By David Futrelle
There’s some high drama going on in a segment of the manosphere I generally ignore because I find it so tedious. Several days ago, you see, the head grifter behind a long-running series of manosphere conventions booted one of the scheduled speakers — “Red Pill” guru Rollo Tomassi — from all future events. And it’s not at all clear why.
“This removal was made for private conduct unbecoming of a 21 convention alumni speaker,” declared the organizer, Anthony Dream Johnson, in a long but distinctly uninformative statement. This unspecified conduct, he continued, was
irreconcilable in regard to his future involvement with the organization … Out of respect for my relationship with Rollo, I intend to keep the nature of this offense a private matter.
So we don’t know if the accused, say, sexually harassed someone — or if the two alpha males are just having some sort of alpha male slapfight behind the scenes. Most observers seem to think it’s probably the latter. One commenter in the Red Pill subreddit joked about some of the other possibilities:
The top 3 speculations are that he impersonated someone’s online identity, that he tried to conspire to make someone look bad, that he fed a down syndrome kid’s pet goldfish to an alligator.
But no one’s talking, at least not publicly, so the reasons for Johnson’s action remain as much of a mystery as why anyone, even the thirstiest incel schlub, would pay anywhere from $1500 to $2500 to go to one of his 21 Conventions to see a bunch of self-proclaimed alpha males regurgitate the same stale “wisdom” they serve up for free on their various YouTube channels.
For now, most of the people who care about this sort of manosphere drama seem to be siding with Tomassi, a longtime fixture in the community, over the mercurial Johnson. “This is like kicking out Van Halen from Van Halen,” one Redditor wrote.
In the several days since Tomassi’s dismissal, a number of others scheduled to give presentations at upcoming 21 Conferences have either quit or been kicked out, presumably for supporting Tomassi. And some who’ve bought tickets for the cons are demanding their money back.
Right now, it seems, everyone in this segment of the manosphere is mad at everyone else (or mad at everyone who’s mad). “21 Convention Founder Anthony Johnson aka @beachmuscles will now be referred to as ‘Red Pill Judas,'” a former 21 Convention participant known as Jon from Modern Life Dating declared on Twitter.
On YouTube, meanwhile, antifeminist videoblabber YogiOabsa declared that Tomassi — best known for his series of “Rational Male” books — was a “fragile male” who deserved to be “CANCELLED” by the Red Pill community.
In the Red Pill subreddit, both Tomassi and Johnson have their supporters — and their detractors. But most commenters there seem to regard the dispute between the two as so much “bitchy drama … like a bunch of chicks clacking ” in the words of one commenter.
Infamous Red Pill subreddit commenter and sometime troll GayLubeOil dismissed Johnson as a “shady asshole” — but reserved most of his venom for Rollo and some of his better-known supporters, whom he labeled “blue pill beta males.” These are fighting words, in Red Pill land.
“Beta males can only learn things the hard way,” he wrote,
because they are ego invested in not seeing the truth. Anthony Johnson is the real Red Pill alpha Master for exposing these deluded Bloopsters.
Also they don’t even lift.
Others heaped scorn on the pricey convention itself.
“Can’t even imagine the smell at these types of conventions,” wrote someone called zdenipeni. “Yuh.”
“They all sell some perfume or shampoo laced with special pheromones,” added Lucifyer, “they might accidentally seduce each other some day and it would be a sausage fest.”
I guess we’ll have to wait and see if the details of Tomassi’s alleged “unbecoming conduct” ever come out. Until then, I can only say
H/T — Thanks to the reader who pointed me to this whole controversy
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