Could Instagram be becoming an important adjunct to game?

I’m at heart a pragmatist: I look at what works with chicks, then do that. For a long time, my impression has been that most social media use is a feminine, low-status move… as Nash says, “Instagram is for girls.” As far as I can tell, minimal social media presence has been a net benefit to me, not a drawback, because chicks associate social media with their girlfriends and orbiter guys. Maybe some guys with stratospherically interesting lives have been able to leverage it, but if they have stratospherically interesting lives they probably don’t need it, either.

This comes up because of a Twitter conversation between Nash and Seven Daygame, as well . Nash mentions the “no social media post” I linked above. He also says,

You have to look at WHY she said [Instagram]:

— If she uses that as a “shit test,” my line will help
— If she was not that into you… nothing will help

IG is a “holding cell for orbiters.” I never want in there.

Sometimes I can show strength when I reject IG, and she’ll like.

Another comment from Smirking Soldier. That’s interesting, because in the last year or so, I have noticed more chicks trying to give me their Instagrams and more chicks talking about starting to date guys based on Instagram flirting (that post I linked is from two years ago… interesting… Guys badly want social media to work. Here’s why it (mostly) doesn’t is from this year).

A guy DM’ed me because I said that “It could be that this rule/principle is shifting.” My net read is that Instagram is still a slight negative. But I’m now seeing chicks on it everywhere… when I glance at a girl holding a smartphone, she seems to be on it. I’ve heard some chicks say they’re surprised when I say I think it’s a waste of time… not good surprised, which can have an element of confusion to it… negative surprised, like they’d reply to someone who says he thinks deodorant is a capitalist conspiracy. Chicks I’ve slept with have been very eager to sign me up to follow their Instagram… which is fine, as I know they increase their follower count (seems to be important to them), while I don’t interact beyond that.

So while I’m net negative on Instagram, I’m open to revision, and I have to be: if it turns out that Instagram is a form of social media that increases lays… then I guess I need to be working it harder. Guys are the sellers and girls are the buyers in the game… the only exceptions are guys who are so high-value that the market flips, like with famous guys. That’s probably less than 1% of guys and I’m not in that 1%. For the rest of us, it’s game, it’s learning how to read the market and respond to it. If you run a failing business and the market doesn’t appreciate what you’re selling, it doesn’t matter how badly you want to sell it or think the market should appreciate the product… the market has spoken.

It could be that guys working the “broadcast” model (they never interact with the chicks’s accounts and let chicks reply to them) of social media are doing all right… that appears to be Seven and Smirking Soldier above.

I’ve also thought about posting erotic but not nude or pornographic stills from video cips (no girls’s faces in them). Probably too explicit, but the thought has entered my mind before. A bit like the SnapChat in Game gambit. That might just screen chicks, though, leaving the ones who are horny or whatever. It will also piss off the women in the screen grabs, if they learn about this, which they might, even doing them as stories.

Game fundamentals are eternal, like masculinity, facing your fears, approaching the chicks, etc. But some aspects of the game change with the culture and technology. Could be that we’re witnessing that change now.

Being adaptable is good. I’m not a huge fan of being a digital sharecropper, which seems to be what a lot of online systems encourage. But I’ll do the things that increase the bang rate, and if that means Instagram, then damnit it’s time to do it. The other thing, though, is that most of my everyday life… is just not super interesting. I work, I think, I read, I go to the gym. Most of it doesn’t DHV. Except maybe to intellectual chicks, who are pretty rare.

So yeah. I’ll also note that I did a little experiment over the last week or so, which has shaken some of my confidence about the relatively good state of the world. Story later.

I’m thinking about patterns… and in the last year, it may have changed, and I may not have changed with it (yet). Chicks adding me to Facebook has been a demonstration of interest for a long time, even though I don’t use it much either.

The gap between demonstrating higher value, “DHV,” and demonstrating lower value, “DLV” can be narrow (more narrow than some guys think). In my experience, no or little social media seems to have been a “DHV” for the last ten or so years. But if that shifts among the hotter young chicks… then it can become a DLV thing where you’re a weirdo for not doing what “everyone else” does. Sometimes, not doing what everyone else does is good… not eating sugar, hitting the weights, interacting with real people in real life… those are things not everyone does that are good. But the deodorant example above is bad. Refusing to get a real job because you want to be true to your “authentic self” by living at home with your parents is typically bad. Etc. And these things can shift. Being a dirty grunge rocker in 1990-1995 seems to have been cool and possibly a path to getting laid. Not so much today.

