Tag Archives: social proof

Admiration & Respect

admiration

One thing I really enjoy about doing the few interviews I’ve done is that they allow me to do a stream of consciousness dialog with another person. I like this because it’s very close to the internal dialoging I do when I’m writing notes or researching a topic. While I was talking with Christian McQueen last week the topic of respect came up and I riffed on this for a bit.

“Be with a woman that admires you… admiration creates a different kind of respect”

I’ve delved into the dynamic of respect in the past, but what I was getting at with this was the ways in which women and men differ in their views of respect. Towards the close of last weeks post I made mention of Girl With A Dragonfly Tattoo’s post on the womanly art of seduction. What I found interesting in her list of seductive qualities was that these aren’t really means of seduction, but rather mindsets women should adopt to maintain a healthy relationship.

As I mentioned in that post, women’s methods of seduction are a lost art, but those means lack real significance if there is no genuine desire for that man. Women can very easily seduce men today. So starved for intimate attention are the majority of men that they create the seductive narrative for themselves; all a woman need do is make it easy for him to believe.

On a woman’s part, seduction doesn’t require much. There was a time I did some investigation into the profiles of professional online escorts. I had followed some links Advocatus Diaboli had offered in a few of his posts about his dealing with escorts, and while there were the prerequisite “pros’ with pornstar bodies and manners to match, the majority of these women were semi-attractive “amateurs” you’d be surprised by if you saw them in casual clothes. These women tended to be in their 30s-40s but what was telling was how each gal sold herself to potential clients.

To the average frustrated husband or sexless mature man I have no doubt these women were like a tall glass of water in the desert. By my own standards they were average, but what I noticed was each woman’s profile offered some variation of “you’ve worked hard, isn’t it time you enjoyed the appreciation you deserve?”, “let me treat you the way you should be appreciated” or “you’ve earned a good time with a woman who knows how to please her man.”

For part-time semi-pro escorts I was impressed by how well they knew their demographic. My guess is more than a few were divorced, but found their ‘niche’ so to speak once they were set up with spousal support. Each of them sold themselves based on at least the feigned mindset which Girl With A Dragonfly Tattoo proposed women (wives) adopt to seduce their men (husbands).

In that list the first of the two articles stood out the most:

Admiration

Virtually all men crave a woman who admires him.  A woman who will listen to him when he’s talking about something he finds interesting, or when he’s giving his opinion.  They want a woman who will be interested and fascinated with what he says – yes, I said fascinated.  It turns them on to be in the presence of a hot woman (his wife) who is also giving him her entire attention and the right kind of feedback that says, “You are such an interesting man!  Omg I want you!  Now!!!”

When was the last time you reacted to your husband like that?  I know… us wives are ridiculously tired, over-achieving, too much to do, have kids hanging off our legs at any moment when we’re at home (or out… at the store trying to deal with a meltdown).  I understand, I’m a wife and mother of two now.  But guess what?  Your husband craves this kind of thing, and if this need is met by you, he will move mountains to ensure your happiness.

Of these two, admiration is the most important. Feigned admiration is the stripper’s secret (as well as the semi-pro escort’s). To the man unused to genuine admiration (that is to say 80%+ of them) this becomes his worst thumbscrew and source of manipulation. Sexual ‘thirst’ is certainly a factor, but men inherently realize the sexual attraction value that a woman’s admiration represents for themselves.

Part of men’s conditioning is recognizing the effect that simple social proof to overt fame has on women. Smart men figure out how to leverage this to their advantage as a part of Game, but most are so starved of that admiration that even marginal displays from women are enough to convince him her intents are genuine.

Truth or Compliments

Private Man had an interesting post regarding his tweet on compliments from women:

My response was thus:

“Compliments = IOIs (Indicators Of her Interest in the man). 80%+ of men are Betas, thus compliments are a rare. Can’t have Betas get the wrong ideas.”

Compliments are considered an expression of admiration for men, but largely supplication for women. In the past I’ve gone into detail about how compliments for women need to be sparse because, for the greater part of women, compliments have very little value to them. In an age of social media and ‘quick-hit ego boosts’ from her girlfriends and symps, compliments are common.

What’s scarce is valuable, so the rare compliment from a high-value Alpha is a solid reinforcer for a woman – from a Beta compliments are a liability; they are an overt expression of interest from a man she has very little interest in beyond his utility to her.

For that same reason, women giving compliments to men they have no genuine admiration for also becomes a liability – even if that liability is just implied to herself. Ergo, women rarely express admiration for a man they genuinely have no true admiration of – it’s too risky. This is why women must be taught (as in Girl With A Dragonfly Tattoo’s post) to be conscious of, and attentive to, delivering compliments to men they’ve committed to, but regard as Beta. Left to their natural impulses women simply avoid complimenting men they have no desire to be held accountable to.

Private Man asks:

What’s wrong with reinforcing a man’s confidence through a compliment? Women adore confident men. The compliment is the opposite of the shit test where a woman tests the mans adversity by artificially creating that adversity by herself.

Not to run him up the flagpole (I have a deep respect for PM), but Private Man answers his own question inadvertently. Women do adore confident men, but by definition a confident man wouldn’t need any reinforcement of that confidence. Once again, women want a man who ‘Just Gets It‘. Any (Alpha) man a woman has a genuine admiration of doesn’t need a confidence boost from her – in fact that boost, and the implied need of it, only raises Hypergamous doubt for her.

Just as with the differing concepts of love and communication, men tend to presume that their concept of admiration is the universal one. The aspects and considerations men base their admiration of other men on are not the same that women use for men. I outlined this a bit in Hysteria, but there is a uniquely female precondition of unqualified social proof women entertain for themselves as a component to their arousal that men (at least heterosexual ones) don’t have for other men.

In other words men who women are unfamiliar with are an unverified commodity to women with regard to arousal / attraction. As you can see in the videos I linked in Hysteria, this unfamiliarity with a man’s real social value (and associated SMV) are easily mimicked when they control the environment and situation. It’s this unfamiliarity and a want to believe in the possibility that a man may possess fame or even simple third-party social esteem that leads to an easy admiration for a man women have just met or are only casually familiar with.

Imaginings

Women’s imagination is one of the best tools in a man’s Game toolbox, but this is so because Hypergamous doubt is also Hypergamous prospect. The same Hypergamy that predisposes a woman to opportunistic sexual strategy also drives her imaginings about its potential fulfillment by unfamiliar men. It’s far easier for a woman to imagine she should admire a man she doesn’t know than for her to appreciate a man she’s already intimately familiar with anything close to that same admiration.

This is what men idealistically want to believe about admiration coming from their wives and long-time girlfriends – that it’s just as sincere as the expressions of admiration, the compliments and inspiration, she’s naturally disposed to give to men she’s unfamiliar with, even when that man was himself when they first met. Compliments and admiration are less believable, not to mention far less forthcoming, when a woman is aware of the person you “really” are in an LTR because hypergamous prospect turns to hypergamous doubt.

As I mention in Frame, the dominant frame you establish and enter into a relationship with sets the tone for that relationship. Sincere admiration and genuine desire are key components to setting that frame before you enter into an LTR or marriage.  You will never experience a more sincere admiration from a woman than while you are single and uncommitted. Her imagination fills in the blanks for her perception of you because you represent the potential of fulfilling her sexual strategy (either Alpha Fucks or Beta Bucks). Once you are committed and a woman has had those blanks filled in by her familiarity with you, admiration and compliments (if any) become something women need to be taught and reminded are something they ought to maintain to keep men interested in them by necessity.

If there is no admiration expressed from a woman while you’re single, or you’ve got to fish for compliments, or you’ve got to plead your case to her that you are someone she should admire, never enter into any kind of commitment with her.

Girl With A Dragonfly Tattoo’s next article of seduction was respect:

Respect

How many men crave respect?  All of them.  They want to be known as the leader of their house, they want their wives to defer to them for decisions – but they want their wives to genuinely do it out of the feeling of respect, not just half-heartedly ask their husbands what they think, but to let them know that they are expressly interested in their husband’s response because of who he is.

They want a woman who looks up to them – who doesn’t try to outshine them or put them down – but who greatly esteems them and their opinions on matters (this ties in directly with Admiration).  They don’t want a wife who will constantly argue and bicker with them over decisions and details, or one who challenges them and their headship constantly.

Respect amongst men and respect amongst women are, again, two differing concepts. GWADT describes her impression of what she perceives men would want in terms of respect from their spouses, but this outline ignores the basic principles of the Desire Dynamic – respect is valueless if it’s an obligation, you cannot negotiate a genuine respect. Men understand this because respect between men is something that is earned, whereas constant social conditioning makes respect for women something to be expected.

Respect for a woman is a given and as such, like compliments, it becomes so cheap a commodity to women they have no concept that it means something entirely different amongst men. In fact, Blue Pill conditioned men are so socially insaturated in a default “respect” for women that it’s become an article of Beta Game among them. Properly trained White Knights make a competition of “out-respecting” one another with their declarations of respecting women. They believe it sets them apart from “other guys” who don’t respect women and thus make them uniquely in touch and identifying with what they’ve been taught women want.

