The Red Pill & Manosphere

Coach Corey Wayne interviews the President of the Manosphere, Anthony “Dream” Johnson. We discuss what the red pill and Manosphere are.

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Corey: Who better to discuss this topic than Mr. El Presidente, Anthony “Dream” Johnson. Welcome, man.

Anthony: Good to be here, man.

Corey: Thanks for coming over.

Anthony: Yeah, appreciate it.

Corey: So, for the people that don’t know, what’s interesting is, I started seeing six, eight, nine years ago on my YouTube channel and people commenting on my blog about the red pill and stuff about the manosphere. And so, for those that that don’t know, why don’t you give us a little idea. What is the manosphere? What is the red pill?

Anthony: Sure. So, we were talking about it earlier and as I mentioned, the manosphere and my view of it, my understanding of it as president now, it has four main sub-communities. So, it’s not just a cohesive movement where everyone gets along. You know, I joke that my followers on 21 Studios, the subscribers are Manospherians. You know, the magical land of Manospheria. Yeah, my fellow Manospherians.

But more literally, and I’ve talked about this with reporters and stuff at The New York Times and all that that asked me, the manosphere has four distinct sub-communities. And then beyond that, it has kind of what I call manosphere-light. And that’s guys like Jordan Peterson, Stefan Molyneux and yourself. Even if you don’t identify as being part of the manosphere, you’re a man, you’re a content creator, you’re a leader, and you’re creating positive content and media for men. That’s what you do constantly. Instagram, YouTube, your newsletter, your website.

Corey: And women. About ten percent of my audience is women.

Anthony: Yeah, we have about five percent.

Corey: We don’t forget the ladies.

Anthony: Ours should be increasing soon, right?

Corey: Absolutely.

Anthony: But you’re basically a controversial content creator, you have a huge following, and you want to help men, and the women too. And you do that through education, through educational media, newsletters, videos, you know, all that stuff. And Jordan Peterson does that, too, even though he’s not officially part of the manosphere. Stefen Molyneux as well. He creates content for it from time to time, but then he focuses elsewhere on politics.

Corey: Philosophy.

Anthony: Philosophy, or even current events like coronavirus, stuff like that. But within the larger manosphere, more of the formal manosphere, we’ll call it, you have four communities. Some of those are pretty well known. Obviously, the pick up artist community, the seduction community, as it was called. You have kind of the remnants of that. That’s kind of fallen apart over the years, but there’s still a PUA thing, a seduction thing.

For example, on Reddit, there’s a seduction community that’s been around for a long time and they have 300,000-400,000 thousand followers. Obviously, back in the day you had in the 2000s the pickup artist shows, you had The Game and all that. The seduction community has been around since the 90s. And that, to me, is the distinct part of the manosphere.

You also see the men’s rights movement, men’s rights activists. They’re the more politically, legally active, activist part of the manosphere. You don’t see that in the pickup artists. You don’t see that even in the MGTOW guys. You don’t see that even in the red pill. Those are the guys who focus on that. Whether you like them or not, that’s what they do.

You also see the red pill community, which is probably the smallest part of the manosphere. Before they got quarantined on Reddit about a year and a half ago now, they had about 300,000 subscribers on their network. And you see different leaders in that, you know, different content creators. But the red pill is its own distinct corner, distinct community, within the larger manosphere. They usually don’t even get recognized, but they are. And a lot of people say, and I agree with them, that they basically hived off from the pick up artist community in about 2011, 2012.

Before that, the pickup artist community was kind of one thing. And then supposedly what happened was the pickup artist community was getting a lot more feminized. As feminism was kind of increasing as an even more culturally dominant force, you saw a lot more pickup artist stuff get a lot more apologetic about masculinity and things like that.

And so, there was a kind of a wing of the manosphere, the pickup artist community, that was not okay with that. So, eventually they hived off and created their own community, and that eventually grew to have 300,000 followers. At this point, nobody knows how big it is because it shows zero on Reddit, because they nixed that when they quarantined the community.

The final fourth community of the manosphere that occupies it is MGTOW, [Men Going Their Own Way]. You know, a lot of people that we’re talking about, they get blasted by the MGTOW people the minute they make any critical comment. There is a MGTOW community on Reddit that’s pretty big.

