I did not really know who Jack Murphy was until about a week ago.
I had seen his account several times on Twitter, whether through retweets from people I follow or suggested tweets, etc.
I just figured he was one of the many “conservative voices” on Twitter. I can’t even recall any specific tweet of his I remember seeing; the only impression he made on me was that I thought he looked like one of the dwarves from the Hobbit:
But then I started seeing more about Jack Murphy on Twitter and YouTube. Apparently he had gotten himself into a bit of trouble over something.
I didn’t really care, but a lot of people I follow on YouTube and Twitter seemed to care quite a bit about all this Jack Murphy business, so I decided to look into it myself.
Apparently Jack Murphy is not only a conservative influencer online, he is a “manosphere” leader with his own community of followers called the “Liminal Order.” Murphy teaches guys how to be alpha males, I guess.
Okay, fine–not a huge deal. Lots of guys out there do that. While I may think such practices are cringe and lame (we’ll get more into this in a bit), if he’s actually out there helping aimless guys become upstanding men, then I think that’s great.
But then I saw how much it costs to be a member of the “Liminal Order.” That’s when the alarm bells went off:
$99 a month, $790 a year, or $3890 for a lifetime membership.
Pretty steep if you ask me, especially for something described as simply a “private, secure network.”
So basically it’s an online community–a glorified Discord server, I guess. Seems pretty grifty to me off the bat, and Jeremy Hambly, who runs the YouTube Channel “The Quartering,” confirmed the grifty nature of the Liminal Order in one of his recent videos, where he read a testimonial from a Liminal Order member (starts around the 17:20 mark):
“‘You can see what they advertise on the website, but in reality it’s a forum and private chat on Wicker, which is like Slack.
There are discussions on masculinity and sense-making, but those are every couple of months. Most of the events made by individual members are not centralized to the Liminal Order. In other words, people just meet each other, decide to have a hang-out or event.
The Liminal Order has a few guys who make products and sell them to Liminal Order members. I think that’s kind of scummy, because they charge $700 a year and you just get sold a $500 class on philosophy.
Theres’s a central boys club in the LO that does a lot of selling to LO members. I think they see it as an opportunity to make money.
Jack Murphy has had several blow-ups on members of the LO. He called a guy a fat-ass and kicked him from the organization for saying Jack was cowardly for getting the poke (i.e. the vaccine).
There was the ‘Jacked Brunch’ event, which costs money, as well as ‘Suits and Steaks,’ which cost $250 per person. There are fitness standards, but no one enforces them. There are attempts at bigger things, but those are mostly member-driven, and mostly just hype. They get forgotten as fast as they come up.
I left because it’s a men’s organization that doesn’t get past being a boy. They still look up to pick up artists and bro culture, but nary a word about how to be a good husband, father or man. It’s a lot of disaffected young guys, and old, divorced dudes.”
So it’s a scam.
But what really struck me in hearing all this is that there are a lot of directionless guys out there who have no real role models, no purpose in their lives, and are desperate for both someone to look up to, and for a community of like-minded guys (I.e. friends).
Imagine how desperate for belonging and community you’d have to be to pay $250 to go to a “Suits and Steaks” dinner with a bunch of random guys you only know through the internet. If you don’t have any real life friends, but you’ve always wanted to dress up and go to a nice steakhouse with the boys, I guess you can do that in the Liminal Order. It’s pretty sad.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with making friends online, because I’m sure many people have successfully found meaning and community online. But paying for a community–that’s just not it.
It’s no surprise that there are tons upon tons of grifters online. There have been internet grifters for as long as there’s been an internet.
My philosophy–especially in regard to the online right, where most of the content is self-funded and self-created, rather than produced by large media corporations–is that everyone is a grifter until proven otherwise.
But this “Liminal Order” strikes me as particularly nasty. This guy Jack Murphy is preying on the most aimless, insecure, lonely and emotionally vulnerable guys, promising them both a community and the Path To Enlightenment on how to be an Alpha Male.
Before we get any further, let’s actually discuss the Jack Murphy scandal itself that brought down the whole house of cards.
The man who portrays himself as the prototypical Alpha Male, and the man who promises to teach you how to become an Alpha Male, is in reality little more than a depraved psychopath:
Murphy (whose name isn’t even real; it’s actually John Goldman) often goes on very popular conservative-leaning shows like Tim Pool’s podcast and Elijah Schaffer’s show on The Blaze. Murphy has made himself a home within conservative influencer circles, often appearing with Mike Cernovich and Trump insiders like Amanda Milius. But did anyone do their homework on him? It doesn’t seem so.
