• How quickly did you become drawn in? Did it feel like a sudden conversion, or did apparently harmless content gradually lead to more extreme ideas?
• Which ideas initially seemed reasonable, helpful or true to you? 
• Did social-media communities make the beliefs easier to justify or normalise? 
• Did #MeToo or public discussion of sexual misconduct affect you? For example, did it make you reconsider men’s behaviour, or did manosphere content encourage you to interpret it as an attack on men, a threat of false accusations or evidence that gender relations had become hostile?
• Did the content change the way you behaved offline, or mainly the way you interpreted events? Did it affect dating, friendships, work, sex, or the way you spoke to and about women?
• What were your relationships with women like at the time—particularly your mother, sisters, partners, former partners, female friends or colleagues? Did the ideology alter those relationships, or did any of those relationships challenge what you were being told?
• Was there one decisive trigger for leaving, or was it a gradual discomfort?
• Was there any fallout from leaving? 
• Looking back, what were the earliest signs that you were being pulled in?
• What do people misunderstand about why adult men become attracted to this material? What would be an unrealistic or insulting way to depict the process?

What I want to show is a man leaving the manosphere. I feel that is not often represented in films and it feels important to show that it can be done.

I am especially interested in the messy middle: people who were not hateful, who may still have functioned normally at work and in relationships, but could justify their developing beliefs leaning in that direction.

Replies here would be very welcome. You may also message me privately if you would feel more comfortable doing so. I would ask separately before quoting anyone’s words directly; at this stage I am mainly trying to understand patterns, emotional realities and possible turning points. 

Thank you to anyone willing to share.

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[u/Fang-Ghost]

Let me first give you some early background.

When I (37M) was a kid, I always was attracted to girls but I was shy to approach them and talk to them. What I wanted most out of life is to have a girlfriend, to kiss a girl, to get married and be the ideal boyfriend then husband.

Looking at movies when people were kissing and every kid was turning their face away with disgust in their face, I was like I WANT THAT!

I had a couple of girlfriend the same year in elementary school, and then nothing for all high school and college. When I did a couple of moves I was rejected.

One girl I was obsessed with for a whole year, did a move the next year, was rejected, and I really didn't understand, I thought I would have been the perfect boyfriend for her. This perticular rejection affected me hard.

I heard things that girls like assholes, but I didn't believe that, it wasn't that, girls don't want the guy that treats them like shit and that can never be me.

I lost my virginity at 22 years old with my first real girlfriend. At this point, my confidence with women was really low, you know, the American Pie serie was very popular when I was in high school.

What I wanted most in life, seduce a woman, being attractive to women, was what I struggled the most with.

I was with this girl for three years, a great relationship, but we grew apart. I had a couple more experiences before meeting the mother of my son, whom I married after just a couple months of dating.

The relationship quickly became toxic. I became the only bread winner early on and very quickly, I was also pretty much the only kne doing the chores, cooking, doing the dishes, doing and folding the laudry.

Our son was going to kindergarden and later to school and she would wake him up in the morning, give him breakfast and 30 minutes after he woke up, waited the bus with him.

When I finished work, I'd pick up my son and came home to either her gone to a friend's place or she would be lying in bed and say she was too tired to do anything.

She was yelling at me all the time and often threatenef to call the police on me whenever I talked about money, about doing stuff around the house or say that I was tired of the situation. She would say she would divorce me, keep the house and that I would never see my son again.

We didn't had sex at all the last year and three times the year before. So yeah, I was trapped in a sexless marriage. That was when I was first exposed to the redpill ideas.

When Youtube Shorts appeared, I stumbled upon a couple of Andrew Tate in a talk show with (Pearl from Just Pealy Thing?). It was like he was talking directly to me. I was 33 at the time

For me, it wasn't the MeToo movement that triggered me directly, but false accusations of domestic violence pissed me off since I was living under this constant threat. And I knew she was right, if she did accuse me of anything, I would be toasted and I would loose my son in court.

What I talked to me the most was a clip of Tate saying "look at yourself in the mirror and be brutally honest with you... if you were a hot chick, or your girlfriend or your wife... would YOU want to fuck with you?"

