Post: #126

If Roissy was able to step game up to level 2.0 then game still has uncharted lands.

Someone's can step game up to 3.0.

Waiting for someone to make a JJRoberts joke.

Post: #127

Read this article about music subcultures; the same thing happened to the Manosphere. And the Libertarian party. And the NRX, and the Alt Right. The masses showed up, dumbed it down into self-serving egoism, and spend all of their time proving what individuals they are by attacking the leaders instead of contributing.

A sad fact about being on the avante garde is that you'll see your ideas corrupted. This is why we move forward.

Post: #128

I'm glad to see it's not just me that can't read Rollo's writing. I'd heard for a while on other sites "You have to read Rollo!" I subscribed to his RSS feed and bought his book (Kindle; can't throw it out). I guess I got through a little more than 10 posts and started feeling like they were TL;DR. I finally unsubscribed figuring his writing didn't resonate with me. I'd scan the first couple paragraphs of new posts, mumble "Boring!" and move on.

I think what stood out to me about Rollo is, he wasn't growing. When a writer doesn't grow and branch out into new areas, after a while you've read everything he has to say and it's time to move on. That's why I stick with writers like Vox Day, Roosh, Roisy, Aurini, Aaron Cleary, and so on; because they learn and grow. They're always moving into something interesting. I came into the "manosphere" or red pill or whatever we're calling it now through Vox Day. He started writing about game, and I kept hearing about Roisy, so I googled him and found CH. I don't remember how I came across Roosh. I ended up on a landing page for Bang somehow, then found his blog. I guess at one point Roosh could have been considered a PUA, but he's grown into a pretty good contemporary philosopher and leader.

Another guy that didn't seem to grow was Athol Kay. I bought his "Married Man Sex Life 2011" and read his blog for a while, but his blog got old and I stopped reading.

It's too bad so called "Conservatives" like to arrange firing squads in a circle and eat their own. Vox Day and John Red Eagle showed this pretty well in "Cuckservative", and Murray Rothbard's "Betrayal of the American Right" is a good first hand account of how the right continuously turned on itself.

Post: #129

(02-10-2016 08:33 AM)Mercenary Wrote:  

(02-10-2016 08:16 AM)Khan Wrote:  What the fuck are juxtaposition and hypoagency? When I read someone's work, I don't want to be forced to grab a dictionary every time the author tries to make a point. Words and phrases like this are completely redundant, as he can easily make a point and convey his message without them. Because of this I have an impression Rollo has some kind of a complex, forcing him to overcompensate in this matter to make himself seem more scientific and educated.

It's a shame, as he did have some good ideas and concepts.

Agreed.


I wrote this in another post back in October 2015 on his style of writing and his really childish way of dissing Roosh at the time.
Worth repeating here:

(10-19-2015 02:47 PM)Mercenary Wrote:  I really don't understand this infighting among men who I'm assuming are supposed to reaching for similar goals. Sure our methods are different, but it doesn't mean we have to insult eachother like schoolchildren. There’s a much more stylish way to disagree with someone. Rollo mentioning Roosh in such a negative way in his twitter account and now in his latest October 14th post is just bad form and sour grapes.

I like Rollo and his blog. But I admire and respect Roosh much more.
Rollo's writing is quite academic in tone and I often find myself skipping passages cause his blog posts are often way too long.

When you talk too much about anything in one go (especially with women), you usually wind up eventually boring your listeners and your followers take away less than they would have, if you kept it short and to the point.

What attracted me to Roosh was his very practical descriptions of how to do things. Small but very effective ways to change things in yourself and start getting the results you wanted. Methods which came from direct experience. Methods which he described in a way that even a complete novice can follow if he decides he wants to put in the effort. Methods which work.


Rollo's writing is like an old philosopher musing in a castle tower, while Roosh talks like your smarter older brother who's looking out for you.


...

This makes me curious; how do you find my writing? My automated SEO warns me that I'm using too many big words (Grade 12 reading levels drive away audiences), and Lord know I employ a diverse lexicon, but I've got the feelings you won't find it so obtuse.

Post: #130

^^Aurini, your writing appeals to the audience you deserve. I've never had a problem with it, but I'm at or above a 12th grade reading level. I doubt you'd want the audience a 6th grade reading level would bring.

