Brad P’s dating education memoir “Diary of a Pickup Artist (PUA)”

I’ve read too many boring, unsubtle field reports (FRs), but Brad P’s are the opposite, full of life and hilarity… someone should turn his memoir into an audiobook, and sell it, cause if the audiobook is well done, it’ll thousands of guys who can’t read (video games rot their minds), but do like a good story, will buy. Brad P has many good stories, and everything in his memoir is at the intermediate and advanced stages, which is precisely the material there’s too little of. The best part is the incipient consensual non-monogamy material, which he doesn’t develop (the preconditions weren’t right at the time), but I spot them, and talk about them later on, in the best part of this essay. One example of advanced material, he writes of sleeping with a girl who was at a concert with her brother, and telling her brother to (improbably) hit on hot Brazilian chicks. Brad_P says,

I think the guy knew he had no chance with the Brazilian girls, but he was doing the typical “Fake Player Routine” that most guys will do in this situation. Admitting that he doesn’t have the skills to nail the Brazilians is not an option, so he just pretends he’s gonna go for it. I framed it like I was doing him a favor running wing man so he could nail the 2 hotties. Like his sister was in the way or something. It’s always very easy to get a guy out of your way if he’s doing the fake player routine.

I don’t think it’s common to run into a girl out with her brother like that but he did admirably, and part of being a player is perceiving what to try in unusual circumstances. I don’t think I’d have managed the brother nearly as well. It’s cool to see how a guy succeeds in situations where I think I’d probably have failed.

Date structure and arc: how to plan and execute dates

When I’m planning and executing initial dates with a girl, I have a repeatable structure or arc that usually goes like this: date one, we meet at a bar, have a drink or two. If the girl seems particularly “on,” I might suggest drink two or three at my place. More often, I’ll suggest we go to a second bar, get a drink, make out a bit on the way there or at the bar, then suggest we go back to mine. A fair number of girls say yes. Some guys report that trying to pull on the first date increases their flake and fall-off rates greatly, but that hasn’t been my overall experience (or Red Pill Dad’s, he’s told me in private). Xbtusd says he never tries for first-date sex. My theory is that girls respect the ask, even if they say no, but that theory may be wrong. 

“Never settle” is an expression of narcissism

The best thing written about modern dating is by The Last Psychiatrist, and it’s so good he felt compelled to delete it, Don’t Settle For The Man You Want. It’s about narcissistic monster Lori Gottlieb, a woman who can’t see herself for who and what she is but is compelled to ladle advice out to everyone else. She thinks TV shows like Will & Grace and movies like Titanic are somehow real… “Nothing characterizes the dumbest generation of narcissists in the history of the world better than using throw away cinema as a template for life.” Lori can’t find a man for many reasons, one being that “She wants someone who will see her the way she wants to be seen and fulfill various other roles she has planned for him, leaving herself free to ‘grow.'” People are people, not roles, and not props in another person’s drama, however much social media tries to convince us otherwise (the best women I’ve met and dated in the last decade use social media minimally, if at all: not a coincidence). Lori is an expert in the negative, not in the positive,

A reasonable question might be, what kind of a man is this woman looking for? I defy you to answer this question. She’s two books and at least three essays into the topic, and still I have no idea. What I do know, however, is what she’s not looking for. That’s where her laser focus is pointed.

She is all “want” and no “give.” Real relationships mean give and take. Too much of either makes them impossible or dysfunctional. But, lots of people (especially women) have been trained to think like Lori: the man is an accessory to their life, not a person with whom she’ll build a new thing. Religion used to try to fight against narcissism, but it’s dead, and now it’s all about you. Advertising tells us so. And we have good psychological defense mechanisms that prevent us from realizing that we only want to take and never want to give. “Gottlieb figures that because she’s attractive and intelligent, the problem must be her standards are too high or men are threatened by her. Wrong. The problem is she is daring someone to like her.” Well that is one problem, and not the only one. But the key word “standards.” Listen to single women and you’ll hear endless talk of “standards.” Listen to married women and they’ll talk about how much they love their kids. Coincidence?

Listen to women’s dating podcasts (I don’t recommend it, but xbtusd listens to them, masochistically) and the idea of “standards” recurs over and over again. It’s right up there with “Living your truth” and letting emotions rule, and ruin, your life.