Corey: Yeah, my experience, like we were talking about earlier, they’re not the most positive people. They’re not the ones that are like, “Hey, it’s going to work out for you, buddy.”

Anthony: I’m not surprised at all. I’ve gotten some of the same flak from them, not lately, but sometimes.

Corey: I’m sure with that comment alone I’ll get a bunch of people bitching, but that’s okay.

Anthony: But, they’re another community though. They have a couple hundred thousand on Reddit, and then on YouTube, different channels like Sandman and stuff like that. And they’re just another component of the manosphere. They’re a distinct group. Separate from the red pill guys, separate from the men’s rights, separate from the pickup artists. They don’t even like, they hate the pickup artists, for example, a lot of the time. And they’ll make fun of anybody, you know, for any reason that they want. Men’s rights are “manginas,” as they call them. Pickup artists are “manginas.” You know, all this stuff.

I don’t need to get into exact detail of each one of these communities, but those are the four. You have the pickup artists, the men’s rights, the MGTOW, and the red pill guys. And each one has a couple hundred thousand distinct members in it. And there’s some crossover between them, but each one is pretty distinct.

The MGTOW are probably one of the most distinct, because they don’t get along with anybody. I told that to The New York Times, because they asked me if MGTOW was the same thing as “incel,” and I was like, “Oh, hell no.” That’s its own distinct thing that is not part of the manosphere. They hate everybody, obviously. But the MGTOW guys tend to be more combative, and they don’t get along with other other communities. But it is what it is. It’s part of being a man sometimes. There’s, you know, kind of combat and conflict.

You asked about the red pill as well, so it’s not just the community. The red pill obviously comes from The Matrix, you know, the late 90s movie — red pill, blue pill. And the red pill, that’s why I think they called it that, from hiving off from the pickup artist community. The pickup artist community was never creating, in my opinion, a framework or a theory that underlined why women act the way they do, why men act the way they do and all that.

The red pill was like a response to the increasing feminization you saw of the pickup artist community. And it’s a focus on truth. It’s a focus on building a theory that, actually in today’s culture, where men are not even supposed to know this, right. It’s not just these guys, when they find your book and to look for advice from you when they hit rock bottom on something, it’s not just that they don’t understand women.

It’s that they’re operating in a culture that has deliberately propagandized them to not understand women, and to get themselves into toxic relationships, and get divorce-raped and all these things. They’re living in the 1950s in terms of behavior, but they live in 2020 now. And having that kind of behavior and saying, “Oh, she’ll love me forever, because we’re married. Unconditional love,” and all that. It’s like, that doesn’t work anymore. And not understanding that as a man…

Corey: She’ll leave your ass and take half your shit.

Anthony: Or more. Yeah.

Corey: Especially if you live in California.

Anthony: Yeah, lifetime alimony in California. As Stefan Molyneux said, they’re not overly strong and independent when they get lifetime alimony. And you know, I’m not a historian on this stuff, but even alimony, for example, yeah, it’s just ridiculous. The origin of it was fitting to a time when that made sense. And now it’s like, you’re a strong and independent woman. You can go get a job on your own. You don’t need alimony. What do you do that for? I think it should be abolished, speaking of it.

You know, with the red pill community, with regards to the manosphere, with regards to its hiving off from the pick up artist community, it’s a much more explicit focus on building a theory and a framework for understanding women and a culture that deliberately and explicitly does not want men to understand the truth. It wants them to be these kind of dumb buffoon betas, that they even show you on TV, right? From “Homer Simpson” to Modern Family. And the red pill is a pushback against that to teach men the truth, even when it’s cold and uncomfortable. And it’s forbidden for me to even know, you know? Even on your channel. The red pillers, by the way, they call you purple pill.

Corey: Yeah, they call me, “Oh Corey, he’s purple pill, he’s blue pill.” I think somebody even called me an orange pill. They’ve got so many fucking colors. It’s like, you can take all those pills and stick them up your ass, dude. It’s like, I don’t fit in nobody’s box.

Anthony: That’s a way for them to insult you, just because you have a positive view of relationships. That’s all a bunch of nonsense from them, you know, when they attack you like that. But I do think that you are, whether you identify or not, it doesn’t really matter, your focused on the truth. You’re focused on fact. You’re focused on what works.