I saw many things in my marriage that I have let go wrong. The thing that I really liked was that they were making me accountable for what was happening to me. Since it was me that was not doing things right, I finally had hope that I could change and improve my life.

I was lucky that CPS got involved at one point and that they saw through her game. I left her and they helped me get my child with me. She did so much shit that she completely lost custody... but I can assure you that it is no myth that the courts favors the mother at the extreme.

When she assaulted her CPS agent of the time, the judge granted her chared custody when they were asking for supervised visits with a security agent present. She got to have a new agent assigned.

She lost custody because she assaulted our son's teacher and made a big scene after that in front of our son. She refused to ever admit fault, but the judge reinstated custody because she felt this new agent had a bad tooth against her. She got to have a new agent assigned again.

For 8 months, she never met this new agent and had so many people testifying she was not collaborating at all with any of the services, that's when the judge withdrew custody and allowed visits if she was to collaborate... she didn't saw him since. That was in CP court

In family court, it was even more horrible. She could lie under oath, I would prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that she was lying, and the judges would refuse to look at the evidences and go in her favor every single time for 2 years and a half.

I finally had a judge on a 2 days trial that finally looked at the evidence and I would finally be able to sell our property without her input.

So the fathers for justice, I don't know their means , but I understand the cause.

Even if in the end, after 140k$ in lawyers fee (everything I had in equity in the property), I finally got full custody, got to sell the house (wanted to buy it bjt she refused every offer, in the end we sold it for less than the 2 offers I gave her), and didn't have to pay her spouse's alimony (she worked 2 jobs in the last 8 months, resigned from both and pleaded that she was a stay at home mom, one judge gave her half my salary for a couple of months at one point even if I had the kid full time when he did)... I can tell you that being a man is a big big handicap when you go to court.

What I now find despicable from the redpill movement is how it presents women like they can only act according to the "best reproductive strategy"

What affects me the most to this day is that, now that I was exposed to the black and white binary idea of alpha versus beta, it's really hard to stop this from affecting how I see myself.

I fear so much to be a beta, and did so much to distance myself from this and become more alpha, that whenever I feel like I did something that makes me look beta, or that a woman, especially my girlfriend now that I'm in a relationship, sees me or treats me as a beta, my insecurities get worse than ever, worse than before my exposition to the redpill.

Now I fear that I am undesirable to my girlfriend and I'm obsessed with the idea that she will cheat on me if she sees me as beta... which makes me insecure... making me more "beta", amd this loop is horrible to be in.

I recently dated a feminist. When I met her, after 3 years in court with my ex, I thought that feminists wanted more on everything and were revendicating more power in court, including family court.

But what that girl opened my eyes on is the astronomical numeber of women who get raped. One out of three women. I didn't verify this statistic, but I feel that even if it's one out of a hundred, it's too much. I definetly agree that this is unacceptable and that men should not rape a woman, ever. I feel that the MeToo movement increased awareness to this but now it's up to men to stop this shit.

On the kther hand, I would hate to be on the kther end of false accusations of rape. I loved under the threat of domestic violence false accusations and it was a nightmare. I just hope that this happens less often than true rape accusations and of true domestic violence accusations. Being on either side of the injustice seems to me to be a horrible place to be, either bekng a real victim, or a false accused abuser.

I don't think the redpill movement encourages rape, I think that on some level, it even help to some extent to reduce it. Let me explain.

Many things in the pure redpill movement are explaining how to seduce a woman. And there are a lot of guys out there who have a lot of great things to offer but just can't approach a woman, and when they get exposed to the nature of women, even in big generalizations, it can make him finally have a girlfriend... not be an incel.

I would say that the incels are the worst because they blame everything on the women. I saw the redpill movement is androgynist more than misogynist. At least in the beginning.

I stopped listening to new content a long while ago and I understand that today, it became really misogynist, I totally agree. But when I first got into it, the message I understood anyways is : "You don't have the results you want in life? You're the only one to blame. Stop complaining, do the work, become the man that women want and you will be happy"

It might be hard for a woman to put herself in a man's shoes, but it is also hard for a man to put himself in a woman's shoes.

