Owen Cook Has Coached Elon Musk, Goes Full MAGA

[Joshe]

IMO, lots of people saw the easy money was on the right, so they went in for the exploit and over time, they morphed into something different. I remember when Owen started dropping bits of Christianity into his videos and was like “wtf?”. I think it all started to happen around Covid. That’s when I noticed online influencers tailoring their content to the right. I don’t think it’s because they wanted to join their ideology, I think they did it all for the money. Look at Russel Brand who is now Christian. You think that flip is genuine? It’s a total fucking grift. Same as Owen. The degree they’re aware of it is debatable but I don’t think they chose new ideologies, I think they chose the path of easy money and embracing new ideologies is a requirement for them to fleece their chosen audience. 

Edited yesterday at 06:05 AM by Joshe

[Leo Gura]

35 minutes ago, Jayson G said:

I just don't understand how he has become like this. 

I'm not shocked at all. It's just what I would expect.

Owen's whole life has been battling against mainstream PC culture which demonizes pickup.

Wokeness killed RSD. Or so he believes.

Wokeness is Owen's #1 enemy.

Everything else is just a backwards rationalization from that. Owen is doing survival. That's what he's always been doing.

What do you think Covid lockdowns did to his business? What did MeToo do to his business?

You might as well have a gun to his head.

Edited yesterday at 06:14 AM by Leo Gura

[AION]

2 hours ago, Something Funny said:

Sorry, but this is such a stupid take. 

Who wants Owen to be everything? Who says that? It's his choice to talk about everything because he doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut on topics he has no clue about. 

And people just don't want to follow and financially support a corrupt idiot.

And why should they? Why should they give their money and time to someone like Owen when there are millions of other influencers nowadays and they can easily find someone whose values they align with.

If I know that a restsurant owner is a dick who treats his employees like garbage - I am not going to go to that restaurant. Not because I expects this restaurant owner to "be everything" and teach me about how to run a conscious business. I just don't want to support him because I don't like him and don't want to enable his corruption. It's that simple.

I wouldn't support Owen if he treated his staff like shit. I support that he gives free seminars (tours) to people. And I think he has the best mindset on dating. Politics and religion are private things and it is childish to do tit-for-tat. If you hiring people or not hiring people based on politics or religion you are a piece of you know what. How would you feel if people treated you based on your politics and spirituality?

Edited yesterday at 07:36 AM by AION

[Something Funny]

18 minutes ago, AION said:

If you hiring people or not hiring people based on politics or religion you are a piece of you know what.

Since when? If I don't want to work with nazis or if I don't want to work with people who will think that their female colleagues should have stayed in the kitchen or that it's okay to sexually assault them, then I am a piece of shit?

If I am running a conscious business focused on helping the environment, I am not going to hire climate change deniers.

[Something Funny]

28 minutes ago, AION said:

I wouldn't support Owen if he treated his staff like shit.

Treating women like shit and voting for a rapist is fine though.

[AION]

11 minutes ago, Something Funny said:

Since when? If I don't want to work with nazis or if I don't want to work with people who will think that their female colleagues should have stayed in the kitchen or that it's okay to sexually assault them, then I am a piece of shit?

If I am running a conscious business focused on helping the environment, I am not going to hire climate change deniers.

I don’t think Owen believes that and I don’t think you’d be able to afford him anyway

[Letho]

On 3/10/2025 at 5:56 AM, Leo Gura said:

Unfortunately pickup has corrupted his mind. That's what happens when you turn pickup into a lifestyle and ideology.

Most pickup guys will side with MAGA because pickup would be crusified by wokeness. So they make for natural enemies of Green. They are also easily swayed by the macho vibes of fascism.

Owen is also a narcissist like Mask and Trump.

@Leo Gura, calling other people narcissists is the most Leo thing you could possibly do. Trump is overt, Owen is charismatic, but you? You’ve turned self-worship into a sacred science. You don’t just have an ego, you’ve written an entire ontology to justify it. The funniest part? Every time a popular guy ignores you, it somehow becomes a deep metaphysical insight. You’re not analyzing the universe, you’re just coping in long-form. These guys may be narcissists, sure, but at least they have the social proof to back it up. You, on the other hand, are giving TED Talks to a mirror, jumping on the forum to get validation, following up by bashing other people and calling it enlightenment.

