Will public and socially acknowledged sex tapes become common and normalized?

An adult film performer has 300k followers on Twitter: it doesn’t matter which one, but I remarked to xbtusd, RPD, and another friend that she got those followers just for being attractive and naked: I said, “we live in an amazing world.” Xbtusd countered, “Attractive, naked, and recording yourself having sex.” He’s got a point, and yet I wonder if we’ll get to a world where recording yourself having sex and that recording being public will be socially acceptable to the extent that it doesn’t cause negative social and economic consequences; removing those social and economic consequences might drive out or down the premium those willing to violate social norms can achieve.

This isn’t as crazy as it might sound: in the 1950s, lots of people had sex before marriage, but it was a disaster for women to let it be known that they had sex before marriage, even though many women, maybe most, were doing it. It took until the 1970s, if not later, for sex before marriage to become common and expected. By today, it’s weird and bizarre for anyone not to have had sex before marriage.

Today, we’re in a situation where it’s extremely common to shoot nude photos and make sex tapes, but it’s relatively uncommon, and still reputationally damaging, for those to be publicly and socially available. We have celebrities (Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton) whose fame is linked to their sex tapes, and in some sense we all “know” that everybody does it. The vast majority of women let me shoot nude photos. I send them the photos, and I bet many later send those on to others. At what point do sex tapes lose their ability to shock and create negative consequences? It only takes enough women whose sex tapes become public shrugging and saying, “So what? It’s not a big deal. Everyone does it.” Maybe women don’t like their sexual value being foregrounded in this way. Onlyfans is arguably accelerating pre-existing trends. I’ve run into girls who are open about having an Onlyfans account: something I’d not have expected or imagined even five years ago.

Maybe watching other people have sex is losing some of its mystique / taboo elements: watch a show like Mad Men, and observe the etiquette of that time period… like, if you’re a married woman and you’re alone in a room with a man not your husband you better have a very good excuse for that happening. Now it’s like, “Yeah I’m married and yeah I’m going out and getting drunk with the girls tonight, we might fuck a bunch of random dudes, what of it?”

In Mad Men, Don freaks out because Betty tries on a bikini, and he slut shames her (“It looks DESPERATE…”), and Betty immediately changes. That’s representative of the culture of that day; now, thongs are common, and, as mentioned, some famous women got that way because they made sex tapes. And everyone’s fine with it. Very very soon you’re gonna have chicks that are the heads of major corporations, even presidents of countries, they’ll all have sex tapes, no one will care. Italian member of parliament (MP) Cicciolina made erotic films in the ‘80s, prior to being elected to Italy’s governing body. Maybe she’s a one-off, maybe she’s a harbinger. The last American president has more in common with pr0n culture than mainstream political culture. Maybe making sex tapes will be celebrated, an exploration of sexuality, and anyone who criticizes those practices will be ostracized… the exact opposite of what we have today (shaming women for doing pr0n). To use another historical example, recorded sex might be like tattoos; something that was shocking and outrageous decades ago becomes commonplace today (noting that many people don’t have tattoos).

I’ve had female friends whose nudes and/or sex videos have been leaked. And what’s happened has mostly been… nothing. Usually the women in question spend a bit of time trying to wipe the images or videos from the Internet, using DMCA requests, and that works. They’re unhappy for a few weeks, and then whatever fracas might have occurred dies down, and their lives return to normal. What’s most interesting is how minor the event tends to be. Most of their friends are supportive, and angry at the ex who’s done the leaking. Other women are sympathetic, understanding that it could happen to anyone. Guys routinely share nudes of chicks w/ our friends.

Trends tend to persist, similar to how Newton’s first law tells us that objects in motion stay in motion unless acted on by an external force. What external force is going to step in to curtail the growth of women’s sexual freedoms? Or the growth of smartphones, imaging, and connectivity? I wouldn’t want to be short women’s sexual freedom over the next decade. This isn’t my view, but it’s a possible view: if sex has become totally desexualized, and nobody can get hard anymore because of a desensitization to any sexual stimulus, it’s possible women might ask, “What are the costs of an unlimited growth in sexual freedom?” Cancer is unchecked cell growth but most cancer patients damaged their body long before the cancer showed up.

Soon, we’re going to defeat most STIs via vaccination. The social and cultural consequences of this still aren’t appreciated. We’re living in a changing world. Are you ready?