Post: #131

(02-10-2016 11:49 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

(02-10-2016 08:16 PM)Green-On-GO Wrote:  Rollo said he was warning Roosh with the tweet..Giving him a heads up

Warning someone via a public tweet that the whole planet can see rather than the courtesy of a PM or similar is not a head's up. It's about as ingenuous as a public rape accusation.

Pretty much sums up my feelings...

"Fuck you and the horse you rode in on."

Post: #132

Quote: I'd heard for a while on other sites "You have to read Rollo!"

I enjoyed reading his blog during my initial phase, right after I'd been exposed to Roissy. But at that point I was reading through everything on Roissy's blogroll (which is how I found Roosh). I won't claim retroactively that I never thought much of Rational Male, it used to be regular reading, but I definitely had stopped reading long before he started taking shots at Roosh.

Quote:Another guy that didn't seem to grow was Athol Kay.

I think Athol discovered that selling sanitized manosphere-inspired sex advice to married schlumps with sensitive egos was a highly lucrative endeavor and he has focused on milking that cow dry rather than trying to compete with any of the edgier writers. In fact Athol has actually walled up some of his older posts and makes you buy them.

Post: #133

(02-10-2016 12:18 PM)Isaac Jordan Wrote:  Anyone familiar with Roissy's initial writings ('07-'09) knows how massively influential his ideas were at the time, at least to those in our little corner of the Internet. It wasn't initially called the "roissysphere" for nothing. His intimate understanding of the sexual marketplace and his ability to delineate its most important concepts paved the way for every Game blogger to follow. If Mystery and his PUAs were Game 1.0, Roissy most certainly upgraded the scene to 2.0.

While Rollo's early writings didn't have the same paradigm-shifting impact of Roissy's, he made several important contributions during his first year of posting. I happened to stumble upon his blog just as he was getting started, and posts like The Medium is the Message, Just Get It, Operative Social Conventions, and The Cardinal Rule of Relationships dramatically deepened my understanding of social and sexual dynamics and provided a concrete foundation for my new red-pill worldview.

While the majority of Rollo's writings are fundamentally steeped in theory, several of these early posts stand out for their ability to instantly improve one's practice of Game:

Excellent post by Isaac Jordan. You are bang on in that Rollo is one of the early pioneers in this "red pill" movement, but he still a man of words - not action.

Let us look back a little further regarding some other analysis on "men of words" from Eric Hoffer. I am quoting (again) his 1951 book "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" - page 132 and 133.

...The men of words are of diverse types. They can be priests, scribes, prophets, writers, artists, professors, students, and intellectuals in general. Where, as in China, reading and writing is a difficult art, mere literacy can give one the status of a man of words. A similar situation prevailed in ancient Egypt, where the art of picture writing was the monopoly of a minority.

Whatever the type, there is a deep-seated craving common to almost all men of words which determines their attitude to the prevailing order. It is a craving for recognition; a craving for a clearly marked status above the common run of humanity. "Vanity," said Napoleon, "made the Revolution; liberty was only a pretext." There is apparently an irremediable insecurity at the core of every intellectual, be he non creative or creative. Even the most gifted and prolific seem to live a life of eternal self-doubting and have to prove their worth anew each day. What de Remusat said of Theirs is perhaps true of most men of words: "he has much more vanity than ambition; and he prefers consideration to obedience, and the appearance of power to power itself. Consult him constantly, and then do just as you please. He will take more notice of your deference to him than of your actions."


End quote


We can give credit where it is due to Rollo (for his early contributions to game theory)... but now his actions show how is striving to maintain relevance in a movement that is leaving him behind. He is lashing out at other leaders within this broad movement, trying to maintain any semblance of relevance. This is a clear "look at me! look at me!" act of betrayal. Such is the nature of men of words when they see men of action take the reins of power.

History is on the move. Those who cannot keep up, will be left behind.

Post: #134

I tried reading his material but as others have said, his writing style is just too dry. It's like reading a textbook.

Post: #135

Aurini-

I've never found your writing particularly hard to read. It's got a very strong apocalyptic feeling to it, and I can see that driving some readers away, but the way you use the language itself? You're fine.

Here's a paragraph I picked at random off your front page:

"Rape is not misogyny. It is bestial and psychopathic, the behaviour of a brute. A misogynist desires the love of a woman in his own sick way; the rapist pursues nought but hedonism."