The next time you see some self-evincing meme declaring “a real gentleman does X for a woman” posted on Facebook by one of your Blue Pill friends you’ll understand how valueless the term respect really is to women. I hit on this in my post Respect:

Masculine Respect

So this is my point, women don’t respect men, or rather, they don’t respect the masculine – and most certainly don’t have a default respect for it. They’re taught to be adversarial, not cooperative. Women are taught to relinquish respect, and then only begrudgingly when a man has proven his quality beyond the reach of most men. Masculinity is popularly ridiculed in western culture as it is, but to respect a man is to compete with him, to out-masculine him. Cooperation or even recognizing that the genders could be complimentary is viewed at best as antiquated, at worst, sublimation to the male imperative.

Women have very little incentive for learning to defer to a man with a default respect when respect for women is already a social entitlement – that is the frame of reference women have with respect. Even average fathers seldom experience an organic respect from their daughters unless they are taught (usually by example) to appreciate the qualities that make him respectable. Women in the workplace presume they’re being treated with a default professional respect, but any respect that’s afforded them generally begins with that default ‘Respect for Women’® dynamic that 80%+ of men already believe is their due.

When men express respect for other men it’s usually because they’ve in some way earned it or earned a respectable office. That’s not always the reality, but it is the general presumption that respectable men are “leaders of their house” (business, position, team or rank) and makers of the decisions others follow because they have earned it. Think about the men you genuinely respect. Why do you respect them? What have they done to merit your deference of respect to them?

The way a man considers these aspects differs from how a woman considers these aspects. Respectable Men are keenly aware of a respect offered to them due to obligation as opposed to a genuine, considerate and introspective respect. So when a woman who presumes she holds a default authority humbles herself, and magnanimously allows a man she’s told she should respect a degree of deference, that man understands it’s her obligation and not a genuine respect he’d experience from other men.

Indeed, men do want a woman who looks up to them, admires them and respects them, but too many men don’t recognize the motivators behind women expressing them. Many Beta men make a joke out of their wives being “the real boss” or how she “puts up with him.” They have no concept, much less any expectation, of an organic, uncoerced masculine admiration, respect or even a compliment, so it’s no surprise when they can’t discern between a real expression of sincerity and one motivated by manipulation or obligation.

Lastly, ladies, the best compliment you can give a man is with your body and consideration. Unexpected gestures, being an imaginative lover, staying in shape because you want to please a man, are the best expressions of genuine desire, admiration and respect. Nothing conveys real appreciation for a man better than the unsolicited desire you reserve for Alpha Fucks. You want him to know you admire and respect him? Initiate sex with him, often and with intensity.


Idealism

 

idealism

When Neil Strauss was writing The Game there was an interesting side topic he explored towards the end of the book. He became concerned that the guys who were learning PUA skills and experiencing such success with women of a calibre they’d never experienced before would turn into what he called “Social Robots.” The idea was one that these formerly Game-less guys would become Game automatons; mouthing the scripts, acting out the behaviors and meeting any countermanding behaviors or scripts from women with calculated and planned “if then” contingencies.

The fear was that these Social Robots “weren’t themselves”, they were what Mystery Method, Real Social Dynamics, etc. were programing them to be and the relative success they experienced only reinforces that “robot-ness”. My experience with guys from this blog, SoSuave and other forums has been entirely different. If anything most men transitioning to a Red Pill mindset tenaciously cling to the ‘Just Be Yourself and the right girl will come along’ mentality.

A strong resistance guys have to Red Pill awareness will always be the “faking it” and keeping it up effort they believe is necessary to perpetuate some nominal success with women. They don’t want to indefinitely be someone they’re not. It’s not genuine to them and either they feel slighted for having to be an acceptable character for women’s intimate attention or they come to the conclusion that it’s impossible to maintain ‘the act’ indefinitely. Either way there’s a resentment that stems from needing to change themselves for a woman’s acceptance – who they truly are should be enough for the right woman.

I’ve written more than a few essays about this dynamic and the process of internalizing Red Pill awareness and Game, but what I want to explore here is the root idealism men retain and rely on when it comes to their unconditioned Game. In truth this Game is very much the result of the conditioning of the Feminine Imperative, but the idealistic concept of love that men hold fast to is what makes that conditioning so effective.

What’s Your Game?

I’ve written before that every man has a Game. No matter who the guy is, no matter what his culture or background, every guy has some concept of what he believes is the best, most appropriate, most effective way to approach, interact with and progress to intimacy with a woman. How effective that “Game” really is is subjective, but if you asked any guy you know how best to go about getting a girlfriend he’ll explain his Game to you.

Men in a Blue Pill mindset will likely parrot back what their feminine-primary conditioning had him internalize. Just Be Yourself, treat her with respect, don’t objectify her, don’t try to be someone you’re not, are just a few of the conventions you’ll get from a Blue Pill guy who is oblivious to the influence the Feminine Imperative has had on what he believes are his own ideas about how best to come to intimacy with a woman.

For the most part his beliefs in his methodology are really the deductive conclusions he’s made by listening to the advice women have told him about how best to “treat a woman” if he wants to get with her. A Blue Pill mindset is characterized by identifying with the feminine, so being false is equated with anything counter to that identification.

When you dissect it, that conditioned Blue Pill / Beta Game is dictated by the need for accurate evaluation of men’s Hypergamous potential for women. Anything that aids in women’s evaluating a man’s hypergamous potential to her is a tool for optimizing Hypergamy. The dynamics of social proof and pre-selection are essentially shortcuts women’s subconscious uses to consider men’s value to her. Likewise the emphasis Blue Pill Game places on men’s ‘genuineness’ is a feminine conditioning that serves much the same purpose – better hypergamous evaluation. If men can be conditioned to be up front about who they are and what they are, if they internalize a mental point of origin that defers by default to feminine primacy, and if they can be socially expected to default to full and honest disclosure with women by just being themselves, this then makes a woman’s hypergamous evaluation of him that much more efficient.

This is where most Blue Pill men fail in their Game; who they are is no mystery, their deference and respect is worthless because it’s common and unmerited, and just who he is isn’t the character she wants him to play with her.

So even in the best of Blue Pill circumstances, a man is still playing at who he believes will be acceptable to the feminine. His genuineness is what best identifies with the feminine. Blue Pill / Beta Game is really an even more insidious version of social robotics; the script is internalized, the act is who he is. However, it’s important to consider that this genuineness is still rooted in his idealistic concept of a mutual and reciprocal love.

From Of Love and War:

We want to relax. We want to be open and honest. We want to have a safe haven in which struggle has no place, where we gain strength and rest instead of having it pulled from us. We want to stop being on guard all the time, and have a chance to simply be with someone who can understand our basic humanity without begrudging it. To stop fighting, to stop playing the game, just for a while.

We want to, so badly.

If we do, we soon are no longer able to.

In The Burden of  Performance I made the case for men’s need to perform for feminine acceptance and how men’s idealistic concept of love centers not on a want for unconditional love, but rather a love free from the performance requirements women’s opportunistic, Hypergamous, concept of love demands of him. This quote sums up that idealistic want for rest from having to perform to earn a woman’s love and acceptance.

The problem of course is the supposition that a performanceless love would ever really be love, but men’s idealistic nature still believes that the state is realizable. On a social scale the Feminine Imperative sees the resource utility in this and so encourages the idea that both men and women mutually share his concept of idealized love. Thus men, unaware of the respective differences in concepts both sexes hold with regard to love, enter into a perpetual state of qualifying for a love they believe women should be capable of. Men will work hard, build empires and amass fortunes to come to that state of performanceless rest they idealize should be possible with a woman.

The Marriage of Idealism and Opportunism

About two weeks ago I was called to the carpet in the commentary by George Meeks (one of many aliases) for what he believes was an inconsistency in my assessment of men’s idealistic concept of love and how that idealism is really symbiotic with women’s opportunistic concept of love. I’ll spare you his autistic attention trolling, but he did raise a few points I do need to clarify about how men and women’s separate, but purpose driven, concepts of love developed.

From Intersexual Hierarchies:

In the beginning of this series I stated that men and women’s approach to love was ultimately complementary to one another and in this last model we can really see how the two dovetail together. That may seem a bit strange at this point, but when social influences imbalance this conventional complement we see how well the two come together.

When a woman’s opportunistic approach to love is cast into the primary, dominant love paradigm for a couple, and a family, that pairing and family is now at the mercy of an opportunism necessitated by that woman’s hypergamy and the drive to optimize it. Conversely, when a man’s idealistic approach to love is in the dominant frame (as in the conventional model) it acts as a buffer to women’s loving opportunism that would otherwise imbalance and threaten the endurance of that family and relationship.

From Heartiste’s post:

7. Arguments about chores, money, sex life, and romance were highest in couples where the woman made all or most of the decisions. Female decision-making status was an even stronger determinant of relationship dissatisfaction than female breadwinner status. Women can handle making more money in a relationship, but they despise being the leader in a relationship.

8. Argument frequency decreased among female breadwinners if they were not the primary decision-makers. Lesson for men: You can have a happy relationship with a woman who makes more than you as long as you remain the dominant force in her non-work life. Or: GAME SAVES MARRIAGES.

When a woman’s love concept is the dominant one, that relationship will be governed by her opportunism and the quest for her hypergamic optimization. The ultimate desired end of that optimization is a conventional love hierarchy where a dominant Man is the driving, decisive member of that sexual pairing.

