Bootcamp for Men: from betas to alphas

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Producer Dean Russell of the podcast Endless Thread from WBUR, Boston's NPR. How comfortable are you with your masculinity? I'm fine. I feel fine, I guess. But what about you, co-host Ben Brock Johnson of Endless Thread and all the other things that you said? I feel fine with it. I think it's about trying to figure out how to not inflict pain and destruction. That's my general operating position. Apologize often.

And try not to hurt other things. Yeah, I'm down with that. We are here today to talk about one of the more bizarrely viral genres of videos that have become popular enough to... kind of break out of the manosphere and poke themselves into the mainstream videos and the idea of man camp. So some people have referred to this as alpha male boot camp or men's retreats.

There's, of course, a spectrum of this kind of thing, but the alpha male version is the more maybe controversial one that has popped up in recent years. For me, this really started to come into my own sort of online browsing awareness about a year ago. But I have definitely found posts and stories about this kind of like alpha male boot camp or... retaking masculinity retreats and camp.

going back as far as 2020. Yeah. I saw a lot of them a year ago, but then they've sort of also popped up in the last month or so. And maybe it's just like everybody's thinking about camp because it's the summertime. Yeah.

I'm going to share with you this video that, for reasons that are still mysterious to me, went viral in the last month or so. All right. You ready? I got to see it. I'm strong. Move forward. Move forward. Move forward. I'm mad. I am. So this version of this post is from the sad cringe subreddit. And it is a video of these two fully adult men. And one is clearly a camper and the other is clearly a counselor or whatever.

So the counselor is sort of like telling the camper here to literally run into him and push him backwards and yell, I am a man. I am a man. I am a man. Thank you, Internet, for bringing me that. You can kind of tell why it's on the sad, cringe subreddit, right? Yeah. There's another video, which is maybe the first one I ever saw, that really looks a lot like a private form of boot camp.

There's like this muscle bound guy yelling at a bunch of other guys who are holding sledgehammers and lying on their backs and then on their stomachs and then back on their feet over and over while he yells at them. waves on the beach like break over them you don't deserve to be here i want to be a better man i want to be a better husband i want to be a better father i want to be a better you whiny piece of any reactions dean

What have you got? It's something. I'm familiar with this camp. The thing that sticks out to me the most is that I grew up... In a military family. And we, you know, we lived in West Point. West Point's where the military academy is. And my dad taught. He was in the Department of Physical Education, which is like... saying he's like the most intense gym teacher that you could imagine. And my dad would take me to see Beast, which is the six-week boot camp that every cadet takes.

before they enter the academy. And it was the craziest spectacle to see as a child. You would just see men and women, sweaty. running constantly. They would have to like climb this ladder and then slide down on this rope and then drop like, you know. 20, 30 feet into a lake, and then they would have to do push-ups in the lake, like their face would smack against the lake. And it was so intense. It was so cinematically boot camp. But when I watch...

these videos, something feels really off about it. And I think it's the difference of goal. Like, what is the goal of this camp? The goal of Beast was... very specifically to get everyone ready for the academy and the goal of this and men and women were both like going through that process both present yeah and this is this is a different thing and that's

I guess that's my immediate reaction. Okay. All right. I've got another video for you, Dean. Let's do it. This is another one that I saw months and months and months ago that feels like... Kind of a different vibe, but honestly, I also can't really tell if it is. The title of this is A Group of Men Crying Uncontrollably in a Pool. Oh, wow. And yes, it is a pool filled to the brim with men, and they are wailing. It's a much different vibe than the other videos, but...

It was unusual, for sure. This, for me, has been my full... interaction with this idea is just kind of these kinds of videos have like popped up in my feed over and over yeah but you kind of went down a quick little rabbit hole to look at man camp. Um, yeah, which is our shorthand for these various programs or maybe the very specific one that keeps going viral. I don't know. I'm, I'm ready to learn.

I'm your camper. You're my counselor. Do you want me to shout all of this at you the whole time? Please shout it at me while I hold a sledgehammer in very shallow waves. lapping at my stomach as I lie in the sand I'll make sure to include a lot of degrading comments as well so don't worry about that cool Coming up after the break, Dean takes us to man camp.

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Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. All right. So I did look into... the history of man camps and, you know, a couple of specific camps just to really try to dig down and understand their philosophy and what's behind that philosophy. You know, the first thing I'll say is that just the term man camps, it actually comes out of the fossil fuel industry, the American fossil fuel industry, which maybe you know about, but like...

Basically, in the early 20th century, oil and gas companies. It's all workers, right? Right. Exactly. Like oil and gas companies, they used to have these permanent family housing for its workers. And then, you know. There was boom-bust cycles, and basically it became uneconomical to have these permanent facilities. And so, yeah, they built these temporary barracks-like facilities, and...

The term man camp became popularized in like the 2010s with the oil boom in North Dakota. And these were very hard places. to live. The influx of men overwhelmed facilities, the camps. you know, coincided with spikes in violence and sex trafficking, often against indigenous women because, you know, many of these trailing sites were or, you know, are near or overlap with tribal lands.

