Hi. I'm a lurker of /trp/ and I hope to express how I view the subreddit and clear up some things. Hopefully introduce some new ideas and allow some TBP and PPD readers to have some relief. But also challenge TBP readers and PPD readers to understand that their mental image of /trp/-readers might not be entirely accurate.

About me: I'm actually a (I hope) fairly normal dude. I was a kissless AP student in high school at the top of my class. In college I was in two loving LTRs and I've never had a one-night stand (almost got to enjoy one, but I fucked it up, oops). I'm a believer in egalitarianism and most commonly accepted ideas of feminism (first and second wave and some non-crazy third wave). I think I diverge from many TBP and PPD readers in that I think that many people today overly-minimize any and all differences in the sexes (or claim that they are all cultural / socially-conditioned). I don't deny rape prevalence. I don't believe rape is OK. Assume I don't believe in any of the most batshit crazy ideas you project onto readers of /trp/. I don't believe women are intellectually or emotionally inferior to men. (I do think that due to hormonal and brain chemistry differences cis-men and cis-women tend to be different mentally and emotionally. It's science!) When I have kids, if my boy wants to play with dolls I'm not going to stop him. If my girl wants to play in the dirt then she's welcome to. Whatever. I have gay friends. I'm a liberal. So fuck you if you read this and assume I'm some monster the whole time. That's not being intellectually honest with yourself. Accept that many people with different views are just like you. Not monsters :)

I think I am probably pretty representative of the vast majority of people who read /trp/. If you aren't aware of the 1% rule: 90% of the participants of a community only view content, 9% of the participants edit/vote on content, and 1% of the participants actively create new content. I'm part of that 90%. This is actually very important to one of the points I want to make in this post which is that the vast majority of men who read manosphere or PUA sites or even a subreddit like /trp/ don't ever make their presence known. And the fact of the matter is that it tends to be extremists who are loudest. In extremist feminist discussion boards you will find comments saying some really messed up, disturbing stuff. I'm not going to worry about giving examples because if you can't agree with the premise that there are extremists in all schools of thought then it's not worth arguing with you. I'll also note that it's important to qualify with "extremist" because the vast majority of feminists are good people and aren't crazy. Which leads me to my next point, which is that the vast majority of readers of literature and thought in the manosphere and PUA worlds are not extremists and they are much more rational that you'd expect after reading /trp/.

One of the reasons I'm making this post is that I think PPD and BPD posters should realize that /trp/ seems to be a magnet for the most extremist views and characters that I've seen in the manosphere, men's rights, PUA etc. arena. I actually stumbled upon /trp/ when it was a relatively new subreddit and back then it was a much more rational place. But when extreme view points become more and more normalized, it drives away people who have less extreme views, which creates a feedback loop. The end result is having a higher and higher percentage of the submitters and commenters being either quite bitter towards women, dismissive of women's intellectual or emotional capabilities, or just outright having fucked up views that make a normal manosphere-reader type dude cringe.

Today I usually click on a small minority of the links on /trp/ and I find myself internally facepalming at such a large portion of the comments. It's really starting to turn into a shithole. But I still think a lot of the original core ideas are pretty damn valid and useful. It's just that they are little nuggets of gold in a mine full of shit.

Now I'm going to try to explain what exactly it is that I see in /theredpill/ as being valuable or interesting. Sorry but it's really really rambly because I've never had to put down in writing my feelings on the subject. And regardless of whether or not you find yourself disagreeing with my views or presumptions in this explanation, humor me and follow along so you can at least see why I (and I imagine lots of other readers) find value.

The name "the red pill" is a metaphor for embracing the harsher realities of dating and gender relations between men and women (and I fully admit that it's about heteronormative gender relations and I admit that these relations aren't easily generalizable or applicable to everyone or every situation). The red pill was originally a safe place to discuss these harsh truths which are often considered politically incorrect without worrying about offending anyone. It was a place to explore ideas. Many new readers have never thought about a lot of these ideas and use /trp/ as a source to read about and evaluate them. That's right, evaluate them. Please acknowledge that /trp/ readers and posters aren't a cohesive group. It's a group of dudes posting online with varying levels of bitterness towards women (some not bitter at all just cynical about gender relations, others extremely bitter).

Here are some random ideas that /trp/ has to teach dudes:

For a heterosexual man, sexual attraction is more visual than for a woman, and it's based more off of physical proportions and symmetry as well as indicators of youth and fertility. In contrast heterosexual women, while still caring about physical attractiveness, care a lot more about other things than men do. I won't try to say that good looks are this fraction of attraction for women and this fraction of attraction for men, or that for all men good looks are more important than for all women. The point is to be able to make useful generalizations. Things like a man's ability to provide for a woman (and potential offspring, hurr durr evo psych), his social status, his sense of humor, and his confidence are more important to a woman's sexual attraction than non-physical factors are to a man's sexual attraction. How many women are sexually attracted to a man who has literally no self-esteem? I'm not saying a guy who's not an "alpha" in the /trp/ sense, but a guy who really thinks he's worthless and has zero self-esteem. On the other hand, men care a lot, lot less about a women's confidence in terms of what they are sexually attracted to. Many guys find insecure women endearing because their inner protector comes out (yes protecting vulnerable women and children is a biological instinct within most men, and I'm sorry if that offends anyone. As a side note, how many times have you ever heard a woman say that she feels something deep inside of her telling her to protect fragile and weak men? There are biological differences between men and women. Sorry.) To reiterate and resummarize, men care more about physical beauty than women do. And women care more about social status, a man's behavior/treatment of her, his ability to provide, etc. than men do.

