Pavol Rusnak's recent Twitter article - Bitcoin Toxic Maximalism Has Failed "Good people attract good people. If you build a community around hating something, you attract people who hate."

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Pavol Rusnak (@PavolRusnak) on X

Bitcoin Toxic Maximalism Has Failed

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Lately I’ve seen a return to using “gay” as a pejorative. That concerns me. I don’t want to go back to a world where gay bashing is normal. But I call people on it and they are like “nah it’s just a word, it doesn't mean that, relax” And so for those people I have a question… How about when I see something that I think is stupid or an over reaction, or someone just being dense I’m going to note how “male” that is. It’s “male” as a pejorative. I don’t mean that I hate men, of course not. Some of my friends are male! It’s just that things that are silly, or impulsive, or idiotic are “male”. Ya know it’s just a word. And you of course are totally cool with this… right?

Pretty much every Bitcoiner I know has a story about losing funds. I’m unaffected by this latest disaster, but I’ve lost funds in other mishaps. We all have. If this one affects you, I want to tell you that money really isn’t all that important. Which may sound insane when you’re staring at a zero balance with that pit in your stomach. And it’s also a strange thing for a Bitcoiner, with a degree in economics, to say. But, more accurately, I want to tell you that the accumulation of personal wealth is not very relevant to living a good or happy life. Now how money functions, the type of money that the world uses, that is very impactful. I don’t work in Bitcoin to stack sats, or build a citadel, or to drive a lambo, I do this work to separate money from state, to remove a giant concentration of power from the world. And having meaningful work in my life does make me a happier person. Where you spend your time and energy is wildly important, but wealth, the accumulation of stuff, is a different beast entirely. If this one affects you, I want to shake you and yell at you… WEALTH DOES NOT MAKE YOU A BETTER OR HAPPIER PERSON. Please believe me, I checked! ...a few times. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen this issue from many different angles. I grew up in a household that had some wild swings in income. One year a trailer in Florida, one year a month long vacation in Europe. I’ve lived in a roach filled studio apartment on the wrong side of town, and in a house so big you might get lost. I’ve lived among the poors and partied with the super wealthy. One time my ex won the lottery and then fell into a depression. True story. I’ve got some experience with this one! So many of us grew up with the belief that money is how you measure personal value and worth. That understanding is deep in our bones. I believed that for a long time and I fought really hard to ‘get into the room’, and then hated it there. Getting out of poverty will make you happy, but from there the more you climb that ladder, the more you find yourself in rooms filled with people absolutely desperate to prove themselves via money. People who have lost their soul. That is not winning. The accumulation of wealth is not an interesting or valuable goal in life. You can’t take the money with you. You can’t take the Twitter follower count with you. You can’t take the perfectly decorated giant house with you. You do take your story with you. And your story just got a wild new chapter. Welcome to the club.

Good times/bad times don’t make someone’s character, they reveal it. Re this Coldcard disaster, it’s been very interesting to see who is using this to dunk on others, who is trying to CYA, who is using this to gain new customers, and who is simply helping. Noted.

I’m so not a Ayn Rand fan, but she did say something brilliant once, “people who are genuinely racist usually are so because they don’t have a better reason to like themselves.” Nailed it! And this applies to all sorts of things and certainly to sexism, and especially to the Red Pill crew. Men who look down on women nearly always do so because they don’t have a better reason to like themselves. There is that zerosum hierarchy again. If you can be above a woman then you aren’t on the bottom… right?

This is one of the most disgusting things one human can say to another. This says I don't give a shit about who you are, I don't give a shit about your dreams, I don't give a shit about your accomplishments. All I care about is how you can service me. Absolute fucking trash.

You can’t make someone care about you. You can’t make someone care about you. You can’t make someone care about you. You can’t make someone care about you. You can’t make someone care about you. You can’t make someone care about you. You can’t make someone care about you. You can’t make someone care about you. You can’t make someone care about you. You can’t make someone care about you. ...Let them go.

