He has the unvarnished wisdom of a bartender in a fishing town, for one thing. With his 2016 mega-bestseller, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck , Manson set out to contradict everything all the other self-help books were saying. If other self-help books say you're special, I'm going to write a chapter called You're Not Special. If other self-help books tell you to believe in yourself, I'm going to tell you to not believe in yourself. If other self-help books tell you just say yes, I'm going to write a chapter that says, just say no.
The Subtle Art has sold over six million copies. At press time, it still tops the New York Times bestseller list in its category, and Mansons recent follow-up, Everything Is F*cked , has been on the bestseller list for 13 weeks. His blog, MarkManson.net, boasts over one million monthly readers, with half a million paid subscribers.
Still, Manson, 35, has an aura of approachability. It could be his soft, friendly-looking features, or the way he looks comfortable in every chair, even when hes onstage. It could be the swearing. At first I think the fucks sounds a little forced, in the context of his latest books titleslike a kid who swears because he knows its going to get a rise out of his mom. But the curse words become more frequent when Manson is talking passionately about something, and less frequent when hes considering every word. Hes just a swearer.
In his books, Manson flays himself: The Subtle Art , in particular, draws heavily from Mansons own highs and lows. Some moments are funny, and some are unexpectedly gutting, as when he describes his friend Joshs drowning when Manson was a teenager. Joshs death marks the clearest before/after point I can identify in my life. Pre-tragedy, I was inhibited, unambitious, forever obsessed and confined by what I imagined the world might be thinking of me, Manson writes. Post-tragedy, I morphed into a new person: responsible, curious, hardworking. I still had my insecurities and my baggageas we always dobut now I gave a fuck about something more important than my insecurities and my baggage.
Its feelingspeak, but its anchored by raw storytelling (and the occasional fuck). Everything Is F*cked is less moored to Mansons own experiences than The Subtle Art, but there he cushions his philosophies in yarnsthe book opens with a story of Holocaust heroism. Manson recently read a review of Everything Is F*cked that described him along the lines of the local drunk who spent too much time in the philosophy section at the bookstore. He was unruffled by the review. I read that and Im like, thats pretty accurate.
Strikingly, Mansons books appeal to both men and women, who have historically been shuttled into separate lanes by the self-help industry: Men self-improved by getting swole or getting rich, and women self-improved by finding husbands and laying out all our work outfits for the week on Sunday night. Manson estimates that his events audiences are two-thirds female and one-third male, but he says that men are way more likely to come up to him afterwards, to tell him how hes changed their lives.
My most fervent fans are always guys. Im probably one of four authors that they really like, he says. He explains that besides books about making money, and besides a wave of creepy pickup books in the aughts, the self-help industry hadnt really found a way to address men. Its not that men arent interested in achieving emotional maturity or distilling their values, Manson adds. Its just that when most writers hold forth on those subjects, they kick a masculinity trip wire: Theres still a stigma towards men discussing their mental health and, more nebulously, their feelings.
Manson is unnervingly well-read in the industrys old vanguard. Hes able to summarize and belittle entire bodies of work in a single sentence. (Hes good. Hes really, really good, Manson says of life coach and fellow mega-author Tony Robbins, but with that many peoplewith that far-ranging an audienceI canyoure going to fuck some up.) Manson studied how Robbins buried advice about needs and values in business advice, and he saw how the creepy pickup books did the same thing with romantic advice.
I think if there's been a breakthrough in my work, Manson says, it's that I have found a way to appeal to a lot of mento make it okay for them to read a book that talks about feelings, and values, and relationshipswithout also alienating women.
There are a lot of self-help writers with accessible voices and good stories who dont alienate women, but none of them have Mansons audience. What sets Manson apart is his ability to cast himself as the clear-eyed voice of reason in an industry of nuts. He did it recently, with the self-help industry, and he did it years ago, with the pickup artist community. And that is perhaps the most compelling reason to listen to Mark Manson: At a time when male comebacks seem unlikely, even impossible, Manson has managed to successfully rebrand from professional bad dude to professional good dude.
As of 2005 Manson was, in his words, a poor sexless neophyte. That was the year he discovered The Game. The Game was a pickup artist manifesto from writer Neil Strauss, the personification of a left-swipe on Tinder. Manson became a disciple of the pickup artist community, then quickly rose to a sort of nerd regency. Throughout his childhood in Austin and college in Boston, Manson had played a lot of video games. When he had to choose a pseudonym for online pickup artist forumshis nom de douchehe resurrected his gamer name, Entropy. Manson spent the next seven years traveling, delivering dating advice on his now-defunct blog, and working as a wingman-for-hire for the kind of guys who would seek out a wingman-for-hire. He charged clients about $800 a day.
Manson isnt particularly apologetic about his time as a pickup artist. He volunteers that he began his career in dating and relationship advice, but not that he was a pickup artist. When I ask direct questions about that period, though, he answers them candidly and casually.
