At least not in the way you might think.

I was reading through the comments of a recent thread and something clicked for me. Stonepimpletilists was responding to the OP and stated: “You were thinking this was a support group. No time for that, we are busy building men here.”

A few weeks ago I had a shit night/day and decided to post a rant about it. It was quickly deleted by the mods on the grounds of being victim puke. My knee jerk reaction was to get angry and say “fuck these guys” let them have their superiority I’m out…but I couldn’t, because I’ve grown and learned so much here. I can’t deny the truths I’ve learned, or the tangible benefits I’ve experienced from exercising these truths. So, I took a step back and tried to figure out why my post so was quickly deleted. After I read through it a few time I realized it was comprised of humble bragging plus victim puking (i.e. whining). When you add those two things up you get nothing of value and I understood why it was deleted. The reason why Stone’s comment struck a chord with me is because back when I wrote my post I had the idea that MRP was a support group. A no nonsense masculine support group, but still a support group. I was wrong…sort of. The rest of what I’m writing is to all you lurkers out there that have the wrong idea of what kind of support group MRP is.

MRP is not the kind of support group where you go to like-minded men to tell of your woes of women. It’s not a place for you to rant and vent your frustrations and have men in a similar situation pat you on the back and say: “right on brother, woman can sure be bitches”. We all know that! We’re all here because of our own individual experience with how shitty women can be. So, when you post saying “woman can be such lying, opportunistic, cheaters boo hoo”, we’re thinking yes, water is wet, what else you got? The way that TRP is a support group is that lessons can be learned here that can used to improve. You can (silently) take good information from here, apply it to real life and see results. I’ve come here quite often with questions and frustrations and self-pity only to read a post and comments that directly speak to my situation. I internalize and act on what I’ve learned from other men. And in that way I am supported.

Something important to point out is that not all of the posts I’ve learned from are the posts where the OP does something right. Sometimes he royally fucks up and the comments section mercilessly point out the flaws. The OP may, or may not receive the advice, but I can still take something away from it. The reason being, it involved doing something. Whether the actions of an OP are right, or wrong they were actions, and you learn from doing, not whining. Some may want to say it's “venting” not whining, but when guys do it they're usually worse off then before they started. I never feel good after “venting”. You know what does make me feel better when I’m frustrated? Doing something: Lifting, fixing, cleaning, building. When I need to process, I do. And when I’m done, not only do I feel better, I’ve accomplished something. You get the exact opposite when you whine about problems, which is why it’s not tolerated here.

So, to sum up. If your posts don’t involve some kind of action then it’s probably humble brag (I am awesome), or victim puke (poor me), neither of which accomplish anything except wasting time. If you’re looking to become better help is available in the form of the sidebar and quality posts that you can internalize and put into practice. If you’re looking for someone to empathize/sympathize with you and your problems: “You were thinking this was a support group. No time for that, we are busy building men here.”