The only red pill worth taking is the one you make yourself

Make your own path

When I was younger, I was always the new kid at school, because I would be bouncing around from one place to the next almost every single year.

It was a frustrating life, because I’d be picked last in gym class, and I would never find a partner in group projects.

One day, in a moment that I can only describe as being “down bad” I decided to forgo a piece of my dignity. When the next group project was announced, I went up to one of the more popular kids in the class, Darren, and handed him 10 bucks on the condition that he would let me be part of his group.

Darren was one of those kids who naturally made friends with everyone, which was the complete opposite of me, because I was basically an undersocialized autistic nerd.

Two days later, it was time to formally declare our groups for the project, and Darren ended up pairing off with two other kids. Dejectedly, I met him after class and reminded him of our agreement. He just laughed it off, shrugged his shoulders and said “sorry dude, totally forgot about it.”

At the time I didn’t even have the courage to ask for my $10 back.

***

About a decade later, I’m in business school. One of those fancy business schools that everyone in the country has heard about.

I fucking hated every single minute of it.

My original plan for college was to… I don’t know? Live some sort of lifestyle that was the equivalent of Harvey Specter from Suits or something. But actual exposure to higher education made me realize that business school was filled with douchebags.

So I decide that I’m going to try and start my own business.

Honestly, I think the idea was pretty solid; I’m sure there’s a few companies that are now doing it, but at the time it was pretty revolutionary.

The idea for my business was simple: now there are multiple streaming services, people need to manually keep track of their subscriptions. Instead of doing that, the idea was to give us their emails and credit card information, as well as the shows that they enjoyed watching. Every year they could update the list, and the service would dynamically expand or contract to include only the streaming sites that actually had the shows they wanted.

I was ready to do the technical part, but I knew that I needed a salesman.

And at the time, I happened to get back in touch with Darren. I ended up pitching the idea on Facebook (this was the time when Facebook wasn’t completely filled with boomers) and he happened to respond.

It was pretty sweet, over the course of the next couple weeks Darren and I exchanged messages, talking about how we would build out the idea.

I was actually on the verge of getting some funding; all that we needed to do was to get together and go over the presentation. So I booked a time for us to meet up and go over the particulars.

Well, long story short Darren, cancels at the last minute, and when I rebook the meeting a week later, he cancels that. About a month goes by, and I check in on him, and he suggests a third meeting. Of course, I’m a little bit skeptical now, so on the day of our meeting I ask him if he’s still good. He says he is.

I went to our meeting point, a small restaurant — and surprise surprise, literally 15 minutes before he was supposed to show up he messages me and says that he needs to drive back to his hometown because of an emergency.

I see his Facebook profile the next day; he was hanging out with his boys.

***

The Librarian of Celaeno wrote this piece the other day, entitled “Chris Rufo is right”. Truth be told I don’t really know about Rufo or this thing about chipotle — but I don’t think the title does Celaeno any credit for the message that he’s trying to convey.

Ultimately it’s a post about how a person, specifically a young man, needs to carve out his own path in life, regardless of the consequences it entails.

I found the below passage to be both funny and inspiring:

Is wagie life bad because it’s spiritually polluting? Then why complain that no one will hire you and that you can’t buy the house you want or marry that 10? Are you a Bronze-Age Nietzschean warrior too aristocratic to roll burritos? Then answer an ad in Soldier of Fortune and go do that (say what you will about Nietzsche, he lived a Spartan life to free up his resources for his greater mission). Are you profoundly middle class and derive your self-worth from your profession and economic status? Then just be fake and gay and get hired- more on that to come.

Celaeno was talking specifically about an economic context, but as I was reading his post, something clicked in my head.

All at once I thought to myself: “Oh, this is why I hate the modern red pill.”

As far as my thoughts on the red pill go, I would put it this way:

1. If you're 12 years old and into the red pill, that's probably a bit concerning

2. If you're 20 and you're into the red pill, that's probably fine

3. If you're 45 and you're still into the red pill, that's concerning again

Of course, like most typical young men, I had my own path into the red pill, when I discovered the “just be yourself” normie life advice just wasn’t enough. To a younger guy, it’s an eye-opening perspective, because you realize that you’re not a woman, and that the perfect partner isn’t just going to fall into your lap. The red pill teaches you some neat little stuff about evolutionary psychology, and for many it’s the first step to a path of self improvement.

But over time I noticed a split within the red pill community. Broadly speaking, you could divide them into two factions, which I will call the Bilzerians vs the Durdens.

I was more of a Durden guy, because at the time it became increasingly clear to me how much of the education system was just a complete fucking waste of time. The public school system was little more than a daycare that hasn't been updated since the industrial age, and the higher education system is little more than a scam.