Still, when I search for cached web pages from Mansons old website, PostMasculine.com, Im surprised at the Neil Strauss-ness of some of his early posts. On his blog he held forth on subjects such as Ethics: Bride at Her Bachelorette Party (in hindsight, pursuing her was wrong) and How to Pick Up Girls in College, a post Manson published on his blog in 2008. As soon as you can tell a girl is attracted to you, make a move on her. Girls at college parties are drunk, inexperienced, stressed out, and many of them are looking to hook up. Theres no place for subtlety here, Manson wrote. You can kiss them within minutes of meeting them. If you move things fast physically, and get them horny, you can get them in the bedroom within 30 minutes.
When I mention this post to Manson over the phone, he sounds so uncomfortable that I apologize. I definitely wrote something like that, and its definitely making me cringe a little bit right now, he says. I have a number of guy friends that I met in that community. And they've moved onnobody thinks about it anymore. But every once in a while, I'll have a conversation with one of those friends and be like, I can't believe we did that. You know? And they're like, Yeah, but, we grew a lot, and we matured a lot. And it's like, Yeah, but we did a lot of kind of shady shit, too. He's like, Yeah, kind of. There's definitely conflicted feelings about it. I think, overall, for most of the men, it was probably a net positive.
Another deleted post, from 2010, heralds the end of the pickup artist community. After spending five years in the Pick Up Artist community, Ive taken my leave, Manson wrote on his blog on September 21, 2010.
After that, Manson began repudiating pickup artistry more frequently and more decisively. On PracticalPickup.com, formerly the hub for his coaching, Manson offered advice for transitioning from pickup artistry to civilian life. He appeared on various blogs, he did AMAs on Reddit, and he devoted a blog post to dismantling The Game.
Now, Im not here to start a smear campaign, Manson wrote of Strauss, after an introduction in which he expressed his gratitude to Strauss for exposing him to the idea that its possible for any man to improve in matters of seduction. But everyone Ive met who lived in that house [Project Hollywood, Strausss pickup artist mothership] has come away with a bad taste in their mouth, and many of them openly dont like the guy. You be the judge. He went on: Pick Up Artist advice up until about 2007 or so, wasand Im being brutally honest herehorrible. Completely ineffective at best and outright manipulative and misleading at worst, Manson wrote.
He decried The Game as a marvel of marketing, a dating get rich quick scam. He launched THE single biggest product launch in internet marketing history at the time, bringing in over $11 million, Manson wrote, He then launched his business Stylelife which has over 40,000 members each paying $40 per month. You sure it wasnt a sales job?
(On his website Manson touts his $48 annual subscription in a Wikipedia-like appeal: Im an independent writer. What that means is that Im not under contract at a magazine or newspaper, Im not beholden to some overbearing editor/publisher, and Im certainly not whoring myself out to some big media conglomerate I have you. My readers. People who love what I do enough that theyre willing to help me keep being able to do it.)
In July 2011, Manson self-published a book, Models: A Comprehensive Guide to Attracting Women, on Amazon and on his website. In 2012 he released a revised edition, calling it Models: Attract Women Through Honesty . In a foreword to the revision, he explained that hed wanted to address consent more directly. This was always implied in earlier versions of the book, Manson wrote, but after being horrified at some of the emails I get from men and how they interpret the book, Ive decided to be more explicit about this.
Manson has left Entropy behind (insofar as one can leave anything behind on the internet). His old blog posts were accompanied by a photo of a slimmer, younger Mark Mansoneyes very green but a little dead, a smug half-smile on his lips. Now the About Me page on MarkManson.net features a photo of him in a light-blue button-up shirt, arms crossed in front of him. He looks healthy and corporate and not at all entropic. He lives in New York with his wife, Fernanda. He did meet her in a nightclub, he says, but he approached her as a civilian. I had no line, he recalls, It was, Hi, I'm Mark. In addition to The Subtle Art and Everything Is F*cked, he has a robust motivational speaking career, and he blogs often.
Besides being important from a personal development standpoint, Mansons well-engineered departure from the pickup artist community was a prototype for the rest of his career. Manson is a serial disruptor, and if theres one thing he can teach us, its how to make yourself the face of an industrys a-ha moment.
Manson was a welcome upstart among the old woo-woo institutions. Dale Carnegie, of the veryold vanguard, gave us tips for how to win friends and influence people in 1936 that are still in circulation now. Gentle earth uncle Eckhart Tolle encouraged us to quell the destructive ego-driven thought patterns keeping us from finding our true purpose. The Secrets Rhonda Byrne suggested that single people sleep on one side of the bed, and only use half the space in our closetsit will be as though we have already found the perfect partner, she reasoned, and then the Universe will send the perfect partner our way.
I know Im a self-development blogger and Im supposed to keep everything light and airy and full of poop jokes, but fuck itI hate it. Its an awful book, Manson wrote of The Secret in 2015, on MarkManson.net, in a post very similar in tone to the one in which he tore into Neil Strauss and The Game in 2010. His campaign was one of radical change, and Byrne was his counterpoint. He argued that Byrnes philosophy of all-the-time positive thinking is in fact very destructive. Call me crazy, he wrote in 2015, but I believe that changing and improving your life requires destroying a part of yourself and replacing it with a newer, better part of yourself. It is therefore, by definition, a painful process full of resistance and anxiety. Nobody called him crazy.