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, Letho said:

calling other people narcissists is the most Leo thing you could possibly do

I don't use that word lightly. I only apply it to people who I think genuinely score high on a clinical narc assessment.

If someone is a narc, to not know that about them, to not take it into account, is a mistake in analysis. Being a narc explains a lot of one's behaviors and motivation.

It's not personal. I don't go around calling people narcs just because I disagree with them.

Trump, Musk, Owen -- they have some deep personality issues and a lot in common. This not a thread about bashing Owen. It's a thread about making sense of why he backs Trump and Musk.

Edited yesterday at 08:29 AM by Leo Gura

[nerdspeak]

3 hours ago, Something Funny said:

Who wants Owen to be everything? Who says that? It's his choice to talk about everything because he doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut on topics he has no clue about. 

10-15 years ago, many of his followers did. RSD generally attracted angry young men whose parents had failed them, so they were looking for a replacement belief system. 

I agree it’s irresponsible for Owen to feed that impulse, but that’s audience capture.

Regarding whether “pickup” is ethical, doing cold walk-ups is a lead gen channel like any other—a moderately obnoxious one like broadcast fax or cold-calling. Is cold-calling unethical?
 

The tactic itself is not the part that got RSD in trouble, it’s the other sleazy beliefs that RSD promoted. 

Edited yesterday at 09:18 AM by nerdspeak

[nerdspeak]

3 hours ago, Joshe said:

IMO, lots of people saw the easy money was on the right, so they went in for the exploit and over time, they morphed into something different. I remember when Owen started dropping bits of Christianity into his videos and was like “wtf?”. I think it all started to happen around Covid. That’s when I noticed online influencers tailoring their content to the right. I don’t think it’s because they wanted to join their ideology, I think they did it all for the money. Look at Russel Brand who is now Christian. You think that flip is genuine? It’s a total fucking grift. Same as Owen. The degree they’re aware of it is debatable but I don’t think they chose new ideologies, I think they chose the path of easy money and embracing new ideologies is a requirement for them to fleece their chosen audience. 

COVID was peak technocracy. The bureaucrats went from telling you war and austerity was necessary, to telling you to stay inside for two years lol. 
 

I won’t get into whether it was a good idea or not, that’s a separate issue. 

The point is, you would expect a backlash—which you see now, as every government in power in 2021 has effectively been thrown out — and influencers were positioning themselves for it. 

[Leo Gura]

19 minutes ago, nerdspeak said:

COVID was peak technocracy. The bureaucrats went from telling you war and austerity was necessary, to telling you to stay inside for two years lol. 

Such shameless ingratitude for hardworking people saving your life.

[nerdspeak]

@Leo Gura I should be grateful for George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld “saving my life” in the War on Terror?

You missed the point of what I said, which was about the optics and the political opportunity it created. 

There has been a huge crisis of legitimacy since the War on Terror and especially the 2007-2008 crisis. No one trusts anything the government says. Because…they constantly lie. 

Whether the lockdowns were on-balance beneficial is a completely separate issue from public trust in government being in total crisis.

[Apparition of Jack]

@nerdspeak Do you believed that COVID poses a health risk?

[nerdspeak]

@Apparition of Jack Yeah of course, I am not a moron despite what Leo apparently thinks. 

The point of my comment was that in an environment of completely degraded public trust in both government and in expertise, you would expect a populist backlash to a drastic policy measure like lockdowns. 

Many influencers tacked to the right to profit from that backlash, since they’re mostly entrepreneurs rather than intellectuals or scientists. 

[Leo Gura]

40 minutes ago, nerdspeak said:

@Leo Gura I should be grateful for George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld “saving my life” in the War on Terror?

Completely irrelevant. That was a right-wing policy agenda.

Quote

There has been a huge crisis of legitimacy since the War on Terror and especially the 2007-2008 crisis.

This crisis is a projection of ignorant people. Why feed into it?

If you distrust your government because something bad happened 15 years ago, you will never have a functional government.

