Owen Cook Wants The Revolution. Wants You To Say Hi To Strangers

[ZzzleepingBear]

15 minutes ago, Consept said:

Yeah i think its similar to how a lot of youtubers became right wing and trumpists, theres certain audiences that just yield better fruit in terms views and then money, although the money might not be important. If you think Rupert Spira is one of the most respected non-duality teachers in the world right now but only has 152k subs with around 20k-40k views per video. Compare that to Russell Brand who has 5.5 million subs and gets literally millions of views per video, add to that his channel blew up only when he started doing conspiracy content during the pandemic ( https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCswH8ovgUp5Bdg-0_JTYFNw/monthly ) for a few years before it was growing slowly. His own spiritually focused channel has not seen anywhere near the growth of his main, now conspiracy orientated channel.

So I think its interesting how easy it is to get drawn into whats selling, theres a huge incentive for Owen to lean into conspiracy stuff because his audience is susceptible to it, the way he talks sometimes is almost like he doesnt believe some of the stuff but he also doesnt want to condemn or say its stupid because he knows that a deal breaker for his viewers. This is the same with Brand, he'll say something like 'whatever your theory is on the vaccine...'. They may say that they have to do that just to get more viewers and once they get them in they can give them very important information, but im not so sure i think playing into it actually makes the viewers focus more on the conspiracy stuff as now this person they respect is kind of agreeing with them. 

Also its a good analogy for revolution, you can say that Brand & Owen are constantly screaming for one, but now that they have some power in terms of their audience, theyre very quick to manipulate this audience by playing into their audiences fears and getting them more engaged in this way, essentially doing what they criticised the mainstream media of doing, so this revolution of media is the same but not regulated. 

Well said, I fully agree with this take.

I was subscribed to Russel for a long time without really watching much of it to begin with. He has a reasonable side to things. But as I began to see how his thumbnails and titles becoming more and more clickbaity, It's clear that he is now catering to those who love getting into the curent conspiracy narratives. And it doesn't require any nuance to do so either, other than speaking with an loud upset voice and picking any critisism out of the air. And never ever question one's own line of thoughts.. Everything just fits perfectly thogheter if done in that way unfortunately. So the vast majority feels that their feeling of unjust and confusion has been heard and rightfully justified by mindlessly listening to these cherrypicked rants.

 

[Epikur]

5 hours ago, Esilda said:

@Epikur Hiya!

Hiya

[Leo Gura]

Owen isn't doing the conspiracy narrative for the money, it's because his life's work and RSD was basically canceled by the MeToo crackdown that platforms did back around 2016. It's obvious this affected and hurt him deeply so he takes it personally and needs some way to explain it to himself. He doesn't like platform moderation because he wants to put out very edgy content. But he doesn't realize how such content hurt women. So it's not that he was being censored for his ideas, the immaturity and sexism of pickup simply hurt too many women and so there was a backlash. This is not elites controlling him. This is just the natural consequence of being insensitive with what you say. Saying edgy things hurts people. Promoting hardcore pickup also hurts people. Owen doesn't acknowledge this enough.

In general Owen is an intense, edgy, and hardcore guy. He loves to challenge mainstream norms and lifestyle. So it makes perfect sense for him to be deeply opposed to things designed to protect the masses. He likes to live more dangerously and aggressively. That's his bias. He does appreciate the function of those mainstream safeguards nor the wisdom of some important mainstream ideas like anti-sexism, anti-promiscuity, and anti objectification of women. There are deep problems within the pickup lifestyle which Owen seems to be in denial about. Mainstream culture is actually right about that. But needs to deny that to keep doing what he is doing.

[Consept]

43 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Owen isn't doing the conspiracy narrative for the money, it's because his life's work and RSD was basically canceled by the MeToo crackdown that platforms did back around 2016. It's obvious this affected and hurt him deeply so he takes it personally and needs some way to explain it to himself. He doesn't like platform moderation because he wants to put out very edgy content. But he doesn't realize how such content hurt women. So it's not that he was being censored for his ideas, the immaturity and sexism of pickup simply hurt too many women and so there was a backlash. This is not elites controlling him. This is just the natural consequence of being insensitive with what you say. Saying edgy things hurts people. Promoting hardcore pickup also hurts people. Owen doesn't acknowledge this enough.