A lot of words here are long, sure, like, "misogyny", "bestial", "psychopathic". But the sentences themselves are very straightforward. "Rape is not (a thing). It is (these three other things). A misogynist (does these things), and a rapist (does these other things)."

This clarity in your writing makes it easy for you to get your views across to your reader. The reader's focus is where it should be: on the ideas themselves, not the sentence structure. You also have a nice alliteration going with "bestial", "behavior", and "brute", broken up by the word "psychopathic" to keep it from getting too obvious. This is the ideal style for the kind of writing you're doing.

Rollo, on the other hand, is a god-awful writer. Most people don't realize it, because most people don't really analyze writing style when they read something. They just notice that it was hard to follow, or that maybe they didn't understand very well. Given Rollo's pseudo-academic posturing, a lot of people probably just assume they don't know about his "field of study" to fully comprehend it. Some probably just think that there's a lot of long words, jargon, and complex sentences, and so that must mean the author is really smart.

Here's a randomly chosen Rational Male paragraph: the opening to his hit piece on Roosh.
"Well I finally had a chance to watch Roosh vs. the bloggers – there are no journalists left in the world – debate (it was anything but a press conference) and it was about what I expected. Every opportunity these bloggers had was to call him on his beliefs and his position on the state of the world with the intent to dismiss, marginalize or ridicule him."

This is terrible, terrible writing. You could spend an hour talking about all the things he's done wrong here in just two sentences.
I'll skip the obvious ones, like the fact that there needs to be a comma after the word "Well". It's a blog post, and all blog posts have grammatical errors. It's a fact of life.
But even if you ignore the grammar errors, look how clumsy it is. There's not one, but two parenthetical asides in the first sentence. Overuse of parenthetical asides is a crutch for writers who can't organize their thoughts. It pulls the reader away from the main idea of the sentence.
Worse, the content of the asides is stupid. In the first sentence, he redefines two terms here: "journalist" becomes "blogger", and "press conference" becomes "debate". But both of these redefinitions are wrong! If you work for Martha Stewart Living, and they send you out to cover a press conference, you are a journalist. That's what the word means. And Roosh didn't hold a debate, he gave a press conference. He gave a short statement to the press, followed by a question and answer period. That's what a press conference is.
Rollo goes on to use the word "blogger" instead of "reporter" for the rest of his piece. It's weird and distracting. Occasionally, people at RoK will call particularly bad female journalists "typists", but that works because "typist" is an obvious word of contempt. Rollo himself is a blogger, so why is he using it as an insult?
If Rollo wanted to say that the reporters were unprofessional, and they were so argumentative that what should've been a press conference turned into a debate, he could've easily done that without inventing his own dictionary. Now whenever the reader sees the word "blogger" for the rest of the piece, he has to remind himself that, "Oh, they aren't really bloggers. Rollo just doesn't like them."

The second sentence is even worse.
"Every opportunity these bloggers had was to call him on his beliefs and his position on the state of the world with the intent to dismiss, marginalize or ridicule him."

This is a run-on non-sentence. "Every opportunity... was to call him on his beliefs"? Huh? What? But even if you were to fix that to something more reasonable, say, "These bloggers took every opportunity to call him on his beliefs..." It would still be a terrible sentence. It takes him 30 words to say, "The reporters were consistently dismissive."


Aurini, your writing is complex ideas, backed up by simple sentences. "There's a distinction between rape and misogyny. Here's how they differ." Rollo is simple ideas obscured by complex sentences. "I saw the Roosh press conference. Man, those reporters were a bunch of dicks."

I shouldn't have to say which one of these is better.

I didn't really realize how terrible a writer Rollo was until I actually went and looked. I remember reading his stuff in the very early days of the manosphere and thinking it was good, if a little academic. When I went back and actually looked I was stunned. It's not "academic", it's "pseudo-academic". It lacks precision and clarity of thought. It's squid ink intended to obscure, and make Rollo look far smarter than he really is.

Post: #136

Post: #137

(02-12-2016 03:56 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  If Roissy was able to step game up to level 2.0 then game still has uncharted lands.

Someone's can step game up to 3.0.

Waiting for someone to make a JJRoberts joke.