Corey: Yeah.

Anthony: To me, that makes you red pill. As long as that’s genuine.

Corey: But what I always say to people, because a lot of people see me like, “Who is this fucking shaved head… what the hell are you going to teach me?” I’m like, even if you think I’m full of shit, if you apply the things I teach, it will work for you, I promise you.

Anthony: Yeah. That’s the test. Apply it to your life and see what happens. Look at it, you know? So yeah, they call you a purple pill. It’s a bunch of bullshit, nonsense. It’s just an insult.

Corey: What is the purple pill supposed to represent?

Anthony: In terms of The Matrix movie where the analogy came from, it would be like “Cypher,” someone who woke up to woke up from the blue pill, but then he wanted to kind of go back to that comfort cocoon kind of thing. And so, he made a deal with the with “Agent Smith.” So, purple pill is like a mixture of the two. It does have real meaning, but they’re misapplying it to content creators that they don’t agree with, like you. That’s a bunch of nonsense.

A real purple pilled guy would be probably like me before finding the red pill community and stuff in 2016. So, for example, I understood from the pickup artist community, my experience there in building the convention that I do and things like that, I understood how to pick up women. But I was still so young, I didn’t really get the bigger picture. And that’s the point. I understood approaching women, I understood how to pick them up, how to get laid and all that stuff, but I didn’t really understand women.

I understood pickup. I understood some mechanics that could get me laid, which, I’m a young man, that’s pretty fun. That’s what I want, that’s part of what I wanted to do. But I did not understand women more fundamentally. I didn’t understand women in the context of relationship. I didn’t understand even parts of myself as a man. So, in those ways, I was still kind of blue pill. So, you saw me have these kind of red pill ideas. Like, I can go to a bar, I can approach a woman, I can get better at doing that over time, and then I can bring a hot girl home the same night and have sex with her.

Which most guys, you know, the average lifetime partner count for a man in America is like seven, or that’s like the median, I think, according to the CDC. So the idea that you can go to a bar and deliberately pick up a girl and bring her home and have sex, to most guys, this is like, you know, movie stuff. This doesn’t happen. But the pickup artists teach you that this is possible, that you can learn these things and you can apply them to your life and you can go out and learn how to do that.

So that is kind of a red pill understanding of women that you can do that. But then not having the backbone and the foundation to be masculine, to be a man and to truly understand women at a broader and deeper level, that’s purple pill. And that’s dangerous, because you can get sucked into a toxic relationship like that, which happened to me, which I’ll talk about pretty soon. And it’s very common for that to happen too.

Corey: Yeah, you’ve got to pre-qualify your prospects. I like to borrow a term from the mortgage business. You know, just because she’s hot and has got a great body doesn’t mean she’s a good teammate.

Anthony: But the pickup artist community, if you notice, I don’t know how familiar you are with it, but in the 2000s when I grew up in the this community — I found it in 2005, I was very young, I was 17 — they didn’t talk about that. They talked very little about relationships, and certainly nothing that was focused on fundamentals. It was very like logistics and approaching, and outer game, as they call it, focused. It was only later on in about 2009, 2010 that they even took seriously the concept of inner game, of understanding self-confidence and your self-worth and self-esteem and things like that, things that I think you’re much more attune with than they were in the 2000s. Which again, was much more topical on outer game.

Corey: I mean, I coach a lot of guys that are married, very religious, no sex until marriage. I coach guys that have been married for thirty years and haven’t been getting laid the last ten years. I coach a lot of lesbians. I coach gay guys sometimes. I mean, I look at the world as if we’re all a bunch of spiritual beings having a human experience. I believe in reincarnation. It’s like, however badly you fucked somebody over in one life, you’re going to be the person getting fucked over in the next life. That’s how I look at it, so you know, I have a different perspective on things.

And it’s like, you know, as a coach, my job is to help people achieve their outcomes. I’m not here to be their judge or be their priest. It’s like, “What do you want to do? What’s your outcome?” Which is always the first thing I ask in my phone sessions with people. It’s like, “When we hang up today, what do you want to get out the phone session?” and I work back from that. I want them to achieve, because people pay me a lot of money to to talk to me, and I want to make sure that they achieve their outcome. Otherwise, I failed.

