So, over on Dalrock, we have a long line of simps complaining that the author isn’t putting his real name, home and work addresses, and telephone numbers up on the internet. First in the queue is a rather strange guy named “bnonn.”
Forging a holy masculine identity is not easy, especially in a feminized world, especially online. Yet the Bible sets out a model for our conduct that makes it simple (not easy) to move in the right direction. Here’s a somewhat chiastic description of some key principles:
1. Don’t be anonymous. The prophets, the apostles, Jesus himself risked a great deal by open discourse. Everyone knew their names. Everyone knew their faces. Have you yet resisted to the point of shedding blood? Don’t be weak. Don’t be a coward. Don’t be anonymous.
I’m not here to contend that cowardice does not exist. I believe that it does exist. It is quantifiable, and it varies from person to person. Is Dalrock a coward? I don’t know. My opinion is that he’s not a coward simply for remaining anonymous.
Bear in mind that discarding his anonymity would not necessarily be an unprofitable trade-off for a writer like him. He’s an excellent rhetorician, and thus the ideological apparatus would likely cut him a good deal to start leading folks astray. I bet my readers can name a number of countercultural figures who, once they achieved a certain level of notoriety, were co-opted by the system in just such a fashion.
Next in line is a man from an outfit I’ve never heard of, specifically Warhorn Media.
It does trouble me that you are denying your readers the chance to examine your life—what sort of man you are, how you practice what you preach, and what authority you speak from. These are not insignificant question, and they’re not inappropriate to ask. Jesus and the Apostle Paul was never afraid to engage in “ad hominem.” Who a person is does matter. Not just their arguments taken in the abstract. That being said, I’m not sure I disagree with your choice. I just question it. However, I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking it through.
The Jesus character had the luxury of speaking truth to power and fighting in the open, because he was an immortal god-man, who could miracle himself anything he needed, from one second to the next.
St. Paul started raising hell in the open because he was a Roman citizen, and his enemies were not. There are allusions in the New Testament to the pharisees trying to get him beaten up and killed; but, such things were impossible without a conviction in front of a Roman judge, and no such judicial authority gave a damn about the whines and moans of his enemies.
The young brothers who read this blog are not Jesus. They’re not St. Paul, either. The establishment is in the pockets of our enemies, and it hates us.
It’s true that none of us are really anonymous. I recently got an e-mail that hit pretty close to my own identity. That doesn’t mean that you boys should open up your personal lives to the whim of the mob. I have a father, nephews, cousins, and they don’t need to be accosted by random bulldykes at the grocery store, just because Uncle Boxer made fun of feminists on the internet.
Your first obligation, as a man, is to your family. Causing these others to be hassled simply to stroke your own ego with internet-fame isn’t bravery. It’s not masculine. It’s just stupid.
There are so many voices in social media that one has to come up with novel just to be noticed in the crowd. This quote from Warhorn Media makes me think they are female: Who a person is does matter. Not just their arguments taken in the abstract. For most guys talking on social media, that is the opposite of what is actually true. It is ideas that are being discussed, with various proofs being offered for the rightness or wrongness of any given argument. Who a person is is totally irrelevant to the male mind when considering arguments proposed for either proving or refuting a given idea.
On the other hand … females demonstrate all the time that they are quite willing to ignore the correctness of the argument in favor of discovering “who the person is”.
I suspect there are some Lefty proponents of blogger non-anonymity who are hypocritically hiding their own ID, while drooling at the chance to track and crack any one of the manosphere lords.
Trust ’em at your own risk!
“The prophets, the apostles, Jesus himself risked a great deal by open discourse. Everyone knew their names. Everyone knew their faces.”
That’s just stupid.
Nobody knew what anybody looked like if they didn’t see them in person. People had only a vague idea of what the Emperor of the Known World looked like from the coins in their purse. 99% of people in the empire never heard about Jesus or his followers during His lifetime.
Huh .. grown men asking other grown men to “do as I say or you’re not a real man” .. on the internet .. huh ..
Where have we heard this before .. /S
Among other things, being anonymous is not automatically cowardly, but it isn’t brave either. At best it is neutral. Now if being non-anonymous is stupid (this is the pro-anonymous thesis), then neutral is an acceptable (the only?) alternative. However, the juxtaposition of “masculinity” and “manosphere” with anonymity is rather ironic.