There's no need to. The Scotian and Kona meetup stories more than speak for themselves. Those stories are easily some of the best material on here.

Post: #138

Heh. I'll just leave this here... :

Quote:Rollo Tomassi Retweeted
Robert Greene ‏@RobertGreene 13h13 hours ago

Keep your words vague but full of promise; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking.

Post: #139

I think we need to quit fighting ourselves over minor matters. The Apostle Paul had a good word about this, by the way.

Post: #140

I started reading a Rollo article once, I don't remember which one or what it said because three minutes later I ate a PB&J and went to sleep, because that shit was dry as fuck.

2/10 WNR (Would Not Read)

Post: #141

(02-09-2016 01:28 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  Doesn't Rollo work in liquor promotions? Doesn't he have to lay low a little to protect his livelihood?

Wouldn't he on some level love to be able to ask a reporter if he lifts and post it on Youtube?

He is a smart guy, as are some of his commenters, but with all of the recent events, like the eruption of the hysteriasphere a minute ago, and the Battle of Canada, compared to that level of direct action in real life, doesn't it just make him and all his readers internet warriors in comparison?

It kinda seems like Rollo's attitude is the public relations equivalent of the pointy elbows syndrome.

Roosh just dropped a Mentos in the media Coke bottle. Rollo didn't.

When I was writing the "Sites" section of the manosphere article, I thought, "Huh, the media and academics have barely noticed Rollo, but they've covered Roosh extensively." It makes sense now.

Free speech isn't free; if you want to make your voice heard, sometimes you have to be willing to pay a price for that. I put my career on the line for the cause too, because I hate to have an opportunity to make a difference and then leave it on the table, if I don't have to. Therefore I tend to err on the side of recklessness rather than caution.

Post: #142

Wanted to bump this thread to see guys' perspectives on Rollo these days. I just checked his site for the first time in ages and it seems he does podcasts and conferences now and is no longer anonymous. I like his perspectives but I can definitely see the validity in some of the criticisms in this thread about his writing-style and overall approach

Post: #143

Rollo was what brought me here so for that I'll be grateful but when I receive an email from his blog these days, I can't get past the first few paragraphs. His writing style is not engaging and a lot of the points are a bit repetitive.

The books were good and I have his latest book waiting to be read.

Post: #144

His writing's just as awful and plodding; his audio/video flows better, but his vibe is still one of "No Prescriptions", reducing to more endless diatribes.

I understand he wants to be the red pill sherpa for newbies, but that's starting to look like a convenient excuse to milk his brand without growing. Something he used to accuse our esteemed host of, heh.

Post: #145

I am a big fan of his old stuff, but nowadays he's Rollo "everyone except for me is beta" Tomassi.

Rollo "if you could bear to read all of my 10000-word essays, you'd know I'm repeating myself" Tomassi.

Rollo "marriage sucks, which is why I'm married" Tomassi.

Post: #146

Rollo talks Roosh, JP and Cernovich from 1:32:38 to 1:45:05...

Post: #147

(06-07-2018 04:49 PM)eL-JJ Wrote:  Rollo talks Roosh, JP and Cernovich from 1:32:38 to 1:45:05...

I watched from 1:32 - 1:45...and honestly? These are entirely fair criticisms that I think the folks in question would do well to take to heart. I've thought a number of these things myself---I wasn't sure if I was the only one and now I know I'm not.

I know some folks around here don't really like Rollo...but I'm impressed by the guy. Whenever he was critical of Roosh or anyone else, it was always in the spirit of mutual respect and brotherly love. He really doesn't seem like he has any personal animus or an axe to grind. Which is how it should be.

Anyways, I hope the all guys involved can engage in some introspection and use that to strengthen themselves and each other moving forward.

Post: #148

Not what I expected him to look like at all:





Good talk though.

Post: #149

^^^He looks like Brett Farve's brother.

Post: #150

I've enjoyed some of Rollo's material. The criticisms are legit, however I do think he is a good speaker and does a good talk. It doesn't seem like he has any animosity towards Roosh, so I don't get the beef.

Anyone else watch the Red Man Group? They've had some interesting episodes. I know Roosh has been asked in chats if he wants to go on, but I think we can agree he wouldn't translate well to their format. It would be interesting hearing him and Donovan Sharpe go at it though.