No one “empowered” talks about “empowerment:” see the lie

“Empowering” and “empowerment are hugely overused words, and the people using them are neither. The people talking about “empowerment” are trying to escape from some aspect of themselves they don’t like, or something they’ve done that doesn’t fit their present narrative. “Empowered” people aren’t talking about empowerment, they’re busy doing things in the real world. Things that are really empowering include learning rare/unusual skills, building a real business that adds value to the world, having peak experiences, deepening real relationships, and probably a few other activities that don’t come immediately to mind. Also, the most “empowered” people I know never talk about empowerment or say they’re “empowered,” so talking about “empowerment” is a sign of weakness/neediness/something undesirable. I searched for the word “empowerment” on red quest and found it in a single post, used skeptically, despite the fact that red quest is in some sense about “empowering” guys to lead the lives they want. If you do the things advocated, and develop the skills described, you’ll be “empowered,” and if/when you are, you own’t need to talk about it. “Empowering” is used once in this blog, but in a quote.

Pickup is hard, and top girls don’t stay that way for long, and musings on networks

Red Pill Dad realizes that “almost everyone is doing online dating (OLD) and banging low quality chicks and then bragging about it… no one really wants to learn day game or cold approach.” [1] Well yes, and think of it this way, literally how many girls are true 7s in the entire world? The true 7s are almost always somewhere between their mid teens and mid 30s, call it 18 – 30, for legal purposes. A few 7s can persist into their early 40s, although that’s rare. A lot of girls drop from their true 7 potential into 5 or 6 territory due to poor nutrition and fitness. The number of true 8s, in the entire world, is not that high, probably a few percent of the female population, and every guy from puberty to senescence wants to bang them. They have a level of “privilege” that the male classes, who are busy working building and struggling, carrying the burden of civilization, can barely imagine, because we’re too busy toiling to try and keep a roof over the head and maybe impress the few hot chicks we’re ever exposed to (“f**king hot chicks” is a fine reason to stay in school, one not adequately emphasized).

The total number of hot girls in the world is not that high, which is why most guys talking online are talking about girls who aren’t that hot. I’ve mentioned before that some of the best girls I’ve been with say they’ve never used OLD… and I believe them.

In the last year, as well, COVID has messed up the world: trying to run game during COVID is like trying to run it during chemotherapy. You can try but it’s not going to be nearly as effective. COVID is still kicking hard and for that reason pickup is hard. Normal girls still don’t want to get COVID and we still don’t know what long-term effects it might generate, even in people with mild cases. As noted back in May, “smart chicks have picked up their quarantine boyfriend for sexual needs. The impulse to test the sexual marketplace is very low right now. It’s all about the cost-benefit.”

COVID aside, it’s also simply very hard to genuinely get girls a point or especially two points above where you are. Like, if I were fat, or skinny fat, or something, I’d probably have had nothing like the experiences I’ve had. Also, for most guys, somewhere around age 40, the ability to get hot girls 18 – 26 plummets. Not all guys obviously, but for most of them. There is a male wall, although it’s farther out than most people realize, and for some guys it’s out in the 50 range. Fitness and nutrition become less forgiving the older you get. As a lad, ice cream and cookie cheats didn’t show up in any meaningful way for me. Today they do.

Persevering if you’re a male 5/6, like most men, trying to get female 7s and higher… it’s really, really hard. Online dating will either not work or work minimally. Throw in COVID, acting like a huge brake on sexuality, and it’s even harder. Day and night game barely work during COVID. Maybe it’s worth taking a break and returning when 50% or more of the population is vaccinated and things are turning into the post-COVID orgy that I’d expect. My impression is that some guys have done or are doing that.

I’m not wildly black pill, but the number of guys I’ve met who have gotten into the 85th percentile of their possible looks (nutrition, lifting), and who have gotten into the 85th percentile of their possible style (fashion), is really small. Even for the average guy, 5’10, whatever, there’s usually a lot of room for improvement that will dramatically affect his game and his outcomes w/ chicks. It’s true that 1. your looks strongly affect your game and outcomes, but also 2. most guys are nowhere near getting to the top of their “looks potential” and also 3. that with sufficient game and effort, looks can be partially, maybe majorly, overcome. A lot of the online discussion is just guys talking past each other, each with one of those propositions in the foreground, but none of them wrong and each compatible with each other. The Good Looking Loser guy, Chris, most emphasized point 1.

I’ve had some success with regular online dating many years ago, and no success from regular online dating recently, and by recently I mean in the last six or so years. Sometime around 2015 I had enough things going on in real life that I had by then mostly quit. I discovered what lots of guys have discovered, even partially, namely, that real life gets superior results. But I’m also less antisocial than many guys speaking up online, it seems.