The top player (seducer) is an extreme insider or an extreme outsider, but not average

The top players have a paradoxical quality: they’re often extreme insiders or extreme outsiders, rather than being average. Think about why: if you’re too insider, too consensus, you buy into “men and women are the same” and “men and women are totally and always equal” (regarding the latter, men and women have equality of opportunity, and in many ways women are favored today in business, education, and government, but equality of opportunity isn’t the same as equality of outcome). If you’re too insider, you buy too much into “the system is right,” when it frequently isn’t. You agree too much (women like it when guys break rapport intelligently). You think that “going to the best school” is smart, when what you think of as “the best school” is a marketing gimmick and will saddle you with $250,000 in student loans; something like self-teaching combined with Western Governors University is “too weird” for you, the insider, who only does what others suggest you do, and you are pathologically afraid of anything weird, anything slightly off the well-worn path in front of you. You think “the system will take care of you” when in fact the system will use you (think of all the divorced guys out there, paying alimony). You think past returns are indicative of future performance, when they may not be… property values cannot infinitely exceed GDP and wage growth, despite the fact that your fiancée wants you to buy her a house. If you’re too insider, you think chatting up strange women is “weird” and you’re afraid of rejection. You underperform in your sex life because you are too polite and scared. You think you are “polite” when you are actually scared.

If you’re too outsider, though, you have a different set of problems that will stymie you: you think the system is totally rigged and totally bullshit, so why try at all? (A good way to end up living in your parents’ basement or in a share house with four other loser guys). Rebel too hard and you won’t be able to find the better jobs, the more important skills, the most desirable mates (women do care about what you do, they care about whether you have a functional job and economic life). If you are too outsider, you won’t be able to effectively cooperate with other people, which you need to do to build larger social and company structures (in neolithic times, the best hunters work together to take down big game). If you’re too outsider, you don’t think you need friends, and you think pure cold approach is all you need, never mind its weaknesses. If you’re too outsider, you think you don’t care what anyone thinks, including potential clients, customers, or users. You don’t care about having friends, when in fact it’s almost impossible to accomplish anything substantive alone: you need friends, mentors, people to bounce ideas off of. The dirty guy living in the desert is not getting many women. The guy living a marginal existence because he can’t be bothered to work isn’t doing well with women. A lot of college is bullshit, true, but the technical degrees aren’t. And the parties, particularly the frat parties thrown by insiders, have much to recommend them.

A woman goes to the husband store…

An old but valuable joke: A woman goes to the Husband Store on Fifth Avenue and, on the first floor, there are hundreds of hot guys to choose from. “This is great,” she says to the salesman, “I can pick any of these to be my husband?” He says yes, and the guys are all good looking. But she says, “These guys are great, but what else do you have?” “Follow me,” the salesman says.

On the second floor, the guys are all good looking AND rich. The woman is thrilled. “Wow, good looking and rich. Jackpot.” She inspects the men, likes them, but she wants to see the third floor. Now, they’re good looking, rich, AND funny. The woman says she’s pretty much there. “But is he good with kids?” she asks. The salesman brings her to the fourth floor, where the guys are also good with kids.

This keeps going. Good with pets. Highly educated. Nice to her mother. Won’t try to sleep with her hotter sister. Finally, she gets to the 12th floor, and she’s in the room full of guys with numerous superlative qualities. But she’s still not quite there yet. Has she really found her soulmate? She steps out of the elevator on the 13th floor, and it’s the roof. She walks to the edge. “There are no guys up here? What’s going on? Where is everyone?” She peers behind her and sees the elevator door closing, with the salesman disappearing behind it. There’s a gust of wind, and she falls off the top of the building; this isn’t real life, so she splats on the ground but picks herself up, unharmed. She goes to the door of the Husband Store, which is now dark, with a “Closed” sign on the door; she pounds on it, and the salesman opens it ajar to say, “Sorry, ma’am, but, as you can see, we’re closed.” “Ma’am?” the woman says, “I’m not that old, and also…” But the door is closed and she hears the lock slam shut.

(Another version of this joke has the 13th floor being a room full of cats.)

In the male version, a guy goes in the wife store and the first floor is full of hot chicks, the second is hot chicks who want to f**k the guy a lot, the third floor is hot chicks into the same stuff he is (reading, fitness, functional programming languages), and the fourth floor is chicks who are also nice. Once the guy gets to the fourth floor, the guy picks a woman, and he goes, as he’s walking out, “By the way, salesman, what’s on the fifth floor?” And the salesman goes, “I don’t know, no guy’s ever gone up to the fifth floor.”

Women tend to stay on the shelf too long. Guys only need a couple floors. Every hot chick has a dozen beta males eager to wife her up.

An old joke re-told by my buddy, who hasn’t yet chosen a pickup seduction handle, but who needs to, because he’s a fount of stories, wisdom, and laughs in emails and private group chats. I’ve been cajoling and nagging him to share his insights for years, and one hopes he’ll eventually do so. If you like this post, try the free book. 

Chasing a girl in Latin America [FR]

Xbtusd is back, with a story about chasing a hot woman in Latin America during lockdown.