Everything came boiling to the surface after Murphy went after Schaffer’s cohost, Sydney Watson, for asking a question about an article Murphy wrote in 2015 about cuckolding. (For those of you who don’t know what that is, don’t Google it. It’s when you watch your wife or girlfriend in a sexual situation with another man.) It turns out that Murphy had written an article praising this practice in graphic detail.
“Today I sent my adoring loyal hot young girlfriend of two years to have sex with a stranger from tinder. She is currently at his apartment, checked in with me via text and is presumably sucking and f*cking her way to a good time,” he wrote. The rest is too gross to share. You can find it if you want to. It’s pretty much everywhere.
Murphy refused to just address this issue and instead lashed out at Watson for asking a question from the live audience. This set off a chain of events that got the researchers on 4chan interested in Murphy’s past. What they dug up is truly horrific.
Not only did Murphy write disgusting and sexually perverse articles (there is another one about how rape is good fun), he is also an amateur gay porn star. 4chan found videos of Murphy and his girlfriend that he posted to free gay porn sites for tips. When Jeremy Hambly from The Quartering told his audience about these videos, Murphy accused him of posting revenge porn. That is a ridiculous claim. Letting people know about porn that was posted willingly by the participant is not revenge porn. Murphy admitted that he posted the porn. “We didn’t have any money coming in and there were no jobs at all. I was lost and desperate. So my fiance and I did cam porn at home. People paid us to f*ck on the couch. We made thousands of dollars and had sex with each other,” he wrote. And while that might be an unfortunate solution some people choose, is it a life choice that conservative bigmouths want to or should align with? Really?Â
People also dug up a clip of him on Tim Pool’s show (in the above Quartering video) where he says that women enter their “prime” at age 15, and men enter their primes at age 35, and so 35 year old men should be dating 15 year old girls. He really said this–not explicitly, but if you watch the clip, there is no mistaking what he’s advocating.
He also wrote an article in 2015 about how feminist women all have “rape fantasies” (also detailed in the Quartering video above).
While National File was able to independently verify the existence and contents of three of Murphy’s erotic films that involve his fiance (a process that this journalist embarked on so his colleagues would not have to), at least some of the content appears to be homoerotic in nature.
Three videos featuring Murphy and his fiance were uploaded to a porn sharing website approximately two years ago.
Two images viewed by National File appear to depict Murphy inserting a sex toy into his rectum, while some Twitter users suggest that the existence of a torrent file indicates Murphy participated in on-screen male-on-male sexual activity.
Torrent files allow individuals to share files directly via peer-to-peer connections using the Internet, meaning the file containing the video allegedly depicting Murphy involved in homosexual pornography would need to be available for download from another computer connected to the Internet.
Anecdotally, it seems as though this video is impossible to download.
“There’s a torrent on a gay Russian torrenting website which is 70gb,” wrote a Twitter user who described the predicament.
The torrent featured a screen name associated with Murphy’s other adult films – “bigbadbeard1000” – which some believe serves as evidence of a homosexual adult film career.
“Torrent has no seeds, based on that — John Goldman Jack Murphy has done gay porn,” wrote the user.
there’s a torrent on a gay russian torrenting website which is 70gb, has a bunch of of people in it, but includes a clip w/ his username under a folder called “Bear”
torrent has no seeds, based on that — john goldman jack murphy has done gay porn
(Note: National File did not verify this. We had to draw the line somewhere, and for us it is the act of downloading homosexual pornography onto a work computer using a sketchy Russian torrent site that has not been seeded in years)
Sounds like a real Alpha Chad to me!
So many of these online political influencers are, primarily, seeking money. And people will do and say anything for money.
This is why it’s important to be suspicious of people online. The grifters are everywhere.
And this is why I have always been skeptical of the “manosphere” community online–all these Alphas and Chads and the like. It seems like there are so many of these guys online, all purporting to be the most Alpha of all the Alpha Chads.
So much of online rightwing discourse is centered on this idea of the mythical “Alpha Male,” or the “Chad.”
It seems like every young guy online is aspiring to be an Alpha Chad.
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that many of these guys have no real male role models in their lives.
They literally idolize a meme, after all:
Either that dude (“gigachad”), or the Chad meme:
People write captions below these memes, and ascribe personality traits to the memes, and then other people online try to be like the meme, thinking that these memes hold the secrets of to How To Become An Alpha Male.
It’s pretty messed up, honestly. People are literally idolizing memes.
