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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@Lainy
Thanks! It’s from a fantasy epic I wrote when I was twelve, that nobody will EVER see because it was everything you expect from a fantasy epic written by a twelve-year-old.
Allandrel was one of the main characters, and whenever I put him into an “Is your character a Mary Sue?” test, he always scores at least 90%. But I still love the name.
@Allandrel
Well, that’s a shit sandwich you got there, sorry about that.
My first 15 characters were all Mary Sues. I did not learn the benefit of character balance until much longer than I should have. They had substantially less cool names though.
@Allandrel
I thought that was for female characters.
@Big Titty Demon
What’s funny is some of these things (like performing peritoneal dialysis for two and a half years with the threat of painful death if I messed up) were LESS stressful for me than any given day working at a call center. It’s strange how different people handle different situations.
Allandrel is an interesting Mary Sue in that he doesn’t hit any of the “self-insert fantasy” Mary Sue tropes, but boy howdy does he hit the “super special hero” tropes hard. Elf raised by humans, last of a noble line with his deritage kept hidden, hunted by his family’s enemies, unique hair and eye colors, facial scar that doesn’t impact his hotness, Chosen One (well part of a Chosen Twelve) with Sooper Speshul Unique Powahs, has a magic sword that was handed down by his family, is The Greatest Swordsman In The World, has an early star-crossed love, lover killed by his enemy, kills that guy in an epic swordfight, is heartbroken for ages and is pulled out of his shell by his One True Love, comes back from death due solely to his love for her, oh lord that was just the first three volumes.
Like I said, I was twelve.
@Lainy
Sometimes Mary Sue is gender neutral, others use “Marty Stu” for male characters. I prefer “Mary Sue” regardless of gender because it’s more recognizable.
@Big Titty Demon (always makes me smile, seeing that nym)
@Allandrel (lovely nym reminds me a bit of the characters from Garth Nix’s series)
Thanks for those posts. They are much appreciated, and I just happened to see them at a time when I needed this kind of reminder.
@Allandrel
You are right, that is a lot for a character to be in one thing. I’ll tell you though you were for sure go big or go home at only 12.
Sorry to necro this thread, but two things that might prove helpful:
1) when using the internet to look up stuff in your local area, instead of using the name of your town and then going through all the similarly-named towns located far away from you, try using your postal code instead
2) for help reaching a person in customer service, try this site: https://gethuman.com/
3) remember that the person you reach in customer service has (unless they’ve just started their shift) already had a very long, hard day and being nice is very helpful all ’round.