Last winter the obvious move, for anyone childless who could suddenly work remotely, was to leave dense urban areas and head to warmer climates. I rented a place with my girlfriend and three friends: life was idyllic, the women were stunning, yet our social life was still a bit stunted by COVID. For the most part, our house rules roughly translated to, “you have to get permission to hang out with anyone not already on the approved list.” Back then, rapid tests and vaccines weren’t widely and easily available, and the rules made making new friends and dating a tough sell. As the winter passed, the fear of sickness abated, and the desire to socialize came back with a fury.

One of the guys staying with us had a younger former student in the area, so we invited her to hang out.

When he read this story, RQ asked the obvious question… why not all of you? She gave off strong sexual vibes but said she hadn’t had sex in a long time and that she hadn’t felt ready to since her last relationship. It was hard to square her strong apparent boundaries around sex with her palpable desire and her sexual heat. It also seemed like she might be just a flirt/tease. She made it clear that she wasn’t going to be sleeping with any of us as we were friends of her former teacher, but it was hard to read whether that was just her “anti-slut defense” or a genuine boundary. It didn’t strike me as a situation where she was going to hook up with more than one person, if she did with any of us. Despite that, she genuinely talked about sex 95% of the time in a group or 1 on 1 setting, perhaps using the talk as a substitute for the action.

She told us about her ex-boyfriend and the bad sex that they had. She talked about coming from an Asian country where sex was not talked about and her family’s relationship to sex. She asked each of us about every sexual experience under the sun. What makes for good sex? How do you like a blowjob? Have you ever had group sex? Are you kinky? Do you like anal? I am not exaggerating that week we spent 20 hours in a group with her talking about sex, and her and our relationships to it. By the end I was yearning to talk about math. We all would have made a move sooner, except that some logistics prevented it. She actually came to hang out with us two separate times separated by about a month. The first time, she was with this awful beta guy she told us she was not fucking but had been dating/living with for a month (an American dude she met on Hinge: if what she said is true, then men really do need to learn the game and stop simping). She had ditched him by the second trip to visit and was there for a longer period. It was also tough to get her alone, so it was awkward to really make a move when we were in large groups, and the other guys and I hadn’t coordinated a possible gang bang. Lastly, we’re all friends and didn’t want to fight over her, or make ourselves look like a bunch of thirsty bumbling fools falling all over each other to get to her.

We had a very large four-bedroom house with a pool in a walled, compound-style home. As a result, we often hosted small parties: sitting by the pool around a big table drinking, snorting freshly cut cocaine, skinny dipping, dancing, etc. On one of her last nights, the usual crew was hanging out, and we were playing “Never have I ever,” like high schoolers, and she said she’d never done cocaine. Immediately a line was poured, and she hoovered one like a pro. I can’t remember how I made the transition, but I then asked if she had ever had a line done off of her? She responded in the negative, and I inquired if she would like to have one done off her tits. She confirmed that she would and hopped on the couch removing her top. I poured up a fresh line and inhaled, followed by a long make-out with everybody watching. My girlfriend took her cue and came over and poured her own line and joined us in a three-person make-out.

My mind raced to logistics. One dude + 2 chicks, with 3 dudes watching. We returned to the table and went back to playing cards. How was I going to get her into my bedroom without the awkwardness of everybody seeing and her feeling the awkwardness of seeming like a slut? As the night wound down I eventually found a moment alone and whispered to her to follow me into my bedroom. I invited her to stay over with me and my girlfriend but she quickly turned me down, saying that she wasn’t there yet. It was clear that this was a boundary and knowing her pretty well at that point I knew that she drew very firm boundaries and so I didn’t push. I thanked her for a fun evening, gave her a goodnight kiss, and sent her on her way.

We all eventually returned home, and she hit me up after a bunch more traveling. The first time we met up was a long day of drinking in the streets. She was hours late and, when she arrived, much to my surprise she told me she had fallen asleep after a marathon night of fucking that ended at noon that day. I was shocked, as sex had previously been off the table, but when I inquired she began telling me about a shift that had happened in her after she left us. She had done an ayahuasca ceremony where she had been transformed and now felt like she had reconnected with her sexual self (demonstrating the power of psychedelics). She had been on a rampage running through every interesting/hot guy she met and was radiating sexual energy, as usual.

Taking my cue, I started flirting hard and floating the idea of having the threesome I had been hoping for earlier in the year, but she quickly nixed that idea, saying that she didn’t want to sleep with friends and make things too complicated. Once again, it was clear this was not a point that she was going to be swayed, so I figured I would let our friendship evolve, and I assume at some point in the future she will have another psychedelic trip where she is instructed to have threesomes with her friends and I will be her first call. Looking back at all the events, I don’t think there’s much I could have done better/differently, but as I’ve mentioned, I’m a fan of the long game, especially for women I genuinely enjoy spending time with. No point in burning any bridges and I get a free call option for later.

Like xbtusd? Read his other field reports and absorb his philosophy.