Manosphere EXPOSED: Innovationist Critique of Self-Help

CPI Regional Captain Noah Schenck of Boston recently created this video pointing to how internet self-help can be unhelpful, and joining a movement for justice is much better than endlessly striving to be “normal.” WATCH!

TRANSCRIPT:

If you’ve spent any time on the Zoomer internet over the past few months, you’ve probably been unable to avoid Clavicular. The 19-year-old streamer and self-described looks-maxer went viral telling his audience that steroids, crystal meth, and extreme self-experimentation will help them ascend, and that it will improve their looks, their confidence, and their lives. And that’s been enough to catapult him across the entire right-wing internet, including what genuinely might be the strangest interview ever aired on the Daily Wire.

Most recently, Clavicular, or Clav as his fans call him, appeared in a live stream alongside a lineup of manosphere-adjacent figures like Nick Fuentes, Sneako, the Tate brothers, and Myron from the Fresh and Fit podcast. The live stream was bizarre, even by internet standards, with the group piling into a limo and singing along to Kanye’s single “Heil Hitler” while doing Nazi salutes, after which they then proceeded to go clubbing.

And as surreal as that moment was, even by internet standards, it exposed something actually important. Clavicular isn’t just a weird internet character. He’s a symptom of a broader problem. His rise reveals the underlying fantasy at the heart of a lot of manosphere “self-improvement” content, and how it preys on young, isolated, often neurodivergent men by promising that if they suffer enough, if they optimize enough, if they punish themselves enough, one day they’ll finally get to be normal.

The fantasy shows up everywhere, from explicitly political gender-discourse content to apolitical fitness influencers like Connor Sin or Togi. And there’s a reason live streams of some “Chad” going out to a bar, getting drunk, and hitting on women have become so popular. It’s because they’re selling their audience a fantasy, and it’s a harmful one.

And I’m not going to lie: I’m exactly the kind of person this fantasy is meant to appeal to. In fact, I can remember the exact moment I gave up on it. In 2024, I was invited to Sochi, Russia for the World Youth Festival. In many ways, it was an amazing and transformative experience, incredibly validating. During the festival, I was able to have a face-to-face with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in an exclusive televised Q&A.

But one night there was a lull in activities, and I remember I was walking through the festival grounds as a concert was going on. Some Russian pop stars were on stage, and people were dancing, laughing, and having a great time. And I remember this sadness washed over me, because in that moment I realized there was nowhere I could run to. I realized there was nowhere I could hide from who I was.

Even among some of the most high-achieving people—those with the highest math scores, future politicians, future business leaders from around the world, high-achieving people from Russia, from the developing world, from China, from the BRICS alternative—many of whom had similar politics to me, even among them, I was not normal.

Our guide even commented on it. I asked her one night, “What do you think of Americans?” And she said it felt like many of the people who were there just wanted a free trip. It was like a vacation to them. But all I wanted to talk about was geopolitics, obscure political movements. I wanted to talk about BRICS.

Later, I told a Russian friend about this experience, and her response was essentially, “So what?” She said, “You’re bookish. You’re shy. You’re a little obsessive, but I like talking to you.”

And I thought about it, and I realized she was right. I realized that I’m exceptional, and that the only reason I have been able to do anything that I’ve done is because I’m different, not in spite of it. And this is the fundamental lie at the heart of individualistic self-help culture online. It’s that being normal is the highest virtue that one can have, and it just isn’t.

Now, that’s not to say that self-help in and of itself is wrong, or that self-improvement is wrong. In fact, self-help as a genre actually has socialistic roots. Samuel Smiles, who coined the term “self-help,” was a member of the Chartist movement, one of the first socialist movements in Britain. What’s more, Wallace Wattles, who popularized manifesting with his books The Science of Getting Rich and The Science of Being Great, was a socialist and a follower of Eugene Debs.

It wasn’t until Rhonda Byrne published her book The Secret, which took Wallace Wattles’ content and removed all the radical politics from it, that manifesting became cringe. What I’m trying to tell you is not that striving to be a better person is bad, but that the empty pursuit of change or improvement, abstracted from social movements, abstracted from society, will be empty. True change comes from joining a movement.

