Tag: pickup

Things Red Pill and pickup get right about men and women

A guy asked me about what I think is true and useful in red pill, since I’ve written out some criticisms… it’s a good question… I thought about it… and came up with some answers…

1. Women (mostly) get their value; men (mostly) earn their value

An attractive woman who doesn’t eat too much sugar and isn’t ridiculously lazy gets a lot of social and sexual value as a teenager, and that value stays with her well into her 30s (where it can drop suddenly… a lot of women are surprised by the drop). She doesn’t have to do much to get and maintain her value. Men, by contrast, mostly have to earn our value through achievement. “Achievement” can mean a lot of different things.

“Mostly” is key because there are exceptions. Women can squander their value, and some get screwed genetically, and some get screwed behaviorally by their families (if your family feeds you a bunch of garbage simple carbohydrates and sugar, then a lot of the value will go away or never arrive). Some guys have great physical attractiveness and that works with women, for a long time, without great effort… a few guys get a lot of value without having to do much work for it. There are exceptions but the overall correlation is clear.

2. Most guys don’t understand women.

By failing to understand women or what women want/feel, most guys screw up their game.

3. Women are attracted to winners.

What “winners” means can mean a lot of different things to different women… but a guy who wins at something is going to do better than a guy who doesn’t.

4. Family courts in the United States are set up to attack men

Family courts take men’s money and children away, and there is very little a man can do to stop that process. Real world divorce should be required reading for any man contemplating marriage.

5. Schools are biased against men

Same as #4, but with schools. Parents need to resist schools’s desire to medicate boys, especially younger boys. I don’t want to spend too much time b**ching about bias… the solution to bias is to work harder than the other guy… but it is real and exists.

6. Men are performance oriented.

Video games are poisonous because they give the simulacrum of performance with none of the outcome from the real thing (as a side hobby they can be okay… for a lot of guys they are not a side hobby). “Performance” can mean lots of things, so this is similar to #3, and high, sustained performance leads to #1: achievement.

In terms of men and women “performance” is usually measured by, “are you f**king the chick?” If you f**k her… that is an unambiguous performance success measure… because it’s unambiguous… a lot of guys prefer softer, squishier metrics.

7. Game works. Pickup works.

The game and pickup practices work, if a guy is willing to put in the effort and practice. “Works” will vary by guy… a guy who is male 4 is still unlikely to get female 7s… but the tools are available for a guy to improve his sex and social life, relative to where he starts, if he wants to… most guys don’t, not really.

8. Chicks are usually more passive, and guys need to be more active

Especially with sex/dating, guys need to make the first move… and make things happen… most chicks will accept or reject offers and do little to move things along for themselves. Men create civilization, women live in it (and raise the next generation). Magnum likes to say that women veto. When I was younger I thought women were kind of like defective men because of their inability to propose, plan, and execute. Now I realize that different isn’t the same as defective… if you expect a cow to be a dog you will usually be disappointed.

Many guys don’t understand that it is our responsibility to ask her out, arrange the date, kiss her, escalate, etc. She won’t do it, much. At most she might make it a bit easier by staring at you, playing with her hair, etc., but even that is unusual. Chicks go through the first half of their lives with guys doing things.

9. If you work, you will get better.

This is not a strictly red pill idea, but red pill guys emphasize growth and growth mindset over static/fixed mindset. Trying hard and practice matter, and yet “trying hard” isn’t sufficiently emphasized in the United States and most of Western society. We influence our own destinies, and the harder we try, the more we influence. “Influence” is not the same thing as “100% control…” we are all somewhat restricted by the circumstances of birth, family, genetics, etc. But within those parameters, the people who work to seize control, get more control. If you believe you will fail… you are probably right… if you believe you can’t change… you are probably right…

10. On average, differences between men and women exist

This is pretty straightforward… you can overemphasize differences (a lot of red pill/pickup guys do) but you can also underemphasize them (media is super guilty of this).

In any community or set of ideas, one can also elevate and emphasize some ideas at the expense of others. When guys emphasize improving themselves and practicing new skills, that’s good. When guys emphasize what they perceive as being wrong with the broader society or culture, they often seem either wrong outright or at least misguided.

Red pill dad has a summary of “basic red pill things.” I think the distinction in #4 is rarely clean cut… and I think #9 is mostly untrue… but the others I mostly buy.