This was the meat of George’s confusion. As with the opportunism that Hypergamy predisposes women to, men’s idealistic concept of love stems from his want for genuineness and a want for what could be. I’d suggest that men’s idealism is the natural extension of the burden of performance. From a Beta perspective, one where women are his mental point of origin, that burden is an unfair yoke; one to be borne out of necessity and ideally cast off if he could change the game. To the Alpha who makes himself his mental point of origin, that burden is a challenge to be overcome and to strengthen oneself by. In either respect, both seek an idealistically better outcome than what that burden represents to them.

In and of itself, a man’s idealism can be a source of strength or his greatest weakness. And while unfettered Hypergamic opportunism has been responsible for many of women’s worst atrocities to men, in and of itself Hypergamy is the framework in which the human species has evolved. Neither is good nor bad, but become so in how they are considered and how they are applied.

Men’s idealistic concept of love is a buffer against women’s opportunistic concept of love. When that idealism is expressed from a Beta mindset women’s opportunism dominates him and it’s debilitating. When it’s expressed from an Alpha mindset it supersedes her opportunism to the relationship’s benefit.

Conditioned Idealism

If you want to use Blue Valentine (the movie) as an example, the guy in the relationship abdicates all authority and ambition over to his wife’s opportunism. He idealistically believes “love is all that matters” and has no greater ambition than to please her and ‘just be himself’, because his conditioning has taught him that should be enough. His Beta conditioning convinced his idealism that his wife would shared in that idealistic concept of love in spite of his absence of performance. Consequently she despises him for it. She’s the de facto authority in the relationship and he slips into the subdominant (another child to care for) role.

Now if a man’s Alpha, willful, idealism propels him to greater ambition, and to prioritize his concept of love as the dominant, and places himself as his mental point of origin for which a woman accepts you can see how this leads to the conventional model. His idealism is enforced by how he considers it and how he applies it.

Men’s idealistic concept of love can be the worst debilitation in a man’s life when that idealistic nature is expressed from a supplicating Beta mentality. It will crush him when that idealism is all about a bill of goods he idealistically hopes a woman shares and will reciprocate with. This is predominantly how we experience idealism in our present cultural environment of feminized social primacy.

From an Alpha perspective that idealism is a necessary buffer against that same feminine opportunistic concept of love that would otherwise tear a Beta apart.

There was a time when men’s idealistic concept of love was respected above the opportunistic (Hypergamy based) concept of love. I explored this social control of Hypergamy in Women Behaving Badly.

Under the old set of books, when men’s attractiveness (if not arousal) was based on his primary provisioning role his love-idealism defined the intergender relationship. Thus, we still have notions of chivalry, traditional romance, conventional models of a love hierarchy, etc. These are old books ideals, and the main reason I’ve always asserted that men are the True Romantics is due exactly to this love-idealism.

There was a time when men’s idealistic love concept pushed him to achievements that had social merit and were appreciated. Ovid, Shakespeare and the Beatles would not be the human icons they are if that idealism weren’t a driving force in men and society. Likewise, women’s opportunistic, hypergamy-based concept of love, while cruel in its extreme, has nonetheless been a driving motivation for men’s idealistic love as well as a filter for sexual selection.

Under the new set of books, in a feminine-centric social order, the strengths of that male idealism, love honor and integrity are made to serve the purpose of the Feminine Imperative. Men’s idealistic love becomes a liability when he’s conditioned to believe that women share that same idealism, rather than hold to an opportunistic standard. This is what we have today with generations of men conditioned and feminized for identifying with the feminine. These are the generations of men who were conditioned to internalize the equalist lie that men and women are the same and all is relative. From that perspective it should follow that both sexes would share a mutual concept of love – this is the misunderstanding that leads men to expect their idealism to be reciprocated and thus leads to their exploitation and self-abuse.

A man’s idealism becomes his liability when he enters a woman’s opportunistic frame still believing they both share a mutual concept of love.


The Art of AMOG

If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

One of the more contentious aspects of intersexual competition the early PUAs hit upon was the phenomenon of the AMOG – Alpha Male Of Group – and how ‘that guy’s’ apparent social dominance focused all interaction within a peer group on himself. The AMOG was an easy parody of a guy to hate on for early Game practitioners because his archetype was so relatable for men looking to improve their chances with women they’d never been able to consider before they discovered Game. The nefarious AMOG was their worst cock-blocking villain.

For a recovering Beta experimenting with Game for the first time it was bad enough that the very real, in-his-face proposition of rejection by women was always to be considered, but to have to account for a guy that looked (in his mind) like the typical jock who regularly out-Alpha’d him back in high school seems like an unfair obstacle to need to overcome. I think that a lot of men’s competition anxiety focuses on a very overdramatized caricature of the Alpha ‘bullies’ they were familiar with when growing up.

This characterization is also the basis of the long-clichéd plot of every boy-meets-girl, boy-overcomes-shyness, boy-overcomes-bully-to-get-the-girl story ever told, and not just by Hollywood.

While female written romance stories revolve around multiple suitors for a woman protagonist to tame the most Alpha among them – usually ending with the one who’s a misunderstood asshole to everyone but her – male written romance generally centers on an underperforming Beta male (with a heart of gold) who, through extraordinary circumstance is placed in a position of  outperforming all of his previous rivals for his dream girl, or the girl he ‘should really be with’ instead of the shallow girl he thought would be so great. Instead of selfishly abusing his newfound Alpha powers by kicking sand in the faces of lesser Betas, he fashions himself as the hero exemplar of how Betas should act if they find themselves in a similar empowerment.

The stories of Spider Man, Captain America and even Back to the Future follow these male-romance scripts to the letter, but in every case the Beta-with-a-chance has to teach the bully a lesson before he can qualify for the girl’s attention, much less her intimacy. This clichéd story arch is a manifestation of men’s internalized understanding of their burden of performance. And while I can’t entirely assert this is an intrinsic part of men’s own mental firmware, I have to speculate that the fantasy of fulfilling it is part of men’s ubiquitous need to adequately perform for women’s intimate approval.

Regardless, the objective purpose is still to ‘get the girl’.

Examples of this Alpha bully archetype are part of most men’s formative learning. Not all men learn the lesson of the bully (some play the role with relish), but if we hold to the 80/20 rule of the manosphere we’re statistically looking at around 80% of (Beta) men who do. From grade school to high school to college, that guy, the douchebag, the guy who can’t help but actively or passively draw attention to himself, becomes the AMOG – and damned if he’s not the most contemptible bastard (or type of bastard) you know.

I’m highlighting that guy because more often than not he’s less a real person and more a manifestation of the anxiety that results from men’s insecurity about performing adequately for feminine approval. It’s easy to poke fun at the guys you see on hotchickswithdouchebags.com because they’re representations of the bully you hate. They’re the Jerks that every woman loves and every ‘normal’ guy vainly tries to make women rationally understand are the worst possible romantic option for them.

One very difficult hurdle men have in unplugging is getting past what they believe is the emulation of the Alpha Jerk who so regularly outperformed them, if not bullied them – yet, his asshole ways were still undeniably effective with the women he wanted to get with. Thus, for men who come to Red Pill awareness there’s a natural resistance to become that guy.

This AMOG archetype impression is tough to confront for men, but it’s important they do so.

This impression for men is an incredibly useful tool to effect women’s sexual strategy later in life when the woman (or type of woman) he’s held in such high regard and pined to be intimate with for so long finally “comes to her senses” around her Epiphany Phase and accepts him. For men with this AMOG mental impression, that woman’s acceptance comes with a certain degree of (sometimes smug) vindication. He waited her out and finally she’s “realized” what he’s been trying to make her see for so long – he’s actually the ‘perfect boyfriend’ for her.

He doesn’t realize he’s just playing the convenient ‘savior’-provider role women’s sexual strategy has conditioned and prepared him for, but believing his Beta Nice Guy life track has finally won out over the nefarious AMOG in his head is a strong reinforcer of a belief women need him to strongly believe when it’s time to cash in their Beta Bucks chips and her SMV starts its decline.

And therefore those skilled in war bring the enemy to the field of battle and are not brought there by him.

I’m going to flip your AMOG impression upside down now. That AMOG isn’t the one you should concern yourself with.

Most of the first PUAs always suggested a process of containment and isolating your target woman in order to ‘poach’ her from that guy. I understand the proposed isolation idea is to remove a girl you like from her social group, but the effect is really similar to Mate Guarding – isolate her awareness of all other sexual competitors and focus her on yourself. 

However, unless you’re making your approaches in clubs or loud bars it’s likely the context you’re working on a woman in isn’t one where an active, in-your-face AMOGing is happening. Isolation becomes a security measure to focus her on you being her best immediate prospect.

Roissy once stated that there are groupies for every male endeavor, I should also add that there are AMOGs in every male endeavor. Every group of nerdy programmers, geeks, chess club, your bowling team and even in your Bible study group, there’s an AMOG. Some are more significant than others, but rest assured, you know him, or you will.

Most men will compartmentalize themselves socially so as to best facilitate their chances of meeting, banging, marrying or otherwise interacting with women. This compartmentalization is really a form of Buffering against rejection, but it’s also a logical social positioning of a man putting himself into an environment where he can (hopefully) excel and be noticed for it.

All warfare is based on deception – Bear this in mind when you enter into a new social group dynamic or an unfamiliar social environment. You are an unknown commodity and therefore your strengths are novel to the group. Your weaknesses (your Beta-ness) will be more obvious than your strengths and thus more easily attached to you.