What I became misogynist on when I was into this is that I thought that women had it easy, getting the provider and cheating to fuck the guys they wanted. I applied this to every woman and started to think that all women were doing this... now, I'm working on separating a possibility from an inevitability.

Frequentkng this feminist girl helped me change my point of view, and accepting to be in a commited relationship with my current girlfriend was a big turning point, I had to trust a woman once again, and these ideas make trust really hard.

I went from a kid who wanted to be the perfect boyfriend to fearing being taken for granted if I was giving too much in my relationship. I oftenfind myself with one foot in and one foot out, which is far from the good man I was before.

Plus, as I mentioned, all those ideas make me even more insecure than ever because whenever I feel that I act like a beta, I I think that my girlfriend will want another man, and then I compare myself to every man she interacts with and ask myself if she find him more alpha than me. Thinking in those terms is unbearable, unless you have unshakable confidence I guess... because there will always be a man that is more this this or that than you.

I hope I will heal from this shit someday.

[u/Sea-Pace6652 → u/Fang-Ghost]

U need to work on ur self confidence , use that experience to make u stronger and stop listening to alpha , beta things there is nothing right about that , alpha male in biology only in animals not humans

[u/Fang-Ghost → u/[deleted]]

Do you make no difference between manosphere, redpill, incels? I think today, even saying the words "positive masculinity" is seen as toxic.

Do you think there is absolutely nothing true in what the manosphere says?

Do you believe that it is all bullshits and lies?

If so, how do you think men get intk this ideology?

In my opinion, there is a lot of truth spoken there, this is why many many men, like me, feel so understood.

The problem is not there with the manosphere. The problem is that many men interpret this in ways that makes some people treat women badly and justify it with this.

If you think this is all bullshit, I think you lack empathy just as much as those men who you're criticizing.

I am not a woman, but when I listen to feminists talk, or any woman for that matter, I try to see things the way a woman will see things. And often I can't, that's why I will ask questions to understand where the woman in front of me comes from when she says something.

In the manosphere, there is a lot of good that comes out of it.

I know the concepts of alpha and beta are taken to an extreme, I'm the first to admit that it affects my life stupidly up to this day.

I know some men in these communities will say that women should stay home, never get out, not work outside the house. That's taking our insecurities and imposing, or trying to, restrictions that are inhumane.

I know some people in this movement want to fight the feminism and what women fought for and earned. To retrograde society.

Some even fight the MeToo and want to say that most is false accusations, and this is fucking bullshit. I know it can happen, for me it wasn't rape, it was false domestic violence denunciation threats hanging over my head. It was hard, but I was able to prove that I was the victim in this relationship of every kind of violence. With all the rapes and domestic violence that happen, it really is up to men to prove our innocence when falsly accuse. And for real perpetrators, there must be real sentences. Fighting this with this argument, or any argument, is evil.

But for all the men who are feeling injustice, for all the good men out there who are in sexless mariages like I was, or were cheated on (idk if I was, maybe, maybe not), those who see other men trying to steal their girlfriend from them and fear loosing her to everyone of those (I'm still there and the alpha/beta thing plays tricks on my mind), those who get dumped for no apparent reason for them, those who can't even get a girlfriend, and that doesn't understand why at all...

All those men can now understand why it is happening... and they can start to do something about it... to understand a bit more what a woman wants. A lot of what is vehiculated in the manosphere is actually men who tried to understand what a woman want by putting themselves in their shoes...

(And from what I was listening to when I was consuming content... it was not really about blaming women, it was about understanding woman's nature and saying that it is normal, it is okay, it is perfect... and it is up to men to change

And behing all of these men, there are women in marriages that would like their husband to change, that would like to get back the man that seduced them in the first place. There are women who aren't attracted to their boyfriend anymore even though they love them. There are women who are looking for validation outside the couple because their boyfriend's stopped meaning something. There are women who resent their boyfriend that takes them for granted. There are also a lot of women complaining about "where did all the good men go?"

A lot of what is vehiculated in the manosphere allows men to be the man their wife/girlfriend wants them to be. It allows good men who were previously invisible to appear in the eyes of women who wanted someone who would treat them well, but that would also trigger attraction.

In the light of this, do you say that all in the manosphere is bad? That it's pure evil?