I’m sure I’m missing things, and this isn’t meant to be comprehensive… but there is little game happening during the pandemic, so we get more speculation and, sadly, fewer field reports… I have speculated that the pandemic will change the game… probably by making chicks more k selected, and less r, on average. When we have a lot of money, low disease burden, and extra resources, we can afford to f**k around a lot more. Cross-subsidies in relationships don’t matter as much. Can the woman not cook, but she’s good in bed? That’s okay, order takeout. Can the man not earn, but he’s hot and a practiced dom? That’s okay, she’ll get a job of her own. When we see incomes collapse and uncertainty rise… we’ll see more k. The opposite, more r. That’s my guess… it could be wrong… and it also only takes a few outliers for a “trend” to feel wrong, even if it is overall correct.

Women hate the demystification of romance: commodities, artisans, and the game

Women hate game but simultaneously women hate guys with no game. Players look at this and initially think those two views make no sense together, because on the surface they doesn’t… women should want guys to learn game and learn how to please women, instead of repulsing women with awkward banter, technical talk, sports talk, politics, terrible fashion, video games, etc. Yet we have all seen game demonized by some women and feminists, who also complain that there are no “good” men (and there’s some truth to their complaint, since men don’t learn how to be effective with women). I would probably never tell a woman in real life about consciously practicing “the game,” although I have encouraged a few to read Neil Strauss (they hate THE GAME the book).

What gives? The seduction and sex process is probably shrouded in more mystification than any other common human activity… the whole culture is collectively blowing so much smoke around seduction and sex that women don’t understand it either, and thus many women encourage men to do things that the woman herself doesn’t like, like “Just be nice to her,” fine advice if you are +2 or +3 relative to her in SMV and bad advice if you are not. Men don’t understand the seduction process or women.

What happens when you remove the mystification and understand the process? Men get more power (a few of us do, anyhow) and often, as a result, become less interested in commitment. Women hate game because it demystifies romance and pushes sex with a woman just a little bit closer to commodity status. A little economic theory for you, no one wants to be a commodity because a commodity can be made by many producers, pushing profit to zero or near zero. Everyone wants to be differentiated because a differentiated product can earn profits above the market rate. Apple makes more money than a thousand white-box computer makers because Apple is differentiated from white box makers; if consumers wanted to maximize income we would all be buying white box computers running Linux and a web browser. Most computer users prefer the branded experience though and producers want to create brand mystique so they can charge higher prices. Mystification can help everyone win. I’m writing this on a Macbook not a whitebox Linux laptop, so I’m as guilty as anyone, and I know enough to know better.

Many guys think, “What do women want?” “I don’t understand women.” “I got lucky.” If they learn evolutionary psychology and game, they figure out what women want and how to deliver it, with much greater consistency and reliability than if we don’t learn evolutionary psychology and the game. Many women have nothing of value in their lives apart from their p***y, so, if you reduce the value of that by learning game, they end up being commodities. Hot guys with good game take them for a ride then decline commitment, leaving her feeling used and unhappy. So women demonize game and think romance should “Just happen” like it does in the romance novels they masturbate to. At the end of all romance novels a hot guy wifes up a woman… usually a woman who is lower SMV than him.

Many women are frustrated because they find it easy to get a guy +2 SMV for sex but can’t get him for a relationship. The guy who is even SMV or -1 to her might be willing to do a relationship but he doesn’t have the value she seeks. To quote David Buss’s advice to a female colleague, “She is an 8 chasing after 10s but being pursued by 6s. It dawned on her that pursuing men just outside of her mate-value range was the source of her misery. Why would it take my intelligent friend so long to come to this realization? Her belief was encouraged by high-mate-value men who gave her cues to long-term mating interest—acting helpful, taking her to nice restaurants, displaying interest in her personal life, finding common interests that they shared. Men interested in casual sex commonly provide misleading long-term cues because they work.” (Source, Buss’s book, When Men Behave Badly.) Many women thrash in this trap for a long time… the ones who thrash in it too long end up being spinsters and writing those stories about why hot rich men won’t “man up” and marry 38-year-old women past their prime. Sex and the City is the fantasy version of women who play the field and somehow everything magically works out for them. Cultural narratives can deliver on fantasy that differs from reality.