A perfect example of positive self-help is the life of Malcolm X. Prior to becoming a member of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm was a petty criminal. In his autobiography, he describes pimping women, robbing people, and partying as what made up the whole of his life. Had Detroit Red never joined the Nation of Islam, we never would have heard the name Malcolm X. But by joining a movement, by taking history into his own hands, by learning to work with people, by becoming an organizer, Malcolm became somebody capable of changing the world.

Because the process of changing history—of getting involved in the struggle—also changes you. It teaches you empathy. It teaches you resilience. It teaches you patience and discipline. It transforms you into a person capable of fulfilling the role that history has chosen for you.

This transformation is not unique to Malcolm X either. Prior to founding the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, Huey Newton was a college dropout who made ends meet by short-changing people. But because Huey was exceptional, and because he got involved in Students for a Democratic Society, we got maybe the most effective working-class movement this country had seen in decades. We got the movement that brought us the free breakfast programs, local community organizations, and empowered the Black community to fight for their rights.

And think of what the world would have been robbed of if Huey Newton had decided that his interest in revolutionary politics was too weird and instead wallowed in his misery on the internet.

This is another thing that often gets obscured. Huey P. Newton was a brilliant organizer and a brilliant theoretician, but he was not the most charismatic member of the Black Panther Party. That’s just a fact. His public speaking was described as awkward and stilted, sometimes overcomplicated. Many felt some of his political classes were too dense and insular.

Huey P. Newton was not normal.

And you need to get it out of your head that the only way you can amount to anything is by desperately trying to be normal. Oftentimes, the people who change history are obsessed, and they are able to accomplish what they do because they are obsessed.

Another perfect example is Vladimir Lenin. Lenin was not a normal person, nor was he described in personal accounts as a very charming or personable individual. People who knew him said that he talked with a lisp. They said he would get so worked up about party disputes that he would stay up for days on end ranting about them to nobody. He would work himself into such a panic that he had to play the piano to calm himself down.

Theodore Ilyich Dan, a Menshevik and one of Lenin’s enemies, once attacked him in a pamphlet, saying, “What are you going to do with a guy who talks, writes, thinks, and breathes nothing but revolution twenty-four hours a day?”

This was a common attack of the social democrats on the Bolsheviks. They said they were weird, that they were cultish, and that they gave the whole of their lives to the struggle. And it had not occurred to them that the only reason the Bolsheviks were able to take power—the only reason they were able to change history and transform Russia from a backwards agrarian society into a superpower—was because they were weird.

If you really want to live up to what you have to offer humanity, you have to embrace the person that you are. And you should get involved in the struggle. You need to join an organization.

Now, joining an organization is not easy. Being part of a movement is not easy. I’m not going to lie to you. It involves a lot of rejection. It involves dealing with and understanding people, and that can be very difficult. It sometimes involves facing persecution and being resilient enough to withstand it.

But I think about the person that I was before I joined the Center for Political Innovation, and I am so glad that I joined.

My favorite American novel is The Grapes of Wrath, and it’s my favorite because of how much I relate to the story of Tom Joad and how much he captures what it means to become an activist. I relate to how, at the beginning of the story, Tom is selfish, mean-spirited, short-sighted, impulsive, and lazy. But by struggling and suffering, by coming to understand the struggle of oppressed people through getting involved in a movement, he is transformed into a different person.

By the end of the novel, he is somebody capable of sacrificing his own freedom to defend a group of striking workers. After he makes that sacrifice, he realizes he has to run away, and he confronts his mother about why. The words he says have become a mantra for me. When I’ve lost or been pushed out of jobs for what I believe, when I’ve lost partners for what I believe, when life feels hopeless and I start to wonder if my commitment was worth it, I recite these words to myself:

“Maybe a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, only a little part of a big soul, and then it won’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark. Wherever there’s a cop beating up a guy, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. I’ll be there in the way that guys yell when they’re angry, or kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready. When the people are living in the houses they’ve built, eating the food they’ve grown, I’ll be there, too.”

That is what self-improvement means to me. That is what being an activist means to me. And if you are interested in anti-imperialist politics, if you want to take up history’s challenge, I invite you to join my organization. It’s called the Center for Political Innovation, and there will be a link in the description.

Thanks for watching.