Welcome to Hell

Thoughts on the manosphere and the very online new right.

The Harrowing of Hell by Hieronymus Bosch.

I’m wrapping up two big ghostwriting projects and halfway done with a third. Something I’ve really enjoyed about this work is putting myself in the lives of others, learning to write in their voice, and helping convey in words things lived and dreamed.

Before I got started writing political things, I wrote little stories that’ll never see the light of day, mostly as a way of taking the world around me and straightening it into a narrative thread that made sense. Parents who fought a lot. A vision quest that didn’t pan out. Half-sister who struggled with addiction. These things developed in me a healthy sense of empathy, but I think that once I started down the path of political commentary, the aperture of my empathy narrowed because I began to primarily evaluate people (and things) based on ideological criteria. It’s hard to put yourself in the shoes of others after you have reduced them to an abstraction, an idea denuded of flesh and blood. The degree to which this happens depends on how far you go down the rabbit hole and how much of your being you surrender to ideology. I was in pretty deep. In my defense, the last decade has been one of profound polarization, and I am recovering.

This might seem like a strange way to back into an article about how the new right has been subsumed by the manosphere and adjacent online communities and the culture that accompanies them. I hope it will make sense by the end.

What I’m writing is part personal reflection, part analysis of a movement I had once associated with but no longer. I should start by saying that I am not a “trad” person. You will not find my writing in First Things or The Lamp. I am too self-conscious to even pretend I have it all figured out. I believe, like Jack Kerouac, in “order, tenderness, and piety,” although I am not particularly religious. I am telling you these things so that you understand where I am coming from and why I occasionally write about being a parent. I have three kids. Being a dad helped me recover normalcy, for which I am grateful.

So on Wednesday, in a short Substack Note, while waiting for a pot of coffee to brew, I posted about being a dad.

I do not use Notes frequently, and was not expecting much of a reaction, let alone a psychotic, even violent response to such a mundane post from the manosphere and adjacent spheres.