True manliness is about capability, not cooties. Which doesn’t stop dozens of dumbasses from trying to take your money with Matt Black Tactical +!++# Beer-Warmers. We’ve combed Kickstarter to compile a list of most laughably “manly” campaigns, and to explain how they went wrong.
Manly Cookbook
We could resurrect Edgar Allan Poe to deliver this line and still not have worked hard enough to tell you in somber tones: this is not a parody.
We’ll save you some reading: meat. (Source: Jared Green)
That’s not a book, that’s bait laid by aliens trying who learned about men from awful 80s sitcoms about unhappy marriage. The “Manly Cookbook” offers alternating pages of manly recipes and semi-naked models. He’s raising money on the internet for a much worse version of the internet outside the internet.
We’re not sure to deal with somebody who wants to include the Mars symbol in a title which already has four O’s, but instead jams it into the middle like a tiny belly button, then twists the arrow to make it fit. That doesn’t look like Ares manliness, it looks like an instruction to reset this entire project. Which the internet did by refusing to fund even 10% of the projected goal.
After being turned into mince the cow didn’t think anything worse could happen, and was wrong. (Source: Jared Green)
Look at that burger. Anybody who needs a cookbook to make one of those would need a full pit crew and robotic exoskeleton to attempt anything as complicated ribs. And that’s not just his cooking, that’s his best cooking. That’s the cooking he used to tempt $8,000 out of strangers. If the “models” are of the same quality, we just missed a chance for some anatomical shots of Baba Yaga’s wrinkles, Penanggalan nightwear, and a long lingering shot of Medusa’s seductive stare.
Help Save The Real Man!
When someone says that “real men” are endangered, just replace “men” with “@$$#()!%$.” And replace “real” with “@$$#()!%$.” In fact, just replace everything about them with “@$$#()!%$” and you’ll notice no change and save some time. They’re always complaining about progress, and even if they weren’t it turns out “whining about being a real man” proves that they aren’t.
Which only makes this failure more hilarious.
For such testosterone-laden men their faces sure are covered in eggs. (Source: Academy of Men)
Their professionally produced kickstarter video only captures their assholishness while adding expense to the humiliating failure. Their ideas of “real manliness” including bothering overworked female cashiers by trying to get dates, literally bashing rocks together instead of using easy tools within arms reach, and just being the most contemptible smug-buckets in every possible direction.
This man’s survival is a testament to her heroic work ethic. (Source: Academy of Men)
Because all their talk of “real men” was a ball-based scam. They wanted forty dollars for “Manliness in a box,” which turned out to be “An overpriced shaving kit.” Their website has been downgraded to “Concept,” where we see the next boxes would have been “an extraordinarily expensive tie” and “a ludicrously expensive condom somehow less classy than that in the nightclub.”
Spoiler: Nobody involved in this is coming soon. (Source: Academy of Men)
Wait, dice? Their idea of ice-breaking is dice? Did they just rhyme by accident? Are they trying to sleep with Luke Rhinehart? Did a woman tell them their chances of getting laid were one in a million, and they thought if they could get 140,000 men rolling dice for them and a million dollars they might still have a chance?
Manly Attire
One problem of “manly” attire is the way tactical camo has become the pretty pink princess aisle of insecure men, a glaringly obvious color-code attempting to make a big deal out of gender in a way which really doesn’t understand reality.
“I just dress like this to pick up my groceries, and am completely sane.”
And that’s nothing compared to the maddest manly attire ever invented. Tell the world how much you love beef with this t-shirt:
DEAR LORD IN OVEN (Source: C.J. O’Kane)
That isn’t a bison, that’s the last image in a bison’s brain after it’s been speared by protohumans, the final images produced by dying animal neurons as the oxygen cuts off and it tries to process crude hooting and hollering of the delighted cave-people. And if those neolithic savages could see this image they’d boo and throw $#!+ at something so inferior to their cave paintings.
In the risk and rewards, the CJ—-possibly the shortened nickname of CJD, the prion-infestation which turns cow brains spongey and hollow and apparently into T-shirt artists—-explains that his previous projects weren’t as appealing. We can only assume they were shipped straight to R’lyeh so the squid-faced horrors could wear them during oyster-eating contests.
