Fake Tough Guys Aren't Just Desperate

Everyone is a gangster until some real gangsters show up. The problem is that most people in most societies don’t ever actually run into real gangsters.

Now, when I say that it’s a problem, I don’t mean that everyone’s lives would be better if more people claimed a set, a crew, or belonged to a family where you have to “make your bones” to join.

I grew up in that environment, and there’s a reason why I moved my black ass to the suburbs.

As much as I think societal decay and inflation are bringing normie life closer to hood life, I don’t think we are quite at the point where you have to worry about what colors you wear on a Walmart run. At least not yet.

When I say that it’s a problem, I mean that the safety and security of civilized society has spawned an epidemic of fake tough guys who like to puff out their chest because they are supremely confident that no one will puff back.

Because America is a diaspora of different cultures, backgrounds, and experiences, fake tough guys aren’t just confined to one bar in one college town or a beginner’s mixed martial arts class.

These creatures also inhabit moving vehicles, where no one can confront them; are in line at the bank, talking crazy to 50-year-old women working as bank tellers to help the family; and even in the projects.

Speaking of your friendly neighborhood fake tough guys from the projects, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out something else about these dudes.

Not all fake tough guys are harmless.

“God created some men tall and some men short, but Sam Colt made them equal.”

This was once the marketing slogan of the Colt 45 revolver. Although those words are older than the Civil War—and very few would-be tough guys carry revolvers anymore—the sentiment still stands.

Whether a guy is fake tough or actually tough, it doesn’t matter if he’s packing heat and he’s not afraid to use it. Not only are these types not afraid, but they are also—almost literally—dying for the chance to.

But that brings us to an important point:

If the road rage, a few fighting lessons, or the willingness to fill someone with hot lead over a street corner that even homeless people don’t sleep on doesn’t make you a real tough guy, what does?

Before we go any further, we have to define exactly what a real tough guy is. Because if we don’t do that, then how in the world do we know that we’re dealing with a phony?

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What Makes You A Real Tough Guy?

The following is obviously just my opinion, but that’s what you’re reading for—my opinion. And in my opinion, a tough guy is defined by two signature traits.

Tough Guys Have Self-Control

The first is that a tough guy—an actual, real-life, legit tough guy—can restrain himself.

A real tough guy is a man who can subdue his impulses—especially if giving into them would worsen his position in life.

If you crash out over small stuff and lose your mind, dropping all types of curse words and racial slurs at people from behind the wheel when they cut you off, you’re not a tough guy.

If a woman, a kid, or an old man says something wild to a guy and he lays hands on them, he’s just a coward.

If a guy throws blows or pulls the strap because he doesn’t like the way someone talked to him, it’s not about “putting respect on his name.” He’s just being a weakling.

Basically, any response that is not only disproportionate but also comes from a position of obvious advantage is something a fake tough guy loves to do. But a real tough guy not only won’t do this, but will probably bully the bully.

Tough Guys Do Hard Things—Irregardless Of How They Feel

The second point—just as important as the first—is that a real tough guy does what is difficult, regardless of how he feels about it, if it needs to be done. This is essentially the synthesis of courage and grit.

If you can’t face your fears, risk rejection, or have a difficult conversation where you know that you won’t like the outcome, you are safe and soft.

By itself, this isn’t necessarily a quality that will destroy your life, but it will definitely put you in a position to follow the crowd and will probably make you more likely to crash out.

With all that established, let’s take a look at some common archetypes of the fake tough guy you’re bound to encounter in your daily life.

The “I See Red Bro!” Fake Tough Guy

Let’s start with my favorite fake tough guy—the dudes who swear, despite never having trained a day in their life, that they’d destroy you in a fight because “I just see red, bro, then it’s go time.”

These guys may have had a few drunk fights, and because they managed to get one lucky punch in and didn’t end up in an ambulance, they think they are “that dude.”

I’ll be the first to say that competence breeds confidence, and getting one off in a street fight is technically an accomplishment, but there are limits and levels to this.

I always seem to encounter these guys when they walk into a boxing gym looking to spar.

Showing up to a boxing gym to spar, uninvited and unannounced, is a pretty big faux pas on its own, but showing up just to spar to test yourself is a sure-fire way to get a reality check from people who can actually fight.

Every time I’ve seen a guy who was 30-0 in street fights—yes, I’ve heard that before—come in and glove up with someone who’s actually disciplined, it goes exactly as you’d expect. And in true fake-tough-guy form, shying away from difficulty, I’ve never seen any of these guys come back and actually train.

When I mentioned this on X, a few guys from the traditional martial arts space chimed in and told me that this behavior was also a thing in their disciplines back in the 70s and 80s, the heyday of karate and kung fu. They even had a specific name for it—dojo busting.

A guy would come in off the street, challenging the guy who ran the school to fight like one of those old kung fu movies. Except this isn’t the movies.

I know the traditional martial arts get a (somewhat deservedly) bad rep for not being practical, for being just for kids, and for basically giving out belts to whoever can pay, but I guess things were a lot different and more real back in the day.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after spending way more time on X than I care to admit (follow me at Edlatimore to fuel my obsession), it’s that every dude is convinced they could kick someone’s ass if it ever came to that.

This is, of course, the delusion of keyboard warriors, my next favorite type of fake tough guy.

The Keyboard Warrior Fake Tough Guy

The distance and anonymity of the internet bring out a lot of guys’ inner fake-tough-guy.

