Why I don’t accept most generalizations about men and women and you shouldn’t either

In a private chat, Red Pill Dad and xbtusd have been talking about their respective experiences and the qualities that might be possessed by different women at different ages. Each of them has stereotypes and generalizations supported by their experiences, yet they’re very different guys who live in different places and have led different social, economic, educational, and dating lives. Their conversation reminds me of the dangers of generalization.

Think about the tiny number of people you’ve interacted with in your life. I have maybe, I don’t know, 2 – 10 people, depending on how you count, who I’m very or pretty close to (know a lot about means I know a lot about them), maybe a couple dozen I know a little bit well, a couple hundred who I vaguely know, somewhat recently, by first name or face (could be 1,000), maybe 10,000 I might conceivably have interacted with since I was a freshman in high school (maybe a bit more, maybe less)… that’s not a lot of people, if you think about it… some of these numbers might be a little low, but even if you assume I’ve had some vague interaction with 30,000 people over the last 30 years, that’d be 1,000 a year, way too many for more than idle passing on the street, that sort of thing… 500 a year is probably too many, even counting schools… point is, however one slices these numbers, I don’t have substantial interactions with that many people, and I haven’t, in my whole life. I checked, the United States has 330 million people in it, and 330 million is a huge number, so huge humans can’t comprehend it.

The network approach and the shotgun approach: why and when girls flake in dating

Consider two Hollywood screenwriters: one is fresh out of school and knows no one, or almost no one, in the business, but he’s written a couple of screenplays and, for the sake of this hypothetical, he’s got some talent. He gets to Hollywood and what’s he going to do? He’s got no connections anywhere in the business, although he’s read lots of those memoirs about how other guys made it, so he sends his screenplays to every single player out there. Writers, directors, agents. The vast majority don’t reply, and he doesn’t get even a rejection. Damien Chazelle, Chris Pratt, Chris Hemsworth, all the Hollywood “Chrises,” Ari Gold, they all say “no” by saying nothing. Somehow, though, someone bites, a little… Jonah Hill let’s say… and Hill or Hill’s people like the SF action pitch—reminds them a little bit of a modern Pitch Black, but could the writer make it funny, too? Maybe they’ll pay him a little bit for this, but, compared to the work he’s doing teaching spoiled brats the SAT and waiting tables, it’s a lot of money. He has no idea how to make it a comedy but he starts work, cause what else is he going to do? His other screenplays go nowhere. He starts a novel at the same time.

Then there’s our other screenwriter. He’s in the business… maybe he got in through family connections, a working writer in a school saw potential in him, he got lucky, whatever. He knows some people in the business, and he’s been working on a screenplay that he knows will be right for someone, let’s say Chazelle for purposes of this hypothetical. He’s already met Chazelle at industry functions, maybe done a little blow with him in a bathroom, whatever. Both of them think T.C. Boyle’s novel DROP CITY would make a great movie but neither has ever been able to get it made. Our screenwriter says, “You know, we could never do DROP CITY right, but I’ve got a kinda similar story, set in the ’80s though, against the AIDS crisis, we should do it.” Chazelle reads it, likes it, has some suggestions, they work on it together for a while. One or both of them know the right actors for it. Their agents like the project. In effect, our screenwriter #2 is never really rejected. He’s a known quantity to others in the business, working with other known quantities. Now, the project may fall apart… maybe Ryan Gosling hates Chazelle now for some reason… but screenwriter #2’s journey is nothing like screenwriter #1’s. If you ask each about the nature of being a screenwriter, they’ll have wildly divergent opinions.

The application of game to this metaphor ought to be obvious, but since this is the Internet let me spell it out: the raw cold approach guys are #1. They often have limited network/friend circles. They don’t do that much cool shit, or “cool shit” as hot chicks would define it. They’re guys I’m talking to in Parties, and Festivals, parties, etc. and the network’s power, and other things like that. I have some things in common with them because I’ve done some cold approach… but for the past ten or twelve years, it’s not really been my modality… I’ve focused more on sex clubs, which are themselves a kind of network. Sex clubs + non-monogamy are also fun cause I can slot new chicks into that network, if I meet the right chicks and such. I also like doing them.

Festivals, parties, etc. and the network’s power

Festivals, concerts, the parties that go with them… I read almost no guys writing about them online. So… let’s talk about what happens, within my limitations, because I don’t have a lot of experience with music festivals and concerts, since they don’t match my personality properly… but I know people who do these things and can infer their power. I think the guys who get laid the most, with the hottest chicks, develop a network or ecosystem of people… the people who go usually have friends or make friends, and I think a lot of them have access to drugs that make them more open to meeting people (including chicks) and to offer access, just by starting with basics like, “What have you seen tonight?” “Are you girls rolling or what?”

Also, exposure is one way to get chicks. If you see a chick at two or three different venues, a logical open is, “Did you see at [place]? I think so.” Even a little bit of familiarity can pry open a closed chick. I have seen guys at parties just go by and say “Hey, what’s up?” to almost everyone they see at a party… then next time they’re like, “Hey did I see you at [venue]?” They’re planting lots of seed. At festivals with thousands of people this works less well but even among festival people I think the same faces will show up again and again.