Earlier today I met a friend for coffee… had two very good interactions with chicks who seemed into me but claimed boyfriends… but they were very pleasant, even in what is technically a rejection. The contrast w/ online is startling. My buddy is in the non-mono community… lower SMV than me, if I can be honest / possibly an asshole. There was an older-but-not-old woman there too, with her big fake tits hanging out, and I left to leave my friend time to get her number. He didn’t… lacks killer instinct… after she left I asked him about it and he said that being in the community makes him lazy. This is probably true, although lazy and cowardly can be pretty close together too, like DHV and DLV. I have my cowardly moments… but I have enough game and enough underlying value to get the multiplier effect going, by bringing new chicks into the non-mono community. Leveraging both game and the non-mono community has led me to great results, in my view, and that is why I have been writing about it, before I leave or dramatically scale back both.

Guys badly want social media to work. Here’s why it (mostly) doesn’t

Whenever I’m wasting time online, I see some guy asking about using social media to attract women, and sometimes I link him to “Men, game, and social media strategies,” which explains why it’s not likely to work, and then “Attention is the only tool modern men have,” which explains why social media is usually poison to strong game. I finally realized, after way too much time had elapsed, why these questions keep coming up: social media is easier (seeming) than other routes of getting laid. It can make guys feel like they’re making progress towards the getting-laid goal (“Look! I got 5 new followers today, bro!”) when in reality they’re not making real progress. Guys should be looking for the hard, authentic way.

Social media feels good because it’s easy, but it’s easy like soda or McDonald’s: all three are traps that ensnare the unwary. Guys imagine that if they just build an intense enough social network, they will get chicks coming to them, or that chicks will be so impressed with their Instagram stories or whatever that the chicks present for sex. I get it. I like the idea of some hot chick messaging me out of the blue for dates/sex. But in reality social media doesn’t or very rarely leads to lays.

Instead, it leads to frustration, because guys don’t realize that most chicks on social media are passively consuming, and the gap between passive consumption and activity in the real world is wide. A few guys who lead fantastically interesting and photogenic lives and can parlay their already interesting lives into an interesting Instagram feed that feeds on itself. DJs, surfers, some photographers, whatever. For the vast majority of normal guys, though, it’s not going to work. I have an account on most of the social media networks and use it only for one-to-one messaging, or sometimes one-to-many messaging. But I hardly post anything to the “story” or to the main feed. I am better off maintaining a sense of mystery.

Again, I am not saying it’s impossible to leverage social media into lays. For most guys, though, it’s not going to work and focusing on social media is a dodge designed to protect against the sting of real life rejection. If you are serious about getting laid, you are better off learning cold-approach pickup. And the worse people’s real-world social skills become, the more valuable cold-approach pickup becomes.

When you do the conventional social media thing, you waste way too much time. You post a bunch of stuff but it doesn’t add up to much. When a chick checks you out, you read like a basic guy, the kind of guy who is easy to “next.” When you post almost nothing, you can come off as intriguing, particularly if you have a strong in-person connection. In person I say things like, “Given how intense the real world is, isn’t it weird how many people waste their lives staring at their phones?” Things like that. Modern chicks, even the ones who waste their lives staring at their phones, will agree. Even social media addicts know social media is mostly garbage.

Do you need more garbage in your life?

Any minute you spend on social media would be better spent 1. In the gym, 2. Outside meeting chicks in the real world, 3. Making money, 4. Reading books, 5. Developing new skills. But you are tempted by social media because it’s easy.

On social media, you can be directly compared to hundreds, maybe thousands, of other guys, all at once. In the real world, you are usually being compared to zero, one, or at most two other guys. In the real world, you can almost immediately assess whether you’ve got a shot with a chick. If she doesn’t like you, she will walk a way, ask you to leave her alone, say she is not interested, etc.: precisely the things most guys are trying to avoid. Experienced players realize this is actually GOOD, because it gets rid of “no girls” right away.

This explanation is not going to stop guys from asking how to leverage social media, because everyone is looking for an easy way up the mountain. There is no easy way. When you get up the mountain, you realize the folly of seeking the easy way up.

“The only guys who like your pictures are the ones you don’t want to like your pictures”

I was listening to and nominally participating in an inane female conversation about social media, and two women were talking about Instagram and the unwritten “rules” about posting to Instagram. At one point I just interjected and said, “The only guys who like your pictures are the ones you don’t want to like your pictures.”

They agreed that I “got it.” One asked me if I have Instagram, and I truthfully said that I have an account but don’t use it. For some reason a lot of chicks like to tell me about the pictures of whatever thing they did and will then sign me up to follow them on Instagram. Fine with me, but I don’t interact or look at it.