In general Owen is an intense, edgy, and hardcore guy. He loves to challenge mainstream norms and lifestyle. So it makes perfect sense for him to be deeply opposed to things designed to protect the masses. He likes to live more dangerously and aggressively. That's his bias. He does appreciate the function of those mainstream safeguards nor the wisdom of some important mainstream ideas like anti-sexism, anti-promiscuity, and anti objectification of women. There are deep problems within the pickup lifestyle which Owen seems to be in denial about. Mainstream culture is actually right about that. But needs to deny that to keep doing what he is doing.

Interesting insight and i guess you know him a little bit but it makes sense. I agree i dont think hes doing it for money but i think it would be hard to not be aware that when he talks about conspiracy orientated topics he gets more views, at the very least he will try not to alienate his audience that do believe in that stuff. For example in a recent video i watched he was talking about the will smith slap and he was very charitable to it being a set up although he didnt think it was, it jus struck me that although his point was the opposite of the conspiracy take, he still had to appease that side of his audience. 

Also i get the impression with him that he does want to get to almost Tony Robbins levels, that seems to be the goal and to get there so it would be hard to not take all these conspiracy fans with him. Having said that i think he does have excellent insights in terms of social and spiritual and i think its great that he can put those two together, because thats not often done. I just dont think he realises how these wild ideas affect his credibility. 

[Hardkill]

24 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Owen isn't doing the conspiracy narrative for the money, it's because his life's work and RSD was basically canceled by the MeToo crackdown that platforms did back around 2016. It's obvious this affected and hurt him deeply so he takes it personally and needs some way to explain it to himself. He doesn't like platform moderation because he wants to put out very edgy content. But he doesn't realize how such content hurt women. So it's not that he was being censored for his ideas, the immaturity and sexism of pickup simply hurt too many women and so there was a backlash. This is not elites controlling him. This is just the natural consequence of being insensitive with what you say. Saying edgy things hurts people. Promoting hardcore pickup also hurts people. Owen doesn't acknowledge this enough.

In general Owen is an intense, edgy, and hardcore guy. He loves to challenge mainstream norms and lifestyle. So it makes perfect sense for him to be deeply opposed to things designed to protect the masses. He likes to live more dangerously and aggressively. That's his bias. He does appreciate the function of those mainstream safeguards nor the wisdom of some important mainstream ideas like anti-sexism, anti-promiscuity, and anti objectification of women. There are deep problems within the pickup lifestyle which Owen seems to be in denial about. Mainstream culture is actually right about that. But needs to deny that to keep doing what he is doing.

I see your point. 

I get that all of the marketing for picking up women comes off as misogynistic, but I now feel bad for Owen after all of the hard work he did for all of his media content.

[Leo Gura]

He definitively has this meta-narrative going (which smacks of conspiracy) that elites are using the little guy as "batteries in the Matrix". I really don't like this meta-narrative because it's fundamentally not how society works -- although at the same time there is some truth to it. But it's a very partial truth.

Here's an example of where Owen goes way too much in the conspiracy narrative:

Unfortunately he is inadvertently brainwashing his audience into believing this kind of stuff.

The notion that Twitter or the internet used to be such a good place back in 2015 is absurd. Twitter was a toxic cesspool back then but Owen ignores such basic facts. Moderation has not made Twitter worse. And the moderation was not done by "elites" to keep the little guy down. It was done because it was being exploited for devilry by both little actors and giant actors like foreign governments.

The are fundamental biases within pickup advice. And even when Owen is giving his more philosophical takes which don't have anything to do with pickup, he still can't shed those biases. That's how deep those biases run. And almost no one in the pickup community who follows Owen will sense that until years after they have been indoctrinated with his biases. It's very subtle. It requires a high level of development and consciousness to see it.

[Consept]

26 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

I see your point. 

I get that all of the marketing for picking up women comes off as misogynistic, but I now feel bad for Owen after all of the hard work he did for all of his media content.

 

19 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

He definitively has this meta-narrative going (which smacks of conspiracy) that elites are using the little guy as "batteries in the Matrix". I really don't like this meta-narrative because it's fundamentally not how society works -- although at the same time there is some truth to it. But it's a very partial truth.

Here's an example of where Owen goes way too much in the conspiracy narrative:

Unfortunately he is inadvertently brainwashing his audience into believing this kind of stuff.

I actually feel quite sorry for him, you can feel the pain behind what he saying in terms of looking for someone to blame for censoring him. The key thing as you say is that hes not accepted that his previous teaching could be harmful for women, there could be the argument that its a net positive as it does help guys and he was kinda getting them into spirituality and trauma release etc, but the problem was the whole pick up scene was so toxic. 