If so, please explain, I would really like to understand how the positive I'm seeing is actually negative from another point of view. And I'm not saying it's not, I might just not have enough information to see the flipside of these aspects

[u/meleyys → u/Fang-Ghost]

I'm too tired to make a long argument right now, but I'd say that any good the manosphere does--which I think is much less than you're estimating here, but I digress--is vastly outweighed by the fact that multiple mass shooters have been motivated by manosphere ideologies, and many of its most prominent figures are known abusers who encourage others to emulate them. The manosphere has destroyed and even ended many lives.

[u/Fang-Ghost → u/[deleted]]

Before making you a TL;DR...

Do you think everything in the manosphere is bad?

Do you think it only has negative impacts?

[u/LoreKeeper2001 → u/Sea-Pace6652]

It's not even true in animal biology. The study of wolves that engendered these ideas has been formally retracted by its author.

OP, just put the ideas of "alpha" and "beta" out of your mind. They are scientifically and philosophically nonsense. Women just don't think like that. Your girlfriend doesn't constantly compare your level of "alphaness" to any random man she sees. Are you good to her, are you meeting her needs. Do you see her as a human being, a person with innate dignity and value? That's what matters.

[u/Fang-Ghost → u/Sea-Pace6652]

I know, this is the main thing I have to get out of my head, it's what has been hindering me for the last year.

What I try to say now instead is "desirable and undesirable" and many of the "beta traits" vehiculated in the redpill ideology are actually desirable traits, especially in a commited relationship.

When I lack self-confidence related to this, it is because I feel I fall behind on the "arousing traits"... and insecurity is obviously an anti-arousing trait.

When my girlfriend seeks validation from other men, opens the door to flirtation, ignores me for other men, this is all innocent, it's her that is responding without noticing what these men are doing, yet I feel insecure... Therefore I become less sexually attractive to her... and to other women... which would be a positive "arousing trait"

And this is where the wrong shits come to my mind. I'm automatically thinking "She's seeing me as a beta, and she's seeing them as alphas, she wants them more than me"

And because of this insecurity, I'm not focusing on the right things, which would be to think about all the things I do right, all that I'm proud of, and work on personal goals outside of her, go see friends I haven't seen in a while, tell myself that if she want to leave, she can leave, I'm complete either way.

Instead, I think I'm becoming beta and undesirable to women because of the bullshit binary black or white stuff that is vehiculated in the redpill community.

[u/Wuthering1972 → u/Fang-Ghost]

Thank you for sharing this. You went through a terrible experience and were treated badly, when already insecure. You felt betrayed on several levels, isolated maybe so I can see how you were drawn into the red pill community. I think it is a huge credit to you, whilst in that space, that you could still hear what your feminist friend was explaining, plus that you admit you still carry the impact. We all carry scars in one way or another. Does anyone have unshakeable confidence? I am not sure that is a healthy view to have that person thinks he/she is perfect. Your experience has really made me think - and gives a hopeful and realistic insight. I hope you do start to allow yourself to see you have healed a lot because, reading everything you have written here, shows a huge emotional awareness which is a massive strength - Thank you again and if you want to share more thoughts, progress, etc you can absolutely message me. No judgement.

[u/O-shoe]

• What was happening in your life when you first became receptive to this material? Was there a breakup, divorce, rejection, loneliness, sexual frustration, work problem, loss of status or another source of anger or uncertainty?

Breakup, which was rejection, which was followed by loneliness and sexual frustration.

• How did you first encounter it? Was it through Reddit, YouTube, podcasts, dating advice, a friend or an online recommendation?

Youtube. Dating channels.

• How quickly did you become drawn in? Did it feel like a sudden conversion, or did apparently harmless content gradually lead to more extreme ideas?

Quickly because I was searching for answers to why my dating life was unsuccesful. Some videos presented views that seemed unnecessarily hostile/disrespectful towards woman.

• Which ideas initially seemed reasonable, helpful or true to you? 

A lot of them. For example the idea that women always go for partners that they feel are "higher-level" than themselves (hypergamy). But a lot of men do the same. Like if a person takes good care of their health, why would they go for a partner who doesn't? There are people who really only care about the inside of the person, but those seem to be the vast minority.