The one-dollar pledge level is the height of optimism.
(Source: C.J. O’Kane)
We admit that not giving a single damn about what you’re wearing or what happens to your money is a certain style of macho, but this isn’t the way to do it. You’d be better off wearing the actual carcass of a bull you just killed. Because that would be less psychotic than the nightmare vision of this Frankenstein bull head salivating as it’s served on a dish of its own sliced flesh, like an autocannibalistic St John the Bovine Baptist.
Manly Sniff
Manly Sniff has a few problems. They’re all the name. It sounds like a frat prank where they shove your face into their armpit while trying to make fart noises.
And the logo looks like they’re trying to light the real fart noises (Source: Manly Sniff)
It also implies an awful inversion of manliness where guys will literally run away from light and warmth unless it’s been correctly scented, a level of unmanliness which would have invented lesbians as an entire self-replicated species before we had the wheel.
Still, scented candles are big business. More choices are good and there are some fine fellow-oriented scents. Unfortunately Manly Sniff couldn’t think of any of them. Instead they offer Beer Suds, 5:00 Shadow, Man, and One Night Stand. Those are all the worst smells we survive as men, not ones we enjoy. Stale beer, a day without showering, and the sticky morning after? They’re only missing Crunchy Socks In The Back Of The Drawer and Last Week’s Gym Bag. The only worse male smell would be a lion’s marker scent when behind you suddenly hear a growl. And he interprets your pissing yourself as an attempt to assert dominance.
On the upside, they set a reasonable goal, achieved it, and are now happily sending their scent around the world and being paid for it. So if you must do down the alpha male route that’s the most comfortable possible way of doing it. But there’s still the desperate reek of grrr-macho all over even this good idea. The “Sawdust” scent is a legitimately great choice, but when it’s listed in the “Manly Sniff: Hard On Collection” you have to start wondering when “manliness” started counting as a kind of brain damage.
Dude Stick
The man behind Dude Stick has been widely mocked as a dick. Possibly because he put his name to “Dude Stick,” and that’s exactly and only what “Dude Stick” means. In fact “dick” may just have been a contraction of “dude stick” all this time, and it took him to truly expand it to its full glory. Which really raises more distracting images.
Is he selling his Dudestick or starting an alpha male fight? Tragically he thinks both. (Source: Spencer Sevy)
The problem is that, apart from his apparent allergy to regular chapstick, Spencer Sevy seems like a really solid guy. He had an idea and he made it happen. He set a reasonable goal and has already made over 1,500% of his target. He’s delivering his product on time and under budget. His process is so simple the only entry in his “Risks and Challenges” is not knowing what to do if the sun explodes, and his higher-tier rewards include his baking you cookies and mailing you a photocopy of his hand for a long distance high-five. Everything indicates a cool, effective, and entertaining guy…
…But one who comes across as unnecessarily @$$#()!%y when he wines about not wanting to use unmanly chapstick on his grizzled but bleeding lips. We’re forced to assume they were torn up by too aggressively kissing a grizzly bear he’d just saved from terrorists. This awfully projected masculinity spurts across the whole product.
For when you’re not sure if you’re going to kick ass or kiss it (Source: Spencer Sevy)
The Dude Stick is shown strewn over blades, bullets, and guns, as if men may only moisten their if they’ve been kissing too much robot ass goodbye. It doesn’t speak of tactical matte manliness, it indicates manliness so fragile that so much as the touch of a pomegranate-scented balm is enough to pop it in an explosion of insecurity. And that’s the awfully insecure antimanliness too much media is trying to trick you with.
Don’t fall for it. Don’t define yourself by their demographic marketing. If you must be manly, be like Conan tearing through the illusory blandishments to strike down the evil wizards of advertising.
Be yourself. Be better. And those are both the same idea.
Luke McKinney writes about games, drink, science, and everything else that makes life amazing. He’s a columnist on Cracked and writes for several beer magazines. He’s also available for hire. Follow him on Tumblr and Twitter @lukemckinney.
Luke found you some real manly joys in Patio Perfection With Summer Cider Cocktails.
Sssssip a sssssscider thisssss ssssummer.