Anthony: Yeah, you’re a coach, not a dictator.

Corey: Exactly.

Anthony: It’s similar to the 22 Con. You know they think, as I was talking about it earlier, that we want to control women and dictate to them. It’s like, no. If you want to come to the conference, let’s talk. Like, how can I help you? How can our speakers help you, more importantly. It’s a very mutual, you know, voluntary thing. That’s good.

Corey: Cool. So, back to the the manosphere. What is the state of it, the state of the manosphere, for the manospherians?

Anthony: I would say recently it’s grown a lot. I think the “Make Women Great Again” has been such a huge cultural thing. It’s reached almost a hundred million people that it’s actually grown the manosphere. It’s grown an awareness of it.

Corey: That’s your seminar that’s coming up?

Anthony: On women.

Corey: It’s kind of like a couples weekend, right?

Anthony: Yeah.

Corey: You’re going to have the patriarch edition and then the one for the women, so couples can go together to this event. The men can attend the patriarch edition, and the women can attend the “Make Women Great Again” mansplaining event in the future.

Anthony: The mansplaining event of the century. Yeah. It’s because it’s all male speakers, 100% for the first year. In the future we might change it, but for now, it’s the mansplaining event of the century. All male speakers and all female attendees. Men are not allowed to attend 22 Con, women are not allowed to attend 21 Convention, but all men are speaking at both conferences. So this has really upset the feminists, you know, for obvious reasons.

Corey: How dare you help men and women.

Anthony: I know, right? Yeah, I know. You bigot, how dare you. Yeah, it’s just nuts. But it was expected too though, you know. Like, the outrage and all that. But we live in a cancel culture kind of times. People have been threatening to kill me, all kinds of nasty stuff. They scream at me on the internet. The company voicemail that we have, the phone’s been blowing up with these women screaming at me and stuff, saying they want me to die. I mean, I get all kinds of really nasty stuff. They wish I was never born, I should have been aborted. Just sick stuff, man.

They try to find the venue too, obviously, to cancel it. They even tried to trick us through email, they try to get the venue without buying a ticket. And it’s so obvious what they do. It’s like, I know you just want to get the venue so you can call them and harass the management, tell them to cancel us, a bunch of nonsense.

Corey: People with too much time on their hands.

Anthony: That’s right. So, let me say this about the manosphere. In spite of some of the negativity you see that is natural to any movement, the manosphere, I think, is primarily and fundamentally very positive for men and women. And for women, that’s now for the first time that’s being expressed and that’s being seen. And that’s through mansplaining. Which is a term that I think feminists know it’s funny, people laugh at right away, but it’s funny because…

Corey: Well, they use it as a derogatory term towards men, and then you’ve just kind of taken it like aikido and just redirected the momentum into something positive.

Anthony: That’s right. Just like Trump would do with these people that attack him. Or like what happened in the MAGA movement. Hillary Clinton had called Trump supporters deplorables. They’re going to say, “Fuck yeah, I’m a deplorable.” So, it’s a positive way to deal with a kind of negative concept like that.

Mansplaining in particular, I think, has been used to silence and censor and neuter masculine voices in America, from fathers to brothers to men to husbands and all that stuff. And that’s one of the reasons it was so important to grab as a concept, because I knew they’d call us a mansplaining event anyway. So I was like, all right, let me just take this concept, mansplaining, which is what we’re doing anyway in their terms, right? We’re talking to women about how to be women, and we’ll embrace it and own it. And that’s by saying it’s the mansplaining event of the century — the biggest one, the first one and all that stuff, ever.

So, feminism I view as a movement for women, obviously, right? And an ideology that I think is very toxic. But feminism is very negative for women completely, especially at this point. For example, in feminism, whether it’s on Reddit, in these huge communities or websites, and all these different organizations that they have, none of it is self-improvement focused. Like, none of it. At best, maybe some fitness stuff they go over, like, you know, lose weight and all this stuff. But really, it’s a very negative movement that’s not positive. And the manosphere is very different from that.

