Matrix, that supposedly aims to liberate men from a feminism-dominated society as well as the fundamental distinction between alpha and beta males (among some other types), with the former conforming to independent, assertive, and autonomous men who can handle any situation for their own benefit and the latter to docile men who have lost their maleness as a result of feminism and social degradation. The manosphere is also a place of more underdog, self-described beta masculinities, such as the incels, or involuntary celibates (O’Malley, Thomas and Holt, 2022), who constitute a resentful online movement holding women as well as the alphas equally responsible for their poor dating life and subordinate status and codifying them in derogatory slang such as the Staceys and the Chads, respectively (Menzie, 2022). The seduction community inhabits overlapping codes and vocabularies with the manosphere, such as “friendzoning”, that is when a woman wants to remain friends instead of having a sexual relationship, and the “Mr. Nice Guy”, which refers to the passive beta males whose desires are colonized by dominant society. Male coaching in essence trains the “Mr. Nice Guys”, the “losers”, the “people pleasers”,15 and the “betas” of this world to escape the friendzone and gradually become the real masters and leaders of their desires.16 In this sense, male coaching represents an uplifting, assertive, positive, and generally curated practice against the uncurated masculinities that are confused in a chaotic social environment; a curated masculinity promises a step toward men’s well-being and happiness. The ideal mindset here is not simply one aiming toward growth, as we discussed in the previous section, but a mindset that corresponds to a curated version of dominant masculinity.
The repudiation of weakness in favor of dominance and assertiveness is a common trajectory in all the male coaches I followed, including the seemingly more fragile ones: “Finally feel like a MAN. With an unshakable confidence and trust in who you are and what you want” (Jodi and Reece, 2019), “Most women crave alpha males who display strength, confidence, and power” (Valizadeh: Ch. 1), “A true Alpha Male, a man who goes for what he wants and has positive expectations that he will achieve his goals, will choose his purpose and his passion over a woman if faced with the choice” (Wayne, 2013: 2), “I am advocating that you develop a strategy for adaptation—like a blueprint for transforming from a beta male to an alpha male” (Blake, 2021: Introduction). Thus, while not all men’s coaches inhabit the manosphere in the same way, they all curate a hegemonic masculinity that is vigilant, forceful, self-controlled, resilient, and adaptive. In light of resilience and adaptability, discussed in the previous section, hegemonic masculinity cannot primarily be defined in its traditional opposition to homosexuality, as some scholars have argued in the past (Anderson, 2009), but refers to a varied process of accommodating values within a given social order, including the strategic adaption of elements from less hegemonic or beta masculinities for establishing strategic dominance—for instance, by being strategically pro-gay so as to adapt to social norms and remain influential within particular milieus (Ging, 2019). Men’s coaching then hinges upon this explicitly managerial framework to curate hegemonic masculinities to new social environments of rising feminism and technological afordances that demand new forms of political correctness and accelerate dating competition: be an alpha “without the toxic masculinity bullshit”, as Damien Blake, the author of the Modern Alpha Male Mindset Strategies, puts it (2021: Introduction).
Curating Mindsets, Micro-Celebrities, and Intimacies
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