Playing to one’s strengths usually involves defining a man’s social environments. King Douchebag at a Vegas pool party is excelling in his environment, just as Bobby Fisher is at a chess tournament. One reason less ‘socially adept’ men enjoy more confidence at a ComicCon is because the environment buffers their social deficits, but emphasizes their particular talents. The first mistake most men make when considering an AMOG situation is underestimating the importance of that environment. In high school the environment was probably set for you, but as an adult you’ve got a greater degree of control over it.

Bear this in mind when you’re confronted with a guy “all the girls love”. There’s a tendency on the part of Beta leaning guys to think the AMOG is a ‘natural’ Alpha when in fact he’s really domain dependent on the social environment you share with him. Of course there will always be guys who excel in almost any environment because Hypergamy is universal to women and a ‘hawt guy’ is ‘hawt’ to all women, but remove him from his preferred domain to one you’re better adept in, or, outperform him in his domain with a particular strength or expertise you possess in such a way that he’s forced to acknowledge your skill.

To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy.

The caricature of an in-your-face belligerent AMOG is really a social anomaly, and usually your experience of him is the product of an environment you’re not at home in. Far more common however is the AMOG who is unassuming, affable, and honestly a guy you probably can’t help but like. In fact this likability is his primary appeal. Obvious Alpha superiority combined with even a marginal humility makes for an irresistible AMOG to women.

One of my best friends to this day was a guy I despised when we were in high school. We ended up becoming lifelong friends, but initially I hated him for having such a natural Alpha affinity with the girls I wanted to get with. I actually attribute part of my early 20s sexual success (and if I’m honest some proto-Red Pill awareness) to many of the lessons women’s behavior around him taught me.

Both the nervous Beta and the PUA like to encourage the idea of an AMOG as being the drunk, loud-mouthed frat boy who pushes you aside to get to the girl at the bar you’re sarging (“Step aside McFly!”), but the Alpha Male of the Group to really consider is the guy women can’t stop talking about when he’s not even present. He’s the guy who leaves the room and girls giddily huddle together to agree about how ‘hawt’ he is. He doesn’t even have to be in the group to be the Alpha of it.

The best form of social proof is the unsolicited kind. The kind where women can’t help but talk about a guy, and ask his Beta-chump friends how they can get to know him better.

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious.

In the immediate sense, unseating this AMOG would be a challenge only the most exceptional men could hope for. He’s established in his environment and his status and social proof is perpetuated for him within his social group. This situation may seem hopeless, and if your goal is to supplant him you’d have to really consider what the rewards would be in doing so, however there is much to learn from him within your shared environment.

Pose as a friend, act as a spy. Befriending the AMOG may be your best option as it opens you up to his social proof as a peer. You may not replace him in the short term, but if you’re spinning plates as you should, his confirmation of you as a peer will only benefit you. This confirmation will allow you an insight into the dynamics of that social environment. Your ultimate success doesn’t lie in destroying the AMOG, or becoming one yourself, but mastering a shared environment in which your strengths are best applied.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance. The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

This tact is useful for both the in-your-face AMOG as well as the non-direct, status affirmed AMOG. Sometimes proving one’s superiority is simply allowing the mediocre enough time and opportunity to self-destruct. The trick of course is in being prepared to swiftly capitalize on that AMOG’s missteps.

Law 33 – Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall.  That weakness is usualy an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure.  Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.

In the early part of my career in liquor branding I worked for a very rich man in his mid 60s. This guy had quite the resume of “successes”, but for the greater part they’d come from his self-importance and borrowing money than any real talent of his own. He was the owner, but had a reputation for attention seeking and a love of flattery that bordered on arrogance. Usually this would come at the expense of whomever happened to be outshining him as the master.

He was a consummate AMOG, but with no real legitimacy. At one point we had an important negotiation with a Chinese distributor to get our brands into an Asian market and as he’d typically do he wanted to entertain the reps over dinner after a big trade show we’d met them at. They were impressed with me because I was responsible for the creative side of the company, but even with my own deferential credits to my ‘boss’ he took it as an opportunity to AMOG me in front of his new ‘friends’.

I actually saw this coming (it’d happened on other occasions) and I had a good prior knowledge of the sensibilities of the Chinese from my time in doing casino marketing, so I diplomatically let him hang himself with his self-aggrandizement and bluster at my expense. Predictably the reps were off-put by this and we lost the distribution. The good news was that about a year and a half later I was offered a string of very lucrative branding contracts for several of this Asian company’s holdings (2 of which I still front now) because of this patience and letting my boss implode. And all I did was see it coming and let him convict himself.

Every AMOG has a weakness to exploit. Sometimes discovering this requires a patience most guys simply don’t want to wait around for, but with a bit of tact and attention it doesn’t take long. I think the older a man gets the easier it is to judge the character of others (or it should) – you experience the “types” enough to gauge a predictable character action.

There’s an old, but fantastic breakdown of the classic Boyfriend Destroyer script on RSD Nation. I wont repost it here, but if you take a moment to read the script, the premise is one of breaking down a boyfriend’s reputation by indirectly whittling away at the most predictable areas of contention in most relationships. Emphasize his Beta attributes while leading (not telling) her to consider and appreciate your Alpha attributes.

Yes, it’s bad form, and yes, your efforts would be better applied to new prospective plates to spin instead of working on some girl with a boyfriend. However, it is an excellent study in understanding how to deconstruct an AMOG and learning his thumbscrews.

Amused Mastery isn’t just a technique to hold women’s attention, it’s also an effective tool in defusing an AMOG. Once you have an understanding of that AMOG’s weakness – a penchant for self-aggrandizement, a taste for booze or a kind of woman, lack of legitimate ambition, Beta thinking/behavioral tendencies, etc. – the plan then becomes one of emphasizing those character flaws indirectly by exemplifying counter-strengths to those weaknesses.

Women love a man who Just Gets It, and the best, playful way of expressing that is with Amused Mastery; but it’s even more sexy when that Mastery extends to men who she perceives are your intersexual rivals. This then, by association, compliments her ego for your Amused Mastery of her.


Hysteria

In light of the Feminine Imperative having itself capsized over the UVa rape fantasy retracted by Rolling Stone this month, I was reminded of this video and post by Heartiste (Roissy) a few years ago:

Basically, the guy had a few friends follow him around the mall, one guy filming him and the other two guys (I can’t tell if any of his hired guns were women) acting as his “groupies” or entourage. He goes around identifying himself as “Thomas Elliot” when people, mostly women, ask him his name. Eventually, he begins to pile up admiring and gawking female attention, which only snowballs into more female attention. Apparently, not one of these starstruck chicks thought to question if Thomas Elliot was a real celebrity. That’s the power of preselection and fame; so powerful, it can disengage a woman’s neural logic circuitry.

Heartiste goes on to make the prerequisite Game principle  & application observations here, but there is a much larger dynamic in play. While the mall makes for a good setting to test this experiment, it is fairly isolated. A security detail gets assigned to “Thomas Eliot” and even some shops close in order to avoid a crowd panic, but could this dynamic be proven on a larger scale?

This is a very interesting social experiment, particularly when compared to the now infamous (and staged) viral video of Shoshana Roberts walking around New York and enduring the attentions of men she found less than savory. Interesting because they’re essentially trolling for attention from the opposite sex with similar methods, and the results are telling about how each gender perspective generates and reacts to that attention.

Darryl Long made a comment on this topic, and I’ve been considering it for a while now:

On this topic of how women’s attraction changes across their lifetimes I don’t think any analysis is complete without looking at the phenomena of teen-idols. As a man who has sisters and daughters its clear that there is something biological going on with pubescent girls in a way that is radically different from boys. Boys may fantasize about a poster girl, but they never fall over themselves for heartthrobs like Bieber, or Lief Garret, and David Cassidy (in the old days). I’m amazed that many of these teen heartthrobs are more on the fair/effeminate side than masculine. They look like they have good genes, but the most important thing is that all the other girls like them. They are male figures that girls lend incredible status making them even more attractive.

Preselection is a very powerful motivator of women’s hypergamous decision making process. Even the perception of fame (or even the potential for it) is a prime motivator and incentive to lock down a man who presents the hypergamous optimal ideal – a guy who satisfies the sexiness her Alpha Fucks hypergamous needs require and the long term security of provisioning potential from status-confirmed Beta Bucks.

Whether this “famous” guy actually embodies this ideal is irrelevant to a woman’s Id-centric psyche. When women are younger, tweens and teens, this self-convincing is much easier since girls lack any real world experience to reference with respect to what the guy really represents. A capacity for abstract thinking is something that develops as we mature, but the desire to optimize hypergamy is a limbic, instinctual drive for girls and no amount of reasoning can compete with the fantasy of a pre-fabricated idealized Hypergamy.

They want to believe it.

Thus we have hordes of girls and young women willing to go to behavioral lengths they would never consider with the mundane men they’re familiar with in order to just brush with the possibility of  that hypergamous ideal. They will literally climb over one another to realize this.

In a Game sense, preselection (and prequalification or 3rd party endorsement) is a very powerful, instinctual impetus for women. Even in marginal, isolated social settings preselection is an overriding imperative:

Your goal should be to attract women effortlessly, so play to your strengths no matter what they are; there is a groupie for every male endeavor. – Roissy

Mass Hysteria

Once you have a basic understanding of the preselection dynamic and how it is an evolved feature of women’s psychological firmware, the next step is to understand how the power of preselection influences women (and by association men) when scaled to a feminine social dynamic.

