Is 1STMAN okay??

[Seth Walsh]

@piec

 

[powerliftercoco]

yeah he’s just cocaine maxxing

 

[Seth Walsh]

Short answer: he over-leveraged a persona, under-leveraged cashflow, and he’s now in the “identity margin call” phase. I’ll lay it out in phases rather than gossip.

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1. Rough timeline of the last decade​

This is approximate and based on public info + pattern-reading, not insider facts.

2014–2017: Skill acquisition / pre-brand era​

• Background in videography / media production.ContactOut
• Almost certainly doing client work, learning cameras, editing, online video, etc.
• No big personal brand yet; he’s building skills that later let him self-produce everything.

Core dynamic: builds capability but not yet leverage.

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2017–2019: Birth of “1STMAN / Male Advantage”​

• YouTube channel launches and slowly grows into a men’s lifestyle / masculinity brand, later rebranded as “1M”.YouTube+1
• Core ideas: “Male Advantage” window at 30+, delayed gratification, work in your 20s, etc. His book The Male Advantage crystalises this worldview.Studocu
• He positions himself as the blueprint guy: the one who figured out a new male lifecycle.

Psychology:
He writes a script for male life that he himself now has to live up to. That script becomes his prison later.

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2019–2021: First real monetisation attempts​

• Book, digital products, and coaching courses linked to the “Male Advantage” brand.Studocu+1
• Early talk of men needing assets, freedom, and “no boss” — he leans into anti-corporate rhetoric and likely exits traditional employment somewhere in this band.
• Supplements appear as an arm of the brand (testosterone boosters, debloaters, etc.), still sold today.Looksmax+1

Reality vs. expectations:

• YouTube audience mid-tier (now ~167k subs) — big enough for a living, not big enough to print millions.YouTube
• He assumes his “outlier male” content justifies outlier money. The market delivers “okay” money at best.

Your theory about an inheritance in 2021: I can’t verify that. Nothing public confirms he inherited substantial money; his own book talks abstractly about inheritance in financial planning, not about his personal life.Studocu
So treat that as possible, not proven.

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2021–2023: Ecosystem build-out + overreach starts​

• He doubles down on being not just a YouTuber but a “men’s lifestyle brand”: website, supplements, courses, “streaming platform,” membership.Skool+31MI+3LinkedIn+3
• Launches a private Skool community (recurring subscription with courses, “streaming platform,” weekly calls, discounts).Skool

Problem:
Each new product nudges him from “content creator monetising sensibly” towards “stacking offers to squeeze more ARPU from a relatively small base.”


You see early credibility erosion here:

• People on Reddit and forums start calling him a “scammer” or questioning the value of the offers and his actual success level.Reddit+1

That doesn’t prove fraud, but it does show that his perceived status and real-world proof are diverging in the audience’s mind.

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2023–2024: 1M House + backlash​

• 1M / “1M House” project: a luxury lifestyle / co-living / timeshare-esque property concept marketed hard as a “top 1% male” experience.Irish Podcasts+1
• A YouTuber on r/selfimprovement and others break down logistics, noting that:
  • At the time, they hadn’t actually bought a house.
  • Plans (beds vs people, pricing, etc.) looked shaky.
  • Negative/critical comments allegedly deleted, comments disabled on some promos.Reddit

This is where his ethics start to look off from the outside, regardless of his intent:

• Selling a lifestyle he hasn’t structurally proven.
• Moderating away legitimate criticism instead of answering it.
• Using the “Male Advantage” mythology to justify high-ticket, high-promise offers.

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2024–2025: Streaming platform & “desperation monetisation”​

• Pushes a “men’s streaming service” via Kickstarter / similar; heavily branded as a Netflix-for-men style platform.Kicktraq+2YouTube+2
• Skool page now pitches:
  • 100+ videos, weekly calls, streaming platform, supplements, etc., at a monthly fee.Skool
• Coupon/affiliate sites list heavy discounts on his supplements and products in late 2025, which usually implies aggressive marketing to move volume.1st Man

Meanwhile:

• Threads on looksmax and elsewhere speculate that he’s in debt and that the “I’m successful” narrative is marketing rather than reality.Looksmax+1

Again: that’s speculation, but it’s consistent with the visible pattern:

• Constant new offers.
• Increasingly grand claims.
• Tight comment control.
• No independently verifiable big wins (no public portfolio of successful 1M Houses, no explosive platform growth).

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2. What actually went wrong?​

Strip the noise, the likely failure stack is:

1. He mistook insight for inevitability.
   He understood the new male lifecycle (late blooming, compounding skills/assets) and wrote it down well.Studocu
   But understanding a blueprint ≠ executing it. His life never fully matched the outlier male archetype he describes (strong assets, optionality, diversified income).
2. He never built a solid base business.
   • A mid-six-figure brand could exist behind his audience, but there’s no hard evidence of a robust, boring cash machine (agency retainers, SaaS, real property portfolio, etc.).
   • Instead, he’s in “offer treadmill” mode: book → course → supplements → membership → streaming → house. It screams cashflow gaps more than abundance.
3. He oversold prestige, undersold delivery.
   • Marketing frames him as a world-class operator: top 1% man, outlier male, global lifestyle, 1M Houses.Irish Podcasts+1
   • Delivery (as far as outsiders can verify) looks more like a one-man content shop plus some white-label supplements and a white-label streaming platform.Looksmax+1
     That gap creates cynicism and “he’s scamming” chatter, even if he’s just overconfident rather than malicious.
4. He tied his entire identity to being the outlier.
   His own book bangs on about “27 being the most dangerous age”, “men’s lives start at 30”, “outlier male by 40”, etc.Studocu
   Now he’s mid-30s-ish, with:
   • No clear empire.
   • A contested reputation.
   • A visibly shrinking or stagnant channel versus newer male-space creators.YouTube+1
     That mismatch between story and reality is the psychological nuke.
5. Audience fatigue + competition.
   • Hamza and others took the same niche but executed harder and cleaner; 1STMAN became “the guy you used to watch.”Medium+1
   • Once you’re no longer the aspirational example, your entire Male Advantage shtick is harder to sell.

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3. Is it ethics, IQ, or mental health?​

IQ​

• Clearly not low-IQ.
  • He wrote a reasonably coherent book.Studocu
  • Built a multi-product ecosystem.Linktree+2Skool+2
  • Survived as a solo creator for years.

The failure is in strategic thinking and sobriety, not raw intelligence: overestimating his leverage, underestimating the need for boring, compounding businesses.

Ethics​

• There are real red flags:
  • Selling high-promise things (1M House, streaming platform) before real proof.Reddit+1
  • Heavy moderation / deletion of critical comments noted by others.Reddit

This sits in the “ethically sloppy / self-serving marketing” bucket.
That’s not a legal verdict, but it’s not clean either.

Mental health​

• I can’t diagnose him.
• From the pattern you showed (recent community posts + his visible behaviour), it looks like:
  • Identity burnout.
  • Chronic stress from trying to prop up a collapsing persona and business.
  • Emotional volatility leaking into public messaging.

This is what happens when your only self-worth metric is “am I an outlier male yet?” and at 30+ the answer is “not really.”

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4. The core pattern in one line​

He built a very strong narrative about compounding, late payoff, and male advantage — then bet his entire life on that narrative paying off big by his mid-30s, without ever constructing a stable, boring, cash-rich foundation.


Now the bill for that mismatch is due.