Hypnos

Seeing looksmaxxing become a mainstream talking point after initially discovering it years ago on incel/blackpill subreddits and forums actually feels surreal. Genuine advice for all the men that follow me, please read this post before buying into any of it. It could genuinely save your life. Put yourself in my shoes for a minute; At 16 years old you have no dating experience whatsoever. One day, you stumble upon a YouTube video taking about inceldom and although you find the idea of it so absurd, it’s presented in such an entertaining way that you can’t stop watching. After the video ends, you search up the term online to find more resources on the matter and in doing so, become obsessed with redpill, blackpill, and incel subreddits for months. Eventually the posts stop being purely entertainment for you, and you resonate with some of what’s being said. Months pass. At 17 you think no one will ever love you for being you, so as a result you dedicate your everything, for years, to being the kind of person that can experience that love; You workout every day, You work hard towards the actualization of your career every day, And with everyone you meet, you try to put yourself in their mind to figure out how to best approach situations in order to better their idea of you. Along the way, every negative experience and heartbreak only reinforces the ideas that were present in your mind, pushing you further down the rabbit hole. And then, years later, when you finally end up ‘making it’ you doubt the intentions of every single person you ever meet because you hate the very idea of them liking you now because they would’ve never liked you back then. Paranoia and anxiety don’t become traits that you possess, they become the very center of your being. Your entire existence takes on a grey undertone so severe that you become even less the person you once were in such a way that you isolate yourself completely from who you are at your core. You separate yourself from your hobbies, Your interests, Your family, And your friends; And in walking this path that makes you feel worse the further along you trudge across it, you believe that the only way forward is forward. At 21, things hit a peak. After years of struggling and finally making it to the top of your industry you turn the cameras off and, while living out your literal childhood dream, feel nothing but hollowness as you drift off to sleep every night. You realize that after years of being hurt, you’ve slowly turned into someone who also hurts others and, while hating it, feeling enough comfort in it that you continue down that path. At 22, in an ultimate act of mental instability and foolishness you break things off with the only person you ever felt true comfort with because your mind convinces you that you’re undeserving of what you found and must rededicate yourself because maybe, just maybe, if you push yourself further you’ll feel deserving of love. And then at 23, after she decides to work together with you and help you realize just how problematic your mindset has become for not only yourself, but all those you love, you finally go to therapy. You spend months there, restrengthen the bond you had with your girlfriend, start dating again, propose, and get married. And then, at almost 24, you feel more at peace than you ever have before after having not only found acceptance for yourself, but also committed yourself towards working on the negative traits in your personality that actually need to be fixed. This entire concept is a trap that strings some people along for not only years, but decades at a time. What’s the point of having all the knowledge in the world if the only thing it does is make you hate your existence inside of it? Ironically, most people that end up getting into this rabbit hole only do so because they believe they’ll never be able to find someone who loves and accepts them for being them, and as a result they stray so far from who they are at their core that they end up turning their biggest fear into their most likely reality. Yes, the dating pool is hard nowadays. Yes, social media has warped peoples perceptions of what is ‘normal’. Yes, there IS a male loneliness epidemic. But, as someone that for years went down that rabbit hole, no matter how much research you do, how attractive you become, or how many people you sleep with, no amount of looksmaxxing or red pilling will ever make you happy. You’ll render yourself somewhat immune to the hurt that you’ll experience throughout your life, but in doing so you’ll not only limit the amount of comfort and happiness that you’d regularly be able to feel with your partner, but you’ll also inevitably end up hurting genuine people in the process as well. You’ll become so obsessed with the idea of what people’s idea of you is that you cease to even exist in your own mind. Your personality won’t be a unique blend so in tune with who you are that you can cultivate a close circle of those that genuinely like and appreciate you for being you, and will rather end up becoming a cardboard cutout that while being able to appeal to more people, will only ever bring you surface level relationships that either never last or never go beyond the surface-level. As much as I wish it weren’t the case, the only way to truly ‘ascend’ is to become okay with the idea of being hurt; Being rejected, Being heartbroken, Being mentally shattered for months, And being willing to give all of you, once again, to the next person you believe whose intentions will be true. That’s not to say you shouldn’t self-improve, however. Working on your career, your physique, your hobbies, and yourself is, and will always be, admirable. But turning your entire way of being into that of someone who just wants the approval of others and the confidence boost that comes with it can only ever end disastrously. Always remain true to who you are.