Roissy notes from the first video:

Apparently, not one of these starstruck chicks thought to question if Thomas Elliot was a real celebrity.

As I’ve noted in prior posts, perceptions are the overriding imperative of the feminine psyche. It’s not that women on an individual level don’t possess the faculties to discern legitimate social proof, it’s that on a social level they want to believe in that social proof. The estimation of the collective feminine mindset is a powerful influence on the individual woman since it plays on that non-abstract, instinctual need for a pre-verification of optimal hypergamy.

In other words, the effort of sexual-selection vetting has already  been done for them by the feminine hivemind.

Verifying legitimate social proof takes individual time and effort. Perhaps not as much as men have a rational capacity for (the New York stunt fooled more than a few tag-along guys affirming the pseudo-social proof), but for women that opportunity for meeting a hypergamously ideal man supersedes the mental efforts needed to verify social proof. The greater mass of women already believe in the preselection and the intersexual competition is on and overt.

I’ve made the distinction before with regards to women’s preferred communications methods; covert communication being women’s native language, but when women resort to overt communications it’s generally because the content of the  information needing to be transferred outweighs the need for how it’s delivered, or the context of that information.

Transferring information about a man’s preselected approval amongst a collective of women is one such override. However, it’s very important for men living in a feminine-primary social order to understand that social proof is not just limited to preselection of men as potential partners.

This social proof dynamic extends to the perceptions of women in a collective peer group, as well as men for whom they have no sexual interest in, but serve their material interests nonetheless.

The current cultural atmosphere of male suspicion and autonomous rape-threat assessment of men is another variation of this perceptual, hysterical, collective belief dynamic. Women want to believe in the presumption that every man outside of their preselected, collective approved, hypergamous ideal  is a potential rape threat. In other words, a man who might, by force or coercion, assume control of her hypergamous sexual selection.

The narrative, the perception, is all that matters.

And like the women who never had an afterthought as to whether “Thomas Eliot” was the real deal, likewise women become so ego-invested in the certainty of their collective perceptions that, even in light of contrary evidence, the only acknowledged verification of that perception is how it makes them feel.

This contradiction of a collective feminine hysteria is what many luminaries of the Feminine Imperative are now being forced to confront. It’s important to remember during this UVa / Rolling Stone rape debacle that women, and more than a few enabling male sympathizers, wanted to believe this travesty was true in spite of the vaudevillian outlandishments and still refuse to accept that it isn’t.

From Truth to Power:

Denial

The first step to really unplugging from our preconditioning (i.e the feminine Matrix) is recognizing that this conditioning has led to the beliefs we think are integral to our personalities. The psychological term for this is called ‘ego-investment’. When a person internalizes a mental schema so thoroughly, and has become conditioned to it for so long, it becomes an integral part of their personality. So to attack the belief is to, literally, attack the person. This is why we see such a violent reaction to people’s political, religious, inter-social/inter-sexual, inter-gender, etc. expressions of belief – they perceive it as a personal attack, even when presented with irrefutable, empirical evidence that challenges the veracity of those beliefs.

People resort to denial when recognizing that the truth would destroy something they hold dear. In the case of a cheating partner, denial lets you avoid acknowledging evidence of your own humiliation. Short of catching a spouse in bed with your best friend, evidence of infidelity is usually ambiguous. It’s motivated skepticism. You’re more skeptical of things you don’t want to believe and demand a higher level of proof. Denial is unconscious, or it wouldn’t work: if you know you’re closing your eyes to the truth, some part of you knows what the truth is and denial can’t perform its protective function.

One thing we all struggle to protect is a positive self-image. The more important the aspect of your self-image that’s challenged by the truth, the more likely you are to go into denial. If you have a strong sense of self-worth and competence, your self-image can take hits but remain largely intact; if you’re beset by self-doubt, however, any acknowledgment of failure can be devastating and any admission of error painful to the point of being unthinkable. Self-justification and denial arise from the dissonance between believing you’re competent, and making a mistake, which clashes with that image. Solution: deny the mistake. Attribute it to an outside element rather than resort to introspection.

This degree of core-level denial is where the likes of Jessica Valenti, Susan Walsh and Zerlina Maxwell find themselves today.

In spite of still growing confirmation that the story was a hoax, femosphere bloggers hold out hope against hope that even the smallest part of a medieval-like rape story to rival Silence of the Lambs could be true.

The pivot for this will of course be how the falsehood injures women who genuinely are rape victims, but this is just the shiny keys jingling to distract anyone sympathetic to their ego-investments from the fact that they wanted to believe this story was legitimate.

They wanted to believe it without an afterthought of critical analysis.

They wanted to believe it in spite of the obvious melodramatic dialogue described by “Jackie”.

They wanted to believe a naive freshmen girl could be frat boy initiation raped for three hours on the shards of glass from a broken glass table and never seek medical treatment or have anyone raise an eyebrow over the bloody mess that her back must’ve looked like as she nonchalantly walked out of the party house.

They wanted and still hope that even the most marginal parts of the story might be true. They want any shred of hope that will distract from the fact that they must now confront their complete acceptance of this obvious farce without any compunction of critical thinking.

They all have to face the fact that their presumption of male guilt comes before any logic or reason. This is the uniquely feminine hysteria that even men will invest themselves into if it means they can more positively identify with the Feminine Imperative.


Game Works

game_works

Game, for lack of a better word, is good. Game is right. Game works.

After listening to myself on this weekend’s interview with Christian McQueen and Dagonet I realized that as I became more comfortable with the interview I found myself verbally ‘dialoging’ in much the same way that I scribble down fragments of ideas in my notebook or when I’m fleshing out a draft for some topic I’m considering in-post.

It’s always been a strange sensation for me to hear myself speak. Even when I record a voice message on my iPhone it always makes me self-conscious to listen to the message play back. However, as I was in the midst of listening to myself on the show I had the same familiar internal conversation and I picked up on a thought I had planned to write about, but I think it slipped my mind until now.

Towards the middle of our conversation I considered a few things about the benefits of Game, and it made me think about how Game has progressed to what it is today. One of the chapters in The Rational Male I specifically wrote for the book – and later converted to a blog post – was called The Evolution of Game. I added this as an effort to help uninitiated men have a better grasp of just what Game really is.

There’s been a lot of redefining of exactly what Game is over the past 12-13 years, but I’ve always considered Game an abstract term for a much larger concept.

Naturally, critics predisposed to a blue pill worldview want to portray “those red pill game guys” as throwbacks to the PUA set of the early 2000’s. This is a very shortsighted evaluation, usually proffered by guys ego-invested in a blue pill mindset and in need of easy definitions and buzz words to ridicule and move onto the next distraction.

Facing red pill truths is uncomfortable, and I understand the need to casually pass them off for fear of really having to critically reconsider ego-investments; that type of insight requires either real depth of character or an experience traumatic enough to shake one from beliefs that, in essence, make up part of their personality.

Both require a concentrated effort to learn from, and honestly, most people are too lethargic to consider red pill truths when there are more entertaining distraction to inure themselves with.

It’s just this lethargy that prevents them from understanding that Game and red pill awareness have matured far beyond the PUAs techniques of the past. Neil Strauss published The Game in 2003 – that’s 15 years since Mystery was wearing top hats and elevator boots.

Those caricatures may be comforting to laugh at, but in fifteen years the developed techniques and observations Game practitioners failed and succeeded with fed into what we would eventually come to understand as red pill awareness today.

Even some well meaning red pill Men may want to self-affirmingly ridicule the PUAs of the past and present, but if you have embraced a red pill awareness today, at least partially, you have these Men to thank for risking rejection and practicing techniques that laid a foundation for contemporary red pill awareness.

Now, imagine for a moment that, today, all men had to build on was the antiseptic studies and controlled experiments of a social science academia firmly steeped in a feminine-primary, feminine-correct social context. Imagine what red pill awareness would be if not for the guys in the field doing ‘experiments’. Imagine what marriage counselors and ‘relationship experts’ would (and honestly, still) advise men to do in order to change their lives with an understanding based solely on what a feminine- primary, controlled social science approved of.

Only the PUAs of then and now have had the unfettered freedom to perform in-field social experiments, and relate their collected evidence and observations with other men; the types of which social science has been forbidden from due either to ethical considerations or by feminine-primary social conventions.

Game does not Occur in a Vacuum

Recently the comment threads here have had a tendency to devolve into a “looks are all that matters so why bother learning Game?” line of reasoning. The commentariat can lean towards go-your-own-way defeatism, then to resolving to live in the gym until one inspire female arousal, or, to appeals to positive confidence.

And while I have always recognized – more than most other manosphere bloggers if I dare – the obvious truth that Looks are a prime requisite for arousal (and attraction), I also recognize an effort to discredit Game and red pill awareness by absolutes, extremes and absurdities.

For anyone with the sense that Game and red pill awareness is valueless and superfluous in the face of women’s primary drive for physical arousal, I suggest you read Advocatus Diaboli’s treatise on how to pragmatically use escorts (either that or relocate to the state of Nevada). Honestly, I hold no disapproval for men who feel this is the best way to satisfy their need for sex and female contact. It may indeed be your best option under the current social environment.