Game improves male SMV but also makes the guy choosier and less likely to commit. A guy with many options won’t be as interested in committing as a running-to-fat guy whose chief hobby is video games, with pr0n and TV secondary.

Economic history has parallels to this: starting with the Industrial Revolution, people began figuring out how to produce artisanal goods at mass scale. Artisans fought like hell against mass manufacturing because they argued mass-produced goods can never be as pure and honest (or whatever) as hand-crafted goods. Everyday consumers were like, “LOL whatever bro” and bought cheap + functional. Entrepreneurs used factories to demystify the production process and make high-skill artisans redundant. The children of artisans ended up working in factories because that’s where the efficiency was, and thus where the wages were. Today some artisanal commodity goods have high status again among some people, but the vast majority of us buy cups and plates and clothes that have been inexpensively made by machine. Ikea, Target, and Amazon rule.

Early artisans were angry but ineffective, because machine-made goods were and are better, and the superior product wins over time. We now have the term “luddite” from nineteenth century anti-technology groups who failed to stop technological development. Women also don’t want game entrepreneurs to apply evolutionary psychology to the dating and sex process because they want to be artisanal producers, not commodity products. No woman, except a few unusual women like evolutionary biologist Diana Fleischman, will characterize the situation this way, but the instinctive anger reaction is there. Women like a guy who “just gets it” and shows his intelligence, charisma, etc. by “just getting it.” Women hate the idea that average guys can counterfeit (or, more realistically, learn) these traits, then avoid committing financial and attention resources to women. Personally I think these fears are overblown because the vast majority of men are too lazy with insufficient IQs to make any of this happen… but a few will learn game and in the process they might remove themselves from the marriage market. That’s frustrating for women. Smart men are learning from each other and using that learning to reduce female market power.

Continue reading “Women hate the demystification of romance: commodities, artisans, and the game”

Bodi’s book *Death by a Thousand Sluts*, on pickup and escaping being a gamma

I read Bodi’s book Death By a Thousand Sluts, Part Two… the content is very good but the book effort itself has some half-assed qualities, as it does not even include mobi or epub versions, though the writing itself is often very funny and misanthropic… much funnier than the handful of stupid celebrity memoirs I have picked up, like a half-wit. Bodi seems to (seemed to?) hate everyone, including himself, yet, fortunately, he is unwilling to off himself, and thus we have his two memoirs. Hate, despair, and contempt are very bad internal emotions for anyone trying to achieve anything social, including picking up chicks, so getting over those internal emotions is a huge part of his battle.

Although the book’s topic is Bodi’s internal journey and game experiences… if you read it, you will notice how much of it is really about Bodi’s relationship to Krauser, like an abused wife who cannot leave her man. Bodi cannot leave his guru/teacher/abuser but cannot not leave him either, and the scenes between them, as well as his love-hate for Krauser, could itself be a book, “Krauser & Me: A Love Story.” I’d read it.

For guys, the meta lessons from this book, *Death by a Thousand Sluts*, are to lift, to have or find purpose, and to focus on craftsmanship. Bodi doesn’t lift and consequently he is probably less attractive to women than he would be otherwise. This seems to be one of Krauser‘s hurdles as well, as his books include some photos of him, and he often looks like a head of cattle the day ax falls. That he can have that bad a body and yet still achieve game success is testament to the power of game and extreme grinding, but I have found it more pleasant to work out (makes you feel good) and also reap the sexual rewards. That is probably why my game is not that sharp, as I have relied on other dimensions to achieve my ends. If you are the sort of wanker who is spending time on Twitter, you have seen links to Cues of upper body strength account for most of the variance in men’s bodily attractiveness, as well as Hand Grip Strength and Self-Perceptions of Physical Attractiveness and Psychological Well-Being. I will summarize them as “stronger, more cut guys are happier and f**k more.” “Estimates of physical strength determined over 70% of men’s bodily attractiveness.” If you are not working on your physical body as well as your clothes then you are likely just leaving lays on the table for no good reason, except that you love sugar too damn much and need to pump some iron. Go read Arnold’s biography to get pumped for getting pumped.

It is painful at times to read a tale of so much self-sabotage. Bodi seems like he could be fine with women but is ineffective, mostly psychologically. I don’t think I saw the squat or bench press mentioned anywhere.

