His is a cautionary tale of what happens when someone who feels inadequate listens to the new generation of masculinity salesmen
When I first met Nick in 2019, at a dating and self-improvement summit in Miami, it wasn’t immediately obvious why he was paying so much money to pseudo-authority figures from the manosphere. He had looks, cash and some of the easy swagger of London done good.
Nick was over 6ft tall and had nice white teeth, labrador eyes and a healthy quotient of melanin courtesy of the sunbeds at the health club he went to twice a week. Financially, Nick had done well for himself, creating a mobile phone app and selling it to a big company. He’d put some of the proceeds down on a small flat in west London – not bad for someone in his mid-20s with no family money. Nick had even helped his parents buy an apartment in Spain on the Costa Blanca where the family holidayed twice a year, frequenting English bars and greasy spoons with all the other English people. He bought a lot of designer clothes, too (Armani, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Stone Island, Off-White, Hugo Boss). “Important to have the basics sorted,” he’d say, splashing Tom Ford cologne on his neck before a trip to Mayfair.