Not everything the pickup guys believed or taught was crap. It's true that women do want to have sex, sometimes lots of it, I know i was, but I was constrained by the whole slut thing. That said, I still did a lot of guys when I was younger (I wonder what the number would have been if I'd done the rest?) I wasn't much interested in settling down so that had a lot to do with it. 'Direct Approach' and NLP clearly do have some benefits for some even if they don't apply to your experience.
The two most valuable lessons I got out of The Game was that these guys know female psychology better than we do, and that if you want to avoid a lot of abusers, manipulators, and sexual predators, reading this book will arm you better than anything else will. I highly recommend it for women.
Also, the methodology Strauss outlined for how to accomplish the seemingly impossible - a short, thin, bald, average-looking dude nailing hot chicks - was quite familiar to me - as I'd run across it many times in business books and books on how to be successful. It's the same outline startup entrepreneurs are encouraged to follow - with most of the writers being probably completely unaware that the PUAs use it. The business guys are the ones who invented it, anyway - the PUAs either copied it or figured it out for themselves. But it stresses constant learning and constant field work for practice, however scary that is. It could easily be applied to more productive goals--learning another skill, starting a startup, learning a new sport, writing a novel and getting published, changing to a new profession. Tom Cruise, who makes a brief appearance in the book when Strauss works with him on one of his movies, was the voice of maturity: "If only these guys would apply themselves like this to something useful and productive, it's incredible what they could accomplish!"
My sense entirely. I got two articles based on both out of this, and I recommend Strauss's book to women trying to avoid toxic men.
>> I really wanted to have sex, but often had this stupid gatekeeper thing in my brain that would shut down and prevent me from getting sex. Teaching men to do a magical series of moves that would manage to circumvent my gatekeeper and help get me laid was a wonderful thing, and I advised my male friends to try it.
> Pickup artists can liberate these women - just not from the social norms (which already favor casual sex within their subculture), but from their risk-averse nature, resulting from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.
To me, that sounds like “liberating” them not from their risk-averse nature, but from their pickiness, which I find uncomfortably close to outright raping them. Surely the gatekeeper is there for a reason. If a woman were to encourage me to circumvent her internal gatekeeper, tricking her into desiring sex with me—yes, this is pure fantasy—I’d think I’m already badly abusing her and have somehow broken her into going to horrifying lengths to please me, which I definitely do not deserve. I’d also count myself as living on borrowed time; it couldn’t take long for someone to righteously beat or stab me to death.
Are you an appropriately trained and licensed mental-health professional? I’ve always been told you have to be one to diagnose mental disorders.
How is it “navel-gazing”, and how does it make you feel raped, that I make a point to avoid being a rapist in any way, shape or form? If I’m raping you by not raping you, this is a witchhunt and there’s no way to be innocent, and I find it hard to believe this is not your whole idea, provided you read my comment at all.
I neither called anyone retarded nor talked about ordinary women—ordinary women don’t show any interest in me, let alone encourage me to play tricks to make them interested.
What I would like to point out is how the whole thing devolved into scam and grift. Selling the hold eye contact for 3.5 seconds kinds of training courses.
I find your repeated fears of being "manipulative" to often miss the point.
An "indirect approach", for example, appears to instead describe a respectful and considerate expression of interest. One which is deniable for both parties and therefore actually not emotionally blackmailing unlike a direct one, because it's not "look at me, I'm prostrating myself before you, now feel bad for me when you reject me."
Though of course this assumes that both parties are reasonably intelligent and socially adroit.
Re: Kayfabe. I remember a hilarious post on Chateau Heartiste where the day game opening line was to ask the woman if she knew if there was a pet store nearby. I remember laughing at it, and the guy doing it was clearly a natural with buckets of confidence. As I recall, the idea was that the line was so preposterous that both parties knew it was a sort of gag, and the woman would play along with it for the fun of it. Apparently he had some luck with it.