For many men, they've grown up having absolutely no idea what about men attracts women. TRP gives the most politically incorrect version possible of what attracts women to men. A lot of it is complete bullshit, but a lot of it is stuff that is, while uncomfortable, true. I won't get into the "women like bad boys" debate. Everyone agrees that women like men who have clear boundaries and stand up for themselves. Some /trp/ posters take this to mean that they should shit all over women (because they are in fact actually misogynists). Some /tbp/ posters think that the slightest sign of teasing a woman is being an asshole misogynist (because they are in fact actually the nice guy that doesn't understand why he's always friendzoned). But the "women like assholes/ bad boys" cultural meme is based off a certain truth which is actually just the fact that women are attracted to men who aren't doormats. Men who have clear boundaries, who have values and principles and won't change them on a whim to please a woman. Men who won't just agree that they like a TV show because they think agreeing with you will make you like them. This is beginners PUA stuff. It's spawned the pop-culture phrase "No More Mr. Nice Guy". And it's about not being nice and then expecting a woman to reward you with sex because you treated her nicely.

These things affect both how they live their lives and their sense of self-worth. You can take some grains of sand from the desert that is /trp/ and come to realizations about attraction and gender relations between men and women. In this sense, /trp/ is a pretty shitty place actually because it's evolved to become such a cesspool. I find a lot less there than I used to. But it still even now provides value. /trp/ lets you read about this non-neediness in action through the form of people describing their experiences as case studies. Non-neediness is huuuuge cornerstone of most heterosexual women's sexual attraction to men. It relates to status. Women are attracted to men of high social status. Politicians, celebrities, doctors, the "life of the party", DJs, bartenders, are all attractive because they have social status. When they are in a social setting that provides them with status, they are seen as more attractive than outside of that setting. A DJ at a club is more attractive to the women at the club than he is as an anonymous person on the street. Non-neediness ties into social status because a man of high status typically has more dating options and therefore is less needy with any particular woman. If you think this is all bullshit, please read this http://markmanson.net/attract-women

This leads me to an unrelated topic, which is alternatives in the manosphere and PUA community for people who aren't assholes, don't need to rely on emotional manipulation, and value women. The guy you're looking for is Mark Manson. He was a PUA leader for five years who realized he didn't like all the bullshit and changed what he was preaching to a message that was about being confident and vulnerable and authentic to who you are: demonstrating true confidence by showing who you really are to women and if they aren't interested or compatible then you've both saved a lot of time. And none of it is about "game". He advocates an approach based on respect: collaborating with women not seeing seduction as a competition, believing men need to provide value in order to deserve value from women. If you are a TBP reader and think all PUA type stuff is terrible, he's an example of the exception to the rule. He also writes about masculinity in general. And lifestlye and travel. :)

Back to TRP and non-neediness: TRP often has "field report" type posts where a guy describes how he handled a situation. Most of it revolves around "shit-tests" and being non-needy. I personally think /trp/ generally handles "shit-tests" the wrong way. Mark Manson writes about "shit tests" here: http://postmasculine.com/shit-test-paranoia it summarizes my thoughts on them much better than I could. But as far as being non-needy goes, there are plenty of cases of posts on /trp/ from guys where they were clearly assholes. But there also posts where a dude did shit the right way and it had a positive outcome. He wasn't a doormat, or he wasn't needy, etc. These are things that are good for both men and women. There isn't a winner and a loser. A /trp/ reader like myself can find some posts on /trp/ that show good role models of how you can handle all sorts of interactions in an "alpha" way, Again, some posters on /trp/ take being "alpha" to extremes and are assholes. But there are plenty of posters on /trp/ who are "alpha" without being disrespectful.

Another example of value I as a reader of /trp/ get is being told that my "SMV" is much lower in my early-20s but that it will be when I get older assuming I'm not a fuckup. That a career, having my shit together, and other such things matter more to women as they get older. Of course there are women who care about those things at age 22. But at a get-together at age 30 most women have a lot more fucks to give about my profession than at house party in college. Hearing things like this is a lot like when gay people hear the "it gets better" commercial or when women are told that while it's true some guys only care about looks, there are plenty of dudes who aren't shallow, etc. In this case it's about nerdy guys feeling better that some of their qualities will hold higher SMV a little later in life.

I'm just gonna randomly stop here as I've already rambled a lot here and wasted a lot more time on this than I wanted to. I generally consider most online discussion like PPD to be like shouting into a thunderstorm. But I will elaborate and answer any questions. I want to provide insight into the mind of what most TBP readers would probably project as being an almost nice, normal guy who is just a little bit of an asshole / misogynist. To be honest I had a much harder time defending /trp/ in this post than I expected, but as I was typing this I came to the conclusion that it's much more important to me to defend the more general manosphere, PUA, and redpill-esque greater community of thought than this particular subreddit, which has mostly gone to shit.