The post about there not being much left for me to say, while encouraging other guys to carry on

I’ve said as much before, so maybe this one won’t stick either, but I think I’m basically done writing Red Quest. After more than five years of writing, few, if any, of my original goals for Red Quest have been accomplished: I thought, to cite one example, that writing about sex clubs and non-monogamy would make a bunch of guys try some of the strategies I suggest, then report back on what they found, but, instead, I’ve moved closer to the view that most guys interested in or peripherally orbiting this space don’t get laid at all, or minimally (a view elaborated in most guys don’t care much about getting laid, I hypothesize). Most guys feel they are doing good enough and thus don’t try to do better, or they are so mired in their existing problems that they think the path to improvement too long and arduous to start.

The most powerful “privilege” is hot girl privilege, which is everywhere

A hot girl, “Heather,” moves in nearby: I chat with her because she’s hot (obviously), and I believe in fire & maneuver, or the practice of continually being in the game… a theme consistent with A lot of guys are pussies, but that means opportunity for the few who aren’t. People who succeed usually succeed because they are consistently doing things right, every day, and building towards their goals.

Heather seems receptive. I run into her a few times, and find out that she’s broken up with her boyfriend and moved out of his place, which is off in a boring suburb. She doesn’t know anyone… somewhere in the beginning she mentions that she finds guys easier to get along with. Mentally, I infer that, like a lot of hot girls, her real social skills are poor, and, because she is hot, she finds it easy to attract guys who want to f**k her, but who are too pussy to make a move, into her outer orbit, where those guys offer her attention but don’t have a real shot at f**king her.

Life as a one-way function

In the later seasons of MAD MEN, Don gets a hot secretary, Megan, and then up and promptly marries her.[1] Whether this is a good or poor idea is left up to the reader, but Megan wants to be an actress, like so many hot chicks who crave attention, and Don sets her up to be a copywriter, then an actress, and, because this is TV, she succeeds: Don Draper magic works. Megan’s “career” suddenly becomes important. She and Don plan on moving to LA for her acting career. Don later decides he can’t go, but that Megan should go anyway. She becomes a glamorous LA woman. When Don arrives in LA, he doesn’t fit in with her life any more; she’s outgrown him, or grown in a direction orthogonal to him. In one of their last real interactions, she sets up a threesome for him, but it’s a melancholy, goodbye threesome, not a fun, life-affirming threesome. “Enjoy it,” Megan seems to be saying, “because we’re done, and this is a parting gift.”

Don thinks he’s going to show up in LA and Megan is going to be his, like she was in NYC… but she’s not his, not anymore. She’s not the girl, the secretary, he first met. You can’t turn a famous actress back into a secretary just hitting the big city for the first time, not when you have made her into something impossible to achieve for most women. In programming we call those “one-way functions:” easy to compute but difficult or impossible to reverse (without them, all you crypto HODLers would be hosed). Turning a secretary into a famous actress is a one-way function: she’ll never be the same, even though Don would like her to be. He can’t swoop in and have “her” again. He’ll never be the same in her eyes, because she’s changed… and been exposed to numerous high-status men. Don can have sex with her, but she’s become an actress, and the sex is sex, not her life. Sophistication goes up, rarely down. 

The whining disparity: Male struggle is invisible to most women

Successful men have an incentive to hide how hard getting to the top and staying there is, because women don’t like weak men who whine and complain about not getting laid… or almost anything else. Guys who have some success must present it like it’s easy and organic to women, despite the fact that almost all guys experience a lot of rejection and difficulty when it comes to dating… but this can’t be stated, because the unsuccessful men die off, figuratively, in her world and her attention. Women internalize the idea that men have it easy, because that’s what a lot of successful men are marketing… because they (we) think women demand it. When a market demands fantasy, sellers offer fantasy.

“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.

The time horizon question

Lately I’ve been talking about time horizons and how there’s frequently a tension between what’s optimal in the short term versus the long term: when you’re thinking about an action, set of actions, program, program of study, etc., it’s useful to consider “tonight” “this week” “this month” “this year” “this decade” “these two decades.” Some guys can have great days, or great weeks, that don’t add up to anything, a topic that arises due to The curious, cautionary fates of many of the guys who go deep into game and Internet. The question is, can guys get different time horizons in alignment, despite those time horizons being in tension with each other?

A great night tonight might mean this, but if you do that every week, that’s catastrophic. A great decade might mean a lot of grinding work, but without any of the things that can make life worth living. Many top guys figure out how to balance their time horizons, and many ineffective guys focus exclusively on the short term (girls of course do the same, but girls face a different set of game constraints than men do). Sugar is short term, measured in seconds or minutes, as are video games, measured in hours. But developing special and unique skills might take years, and yet you won’t develop them if you don’t put the work in every day. On a day-by-day basis, it might be fun to f**k around, and then watch as months or years pass, that time put into a video game machine or bong, instead of something lasting, sustainable, and meaningful.

