Glamorous Outlaw: a NUTCRANKR review
Hopes and Humiliations of an Aristocratic NEET
A certain Type of Guy trolls anonymous imageboards, niche hobbyist forums, and porn comment sections. He’s unhinged, overclocked, and a prolific propagandist for an impossible cause like ‘promulgating the values of Christian and pagan antiquity across the globe.’ Dan Baltic’s NUTCRANKR cracks open the skull of this archetype—the aristocratic NEET—to deliver a darkly funny autopsy of the 2010s-era reactionary.
Published by Terror House, NUTCRANKR emerges from the literary weeds sprouting in the cracks of the ‘Big Four’ publishing cartel. For all their prattle about ‘inclusion,’ good luck finding a story about a Baudelairean recluse like Spencer Grunhauer on their shelves. You’re more likely to trip over this ghost on Substack, and NUTCRANKR reads like a composite of some of this platform’s spiciest avant-garde.1
Satire runs the risk of turning cruel, but the author handles our hero with tender mercy. Much of the book’s humor comes from the ironic gap between Spencer’s towering self-regard and the disdain or bemusement he inspires in others. Such is the plight of the Highly Systemizing male: the same trait that wins him accolades in the classroom becomes a dating disability in the Dionysian world of women and desire.
Sir Spencer in the Dungeon
According to Robin Hanson in The Elephant in the Brain, human intelligence evolved for two main reasons. The first, ecological challenges, inspires feel-good narratives about cooperation around climate change and survival. The second, social challenges, is explained by the ‘Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis’: big brains help us to excel in status games and the subtle dynamics among friends, lovers, and countrymen.
Social intelligence isn’t just about knowing the correct platitudes to say; it’s also about delivering them convincingly. For many White men looking to date a similarly-educated woman in the 2010s, this meant mastering the art of performative self-flagellation. On his first date with one Crystal Clancy, Spencer approached this challenge like a rat working a maze, leaving you rooting for him to win his prize.
“Yes, we have much we need to atone for,” said Spencer, directing his eyes downward into the dark wood of the faux-rustic table in a demonstration of disingenuous contrition. After a calculated delay, Spencer looked up into Crystal’s eyes. The metalwork that so disfigured her face glinted in the lowlight of the bar. In an act of daring reminiscent of celebrated beach landings, Spencer took Crystal’s sweaty hand into his own.
“You like to be dominated?” Spencer asked.
After a few bumpy false starts, Spencer and Crystal stumble into a relationship that socializes him into New York City’s BDSM scene. But as his social world expands from 1-on-1 encounters to the communal rituals of kink, the clash between his personal fantasies of male domination and the scene’s feminized politics leaves him perpetually offsides, simmering with a wounded pride worthy of Sayyid Qutb.
It is this scene that pulls Spencer into the most treacherous social waters: the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, where the shark circling the clique’s pool is NUTCRANKR’s antagonist, Enrique. That jive-talking ‘play partner’ to all the women in the group lands both literal and metaphysical punches on Spencer—mocking his lack of verve for the ‘pussyhat’ while skillfully framing him as the racist aggressor.
The Scraggly Weasel’s Ruse
Laughter, as Hanson and Simler observe, reveals truths that words can’t plausibly deny—like how much we really care about others. A prison rape joke lands with free men because of the psychological distance they feel from the bottom ‘punk.’ When Enrique calls Spencer a ‘ring-ding’ and the group laughs, Crystal included, Spencer feels the sting but rationalizes away his pain with her private reassurances.
While Enrique weaponizes body language with the ease of a seasoned politician, Spencer seeks refuge in words: concrete, unambiguous, and utterly incriminating. Nonverbal messages offer strategic exits for the deft in fraught arenas like flirting or workplace politics. An effortpost provides no such escape, and hands the disloyal Crystal her perfect pretext to run crying into the arms of that ‘poor man’s Don Juan.’
“What did you say, darling?” asked Spencer. “No, I don’t think any of those things. Why do you think I think those things?”
“You wrote this,” said Crystal, jabbing her stubby little index finger at the MacBook screen as the hillocks of her breasts rumbled with the motion. “Are you saying you didn’t write this 450-page diary thing where you talk about how ugly I am and how women need to be oppressed?”
The scene of Crystal condemning Spencer’s manifesto through a literalist reading is rich with irony. At the march, it was Spencer who intuited but couldn’t articulate Crystal’s motives when she dismissed monogamy as ‘an ancient, racist ideal,’ actively aligning herself with the milieu’s egalitarianism. The dissonance between Spencer’s private instincts and their circle’s public values broke him. Women won with language.
In Spencer’s private world, filled with Trojan heroes and Norse valkyries, the proper way to settle matters with Enrique over Crystal would have been pistols at dawn: masculine, virtuous, European. Instead, the conflict ended in a manner befitting the lively natives of Washington Heights, with the ‘patchy-haired weasel’ delivering a sucker-punch to Spencer’s kidney. Oye, blanquito, ¿cómo 'ta'? ¡No me diga nada!
Nevertheless, he persisted
Men of Enrique’s station, and their admirers in Hollywood, spin a beautiful story of contrasts: ‘book smarts’ versus ‘street smarts,’ or perhaps some ‘musical’ or alternative intelligence. But for a mind with Spencer’s horsepower, a dishonorable assault can be as didactic as any book or barrio. By learning to navigate the times, the protagonist finally secured wealth, fame, and a blonde, Jewish Ivy League-educated girlfriend.
Take your pick: ‘It Gets Better’ from the gay rights movement or ‘This too shall pass’ from the Persians. The message is the same—time and focus make the difference for late bloomers. For sensitive young men like Spencer, who spent their youth with books instead of parties, achieving wealth and power might seem to require a total reordering of society. Sometimes it does, but the willful game the system as it exists.
The massive vibe shift of 2024 opens new opportunities to uplift the aristocratic NEET, channeling his energies toward building a society that respects independent thinkers. A positive 2020s evolution of the erstwhile ‘dissident’ might follow Piotr Pachota’s ‘humanist transition,’ where talented systemizers hone practical skills in relationships and communication to master the art of social dynamics.
I love all my children equally, but one Spiritual Aristocrat that kept coming to mind was The Rake. To give you a flavor, the first sentence of the linked piece begins:
In September, the divine providence called “my family’s cash reserves” allowed me to undertake a travel to the Loire Valley, the european valley of Kings, which was a dream of mine since i read many of Alexander Dummas novels.
Excellent prose, subscribed.