What do we spend our excess money on? Sex.

 

The Western world is richer than it’s ever been, so what do we spend all that excess on? Sex, or near-sex and sexually-related equivalents: fancy clothes, expensive cars, pretty much anything that can be counted as a “status” symbol. Until a country or society reaches some baseline threshold of wealth, its residents and especially its women are too tethered to survival to focus on fucking around a lot: which is one reason why game works differently in different countries.

(Obviously, there has always been some level of fucking around, but nothing like what’s been happening in the contemporary developed world in the last couple of decades.)

I bring this up because I write primarily about experiences in the United States. Wealthier countries are more likely to have a lot of excess money that can go into personal development and sex. In poorer countries, the margin of error is too small to develop a diverse, sex-positive culture. I was chatting on Twitter with a guy from Turkey. He says Turkey is bad for game because its culture is more sexually conservative, even in Istanbul. I have no idea whether he’s right or not, but I do know that game has to be more effective, all else being equal, in richer societies. The United States is so wealthy that lots of women are happy bearing children out of wedlock or committed relationships.

Turkey also has the disadvantage of being predominantly Muslim. I don’t like most religions, for the usual reasons, but Islam as it’s currently practiced is particularly bad.

Game works best in large, Western cities. In the United States, I’d guess the best cities for game are New York, LA, and Chicago, probably in that order. If a guy can’t move to a major city, he might simply not be able to do game. I don’t have a firm number, but I guess the population minimum for effective game is probably around 500,000. Lower than that, and the “small town” reputation protection system comes into play, and the few hot chicks around will be wary of risking their reputations on sexual fun and hedonism. Messing around still happens, just more covertly and over longer periods of time. Plus, in smaller towns or cities, a guy will literally run out of chicks to game. The exception may be transient tourist areas, like Tahoe in California, or other ski resorts, or beach towns.

Another wrote to me and said that he’s in a smaller town but interested in game. I think he has to move. Game is hard even in big, anonymous cities. In small towns, it must be much, much worse.

In modern, wealthy atmospheres, expression matters more than survival. Including romantic expression. So women don’t want to commit because they don’t need a man’s protection and they don’t even need much in the way of his resources. To the extent she does, the state will remove the man’s resources and give them to her anyway.

In this milieu marriage doesn’t make sense. Sexual expression does. Guys who specialize in being providers have less fun than guys who specialize in being party animals.

If something awful happens, like nuclear war with North Korea, this may change, fast. People will form deeper, tighter communities just to survive. Both men and women, but especially women, will worry less about about how much good sex they can have and more about whether they’re going to eat. When you’re worried about making sure you and your children don’t starve, it’s not very tempting to have an affair or bang the hunky guy down the street.

When you’re rich, you want self-expression. Like you can achieve through sex and going to the gym. If I were worried about keeping the roof over my head, I wouldn’t be writing a player blog and going on and on about not eating sugar. I wouldn’t be using a pretty new MacBook. I might not have access to reliable condoms. Chicks might not have access to reliable birth control. In a resource-starved environment, the costs to a chick of engaging with a strange man might be enormous. In a resource-rich environment, they’re very low. Stranger sex is costly there.

Many guys with a “nice guy” frame and worldview think that they’re still living in 1900. They’re not. Women respond to conditions and so do men. In a condition of wealth, expecting women to behave as they do in a condition of scarcity is madness. That’s also why a guy living in a conservative, developing country may not find American game writers very useful. We’re writing about a particular set of social and economic conditions.

Men today have none of the tools they used to have to enforce female monogamy. Without those tools, most people are weak. So we might as well embrace pleasure and expect de facto polygamy (whatever we call it). Our social and cultural systems are set up to express sexual expression. The bigger the city, the more true that is. There’s a reason why “Porn Valley” (aka the San Fernando Valley) developed in the Southern California metroplex. Los Angeles County alone has ten million people in it, and the movie industry is centered there. Ten million anonymous souls, hunting for lust and sun. Developing the porn industry in a far smaller city would have too many reputation repercussions for the performers.

Game is not impossible in smaller cities. A guy reading this and living in a smaller city should still try to do what he can, particularly if the city has a transient population due to tourism, college, etc. But that guy also can’t expect to get the outcomes big city guys get.

