HealthyGamerGG - Stop Being A Low Value Man

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

Today we're going to talk about how to stop being a low-value male. In this episode, we go into what part of this ideology is bs and what is actually true. Check out HG coaching: https://bit.ly/47dF7rF Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we're going to talk about how to stop being a low-value male. Now, this may sound surprising coming from a psychiatrist who's trained and has done clinical work and all that kind of stuff, because isn't all of this low-value stuff BS from the internet? It turns out that there is a lot of BS, but there's actually a lot of truth to it too, which is very scary. And today we're going to teach y'all where this concept of low-value male comes from, what part of this sort of red pill ideology is BS. but shockingly, what part of it is actually very, very valid. And lastly, once we understand what's the difference between what's scientifically correct and what's kind of going on with people, we're going to offer you a road to get out of this thinking that you're a low-value male.

Hey, just a quick note. A lot of people will ask us, what do I do next? And that's why we built Dr. Kay's Guide. It's a comprehensive resource that distills over 20 years of my experience, both as a monk and as a psychiatrist. And it's designed in a way that's tailored to fit your needs. So if you're interested in better understanding your mind and taking control of your life, check out the link below. So let's start with the BS. So if we sort of think about this concept of alpha versus beta, the original researcher who sort of looked at this stuff and coined these terms was studying wolves in captivity.

And after they published this paper, and this kind of went wild because everyone thought, oh my god, this person has figured out that in social hierarchies, there are alphas and there are betas. and there are betas. But this person actually spent the rest of their life actually trying to disprove this and trying to explain to people that, hey, these hierarchical structures are artificial and exist within captivity. The basic point that they sort of made is alphas and betas may exist in something like a prison system, but if you are in a normal, healthy functioning society, social structures are a lot more complex. But unfortunately, at that point, the cat had gotten out of the bag, the wolf had gotten out of the bag.

And everyone started believing this stuff. And so then the question becomes, okay, if this is not scientifically accurate, why on earth is this kind of manosphere, red pill kind of stuff growing? And the more and more women that I talk to, whether they be clients, patients, random people from the internet, the more that this is becoming a problem. So I've talked to a ton of women who will say, my boyfriend, my husband, my son especially, is starting to go down the red pill rabbit hole. and then they're sort of starting to become like really, really like condescending towards women, hateful towards women, really misogynistic, and we're not quite sure like what to do. How do I deal with this person? And this is where we have to understand something really, really important,

which is that the red pill manosphere sort of section is the one place in society that really validates men and sort of meets them where they're at. Now, this is kind of shocking, but I want you to think a little bit, and if you don't believe me, talk to men about their experiences about this, because it's, that's what we've done. So right now, if you're a man living in today's world, and you complain about something, and you say, like, hey, my life is hard in some way, there's a very good chance that someone out there will respond to that with some kind of condescension or invalidation. You'll hear a lot of talk about how society is a patriarchy, and therefore you don't have a right to complain.

And I'm not saying that society isn't a patriarchy. We're not going to kind of dive into that sociology. What I'm sort of pointing out is that when a man in today's world complains or suffers in some way and voices that complaint, what they're frequently met by is an invalidating response. And someone saying, well, why are you complaining? You're part of the majority. You're part of the patriarchy. You have all of these advantages of being male. And I'm not saying that there aren't advantages of being male.

Or once again, that the society isn't patriarchal. But in that moment, how does that person feel? So I see this a lot in clinical stuff where we see sort of these traumas. competitions. So when I'm working inpatient on these trauma units, you'll get a group of people in group therapy. And so one person will say, I was traumatized in this way. And someone else will say, well, that's nothing. I was traumatized in this way. And so in that moment, someone's looking for compassion and validation and someone else invalidates them. And in some situations, like, it kind of makes sense. So let's say that I'm complaining about losing one leg. And then someone

else sitting next to me can say, well, what are you complaining about? You've at least got one leg. I lost both of my legs. And in an objective sense, you're right that like losing two legs is probably worse than losing one leg. But in that moment, it's incredibly invalidating. And so the one reason why I think that the Manosphere Red Pill stuff is growing. And if you're a woman who dislikes this stuff or you're a man who dislikes this, you all need to really understand this. The reason it's growing is it's because the only place on the internet or in our society in general where people will consistently validate men's experiences and what does that look like let's understand this so if i say hey it's hard to date or i can't find a romantic partner or women reject me right so i get judged for being a creep i get

judged in this way whatever the situation is my life is hard and the red pill folks kind of come along and they say, you're right. Your life is hard. That's because you're a loser. That's because you suck. That's because you're a low-value male. And here's how to fix it. Whereas the rest of society says,

why are you complaining? Your life isn't hard. Someone else has it worse. And so this is the one reason. If you want to understand why people are going down the red pill rabbit hole, this is the central point. Now that we have that context,

we can actually tunnel down into what makes a man a low-value male and how to fix it. So let's start by understanding the psychological impact of this dynamic. So when you're a human being and society tells you that you should be doing well and you are not doing well and if you complain, they say you shouldn't be complaining. What is the primary emotion that that evokes? Shame, right? So we see this with like ADHD as well.