From day one, the manosphere has been a lot more positive. Our conference, for example, when I started it in 2006-2007, they said it was like a pick up artist conference. And I was the founder, and I never viewed it as that, ever. Even at the beginning when it was almost all pickup artists speaking and like one fitness guy. First of all, we had a fitness component from the beginning. But second of all, even with the pickup artists, coaches and all that stuff, and eventually we evolved beyond that too, for me, it was like your stuff. It was about understanding. You say understanding relationships, that’s your website. But for me, the conference…

Corey: Because life is relationships. It’s all about our relationships with other human beings.

Anthony: Yeah. But even from our perspective, my perspective as the founder of the conference, it was about understanding women and it was about understanding yourself as a young man. Because it was for young men at the beginning, the under 21 Convention. So it was always about understanding male-female relationships, understanding women, understanding yourself as a man, understanding how women behave, so femininity, things like this. The pickup artists component, that was like kind of a the framework that it existed in, like the topical shell of it. But at its core, it was always fundamentals based — understanding things, understanding philosophy, understanding women, understanding yourself.

And that’s why I think it’s also grown so much over the years. I’m doing it for 13, almost 14 years now, and it’s evolved to have medical doctors, Navy SEALs, a lot of coaches like yourself, that we have, similar. And then even, you know, philosophers like Stefan Molyneux. All that’s welcome at the conference because it’s always been understanding focused, not like get laid. Which, you know, that’s fun, but it’s a much deeper, bigger vision than that.

The state of the manosphere, I could get back into that. So, let me say that I think it’s a very positive movement for men, and now women too. For the first time in modern American history, I think men are standing up and speaking in public to women, and we’re using “Make Women Great Again” to do that at the conference. That’s a very positive thing. But even for the men, it’s primarily, there’s a little bit of negativity. You know, guys get burnt in a relationship, they look for help on the internet, they end up in a community, you know, whatever.

Corey: You know, something that’s interesting, though, along those lines is that when I first wrote my book, 95% of the self-help books on dating and relationships are bought by women, and only about 5% percent by men.

Anthony: Wow! Damn.

Corey: So, you know, if you’ve got a bunch of guys that are experts, coaches, and you know, people that you have speaking at “Make Women Great Again,” I mean, women are more inclined to want to hear what they’ve got to say, because they’re more focused on nurturing in relationships, because that’s all part of feminine energy.

Anthony: But as far as the manosphere, I mean, it’s it’s a lot of content. It’s not just people in it, you know, men. It’s a lot of speakers like yourself and coaches and things like that. It’s very positive for fathers, for example. We do a whole father conference now, how to be the best father you can be for yourself and your wife and your children and all that. And for the men, it’s very positive. It’s how to be the best man you can be. That’s like a recurring theme throughout all the manosphere. A lot of the coaches say that.

They have different kinds of variations of the phrase for that, but really, the one I like to use is from an Ayn Rand objectivist perspective, become the ideal man, not by someone else’s definition, but by your own definition. And that, to me, means being the best man you can be in this lifetime that you have before you die. Whether that’s next week or fifty years from now, be the best you can be. Express yourself in the best way possible, and navigate life and define what that’s going to mean for you with your goals and values that you have, that you pick along the way.

The manosphere is very positive, and that’s also so different from feminism. Feminism is a very negative movement for women, and it’s very toxic and destructive. The manosphere is about building men up, and building fathers up and becoming the best man that you can be. And each community has kind of a different focus, whether it’s the guys teaching men what they believe to be true about women and a culture that is very hostile to men and masculinity, or whether that’s the men’s rights community trying to undo the very destructive, unfair, unjust family law for men and fathers and things like that.

For example, recently, I think in Kentucky, they finally passed a law now, 50/50 custody for men and women, fathers and mothers, as a default after divorce, you know, child custody. And most states you don’t have that. Women win like 83% of custody battles or something like that for primary custody in America, which obviously is not equal and not fair and not good.

Corey: No.

Anthony: And in Florida now too, they’re pushing that finally. I think the bill is going to be to make 50/50 custody default, which I think is very American and very positive and very just. And so, that’s why the men’s rights guys, that’s why their focus is different from the pickup artists and the red pill and stuff like that. So, I think that answered your question for the state of the manosphere. I should give a speech on that at some point. That wouldn’t be the first one, but it would be, you know, one of the first.

Corey: So anything else that we should talk about, about the red pill that people should know?