And so that's an interesting background to me to then morph into something else. Man camps meaning what we're talking about, which is a lot of... Dudes being dudes together. And, you know, as we kind of established, man camps can mean a lot of things. We are talking about boot camp. One of the videos, the second video that you showed me where they're wielding a sledgehammer. Oh, yeah. This comes from the Modern Day Knight Project. It came about in 2019 in Southern California.

I'm assuming that modern day night is K-N-I-G-H-T. Modern day night. And that will relate to something in a second that we'll talk about. Okay. I'm nervous now because I love a knight. I love the Knights of the Round Table, King Arthur. Big fan. So hopefully this doesn't ruin it for me. Please go on. This project got a lot of attention over the last few years. USA Today did a profile of the group about a year and a half ago. And it's really because the project itself stands out

in the cost and in the way that it's executed. This is billed as a 75-hour crucible. That's what they call it. And it costs $18,000 to attend. So $18,000 for three days. And what you get... Oh, boy. ...is three days of torturous physical challenges led by... military veterans so former marines former navy seals you name it these are the instructors that are yelling screaming bullying

all in the name of brotherhood and manhood. And it's pretty intense. You can go for more than 24 hours without sleep. You're doing, you know... All the time, you're doing push-ups, sit-ups, endless runs. You play paintball. You get dragged through the mud. You shiver in the ocean, as we saw. You shiver in an ice bath while holding a cake. I guess that's one of the things that they do. Don't understand it, but that's what they do. And you'll carry your buddies. You'll carry another dude into...

modern day night's vision of manhood. And if I were to sum up the philosophy, it would be this. You know, your wife did not marry you just to have another son. She wants a man who is confident, who is capable, who is courageous, who knows how to protect, who can provide, and who is always prepared for the worst case scenario.

Did you know that, Ben, when you got married? Were you aware of this? I mean, look, this is the complexity of these things for me. This is touching on something that I see people actively. complaining about and asking for guidance on all the time on Reddit. This is touching on a real thing, which is that one might make the argument that... A large number of adult males have not been culturally trained to be good partners in relationships. Mm hmm.

And so I can see that this video is like ostensibly sort of like trying to solve for that, saying like you have to take responsibility and accountability for. your part in this relationship. So I can see that side of it. I'm not sure what digging a hole in the dirt under floodlights has to do with that. It's complicated, right? Because you're, you know, again, to me, this is touching on a real sort of like cultural challenge in the way that we like view ourselves and each other. And also...

It also seems ridiculous when you look at it objectively. It seems very clownish. It's one of those things that starts in a philosophy... that many of us can agree with, which is to say you have to take responsibility for who you are. But then you dig down into what... does that mean? Because that means different things to different people. Yeah. And what I'll say about this project, because I think the way it runs is really interesting.

Between 2019 and 2024, they held 20 classes. And each one sold out according to the project. And not everyone makes it. The full 75 hours. So if you reach a breaking point, you ring a bell of shame, essentially, and you're dismissed. And a lot of the videos are instructors screaming like, go ahead, ring the bell, do it, do it. And then obviously you have to leave. You do not get your money back if you leave early.

Wow. But you are rewarded if you make it the full 75 hours. You get sort of inducted into this kind of brotherhood with coaching from folks like Bedros Koulian. He is the co-founder of the Modern Day Nights Project. There's something inside of a man that we will run towards enemy gunfire for the cry of a woman, let alone... Our woman or our daughter. He kind of looks like a hybrid of Jimmy Kimmel and Joe Rogan. Okay.

If that's helpful to you, just smush them together. I think it is. Yeah. Yep. Yep. He's a fitness entrepreneur, author of the book Man Up. He's got a podcast like everyone else in the world. I have some good news and some bad news about Bedros and his projects. What I really wished for this episode was for us to attend...

the project together. You know, I felt like that would have been really special. I don't know where we would have come up with $36,000, but it would have been great. I don't know which one of us would have rung the bell of shame first, but... We could ring it for each other. I think I would have just collapsed. I wouldn't have the ability to ring the bell, I feel like. But, you know, you never know until you're there.

The bad news is that we will never know actually because the project closed in 2024 for reasons I do not know. The very good news though.

is that Bedros Koulian started a very similar man camp for fathers and sons. It is called the Squire Program. every man knows instinctively my son to survive his life's journey needs to be harder than my daughter and i know the feminists are losing their right about exactly what do you mean that's just how it is you know like it or not oh my god i can't

I can't with this one. I can't. I cannot, Dean. The point of the Squire program, which he's kind of underlying there, is that it's designed as a, quote, rite of passage for boys because... Quote, men are literally the only ones who will stand up and defend our society from the tyranny seeping into our nation. This guy.

And because the tyranny seeping into our nation can be seen in many different ways, he clarifies to say that is also known as... the mission to turn, quote, masculine societies into soft, confused, unsure, passive-aggressive, feminized betas. Can this guy just take five minutes and read the Wikipedia for Harriet Tubman? I don't know, man. I don't know what to do. It's very upsetting. So I sent you a link to what the Squire program looks like.