Being in business school, I realized that so much of society runs on the ability of convincing people to buy shit that you don’t need, and that your personality has been molded by advertisements which have embedded itself into your limbic system since you were old enough to read and write.

For reasons that I will touch on in a separate series of posts, I was not a very sociable person growing up, but I thought I could overcome these deficiencies if I just did better than everyone in school. Far too late did I come to realize that so much of life, as George Carlin put it, is a big club — one that I’m simply not a part of.

As a consequence of these same sentiments, I became disgusted with the Bilzerian half of the red pill community, primarily because of how little self-awareness they seemed to have. On the one hand they wanted to carve a new path for themselves, but on the other hand they defined themselves in the most superficial and retarded way imaginable.

During the Covid years, people like Andrew Tate, Kevin Samuels and fresh & fit came along — but if you strip away the aesthetics and the rhetoric, what you get are just more mutations of Dan Bilzerian.

Ultimately, I find these kind of guys kind of ironic. It’s not that I reject the red pill because of Andrew Tate and Kevin Samuels; rather, it’s precisely because I am red pilled that I reject them. Because if you take a step back, these are some of the most blue pilled people that you can possibly imagine.

If you’ve watched the show Mad Men, then you know that so much of the bullshit in this world comes from specially crafted advertising campaigns — and people like Kevin Samuels and Andrew Tate have deepthroated these campaigns all the way into the very essence of their being.

I already know that there’s going to be some people reading this who think this is nothing more than cope, that I’m jealous of these people because they have a Bugatti or a girl with big tits or whatever.

To be clear, just as Celaeno points out in his post, there’s nothing wrong with wanting wealth. A big house with a nice pool is amazing. Just admit that to yourself — and just admit the fact that you want the approval of the people that you also disdain.

Similarly, there's nothing wrong with rejecting the entirety of the system, and trying to construct a life by living by your own rules. But once more, you don’t get to have a “cabin in the woods” lifestyle and also pine for the email job in the middle of the bay area.

Ultimately, it’s stupid to claim that you’re trying to escape the matrix, while simultaneously judging yourself by the very same metrics that every LinkedIn retard uses. It’s equally stupid to go around talking about slave morality, while simultaneously crossing your fingers, hoping that you get a call back from Black Rock.

***

In 1994, the feminist scholar bell hooks released Teaching to transgress.

Two years later, Chuck Palahniuk would come out with his book fight club.

Here's some shit that should make you uncomfortable: the main message of both of these books are eerily similar. If you strip away all the aesthetics, all the academic language, it's a complete rejection of the retardation of the modern world, an understanding that everybody's jerking themselves off to a completely arbitrary mountain of ideals, one day hoping to get the approval from people that they don't even like in the first place.

Over three decades later, the reason I detest these upper middle class Substack feminists is the same reason I detest the modern manosphere. The former group diluted the message of their movement, devolving into little more than delusional girl boss think pieces. Meanwhile, the manosphere completely forgot what Tyler Durden was actually trying to convey; now their content is little more than creating podcasts where they yell at teenage girls for being whores in between ad reads for useless supplements.

I’m not a particularly religious man, but that’s the part of Celaeno’s post that I deeply resonate with. In order to truly forge a path for yourself, to become the type of person that you yourself fuck with, you need to reject the retardation coming from both sides — and ultimately accept the consequences of the path you take.

***

When countries began relaxing the Covid regulations, I was able to go to the gym again — and surprise surprise, who did I see? Darren.

The pandemic had not been kind to him. At this point he had gained about 30 pounds of fat, and looked about 10 years older than me.

We got to talking, and it was a cordial conversation. Eventually he looked at me and said: “Hey man, we should hang out some time!”

Unfortunately I’m not a sociopath, so I didn’t laugh in his face, or give the middle finger, or give some long speech. I just kind of snickered to myself and said “Yeah sure,” without bothering to give him my new number.

Looking back on it, I’m honestly thankful for people like Darren. He made me realize that no matter who I was or what I did, people like him would never really accept me.

More importantly, I was forced to ask myself the question: Why the fuck did I want his acceptance so badly in the first place?

If you’re a young man and you’re reading this, then you probably know what I’m talking about. You probably have a Darren in your own life. Maybe your Darren is split up into multiple people, or perhaps he’s a girl. Perhaps he’s more of an abstract concept, a particular sliver of society that seems unattainable from your point of view.

I suppose the only advice that I would venture to give is this: no matter what path you take in life — whether you aim for riches or solitude, mastery or detachment — do it for your own approval, or perhaps the approval of the small group of people in your life who you actually care about.

As for the Darrens of the world, fuck ‘em.