Having and finding purpose is more nebulous, as you cannot typically find these at a gym (or a gym alone), but they are good for your psychological well-being as well as being attractive for women. Most males, if we don’t create any value at all, begin to feel malaise. Bodi seems to be convinced that he has rarely if ever created value, and the malaise is deep in his soul. He is predominantly fighting against himself.

Do you know those people who, when you ask them about their weekend, always say “it was good” “nothing much” “I watched some TV?” Do not be them. Ideally have specific actions. “I hosted a party” “I went on a date” “I set a new personal record in the gym” “I learned how to make a bookshelf at the local Home Depot.” Most people actually love to hear about learning new things (that they don’t have to master) and these kinds of hooks allow others to ask follow-up questions. Don’t be a bore and learn to gauge interest, but a guy who has some determination and who is active is more attractive than the opposite. Learn to tell stories around these activities, while soliciting her stories, if she has any. Many chicks are actually quite boring and have done nothing, so it pays to be prepared for that too.

Craftsmanship is learning to enjoy and compound small victories in any domain. It is the process of developing mastery over a skill. I don’t have much more to say about it, but you can read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values Paperback if you’d like some spiritual blather.

Bodi seems not to take pleasure in doing anything well. When this happens, it is both hard to do anything well and also hard to be contagiously interesting. I often talk, for example, on dates, about whatever meals I’ve been learning how to make, and that is an okay short date conversation. I will sometimes tell chicks to show me their knife skills (make them pantomime) and then “show” them the correct way to chop, which is a fine kino moment. I’m not saying you should do the same, but it is a true thing and one that interests chicks. Dinner is a common second/third date.

He seems not to be able to monetize his programming skills into consulting or running his own business… although I wrote the material you have already read before I read this in his book, “This is a lesson I learned and still hold in all aspects of my life. A long time ago I realised that lazing around doing nothing doesn’t make me happy; it makes me feel fidgety and low-value. Free time and relaxation is relative. It’s relative to the work that you do. The less free time you have, the more precious it is. Feeling good is caused by accomplishment and for accomplishment you have to work.” It’s f**king obvious and most people know it instinctively. Has no one ever told it to him? One problem with severe anti-social tendencies is that the guy doesn’t learn the obvious.

I also have had my struggles but nothing in the league of Bodi, so his book is a bit like reading about people born into third-world slums who have little ability to leverage their way out. He just doesn’t seem to be able to make his actions effective enough for him to leverage his way out.

Bodi should do standup, as his sad-sack stories are hilarious and can be made just misogynistic enough to be true but not so much as to alienate the audience. Standup stages are one of the few public arenas where sexual truths can still be uttered.

I have had anti-social tendencies, like you know, but they were balanced against athleticism. Strangely, being anti-social may have helped me deal with rejection more effectively when I was young and entertaining chicks -1 or -2 relative to me. But I was ahead of Bodi in other ways. He has intense fear, even nausea, on dates, has no idea what he’s doing wit chicks, etc. All feelings that were very familiar to me from ages 16 – 22-ish. Obviously I still get those feelings occasionally today, but I know how to squash them and soldier on. If you deeply believe that you are the prize and the chick will be lucky to get you, you have a different world than if you do not believe that. If you don’t, you have to fake it till you make it. Bodi goes through this much later in life but he does go through, which is good.

I believe this story starts at age 36, and, for Bodi, “Like me, in fact, the world scared Steve Jabba. Leaving his job and trying to forge a new life in a now threateningly Red-Pill world worried him and gave him anxiety.” This should worry him and give him anxiety. Careers have trajectories and if you f**k around being an unemployed pickup artist long enough you are likely going to f**k your career and earn real money. Earning real money is not something to be laughed at, as, if you need it, you might really need it. The people who earn large amounts of money usually develop their skills and networks over many years. While there are rare exceptions to this idea, the exceptions are just that, exceptions. Most people who spend years out of the labor market and network market permanently retard their ability to make money. That in turn is going to seriously retard your ability to have a family, assuming you want one eventually.

Most normal chicks also want a guy who they can tell a story about moving towards marriage and kids. Even chicks who will have a little fling cause you get them at the right time and right place. If you live a weird full-time player lifestyle you may be able to have short-term flings with those normal chicks, but you are not going to be able to retain them. Higher value and smarter chicks who want real boyfriends, or guys who they can tell real-boyfriend stories about, are not going to go for this.