Game may not be impossible in Turkey, either. But if the Turkish guy moves to a Western country, he will not get a free pass. Game is hard for most men everywhere. If it weren’t, guys wouldn’t write pickup and seduction blogs. One of game’s harsh lessons is that there is no easy way. I have a lot of advantages most guys don’t, and it’s hard for me.

“Which People Would Agree to Have Sex With a Stranger?”

“Which People Would Agree to Have Sex With a Stranger?” is highly relevant to men in the game and looks at tests done by aspy psychologists who set out to discover and document the obvious: almost all men say they’ll have sex with an attractive female stranger and no women say they’ll have sex with an attractive male stranger. That’s being asked in daylight, possibly in front of other people, but as players know most chicks take some to evaluate a strange guy. Same day lays from cold opens are possible, they just aren’t easy or common. Guys who filter for same day lays are leaving the vast majority of chicks on the sidelines.

There are also gaps between total strangers and strangers who have some social context. You may notice that colleges and workplaces appear to have more stranger or semi-stranger hookups. That’s because familiarity and some shared things in common allow women to feel like the guys they’re hooking up with aren’t total strangers, and who might have some reputation consequences to bad behavior.

Same thing happens in sex clubs. When a couple first arrives, everyone is a stranger. But most clubs have some regulars and some floaters or orbiters. Floaters and orbiters will also be found on some websites and apps. So even there, the apparent fantasy of “total stranger sex” is rarely indulged. Good clubs disallow single men, so at the very least any given man will have one woman who vouches for him. There are not unpaid venues where it’s common to have stranger sex.

Sex with strangers is fun and it’s possible and I’ve done and most women will not do it at any given moment. The women who do do it are more fearless and more open to novelty and new experiences than the women who won’t. Women have little to lose by making a man wait a couple of days, and women can assess a man much more accurately over that time. That’s why players have figured out that 4 – 10 hours is typically the magic number to go from stranger to sex. Typically shorter in big anonymous sexually active cities and longer outside that context. It can be done faster, particularly in environments that already conduct some filtering, like sex clubs or colleges. Most guys who shoot for very fast sex with strangers will estrange most women. Life does not work like visual porn (male fantasy) or romance novels (female fantasy). The more a person attempts to make life work this way, the harder it will typically be for him or her. There are probably exceptions, like high-level male musicians or ridiculously attractive men, or ridiculously attractive and self-aware women.

It’s very popular to talk about the exceptions, obviously. But for most guys attempting to game most chicks, it’s useful to know about how familiarity is useful. That’s one reason why, despite my disdain for social media, I still have a somewhat well-developed account on one or two platforms. Girls have reported that that makes me feel more “real” to them. By that, I believe they mean I have real friends, a reputation among those friends, etc., and that makes me feel safe to them.

For chicks, there is always tension between safety and danger/mystery. Too much safety and a guy is overly beta, weak, boring, and predictable. Too much danger and mystery and the guy is overly risky and might ignore a woman’s consent or otherwise injure her without repercussion. Game attempts to teach men to navigate these two risks.

This is also why it can be simple to run game via social networks, for guys who can manage that. The easy first question at a party is, “How do you know the host?” But as a guy gets older, this works less and less well (my social networks don’t have a lot of 18 – 25 hotties in them anymore). Social networks have other problems, like her fear of repercussion (she hooks up with a random guy and now everyone knows it, which is diminished online, where she can be more experimental).

As is so often true, there is no final answer, only possibilities. Cold approach can and does work. But true stranger sex is probably pretty rare.

Teachers

Wall Street Playboys:

If your teacher was actually smart he wouldn’t have become a teacher in the first place.

Remember that if you take any career advice from them.

On average, that’s likely true. But I replied:

Not necessarily… I know guys who became teachers because it’s a dead easy job that leaves copious amounts of free time for other hobbies, like game. Plus, there’s a natural funnel for chicks, who are available one year post-grad.

I don’t know anyone in real life who has gone truly hard-core in game like the guys you can read in the sidebar. But at least one guy I know from college essentially used high school teaching as a funnel for chicks. In his 20s he was pretty good looking and pretty musical (played guitar and taught it sometimes at his high school, apart from his main subject). He wouldn’t quite 100% admit to what he was up to, but he would admit that teaching is dead easy. He had a band for a while and no surprise there he used it to get laid. Back in MySpace days his opener to MySpace chicks was an invite to his shows.