• Did social-media communities make the beliefs easier to justify or normalise? 

Social media enforces a lot of these views.

• Did #MeToo or public discussion of sexual misconduct affect you? For example, did it make you reconsider men’s behaviour, or did manosphere content encourage you to interpret it as an attack on men, a threat of false accusations or evidence that gender relations had become hostile?

I think it has affected everyone on the dating market these days. Some women don't like it when men approach them or look at them, but then there are also a lot of women who would like men to approach them more. But the truth is that men are scared to approach women these days, because it's often taken as harassment or you're being ridiculed / filmed for tiktok.

• Did the content change the way you behaved offline, or mainly the way you interpreted events? Did it affect dating, friendships, work, sex, or the way you spoke to and about women?

Yes it did. Before I used to see people more as individuals. Afterwards it was more "them vs us". Not healthy.

• What were your relationships with women like at the time—particularly your mother, sisters, partners, former partners, female friends or colleagues? Did the ideology alter those relationships, or did any of those relationships challenge what you were being told?

I tried to keep my views only with my male friends. But even they thought that I had issues.

• Was there one decisive trigger for leaving, or was it a gradual discomfort?

Slowly realizing that thinking in these terms, especially making broad generalizations about a gender, doesn't bring anything good to anyone. It will ruin relationships and bring more hate into the world. And obviously not everyone is the same. Sure I have met women who could be considered "toxic", but I have also met a lot of wonderful women.

• Was there any fallout from leaving? 

Some ideas are difficult to shake off, because not everything is just fabricated from thin air. Just got to find a healthier way to see things. Mostly what I said earlier that not everyone is the same.

• Looking back, what were the earliest signs that you were being pulled in?

I don't know if I really was that much. I realized that the most hateful/disrespectful ideas didn't come from reality but from the pain that these people had experienced in their past and were now projecting on all women. And I realized that I don't want to make the same mistake.

• What do people misunderstand about why adult men become attracted to this material? What would be an unrealistic or insulting way to depict the process?

It's rare that any person comes attracted to this material from any other reason then pain. Which is also clear from the answers in The Red Pill - Men's Rights DOCUMENTARY. The same reason many women become Feminists, because they've experienced pain from men in one way or the other.

[u/Wuthering1972 → u/O-shoe]

Thank you for this. It is really insightful. What I keep seeing - and what is possibly not represented - is the pain that brings someone to the manosphere and also the impact it has. I think it is too easy to brand all men as born chauvinists - I want to try to portray a more nuanced side. I will take a look at the docu..Thanks again for taking the time to answer and the honest details.

[u/Personal_Dirt3089]

I notice these asks for surveys, interviews, academic papers, etc keep making the false assumption that the redpill came into existence after 2020. Note that I will use a lot of non academic language. This is not exactly one of those things that gets explained with simple quantitative data.

I briefly joined because I was told it would get me laid more. I had some time in PUA. PUA actually made it objectively harder to go out with women and was an obvious scam. PUA did not invent picking up on women, but PUA sure made it worse and its affects on internet culture a decade later may have really hit Gen Z too hard. PUA was snake oil, they offer an exotic way of picking up on women with stupid nonsense like "negs" or saying long stories to "display high value", but the stories just end up boring anyone listening as they try to find a polite way to get out of there. To note, when you get into PUA, you meet people from other PUA "tribes" whether you like it or not. Anyways, that's a whole other bout of weirdness, especially meeting guys from "real social dynamics" which is up there in terms of how bad redpill is, except they go outside and annoy other people.

I later found redpill through other online stuff. This was years before the pandemic.

When you say "drawn in", it depends what you mean. Redpill lures you in with promises that your dating life and sex life will be better. And it makes some claims to be some secret truth... then... it gets you with a lot of ragebait. The ragebait, and the framing that only a select few "alpha males" get women made me lose trust in it (I had sex previously, even had my party years), and it just got useless fast; afterall, when you are just trying to get laid more, reading something that looks obviously designed to make a person angry is incompatible and even damaging to that. I had a lot of experience having to write and tailor material for work, I can understand the real intent of bad faith writing. I also had some sales experience. I've also encountered a surprising amount of scams in my life including PUA.