It's time to start passing the torch on to your son. Stop doing everything for them. Let them f***ing start taking the lead. Start demanding they take the lead. And then stop letting yourselves be baby. You're f***ing young men. If you're here, you're old enough that we can talk to you like this. Oh, God. I feel sorry for these kids. All right.

This guy is he's basically it's sort of another version of this boot camp where he's like yelling at the children and he's yelling at the dads and the sons. Yeah. This seems like the essence of toxic masculinity here. Like you're basically like poisoning these people with ideas. That's my perspective. Yeah. Again. acknowledging that men are in need of direction in our modern society and support of each other.

this is going to result in the opposite of that. I feel, or, or just like, it's going to result in ideas that again, like are actually fake, like ideas that are not real about. how you're different from women and girls and, and what that means and why it matters and whether it matters. It just all seems very stupid. Yeah. So I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what to say about it.

It is this kind of training camp to be the traditional, bread-winning, strong man idea. And it's not unique either. Like, for instance, Andrew Tate, this sort of celebrity, former kickboxer charged of many things, including rape and sex trafficking. has set up several expensive online boys to men training grounds. There are plenty of ways of going about this. And when I say about this, I mean about...

the sort of adrift feeling that seems to be out there. There are many man camps with different vibes. I mean, the Guardian did a profile of... Secret Sons, which is dedicated to, quote unquote, healthy masculinity. And these are like retreats that involve a lot of crying and emotions and staring into each other's eyes. And there is... Something there. There is something that some men appear to be searching for. Yep. I mean, a lot of experts have pointed to loneliness.

And there's something to that. I mean, like several surveys suggest that men have a harder time connecting emotionally with their friends. And each other specifically. A recent Pew survey found that 16% of men say they are lonely all or most of the time. That same survey found that 15% of women said the exact same thing. I think loneliness seems to be a larger epidemic. It's not gender-based. And I think that...

The gender piece of it, or at least I'll say this anecdotally, the gender piece of it to me.

is maybe connected to how men are culturally trained to not allow themselves to be honest about their emotions, perhaps, or reach out for help, or... say how they feel and so men are you know once they reach a certain age they're actually very bad it's supporting each other again and like reaching out to each other and connecting with one another men are also often i think trained to not know how to be friends with women culturally and i think that's like another

aspect of this that is like really unfortunate and feels real I'm not sure how we as men sort of like figure it out but it definitely needs work and $18,000 in three days ain't going to do it. I will say that. I haven't been through this camp, but boot camps can be effective at a lot of things. Like, they can be effective at... friendship and bonding. They can be effective at physical fitness. Yeah, building confidence. Exactly. And there are brutal boot camps too that, you know, maybe...

You could condemn them, but I think of Beast and the U.S. Military Academy. Like my dad went to Beast. My dad was an instructor at Beast. But my sister also went to Beast. To me, that's like the difference. It is this... Banner philosophy of should, like men should be a certain way. Society should run on certain principles, principles that flow from a culture of the past. And there are reasons.

That philosophy is appealing to certain people. There are real issues, issues that we're talking about, right? Like loneliness, even though it's not maybe gender specific, loneliness and wealth gaps and education gaps. Boys graduate high school and go to college. Less than women now. The grounds of culture are, you know, ever shifting.

And you throw all that together. To me, it makes sense that some people will hold onto something because it is clearly defined. And for that subset of people, it seems like solid ground.

is x and x is strictly defined but it made sense that the universe revolved around the earth for a long time and then you know turned out that wasn't true i also think there's like a Identity is important. I want to acknowledge that identity is important to a lot of people, and this is not to take away from male identity and all the different people who... wish to have that male identity. And at the same time, I think it's interesting to think about a world where we

We just really let these things go. And if you want to be strong and powerful, you're just strong and powerful. You just work to be strong and powerful and no matter who you are. And if you want to be somehow like pugilistic in the way that you think about your positioning towards the world and you want to be a defender and you want to be the one who runs towards flying bullets.

Like, it doesn't actually matter who you are. If that's what you want, then you do that. We live in a world right now where that stuff can culturally be tied to gender. And I get that. And also, like... Doesn't have to be. And I think the more we think about that and just like allow that to be fluid, I think the better. Yeah. Well, Ben, it's been lovely. Thanks for...

Joining me on our trip to man camp. Always pleasant. Absolutely. I mean, I'll be in the same cabin with you anytime, my friend. Shotgun top bunk, though.

Fair enough. But I think there's no sleeping allowed in man camp, but fair enough. Fair enough. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was co-hosted by myself, Ben Brock Johnson. And me, Dean Russell. It was produced by Frannie Monahan. Our editor is Meg Kramer. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

The rest of our team is Amory Sievertson, Grace Tatter, Managing Producer, Samata Joshi, and Production Manager, Paul Vykus. If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or some other wild story from the internet or camp that you want us to tell, get in touch. at endlessthread at wbur.org.