His band sucked, but he did the trick.

We lost touch over time, and he eventually got married, fat, and into video games. He wasn’t a brilliant guy but he wasn’t dumb either. Occupation is about cost-benefit. He was also smart enough to know not to hit up chicks until a year after they graduate.

Career advice is tricky. I don’t remember getting much career advice at all in high school and I don’t know if high school teachers today dispense it. But not all high school teachers are dumb or not smart. With teaching, a guy gets security and a low to medium income and time. But he also gets a very low cap on his salary, low social status through career, and bureaucratic bullshit.

Some smart, family-oriented chicks choose teaching because it allows them to take time off when their kids are small.

Ms. Slav is back, and, also, use a vibrator during sex

Ms. Slav is back. She finds her home country and city too small, provincial, and most of all conservative, so she’s happy to be in the United States again. She’s staying in the same swank hotel as her parents, but, fortunately, in a different room. We met in her hotel room, and without saying much I stripped her black dress to discover new lingerie underneath; she said she’d been shopping for it a couple hours prior. So I left the thong on, and pulled it to the side. Beauty.

After, we took a nap and started chatting. I told her I had a surprise for her, and I pulled out a package containing a vibrator. She was pleased, and also surprised, and said, “Guys give me flowers and jewelry all the time. I would much rather have this.” That perked my ears. How many guys? “A lot. A hundred?” A hundred? At her age? I want to think she’s exaggerating. Conceivably she isn’t. She said that for most girls, flowers are the best thing the girls think they can get. Ms. Slav is fond of drawing distinctions between herself and “most girls,” which is almost, but not quite, a red flag. In this paragraph, there is an important lesson for men: be the guy who gives her the vibrator and makes her get off, hard, not the simp giving her pricey trinkets she doesn’t care about.

Ms. Slav said that she’s never been very submissive before. With women she’s dominant, and with men she’s never really been made to submit. But she said that when I move her where I want her, and hold her down by the throat, it turns her on. Like spanking during foreplay. Like most chicks, she can take more than I think she can. She may like the way I use raw strength. I remember a session with a lover from a couple years ago, and she was playfully resisting by moving to the top of the bed. I grabbed her ankles, dragged her entire body down, and forced her legs open. She said, “I forgot how strong you are” (I’m not that strong, I want to be clear… I have met truly strong men, seen them train… I’m just stronger than guys who don’t follow a weight lifting program). That girl’s comment was a major turn-on, largely because I don’t think it was planned… it popped out of her.

There was something about sex with that girl, Short Dancer, that was unreal. Unfortunately, I lost her because she knew I was dating someone else… a couple someone elses, to be honest… and didn’t like my ways, but I wasn’t willing to commit to her. It was a complicated time. The situation persisted until she went to a party while I was out of town and… yeah. Still have a bunch of great sex videos I made with her. I think of her with happiness.

With Ms. Slav, that day in the hotel room her parents were paying for, I meant to tie her up and really paddle her, but I was too focused on the sex to do the more elaborate pieces. Also meant to bring my favorite massage oil and forgot it as well. Did remember the camera. She still likes the photos and being shot nude.

Ms. Slav washed the vibe and I plugged it in. She used it the second time we had sex, and she kept coming, over and over again, incredibly hard. So hard it was hard for me to hold off, and eventually I couldn’t. She said she’d never had sex while using a vibrator, or come so hard. I’m disinclined to believe such praise, but I think her oldest partner prior to me was 18, or maybe in his early 20s, so she could conceivably be telling the truth, instead of attempting to stroke my ego. Guys are too dumb to get girls to use vibrators during sex. I may “win” a lot because I don’t do the dumb, high-ego things.

All in all I’d call it a very successful session. I know guys in the red pill are against giving chicks gifts. I agree with that stance… BEFORE sex. After sex, some small gifts are okay, particularly if they’re sexually related and treated like they’re no big deal. See my old post, “The holidays are coming up: shit tests, comfort tests, and gifts [intermediate and above].” It is bad to give a chick anything as an implied exchange for sex, but okay in my view to do so afterwords, particularly if the chick is younger and inexperienced. Few guys understand that chicks LOVE gifts that are earned. Ms. Slav has earned hers.