For anyone else, I think it’s very important to look at the benefits of Game both in an intergender and interpersonal context. If you consider yourself “red pill” (another useful, but abstract term) Game has benefitted you – because it was the early trials and errors of Game that led to red pill principles we understand now.

If you have even a cursory grasp of how women’s biology and menstrual cycle influences ovulatory shift behaviors in mate preferences and you’ve altered your perception of women, Game has benefitted you.

If you understand the basics of feminine hypergamy and the sexual strategies women use to optimize their mate selection, and then changed your intergender tact as a result of it, Game has benefitted you.

If you’ve internalized the core psychological principles underlying women’s perceptions of Amused Mastery, Command Presence, Agree & Amplify, Cocky & Funny, Social Proof, Dread and even Chick Crack, whether you’ve applied them or not, Game has expanded your consciousness of women’s behaviors and their motivators.

If you’ve had the insight to understand your blue pill conditioning, the reasons for your predispositions towards a Savior Schema, feminine identifying, why a LJBF is a rejection, why Beta Game comes naturally to men but is self defeating, or why SMV accrues and decays over the course of a lifetime, Game and the red pill have benefitted you.

If you’ve used or modified any of these principles to better your marriage, your dealings with co-workers, your daughter, mother or even your best friend’s domineering wife, you’ve benefitted from Game.

If you’ve saved or bettered another man’s life, or bettered his intergender relationships, you’ve both benefitted from Game.

I could go on, but if you honestly believe that women’s primary physical arousal cues trump any value that Game or red pill awareness really has, then you’re wasting your time here reading and commenting on what I have to offer. You’d be better served by focusing all your attentions to lifting in the gym and shifting your career goals toward a job that is physically demanding and keeps you at your physical best.

Ironically, getting in shape is also an aspect of Game. Even if your belief is “Looks are everything”, but yet your understanding of this comes as a result of your red pill awareness of the Alpha Fucks side of hypergamy, Game has benefitted you.

Just a familiarity with Game concepts, whether you accept them or not, still influence your perception of women and the motivations behind their behaviors.

Red pill awareness challenges feminine-primary thinking. Why do you think the mass dissemination of red pill awareness is so threatening to the Feminine Imperative?

Doing Something

What is the manosphere actually ‘doing’?

This is the first critique I expect from from a poor debate opponent – disqualifying the strength or validity of a premise by the ‘success’ or lack thereof of a proponent’s efforts to enact or convince others of that premise.

By this logic, one could make the case that the MRM is an utter failure, but it still doesn’t mean they aren’t correct in their efforts.

As I mentioned on the Christian McQueen Show, I’m of a bottom up, or an inside – out mind when it comes to enacting red pill ‘change. The manosphere is raising awareness and this needs time (maybe even a generation) to mature into personal consciousness and then popular consciousness.

It’s difficult to quantify the ‘results’ of the manosphere, red pill awareness and Game because its effects are individually subjective at this stage. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t receive an email, a forum/blog comment or a tweet about how my book or what I’ve written on the blog has changed (or literally saved) a man’s life.

That’s not meant to gloss myself, but rather to illustrate a point – the red pill (and Game) is doing something, it’s changing minds and lives. It’s not rallying men in the streets and waving banners, nor is it effecting legal or social policy (yet), but it’s making men aware of their condition and changing their beliefs.

No hate for what the MRM is doing, I recognize the intent and applaud it, but thus far it’s been impotent in effecting “real change in policy”, while red pill awareness has done more for men individually. For all of the MRM’s efforts to enact public change, all it takes is one White Knight in a position of authority to say “GTFO you misogynist creeps!” Now imagine in the future a man who’s red pill aware in a position to effect that policy.

Real change isn’t going to happen directly it’s going to happen indirectly, on a man by man basis. And not just publicly but personally.

That change will happen in men’s relationships with their wives, daughters and sons. That change may simply be a form of ‘civil disobedience’ in not marrying at all, or holding women accountable for their open embrace of hypergamy and their AFBB sexual strategy and only marrying / supporting women who make an effort to control their hypergamy.

That change will happen in the workplace and hiring practices. That change will filter into men’s better understanding as the red pill spreads and men reassume some of the social frame control the Feminine Imperative unilaterally legislates and provide to women now.

The red pill is ‘doing’ something, it’s planting the seeds for a greater shift in gender power with every man who becomes aware of how women ‘are’ and what they will predictably do.


20 Questions

 

RT

Back in May of this year I was asked to do a second installment of the red pill Reddit forum’s AMA (“ask me anything”) and I’m not really sure too many of my core readers were aware of it. Unless you follow me on Twitter you probably didn’t know I’ve done two now.

After I’d closed out that discussion thread it reminded me of another ‘interview’ I was asked to participate in at my home forum of SoSuave back in December of last year. I hate to say, but I never really got around to posting my replies back to the original thread, however I did save the questions as a post draft so I could do the interview some justice later.

Well here we are. Next week will mark the three year anniversary of my launching Rational Male, and as always I’ll be doing another year’s retrospective post as well as another Best of Rational Male – Year Three links post.

I make it a policy not to go into too much personal detail on Rational Male unless the topic is something I can illustrate better with a personal story. I’ve never wanted the Rational Male to about me, but rather the experiences and input of my readers. However, after almost three years and one book later, I figure I’ll open up once and publish these question I was asked back in December with the hope that maybe something I answer will give someone some new insight themselves.

 

 

1) What brought you to SoSuave and how did you find the site?

Unlike a lot of SoSuave guys I actually found the forum because someone suggested to me that I might be able to reach more guys who needed help there.

Most guys go searching for answers about how they can get back with an ex, or why their last LTR imploded on them because they went too Beta or didn’t understand the basics of red pill awareness. I found SoSuave through the old Ladder Theory site as I was toying with the idea of psychology as a second major when I was at university. A lot of people don’t know the SoSuave of today is actually the second version of the forum. My understanding is that Alan, the forum admin and owner, had to expand to a larger server and forum architecture due to the site being so overwhelmingly popular.

There really wasn’t a manosphere or what we term Red Pill back then, just Mystery Method, PUArtistry, FastSeduction, RSD and the collected experiences of guys just posting their Field Reports and hitting upon commonalities of those experiences.

Mystery had made some conjectures with regards to the psychology involved in pickup and I just happened to come across it while I was studying behavioral psychology and personality studies. I also found that making the connection between the two, at least publicly amongst teachers and classmates, was a very contentious prospect. I got called a misogynist a lot back then just for proposing the germs of the ideas that have built the foundation of what the Rational Male and the red pill have become now.

2) Any special reason for your SoSuave username, why you chose it?

It was actually a hold-over from my old online persona from some other forums and it stuck. If you watch the movie L.A. Confidential you’ll get the meaning of it. It actually seems more fitting now with the book’s release. Rollo Tomassi was the generic name given to a nameless criminal who got away with his crime.

I also understand that Rollo was the name of an infamous viking. I found this interesting since we both descend from Danish heritage.

3) What’s the best and or worst advice you’ve ever received in regards to chicks?

JBY, Just Be Yourself is definitely the worst advice because it’s so endemic of people who are ignorant of Game. It’s such a passive, easy dismissal of a guy wanting to know why what he’s been doing isn’t getting him the results he wants, but at the same time it illustrates the belief and trust of the person saying ‘just be yourself’ in the conditioning that brought them to it.

It’s a very uncomfortable revelation for anyone to embrace in thinking they should need to change and/or improve themselves in order to get the results that they want. The foundational mistruth of blue pill conditioning is that a nebulous ‘being of oneself’ should be enough for anyone (or ‘the right ONE‘) to be attracted to, and discourages any real self-analysis or improvement. ONEitis and Just Be Yourself tend to be codependents and, in tandem, really fuck up a lot of guys lives.

Best advice is more difficult, but for me personally it was “believe what a woman does, not what she says.” For most red pill guys this seems kind of remedial now because it’s a foundation for really unplugging I covered almost 11 years ago, but it can’t be stressed enough.

This basic truth is what inspired The Medium IS the Message and as stupid-simple a truism as it is, it’s often the most difficult part of Game-awareness that blue pill guys first struggle with. They struggle because their earliest feminized conditioning has always taught them that women are fundamentally the equal, rational agents that men are and they will relate to boys / men in full confidence and reason (just as they would expect from men) if they themselves don’t play games with them and communicate in full confidence and full disclosure.

It’s believe what she says and ignore, forgive or get over your judgementalism for what she does because she’s (supposed to be) being equitably honest, forthright, and knows exactly why she does what she does in spite of herself.

I don’t believe men and women are equals of each other in an egalitarian sense – there are simply too many empirically provable differences in both sex’s psychology and biology to draw any other conclusion; and as such each sex has it’s own imperatives and strategies for achieving them.

I do however believe that the sexes evolved to be complementary to each other, one sex’s strengths compensating for the other’s weaknesses. It’s this overreaching social impetus (idealistic humanism and feminine social primacy) that encourages us to believe we are independent, autonomous and self-sufficient entities (founded in feminine solipsism), equal in biology and psychological potential that imbalances that mutually beneficial complementariness.

4) Have you ever posted in or lurked in other seduction forums/blogs etc?

I occasionally post on Dalrock’s, Just 4 Guys, Chateau Heartiste, Roosh’s forum, The Red Pill reddit, Return of Kings and a few others. I sometimes track back to forums my articles get linked to, but I honestly don’t have time to respond to everything I read.