I actually haven’t had guys threaten violence against me, but the level of disrespect and vitriol I experience on various forms of social media is truly mind-boggling.

This isn’t me complaining. I can actually fight—at least well enough to win national amateur titles against future Olympians and World Title Holders—so words don’t bug me at all, especially when they come from guys who can’t even show their face online.

But it makes me wonder how these people act in real life. I’m sure there are a lot of folks who use the internet’s anonymity as a stress-relieving alter ego, but I don’t know.

Through various means and methods—along with these guys having zero restraint in the DMs they send to girls—I’ve gotten inside information on the lives of some of the biggest anonymous internet tough guys.

I’ve also met quite a few of the more vitriolic Red Pill voices, and in my experience, how someone engages with you online—regardless of whether they shield their identity or not—is a pretty accurate reflection of their real-life circumstances and how they feel about them.

Don’t take this to mean that all the anons online are assholes or that every guy I’ve met in the red pill space is whiny and bitter. That is simply not true.

But this type of fake tough guy is definitely taking out his anger and frustration on the world, which comes through in the form of disrespect they’d never think, let alone even say, if they were in person.

Before we get to the next type of fake tough, I have to give a quick shoutout to the sponsor of this essay, Shortform.

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One of the biggest ideas in the book is that people never stop competing for status—they just compete in different ways, and as you’ll see in the video, that drives a lot of fake tough guys.

Fake tough guys aren’t usually trying to prove they’re dangerous. They’re trying to prove they matter.

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Now back to these fake tough guys.

The Road Rage Fake Tough Guy

A close relative of the internet tough guy is the road rage tough guy.

Being in a moving vehicle seems to make people believe they can get away with saying anything to anyone.

The only time someone has ever called me the N-word with the hard R was a road rage incident, but not in bumper-to-bumper, gridlocked traffic where—if I was a little more off my rocker or had a little less to lose—might have come with physical retaliation.

Just because I let it slide doesn’t mean everyone else will.

Road rage shootings are becoming surprisingly common. Since 2018, there have been at least two hundred road rage shootings, and since 2020, at least 100 road rage deaths as a result.

The problem with road ragers is that you can do everything you can to be cool and not escalate or agitate, but that ain’t enough if you come across the wrong one. Hell, you might not even realize you did anything “wrong,” but the road rager was having a bad day, and you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A good friend of mine was heading home one night and was at a stoplight. A guy pulled up beside him, looked at him for a second, then unloaded into the car. They caught the guy and found out that he just had anger issues.

Now, fortunately, despite being hit 5 times, having his spleen removed, and doing a year of rehab, my friend has made a full recovery.

While this was not a classic case of a fake tough guy, I tell this story to illustrate the power that firearms can give someone if they decide they’re a tough guy, and it’s something you need to be aware of, which brings me to the final version of the fake tough guy, YNs.

YNs: The Fake Gangsters With No Real Code

Judging by the demographics of those who read my essays, there’s a good chance that 50-60% of you are not familiar with the term “YN.”

For the uninitiated, YN stands for “young N-word with the soft ah at the end.” I said it that way because algorithmic suppression is a real thing and I like my content to be read by as many people as possible. .

Your standard, run-of-the-mill, YN is between 13 and 24 years old, born and raised poor in a violent public housing project, and has no relationship with his father or any positive role models that can at least give him some of the game of restraint, grit, and courage.

By itself, the data shows this is a recipe for disaster, but when you combine it with the ease of acquiring firearms, you breed a different kind of monster.

Now you have a kid who has learned that violence is the best way to get what you want, but instead of throwing fists and learning that you can’t bully everyone, they just squeeze that trigger.

Believe it or not, it wasn’t always this way in the hood.

You used to be able to get a fair one. Or, at the very least, if you got jumped, you didn’t have to worry about getting shot. Nowadays, you can get shot just because a dude doesn’t like you or because you have something he wants.

The best thing you can do is avoid the parts of town and places where these guys hang out. One of the main reasons I live in the suburbs as opposed to just a nice neighborhood in the city is that it’s difficult to get out here without a car. The malls and parks are safe because they’re only full of people who are “local,” meaning they’re a 5-10-minute drive away.

When I go into the city, I practice good street smarts because the last thing I want is to get mobbed by a teen takeover.

Now this behavior doesn’t only belong to the YN demographic. They’re just the most visible example, but this can be any guy with a gun who thinks he’s invincible because now he can just pull it out.

You Never Know Who Doesn’t Care About Going To Jail

In my essay about why tough guys don’t fight, I specifically warn people about the idea that you never know who has a gun and, more importantly, you never know who doesn’t care about going to jail.

This brings us to what all of the fake tough guys have in common: a deadly combination of 3 traits:

They lack the self-control to keep themselves in check, the courage to actually confront a problem or weakness, and both are driven by an intrinsic pride that is simultaneously fragile and undeserved.

Once you injure their pride—whether it’s beating them in a fair fight, presenting counterevidence to an argument, or saying something that’s perceived as disrespectful—they can’t control their emotional response, and they have no desire to reach an amicable, or at least non-violent, conclusion.

Because to this type of person—the fake tough guy—everything is either a show for others, the basis of their identity, or a highly destructive combination of both.

Prisons and graveyards are full of men who couldn’t control themselves and wanted everyone to think they weren’t the ones to challenge.