You wouldn’t imagine one could write that without irony, and yet there it is. I’ve always rather liked Tucker Max despite knowing that there is an element of, shall we say, inventive color to be found in all the satyrical shenanigans. As with Roissy, if you only pay attention to the sordid details of his controversial subject matter, you will completely miss the intelligent insights he has to offer:
Why do you think my writing is so popular? It’s honest. That’s what all the idiots who try to imitate me don’t get. It’s not about the drinking or the fucking or the crazy stories. It’s not even about the funny, as much as it’s about the honesty. No one is ever honest, but when you are, when you say the things everyone knows but won’t admit, it’s so shocking and amazing that the world can’t help but stop and look.
But here’s the thing about being honest: All the liars HATE you for it, and most of the people in the world are liars. They lie to their bosses, they lie to their families, they lie to themselves, they lie so much they don’t even know they’re lying anymore. If you have the courage to be honest–even a little bit–all those people will hate you, because your honesty reflects their lie back on them.
Oscar Wilde wasn’t kidding when he said, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
I think the reason I like writers like Tucker, Roissy, and Jonah Goldberg, and why I tend to view them as something more or less akin to peers despite our varying levels of public visibility, is that we are all essentially doing the same thing in different areas. Of course, far fewer people are interested in economics and history than politics, much less sex and dating, but my approach to mainstream economics isn’t really all that different than Tucker’s approach to American sexual mores, Roissy’s approach to male mating rituals, or Goldberg’s approach to left-wing political ideology.