If there was one real-life example of a guy who is held up and idolized as the ideal Alpha Male, it would obviously be Trump.
For a lot of people, Trump isn’t just a politician, he’s a role model. But no matter how much you may like Trump, I promise you, idolizing politicians generally does not work out well.
This whole Jack Murphy story really underscored, for me, just how ass-backwards this online “Manosphere” truly is.
There are a hell of a lot of guys out there who have no real male role models, and have no idea at all what it means to be a man, and so like lost puppies, they will follow anyone who looks the part and promises to Teach Them The Ways.
Almost all of these ostensible Online Alpha Chads are frauds.
Why?
Because real “alpha males” generally don’t make careers as online influencers, and they don’t attempt to monetize the process of becoming an alpha male.
So if all the online alpha chads are frauds, then who are the real alpha males? Where do we find them? How do we learn from them? WHO ARE WE TO LOOK UP TO AS A ROLE MODEL?!
I would love to say that the best way to learn how to become an alpha male is to simply look to your dad as an example, but the problem is today there are so many divorced families and boys raised by their mothers that probably a lot of these online “aspiring alpha males” have no real fathers or at least father-figures in their lives.
Which is why they’re giving their money to guys like Jack Murphy–because they don’t have actually have anyone in their lives to teach them how to be alpha males. They’re seeking direction and guidance online, but they often get suckered and scammed by grifters.
We have a massive problem in our society today, where so many young people are being raised either by their televisions or by social media. This is what happens when you either have absent parents, or simply bad parents who don’t care enough to raise their children.
People have this perception that the true Alpha Male is rare, almost mythical creature. And that may be true in a country where divorce rates are sky-high and masculinity is demonized by popular culture.
But there’s this idea that the Ways of the Alpha Males are shrouded in mystery, or that it’s extremely difficult to become an alpha male–like you have to become the human equivalent of a silverback gorilla, the biggest, strongest, meanest creature in the jungle.
You do not have to become Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones in order to become an alpha male.
There are tons of genuine alpha males out there. Tons of them. All it takes to be an alpha male is to have the love and respect of your wife and children, and to make enough money to provide for your family.
Seriously. It’s not hard to be an alpha male. Here is the criteria:
- Happily married.
- Loving and caring father.
- Breadwinner.
It’s not rocket science. You don’t need to lift tons of weights to become an alpha male (although obviously exercise and physical fitness are important). You don’t need to be a pick up artist. You don’t need to drive a nice car or run for President. You don’t need to be the King of the Jungle.
If you are a good father in a happy marriage who makes enough money to provide for your family, you are an alpha male.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have a father who is a shining example of what it means to be a man. I have always looked up to my dad, but I never realized how lucky I was to have a role model like him in my life until I wrote this article and it really hit home for me just how many people out there have no real male role models in their lives.
If you have no alpha male role models in your life to look up to, then your mission is to become an alpha male role model yourself.
In other words, if your parents are divorced and you have no real father figure to look up to, you must break the cycle of divorce yourself and become for your children the father you never had.
It’s really that simple. We’ve known this for centuries–millennia even.
Yet today, lots of guys believe the Secret To Being An Alpha Male is shrouded in mystery–a sort of esoteric knowledge possessed only by a select few.
A big part of it is that societal values have broken down to such a degree that being an alpha male is no longer the norm. Adulthood has been delayed; things like online porn, feminism (i.e. women choosing career over motherhood) and Vogue Magazine Morals have screwed things up between men and women.
It used to be quite normal for guys to be married with children–and a homeowner to boot–by like age 25 or even earlier. Divorce also used to be a rarity.
Nowadays that’s not the case.
Part of it has to do with people just having so many more “options” nowadays. People feel like they have to “find The One.”
But back in the day, people used to simply marry their high school sweethearts, and that was enough to stay married for life. They weren’t on this long quest to “find The One.”
People today believe they have to go on this long quest to “find The One” because of Hollywood, largely. Millennials are extremely picky when it comes to settling down and getting married Yet seemingly paradoxically, people today are also quicker to file for divorce than ever before.
I’m getting into a whole can of worms that would take me hours–possibly days–to write about in full, so I’m going to stop it there.
But there is a very serious problem in our society: lots of young men are aimless, and have no real role models in their lives.
And the Manosphere grifters have stepped in to fill the void.
It’s good that Jack Murphy was exposed as a fraud.
But as long as there is a demand for “Alpha Male” role models, then grifters and snake oil salesmen like Jack Murphy will keep popping up.