And the anti-Covid nonsense has nothing to do with that. It is just memes and mass delusion. To frame it as coming from a legitmate greivance is to give it too much credit.

Covid was handled well considering how many people could have died. People have just rotted their own minds with conspiracy theories.

Edited yesterday at 10:24 AM by Leo Gura

[AION]

2 hours ago, Letho said:

@Leo Gura, calling other people narcissists is the most Leo thing you could possibly do. Trump is overt, Owen is charismatic, but you? You’ve turned self-worship into a sacred science. You don’t just have an ego, you’ve written an entire ontology to justify it. The funniest part? Every time a popular guy ignores you, it somehow becomes a deep metaphysical insight. You’re not analyzing the universe, you’re just coping in long-form. These guys may be narcissists, sure, but at least they have the social proof to back it up. You, on the other hand, are giving TED Talks to a mirror, jumping on the forum to get validation, following up by bashing other people and calling it enlightenment.

And on top of that he is straw manning Owen Cook too. Although I’m not a fan boy of him it is not ok to straw man people if you are a philosopher. 
 

Owen

• doesn't teach pickup anymore
• doesn’t do pickup in his personal life, he does social game 
• most of his videos are about mindset frames and unfortunately in his free seminars he rambles about his deluded politics 

 

Leo

• does pickup
• does promote it
• doesn’t teach men inner game how to be happy with themselves without women which Owen does

Edited yesterday at 10:39 AM by AION

[nerdspeak]

39 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

This crisis is a projection of ignorant people. Why feed into it?

If you distrust your government because something bad happened 15 years ago, you will never have a functional government.

And the anti-Covid nonsense has nothing to do with that. It is just memes and mass delusion. To frame it as coming from a legitmate greivance is to give it too much credit.

You’re right that I phrased my “peak technocracy” comment in a way that left it open to misinterpretation.

That said, I think there is a connection between these events. The War on Terror (which Obama extended despite promising to end) and the mishandling of the financial crisis severely harmed public trust in government. In both cases, experts funneled money upward while claiming it was necessary and that the average person couldn’t understand why. 

I am sympathetic to Charles Taylor’s diagnosis of democratic degeneration, and would extend it to suggest that COVID skepticism is symptomatic of a broader decline in the perceived legitimacy of liberal democratic states and their officials. 

Inequality, and the (valid but of course incomplete) perception that Western states prop up that inequality, is leading a significant number of people to lose trust in public officials — even those in non-political roles like public health. 

Populist authoritarians then mobilize that distrust, although of course once in power, they just make the situation worse. 

Edited yesterday at 11:03 AM by nerdspeak

[Vibes]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I'm not shocked at all. It's just what I would expect.

Owen's whole life has been battling against mainstream PC culture which demonizes pickup.

Wokeness killed RSD. Or so he believes.

Wokeness is Owen's #1 enemy.

Everything else is just a backwards rationalization from that. Owen is doing survival. That's what he's always been doing.

What do you think Covid lockdowns did to his business? What did MeToo do to his business?

You might as well have a gun to his head.

And he created spiritual believes too. He believes he's some kind of evolved being or even martyr. He believes that Kobe Bryant quit Earth - even hinted that 'they', whoever tf they are, might have killed him. And he ascended to a higher realm, and it will 'probably' happen to him also. He seems to have this mentality of being persecuted by 'the matrix'.

[JosephKnecht]

1 hour ago, AION said:

Owen

• doesn't teach pickup anymore
• doesn’t do pickup in his personal life, he does social game 
• most of his videos are about mindset frames and unfortunately in his free seminars he rambles about his deluded politics 

 

Leo

• does pickup
• does promote it
• doesn’t teach men inner game how to be happy with themselves without women which Owen does

You guys are being too critical. 

Let the man cook.

 

[Recursoinominado]

2 hours ago, AION said:

Owen

• doesn't teach pickup anymore
• doesn’t do pickup in his personal life, he does social game 
• most of his videos are about mindset frames and unfortunately in his free seminars he rambles about his deluded politics 

He still teaches/practices pickup and he even does bootcamps.

His "social game" is just a disguise to teach pickup and not get canceled.