Its interesting how the brain works as he probably cant confront that reality so the only other avenue is this meta narrative. The problem is it doesnt at all solve the problems of free speech and this marketplace of ideas simply doesnt work, as has been proved with the pandemic and trumpism and other things, it doesnt take into account how strong the fear response is and how easily that can be manipulated to cause real world consequences. 

 

 

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Consept said:

there could be the argument that its a net positive as it does help guys and he was kinda getting them into spirituality and trauma release etc, but the problem was the whole pick up scene was so toxic.

I think it was a net positive but he just needs to bite the bullet and admit to himself that it wasn't all positive for everyone, and then just move on to doing more wholesome and anti-toxic dating advice. He's basically gotta shed the old selfish pickup ways -- which is hard to do after 20 years of nonstop pickup. It would help if he did a video actually addressing the immaturity, narcissism, and toxicity of pickup culture. Then he could lead people to a more ethical and conscious form of socialization, dating, and relationship advice.

[Tudo]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I think it was a net positive but he just needs to bite the bullet and admit to himself that it wasn't all positive for everyone, and then just move on to doing more wholesome and anti-toxic dating advice. He's basically gotta shed the old selfish pickup ways -- which is hard to do after 20 years of nonstop pickup. It would help if he did a video actually addressing the immaturity, narcissism, and toxicity of pickup culture. Then he could lead people to a more ethical and conscious form of socialization, dating, and relationship advice.

Do you think a softer kind of pickup is ok? like a guy doing pickup to have a girlfriend, not just one night stand.

[Karmadhi]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

He's basically gotta shed the old selfish pickup ways -- which is hard to do after 20 years of nonstop pickup. It would help if he did a video actually addressing the immaturity, narcissism, and toxicity of pickup culture. Then he could lead people to a more ethical and conscious form of socialization, dating, and relationship advice.

Would you consider statements as "Jelousy is a feminine trait" and stuff like this toxic or sexist? I have seen quite a bit of Owen and RSD old videos where they talk about females and tbh i did not find much mysogonistic stuff there, at least not more than you would find in a book like "The Red Queen" or "The Way of the Superior Man". Saying women want to date masculine alpha males and hate soft betas is kinda true.

Maybe i missed something? Yes pick up can def be toxic af but it is the pick up itself in general more than what RSD was saying specifically.

 

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Tudo said:

Do you think a softer kind of pickup is ok? like a guy doing pickup to have a girlfriend, not just one night stand.

Well, that's been my approach. But many guys who get into pickup end up just settling down with a girlfriend. It's usually just a matter of time. But even so, that doesn't solve some of the ethics problems, immaturity problems, and toxicity problems in this niche.

It's hard to get really good at game while also maintaining high integrity, ethics, and maturity. This is extremely hard and rare.

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, Karmadhi said:

Would you consider statements as "Jelousy is a feminine trait" and stuff like this toxic or sexist?

I mostly consider that an inaccurate statement. Men are easily jealous.

Quote

I have seen quite a bit of Owen and RSD old videos where they talk about females and tbh i did not find much mysogonistic stuff there, at least not more than you would find in a book like "The Red Queen" or "The Way of the Superior Man".

Definitely more than in any of those books. You haven't watched enough old RSD content then.

Quote

Saying women want to date masculine alpha males and hate soft betas is kinda true.

Saying that is not the issue. The toxicity was something deeper than simply alphas and betas.

Quote

Maybe i missed something? Yes pick up can def be toxic af but it is the pick up itself in general more than what RSD was saying specifically.

Of course RSD was not any more toxic than the community as a whole. RSD just got a lot of blame and attention because it was the biggest and most popular company.

But also to be fair Julien was doing some really toxic immature shit back in 2015 -- which is what got RSD canceled. When I saw what Julien was doing back in 2014 I was disappointed and had problems with it. It wasn't even solid game, it was just cruel and egoistical. I wanted nothing to do with that and I was a big fan of RSD back then. I published my video: A Rant Against The Pickup Community back then. And a lot of PUAs hated me for it.

RSD was definitely to blame for its own downfall. It was some "elites" who took it down. They were promoting a sub-culture of treating women like shit. This is not cool and should not be acceptable by larger culture. If RSD has emphasized respectful treatment of women, they would never have been canceled. What gets you canceled is unethical shit. And rightly so. That is not "censorship", that's just society protecting vulnerable people from exploitation by immature selfish assholes.

[OceanRiver]

@Epikur Owens been a massive help to me.

[Esilda]

14 hours ago, Epikur said:

Hiya

@Epikur ??❤️???

 

?

