Strength of Interest

I had a couple of questions from the SoSuave Forum‘s (yes, I’m still a mod there) Judge Nismo I thought I’d take a crack at:

G’ morning Rollo. I got a couple questions for you that I don’t think you touched on in your book…or I may have overlooked.

1. What is your opinion on the Celebrity Maxim?

That is, I know you see it a lot in your Rational Male comments and on this board (i.e. Would she flake out on Brad Pitt? Would she make George Clooney wait for sex? She wouldn’t confuse Channing Tatum, etc.) I’ve even used it a lot on here, usually saying you wouldn’t fall asleep if you had a date with Katy Perry, and you wouldn’t pull a last minute flake text with Kate Upton, and you wouldn’t have to babysit if you had Shakira ready to bang!

If there’s three things I’ve learned from writing in the Manosphere for the past 12 years it’s this; no matter how apt, never use an allegory to illustrate a point, never try to relate a fictional story, movie or character to a real world dynamic and never hold up famous celebrities as common reference examples of broader, mundane dynamics.

The temptation to do so stems from a want for a common point of reference. However, appealing to a highly recognizable exemplar of a dynamic only makes picking apart the known particulars about that individual a priority – not on really grasping the dynamic itself.

I see this in the ‘sphere occasionally, and I’d be lying if I said I’d never committed these sins myself. For the most part, and certainly as far as my own readership goes, I think many of the best writers and the commentariat of the ‘sphere are very intelligent men. That’s not to account for the occasional troll, but I’ve found that even an OCD troll still needs to be clever in the ‘sphere.

That said, it’s just this preponderance of intelligence that makes men take illustrative examples as face value facts. Using celebrities as examples of commonality in purpose just smacks of the Apex Fallacy.

“….the Apex fallacy is the idea that we assign the characteristics of the highest visibility members of a group to all members of that group.”

If you’re at all familiar with the controversy surrounding the Apex Fallacy, feminists and manginas alike decided to commandeer wikipedia to paste this as a Men’s Rights misappropriation of the definition, but in actuality the true definition cuts both ways. So while women misappropriate the highest visibility men to associate a totality of the “patriarchy”, men, on the other hand, misappropriate the highest echelon men with examples of common inference of a dynamic.

In English, those celebs aren’t you or me or any layperson you deal with daily. I get the inference of course, and the message is usually one about incentives being strong enough to prompt behaviors. However, what Nismo is getting at is really less about the validity of those illustrations and more about genuine desire:

I ask since it’s quite a big trope in the manosphere…

2. What is your take on the one strike rule?

You do have a 3 strikes article on Rational Male, and I did read it. On this board, it’s quite common to see situations with chicks go like this:

– She flaked on me, she is deleted.
– She stopped responding to my texts and calls, automatic out.
– She wants to bring some friends along, sorry this is one on one.

I could go on and on, most of these situations often get read by red pill men as low interest, thus move on or become a beta orbiter. Yes, I do online dating and work 2 jobs, but I do have a one strike policy.

Sure, sometimes life will truly get in the way, but most men who are red pill will likely move on if there’s low interest. We all know not to waste time with uninterested chicks because they won’t put out. Heck, the sick excuse is often times a blow off, and lately, death in the family has been disguised as blowing someone off.

Zero Tolerance

The problem most men have with a Zero Tolerance policy is that you’re not George Clooney and you’re not Brad Pitt, but moreover, most men still cling to Blue Pill idealisms and the conditioned hope that women will see the “real” men they think women have a magical sensitivity to detect. Thus, they play by the script and hold out for the real desire they believe women should have a capacity for with them.

This is why Blue Pill men get angry at the 3-Strikes rule; that scarcity mentality colors their interaction with women to the point that anything counter to playing the patient, devoted, “prove-my-quality” white knightery role invalidates everything they’ve sacrificed and waited so patiently for up to that point.

They’re afraid of throwing the baby out with the bath water, and damn it, if you suggest doing anything other than what makes their patience worthwhile you’re a misogynistic prick.

If these men could pause with any insight they’d understand that any threshold – one strike, three strikes – suggested by myself or the manosphere isn’t about punishing a woman’s indecisiveness, but rather a pragmatic vetting meant to be efficient for men. That tolerance policy is about conservation of resources and time, not so much retribution (though I’me sure some men entertain that).

• She flakes on you with no counter offer or marginal reframe? –
  Message: Insufficient interest
• Stops responding to communications (and possibly resumes after a period)? – The Medium is the Message
• Wants to bring friends along to a date? –
  Message: you are a rich resource to be exploited, or her interest is so low that she foresees a need to bring friends along to make her date with you entertaining.

