Saturday, January 9, 2016

The Old Men's Magazines

I've mentioned about men's magazines before.

My father had a subscription to the old men's magazine True when I was a kid. I only remembering reading two articles - one about a guy who killed a grizzly bear with a .45 round through the heart, and one about Phineas Gage, who had an iron rod go though his head and lived for years afterward, though of course not as the same man.

Years ago I bought some old copies of True and Cavalier online. They they turned out to be light reading - men's general-interest magazine about current events, history, fiction, cars and firearms.

Now they are all gone, pretty much replaced by Playboy, and boy was that magazine there at the right time. I found the writing impeccable. History, current events, interviews, fiction, men, women - and of course the pictures. Hef was a genius.

Now Playboy appears to be its way out, or at least in steep decline. It's no longer running pictures of women. I haven't bought a copy for years.

I've looked at other modern men's magazines, and they don't appeal to me at all.

Is there no longer a market for a men's general-interest magazine? I see speciality magazines all the time, but I don't care for magazines about nothing but cars and model trains.

A lot of men's magazines have moved online and offer free content. The Manosphere's content is free, and a good thing, too because I sure wouldn't pay for 99.999% of it. Do you honestly think I would pay for ignoramuses to inform me intelligence is a beta trait or that alpha and beta sperm really do exist? And the comments I read at the more poplar sites! Are the readers really that shallow, indeed stupid?

The Internet is a game-changer and as one it is impossible to predict the future concerning it.

In a sense this blog is a magazine because I run articles by other people. And it's not just about the Manosphere, which in many ways is too easy to criticize. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Those old men's magazines weren't just for the fathers - they were for sons. That's why I read them and they had such a profound effect on me (so did Playboy for all the boys now my age).

Ask yourself this - do you really want your eight-year-old sons reading the Manosphere and taking its content seriously? Or thinking that "Roosh" and "Roissy" and "Vox Day" are fatherly mentors to your growing sons?

I considered those old-time men's magazines to be models, even mentors. They had a good effect on me and not a bad one at all.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...


I like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics:

http://www.popsci.com

http://www.popularmechanics.com

And there is also Maxim Magazine:

http://www.maxim.com

Anonymous said...

"A lot of men's magazines have moved online and offer free content. The Manosphere's content is free, and a good thing, too because I sure wouldn't pay for 99.999% of it. Do you honestly think I would pay for ignoramuses to inform me intelligence is a beta trait or that alpha and beta sperm really do exist? And the comments I read at the more poplar sites! Are the readers really that shallow, indeed stupid?"

Yes, they are that stupid and ignorant. It's classic psychological projection, ignorance, and lack of wisdom and life experiences, especially with women and fathers.

There are Rollo Tomassi (therationalmale.com), Roosh, et al. followers that swear that the advice they give as gospel and scientific fact.

Anonymous said...


What's really scary about these manosphere sites is that many of the readers making these juvenile comments appear to be 40, 50+ years old, not just young fatherless, whipper-snappers.

Anonymous said...

This site has been a favorite of mine for a number of years now, Bob. It's just a nice mix of blunt, sometimes brutal, common sense and reason. Everytime you point out the value of mythos (like the Bible, Greek myths, etc) and remind people that one need not believe in them literally in order to glean wisdom, I remember there's at least a semblance of hope out there, some people thinking beyond the cultural nonsense.

I wonder sometimes if the 'manosphere' isn't so obsessed with the term 'cuckservative' because they know they've failed in the exact same way: they've run on a platform of childish anger that is rather akin to feminist envy, much in the way modern conservatives have adopted very left-like tactics, in order to garner votes and stay in power. The bigger names likely know this, if not at least subconsciously, and they know how populist bread gets buttered--with anger.

Unknown said...

The modern science magazines are the only ones I have subscriptions to.

I wish we had one with modern science, a occasional car, modern technology, firearms and men and women. And, sometimes, that is exactly what those science magazines cover.

DeNihilist said...

LOL! Betamax and alphalpha sperm! haven't seen that one yet!

Question I have asked and it has never been answered, or even disputed. If 80% of the fucks are by alphalpha's, then why are 90% of the men Betamax's? If all that alphalpha seed is going into "hawt vags", then most of the children being born must have that dominant alphalpha seed as their base, so why is not the world of men turning more alphalpha?