I observe that the guys I know, in real life, who verifiably seem to be doing well do a combination of online and real life… they’ll match with a chick online and then run into her at a bar or party. They’ll run into a girl at a bar or party, then match with her online, that sort of thing. But most guys are antisocial and most sex is a social act for most chicks, so things don’t work for them. Most guys live in dreary suburbia where it’s hard to meet hot chicks, and that holds them back.

To an extent, a guy’s sex life is an extension of his network. This can of course be overcome and the hardest core daygame pickup guys do overcome it. I’ve done a bit of everything in my life and that’s worked out pretty well, but normal online dating doesn’t seem to work any more, even during COVID, and guys who are doing it exclusively are likely getting results consistent with that. And, I dunno, merely all right girls, the 6s of the world, are good enough for a lot of guys. Numerically, they have to be. It also depends on where the guy is. A male 6 getting female 6s… that’s pretty good, IMO.

Some guys want to learn game + cold approach, but until COVID is whipped by vaccines, I don’t think that’s going to work all that well either, mostly, although it’s still probably better than online exclusively. When you chat up a girl in the real world, you are an n of 1. When you try online, you are an n of 99, or 1000.

Talk to girls. I do. They will tell you what they think about online dating and how they do it. Obviously what a girl says, what anyone says, is often highly selective and/or inaccurate… but many girls today, maybe most, don’t take online seriously at all. If a guy’s primary resource is girls online, then he’s probably not getting feedback from the top tier of girls who don’t do online.

I’ve tended to do some of everything in my life/game, and that is why I have emphasized “the network.” Almost all guys who I’ve known in real life who get laid a lot with hot girls have had some kind of network effect. If you’re doing exclusively or primarily OLD… that network effect is unlikely to get going, and you’re likely to have a hard time of what you’re doing. If you’re not doing fitness and nutrition well, you’re also probably going to have a hard time. Look at the hot girls you know, and then look at the guys they f**k, and what do you notice about them? If you don’t know any hot girls, then that’s part of the problem.

Pickup is hard but it’s 100% doable.

Few join the secret society.

Few develop their powers and abilities.

Given the choice between despair and deadlift, choose deadlift. We are agents of our destiny, if we choose to be.

……………………….

[1] Red Pill Dad also likes to say, “If this doesn’t apply to you, then it doesn’t apply to you.” I don’t know whether it applies to you, only you do.

My perspective on investing and financial security is super vanilla

A reader asks my thoughts on financial matters,

Hi RQ. With the GME short squeeze/bubble (whichever term you prefer) making headlines, it made me curious what your perspective is on investing and financial security. Obviously one of the best ways to improve your finances is to not get married, something you have espoused all the time, but I would love to read a whole post about the subject.

Don’t have a unique view or expertise here… a lot of finance advice is pretty wasteful because there are only really two or three ways to really achieve financial freedom:

1. Spend less.
2. Earn more.
3. Invest in assets that earn more than inflation.

That’s it. Numbers 1 and 2 are both hard (if they were easy, we wouldn’t have a $10 billion finance industry trying to sell us on ways to do them).

Re: #1, I rely on Mr Money Mustache for ideas, so start there… he has a nice philosophy too, where he says, “What are you really on this planet to do?” Money is usually a way to achieve other goals, e.g. make friends, create things, etc. The advertising industry is there to convince you the way to have a better human existence is to buy shit (hint: it’s not).

Re: #2, that’s good as well, and you should develop valuable skills, but many high performers spend whatever they make, cause the hedonic treadmill is real, and it’s also not easy to make a lot of money, in most cases (if it were, more guys would do it). A lot of guys who focus on making a lot of money forget why they want to (to live a better life). I’ve not maximized earnings in my life, and have spent more of it than I should have living on the edge, partially due to some choices that, from a finance perspective, haven’t always been the best. Okay and worth it, but I’ve taken a lot of risks with sex.

Re: #3, see John Bogle’s books on index funds. See A Random Walk Down Wall Street, and other finance classics that extol index funds. Efficient markets hypothesis is mostly correct and most people don’t beat the market, sorry. The math behind lower fees and dollar cost averaging is sound, unless you are RenTech or someone like that (extremely rare).

Where do your ideas come from? Doing things, going places

A guy emails to ask, how do I write so much? Where do I get ideas? Three tiers, in descending order of importance…

* Experiences. What have I done, how did I do it, what did I learn from it. These can be negative ones, too… how did I fail, why did I fail, what did I learn from it. The best, most intersting guys are reporters. They go out, see/do things, report back on what they find. Scientists do the same, in a way… they try something, see if it works, if it works, great, if it doesn’t, why not? What can we learn about the natural world from the thing working, or not working?