I like experimenting. Many chicks have told me that, when they’ve tried to bring toys into the bedroom in the past, their guys have been threatened. Not me. I see man as the tool-using animal.

Ms. Slav says she’s going to get an IUD, and I hope so, because the lack of busting in her may be the barrier preventing me from being fully into her. She’s been on hormonal birth control in the past, but that disagreed with her. She said that she was tempted to get it in her home country but didn’t trust the medical system there.

The 20-year-old is also back, but I can’t be arsed. She seems too likely to be a problem and too flakey for me. I’ve had some other adventures as well I mean to write more about.

“Sex, Steroids, And Arnold: The Story Of The Gym That Shaped America”

“Sex, Steroids, And Arnold: The Story Of The Gym That Shaped America” is a great story. For the vast majority of guys, pumping heavy iron needs to be part of their life. Without it, most guys will not succeed in their dating lives and will not realize the link between their physical and psychological potential.

Among other things that’s not widely understood about bodybuilders, I think, is how good they feel. Working out they have these endorphins cascading their bodies. They’re eating enough meat for a male lion every day, and lying in the sun and screwing whoever they want to screw.

Doesn’t mean you have to be a bodybuilder to get laid. You don’t. But think about that when you’re deciding between video games and the squat.

In bodybuilding we had never seen anybody combine personality with physique. That’s Arnold.

For most guys, the gym is not enough. You don’t want to get stuck in the plight of the lonesome bodybuilder. Guys who are ripped and ripped without any game or personality will probably do worse than guys who aren’t ripped but who go out and hit on chicks.

Because most men are physically weak today, the men who are different have tremendous opportunities. Be that which is scarce, not that which is common.

“Daygame Lay Report: Closing The Loop”

I like “Daygame Lay Report: Closing The Loop” because similar things have happened to me. A girl’s first stop when she’s single is often whoever she has on tap. In this case, Tom may have also benefited from not being part of her social orbit, as she knows that an assignation with him is unlikely to get back to her friends and family.

This is also why it’s rarely a good idea to overtly burn chicks. Dead leads will come spontaneously back to life when the chick’s situation changes.

By now, I have had 10 – 15 year old open loops come back around to me. Unfortunately, the longer the time elapsed, the more likely the chick has gotten fat.

“My dad was not my biological father.”

Letters: ‘My Dad Was Not My Biological Father:’ Readers share their experiences receiving surprising results from a genetics test is your occasional reminder to DNA test any children you think you’ve fathered. The DNA testing revolution is likely to yield some uncomfortable truths.

Are you a person who will be cheated with or cheated on?

“Verbalizing Nonmonogamy Right Up Front”

“Verbalizing Nonmonogamy Right Up Front” is a slightly interesting post from “Black Dragon,” one that I’m not linking to directly but that you can find if you must… Black Dragon overall seems like a fool, but a fool can be right now and then.  I haven’t done online dating for a while, and when I did, I never wrote explicitly about polyamory, as this guy does:

Makes my profile clearly unique. They contact me because they want to know about polyamory. I’m suddenly not a random profile on the website, I may be the only one stating my polyamourous lifestyle (appart from OkCupid, I don’t think many dating sites allow you to show your nonmonogamous lifestyle, and OkCupid is not much important in France).

That’s an interesting perspective and it might work. When I did online dating, I experimented with a generic “good looking adventure guy” type profile, which usually consisted of one or two activity shots (motorcycle, pools/beaches, that kind of thing), one headshot, one party or group shot, and one or two shirtless pics. Pretty standard online dating things for guys with something going for them. I also experimented with kink and BDSM-themed pics: rope, paddles, cuffs, that kind of thing, in pictures. That also made my response rate decline substantially. That’s similar to what commenter Paul experienced:

My response rate crumbled to 5% (0% amongst women my age). But two gals contacted me, and showed interest in polyamory as soon as they opened their online mouth (in France, it’s not as big as it is in the US). One told me she considers MLTR to be some ideal relationship. The other one just crave for air in monogamous relationships (in my opinion, she should really consider polyamory as a lifestyle).

But the chicks who did go for me, were usually really into me. And there’s heavy overlap between kink and non-monogamy.