When I speak of how there is no easy way, there is only the hard way, I’m saying that top guys usually have to focus on doing this today that might not bear fruit for months or years. It’s easy to misinterpret red quest as a work and philosophy because you only see the tip of the spear: you read a work that’s the result, often, of decades of work. Top guys manage to think short and long term: a great experience right now, but also a set of activities and strategies that’ll help guys “build wealth slowly” as xbtusd likes to say. What’s great in the short term may be poisonous long term. I can’t tell you how to optimize your life, but I can tell you you should be aware of this principle. In sexual terms, I’ve tended to optimize for short-term activities: hours to months. In the last year or two, I’ve been trying to change that, and instead focus on years to decades… which may mean moving against my feral player instincts. Can I lay the foundations for a good life, long term, or will I be waylaid by my desire for carnal sluts? Tune in next year to find out.

Some Internet can be good, too much is bad. I’ve been doing too much. What? I’m not perfect, I make mistakes.

If there’s a message in red quest besides “group sex is fun and people should try it out, and here’s how to do it” it’s “things are complex and resist simple / easy answers.” Most of us want easy answers, most of us have limited attention spans, most of us are ineffective… with the results seen everywhere. This post isn’t immediately actionable in a universal way, like “lift” or “don’t eat sugar” or “call your mom” is, but it applies to many of us, if not most.

The curious, cautionary fates of many of the guys who go deep into game and Internet

Tom Torero has died, and he is said to have died by suicide. RIP. I don’t recall when or how I first started reading him, but it was many years ago, and I bought some of his books. I remember finding both DAYGAME and BELOW THE BELT (neither seem available on Amazon right now, sadly) amusing and at times inspiring: though, like many guys interested in these matters, there seemed to be a thread of darkness running through his soul + writings. He was smart, and I’m saddened by his passing.

There is a line of intellectual descent running through many guys interested in pickup or seduction, and it seems many guys found his work. Right now, the TomTorero.com domain seems dead, and I wonder if anyone has a backup of his material.

A few years back, Torero asked if I’d be on his podcast: for reasons of anonymity, I said no, though I listened to some episodes. If he’d been born centuries ago, he might have been a priest, or a heretic, the line between those two positions being thin. Heresy attracts me.

I’m saddened, and have read some of the memorials devoted to Tom, and I’m also thinking about others who have trod, if not his path, then paths adjacent to him: Roosh found god and has become… a curious personage, to be polite, although many less-polite descriptions are possible. If you wish to have him exhort you to find god yourself and stop sleeping with hot chicks, you can do so, though I don’t personally wish to.

Another guy, Goldmund, tried to monetize game and being a game coach for a number of years, before disappearing for a while and then coming back around, apparently also in some kind of spiritual/religious cast, after family tragedy. I find his recent work and exhortations… not compelling. That he’s done a 180, though, is notable. Why should we believe he won’t randomly change again? He is scientifically and technically illiterate, something he shares with others in this space.

“How did you figure all this out?” On women and dating

A guy at reddit asks that rarest of things, an interesting question, which got started from this post. The guy says, “I was the outsider for a long time (I box professionally) so I had this idea that it doesn’t matter what the average person says or think, I can do whatever I want. I was super disagreeable and would keep grudges (and of course I lost friends like that). This was my most recent realisation, after finishing my study abroad year in Madrid. Having (the right) friends give you an unwavering amount of confidence and motivation, whether it’s picking up a girl or starting a business.”

Furthermore, “the contrast thing is also very true. A lot of my friends think I get girls mostly because of boxing plus I study at a top university in the UK, but the reality is because I paint and post it on Instagram.” Yet he says grew up in poverty. He asks, though: “how did you figure all this out?” It took me a while to figure out how to answer him, because to answer it with any level of honesty demands detail. So I took a shot:

Getting hit in the face (figuratively, mostly, took boxing lessons but never fought), failing, flailing, struggling, reading Peter Thiel (one of the great geniuses of our age, even when he’s wrong), reading broadly + deeply (the people who tell you fiction is a waste of time are dumb), observing, practicing, feeling humiliated by rejection from chicks, realizing some chick is saying “ljbf” before she goes off to get railed half an hour later, trying to figure things out, reading pickup / game / red pill blogs (for too long now, though I’ve learned much from these guys, even some of the crazy ones), studying Bayesian statistics, studying statistical thinking more generally, talking to guys. Some of the “how did you figure all this out?” is just an interest in puzzles, of which human social life presents many. A lot of guys are stuck in an overly simplistic mindset, where they think “iff a, then success” when in reality “a” may be helpful, but success is rarely, if ever, monocausal. That overly simplistic mindset is evident in many comments online, many of which are so incomplete as to be effectively wrong. Many aspects of success in social life are not only not monocausal, but they’re a matter of balancing opposites: an idea many Internet users reject.