Which, unlike others, is not something that I have done. A man should weigh it for himself and make up his own mind. Dalrock is still a real man looking out for his (alleged) family. But he’s also putting his not insignificant leadership role in the sphere as second priority. That’s his call to make.
The anonymous are not on the front line drawing blood and being slaughtered. They are behind the castle walls shooting arrows. In the end, though, every war requires foot soldiers. Let’s not sugar coat who is who in the war. It doesn’t make you less of a man to be an archer, but it also means you are not a foot soldier. It is not lost on the foot soldier that they are taking the heaviest losses, but they do their duty anyway.
It’s not a crime to point this out, as I have done.
(Pardon the analogy. I try to avoid them, but didn’t know how else to make my point clear.)
This is a fallacy. Nobody cares who anyone is unless it is associated with authority. Similarly, no one needs to be non-anonymous if they are not doing anything that involves authority. If authority is invoked, then who a person is matters quite deeply in all cases. People like Dalrock are taking places of cultural authority (albeit a reasonably small place) while maintaining anonymity.
But if someone bearing the authority of the the Emperor came and told you what to do, it would matter quite a lot whether that person was really the authorized representative, as your life was on the line. Their identity would be critical.
The manosphere harps on a woman submitting to a man’s authority. Catholics and Orthodox harp on the authority of the church, through an explicitly identified line of succession. The relationship between authority and identity is necessary, and everyone recognizes this in every other context. I find this to be a curious gap in consistency.
There is one exception: if the person of authority, known to you, explicitly authorizes an anonymous person to hold their authority in their name. You don’t need the identity of the person wielding the authority in that case. But I don’t see how that applies to blogger anonymity. Perhaps others can enlighten me.
You’re pretty terrible at this. Neither of your responses have anything to do with what I stated.
Nope, have to strongly disagree with you on this one @Boxer
Dalrock is a gutless coward who conceals his identity like the faggot he is
The man has NO gmail account, no email address, no Facebook, no Instagram, no Messenger, no Twitter, nothing, zilch, zero
Even the most hard core privacy nuts at least has an email address but not Dalrock. ….no one knows anything about him except his blog here in WordPress
It’s a rather pitiful and weak excuse that someone needs to hide in anomymity in case they bump into those who they offend
Dalrock claims to be a Christian, so it’s on him to come out of hiding and not cause Christ’s name to come into reproach
I speak harshly but I stand by whatever I say, and I’ve put myself out there so ANYONE can contact me or find me
Consider this case in point:
Is this cowardly?
This is more like the king holed up in his castle than the archer at the wall or the footman on the field of battle. No personal risk. No taking chances at losing authority and power: the platform matters more than the message.
Dear Necro & Derek:
People criticized George Washington’s partisans for the same thing: they fought from the treeline, rather than marching out in rows like men. I’m sure that from the perspective of the average redcoat, these were cowardly scoundrels, but in the long run, they won.
I think you guys are looking at this through a traditional lens. While that’s understandable, you guys need to get with the times. The old days, when two knights rode out to have a fair fight, are over. If you want to keep some outdated moral code, then that’s your issue, but don’t expect to actually win in this milieu.
If you wanted to call him a dishonest liar, I’d be on board (he lied about me, after all — same as you.) I really don’t know whether he’s a coward without knowing more about him. Whatever the source of his (weirdly feminine) propensity for histrionics, he should keep making fun of our enemies (he’s good at it) and keep playing to win.
Question: If Dalrock started an instagram and gmail account, would his message be more potent? How about if he got his WordPress account censored for “deadnaming” some weird tranny. Would that make him more or less effective?
Boxer,
Let’s, for sake of argument, accept your George Washington analogy wholesale. Dalrock has let the feminists (i.e. WordPress) to dictate terms of engagement (i.e. the language used). This is cowardly, and quite frankly, deserving of the label “cuck”. It’s facilitated by the stupidity of not self-hosting: he puts himself in a vulnerable position.
Consider the definition of coward: “a person who lacks the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things.” You can expect a coward to cave, refusing to stand up for his beliefs because of potential consequences. Dalrock has self-censored because he is a coward. The fact that there might have been unpleasant consequences is exactly why he is a coward, by definition.
GW’s men may have taken protection behind the tree line, but this didn’t prevent many deaths. They still had to fight and put themselves in danger. You can debate tactics, but they were not cowards.
Censoring yourself to own the fems? That’ll show ’em! LOL.