Not everything the pickup guys believed or taught was crap. It's true that women do want to have sex, sometimes lots of it, I know i was, but I was constrained by the whole slut thing. That said, I still did a lot of guys when I was younger (I wonder what the number would have been if I'd done the rest?) I wasn't much interested in settling down so that had a lot to do with it. 'Direct Approach' and NLP clearly do have some benefits for some even if they don't apply to your experience.
The two most valuable lessons I got out of The Game was that these guys know female psychology better than we do, and that if you want to avoid a lot of abusers, manipulators, and sexual predators, reading this book will arm you better than anything else will. I highly recommend it for women.
Also, the methodology Strauss outlined for how to accomplish the seemingly impossible - a short, thin, bald, average-looking dude nailing hot chicks - was quite familiar to me - as I'd run across it many times in business books and books on how to be successful. It's the same outline startup entrepreneurs are encouraged to follow - with most of the writers being probably completely unaware that the PUAs use it. The business guys are the ones who invented it, anyway - the PUAs either copied it or figured it out for themselves. But it stresses constant learning and constant field work for practice, however scary that is. It could easily be applied to more productive goals--learning another skill, starting a startup, learning a new sport, writing a novel and getting published, changing to a new profession. Tom Cruise, who makes a brief appearance in the book when Strauss works with him on one of his movies, was the voice of maturity: "If only these guys would apply themselves like this to something useful and productive, it's incredible what they could accomplish!"
My sense entirely. I got two articles based on both out of this, and I recommend Strauss's book to women trying to avoid toxic men.
>> I really wanted to have sex, but often had this stupid gatekeeper thing in my brain that would shut down and prevent me from getting sex. Teaching men to do a magical series of moves that would manage to circumvent my gatekeeper and help get me laid was a wonderful thing, and I advised my male friends to try it.
> Pickup artists can liberate these women - just not from the social norms (which already favor casual sex within their subculture), but from their risk-averse nature, resulting from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.
To me, that sounds like “liberating” them not from their risk-averse nature, but from their pickiness, which I find uncomfortably close to outright raping them. Surely the gatekeeper is there for a reason. If a woman were to encourage me to circumvent her internal gatekeeper, tricking her into desiring sex with me—yes, this is pure fantasy—I’d think I’m already badly abusing her and have somehow broken her into going to horrifying lengths to please me, which I definitely do not deserve. I’d also count myself as living on borrowed time; it couldn’t take long for someone to righteously beat or stab me to death.
Reading the level of navel-gazing neuroticism in your comment made me feel raped. You do realise ordinary women are not retarded right?
Are you an appropriately trained and licensed mental-health professional? I’ve always been told you have to be one to diagnose mental disorders.
How is it “navel-gazing”, and how does it make you feel raped, that I make a point to avoid being a rapist in any way, shape or form? If I’m raping you by not raping you, this is a witchhunt and there’s no way to be innocent, and I find it hard to believe this is not your whole idea, provided you read my comment at all.
I neither called anyone retarded nor talked about ordinary women—ordinary women don’t show any interest in me, let alone encourage me to play tricks to make them interested.
Do you have any point beyond regulating my status (<https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jvpPknEbbsjx44wty/status-regulating-emotions>)?
Calm down. You're hysterical.
I’ll take that as a “no”.
What I would like to point out is how the whole thing devolved into scam and grift. Selling the hold eye contact for 3.5 seconds kinds of training courses.
I find your repeated fears of being "manipulative" to often miss the point.
An "indirect approach", for example, appears to instead describe a respectful and considerate expression of interest. One which is deniable for both parties and therefore actually not emotionally blackmailing unlike a direct one, because it's not "look at me, I'm prostrating myself before you, now feel bad for me when you reject me."
Though of course this assumes that both parties are reasonably intelligent and socially adroit.
Re: Kayfabe. I remember a hilarious post on Chateau Heartiste where the day game opening line was to ask the woman if she knew if there was a pet store nearby. I remember laughing at it, and the guy doing it was clearly a natural with buckets of confidence. As I recall, the idea was that the line was so preposterous that both parties knew it was a sort of gag, and the woman would play along with it for the fun of it. Apparently he had some luck with it.
Great content here, and very true. Kudos.
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