Learnings from women’s dating podcasts: Grandma versus young girls

Xbtusd has a curious hobby: listening to women’s dating podcasts, which, to me, seems like an exercise in masochism, but to him, women’s podcasts are comedy, mixed with information from behind enemy lines. His latest find is a gem, What Grandma Thinks We’re Doing Wrong with “Excuse My Grandma,” in which two girls in their 20s talk to “Grandma Gail,” who is brilliant, while the girls in their 20s sound… is “r^tarded” still a word that gets one cancelled? Sorry, it’s the first word that leaps to mind. Grandma Gail is so smart, and keeps telling the girls the most obvious stuff, and they keep replying with inane, narcissistic remarks. Grandma Gail says, “If you’re going to pick somebody apart, as most of you girls seem to do, it’s just a never-ending stream….” and then she gets interrupted. Anyone who wants a real, adult relationship understands that relationships are about compromise. If you can’t compromise, you’ll never be in a relationship, though, if you are a woman, you can sleep with guys a couple points above you in sexual market value (SMV). Similar problem happens with people addicted to new relationship energy (NRE… I cop to that addiction… the high of fresh p***y is unbelievable…). Few years back this hot chick I was flirting with admitted that she only loves what she called the “cupcake” stage of relationships. She’d married early and was divorced or in the process of getting divorced… she had “problems, but the sex will be great” written all over her.

I’m getting off the point, which is that Grandma Gail is full of wisdom, like when she says, “If you’re looking for perfection, you better stay by yourself, because it’s never going to happen.” I don’t have anything to add. Not everything she says is perfectly on the mark… Grandma Gail says a lot of men feel “a fear of commitment.” Often it’s not a fear. It’s cost. And a lot of men LOVE f**king. So do women. So why would a man get married (risk high costs, divorce is expensive), if he can get sex without marriage? High-status men know this. Hypergamy isn’t part of Grandma’s vocabulary, but it’s lurking there in her speech without being mentioned.

“Deserves” is a childish word

“Deserves” is a childish word and the people concerned with what they “deserve” are often childish, if not outright narcissistic. The topic arises cause a guy I know is with a woman whose aspiration in life is to get married, it seems. Not BE married, GET married (the difference matters). She doesn’t want kids. Weird, right? Why bother with the marriage except for social status and kids? She doesn’t want the “kids” part of marriage, the part that really matters, so it’s pure social status for her, I guess. If that weren’t enough, my buddy (we’ll call him Steve) has read and been ensorcelled by the sex club book, so he wants to try non-monogamy. Steve has good communication skills, so he’s been negotiating out what the life with him and the woman should look like, since they want different things. He’s talked to her and not come to a final conclusion, in part probably because the girl fucks really well and is hot, two things known in combination to beguile men. There are FDA warnings about such women.

They were talking and the girl said she “deserves to get married” and “deserves to be excited about getting married.” I say “said” instead of “argued” because “I deserve to get married” isn’t an argument. Adults know that people don’t get what they deserve all the time. People also often don’t get what they do deserve, to the extent any of those things are computable at all.

I’m not opposed to people “getting what they deserve…” justice and fairness are based partially on those lofty goals. But “deserve” has so many dimensions that trying to compute them, let alone talk about them, seems futile. “Deserves” may not even be a linear system, so something like linear algebra may only be useful for approximations, not the real thing. The real world has very large, maybe infinitely large, matrices that include many variables for “deserve.” Does someone who works hard and makes a lot of money but is an asshole “deserve” the money? Does someone who is a good person who gives away too much value “deserve” to get that value leeched? I don’t know, and a person could generate an infinite number of such questions, with no final answer. Life is not solvable.

Does the game have a limit? I’m still learning

For a while, I’ve thought I’ve maxed out my knowledge of the game… I know what I know, and there’s not much left to learn, cause I’ve been at it for a long time. Few days ago, though, I went out with friends and made a somewhat minor modification to the overall game, and the minor modification seemed to result in significantly improved opens and retention. “Shit,” I thought to myself, “there are still things I can do that result in what seem to be big improvements,” depending on crowd and environment. I don’t want to get specific about what I did because doing so is too revealing, but say something privately if you want to know more. If there are still things I can try to optimize, maybe game is a field that goes to infinity… you can never truly know it all. Reading most large forums, like Reddit, is unsatisfying because almost all the guys there are beginners with basic problems and situations. Nothing wrong with beginners… we’ve all been there… but “all beginners” is boring. A lot of beginners would be better off hiring a coach and spending less time on forums.