Anthony: I mean, the red pill is a distinct community in the manosphere. I’m not on good terms with one of the leaders in it. I exiled him from the manosphere. That was my first ax.

Corey: Excommunicado?

Anthony: Excommunicado, exactly — John Wick style. A lot of people are very critical of it, like the MGTOW, but I still think it’s a pretty positive thing. In spite of some of the polarization in it and some of the negativity, I think it’s still a pretty good thing. Men need to be told the truth about men and women. They need to be told the truth about what’s going on today. And the red pill, I think, does that. It’s a good analogy, too.

It’s used, obviously, outside of the manosphere. It’s used in politics and all kinds of things, because it came from a movie that everyone knows. I think it’s a good movement. It’s a good thing. I think you’re very red pill. You’re dressed head to toe in red right now.

Corey: Yeah, I got this nice new hat here that somebody just gave me.

Anthony: The final thing I will say is that I don’t know how much longer, and I’ve said this in a speech I’ll publish pretty soon, I said in my speech in Poland at the 21 Convention, that I think long-term you’re going to see the sub-communities, the four of them fizzle out in the manosphere, and it’s going to kind of coalesce into one larger movement known as the manosphere. That’s part of why I wanted to be the president of it and declare that for a couple of reasons. Like being a lightning rod for mainstream media to attack. I think someone needed to do that who was anti-fragile, who would benefit from that as I have.

Corey: You’ve handled it quite well.

Anthony: Thanks. Yeah.

Corey: I’ve watched the Piers Morgan interview and, you know, they did a good job of trying to squeeze your nuts, and you handled it pretty well.

Anthony: Dude, that was at 3:00 a.m. in the morning too in Orlando. I was like so exhausted. I had some coffee, but I was still just like, ugh.

Corey: That’s right, they’re five hours ahead over there in London.

Anthony: Yeah. But anyway, I think long term, like the 2020s now, this decade, the pickup artists have already been kind of falling apart over the years. Like, it’s not as organized as it was in the 2000s. So, I think we’ll see these communities kind of fizzle out or lose momentum. And in general, men will identify more strongly and consistently with the manosphere itself, which is kind of an odd term, you know, but it’s the best we have. People say it sounds like a gay nightclub or something. I think that’s stupid. It is what it is.

It’s the manosphere. It’s a community for men. It’s the world’s first ever movement for men and fathers that are organizing together for the interests of men, boys and fathers. That’s never been seen in the world, to my knowledge. And it’s a positive thing, too, like the feminists claim their stuff is for. Which I think is false and fraud, basically. The manosphere, that’s real. These are men and fathers getting together and talking about the issues, putting out content, helping each other navigate the world as men and as fathers. And that’s needed right now, a positive movement and a positive force for men. And that’s not happening anywhere else in the world. I think it needs to happen and we’re at the forefront of making that happen, and it’s a very good thing. We’re happy to lead it and be the lightning rod.

Corey: Cool. And so how do people get in touch with you to attend your events or view your YouTube channel?

Anthony: They can go to The21Convention.org. They can also visit us on YouTube. Go to YouTube.com/21 or you can do a search for 21 Studios. You can also go to the TheManosphere.org and sign up for the the manosphere email list.

Corey: And then is there a separate domain for the women’s event?

Anthony: Yes. So, for the women’s event, if you’re a woman watching this, or if you’re a man and you have a wife or girlfriend or sister or something like that you want to send, you can go to 22Convention.com. Tickets are on sale now, and the event for women happens October 21-24, 2021, right here in Orlando, Florida.

Corey: Cool. Well, thanks for coming over, man.

Anthony: Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

Corey: And as always, for me, if this is the first video of mine that you’re watching, both my books, “How To Be A 3% Man” and “Mastering Yourself,” you can read them totally for free at UnderstandingRelationships.com. Even if you think I’m full of crap and I don’t know what I’m talking about, if you apply the things that are in my books, they will work for you.

And if you want to talk to me personally, one-on-one, and do some coaching, you can go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen on any page and book a coaching session with yours truly.

Here are the links for more information on Anthony’s events, YouTube channel and Twitter:

All 21 Convention events: https://the21convention.org/

Direct link for 22 Convention: https://22convention.com/

Anthony’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/21

Anthony’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/beachmuscles