The big downside I experienced was in terms of quality. A lot of heavy chicks are into kink and BDSM. I don’t know if that’s because they can’t get high-status guys through normal means, or if they’re more open about it, or what. I did find some hot chicks through some kink and BDSM-themed pics, but those pics seemed to lock me out of the highest tier of chicks and seemed to suck up some of the lower-tier chicks.

There were fewer flakes, time-wasters, etc. Not zero, but fewer. So I’m not sure what to infer from this. It’s also hard to draw conclusions because the online dating world moves so fast. Things that were true ten years ago stopped being true five years ago. Things that were true five years ago may not be true today. For example, I got on Tinder when it was quite new. Maybe in 2012 or 2013? Definitely before it was mainstream. I heard about it from college-age people, and when it first came out I would go to a college campus and get numerous matches. It was like fishing for salmon in a pristine stream. I’d stand by the side of the stream and spear chicks as they swam by. Young chicks who wouldn’t touch other online dating systems would try Tinder, “Just for fun.” I was older than most guys on it, which worked in my favor among chicks who like older guys.

Eventually I found someone I liked, dated her for a while, and by the time I tried Tinder for real again it was not anything like it had been. Today, it seems like verbalizing non-monogamy in the profile could have interesting consequences, for the reasons the writer lists.

I also can’t tell if we’ve seen a genuine cultural shift towards explicit non-monogamy. If we have, I have been a small part of that shift. Since I met Libido Girl, pretty much every chick I’ve been with for a substantial period of time I’ve introduced or tried to introduce to the sex club scene. I learned to give them the typical books, like More Than Two and The Ethical Slut. Both books are extremely blue pill and unaware of key differences between men and women, but they are fine places to start.

Today there are more chick-friendly books like Slutever. Whatever the player uses, it’s helpful to try and make the chick’s forebrain agree with her hypergamous hindbrain. Chicks also often infer higher status for a guy who is willing to risk losing them through sex with other people. I think chicks think, “Why is he not trying to monopolize me, like all the other guys do?”

I haven’t kept track of how many chicks I’ve introduced or tried to introduce to non-monogamy, but it has to be at least 20. Conceivably as many as 40 or 45, over ten or so years.

I don’t have much of a point with this post, apart from thinking out loud about what contemporary players might be doing. If you’ve attempted to verbalize nonmonogamy in your dating app life, leave a comment about your experiences.

It also looks like BD is doing some kind of seminar in Vegas. I was wondering about this the other day: is any player living in and writing about being a player in Vegas? From the outside it looks like a great place for a player: lots of tourists looking to party and an easy stroll along the Strip for cold approach. Cost of living is low, which gives it a leg up over LA or NYC. If I were a young guy with a location-independent job, I’d be looking at Vegas. NYC is probably the top city for game, but it is so expensive that I worry most guys will have to work all the time to survive there.

When the problem is not the problem

Remember the girl I had to cut loose? I got a text from her saying that her roommate moved out without telling her, and that she’s looking for someone, almost anyone, to fill the roommate’s place. While the girl I know doesn’t live in a terrible location, she doesn’t live in a great one, either, and she’s likely overpaying for her apartment. She also has a bunch of self-imposed financial problems that make no sense, but she’s a girl and doesn’t know shit about money, even the obvious parts of money, like “spend less than you earn.” She has an okay job, although she should have left it at least a year ago. Remember that in modern corporate America, you should probably be changing jobs every 18 – 24 months, contrary to what your parents and older relatives may tell you.

The problem with her (I’ll call her “Roommate Girl”) is not the roommate who suddenly moved out without warning… it’s her. The roommate departure is a manifestation of Roommate Girl’s problems: she’s not addressing her core problems, psychological, financial or otherwise. While many of her problems are superficially external and outside of her control (it’s true that she cannot control another girl), the root of Roommate Girl’s problems are within, and so she has endless and repeated problems of this type. Her drug issue, which affects the rest of her life, despite the fact that the drug is prescribed. Her doctrinaire, New York Times feminism, which I find one of her least attractive traits despite me mostly ignoring it, comes from inside her. There are other negative habits too, although I don’t wish to be specific about them. She went to an expensive college and took out student loans to pay for it.