Of course if you really look at what is being sold, and yes it is all about sales. These "leaders of men" dispute themselves by saying that Betamax men can slowly become alphalpha by faking it til they make it. Would be interesting to take a DNA sample of some Betamax's, put them into alphalpha training, then after they become poosy slayers, do another DNA sample and see if there is a see able change to their DNA.

The one thing that the slayers of poosy have right, is that if you do want to bang a lot of women, you have to drop your fear of rejection and APROACH! and approach and approach. Even a mutt like krauser, according to him, gets laid by 20 odd different women a year. Of course he approaches 1000 or more a year, so in reality, his technique is nothing but chance/putting yourself out there. If this shit really worked, he should be in the 25 or above percentile, but instead, one of the top gamers gets his numbers by volume. The other way to look at it is he has a 98% rejection rate. Fuck, even a base Betamax like me, when I was trying to get laid (my game was wait for the ladies to approach) had a closure rate of way over 30%. Hell if I had game, according to these poosy slayers, I would have fucked my dick to a nub!

Anonymous said...

"Question I have asked and it has never been answered, or even disputed. If 80% of the fucks are by alphalpha's, then why are 90% of the men Betamax's? If all that alphalpha seed is going into "hawt vags", then most of the children being born must have that dominant alphalpha seed as their base, so why is not the world of men turning more alphalpha?"

I have always wondered about this notion ever since reading about alpha/beta guy theory. If most of the women throughout past history were supposedly cuckolding their beta husbands and actually having their children with alpha guys, shouldn't there be a whole lot more alpha guys in the present day human population? After millions of years of evolution, the beta guys should have been bred out of existence by now, and most men should be alpha guys, but I'm no geneticist.

Mindstorm said...

@first anonymous above
About Rollo, papers of David Buss and Martie Haselton are not gospel, but still quite reliable for what evolutionary psychology has to offer in general.

Mindstorm said...

As for the discussion above, in the age of easy contraception and reliable paternity tests the numbers of 'fucks' and children sired have less in common than anytime before.

DeNihilist said...

Mindstorm, I use to have links to studies refuting the evo-psych stuff the Rollo uses. I have posted links to them on his site. The only reply I get is from Rollo, sending links to his favourite studies. No real breakdown as to why the studies I send are not right. Check out Climate Audit for what I mean.

His group of course just ignores these refutations and keep on licking his balls.

I like his sight, he has some good stuff there and I have learned from it. But when I try to protest some of the junk, the echo chamber becomes unbearable.

Unknown said...

"(my game was wait for the ladies to approach)"

That's exactly what I did, and it worked just fine.

Rusty Shackleford said...

It seems to me like there should be a market for a sort of general men's lifestyle magazine, more so now than ever if anything. Most guys my age or younger dress a little better than bums and wouldn't know from quality in clothes, tools or anything else if it was staring them in the face. My Dad and Grandfather could pretty well take it for granted that if they walked into Sears or wherever, they were going to get what they paid for. It's more complicated now. That adage doesn't even necessarily apply anymore, because it's now very possible to walk into a mainstream store, spend a lot of money and end up with complete crap. When everything is ruthlessly made to a price point, crap becomes ubiquitous while it can become impossible to buy real craftsmanship at almost any price. WalMart for instance is great at making an awful work boot that looks 90% the same as a pair of Redwings but only lasts maybe 10% as long as the real thing.

A men's magazine that gave men a framework for making decisions in some of the basic areas of their lives like food, music, dress, manners, cars, hunting/fishing, etc. and which had pictures of women with big boobs could play a legitimate part in making for a better culture. Playboy used to do this. Maxim tries to, but it's pretty weak and puerile stuff. I guess it'd be a tough project though with the culture being so fractured, and with everyone used to having writers work for free. I only subscribe to car magazines because it's the only periodical writing that's meaningful and that doesn't make me read between the lines.

Frank said...

Today's magazines are advertising propaganda. Long gone are the days when you could pick up a mag and read about adventure and manly behavior-these days there are articles like "the six things every man must own" et. al.
It took me a couple of years of buying Men's Health to figure it out, I'm ashamed to say.
And Maxim is no better- just advertising with pretty girls interspersed in the pages. Dreck, all of it.