The other thing I got to thinking is a classic, but one I repeat because I saw it happen so clearly: girls get in their own way. A friend opened this hot girl, and the girl’s friend was hideous. I tried to get another guy to entertain her, but he said no, so I was like, “Fuck it, I’ll do it.” I entertain the friend for a while, maybe half an hour, then make my other buddy do it. The main friend is hitting on the hot girl. We bounce venues, and the hideous girl tells me the hot girl is out of a relationship and looking to process the breakup, or some similar girl nonsense that means, “My friend wants to hook up and have a great time.” At the new venue I entertain the friend a bit more, have a loop, open some other girls for laughs, and then I go home early cause I’m a good boy now.

Next day, apparently the hideous girl who said she was going to let her friend go fuck, didn’t do so, and hooked the hot friend into leaving. I thought it was a done deal, despite knowing that what seems to be done, isn’t, until it is. The hot girl let her “friend” get in her way. Such is the way of girls, and seeing this happen over and over again is why I laugh so hard at “feminism” and “girl power” and “girl bosses.”

My buddy is a good guy overall, and the hot girl should have done him. Whoever else she gets is probably going to be worse than him. Such is the game. Girls turn down a cornucopia of beautiful opportunities, and hold each other back, like crabs in a basket. Some men do this as well, and if you find yourself among men like that, find new friends.

Friendship and how to be real

Friend from out of town came to visit, and his visit showed me the friendship is dead. I’m mourning its death, because we were tight at one point, but time and his own personality problems have shoved us apart. He’s been depressed for years, and I’m finding myself realizing that I, or perhaps we, are trying to have the friendship of many years ago, and… it isn’t working. I’m annoyed at myself more than anything else, because I should have known this, and acknowledged it to myself, but I didn’t. I wanted him to be continuing to learn & grow, but, instead, he was busy wallowing in his own world of feelings, too inwardly directed and not sufficiently outwardly directed. I realize I’m being vague here but the specifics are too specific. I saw a tweet where a guy said, “In 2050 it will be an accepted fact that focus on psychological health (including meditation) was one of the biggest biggest disasters for the advancement of humanity ever.” That’s true of my friend, a victim of “psychological health” that is the opposite of psychological health, and a victim of his own weakness.

The visit was a waste of time… I’d thought it would be a regenerating visit in which I’d help him help himself, but he rejected the gift to instead pursue a path of folly and isolation. He thinks I don’t understand him and that I need to respect his feelings. I’m a man, though, and if “feelings” are not useful, they need to be ignored, jettisoned, and changed. Part of being a man is ignoring feelings to get things done. Losers whine about their best; men go home and f**k the prom queen. I want to f**k the prom queen (and literally have, granted we were in college at the time… another story…), not whine pointlessly about my best. He needs to read my guide, Female “friends:” the comprehensive statement, but he never will. What he thinks of as his own conviction is really cope for being inert.

Women write “No ethical non-monogamy” (ENM) on their Tinder profiles: is it true?

I’ve been seeing the screenshots make the rounds: a woman’s online dating profile says, “no ENM” or “no poly.” The most interesting part of those profiles isn’t whether she’s telling the truth… it’s that enough guys have figured out ENM for women to preemptively declare they’re not into it. I’m sure some of those declarations are sincere and they’re looking for their babydaddy. RPD thinks we’re still in a situation in which most women will say “no” to ENM… I think there’s some truth in that point of view, maybe a lot of truth, but it’s also true that, pitched properly, a lot of chicks will be up for it.

How? It’s not the guy being like, “Let’s go to a sex club, maybe we can fuck some new chicks.” Instead, it’s the guy whose social world is intertwined with ENM world (THE GOOD GIRL depicts this). The guy meets a new girl, she likes him, they sleep together, the guy makes risotto for her on the sex date, they date a bit, she meets his friends. His friends are cool (like your friends are cool, right?). They’re hosting parties. At the parties, a lot of the people take mdma, but they’re cool, functional people, not drug idiots. The girl will take some, or, if she doesn’t, she’ll be around people having the time of their lives. There’d be a mini-orgy in one corner. Some girl would tell your girl, let’s call her Marcia, she’s pretty… and the two girls would make out.