When a kid is told, hey, if you just work harder, you would do so much better. If you just apply yourself, you would do so much better. What that actually induces in the child is shame. We're not telling the child, hey, there's actually a problem which keeps you from performing. What we're telling a child is that your lack of performance is a choice. And if you behave differently, then you'd be doing better at life. leads to a ton of shame, which is why 70% of kids who have ADHD and depression develop ADHD first and then wind up with depression later. And so what effect does shame have on someone's idea of whether

the low value or high value? It's kind of a silly question, right? Because the more ashamed you are, obviously, the more low value that you're going to think you are. And now we also see why red pill stuff quote unquote works. Because if we look at the strategy of the red pill manosphere, what they sort of say is, yeah, your life does suck. And by the way, do these things and your life will get better. Start going to the gym, start setting boundaries with people, which is really what they're doing. Cut some people off who are emotionally manipulative, you know, start to get sexier, right? So do your hair different, get better clothes. And the other really interesting thing is I've seen over the last year or two, a lot of people in the Manosphere and even the toxic manosphere recommending therapy. They'll say, go get your issues

sorted out in therapy. And so if we sort of look at this kind of red pill dynamic, all of the things that they tell people to do will actually correlate with an increase in confidence. And even if you look at the science of what sort of women find attractive or human beings in general find attractive, they're attracted to confidence as opposed to shame. So I think some of the reason that the red pill stuff quote unquote works, and I don't think it always works or doesn't even work well in a lot of cases, is that they sort of give people a script from, if you are ashamed of yourself, here is a road to put together your life, and then you will feel better about yourself. And I don't think it's the fact that they're necessarily making more money or the fact that they

got sexy. Those things definitely matter and will definitely improve your, you know, dating success. The other, the main thing, though, is that they really help people improve their confidence. And once the confidence changes, I think that's the linchpin of no longer being a low value male. This episode is brought to you by CarMax. Want to buy a car the easy way? Start at CarMax. Want to browse with confidence? Get pre-qualified with no impact on your credit score and shop within your budget.

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So one thing that leads to a lot of shame is men who go on dating apps and get rejected over and over and over again. So this is something where if you look at it, like men will say, okay, like women can get matches all the time. but I've been struggling. I'm on dating apps day after day I swipe, but for 600 swipes, I get one match. And so if you think about the amount of rejection that someone goes through on a dating app, it's astronomical, right?

Human beings were not designed to be rejected like 599 times for one acceptance. When I was in high school, like, I got rejected maybe once or twice, and that's like all I had the balls for, right? Like, you can't just chain, ask people out, and get rejected. And then in college, I got rejected a couple more times. The human brain is not designed for, like, 600 rejections over the course of six months.

And so that, too, is shame-inducing. The really tricky thing, though, is that once people get rejected so much, they start to formulate some of these beliefs. Like, okay, they'll hear these statistics, like the top 10% of dudes on dating apps get 90% of the dates. And so what they sort of will reinforce is there's this idea of, two buckets. They're the high-value men and the low-value men, and I'm down here. It turns out that a lot of these things about high-value and low-value men are actually cognitive biases that are induced

and driven by shame. And if you really want to stop being a low-value man, what you need to do is work on your confidence and get rid of your cognitive biases. So let's explore this statistic to understand this a little bit better. So there are some estimates that show that actually, like, the dating ratio on some of these apps is actually 10 to 1. men to women. And so it's not that the top 10% of dudes are dating nine women each. It's that there's 10 women and 100 dudes. And so like, of course, in a sense, the top 10%, whatever that means, are dating 10, it's still a one-to-one ratio. It's just there's a lopsided number of people in the game. The second thing that's really interesting is there was recently a study that came out that up to 50%

of people on dating gaps, and I think this was primarily looking at women, actually use dating apps for psychological reasons that have nothing to do with dating. So I think what started to happen is a lot of people have figured out that I can get some of my emotional needs met through dating apps, even if I'm not interested in dating. So out of the 10 women on there, possibly only five of them are actually interested in dating. And so then it sort of makes sense why, like, you know, for 10 women on there, like your rejection rate is going to be way higher, because half the women that you look at profiles for may not even be interested in dating at all. The point is that this all reinforces these kinds of statistics, which we don't think about, right?