Most importantly, many girls are in a flirtatious and open frame of mind… outside of their “everyday” mode. Party drugs (ecstasy, molly) can make people open to doing things they might not do otherwise. Some chicks like coke. That seems like less a sex/love drug and more of a… I don’t know what to call it.

The best people seem to have good logistics and things like afterparties planned and ready to go. The guys who do really well here seem to have broad, shallow networks. They meet lots of people (men and women), collect lots of numbers, and then keep in contact with people and facilitate connections. Many guys will have lists of girls and ask “Are you going to yyy venue/party this weekend?” Sometimes the hookup happens there, sometimes on a date after, etc. Lots of girls fall away… but the power of the network is high. Because it’s about the network and a momentum strategy, most guys aren’t going to show up and get laid… they are going to need to learn the world and the world’s rules, and meet some of the people in it. The winners building winning systems.

Drugs… are dangerous. They can be addictive. It is fine to like them but awful to need them. The other problem with drugs, apart from addiction, is that they destroy a lot of time. Many people after molly/ecstasy need like 48 hours or longer to recover. Alcohol is like this too of course. But if you come to rely on these things or do them too much, they will compromise your other goals in terms of fitness, finance, career, etc. I have seen men and women turning 30, 35, whatever, and realizing that their life consists of a series of parties and drug experiences and sex experiences, but… there is not much to show for it.

Most lives need balance. If you are compromising your other goals… you will suffer for it… the quality of your life, family, career, and development will suffer for it. Drugs can be an aid to reaching other people but they can also be very destructive. It’s also easy to get into dangerous credit card debt and have your financial life fall apart.

One thing… I have been at the outskirts of these worlds sometimes… and I can see their power but also their selection bias. The chicks in them are selected for being sex-positive s**ts. So other girls… may become unavailable to you or just less interesting. But some of them… are also good.

Sometimes in real life I’m really attracted to chicks I wouldn’t find appealing online. And that’s true of chicks too. Real life has seduction/feedback/eye contact mechanisms lacking online. We’ve spent our whole evolutionary history evaluating each other in the real world, and like 20 years evaluating each other online… then we are surprised when problems emerge from online.

Guys writing pickup material were almost all social ret**ds for most or all of their lives (a lot still are). They are introverts trying to work with their introversion. Their loner nature limits their social networks. So the things normal guys do for girlfriends and sex, don’t apply to most of the pickup guys. Because of their personalities, they’re blind or semi blind to some types of ecosystems.

These guys doing festivals etc. also have compelling pics, often with pretty girls, and use those to judiciously seed social media accounts. The average guy who spends his days playing video games, watching porn, etc., doesn’t have any of that visual social proof. He literally doesn’t spend enough time with women to understand them properly. His weaknesses are a kind of reverse Matthew Effect. As he gets weaker, he gets weaker, instead of stronger.

Also… if you meet real women… most of them are not like the resentniks online say they are. Yes, there are some bad ones. Yes, many of them will take free value if it’s offered to them (as many guys do). Most of them… are struggling. In ways different from the ways a lot of guys suffer, but not that different. Talk to them enough and you will see their struggle.

There are many good things about pickup seduction and red pill guys. There are also some blindspots, like with any movement/ideology. I want to talk about their positives but I also want to surface some of the blindspots. The world is huge and any person’s place in it tiny. We all mistake our realities for reality.

I’m not 100% sure how to get a guy totally outside the festival/concert/etc. scenes, into them. Just start going? Ask your friends (you have some of them, right?) to go? On this blog I often talk about how to get antisocial loser newbies going (example), but this is one area where I’m not sure how to do that.

One thing to ask is what value you’re bringing. Are you ripped? Do you set up photobooths? Do you have drug connections? Do you make connections among different people? Do you have an afterparty set up and ready to go? Guys should ask these questions and have good answers for them. Chicks bring value just by showing up and being hot. Guys… should try to answer this question. Just being there is okay but I think the better guys go past this.

In-person meetings are just more powerful and immediate than online meetings… online used to work… now everyone is online and it doesn’t. A common theme of my writing is that guys with good sex lives have good social lives. Usually that means minimizing the modern online bullshit of video games, TV, and social media. Top guys develop skills and abilities and social lives that are consistent with getting laid. This is why so much of the seduction conversation is hard… it’s almost never one single thing that gets guys laid… it’s a bunch of things. I have been trying to explain the things I do and I have realized that it’s not one thing, it’s a bundle of things.

Exceptional effort (that is effective) = exceptional results.

Like everything else in life.

Some recent experiences have me thinking about this (I hadn’t been able to capture this facet orf what I do until those experiences). And just observing the world around me. Almost no guy I know seems to have gotten the best sex life just via online. Maybe the ones who are super attractive and don’t need it that much.

Even within game… the best conversations are happening outside public spaces. I didn’t understand that when I started writing this blog, the best insights wouldn’t be posted publicly, they’d come from chats, emails, etc. If you are only living on the public side of the game world, you’re missing out.