I told them that if they want to find higher-quality guys, they should spend less time on social media and more time in the real world. One agreed and one argued that social media was “fun” and “important.” There was nothing to argue again because the point is so inane.

For guys, liking a woman’s social media posts is just a demonstration of lower value. Women know this yet many guys do it anyway. Women who post pictures of themselves in pretty addresses or bikinis get endless waves of validation and attention, but deep inside the women themselves know that the attention is meaningless.

Online and off, less is often more. I do use some Facebook and WhatsApp, but for me the main purpose is to focus on meeting up. Any woman you can’t get on a date might as well be invisible to you.

Social media is deceptive because it can make a guy think he’s making progress when in actuality he is either not making progress or is actively moving himself back. Generic likes and “so hot” comments just convey thirst.

I did tell those two girls that my most interesting social media is anonymous and NSFW, which is true and intrigued them, but I refused to give specifics. Holding back is sometimes better than spewing out.

I have a bunch of other stories to write, including one about Bike Girl’s first foursome, with a couple who I’ve known for a while from the sex-club scene. I also have a half-written post about swinging and non-monogamy for RP guys.

This is a continuation of my points in “Men, game, and social media strategies.” In my view, guys are well-served by minimal interactions on social media.

Men, game, and social media strategies

As far as I can tell, there are two good, functional social media strategies for guys thinking about the game. Strategy one is the one I follow: no or minimal presence. I have an Instagram account but don’t use it and have never used it, despite my interest in photography. I have a Snapchat account but only use it for 1:1 communication. Facebook is there mostly so I can chat with women, again 1:1. Some women who disappear on text will reappear when contacted through other mediums, and this has led me to some lays. Less is more with any form of communication (which is a form of scarce, valuable attention).

The other strategy is to fully play and invest in the social media game. That means consciously only posting pictures that demonstrate higher value, which usually means action shots, or shots of you with lots of different pretty girls who provide a form of social proof. To me this looks hard to pull off, try-too-hard, and exhausting, but it seems possible to leverage this when it’s combined with other game. I don’t think the cost-benefit is there, but I know a couple guys who seem to work this angle. Don’t know how successful it is because everyone lies about their sex lives, but I suppose it’s possible to generate lays via social media for some guys.

In either case, public interaction with a girl’s statuses or pics should be minimal or nonexistent. You’re a busy guy living in the real world who isn’t here to water thirsty women. We’ve all seen the thirsty “like cascades” any moderately attractive woman gets when she posts a basic pic of herself in a dress or bikini. Those “likes” are obvious demonstrations of lower value. I’d love to omit this paragraph as being bloody obvious but these things happen all the time. I rarely use social media and even I see them. Facebook and Instagram appear to be the worst platforms for attention-seeking girls. When I hear girls talking about them I like to poke fun at their interest in lame guys who are creeping on them online all day. Usually this gets laughs and good engagement. Girls know the validation is shallow but they crave it anyway.

Most guys I know seem to choose neither good strategy. They use social media way too much. They post dumb shit that demonstrates lower value. They toss off thirsty “likes” and compliments. They’re promiscuous, unconscious users who don’t integrate any strategy into what they do, and in the process they waste their effort. Don’t be those guys. Most of the guys I work with, especially the ones who aren’t getting ahead, do this. Guys who give their attention away show that their attention has no value.

Everything you say, write, or post on social media can come back to haunt you. I’ve seen this happen.

Someone just posted about the value stoicism has in their life. I loved that post. Social media is usually the opposite of stoicism. Before you post, stop to ask: 1) will this post help move me toward getting laid? 2) what good thing can happen as a result of this post? 3) what would Marcus Aurelius do this position? 4) what does the man I admire most do on social media (I thought hard about this one… the guys I admire most, who I actually know, don’t have much time for this shit, and they know it’s not going to get them laid).

When you check social media and post there, what are you not doing? You’re not thinking for yourself. You’re not at the gym. You’re not learning new skills, like Shibari or riding a motorcycle or photography. You’re in an intermediate state that is neither being nor doing. The guys who pursue the second strategy I mentioned above are at least consciously pursuintg their goals via social media. I’ve read guys saying social media is poison and while I don’t 100% agree they have a point.

Social media is video games for women, and men should play a better game. Most guys have a short window (one month at most, often just a week) between meeting a woman and getting her in bed. Social media interaction is not a good way to spend that time and if anything demonstrates lower value. Doing things is man frame, while talking about things is female frame. Prefer to do things. Are you watching others, or are others watching you? Why? You should be able to answer the question. When you have sexual abundance, you won’t care much about social media.

Plus: “The only guys who like your pictures are the ones you don’t want to like your pictures.”