So if you're a dude on a dating app today, all you're going to see is that rejection after rejection after rejection after rejection. And then you're going to watch all this like content on the internet, and we got to talk about that for a second. So why does all this red pill content, like if you watch a single sort of red pill manosphere kind of video, you'll notice that all of these content algorithms will start serving it up to you like hand over fist. And why is that? It's because this content is emotionally engaging. So if I'm ashamed of myself and I think my life sucks and any time I try to go talk to someone about it, if they say, you're a loser, there's the patriarchy, go screw yourself, you have nothing to complain about,

I'm going to get rejected from that. And then here's this pipeline of stuff that validates my experience. And that's what's really beautiful about, not beautiful, but kind of scary, is that what these algorithms was basically figured out is that in order to keep a user engaged, I have to emotionally engage them. This is why we love cat videos of them doing cute things. It's all about emotional engagement. And so what happens with some dudes is we have these experiences on dating apps.

We watch one video that resonates with our experience and then the content algorithm figures it out. Ah, here's a dude who feels bad about it. themselves. And so they start to prey on that chain by serving you more emotionally engaging content. And then the more emotionally engaging content you get, the more cognitive bias happens, right? Because now you're hearing from one dude after another dude, after another dude, and even a lot of women, right? Because you'll see those kinds of things and you'll see women say, yeah, I'd never date someone who gets below this in my mountain, is this tall and whatever. And by the way,

if you guys just want to know, like statistically, right? So the number of men who make six figures are over six feet tall and have a six inch dick is like less than one percent of the population. And like most of the people out there are not dating that person. The problem is that this cognitive bias reinforces your beliefs that you have to be in this top 1% to get any kind of affection. Then the problem is that if you believe this about yourself, you're ashamed of yourself, any romantic attempts you make are going to be sabotage, not because you're not in the top 1%, but because you're ashamed of yourself

to begin with, and you don't have any confidence, which is what a lot of what people find attractive. And so they end up shooting themselves in the foot. If you want to stop being a low-value man, and notice I'm not saying this is how you become a high-value man, because I think a low-value man is a combination of a pile of shame, invalidation from the environment, and a cognitive bias that is reinforced through predatory content algorithms. And it's not just the content algorithms that are preying on this shame. This is also what we see with sort of red pill manosphere kind of stuff is what these algorithms will basically do is they'll bludgeon you into more and more and more shame. And at some point, the shame gets so high that you're willing to fork over money for someone to

help you fix this problem. Right. So this is why if you look at all the people who are selling stuff, they're going to really be leaning into, hey, you suck. Hey, life is hard. Hey, you suck. Hey, this is how to be great. And then they show all this fancy stuff with these sexy dudes and sexy women. And each time you watch that, you feel worse and worse and worse about yourself. And then someone comes along and says, give me that money. Give me your credit card information and I will fix it for you. So there's even this Darwinian effect from a business model around these kinds of things. I don't know that these people have really calculated it this far. I don't think that a lot of them have a fundamental understanding of psychology. But I think what they've sort of figured out is this is

what works. The worse I can get someone to feel about themselves, and then if I sort of like give them an antidote, they'll take it. Another simple way to kind of think about this is if I can dehydrate someone, then the likelihood that they'll buy water is going to be way higher, which is why all this content actually induces shame. But generally speaking, what we're talking about is abandoning the psychological complex. And this is what we've seen, I've seen not only as a psychiatrist, but when we work at H.E. with like tons of like in cells and red pill kind of people. This is the path we walk to them, that walk with them that helps them get into healthy relationships. So the first thing that we've got to understand is that the reason you're a low

value male is because you think you're a low value male. The shame that you carry around and the lack of confidence is ultimately the single most controllable thing that is sabotaging your efforts at relationships. The second thing that we've got to understand is that most of this red pill stuff succeeds at helping people build confidence. And that's that's like good in a way. I think the problem is that it carries a negative and toxic worldview that is like very dehumanizing for like half the population and even for a lot of men. So I'm not sort of in favor of that. But a lot of that stuff that they sort of tell you to do, I think it's good to do. I think if you are not happy about the way that you look, you should exercise more. You

should start eating healthy. You should get into therapy. You should update your wardrobe. You should do all of that stuff. All that stuff is actually fantastic. By all means, put together your life. But understand that it's primarily a shame and confidence thing. The second thing that we're going to talk about is I strongly recommend that you sort of reduce your Red Pill Manusphere content. So remember that all this content is designed to be emotionally engaging and sort of induce further and further amounts of shame. Now, this is not just as simple as so stop watching stuff.