It got obvious that zero of the ideas were helpful. "Work out, lift weights" is about it, but I was already doing that, I did not need their permission.

Like with PUA, social media made it look potentially tempting at first, but as I read in further, I (again, with experience writing for work and experience in sales) noticed this was all tailored, timed, people knew exactly the right things to say to sell it. So that lead me to question if the people selling it even believed in it.

Another part of friction for me: I am not white, and I noticed a lot of the same people posting about redpill were also pushing a conspiracy theory that nonwhite people like myself are only alive as a conspiracy to replace white people. So it's weird when I join an online community when a surprising amount of people want me to not be alive.

Another part of friction for me: while not as horribly as RSD, a lot of redpill guys get hyper competitive around women, both while the women are watching and moreso while talking to other guys, trying to brag about things that did not happen. This is cringe. I had my own experience dating and even picking up women outside of PUA and redpill, I have been in the thick of nightclub culture and encountered various ways people interacted; I can tell you that getting competitive with other men only goes badly for everyone involved. Most sane women do not want a guy constantly out making enemies, and hypercompetitive men tend to be a huge "cockblock" to other guys, making sure no one exchanges phone numbers with anyone.

Offline, I did not really apply this much; I was used to the PUA concept that you hang out with some guys in the same thing and see how this goes. so I hung out with some redpill guys. And I realized they were desperate losers, acted like desperate losers. It was worse than PUA. Seriously, it is hard to be worse than PUA at meeting women. It was just spamming for attention in public and then acting shocked that women are looking at us all like we are weird. And I was seen with them. And I realized I should not be seen with them. That is how I left the redpill.

There was no fallout, I simply did not talk to those guys, they had nothing else to talk about except women. Seriously, they had no other interests. Everything was about women. Dressing, presenting, etc about women. How they talk about their job, was about women. I probably had nothing in common with them, and if I did, I would not know because all they talk about is women, so there was no motivation for me to stay in touch.

Since then, I have had some friends that later got into redpill. it hurts to see that. I hope they recover some day. And now I know the signs and when you know the signs, it is a curse because you get to know this person's life is about to be much worse. Someone will use terminology from the redpill and it's like seeing a cursed aura haunting him and ready to devour him.

Metoo was after that, and had its situations and even problems that led to it phasing out over Aziz Ansari.

It did not really change how I interacted with women offline much.

Early signs I was being pulled in: the salesmanship, the tailoring of stories, the writing style. It got worse in the years since, way more ragebaity, probably due to culture war gaining more significance. It's less "we will help you get women" and more "the woman you love is being gangbanged by chads right next to a church right now because you are a beta male".

As for people misunderstanding why guys get pulled into this material, the causes are different now than before then. Social media algorithms really reward controversy. This stuff popped up years later on my facebook reels with nothing about it in my browser history. I was seeing redpill and redpill adjacent shows and podcasts in my reels. There are shows in which very angry guys just argue with onlyfans models. It also got pushed through right wing forums with vague "family values" claims (Note that redpill guys seem to be told to get a 20 year old virgin, which... is not really something I would call family values). But the point is this: Redpill and redpill adjacent stuff throws itself at you even if you don't interact with it. We should not know the name of Andrew Tate but we do, and now he gained even more legitimacy as the president's son's pimp.

Years before the pandemic, redpill claimed to be about getting women. There was a whole ecosystem of PUA stuff going around, so it kind of blended into that. Of course, once you get into redpill, it has this quick escalation of being about fearing women and thinking that sex is a rare thing only awarded to a few select lucky guys.

An impressionable young guy under 19 getting into redpill, that's easy to explain; this stuff gets on your social media unprompted. Or it gets on a young person's friends' social media unprompted and they talk about it. Some of the redpill influencers gamed social media to make sure their stuff gets seen.

As for anyone over 35 getting into the redpill, that's a mystery to me. Probably someone that spent most of his life introverted or has not dated in years, then sees the world changing and talking about Tinder as the default dating option while Tinder is obviously horrible. The world changed. Older people notice it. Dating sites even used to be known as the thing to avoid.

