THE GAME comes out in 2005, MYSTERY METHOD a year later. A bunch of pickup blogs show up, almost all abandoned by now, and sometimes descending into madness and/or conspiracy theories along the way. Few guys have any desire to write about pickup and chicks for more than a few years, and the ones who do are usually unbalanced, or nuts in some other way(s).[1] It’s important to have coolness and status before trying to evangelize or teach, yet the most prominent, least anonymous guys appear to lack both. Most are the kind of guys I’d want to avoid in real life, not the kind who I’d want to get a drink and chat with.
A few years ago (2015) the book MATE: BECOME THE MAN WOMEN WANT, by Geoffrey Miller and Tucker Max, came out, but didn’t seem to make a splash. In a major occasion on par with the moon landing, Red Quest as a blog is founded in 2017, its initiation commemorated by a massive, 10-ten granite ziggurat next to the Washington Monument in DC. Red Quest’s readership peak is 2019, as of this writing, although you never know, maybe some feminist tweeters will come along to denounce me, and thus drive up traffic.[2] Most people who find their way here from twitter or reddit, belong to twitter or reddit, and prefer corporate media. This is sad, but beyond my ability to fix. They’ve been captured by the big-tech borg. Independence and robustness against censorship aren’t appreciated. A few people complain about centralization of power among big tech companies, but the vast majority of people’s actions show preference for big centralized platforms, not for decentralized, censorship-resistant efforts (describing what seems to be true is not the same as approving of a thing that seems to be true).
What’s going on? Knowledge about how to do better with chicks is widely available, but guys don’t seem to avail themselves of it. The other day, I was talking to a few guys in their 20s, and they asked me something about women and dating, so I told them to read THE GAME. Their faces fell and their body language shifted: the idea of having to read a book was so horrifying and foreign that they couldn’t see themselves doing it. If they can’t be bothered to read a fun and interesting book over the course of a few hours, what hope is there for them? Guys who can’t do the easy stuff will never learn the hard stuff.
Chicks themselves are not out there talking about the excessive number of socially smooth, interesting, and cool guys who are seducing them. If anything, chicks are complaining about how “cold” and “inhumane” it is to meet guys through online dating, and how they wish guys would approach them in real life. Chicks are lonely, bored, and understimulated, by their own admission. Memes about funny cats go viral, ideas about how to get laid, don’t. I posit that most guys don’t care that much about getting laid, and even the ones who somewhat care, don’t care or care much about figuring out how to do so effectively. The information itself has been around for at least a decade and a half, probably longer… and it’s still very niche. Most guys are ineffective.
Some guys still seem to think that doing better with chicks is simply impossible: and yet the guys who practice the game demonstrate otherwise. Or maybe most guys really aren’t picky, and are okay dating a few points below themselves. They perceive the mountain to be too high, and go back to the Shire of video games. I know a coach who says his clients think a same-day lay (SDL) is impossible, because it’s so far out from their idea of what’s possible.
Overall, it’s not like men are better at getting laid via some other avenue. Men seem to be getting laid less than they did a few years back, which is also consistent with the “most guys don’t care much” thesis. You’ve probably seen the graphs showing that the number of guys in their teens / 20s who have gone without sex in the last year has something like doubled, or maybe a bit more, from like 8% to like 22%, in the last ten to twelve years:
The number of video gamers and herbivores seems to be going up… which is I guess kind of nice from a “competition” level, but it’s existentially depressing from a societal and cultural level. Maybe one day humanity goes extinct cause the video games are too good. Maybe the effort and subtlety needed to master the art of seduction is too great. Most guys have returned to an oral-first culture, and thus the extensive written corpus about how to get laid lies fallow, for want of readers. In a similar human puzzle, Why aren’t there more computer science majors? It’s probably the most lucrative undergrad degree, and highly impactful on the average person’s life (the average person spends an unbelievable number of hours per day on the phone, which is another way of saying, “Doing things CS majors produce”). Lots of people go to college, get worthless degrees, and spend the next decade plus paying back “student” loans that can’t be discharged via normal means like bankruptcy. Weird! I hypothesize most people aren’t smart enough to do computer science degrees but maybe there are other reasons. Most guys are smart enough to implement the rudimentary parts of game, yet they don’t. Maybe guys are lazy? Maybe they have short time horizons?
Some guys who download and read the book do nothing with its ideas right away, but a planted seed may later sprout. Could be that “time” is a key element for ideas to spread. But ideas from THE GAME and such have had a long time to spread, and seem not to have. Video game ideas, by the contrast, appeal to many millions.
There seemed to be a lot of energy in the pickup and seduction worlds in the ’00s and early ’10s. Where’d it go? Guys in their 20s don’t seem to be writing about seduction and dating experiences (if I’m missing guys who are, tell me). Maybe, today, being in good shape, a male high 7, and having okay pictures of a guy looking buff and hiking or whatever, is enough to snare high 6s and some 7s off dating apps, so the drama of cold approach and bar seduction isn’t needed. The process is a little smoother, its terrifying peaks and valleys and storms smoothed into a neater, more manicured path. Meanwhile the guys playing video games and getting fat are mostly out of the game altogether, or get women consistent with their lives. A guy who gets frustrated enough with his underperforming sex life will find his way to the knowledge he needs, while a guy who is fundamentally content with underperformance, won’t.
Another theory: most guys interested in and writing about seduction are fundamentally unappealing or crazy, a point elaborated in, “The most stridently asserted opinions will disappear down the memory hole.” I look at most of the guys writing about player blogs and they do not seem cool to me, and many of them say and tweet crazy things that will repel normal people, or reasonable people. So it’s hard to separate the crazy opinions on various topics from the reasonable, but slightly unconventional, views on how sex and dating actually work.
Maybe this sort of thing will always be of interest to only a small group, for some other reason I’m not aware of. Maybe I’ve not plumbed the psychology of man sufficiently to discern it. I think I’d imagined that Red Quest as a blog would be more enticing: more efficient, and often effective, ways of getting copiously laid. Even if most guys aren’t interested in undertaking these practices, I imagined they’d be interested in or curious about them. They’re powerful tools, however unusual.
Many guys may encounter some basic game ideas, like “man up and ask her out” and “escalate” and “do some basic lifting,” implement those ideas, and be okay enough. They’re trying to find an acceptable girlfriend and stop, once they find her. Most guys don’t start new companies, we go to work for existing companies. The notion that “most guys don’t truly care about getting laid and being effective” is still my top one, but it’s a weakly held one too.
I don’t have much of a conclusion. Whatever makes ideas popular, does not appear to apply to guys figuring out how to get laid. So much for men being obsessed with sex… if we are obsessed with it, we’re not capable of learning how to effectively get it. Maybe the guys getting laid have good social skills and aren’t much online?
[1]The last year and a half have been revealing. I’ve speculated in private that I think this universe is self-limiting in terms of popularity, because the accurate, useful ideas about picking up chicks are often swirled together with a bunch of other off-putting, inaccurate, and widely disliked ideas: maybe the guys interested in systematically studying the “getting laid” domain are a bunch of anti-social people discussing social skills, while the socially skilled look at some of the anti-social or ignorant remarks and GTFO.
[2]If you know any, direct them here, so they can denounce. Ten years ago, it seemed like pickup artists and such were regularly denounced online and in the media, and now, no one does. It seems the culture wars have moved on. We lost, at least in terms of numbers and attention.
The “feminists” of the 2000s became obsessed with transexuals and “critical race theory.” The game/pickup guys of that same era became obsessed with authoritarianism and MAGA symbols. I miss the old days, when people were interested in f**king in the real world, instead of fighting online.
The Red Quest 