I considered Virgil to be a good friend of mine for a very long time, and the last few years have been deeply saddening for me due to his increasingly bizarre beliefs and his irresponsible and inexcusable behavior, especially towards his female friends and colleagues. This is not the Virgil I knew when I first met him.

I cannot speak for other people, but for me personally, the pseudoscientific reactionary ideas you mention were very appealing to me at one point in time because I had, and still have, a very difficult time attracting women. There was a period of time in my life when I spent a lot of time reading pickup artist/RedPill/men's rights content on the Internet until I managed to escape it, mostly via the help of supportive friends. I think that there are a lot of misguided nerdy young men who fall into this frightening rabbit hole, where one bad ideology leads to another.