You are anonymous, so it’s not a surprise that your bias prevents you from seeing the fallacy in your question. To demonstrate: if Dalrock was outed as a lesbian from NYC, would this change the effectiveness of her message? After all, can’t we just judge her on the content of her words?
Let me flip the question around again. If Dalrock published all of his posts without referring to himself (within the posts or comments) or utilizing a pseudonym, would it change the effectiveness? As you pointed out, the histrionics don’t contribute in any way.
Everyone, including you, understands the relationship between authority and identity. You literally have to sign your name to any official document to assert your authority. If you don’t, it isn’t valid, even if it is true and accurate. Everyone in the world who holds any meaningful position of power and authority is non-anonymous. You can’t testify in court anonymously.
Boxer,
Something occurred to me. You perfectly represent the GW analogy. Your employer knows about your site, and if you used your real name, you could potentially embarrass your employer, but if you were doxxed, you would probably be just fine personally. You might lose your job, but you’d find another. So that is not your main reason for anonymity. Rather, you are the sniper in the woods or the archer on the battlements. You take shots at the feminists and they don’t have a good target to return fire. Your decision to be anonymous is tactical. As such, you are not a coward. Thus your analogy is a good one… for you.
Your analogy does not apply to most bloggers (or anonymous people who comment). When asked why they are anonymous, the majority will state that they fear the consequences of their identity being known.
Eh, DeGaulle said as President of France once “off the cuff” like he usually did with…..He gave the quip “The graveyards are filled with inconsequntial men” (probably in the mid-sixties) was in reference to the fact no matter your awards, your letters of merit, you family, your children, how great you are (or think you are) someday you’re gonna die…..and for the most part you will be forgotten…..
I don’t care if he is anon or not….the usual psychophants on the blog “defended him, and resorted immediately to the person conducting this interview with the usual barrage of defending a man (Dalrock)…..not his ideas, or what he stands for. So maybe the joke is on us
Some of the comments here, in my mind, support the reason why blog owners and commenters should remain anonymous: suddenly we are majoring on minors. What does who a person is have to do with the soundness of the ideas they present. The ideas presented must be debated on their soundness and on their logic. The attributes of the persons debating an idea have nothing to do with the soundness or logic of the idea being debated.
However, if the attributes can become known, then suddenly the conversation is no longer about the idea, but about the attributes of the person that just became visible. The folks who have advanced degrees in marketing know this like they know the back of their hand. There is a huge percent of the population that can be pursuaded based on the attributes of the presenter alone. Consider the success of the snake-oil salesmen in their time. Keep the folks’ attention focused on the attributes of the presenter and away from the science (or lack of same) behind the product being peddled.
Anonynimity helps to keep the discussions focused on the ideas. So anonynimity is useful for things other than protecting your family or the company one works for. It is useful for nothing more than keeping the discussion focused on the topic at hand.
And Jason – inquiring minds want to know: where in the world are you? Europe? East cost of U.S.? West coast?
This is a really good point.
Consider the dissident right as an example, and the effect you describe is perfectly visible.
Person x comes out with a web page, making intelligent political arguments, and everyone is impressed. Suddenly, some malcontent digs around, and “exposes” person x as being undesirable. Malcontent usually gets on twitter and “outs” x as being jewish, being married to a black chick, or some other irrelevant nonsense.
Suddenly, the hoi polloi hate person x… not because his message has changed, but merely due to these superficial factors.
We’ve been seeing exactly this same scenario for years, haven’t we?
I have some opinions about the malcontents who do such stuff (look up COINTELPRO for my own personal suspicions) but ultimately, it’s irrelevant. The one percent must laugh about the fact that Americans are such sheep, that they let themselves get chumped out this way.
If Dalrock turned out to be a lezbo feminist in NYC, I’m sure I’d send her some money in hopes she kept annoying my enemies. She does a pretty good job of it, and that’s really all I’m interested in.
Derek, I think your arguments are more applicable to testimony than argument. As Samuel Johnson said, “Nay, Sir, argument is argument. You cannot help paying regard to their arguments if they are good. If it were testimony you might disregard it, if you knew that it were purchased. There is a beautiful image in Bacon upon this subject; testimony is like an arrow shot from a long bow; the force of it depends on the strength of the hand that draws it. Argument is like an arrow from a cross-bow, which has equal force though shot by a child.”
