IT must have been at least 15 years ago when I first encountered a wannabe “pick-up artist”.
The setting was a bar in Glasgow, and the context was the aftermath of a speed-dating night my friends had taken part in.
Online dating sites existed, but were viewed with healthy suspicion. I doubt anyone present owned a smartphone.
Many of the speed-daters had hung around afterwards, including a chap at our table who engaged in a lively conversation with one of the women.
Overhearing part of it, I interjected. “Excuse me,” I said. “Are you … negging?”
He looked stunned. It clearly had not occurred to him that anyone – let alone a random eavesdropping woman – would cotton on to what he was up to. What he was trying to do was make a subtle dig, a negative comment, in the hope his target would take the bait and seek to prove him wrong by engaging further.
His response confirmed my suspicion. He knew exactly what I was referring to, and that was exactly what he was doing. He really shouldn’t have been so confident of getting away with it, since the tactics of pick-up artistry had been detailed in a 2005 book by Neil Strauss called The Game. It was a New York Times bestseller, and the author’s promotional tour included a branch of Borders books just around the corner from where we sat.
It was about 10 years ago when I first heard the pseudonym “Sargon of Akkad”, shouted in my ear and then scrawled onto a business card that was handed to me by a guy as we waited to order drinks in a nightclub. He told me he’d be interested in my thoughts on it.
The account was run by Carl Benjamin, a far-right, anti-feminist provocateur who went on to stand as a Ukip candidate in the 2019 European Parliament elections. His videos have been viewed more than 15 million times, but he deleted most of them after YouTube removed his ability to make money from its platform.
This happened in 2019, after police launched an investigation into misogynistic comments he had made about the Labour MP Jess Phillips (below).
“A hate mob has been stirred up against me,” claimed Benjamin, suggesting the demonetisation was related to his political candidacy. He was also suspended from Twitter, where several years earlier, after Phillips had posted about receiving rape and death threats online, he had responded to her with “I wouldn’t even rape you”.
In 2022, after Elon Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it as X, the Sargon of Akkad account was reinstated.
I’m no anthropologist, combing through the darkest corners of the internet looking for the next moral panic to fret about. These men are out there, in the wild, and it’s been clear to me for many years that online content is negatively shaping how men think about women, and making them feel like their anger and resentment can be harnessed into legitimate political action.
There’s nothing new about teenage boys feeling aggrieved about not being able to get girlfriends, or indeed dehumanising the objects of their affection, but when I was at school there were no sprawling online communities telling them they were entitled to be angry, that feminism was to blame for their problems, or that self-harm or violence towards others might be a justifiable course of action.
There was certainly no such thing as “looksmaxxing” communities, in which men brutally assess each other’s looks and give “advice” on becoming more attractive.
Last month, a group of five Canadian academics published an article titled When Help Is Harm: Health, Lookism And Self-Improvement In The Manosphere. Their findings are simultaneously enraging and heartbreaking.
The study analysed more than 8000 comments on forums on a looksmaxxing website that receives millions of visitors every month. What they found was a toxic sewer of misogyny, racism, homophobia and ableism in which men seeking advice are subjected to what the authors call “masculine demoralisation”. This is a significant academic understatement; the comments are absolutely brutal.
“Advice” for improvements includes everything from losing weight or growing a beard right up to facial surgeries and breaking bones. Some men are told that even if they take such steps, they may never exceed “subhuman” status and therefore suicide is their only option.
The pipeline going from self-improvement, health and fitness, and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs to the most toxic content on the internet is a short one.
It’s easy for parents to say “my son wouldn’t get involved in any of this awful stuff”, but the two young men I encountered years ago were somebody’s sons. Young men I’ve spoken to recently say the content finds its way onto the feeds of their friends, even if they haven’t gone looking for it.
The solution? Positive role models and a society-wide rejection of harmful sex stereotypes. If parents don’t wise up to what their sons are being subjected to now, God only knows what fresh horrors will await in another 15 years’ time.
