What kind of guy is willing to appear in these articles?
I read the first link (as much of it as I could stomach) and I can only concur with Nash’s comment to the second link that poly in the US must be a “shitshow”. If consensual non-monogamy wants to become widespread, it needs to distance itself from these new-age-nooky nutjobs. Indigo wants to change the world by making others refer to her as “them” (but using the personal pronoun when talking about themself!), and screwing a few lame-ass soyboys who couldn’t even construct an IKEA bookshelf, let alone a coherent society. SMH
Nash is mostly right. But: cool, masculine guys doing poly, don't want to come out to the world as doing poly: they don't want to humiliate themselves, humiliate the women they're with, or disrupt their jobs and lives. Cool, masculine guys doing poly do it under the radar, in private conversations. They (we?) don't want to be activists and don't want to be associated by the kind of losers who appear in qz.com articles.
Most people want to associate with cooler and higher-status people, and no one willing to speak up for being poly is either. That's because open and poly are too disruptive to the normal social order, so the only people who speak up and identify as "advocates" are freaks, outliers, etc. Being publicly non-monogamous under your real name is a good way to lose a lot of real-world jobs, paying real-world rent.
There aren't good, public spokespeople for this, and maybe there never will be. Cool women don't want to be publicly non-monogamous because, if they do, they kill their ability to get one guy to commit to them, even as a primary partner. Coming out as publicly open is just saying, "Hit it and quit it" (obviously there are some individual exceptions). For a woman, ambiguity is good, and conforming to the tribe is good.
Cool guys don't want to perceived as a "cuck." There is not much benefit to being super public about non-monogamy, and many associated costs, so guys with nothing to lose get quoted in the media. They're people with nothing to lose. Kooks and weirdos. Anyone remotely mainstream, stays away.
I think the number of exceptions is growing: I see some attractive women online who are unrestricted sociosexually and willing to talk about it. But, though the exceptions are growing, they're still small in number, and distributed unevenly in geographic terms.
Some of my friends know a little about what I do. Some from the mainstream world know a little bit, revealed in dribs and drabs, with some concealing ambiguity and uncertainty remaining. Most importantly, some of them see the fruits... if you're a guy and you're seen with a lot of cute or even hot chicks... your friends are going to be a lot more curious and interested in the non-mainstream parts of your life. The proof attracts interest (like guys who have hot girlfriends get asked how to attract women, and guys who don't, don't). That's where something like "Ms. Slav at Thanksgiving" comes into play. Many of my friends and family have seen some evidence of the "not mainstream" parts of my life. They are curious about it because guys like me "shouldn't" be getting some of the chicks I have. So they ask questions... I drop a thing here or there... and let them put it together.
You know how no normal chick has an Excel spreadsheet of every guy she's dated? Few normal chicks will admit to the number of guys they've f**ked, all at once? Chicks are the master of trickle truth, while guys have an engineering mindset and want to explain everything. It can be useful to not explain everything all at once. It's like the "rules for talking about RP concepts." Guys shouldn't use the jargon and, first and foremost, they themselves should be seen as cool and socially desirable ("The real knowledge comes not from what you say but how you live. Your life is the best example"). If you cannot do that first, no one wants to hear from you. No one wants to hear about wealth management and creation from some guy living paycheck-to-paycheck, on the verge of being fired from his job. They want to hear about it from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.
Do first, speak later.
The best players I think I've ever met, in real life, haven't identified as players. They don't brag about their conquests (they don't need to... they're secure... others might brand them players, but they don't need to do it themselves). They're a little bit "Under the radar." Women love being seduced... preferably by a guy they think is "naturally" seducing them. I know the concept of being a "natural" is ridiculous to anyone who is not one, but that's chick logic for you. The best players have some ambiguity about them, and women fill that ambiguous space with dreams of being the woman whose magic clam makes the player change his ways and commit to her.
Almost no hot chicks will want to be with a publicly "poly" guy. Their friends will make fun of them. But a lot more chicks than you'd think will go for this sort of thing if it's pitched to them properly. Most guys lack underlying value and the ability to calibrate their pitch. A guy who gets women will understand the female need for covert sexual behavior, and that kind of guy gets the need not to be publicly poly (and thus besmirch his partner(s) when he's announcing his poly shit).
Plus, a guy who comes out as poly is saying to every other guy, "Take a shot at my girl." He's saying, "My girl might be down to bend over for you. Why don't you find out if she's available?" As I have said many times, the bulk of the non-monogamy community is about guys, in particular, trading value for value. Women do some of that, but in a different way. When a guy announces he is poly, he is leaving a pile of sandwiches on the table, or a stack of cash... whoever happens by is going to try and grab that value. Smart guys (mostly) don't want to offer value without getting it in return. But when you identify as poly in an ultra-public way, you are doing just that.
A publicly poly guy is almost all drawback and almost no gain. I don't want to be publicly known as a player, although many of my friends may infer that about me. I don't want to be publicly known as poly, although many of my friends may infer that about me, too. But there is a big important gap between "inference" and "public knowledge."
Think about chicks on vacation. When they're away from most friends and family, they'll do things they won't do at home, because those things are less likely to to affect their reputations. Similar thing here. Most guys with something to lose, don't want to "come out" as poly.
The guys who are willing to put their faces to their work on "pickup" or "game" also generally fare poorly. There are some simple social-dynamic reasons for that: a lot of the top guys, and people in general, are extreme insiders in some dimensions and extreme outsiders in others. Becoming too "outsider" in too many dimensions is detrimental to a person's life. What kind of person is willing to be the face of "poly" or of "pickup" or of "red pill?" Think on that question for a minute and you'll figure out why the public faces of these things are who they are, and why the YouTube conversation around these topics is as poor as it is.