5) How many chicks have you slept with?

My N count is public record; more than 40, less than 50. I’m not trying to be ambiguous, it’s just that when I try to make an accurate count I just don’t remember some names – mostly just places partners and experiences.

Just for some red pill perspective, most of that experience was between the ages of 17 and 28 in the late late 80’s to mid 90’s when there was no formal Game, manosphere, internet, cell phones, Tinder, etc. – getting laid was all analog and mostly instinctual.

It’s kind of funny to think that my N count is well above average, but I expect in comparison to many of the single, active, members of the manosphere / PUA community, 40 individual sex partners might be so low as to disqualify me from being taken seriously with regards to Game.

By the time I was 21-22 I’d figured out how to get laid with some relative predictability. Mostly because I was a fairly good looking, semi-professional musician playing in Hollywood with a bit of social proof and a practiced ability to pick out women who’d be into me.

I should also mention that of those 40+, four were long term relationships, including my wife.

This’ll sound facetious, but I’ve never thought of sex as being “validating” or ego-affirming. I honestly think a lot of that expectation comes from a feminized conditioning about “how sex should be” for men. I was, and still kind of am, more into sex as experience. It’s always been something fun to enjoy with a woman for me, not some meaningful act of cosmic significance. I’ve had sex with women I loved and women I didn’t, some were memorable, some were…meh. Even in my bluest of blue pill days my ‘validation’ came from other sources, not sex.

6) What was your worst and best experience with a chick? (wife, girlfriend or not)

The worst was the 4 years I spent with a BPD girlfriend. I did a post on it. I was in the pit of blue pill hell and pushed to the brink. I didn’t know what borderline personality disorder was back then, in fact I don’t think the DSM even recognized the complex as a psychological disorder in the early 90s.

My best experience is hard to put a finger on. It’s interesting to think about definitively bad experiences, but hard to put a “best” title on a good one. All of my best experiences would have to be with Mrs. Tomassi, our wedding, our daughter’s birth, the fact that even in her late 40s she’s still in fitness caliber shape and we genuinely enjoy each other.

Pre-marriage, I had my share of rock-club women, and when it was on, it was really ‘on’. I can think of at least 4 very memorable women, one was a fuck-buddy who was easily the most sexually hungry (and not just with me I came to find out).

I know the trope is that older women are supposed to be better in the sack than younger women – this was never my experience at all. In fact the younger the girl, the easier time I had bedding her, and the more adventurous a lover she usually was. I think even marginal social proof has a greater impression on younger women and they’re more eager. The older women I’ve been with have always been much more self-conscious.

7) Have you ever gotten friendzoned by a chick and if so were you able to get out of it?

Of course, particularly in my teenage years. In my early 20s I had enough female interest that I’d simply blow off the women I learned weren’t worth the investment. There was one exception though; a girl I knew from a community college who “didn’t date rocker guys or guys in bands.”

In hindsight I know she was leaning into her Epiphany Phase (maybe a bit early) and was trying to do things “the right way” after getting after it with various guys in her early 20s.

I was kind of surprised at getting a LJBF since it hadn’t happened to me for years by then, but all it took was right place, right time, a little social proof and the competition anxiety of other interested women, and I got the lay – which, by comparison at the time was kind of underwhelming. Still, I went back to pursuing her afterwards, got re-LJBF’d and I moved on to other plates.

8) Have you ever had a chick or chicks offering their pussy to you on a platter and you blew them off for whatever reason? And why? (i.e. they offered the pussy on a platter to you at a bar in conversation or even at your or their place and you blew them off.)

Yes, but mostly due to logistics rather than from spite or wanting to up the urgency with a girl as most guys think denying women sex will do. Most often it was because I had a better offer somewhere else or I was just plain tired. When it’s happened to me in the past the girl was a) on the cusp of my maximum weight limit, or b) there was something a bit off about her personally – as in she didn’t seem right mentally.

I once left a DTF girl in a hot tub because I just couldn’t bring myself to hitting that big of a girl (but, in her defense, I have what I think are exceptionally high physical standards for women)

9) How did you handle chicks who’ve flaked?

It depends on what time of life we’re talking about. In my younger, hungrier days, I tolerated flaking because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know the medium was the message, and I thought it was caused by something I fucked up, which I guess it was. Later I simply didn’t care because I had other plates going at the time, but I found that the more options I had going (or had the potential to get going) the less women were likely to flake.

I go into it in Plate Theory, but there are a lot of subliminal behavioral cues a guy gives off (mostly unknowingly) when he’s seeing another (or more) woman that other women pick up on.

Mannerisms, attitude, vernacular, a guy with options just acts different than a guy with none. It’s like women pick up on the subcommunication of a guy who’s less invested in them and associate it with their sexual competition of women who might be interested in him.

10) Most plates you’ve spun at one time?

Actively (meaning I double shifted at the time) 4. Inactively 7 when I was about 23.

11) How did you handle a time of having no plates?

Again, that’s really a question of which time.

Between the ages of 17 and 21, I wouldn’t even consider seeing more than whatever girlfriend I had ONEitis for at the time. However, even before I met my wife, I had some irons in the fire, but when I didn’t I don’t think I worried too much about it since I knew I was probably just one party or gig or business event away from meeting some new talent.

I know a lot of guys get weird or depressed about a dry spell, but I was always kind of optimistic about having no plates because I enjoyed having the freedom to get with whomever, and I looked forward to meeting new women.

12) Dress style you use for going out on the town/ social functions?

I work in the liquor and casino industry so it depends on the event and what time of year it is. Nowadays if I’m out it’s usually because I’m at a promo, a new brand launch or some casino special event I’m involved with.

Lets just say that ‘business casual’ is neither. I either go loose or I go tight, but it really depends on the venue. Loose is jeans, some nice slip-ons, a stylish tailored button down, maybe a casual sport coat. If I’m tight it means I’m somewhere upscale or I’m with the people I work with, so I fall back on well tailored suits.

When you get older, style is much different than when you’re younger. What you wear at 22 is not what you wear at 42; there’s ways for men to capitalize on a maturity in style that women expect from men with the refinement that comes from maturity.

I’m probably not the best guy to hit up about style though – I think I spend way too much on what I could probably get cheaper. Christian McQueen is a better guy to ask about style.

13) Are you currently working out/exercising?

Always. I’m at the gym at 5-5:30am five days of the week, and I haven’t gone more than taking one week off from that schedule for about 15 years now. That may seem like dedication, but it’s really about convenience; early morning is the only time my schedule permits me to work out, and honestly I prefer working out in an empty gym.

For about the last 3 years I’ve been doing kind of a modified Max OT workout. I got into straight Max OT when I lived in Florida after a trainer friend suggested it to me.

I’m not overly huge to begin with, but once I started lifting heavier (and I mean heavy all the time) and my intensity went up, it helped me push past a plateau naturally. I put on a solid 8 lbs. of muscle inside of 4 months. Heh, I had to buy new pants because my thighs got bigger.

It’s probably not for everyone, I just know my body responded well to it. You do have to be careful of injury though, and not just in the lifts. I fucked up my back twice in about 2 years just getting cocky pulling heavier dumbbells off the rack. Just because your focused muscle group can do the lift doesn’t mean your other supporting muscles can. You gotta be careful.

14) For meeting chicks in the past which way was most successful in your point of view and have you tried all venues? Day, Social circle, Online social media/ Online dating, clubs, vacation, through family, work or whatever else.

Again, I’m probably not the best guy to ask about contemporary pickup Game. Back when I was inadvertently spinning plates, my Game at the time consisted of playing in various semi-pro bands and hooking up after a gig. I suppose that would amount to Night or Club Game now, but it was the environment I was in and familiar with. Most of my Game relied on social proof, DHV and looking the part. There was a definite ‘character role’ women liked that I played very well then.

It got to a point where I could get a girl to buy me a drink which I’d nurse for a bit while I talked her up. If I got the right IOIs from her I’d simply say something like “hey, our set’s coming up, watch my drink till I get back will ya?” If she was still there at the bar with my glass after an hour the girl was always DTF.

I should add that, later in life I became very apt at social circle Game, but again, that’s always going to be dependent on social proof, preselection and demonstrating higher value to get a third party endorsement of your SMV.

I know the popular presumption is that if a guy walks into a club/party/social gathering with a ‘hot girl who’s his friend’ it sends some magic preselection vibe to all the other women at the gathering. I’ve never found that to be true. Not that I doubt it happens, but rather if I’m somewhere with a woman (friend) who’s SMV is 1-2 points above the most attractive woman at the event, other women tend to get catty or figure if I can score her why would she bother with me?

There’s a fine line between the benefits of preselection and women simple feeling outclassed by a sexual competitor.

15) Have you ever went full “No Contact”? (Not expecting “results” of getting a chick back but simply cutting all ties.)

Oh yes. I really had no choice but to go no contact with the BPD girl I’d been with in my 20’s, but she’s really the only woman I’ve ever made a conscious effort never to contact again.

For other’s I think no contact really came down to my indifference to the women I really had no more interest in after some event. Though I didn’t do it intentionally, I was spinning plates and had other options to exercise so I’d just become occupied with another woman making no contact just a matter of course.

As I put forth in Plate Theory, non-exclusivity and maintaining your options is your best insurance against ONEitis, which in turn makes for a healthier frame of monogamy for a man later if that’s what you choose to do. No contact is easy when you’re genuinely indifferent to the girl you’re going no contact on.

