25k posts so I'm definitely due. YOLO.

I admire JP's ability to grab preposterous ideas and explain/discuss them in a way he makes them look like they're completely rational and worthy of proper debate. Pretty much what happens with most religious apologists, with the difference they're probably just delusional. I have to say sometimes his takes are interesting, but the amount of sophisticated nonsense is unbearable.

I have never heard anything but soundbites from Jordan Peterson but i know he has gone down some bad rabbit holes (seeing dollar signs from the more looney right, i am sure) but his basic message when he came on to the scene, which was generally laughed at and derided by, mostly the left was a good one.

There is an attempt in todays society to diminish the importance of gender roles, or to say even such a thing exists, but i think there is generally a big loss in the very principles that men were primarily the ones to enforce that are largely being lost in todays society.

the 'make your bed', 'clean your room' is the biggest complaint I have heard from fathers, mostly in blended families, as they are shuttled aside and told that does not matter and not to push it on the kids. Most men, picking their battles, let it go, and imo, it is the beginnings of a 'lack of discipline' that feeds in to so many other areas of the kids evolving life.

It is laughed off as a vestige of 'toxic masculinity' and the need to 'give orders and be obeyed' and not important instead of being seen as an early and vital component of letting a developing child know that life is full of things you 'have to do' and not just things 'you want to do' and that you, the kid, will not draw those lines.


The amount of fathers i know, just myself, who have thrown up their arms in surrender on issues like that (basic disciplines) is shocking in a way, but not in others, given the times we live in.

Petersen is a grifter, just like Tate. They just have differing methods.

He runs a cam business where he lures women in and makes them perform, often times against their will and he makes money off of it. He's a sex trafficker.


Women that like Tate have daddy issues and want to get boned by a guy that physically abuses them.

Men that like Tate have mental problems where they need to be seen as personally wealthy and powerful, but 99.99% of them aren't. So they punt $50/month to his online incel courses.

Correct.

Seems that way, yes.

Lots of young men are lost in todays world, where they are too often told most things 'masculine' are considered toxic and unappealing. They grow up eschewing these 'male' characteristics and find that they then struggle to find partners later in life that value them. Young men are increasingly showing despair as they are left behind more and more scholastically and in dating and grifters like Tate, then can prey on them.

Why do you think that Petersen doesn't actually believe what he says?

Plus, he didn't actively seek a high-profile media presence. He was gifted that when he did nothing more than push back against the Speech Police who were forcing their woke agenda on the professors at the university where he taught.

Men spend too much time in front of the computer in today's age.

50 years ago, you couldn't sit there at home and stare at the screen, you had to go out and do things for entertainment. Which allowed you to socialize more.

99% of men that are datable and are desirable don't need Andrew Tate. Problem is, I believe the pool of datable and desirable males are decreasing as a % as function of current habits.

He is smart enough to have worked out that espousing a certain set of views gets him media coverage.

“Woke agenda” is terrific stuff, well done.

That is certainly true. It is also quite possible that he truly believes what he says. Both of those things can be true at the same time. Unless there is some evidence to the contrary, the charitable thing to do is to assume that somebody actually believes what they say.

Thank you! I save my very best for this Forum.

It is also the naive thing to do.

Cognitive dissonance isn't that fun. Given time, many people who start off promoting insincere views for profit or power end up actually adopting those views.

Not at all.

I agree with this.

But what is the evidence that this is the case with Dr. Petersen?

Are the ideas that he has shared since becoming a public figure inconsistent with his published work and/or public statements prior to his rise to fame and fortune?

Mr. Trump, for example, pivoted on several important issues to make himself palatable to GOP voters.

Agreed.

It is especially important for young men to be sharpening their social skills. Engagement with other boys, men and women. Women often being the most intimidating for them, especially if they like and have interest in them.

for young men it really is a skill that builds with practice and disappears with none. A young awkward girl will still have guys approach her, but a young awkward male will not have women approach and his approaches, if he is willing to make them, typically will not go well.

I've mentioned in prior that our Uni rugby team forced every rookie to hit on 100 girls a night, until they got a yes (number or date) and made a joke of the 'no's' where he would get a beers bought for him in failure. Few would fail with 100 approaches but they learned to laugh it off if they did. And you would see them gain confidence as they did. No one wanted a bunch of gun shy guys around, plus guys who approach girls, open opportunities for their buddies. Win/win, unless you live in a world where you believe it toxic masculinity to approach women like that ridiculous TV commercial tried to show it as.

I don't claim to be an expert on Jordan Petersen. I have no idea what he actually believes and only a general idea of what he professes to believe.

I made this account to wish H&F Happy New Year, and peeked in this forum and here we are.

Anyways, I understand everyone here has already made up their mind about Peterson, with almost no first hand exposure to his works, and almost exclusively from agenda driven third parties telling them what he believes and what that means. And nothing I write is going to change anyone's mind.

But regardless, there are Youtubes of Peterson giving lectures at Harvard in the 90s where he warns about Focault and Derrida and the dangers of Cultural Marxism, and goes on long soliloquies advocating for young men to take personal responsibility and "clean their rooms." If you actually listen to him, he has been remarkably consistent the last 30+ years, to a fault you could argue.

If anything, the most interesting thing about the Peterson experience IMO is how the culture (especially among educated elites) has shifted in the last 30+ years; where someone making essentially the same arguments could go from being regarded as completely harmless, peculiar, and interesting (watching the lectures it is obvious the students he was lecturing were completely captivated) within polite society into a pariah and avatar of right-wing toxicity.

Same here.

I suspect this is also the case also for many folks who are utterly convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Petersen is just a grifter/opportunist par excellence.

Happy New Year to you as well!

Thanks for sharing with us the apparent consistency of Peterson's message over many years. That certainly undermines the "Peterson is just another right-wing grifter" narrative.

Well, it depends on your personal definition of "grifter" and how charitable you wish to be to Peterson. He clearly saw an opportunity to elevate his profile and monetize his worldview using his skillset (mainly charisma as a public speaker, despite his Kermit the Frog voice), and he made the most of it.

But given the consistency of his message and every indication his intended career trajectory was just to be an obscure academic, until a new opportunity presented itself; it takes a very uncharitable (or most likely ignorant) perception to regard him as a cynical grifter on the Trump level.

Despite his (Trumps) personal politics being much more Democratic aligned at the time, Trump literally said if he was ever gong to go into politics he would do it as a Republican, because he regarded the base as much more gullible, and then he did exactly what he said he would do.

Well said.

There is no doubt that he successfully parlayed his ideas and skill-set as a communicator to achieve "fame and fortune" as a public intellectual.

To me, a "grifter" is someone like Trump who changes positions merely (or a at least primarily) for personal gain.

There aren't that many attractive women, in any given man's view, and women are not merchandise, so hierarchically ordering low-status men ('rookies') to 'approach' 100 women in a single evening is extremely regrettable 'jock' behaviour that would certainly qualify as toxic masculinity.

He's mistaken about lobsters but otherwise seems fairly harmless and has just been gifted accidental celebrity. He isn't grifting (unlike British micro-celeb Jack Monroe, for instance), because he isn't pretending to offer anything that he isn't delivering.

i read peterson's book. he's a dumb person's idea of a smart person. and he's a grifter.. and trump never said that quote so we can already understand you're level of credibility in understanding media in the world today. happy new year