[hyruga]

Owen talks too much but gives very little. Only useful if you want to get a  'Masters' or 'PhD' in social communication by enrolling in his courses.

His primary concern imo is still with his own company. How he can grow his company first by capitalizing on the needs of people.

Owen's energy is that of an obnoxious 'I know it all' teacher, not that of a charismatic man. If you talk like him in a pick up scenario, you are probably going to win 50% of the time. Certainly not high.

You are probably much better off listening to this guy for pick up.

https://youtu.be/E77Lq0gmbqE

 

 

Edited April 27, 2022 by hyruga

[Leo Gura]

11 minutes ago, hyruga said:

Owen's energy is that of an obnoxious 'I know it all' teacher

He's both arrogant and humble. He's doesn't think he knows it all. But as far as pickup he does know a lot so...

[Raze]

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Owen isn't doing the conspiracy narrative for the money, it's because his life's work and RSD was basically canceled by the MeToo crackdown that platforms did back around 2016. It's obvious this affected and hurt him deeply so he takes it personally and needs some way to explain it to himself. He doesn't like platform moderation because he wants to put out very edgy content. But he doesn't realize how such content hurt women. So it's not that he was being censored for his ideas, the immaturity and sexism of pickup simply hurt too many women and so there was a backlash. This is not elites controlling him. This is just the natural consequence of being insensitive with what you say. Saying edgy things hurts people. Promoting hardcore pickup also hurts people. Owen doesn't acknowledge this enough.

In general Owen is an intense, edgy, and hardcore guy. He loves to challenge mainstream norms and lifestyle. So it makes perfect sense for him to be deeply opposed to things designed to protect the masses. He likes to live more dangerously and aggressively. That's his bias. He does appreciate the function of those mainstream safeguards nor the wisdom of some important mainstream ideas like anti-sexism, anti-promiscuity, and anti objectification of women. There are deep problems within the pickup lifestyle which Owen seems to be in denial about. Mainstream culture is actually right about that. But needs to deny that to keep doing what he is doing.

Owen said that after the Julien thing he volunteered with abused women and he and Julien recognizes they engaged in immature and self destructive behavior.

His PUA videos weren’t as offensive after that incident, he is more angry about the media lying about him.

[Leo Gura]

17 minutes ago, Raze said:

Owen said that after the Julien thing he volunteered with abused women and he and Julien recognizes they engaged in immature and self destructive behavior.

That's good. The problem wasn't so much that it was self-destructive but women-destructive. It's not good for a leader of young men to model behavior which is harmful to women. But that's water under the bridge. He is much more careful now in how he speaks.

Quote

His PUA videos weren’t as offensive after that incident, he is more angry about the media lying about him.

Well, of course mainstream media is not going to deeply understand Owen and his work. That's not surprising at all. And again, it's not some conspiracy to bring down the little guy. That would be like me complaining that people call me a cult leader because the elites are after me. No, it's just that mainstream media will never understand the things I teach.

The fact that guys like Owen and myself are still allowed to post YT videos is evidence that there is no conspiracy theory or elites looking to suppress deep truths. No one is going to ban Owen as long as he teaches in a responsible way -- which he is now doing. I put out way more edgy and risky content these days than him and I don't have some paranoia about the mainstream not understanding me or trying to silence me.

If media ever writes about me, it's gonna be extremely distorted to the point where it will look like it's full of lies. It's not lies, it's just their inability to understand based on their limited paradigm and life experience. But hey, if my life's work was taken down overnight, yeah, I would develop a chip on my shoulder about that. So I understand Owen's frustration. Society has always had taboo subjects, such as homosexuality, pickup, socialism, or mysticism. Teachers of such topics tend to get demonized. It comes with the territory. Jesus was nailed to a cross. MLK was assassinated.

[Epikur]

1 hour ago, hyruga said:

Owen talks too much but gives very little. Only useful if you want to get a fake 'Masters' or 'PhD' in communication by enrolling in so many of his courses.

His primary concern imo is still with his own company. How he can grow his company first by capitalizing on the needs of people.

Owen's energy is that of an obnoxious 'I know it all' teacher, not that of a charismatic man. If you talk like him in a pick up scenario, you are probably going to win 50% of the time. Certainly not high.

You are probably much better off listening to this guy for pick up.

https://youtu.be/E77Lq0gmbqE

 

 

Seems quite nice. He seems to be sane that is a plus.

[Bando]

Its such a shame Owen shut down the Rsdnation forums that place was a gold mine for game is you knew how to search correctly and took action. Honestly I got more value from the forums than i did with his videos