How do LARPs like the MDK Project get followers?
How do LARPs like the MDK Project get followers?
By now, a lot of us have seen those MDK Project videos. They’re…something. If you’re not familiar, check this out:
This group came to my attention from a number of military influencers who were clowning on these guys. Just to be clear, this kind of nonsense portrayed in this video doesn’t make you a badass.
I’m all for tough training, but what the hell is even happening here?
The MDK Project advertises itself as a 75-hour transformational experience for men, for the cost of $15,000. I have seen groups like this pop up from time to time. They get a number of military veterans to basically yell at people and take them through exercises, and at the end, I am told that they will be “alpha” or…something. MDK Project uses a number of things from Navy SEAL training like people have to ring a bell in order to quit.
There are things that it does appeal to: challenge, overcoming adversity, building mental and physical toughness, and then having a network or “brotherhood” as they call it of other hardcore guys, i.e. not your office colleagues.
That I can understand. My objection is to the execution and the theatrics. I’ll explain. But first…
Below is a different group. Keep in mind…this is for a church group LOL. Credit to
for pointing this one out.Why I have a problem with this
MDK’s training doesn’t make sense. “Eat the cookie”—what the hell is happening in that video? There is a difference between being a badass and being a dumbass. I’m all for running people into the ground and pushing their limits. That doesn’t mean it needs to be weird, unprofessional, or in this case borderline disrespectful.
It’s a LARP. I want to be clear about one thing first. Yes, I was in the military. But no, this is not a matter of me saying “haha LOL I was in the military, therefore I am the arbiter of all things that are badass.” That’s not what this is about. There are plenty in the military who were goofballs too.
The problem I have with this is it is performative. Revolver had a great quote on this from an article in 2021 on Black Rifle Coffee Company:
In many ways, the imagery that Black Rifle indulges is actively harmful. Male-to-female transsexuals famously have a cartoonish, porn-influenced, stereotypical idea of what being a woman is like. That’s why drag queens have such a garish, over-the-top look. BRCC ads evoke the same idea, but for men. Their target demographic is, in a sense, male-to-male transsexuals. The ads reduce veterans from citizen soldiers to a pantomime of desperate masculinity, guys who need tattoos, whiskey, and twenty-seven different guns to feel like “real men.” BRCC ads are supposed to trigger “snowflake” liberals, but they’d be just as crass and ridiculous to a World War 2 veteran in 1946.
Link: https://www.revolver.news/2021/07/black-rifle-coffee-new-york-times/
Feel free to disregard Revolver’s politics if you don’t like them. That’s fine; my Substack isn’t meant to be overtly political. Nonetheless, Revolver was spot on with this comment.
Drinking beer, eating bacon, watching football—none of these things inherently make you a badass, yet this is the archetype held up by marketers like that. Purple haired weirdos also drink beer and eat bacon, and who do you think makes up the San Francisco 49ers fan base?
That all being said…I can see the demand for things like MDK.
I’ll be honest. At first, I thought this stuff was cringe, and it is, but—I can also see why people sign up for it.
Society has completely failed at helping young men. Because of this, guys who are ambitious but lack direction will turn to whoever they think can provide it, whether its Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, or MDK Project. Ambitious young guys are not interested in what gender theory climate change professors have to say.
MDK Project’s message at face value actually isn’t bad. And, to their credit, they have gotten involved people like Nick Koumalatsos who is a good dude. My objection is more to the execution and the $15,000 cost, which I find ridiculous for essentially a glorified Spartan Race plus group therapy (MDK Project does some group therapy type classes off-camera for student privacy).
We need to provide better mentorship.
The reason why people sign up for something like the MDK Project is…well, few others are even trying to serve that market for ambitious young guys.
One thing that is really starting to piss me off is seeing more successful guys hate on less successful guys rather than providing them that mentorship. It’s compartmentalized to a degree; people will cheer on a skinny or fat guy who finally started hitting the gym, but if a guy has relationship trouble, he’s on his own. If a guy finally cut out his weirdo hater friends and is now looking to expand his network with positive people, he’s on his own (OMG what a LOSER for not having cool friends).
Look. If you break your arm, you go to the doctor to get a cast. If your car breaks down, you go to the mechanic if you can’t fix it yourself. For mental health or relationship trouble, guys just don’t want to fix that.
Having personally dealt with 2 suicides and other attempts, I do not accept this.
I started my Bow Tied avatar for two reasons: 1) I had gotten out a long term relationship of my own, so part of this was learning by teaching in order to get myself back in the game, and 2) to help provide that high quality mentorship that some guys just don’t have.
Don’t assume that every guy out there had a strong father figure, or any kind of healthy and stable family background for that matter.
We need to provide better communities and connections among like-minded men
A big part of the appeal that I see to a program like this is the brotherhood that they advertise. As Jack Donovan said, “The way of men is the way of the gang.” This is why guys join college fraternities, elite country clubs, hyper-online internet subcultures, street gangs, the military—or LARP groups.
We live in an atomized society. We commute to jobs, come home to our apartments where we don’t even know our neighbors, then sleep and repeat. One thing that I found interesting while scrolling through some of MDK Project’s Instagram reels is that I didn’t see a lot of young guys as their students. I saw a lot of Gen X and older millennials. Same generation that the movie Fight Club was for.
So of course someone offering a brotherhood of badass dudes is going to sound interesting, when the alternative is boring, plain office colleagues.
Going forward
The reason why groups like this take off is that no one else is serving the market that they are serving. Typing comments on the internet about how they’re a LARP may in fact be accurate…but those comments don’t provide mentorship or serve that market either.
I see two options: 1) if you can’t beat them, join them, so I dig out my old uniforms and start yelling at people and charging them money for it, or 2) give some proper guidance and direction to men who are looking for it.
Lmao. You’re better off dropping 15k on a nice watch and a new gym membership than this bullshit