Dalrock generally engages in argument, though in his early posts (which are generally sunnier in tone) he occasionally relates some story about his family. With these exceptions, his blog posts would be equally as valid (or invalid) if they were written by a NY lesbian. And permit me to say that were this the case, I would take off my hat to her for her magnificent deception.
Richard P
Inquiring minds?
I live in California, and have since 1994 after I finished grad school and was hauled out to the Silicon Valley by a large multi-national amoral company where I wasted 12 years of my life, when I should have been actaully doing something useful. I bought the lie that if I was a solid guy with a good career, goals and objectives I would be able to find, date and marry a solid, and probably pretty gal. If I had behaved like everyone else I would have probably been rewarded indeed with that.
I am a native of New York State. I spent my undergrad years in Vermont. Probablly the only time I had actual peace with who I was in my entire life. College years were just good. Maybe it was because I had a noce head of blonde hair. Who knows at this point. I lived in West Germany as an exchange student in high school. I was sent to India when I was a high tech worker for nine months in 1997. I have lived all over northern California but spent just over twelve years living in San Francisco. I called Fresno my home for ten years. I am back in the north bay of San Francisco now. I lived in Santa Cruz beriefly. A pox on that nutzoid city.
Dalrock is entitled to do what he wants concerning his private life on the Internet…..
If interviews or others though ask about his stance on this or if they disagree with him…..it doesn’t mean they are “simps” or “white knights” or tradcons. It just means they are asking a question. His followers tend to get “hysterical” if anyone dares ask him a question making thenm look like fretful mothers and needing to defend him. Dalrock is quite capable of defending himself and his own position for his reasons…..whatever they are.
Jason, I thought you had recently been in Europe and I didn’t know if you were back or not. That was the reason for my question. If that wasn’t you that was in Europe recently, then it must have been someone else. How’s that for stating the obvious.
I don’t follow you. Don’t know if I was just “negged” or not. If I was, it validates that most men in this red-pill community are more concerned with stomping on other men…..and if I wasn’t………I am still confused.
I’ll be in the UK for the month of June this year.
inquiring minds………
Somone used to post here and elsewhere and then stopped posting. I thought that was you. Someone showed up who I thought hadn’t posted in a while. I thought that was you. Someone said, I thought, that they were in Europe a while ago. I thought that was you.
So – seeing your name on a post I asked where you were – Europe, east coast of U.S., west coast of U.S. Without seeing body language, it is hard to interpret where someone is coming from on the Internet. I get that. But my inquiry was a friendly one. But the stuff in the first paragraph above maybe belongs to someone else, not you. If so, sorry for the interruption.
That is the crux, isn’t it? Should we be judged on the merits of our words only? Let’s consider the problems with this.
If Dalrock was a NY lesbian, his entire message would be shot and he’d lose his audience (cult following). You know it, I know it. He’d be a contradictory hypocrite, because for Dalrock, identity matters quite a lot. What would people think of Dalrock if he was divorced, didn’t really have a happy marriage with a perfect American-ideal 2-kid family, or had a feminist-leaning wife? No, Dalrock’s apparent identity is critical to his message and branding.
Let’s take this claim to its logical conclusion. If people really, truly wanted to be judged on their own words, they wouldn’t be pseudonymous, they’d be completely anonymous. Show me the bloggers that are truly anonymous. Good luck. I can think of one, except in that case, the anonymity is backed by a non-anonymous authority. People care quite a bit about taking ownership of their ideas and they expect others to do the same.
The difference between testimony and argument is real, but it’s also a red-herring. In practice what you’ve identified as “argument” is actually “testimony.” For example, Dalrock isn’t using just argument. He’s creating a brand, an image, a persona, a caricature behind those arguments to create pseudonymous testimony. He’s a leader of the manosphere! The rest of us, deep down, want to have that level of influence attached to our names/pseudonyms too.
The desire for leadership is exactly why we have names like “Dalrock”, a solid Texan family man. It’s a game trying to get leadership and authority (i.e. power and influence) without giving up your real name. My original premise was that authority and leadership are inextricably linked to identity. I’ve seen nothing in this thread to question that. What I have seen are attempts to justify anonymous authority and leadership. No argument has been presented for why anonymous testimony (for that is what it is) should be preferred over non-anonymous testimony.
I’ll agree that there are pragmatic people who care only about the message/results (Boxer appears to be one of the few), but these are rare. I think I could make an ironically good argument for why this is a bad idea, but that’s a post for another time.