He rejected the industrys emphasis on promising readers concrete steps towards self-improvement. These action items are often arbitrary and unscientific, but theyre very seductive. The publisher really wanted me to put those things in there, and I told him, Absolutely not. They dont work. I dont want to write them, Manson says. Some conventional self-help people read the book and were like, Theres nothing actionable in here, so this is a waste of time. If thats their reaction, then its definitely not the right book for them. Which is fine.
Instead of giving readers a step-by-step roadmap to a perfect life, Manson suggested that we learn how to accept lifes imperfections. If other self-help books are crash diets, then Manson is the tough love nutritionist, sitting us down and telling us to stop eating Pop-Tarts. I say, 30 days is not enough. You have to manage your relationship with the Pop-Tart for the rest of your life.
It was an unsexy philosophy, delivered by a man whose professional qualifications amounted to Ive had a blog for a while. People are like, Why should I listen to you? he says. I'm like, I don't know. Don't. I'm not going to stand up here and say that Ive got it all figured outhere are my 18 degrees. I just started writing about my problems and my issues and how I dealt with them. And people liked it and kept asking me to write more. You play that out for about eight years and you end up with a book.
But Manson feels no less qualified to proselytize than any other industry kingpins. Rather, he views his ability to recognize when hes out of his depth as a strength. Hes the fun aunt of life advice. Hes a great peacetime babysitter, up for changing the occasional diaper, but when things get really shitty he hands us off to the people who know best.
He tells me that a self-help writer can either choose to be honest about what he doesnt know, or he can delude himself into thinking that he can solve everyones problems. I stay in the shallow end of the pain pool, he says. Ive written on the site that I specialize in mild life problems. Like if you've had a breakup, a major career decision, or midlife crisis, I'm your guy. I get questions from people who are schizophrenic or bipolar, or are having suicidal thoughts. And I'm like, Hey man, I'm not qualified for this. And I give them resources, links, and phone numbers for people who are.
I ask Manson why his strategy of setting himself up as the counterpoint to bullshit might make his work particularly appealing to men. He speculates that the internet has made people more skepticaleven a little bit paranoid. Because we are exposed to so much information, and we are aware of the ugly underside of a lot of things. When youre able to stand up and be like, This group is bullshit, and heres why, that generates a lot of attention, he says. Men, he suggests, have always had the desire to improve themselves and their relationships, but they sensed the self-help industrys phoniness. It just felt bullshitty to them. My criticisms, I think, just put words to what a lot of them felt. I hear that all the time, too, actually: I never liked self-help stuff, and I didn't know why until I read your book.
Manson is kind of like the car salesman who gets your business by telling you that all those other guysthe guys who promise you that their cars will help you get laidare lying to you. No mere vehicle can do that, hed say, shutting the car door as you prepare to drive away in your new convertible, but this one has excellent airbags.
After The Subtle Art took off, Manson had a brief existential crisis. He wanted to keep writing books, but he knew he was unlikely to out-sell The Subtle Art. He was grappling with a quandary that faces a disruptor of any major industry, from mattresses to happiness: Once youve popped the bubble, how do you keep growing.
I think my whole career has been me kind of ascending within a genre or a community and then stepping out of it, kind of like moving on to something broader, he says. I feel like I want to do that with self-help at some point. The same way, when I was 27 or 28, that I said, I dont want to be writing about dating stuff the rest of my life, I dont want to be writing about self-help stuff the rest of my life. I feel like theres a finite amount of things to say, and then once I say them, I just want to move on.
There are writers in every genre, but particularly in self-help, who spend their entire careers writing the same book over and over again. (Im not going to name any names, but they basically write the same book over and over and over again, and they make good money doing it.) Indeed, an occasional criticism of The Subtle Art, which seems to rankle Manson, is that when you peel away his no-nonsense tone and his analysis of the industry, he isnt really saying anything new.
I ask him whether he felt that he was repeating the same ideas when he was writing Everything Is F*cked. He concedes that some of the topics in the books are parallel, but says that Everything Is F*cked is the calculus to The Subtle Arts algebra: a more complex, nuanced version of the first books simpler principles. Still, hes aware that theres only so much you can say about self-improvement, and only so many different ways to say it, before you start repeating yourself.
Not that writing the same book over and over again is always bad, Manson adds, ever hedging a criticism. Some people enjoy knowing that theyre going to feel centered and motivated for the five hours it takes to read a book.
I don't think it would've lasted this long or been this big if there wasn't some good that came from it, he says of the industry. I think the question is just: What is it? And my argument is that self-help material is really just designed to make you feel good.
Still, while Mansons books may not fluff readers up with promises of the bounty of the Universe, like The Secret, or arm us with easy tricks for getting what we want, like The Game, they are designed to make us feel good: Nothing makes us feel better than being wise to a scam.