Experiences generate stories, and many guys have trouble on dates or with general socializing because they don’t do much: they watch TV, play video games, scroll social media.  When someone asks, “What have you been up to?” the honest answer is “nothing much.” A better answer is “climbing a mountain” “experimenting with MDMA” “learning how to grow herb using LED lights, come over for dinner some time” “went to a concert with this chick.” A lot of guys struggle with talking to chicks because the guy has nothing interesting to say, because he doesn’t do much, or he hasn’t learn to say it in an interesting way.

* Conversations. Post enough about experiences and you might catch the attention of other interesting people. A chunk of the sex club book came from Nash questions or observations. He wanted to know about jealousy, so a comment turned into a post. XBTUSD has written a group of posts, after he left some intersting comments, and I encouraged him to start a blog of his own… instead he wrote a group of posts about his experiences. He’s asked some questions or made some observations that led me to posts. If you’re having conversations in direct messages, emails, or chat apps, keep an ear open for ideas. Breeze has also precipitated some ideas, especially around drug use (not a specialty of mine but having experimented I understand better why normal guys who get laid partake). 

Christianity, maybe an improvement on political religions

I am slowly swinging around to the view that being genuinely religious is probably good for a lot of people, maybe most people… a big, big improvement over politics-as-religion. Without me personally wanting to be religious.

I’ve had religious-type ecstacy experiences in group sex scenarios… should be obvious from the stories… those scenarios are great in the moment, but from what I can tell and what I have observed, they don’t lead to real community. Your “value” is very much based on sex appeal, ability to bring in hot women, ability to be a hot woman, etc. There is a woman, Gwen Kansen, who did a twitter thread about how her group sex communities effectively eject or de-prioritize older women… they’re filled with middle-aged guys chasing chicks in their 20s… I’ve seen this dynamic as well, the invisible older woman thing… I hope she writes something longer and linkable, cause she’s emphasized something usually locked in the attic like a crazy Aunt. One interesting part of Christianity is that your core value is you, and being alive; you have an inviolate soul regardless of your external views and features. Of course we all know that in the real world that’s often not how it works… the hot girl isn’t into you because of your beautiful soul in the eyes of god, your boss doesn’t hire you for that reason, etc. But there is some latent brutality in the competitive world… and I’ve done fine a lot of the time, competitively, I’m not complaining about the competition, and competition has a lot of merits. Adam Smith wrote about how the competition of capitalism encourages kindness and courtesy, because those things make good business sense. The average American or European store clerk is 100x more useful than the average Soviet government “worker.” The more advanced the market economy, the better the service, and the better the range of products. Capitalism and its competitive features are great.

But, competition creates its own challenges (that is not a criticism of capitalism, it is a statement about how not all dimensions can be maximized at once), and the way competition affects and infects people who always want to do better than the guy next to them.

The most stridently asserted opinions will disappear down the memory hole

The most stridently asserted opinions will disappear down the memory hole.

Remember all the hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) truthers from a few months ago? The ones who no longer exist, or seem to exist? The ones who had all the answers six months ago?

I know, I barely remember them either. But I wonder and you should too, “What are they stridently asserting today?” Should we believe it? Why?

What should we take from this episode? I haven’t seen any of the voices who were confidently and wrongly asserting that HCQ or this thing or that thing (vitamin c! no, d!) is a magic bullet, talk about how they were wrong, why they were wrong, and most importantly what will change in the future.

Women having affairs never make you use a condom

Women having affairs never make you use a condom.

I met Carol in a coffeeshop, where she was reading uncommonly cerebral things for a hot chick. I think I have a pavlovian response to coffeeshops, because I’ve done well in them with picking up chicks. And if I don’t, there’s still the sublime reward of coffee or tea. I’ve never been a mass cold-approach daygamer, although I admire them. Friendly chitchat about her work morphed to a tenuous connection between my girlfriend and similar work. We traded numbers. The four of us had dinner a bunch of times. Normal dinners. Like friends. Except it’s noticed that I like to be friends with the prettier girls… it’s true, but I deny it. Coincidence.

The easiest and most straightforward way to start an affair is to already have a girlfriend, wife, or partner. When you first meet the other woman, she knows you are taken (“taken”). You are not a serious threat, at first, but if you exude sexuality and sexual energy, you will not be a boring herbivore either. Red Pill Dad recently wrote about how, as a young man, he hid his dick and consistently failed to escalate. He had all the makings of a chad thundercock, except the ability to execute and the killer instinct most players have. He wasn’t an herbivore grass-eater, I’d judge, but he made critical mistakes… and those mistakes explain why older guys have a decent shot with many hot young chicks, cause guys their own age lack edge and the ability to escalate into her p***y. I’m not going to write out how to exude sexuality, read the rest of the totality of The Red Quest if you wish to find answers. Sometimes, if you merely keep escalating, you will escalate a compliant but distant girl into bed. Many girls have bad game and make their own mistakes.