Few things of value are free

The only free cheese is in a mousetrap. Some guy writes to me to ask, “Would you be able to give me some tips personally?” I guess he gets points for brazenness and going, “Will you give me for free the thing most people pay for?”, but, by that standard, the guy asking for change on the corner gets some points too. Sure buddy, I’m in a hurry to give you, a random guy, time and attention. It’s a top priority. He’s not the first with this request… if he were, I’d ignore it, but I get it often enough for me to wonder what’s wrong with these guys. I linked him to paid coaching, but I sense that the way he goes about asking for free shit is indicative of his failures with chicks… he says, “I haven’t had much success.” Right, cause if his approach with me is bad, his approaches with chicks are probably bad too. I don’t know him. He’s not offering money. Why would I bother? He lacks the wit to learn how to properly ask the question he’s asking. Why would I think he has the wit to learn anything?

He’s not written a player blog, something I recommend guys do, so he’s giving nothing back to the community. I routinely talk about “reciprocity” as a fundamental element in human relationships. Even newbie guys can have useful things to say about whatever’s happening on their journey. This guy wants free stuff… contrast him with someone like Madd Monk, who is telling his story, and who I’ve left comments for and talked with some in email. Madd Monk seems like an interesting guy who’s making some progress in the world… he may have started his player’s journey blog with my encouragement. What’s the guy asking me for free coaching providing to anyone else? Has he read me speculating that there is no real money in game coaching? This could be what chicks feel like, when guys unartfully ask them for sex.

There are ways to get advice from experienced players. Money talks. Contributions talk. A guy showing he’s worth some investment, talks. The internet is full of people trying to cadge something for nothing, while a few of us talk about the importance of real, lasting value. Prove yourself first. Men spend our entire lives proving ourselves, over and over again. Are you a man? The modern education system says “gender is just a construct,” which is the thing only two classes of guys say: the vast majority are pathetic guys who don’t get laid. The other class of guy is so high status that he can say it and get away with it, because he can already get copiously laid. He’s a version of the rich guys who dress like hobos, because they have so much money that they don’t care about he signal, or are going to counter-signal. Women who say “gender is a social construct” want to f**k guys who are hot, fun, interesting, challenging, competent, tall, desired by other women, etc…. like all the other women do… “gender is a social construct” is a troll, disconnected from their real experience and preferences. “Gender is a social construct” “I also want a guy who is over six feet tall and makes over six figures a year”—the same girl. Men learn we have to earn our way. Women get a lot of value delivered to them at puberty, by being thin and young. Create and display your value, or lose to guys who do. Choice is yours. You can choose to pick up the video game controller, or you can choose to create value.

What science, engineering, math, and other nerds get wrong about talking to women

Science, engineering, math, and other nerds often care foremost about correctness, and their conversation shows their main priority, but “caring deeply about correctness” is unusual… in conversation, most people, especially attractive women, care about creating a positive vibe, laughing, group feeling, finding hierarchies, showcasing values, yeeting the outgroup, etc. Being factually right and learning new things is less than secondary, less than tertiary. This divergence in interest and purpose leads to a common failure mode between nerds and attractive women, and the conversation often goes something like,

Cute girl: blah blah blah blather…

Nerd: Excuse me, but, actually, I need to interrupt to say I know that, in reality, if you look at the fossil record and consider what this one paper says, you’ll see…

Cute Girl: No one cares! Like I was saying, Tommy said that Bobby said this crazy thing about Bree…

Male nerds think gossip is stupid, and then discount the conversation of most attractive women, and in doing so reduce their chances of sleeping with those attractive women. Male nerds might be right or wrong about gossip being stupid, but gossip is how women determine rank and hierarchy, and thus who to f**k. Attractive women seeking good vibes are going to care a lot about fluency and how a man makes them feel, and not so much about the precise content of the man’s patter.

In contrast, someone focused on factual correctness in conversation will often stumble and pause, regroup to think, choose words carefully, stop to overwrite himself, etc. He’ll be less fluent but more accurate. Women often interpret nerd conversational style as weakness or stupidity, though it may be the opposite, as the nerd is groping towards correctness.