From the desk of Harsh Strongman
Subj: The lesson from the fall of Victor Pride from Bold and Determined
In the previous piece, I discussed the first biggest creator mistake – not making money.
In this piece, I’ll talk about the second biggest creator mistake – having an unstable personal life.
There used to be a writer called Victor Pride and he used to write a very popular blog called Bold and Determined.
As many of you know, he was the inspiration for Life Math Money. I even spoke to him a few times and he also gave me a shoutout to all of his readers back in the day:
Side note: Providing value is the best way to build business relationships. How did I get in touch with Victor Pride? I became an affiliate and made lots of sales.
He was making $50k a month from his blog. This was a very popular blog. He had millions of readers each month.
But then one day he suddenly shut his blog down and declared that he was a sinner, that all of his previous writing was satanic, and that he had turned deep into Christianity.
This was his message, in a post titled Let It Be Known which he published after deleting all of his previous posts:
Let it be known that I, Nickolas, a reformed sinner, and bondservant of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, have been saved by the blood of our blessed Lord Jesus. Let it be known that I do hereby declare that I will no longer operate in commerce under the nom de guerre Victor Pride. Let it be known that from this date forward I use my Christian name alone. Let it be known that I renounce any article, podcast, or video et al which has blasphemed God. Let it be known that I renounce any such material which does not glorify our Lord and Savior...
He basically did a U-Turn on everything he preached for over 10 years – self-reliance, believing in yourself, being your own man, etc.
He deleted his entire blog and then started calling everyone who didn’t turn hardcore Christian like him a spawn of Satan.
We were perfectly good friends 2 months before his announcement but now that he’s Christian everyone who doesn’t solely blog about Jesus is literally an incarnate of the devil to him. Ok.
He produced very hardcore Christian content for a few months and the he fully shut down and disappeared.
The same thing happened to another writer who went by the name RooshV. He was a very popular figure in the pick up niche who one day decided he was a hardcore Christian, said all of his previous work and his audience was demonic, and did a full U-Turn on all his prior beliefs.
He then produced Orthodox Christian content for a few months and disappeared.
Why did Victor Pride and Roosh shut down?
The answer isn’t Christianity. There are tons of writers who are also Christians.
The answer isn’t money. They were both making money. In fact Victor Pride was doing really well for himself. Victor Pride was pulling in $50k a month from his blog.
The answer is that they had unstable personal lives.
- Victor was a guy in his late 30s / early 40s.
- He had no wife and no children.
- He lived away from his family and rarely saw them.
- He had no place he could call home because he frequently switched cities. He was sometimes in Thailand, sometimes in Cambodia, sometimes in the USA, sometimes in Vietnam – he was everywhere. (This is fine by itself but you need to have a home base.)
All of these things are also true of Roosh.
When you have an unstable personal life, all is fine till you are ~35 but then suddenly you start feeling very empty inside.
You are now the male equivalent of the wine aunt.
Having an unstable personal life in your 20s is not a big deal but as you get older, it starts becoming the biggest problem you have going on.
You will look for distractions to avoid the hell your DNA is putting you through to get you to breed. (Your DNA is wired for only 2 things – to get you to survive and to get you to breed).
In Victor’s case, he constantly changed his way of living to distract himself from this. To quote one of his last published articles:
Where I live now, a small community of 12 people in the forest, we have no city water, no city electricity, no indoor toilets etc.
We use solar panels to generate power, we have water on the land, and we use outhouses. All of the houses were built by the hands of pioneers, not by general contractors.
And I’ll tell you something about living out in the woods with people who can take responsibility for themselves: It’s invigorating. It’s enlightening. It’s freeing. It’s the way the human being was meant to live. So that’s why I do it.
I’ve been from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City to Buenos Aires to Asuncion to Tbilisi to Los Angeles to Manila to Madrid and many more. Just like Johnny Cash, I’ve been everywhere, man.
People with normal personal lives don’t do this.
They might change a few things in their life over time, but they aren’t constantly changing everything like moving to different third world countries, and then living in the woods with 12 people using solar panels to generate power.
Victor Pride’s unstable personal life made him feel lonely and alone. Which turned him towards extreme religion.
If you’ve read my article on the life of an unmarried 30 year old woman, the life of an unmarried 40 year old man is very similar.
- Traveling gets boring after a while. You enjoy it, but it’s not nearly as much fun as when you were younger. In fact, travel fatigue hits you 10x harder at 40 than at 25. It’s simply unpleasant to do it too often.
- You feel very lonely because you are alone so much. You have no wife, no children, and you are away from family a lot. It simply as a slow psychological toll that weighs on you every day.
- Money doesn’t fix the void that not having children creates. Your DNA is wired to breed. It’s where you get nature’s fulfillment from.
Basically you feel more alone and empty as you age if you have an unstable family life (no wife, no children, etc.).
You are pulled towards the one thing people who feel a massive void in their heart are pulled towards – HARDCORE RELIGION.
People frustrated with their personal life are prime recruits for various extreme ideologies.
I know this is true because I grew up in a religious cult/organization (not sure how to categorize it).
I went to a very religious school because when my mom and dad moved to the city, we had a rented home and almost no money – the only school willing to take me in was this hyper religious school run by a religious organization (it was actually a pretty good school).
The one thing I noticed that most of the “recruits” the religious organization had had one thing in common – they were frustrated people who did not like their lives and thought religion could fix it for them.
And the more frustrated they were with their lives, the more literally they took the teachings of the religion and the more HARDCORE of followers they became.
Basically the more of a void you have in your own life, the more likely you are to adopt some extreme ideology as you age. Especially hardcore religious ideology because you’re likely to go there first.
In Conclusion
Victor Pride had no wife, no children, lots of money, and nothing to live for. He was bored of his life and felt an existence void of purpose.
So he got involved with religion to try to fix that and got sucked into the most hardcore version of it where he renounced everything he built and started calling all his friends the spawn of the devil.
He shut down his blog and disappeared.
Now, this is not me trying to throw shade on Mr. Pride and his work. He was the inspiration behind this blog and also promoted it to his audience.
Unlike all the young guns here who think any criticism is an attack, we are reasonable people who want to learn from the mistakes of others so we do not repeat them.
Here is the lesson from Victor Pride’s life mistake: Find a good woman and marry her. Have children. Children are your biological purpose. Money alone is not enough.
You will feel bored and empty and have nothing to live for if you do not create a family and children.
Your DNA is wired to make you feel empty and alone if you don’t have children because millions of years of evolution have wired it to do everything it can to get you to breed. Even if it means making your life feel like hell till you do so.
The lack of family and children will mess with your head and drive you towards extreme things. Building a family is more important than making money.
Do not repeat the mistake of Victor Pride and RooshV. Do not fight the laws of nature. It is a terrible mistake that almost everyone who makes it regrets for life (male or female).
That’s all for today folks.
Hope that helps.
Your man,
Harsh Strongman