Obviously a guy can shoot to be a pure player and forego long-term relationships, and he can shoot for chicks who are okay with this. Lord knows there’s a lifetime of those chicks out there, at least until the player ages out of them.

This is sort of like the male equivalent of a chick who spends all her energy on her appearance. A chick who spends all her energy on her appearance will find that she can be f**ked by some top guys, but the guys she wants the most aren’t going to wife her up. The better, smarter guys with good options are not going to take her seriously, because they don’t take f**kgirls seriously. Chicks with anything going for them are not going to take unemployed players seriously, and they shouldn’t. They might go for adventure with them.

My argument is NOT that guys should become basic corporate drones, wife up a fat chick, and move to the suburbs where she can live vicariously through reality TV, divorce her husband, and take up with a violent, emotionally unstable construction worker because she’s bored. But a guy who becomes an unemployed player is giving up a lot of value and that would worry me and make me anxious because I have the ability to plan for and think about the future.

As long as we are discussing anxieties I might as well let slip one of my own… Bodi says,

Nearly every man I’ve seen that’s exceeded 100 lays has become broken. They can no longer emotionally connect with women. Their circuits are fried from repeatedly going through the ‘attraction cycle’ with an excessive number of partners.

I have been wondering if I am emotionally broken and unable to connect properly, and I have noted the curious, cautionary fates of many “game” guys. I am trying to break that pattern… and also, sadly, not doing as well as I should, or could, as the call of the wild often haunts my dreams. I do not want to be one of those guys, people actually (women do it even more often) who is in the game until the moment he cannot effectively be in the game anymore. I don’t know what to do about this: I’ve idly considered sex addict rehab type things, but they sound unbelievably horrible and, even worse, feminist. How many times can I tell some chick to bend over while I have a camera ready to snap? Do I still want to be doing this in ten years? I don’t think so and yet I find myself doing things that I know are bad for me long term.

Most people, including me, want a story in which their lives are meaningful, and I wonder if too much skirt chasing in itself prevents meaning formation, much as “too little” can. If skirt chasing is a result of some other activity, like being an artist or running a business, then it can be meaningful, but as an end goal in itself, can it? I genuinely don’t know the answer. Failing to chase skirt at all leads a guy to be isolated and with poor women/social skills.

None of the players Bodi konws has a dog, or teaches anyone anything except for game. Family relationships seem tertiary at best. They seem like loners, and functional chicks evaluate a man’s social world.

Back to Bodi anxieties, “I could literally just poke my penis into a woman twice, withdraw then walk out and go home, ecstatic, and update my secret spreadsheet, reverentially.” Laughter. But is her serious? God, I hope he’s not serious. He might be serious. I don’t keep spreadsheets and that sort of thing… not opposed to them, but not for me.

It is also funny reading about people who are obsessed with the evils of socialism and who admire Ayn Rand characters, while simultaneously producing little of economic value themselves. No architects heroically struggling against aesthetic mediocrity in this bunch. Today, I wonder if any of them would try to become Pornhub amateurs as a depraved side gig.

Overall this book shouldn’t be fascinating yet it is, like watching a car crash in a porno or something similarly outlandish and yet compelling. There are also comments beyond the immediate, like,

PUA is a response to societal change. It was born out of Beta men suddenly finding that being able to provide no longer rewarded them with a pleasant, thin, subservient wife, like it previously did. Increasing socialism, feminism, immigration: all have weakened the SMV of Beta men. PUAs are at a unique position in history and sociology; they are a sociological phenomenon which is a response to a specific societal change

I don’t think most guys understand this… yet. Or, they understand, but accept their undersexed lot and the fat chicks surrounding them. But if you want a girl who is better than average, you have to be better than average yourself, or very lucky, or both. It is funny watching fat, or skinny-fat, or otherwise low-value guys who don’t understand why the hotter chicks are not knocking to get them. Bizarrely, many of the PUAs lower their value via video games, but that doesn’t seem to hurt them too much in short-term mating.

Bodi is a long description of mostly what not to do. He does take some action steps which are to be commended. Bodi did a bad course at university and does not seem to have corrected his path. He does seem high IQ because dummies cannot write as coherently as he does. It is a shame that Bodi does not harness his powers via e.g. standup comedy.