From Pickup Artist to Pariah -- The Cut

Jared Rutledge fancied himself a big man of the “manosphere.” But when his online musings about 46 women were exposed, his whole town turned against him.

Jared Rutledge has been called a sociopath. Strangers have picketed outside his coffee shop, calling for his castration. People he thought were his friends won’t return his texts. There are a few places he still feels safe: weekly lunches with his grandma, his therapist’s office, the meetings of his peer-facilitated men’s support circle. At night, he reads fantasy books and loses himself in a universe with societal rules unlike the ones he broke here in Asheville, North Carolina.

The scandal that resulted in Jared’s self-imposed house arrest started in August, when an anonymous bare-bones Wordpress blog entitled “Jared and Jacob Said” appeared online. For a few weeks, no one noticed. Then, on a Friday in September, someone Jared didn’t know posted the link on Facebook.

That night, C., a redheaded woman in her late 20s, saw the link to the blog. She glanced at it long enough to understand that it had something to do with Waking Life Espresso, a popular West Asheville coffee shop owned by Jared Rutledge and Jacob Owens. C. and Jared had had a six-month fling in 2012; she’d just gotten out of an abusive relationship, and Jared, with his brown curls and his philosophy major’s curiosity, seemed like the perfect candidate for some strings-free fun. Her experience with him had been such a refreshing example of no-drama casual sex that when several friends asked her about Jared after matching with him on Tinder, she told them to go for it. Her friends went on to sleep with him, too.

Leave a Comment