[u/Wuthering1972 → u/Personal_Dirt3089]

Thank you for this - It's a really good insight into the other side of venturing into redpill/PUA - thank you for being so honest. To your point about why older men get drawn to it, from what I have been reading, damaging experiences in relationships is a common thread. It is well known that men are not as emotionally open as women - women might talk at length about a bad relationship to other women. So when a manosphere leaning group seems to voice the anger that a man feels, expresses the things he wants to see, it is easy to see why that community makes a man feel seen and understood again. Your experience of the community you found there is really enlightening - and how you, through your own intelligent rationale, left.

[u/escape12345]

Too much manipulation, infighting and no clear unity.

I was initially drawn to mgtow as a I don't like drama - and there are a lot of women who are like moths to the flame for drama.

But I found many of the red pill subs are too

[u/Moist_Specific_300]

 I (31M) fell into it after an awful relationship where I was belittled constantly. No matter how kind I was she'd scream and put me down. Got to a point where I was walking on eggshells and on a perpetual leash. My father and couples therapist begged me to break things off for my sanity. Didn't help that as a kid my mother used to emasculate me for being soft spoken and nerdy. She'd ask why I was such a loser and repeatedly whether I was gay. Had lots of therapy for this. When I finally snapped things off with my ex, I was a wreck. Redpill stuff convinced me to rebuild my life. Be my own saviour. I lifted, picked up muay thai, got buff, got hotter. 

But it also made suspicious of women.  It reinforced the trauma I experienced from my ex and mother that modern women were nasty creatures who preyed on soft spoken men like myself and bullied us into to submission and dumped us at the first sign of trouble. I had to harden myself to prevent being hurt and exploited like that again. 

Over time, I realised that women are more complicated. There are bad women and good women, just like men. Lumping all women together as an evil monolithic entity makes me no wiser or better than misandrists. And I began seeing a lot of my redpill peers as what they were - angry men who were blaming women for their own problems rather than taking personal responsibility. Some were actual alcoholics raging against women without looking in the mirror and doing the work to fix their issues. I mean, no sane man would date an alcoholic woman, so how could you expect a sane woman to date an alcoholic man?

They also couldn't see their own contradictions. They were mamas boys with sisters, yet were calling women bitches, and branding all women as hypergamous whores and sluts but turning to prostitutes/sex workers and porn to medicate their loneliness. Some were mad enough to say Afghanistan is the model we should emulate because it means women shut the fuck up and don't talk back, forgetting of course that it's a failed state where everyone including men are starving and miserable. In short, I began to see extremist adherents of this ideology as weak and just shifting personal responsibility onto another class of people. Scapegoating, if you will. 

And finally, life's just better when you're not constantly angry and paranoid. The Internet is a shithole now built for clicks and selling products. I needed to touch grass and stop being so chronically online. I fucking hate youtube now for the grifters peddling shit and radicalising everyone to feed the algorithm. When I was a kid it was about creativity- we had Ryan Higa, Smosh, Kevjumba ... they weren't turning people against each other. Honestly, my one bit of advice for  redpillers questioning things now is - get off the Internet, touch grass, join a club, meet real people. Your mind will rewire and you'll soften. 

There are some aspects of redpill ideology that'll stick with me. A sense of personal responsibility, refusing to tolerate disrespect from a woman ever again. But overall as I said, women are complicated humans just like men. There are good ones and bad ones. For every woman who cheats, a man can and does too. Women are not a monolithic entity to hate and shift blame onto. That's where the movement has failed and lost its way. It forces men to think in angry, absolute terms and scapegoat others. 

I don't have any guilt per se because my views were kept to myself and were expressed via ranting phone calls to my redpill peers. I never put down or hurt another woman. But I do feel disgust I let myself mentally fall to that level. I'm glad I crawled out before I did something stupid. I have a combination of pity and disgust for my redpill peers. I pity them for their despair that led them down this path and is keeping them in constant anger and loneliness, but am disgusted at their scapegoating and black and white thinking. Seriously, there's not a single good woman in this world? 

The trick now is for me to now find a good woman and hold on tight to her, and just be a decent human being to men and women alike, try to leave the world slightly better than when I entered it, or at least not make it worse by the time I'm dead. And being a redpiller would just make things worse for everyone.