Yup

Modern day motherhood is miserable and that's why fewer women are choosing it. If you want women to chose it, make it less miserable. Why is it miserable? Because we are doing it all wrong. One woman alone in a house with small children all day is torture. That’s not how humans work. Humans are designed to live in a pack and raise children communally. If we want women to not be miserable raising kids, then we need to bring that community back. We need to take all that burden off them and share it around so that they can continue to be normal humans. If women have to give up all that they are to have kids, then a lot of them will chose not to have kids.

I think I've been to 20 different countries. Is that impressive or are those rookie numbers?

I love the idea of men as protectors, it’s a task that they are generally well suited to. Men in general are taller, have more upper body strength, etc. And a very honorable thing to do with physical strength is to protect others. However, men actually doing protecting is pretty rare, at least in my life experience. The most common way that a man, who in theory wants to be a protector, fails to protect, is by not believing that there is a threat to protect from. I have known so many men in my life that I’m pretty sure are not predators themselves, and who in many areas of life are decent and reasonable people, that for some reason shut down on this topic. Unfortunately, being sexually assaulted is very much the norm for women in the world. It has certainly been my experience in life, and also the experience for nearly 100% of the women that I know. And it’s not just anecdotal data here, there are just mountains and mountains of studies that all tell this story as well. The evidence is overwhelming. When I talk to these men about these things I do not accuse them personally of any wrong doing. I do not say ugly things about men in general. I do not advocate the removal of any rights from men. When I am talking to these men I am looking for understanding, but that seems to be the one thing they can’t give. They just shut down and go into defense mode and I don’t know why. So if you have any idea, please please tell me, why are there so many seemingly decent men out there who can not/will not see this reality? What is going on here?

This is not what a man looks like. This is someone who has intentionally, with all consuming dedication, cartoonified themselves for the entertainment of others. No doubt it’s impressive, and very eye catching! 👀 But very likely, for most women, not really that attractive. This dude is no fun. This guy will not join you on a wild night out and do shots and then have tacos. This guy will make your child together cry on their 5th birthday when he refuses to eat a piece of the birthday cake. You’ll never see this guy as he’s at the gym 3 hrs a day. He’s pretty miserable. Most women are going to want men that look like real men.

For a while the BDSM scene has been confusing to me, and a bit concerning. But, after many books and conversations, I think I understand why this exists. But first, a few very important disclaimers: Consenting adults can do whatever the fuck they want in the bedroom. I am not trying to say that people shouldn’t do these things, or even that they are unhealthy things to do. There clearly seems to be some therapeutic benefit. And I am of course speaking in broad generalities here. Humans are complex, people do these things for a wide variety of reasons. So let’s go with a typical setup here, a heterosexual pairing with a woman playing the sub role and a man playing the dom role. Alice and Bob. Alice was brought up in a time and place that taught her that women’s sexuality either didn’t exist, or was very shameful. Because of this sex and shame became fused in her head. Not at all helping this situation is her experiences with sexual abuse. Alice was sexually abused by a close male family member for a time during her adolescence. So not only are sex and shame fused in her head, she also has a hard time differentiating between sex, violence, and love. For her sex is difficult to experience without the themes of violence and shame and a power imbalance. When dealing with trauma people often do ‘reenactment’ where they attempt to recreate the stories, but this time with a different ending. Or sometimes they recreate in an attempt to process what happened and change their relationship to it. Alice seeks out interactions with BDSM doms and presents them with a list of her boundaries. A 3 page detailed list of things that are a hard no, things that are a soft no, and things that she’s comfortable with. This formality helps her to regain a sense of control over sexual interactions. Bob was an awkward and sensitive kid. His mother was erratic, at times manipulative or even abusive. She terrified him, he had no idea how to interact with her let alone connect to her. And as he entered adolescence this fear of his mother extended to women in general. Bob has generally not done very well with the ladies. He doesn’t know what to say or to do, he has no idea what they do or don’t want from him. He desperately wants them, but has no idea how to go about connecting with them. He feels as if he is a cocaine addict and women are people who unknowingly walk around all day with a briefcase of cocaine handcuffed to their wrist and ignore him. After a long dry spell Bob began to dabble in the BDSM world. He seeks out women to play the sub role. The formality of these relationships gives him some clarity in a situation that otherwise baffles him. And playing the dom role gives him a sense of control over an act whose absence has felt like constant humiliation. A BDSM interaction gives them both space to work through these things.