The woman knows that bringing around a new single man will make trouble with her man. She usually won’t do that, although if she has a “work husband” or something, she may be willing to consummate that relationship. But another couple… that is a safe, stable arrangement. In chemistry, nature prefers stable arrangements of elements and electrons. In human relationships, single people tend to gravitate together, as do people in relationships, as do people with kids, etc. Many single people in their 30s feel lonely because their friend group has escalated into another phase of life, while they’re still trying to get laid. The mechanics of their relationship change. Their friends’s apartments/houses are child proof, and their friends don’t have the energy. The best way to hang out with those friends is to bring over substantial dinner and don’t demand extensive energy expenditure, because people with kids don’t have it. They have other things, like a fundamentally meaningful life… but not the energy to relentlessly hit the bars. Even a seemingly committed player like Paul Janka can quit the game to pursue fundamental interests.

XBTUSD’s take on “the talk” a woman gives when she wants to advance the relationship

XBTUSD is back: his last post describes his first sex party, and he’s written three other posts too.

Almost every male and female in a modern dating context is doing some form of a dance: women want an escalator relationship towards marriage, and men want to avoid committing for a long as possible. Men enjoy the pre-label part of the relationship and women get value and security out of the label. Breeze’s post and Nash/RQ’s comments brought up some interesting points about this age-old topic: should a guy get out in front of things and confront the inevitable and have the talk, or should you avoid the talk and build tension, as Nash suggests? I strongly side with RQ and Lucas Bly, but Nash’s comments added another distinction. I’ve heard many in TRP communities argue that those who have the talk aren’t skilled, can’t hold tension, and are essentially pussies for giving in to what the woman wants and losing the frame. But Nash’s comment that he offers up, “I am your lover” made me realize we all might actually be agreeing here.

There’s value in building and holding tension, but only if it is inevitably released. Good standup is setup, punchline, build tension, release tension, and good seduction should have a similar cadence. Those who say you can avoid “the talk” altogether come off as those that haven’t spent much time around women and are LARPing. The talk is inevitable, so how can we approach it from a Red Pill frame. We have to lead. Create the frame, and let her step into it.

TRQ has a great post on the book Warrior King Magician Lover.

Breeze gives The Talk

“Breeze gives The Talk.” Good for him, and a deft, nuanced discussion about and analysis of this stage in the seduction. 

Breeze is going places. I wouldn’t be surprised if he winds up with a quality girlfriend… but I also wouldn’t be surprised if he plunges into the f**k clubs… he feels like an unwritten book. 

There are smart ideas from Nash in the comments as well. The comments section Breeze hosts is worthwhile. 

What XBTUSD’s first sex party was like

A continuation of XBTUSD’s previous post, “Setting the non-monogamous frame and intention with women.”

My first (planned) group sex experience was a sex party that was relatively easy to get into, and relatively easy to find (the attendees were not that hot: which may not be a coincidence). It’s possible to find sex parties with two minutes and a search engine. I went with my girlfriend at the time and two other couples, and all we did was have sex with each other in a setting where other people were having sex with each other. It was disorienting to be having sex next to other people. I couldn’t cum because I was so distracted by being on an uncomfortable bed, and feeling like people were judging my sexual performance. Later, I learned that people are concentrating on their own experience, not on “judging me:” I was having a spotlight effect problem. Most people care about themselves, not about you, and letting go of the spotlight effect enables a better, more adventurous life. Luckily, I didn’t have trouble getting or staying hard, but it was surprising how nerve wracking it was (many guys use drugs like Cialis to give themselves a boost). I highly suggest doing something like this before you have a threesome or foursome to get some practice in a context where there are more people present than just your female partner.

It’s always the man’s job to lead, and to make the women feel comfortable, safe, and allow them to push their limits. Ideally, prior to the “event”, you should have an adult conversation where you talk about boundaries, things you’d like to try together, condoms, etc. Maybe I’ll write up a topic list in a future post. This convo should happen in a social setting like a bar, not the place you’re going to have sex (maybe not even on the same night as the group sex) so that it doesn’t kill the vibe/spontaneity of the actual sex. The more experienced the participants, the less this applies, because you can have the conversation during sex or right before. Once you know people’s desires/boundaries, you can push a lot harder because you don’t have to worry you might push too far. It’s also good to know people’s experience levels so you can tailor the energy level based on the experience levels of those in a group. Don’t do varsity level shit with most beginners. If she loves the first time, ramp up the next experience.

In a foursome (two men two women) you have a bit of a conundrum because we know that the man should lead (you), but there are two men. Should it be you or the other guy? The answer doesn’t really matter as much as some think, as long as the women feel like everything is moving naturally. The girls don’t want to feel uncertainty around leadership, so it’s important to either plan out, prior to the event, who’s going to lead between the two men, or, if one of you is more dominant than the other, defer to that. Also, if you’re in one or the other’s home, it’s natural to defer to the one whose home you’re in.