16) How is married life going for you so far?

18 years on July 20th. I’ve only ever written a couple of direct posts about my marriage, but that’s mostly due to my not wanting men to view it as some model to aspire to. I understand my circumstance aren’t what most guy’s are, personally, family or career-wise, but I don’t for a minute believe I married the elusive unicorn of a woman.

I love Mrs. Tomassi more than anything in this world, we’re a very good match, and red pill awareness has only accented that good match. And for the record, yes, Mrs. Tomassi occasionally reads what I write here and has read my book.

17) Have you read the full DJ Bible? Or some of it/none of it/ participated in it?

The old version yes. The new version not entirely, but I have several of my old essays included in it. I still think it’s a pretty valuable resource for guys new to the red pill.

18) Have you ever met up with or talked to any SoSuave posters offline?

Yes, when I lived in Florida there were about six guys from the forum I used to meet occasionally for sushi or at one of my vodka brands’ promos. Beyond that I do email and (very rarely) phone consults with people who request them depending on my availability and ability to help at any given time.

For the record, I never charge money for a consult.

19) Favorite So Suave posters or posters on your site other blogs etc?

Gawd, I don’t want to play favorites, but in no particular order off the top of my head I think Deti, Dalrock, Novaseeker, Donalgraeme, Good Luck Chuck, Deepdish, Stingray, Morpheus, Han Solo, Obsidian, Mark Minter, Yohami, YaReally, Jeremy, Earl (yes Earl), LiveFree and even the commenters I most emphatically disagree with, all give me something new to think about.

20) How’s feedback coming along for your book, The Rational Male?

Better than I ever imagined. It’s been a success in everything I hoped it would be in the regard that it’s reaching men and helping change their minds and lives. My intent was never to make a load of cash from it, but rather to make it as accessible as possible to have the greatest reach possible and it’s more than done this after only 9 months.


Perceptions

 

I attended a conference about a year ago where one of the presenters was this feminista chick talking about how to make your business appealing to women. Some of the stuff she was saying was really out there in that she painted most businesses as ‘inferior’ because they did not go out of their way to become female friendly. Despite the fact that her strong feminist slant was semi-obnoxious to the audience (primarily men), there were some nuggets of wisdom in there.

One of those was that for women, intuitive perceptions are by-and-large women’s primary basis for making judgments about everything, whereas men will use information to make judgments. If the public bathroom in your office is anything less than sanitary & comfortable, a woman will use that as a gauge for the success of your entire business over actual financial data. In that same regard, she’ll use testimonials (social proof) from other women over any proof-based demonstrations of success you have. Obviously these are generalizations, but they underscore the point that there are fundamental differences in the way the two sexes perceive the world around them.

Bear in mind that the ability for the everyman to create the illusion of success has only been around for the last 100 years or so. The advent of protracted consumer debt has created the ability for people to acquire material possessions which allow them to feign success and status. For a 21st century example, look no further than social networking – the ultimate way to craft a perception of status which may not be at all aligned with reality. Yet, facts are trumped by facades in female psychology, and it’s nothing to fault women for. It’s simply how they’re wired.

I think what we can learn from awareness of this reality is that part of our role as men, in the role of leader in relations with women, is to control the facade. Keeping her interest level peaked is a function of her consistently being able to see and bask in your success as a man. It costs money and it costs time to deliberately focus on one’s image, especially if you are content with a low-complexity lifestyle, which I think describes most men’s inclination were it not for the mating game (i.e. society’s expectations, driven by the feminine).

It’s a scary thought to consider how easy it is to sway the hearts and minds of most women simply with imagery over substance. It’s manipulation of the image which makes even flat broke women work themselves into a rabid frenzy over $200 purses. Successful politicians and marketers have become masters of working this psychology. If there was any wonder left as to why women are the primary consumers in western culture, look no further than the power that perception plays in women’s decision making processes.

The Strata of Perception

In past posts I’ve emphasized the idea that women may claim to want truthfulness, but they absolutely do not want full disclosure.

Right about now I’m sure there are readers thinking “This is some really stupid shit, what you’re saying is I have to manage my ‘facade’ indefinitely and never let the fantasy perception drop? I can’t possibly be expected to ‘play a role’ all the time! When can I Just Be Myself and be comfortable in knowing she’s into me for me?”

The short answer to this is yes, you must never let your guard down; her emotionally associative perceptual interpretations will ALWAYS be an influencing factor in assessing your hypergamous worth for her. However, the practical answer is maintaining that perception becomes increasingly easier to do as you build upon prior perceptions, and legitimately owning those perceptions as part of your personality.

Whether you’re Game-aware or not, every girl you engage with, whether a plate to spin or a monogamous potential mate, your role, your character, has all been crafted by the gestalt sum of the perceptions she’s built around you. Even from before the moment you approached her with romantic interest you’ve been progressively layered with her emotionally associative perceptions. Perhaps by friends, maybe social proof, or even pre-conditioned expectations (for better or worse) that she cast you into, your personality to her is the sum total of a strata of emotional perception. Later into an LTR (or even a fuck buddy situation) this perception becomes more solidified.

The difficulty most men have with using this perception dynamic to their benefit is based upon their failure to grasp how women cognitively differ from men. It seems patently disingenuous for a man to manipulate a woman’s perception of him to his advantage when he’s been socially convinced that women are rational agents needing factual information upon which to base their personal decisions, and are aware of their emotional impulsivity and therefor controlling of it. This is the equalist tripping stone, men’s acculturation has taught the average guy that women are cognitive equals to men.

The tragic part of this situation is that men are, passively or actively, always making attempts to influence that feminine emotional perception to better facilitate some kind of harmony between themselves and women. When a married guy tells me his wife has no respect for him the root of that condition lies in an inconsistency of perception on his part.

“Man, everything was so good in the beginning, but then I went Beta on her, got needy, got ONEitis and she left me for the stud at the custom motorcycles chop shop.” Again, perceptional inconguencies with priorly established perceptions, and then modified by external novel emotionally associative perceptions.


Single + Hot = Crazy

I heard this theory come up on a local radio talk show this morning. The idea is basically for men to be wary of exceptionally hot women who are chronically single. The point being that a hot woman ought to be more likely to be monogamous by virtue of her easy ability to attract guys, but if she is constantly single that it’s indicative of emotional / psychological issues that prevent her from getting involved, or deters men in spite of her beauty (i.e. pump & dump-able but not LTR material).

I’ve experienced this phenomenon played out in the past, but I was wondering what other’s takes on it was.

From our Game-aware side of the equation we can certainly see the logic of this, but for men, to be single, childless and never married after 30 carries a social stigma. Of course they’re presumptions, but how many times have your married friends attempted to set you up with a girl who they think has LTR / Marriage potential for you when you’re single? You’re either a workaholic, status seeking, a latent homosexual or must have some other personality flaw if you’re not following “life’s plan” (see, fem-centrism’s plan) like everyone else. In fact in some respects being married (or at least in a serious LTR) serves as social proof of a certain degree of maturity that might be beneficial for a guy in his career. At the very least it encourages the perception that you’re not gay, irresponsible or overly status seeking and family oriented, irrespective of the actual truth.

Now, that’s as it applies to Men; I’m not so sure that it benefits women as much. We can play the career woman meme and forgive her for not being married and childless, and she garners a relative respect because “she’s fighting her way up the corporate ladder to break the glass ceiling in a world controlled by men” so the Matrix respects that personal sacrifice. In fact if she’s a single parent or married we afford her that much more respect because she’s “doing it all” and at a perceived disadvantage. But, is all this girl-power acceptance really masking what would otherwise be considered a retardation in maturity?

It’s socially acceptable to shame a man for being a ‘kidult’ if he hasn’t gotten with life’s program – he has an underlying maturity problem – but for women, bucking the ‘program’ is evidence of integrity and independence. This begs the question, if she’s attractive enough to retain male attention, but has never solidified a monogamous relationship is there something wrong with her?

The Hot Ones are Crazy

That’s all about the career driven people, but what I was getting at is, is there a corollary between an average woman’s attractiveness, her being perpetually unable to establish a healthy LTR and a personality disorder or mental imbalance? Maybe using the term “chronically single” was a bit of a misnomer. What I mean is an otherwise healthy, dating, attractive woman who, for whatever reason, has been unable to establish a long term connection with a guy. That may be due to men becoming wary of her, or by her own inability to make a lasting connection due to her own insecurities, or by attention whoring. Essentially, is an HB 9 who’s never been in a healthy LTR by age 30 a woman that men should wary of? Is it a red flag?

If you asked 100 different women whether the degree of attractiveness was corollary with how mentally balanced a woman is, my guess is that you’d get answers biased by how relatively attractive each woman was. This is similar to how most very attractive women aren’t as bothered by sexualization in varying degrees as they become less and less so. In other words the HB5 will rail against sexism of skimpy bikinis and beauty pageants, while the HB10 could care less. It serves the less attractive women’s imperative to disqualify more attractive women’s chances of taking the men they’d want to pair with. This is competitive hypergamy 101. So the gorgeous blonde HB10 with huge tits is automatically cast as a bimbo. Women would like nothing more than for a high value men to think of more attractive, chronically single women to be considered damaged goods.

The Maninstitute has a great breakdown of The Hot/Crazy Scale


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