Before you think this is about women, it’s not. It’s about guys, too, because most of them have the same issues as Roommate Girl. They externalize problems that exist within them. That’s one reason, a major reason, most guys do poorly with women. For a lot of guys, game starts as a set of superficial tricks to get laid, but, if a guy does it to fullness, it becomes a total psychological and often physical revolution. For a lot of guys who don’t come in with a strong personality, it’s necessary to fix everything. That is the Krauser point in reveal vs. restructure, a post I keep linking to because it is very good. When a guy’s internal psychology and external actions are wise and congruent, game doesn’t become easy, necessarily. I don’t think it’s ever been easy for me, and I’m rocking a lot of advantages that most guys who write about game aren’t. But getting laid comes, if not easily, then much more directly than it does otherwise. Having one chick or a group of chicks on hand also makes getting the next one easier.

All the problems in a person’s life are typically linked together. Often, those problems have their roots in childhood. Being an adult means taking responsibility for problems that you yourself may not have caused. Roommate Girl has failed to do that and as a result she is suffering from many disparate problems that seem unrelated but start inside her.

These kinds of people often don’t reveal themselves at first glance. Roommate Girl presents extremely well. She intimidates a lot of men. As I’ve gotten to know her, I’ve seen through the facade. Her longest relationship lasted three years, and I don’t know how it lasted that long. I suspect the guy was a pretty weak and dramatic beta dude. Whatever the case, I feel bad for Roommate Girl, but she is also not the kind of person who is going to figure herself out.

The sex tape thing, and being weird

I get some weird sense of achievement from making sex tapes. Don’t ask me why: I can do some bogus, hand-wavy psychoanalysis that won’t mean shit. Let’s just leave it at, “I like doing it and feel a sense of achievement when I do.” Kind of weird, but probably not more weird than many things guys feel (and won’t admit). A guy who gets deeply interested in seduction and self-improvement is by definition somewhat weird. Normal guys think sex somehow passively “just happens,” and that’s why their sex life usually sucks.

Most contemporary women will go for making sex tapes, too… as usual with women, the key is just to treat it as normal. Don’t really ask, just do it (the power of defaults). If she balks, say that you think she’s better than porn and are turned on by her naked body. But like I said, usually it’s better to just do it. Not the first time, unless you think she’s an exhibitionist, but maybe the second or third time. Many chicks have a fantasy about being the center of attention, and being on a sex tape feeds that desire.

It’s just a “thing” I do. Think of this as another non-mainstream thing. Mainstream guys:

* Are fat.
* Underperform in their sex lives.
* Have no women or maybe one woman.
* Never want to ask if their woman will cheat on them. They fear the answer.
* Never want to think about their one woman leaving them (if she does, where will he find another?).
* Feel frustrated by their lives, or worse, don’t.
* Watch a lot of TV.
* Play a lot of video games.
* Form their identity around the shit they buy and the sports teams they watch.

I…

* Am not fat.
* Perform pretty well in my sex life (overall… some guys do far better than me… but I have done fine and am doing fine).
* Read.
* Write elaborate pieces online explaining my life and psyche.
* Like making sex tapes.
* Have learned basics of video editing and color corrections.
* Actively practice diverse skills.
* Seek out new experiences.
* Encourage chicks to share their “dark” secrets with me.
* Like sex clubs.

So “I like to make sex tapes” is in some ways part of a suite of weird stuff I’m into.

I’m not saying I’m perfect, far from it, and I have many of my own demons, though I may not emphasize them… picking out “one weird thing” about me is kind of pointless, when there are many weird things about me. And there are probably many weird things about most guys who get deeply into the game, because normal guys don’t go deep on the game… or much of anything.

What’s the “normal” guy thing to do? Get drunk and rely on alcohol to find chicks. Rely on luck. Rely on friends-of-friends to get dates. Be super polite to chicks, or nervous around them, both of which are turn-offs. Get married by the late 20s to one chick, who then gets fat pretty quickly. Attempt online dating half-heartedly and get discouraged by rejection. Play 10+ hours of video games a week. It’s very challenging and unlikely to be a top performer in video games and a top performer with women.

Guys who do pickup work systematically on the process to improve every part of it. That’s a really weird thing to do. So I’d guess that, yes, pickup artists are weird, but if they weren’t weird, they’d drastically underperform in their sex lives.