Well, let's walk through it a little bit, okay? So here's the main question I would encourage you to ask. is when I watch this content for an hour, what do I end up feeling like and what do I end up doing at the end of one hour of consuming this content? Now, chances are what you'll primarily feel is ashamed of yourself, but also really validated and a lot of like righteous anger. Yeah, things are hard and yeah, and people don't understand and the world is going to shit and like, oh my God, that's how you're going to feel.

But then the question is, do you actually get up and do something about it? about it. Because the other problem with this content is it says that women are to blame and the world is to blame, which sort of is kind of weird because you can't fix that. So the problem with a lot of this content is that if you really pay attention to yourself, if you've been watching it for a day or a week or a month or a year, how many changes have you actually made in your life? Because what I found is that the more it induces shame, eventually maybe you'll buy a course, but I don't know that that's actually going to fix anything. But that shame will actually get in the way of you making progress in life. So I'd highly, highly recommend, seriously, just unsubscribing from this stuff

for a while. And the last thing to consider is just getting the hell off of dating apps. Now, I know dating apps are super convenient and there's this idea that everyone is using them, but I don't know that people are using them successfully. So the other thing to really think about is that a lot of this stuff that you feel comes fundamentally from the rejection of a dating app. And there may be some dating apps in which this is better, but I've seen, like, I've seen plenty of horror stories from all of the dating apps, because there's still some evidence that up to 50% of people are using these dating apps to fulfill other psychological needs. So one simple example of this is sometimes you'll, you know, match with people who are like really condescending and will like just unmatch you

or tell you to go screw yourself and then unmatch you within like three minutes. And then it's like, what the hell? Why did you match me in the first place? People will like log on and they'll say, hey, matched, hey, you're a loser, screw you, you'll never get late, and then they'll unmatch you. You're like, why the hell did you match me in the first place? And that's because they're using the dating app to sort of like support or get some other kinds of emotional needs met. In this case, it's sort of feeling superior. So when I feel inferior or like when other people crap on me and make me feel bad about myself, what I'm going to do is find someone else who's lower than me to crap on to make myself feel better. This is like bully psychology 101. And so really just get the hell off of dating

apps. And the more that you're on dating apps, you've really got to be careful because like there may be sort of a one to 20 ratio of like your chances of success of finding like a partner who will like actually be interested in you. And then that relation, then you know, that's just a chance. Like that one out of 20 people may actually be interested in you. And then like that could fall apart. So things are super lopsided and they really really reinforce this cognitive bias and shame. And then you may be wondering, but Dr. Kay, you're just telling me to get the hell off of dating apps and unsubscribe from content. Oh my God, how am I supposed to exist on the internet? Because that's what everyone's doing. That's not what everyone's doing. That's what everyone who isn't in a healthy relationship is doing.

So thankfully, there's like this counter swing that's going on in our society with things like meetup groups or like board game cafes. We're starting to see the emergence of third spaces. Discord is exploding in popularity. And why is that? It's because the, existing stuff out there sucks. And some people have figured out that, oh, crap, the internet is toxic. And even though it's hard, I have to start, like, engaging with people in the real world. And the problem is that once people, like, make that shift, they don't return to the internet. And they don't make content about, like, dating, right? They're too busy out there, dating, living their lives, getting married, having kids, which just reinforces the cognitive bias of the,

internet. And so I know it's really tricky, but these are the three things that you really have to do. Work on your confidence. And we have a whole resource pack on confidence and kind of how to do that because it's a complicated and long-term process. Second thing to really think about is really like unsubscribe from some of that content. And the main thing there is really ask yourself and pay attention to the more of this stuff that I watch, what does it inspire me to do? Because for most of y'all, there's a decent chance that all it inspires you to do, is watch more of that content and sit around on your ass or get distracted by video games or whatever else or jerk off. And the third thing is really stop using dating apps or at least take a break for them and try to work on meeting people in other ways.

Now, that's really hard because dating apps are so damn convenient. But just because it's convenient doesn't mean it doesn't suck, right? Like, gum on the bottom of chairs and desks is conveniently accessible and free. That doesn't mean you should be eating it. And the same thing applies to dating apps. So at the end of the day, I think that if you feel like you're a low-value male, you can absolutely stop being a low-value male. And that will improve your chances of success.

But it doesn't mean that you need to buy all this BS about becoming a high-value male.