How Spreadsheet Brain Makes You Isolated, Lonely, and Weird
You may not know this, but one simple aspect of your personality is keeping you alienated, depressed, and mired in low self esteem.
You’re probably a nice guy.
Maybe a bit of a loner.
Like most readers of this blog (or anyone reading a blog in 2023), you’re also probably more intelligent than average.
However, intelligence, and the tendency to over analyze, may be holding you back in life.
“Spreadsheet Brain” is an obsession with negative data and statistics, especially in reference to dating, relationships, marriage, family,… anything good and wholesome in life.
Guys with Spreadsheet Brain (speaking as one), think they sound smart when they rattle off lists of cynical statistics about how “Everything Sucks”, like a defeatist parrot.
If you’re reading this, you already know the numbers I’m talking about.
Every Red Pill “content creator” with internet access has discussed these statistics, ad nauseam.
You’ve heard them all before, maybe even read them here:
Women rate 80% of men as unattractive
80% of women on dating apps only match with 20% of men
80% of divorces are filed by women
60% of marriages end in divorce
and on and on and on.
The pessimistic Spreadsheet Brain nerd has a cynical statistic for every glimmer of hope that might possibly exist in life.
As I mentioned, guys who repeat these well worn numbers imagine that they sound intelligent when they repeat lists of ratios, percentages, and “data”.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so wrong, and sad.
To people who DON’T spend every waking hour absorbing Black Pill copes, (most people) victims of Spreadsheet Brain seem bitter, self-absorbed, angry, and socially inept.
Guys who talk like this spend uninterrupted hours on the internet, listening to spurned, lonely, middle aged men work themselves into a fervor, by watching clips of OnlyFans models who take themselves too seriously.
The Spreadsheet Brainer thinks EVERYBODY loses sleep at night over the fact that the “Top 20% of men” are dating the lion’s share of women, and that “30% of American men under 30 reported no sex in the last year”.
However to those outside the Red Pill internet echo chamber, those afflicted with Spreadsheet Brain are emotionally immature at best, criminally insane at worst.
From the outside looking in, most people can easily see the truth.
Guys That Are Successful With Women
Guys that are successful with women don’t know what percentage of women swipe right on what percentage of men, on whatever dating app.
Guys that are currently in a romantic relationship, or have been in a relationship with a woman in the last 3 years, have never heard of hypergamy.
They often don’t care.
That doesn’t mean they’re immune to it.
That means they’re more interested, and invested in living their lives, dating women, hanging out with friends, excelling in their career, than crying about statistics like sexless losers.
Relationships end, and marriages implode every day. Everyone knows that.
If you’re looking for a reason NOT to do something, or (more accurately) looking for a reason to explain why you CAN’T, there’s always a statistic to hide behind.
That’s what this post is about.
Stop Coping
Men need to stop lying to themselves.
Particulary the type of men who are drawn to blogs like Solitary Beast, and other content from within the community of lonely, disaffected men.
You’re not “edgy” or “cool” because you can spout off all the demographic data about why you don’t have a girlfriend.
As a great man once said (on Twitter) “If you’re so smart, why isn’t your life how you want it to be?”
Dressing it up as “MGTOW” is obvious for what it is: a guy who either CAN’T find an identity as a husband, boyfriend, or father, due to being unsuccessful with women, or who CAN’T ANYMORE, due to a break up or divorce, creating a lane for himself the only way he can.
If that’s you, I challenge you to own it, rather than hide behind the results of an OkCupid survey from 2010.
Spreadsheet Brain Is Isolating
Spreadsheet Brain, being obsessed with negative statistics, and using that as a reason not to do anything, is damaging because it creates isolation, and depression in the sufferer.
Regular people, which is everybody BUT the types of guys who get obsessed with marriage and dating app statistics, are weirded out by socially awkward loners who can’t stop blabbering about “female nature”.
It works like this:
“Normal” people invite Spreadsheet Brain to hang out.
They’re reaching out to form a connection with him, one, that as a person who’s fallen down the rabbit hole of pessimistic Spreadsheet Brain thinking, he desperately needs.
Rather than being gentle, acting interested in the other person, validating the things they want to talk about, in a relaxed, easy attitude, he focuses only on himself.
His fixation on spewing everything he know about why the other person’s relationship or marriage is a ticking time bomb, is an unrecoverable social error.
People who initially wanted to be his friend, start avoiding him.
He’s left out of the group text for the next cookout or dinner party.
That isolation, leads him to turn to a reliable source of a feeling of connection- the Red Pill podcasts that made him feel alienated in the first place.