The Prince with Interest

What Nismo is comparing here is really an evaluation of interest a woman has in you. I’ve gone into this in the past:

Women with high interest level (IL) wont confuse you. When a woman wants to fuck you she’ll find a way to fuck you. If she’s fluctuating between being into you and then not, put her away for a while and spin other plates. If she sorts it out for herself and pursues you, then you are still playing in your frame and you maintain the value of your attention to her. It’s when you patiently while away your time wondering what the magic formula is that’ll bring her around, that’s when you lean over into her frame. You need her more than she needs you and she will dictate the terms of her attentions.

From an evolutionary perspective Hypergamy can’t afford to wait once a woman’s filtering mechanism is satisfied that a man passes for an Alpha. Women will break rules for Alpha men and create more rules for Beta men to have access to her. Keep in mind that first part; women will make access easy for a man she perceives as an SMV superior. Hypergamy always seeks a better-than deserved SMV benefit.

So to use the apex example, no, a woman can’t afford to confuse Channing Tatum. Mix in the behavioral influences a woman’s ovulatory chemistry predisposes her to with that SMV+ benefit perception and you’ve got dilated pupils, seductive ornamentation, lower vocal intonations and an elevated heart rate – Estrus.

As you might guess, this poses a problem for most guys because, lets face it, most of us aren’t examples of this apex. Even when we make dramatic leaps in self-improvement and physical transformation it’s hard to shake our former self-impressions and our previous degrees of self-confidence.

Back in the early days of SoSuave there was a concept we’d use that I think had a lot of merit – the concept of the Prince. For many men just coming into a Red Pill awareness meant re-imagining oneself in a new, more intrinsically valued light.

For instance, after you understand the basic psychology of why a technique like Cocky & Funny or Amused Mastery works with women, personally applying those dynamics requires a man to view himself in a more valuable context.

As I said, Hypergamy always seeks a better-than deserved SMV benefit, so it follows that a man should at least reconsider himself as that “better-than her SMV” prospect. Irrespective of that being a reality or not, the idea is a sound one. In fact it’s a law of power:

Law 25 – Re-Create Yourself

Do not accept the roles that society foists on you.  Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience.  Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

And also:

Law 34 – Be Royal in your Own Fashion:  Act like a King to be treated like one

The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated; In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you.  For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others.  By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

In Amused Mastery, it helps to actually have some context of mastery to source as amusement.

Needless to say, asking a former Blue Pill Beta to simultaneously digest a new Red Pill awareness and revalue his self-worth is a pretty tall order. As I mention in Rejection & Revenge as a man, your existence will be defined by how you deal with rejection, so for a majority of men who’ve been hammered flat for the better part of a lifetime by women’s rejection telling him to adopt the mindset of a Prince is alien to him.

Furthermore, much of his feminine-conditioned self-perception has always taught him to be self-conscious and respectful of women’s default authority. It’s part of men’s previous Beta Game to want to identify with the feminine in order to prove how alike a man is with a woman. This conditioning is really a plan to force compliance to women’s sexual strategy from men, but it’s sold on the belief that being more feminine-like, feminine-sensitive, will set a Beta man apart from other brutish men who aren’t.

When you consider his previous degree of ego-investment in his conditioning, you can get a real appreciation of the unlearning a Red Pill man must do. It’s very difficult for most guys to consider themselves a Prince when they’ve been taught reverent deference to women all their lives.

Qualities of The Prince(ss)

A Prince’s time is valuable. His efforts and attention are gifts he bestows on the woman he’s interested in, and as such that woman’s esteem should be validated by it. She is envied by other women because of the Prince’s interest in her; it confirms there is something about her that sets her apart from other women. Her role becomes one of both humbling gratitude and excited, almost childlike, anticipations of him.

If that comes off like a pipe dream or a fake-it-till-you-make-it motivational screed, it’s because most men are so inured by a lifetime conditioning designed to hold them in the role of expectant, reverent, and deferring lover if they can perform to a woman’s standards. So ingrained is that subservience that a Princess’ acceptance of a man is exalted to an appreciation of spiritual, metaphysical, significance. God ordained her acceptance of him, the fates conspired or he “just got lucky”.

Beta men, in their Blue Pill expectations of women being rational agents, are often dumbfounded by the woman who compulsively returns over and over again to the Alpha ‘asshole’ who doesn’t respect, appreciate and love her like she deserves – like he would if she’d just come to her senses. We call that guy the emotional tampon, but what he doesn’t get is that the woman he’s orbiting is locked in a cycle that only a man with an SMV above her own can induce.

Even if that valuation is just perceptual, a woman’s Hypergamous optimization efforts will predispose her to wanting to lock that man down. This is the danger of relying on apex examples of a dynamic – women must still operate within their respective frames and within their capacity to accurately evaluate the SMV of the men she can realistically attract.

That semi-abusive Jerk boyfriend she loves so much? He’s not Channing Tatum or Brad Pitt, but contextually he’s the guy with the strength of her interest.