The conditions that cause Spreadsheet Brain in the first place, perpetuate it:
social isolation leads to spending too much time online,
which leads to falling down outrage Rabbit Holes,
which alienates normal people in polite conversation.
How to Conquer Spreadsheet Brain
The good news is, Spreadsheet Brain isn’t a terminal illness, if you don’t let it become one.
A personality shift costs nothing, but the vision to commit to it, and the effort to see it through.
As previously mentioned, I’m not only the president of Guys With Spreadsheet Brain Anonymous, I’m also a client.
Below are the steps I’m using to dig a path out of the cynicism, anger, resentment, and isolation of Spreadsheet Brain.
Life doesn’t have to be a lonely, miserable, painful existence.
It won’t always be easy, but there’s no reason NOT to fight for it to be better.
Acknowledge the problem
If you related to the short story above, about the guy that only gets invited to hang out once, is socially awkward and off-putting, then never hears from people again, you might have a problem.
Something to keep in mind here, is the fact that YOU aren’t the same as YOUR BEHAVIORS. Which is to say, the things you do, that alienate people, aren’t the same as who you are, as a person.
You can learn a completely different, more effective set of behaviors, and over time, create a completely different, more effective life for yourself.
Unplug from the matrix
It’s ironic that people in the Red Pill space so often refer to normal people (“normies”) as being stuck living inside “The Matrix”.
They don’t see that “The Red Pill” itself has become just another belief system, a whole other “Matrix”, unto itself. See my post, “5 Biggest Red Pill Copes”.
Many of the beliefs that are considered Gospel in Red Pill spaces, simply aren’t true, and are easily disproven.
For example, it probably IS true that women on dating apps swipe right (indicate are interested) in only a TINY percentage of very good looking men.
HOWEVER, in the real world, there are hundreds or thousands of average looking guys with girlfriends, wives, and whole families.
Test it for yourself
For the next week, spend an hour walking around busy areas in your city: the mall, the downtown, shops, the farmer’s market.
In any city in the world, you’ll find normal looking guys, some skinny, some fat, some short, some tall, with women, also of lots of different shapes and sizes.
Don’t just absorb the rage bait that Red Pill content creators spout to get views.
In real life, the majority of people are average looking, and the majority of couples you see will reflect that.
Take a break from Red Pill content
This one is very difficult to do (at least for me), but created the biggest impact.
A lot of us with Spreadsheet Brain don’t have many friends irl. As a result, we create parasocial, or substitute digital relationships, with the podcasters and Youtubers we follow.
Additionally, outrage is emotionally satisfying.
If you’re a person who spends a ton of time alone, feelings of indignation, anger, or disgust (like watching OnlyFans actresses demand to marry tall, rich guys when they’re done doing performing in pron) are more stimulating than the boredom of just being by yourself.
Once you decide to take time off from consuming so much Red Pill content (which is crucially important), you’ll need to invest in finding other podcasts and videos to fill that space.
You won’t realize how addictive this stuff is, until you try to quit.
On the bright side, unsubscribing from your favorite Red Pill channels, creates time to consume content in your other areas of interest, like weight training, sports, art, or music.
You’ll even have time to create content of your own, if that interests you.
Start Building New Habits
The reason why you’re fixated on all these negative statistics and studies, is probably because you’re lonely.
One of my favorite sayings, which I think I made up, is “You’re Not Lonely, You’re Bored”.
While I believe it to be true in many cases, it’s unavoidable that everyone needs IRL social interaction, with other human beings.
If it’s currently challenging for you to make friends, the old cliches of volunteering, joining sports leagues, or taking a class still work to provide some of the social interaction that everyone craves. Even if you don’t need as much as most people do, as a human being, you still need some contact with others.
If you feel very awkward around other people, or generally don’t like a lot of social interaction, just start small, one hour of volunteering, one MMA session, or one creative writing class a week.
It takes humility to start small.
Conclusion
The only thing you can’t come back from, is death.
If you’ve been dealing with negativity, cynicism, and bitterness, acknowledge where you are. Know that you don’t have to STAY there, unless you give up.
You probably weren’t always like that.
Sometimes, a string of bad breaks: relationship ending, money problems, struggles in your career, will put men down a negative path.
If that’s you, it’s ok.
Plenty of men have been down on their luck, bankrupt, struggling, on the brink of disaster, and been able to turn it around.
One thing that helps me, is to understand that I don’t have to recreate my entire life in an afternoon.
I take small steps, one after another, and just start heading in right direction, a little a time.
Put your head down and work.
By the time you stop to look back, you’ll be surprised and proud of how far you have come.
See my posts “How Men Can Overcome Depression” and “5 Ways to Control Your Mood and Feel Amazing”.
Godspeed,
Solitary Beast