Taking the first step

Some of you found this blog by searching for "bootcamp," as in field training to pickup girls. Before we consider taking a bootcamp, let's assess where we are and where we want to go. Now, picking up girls is not what it seems; to be able to rapidly connect with a stranger by piquing her curiosity/interest and concurrently building rapport, this requires some finesse to find the right balance.

Let's start with where we are... There are quite a few "community" guys reading this so I'll be blunt. As my sociologist friend told me (and no, he doesn't have a PhD), the community is filled with deviants, that's right, people who are not normal, not on both ends of the bell-shaped curve, but mostly on the lack of social skills side, i.e. two standard deviations below the median. Whereas guys who are pulling girls left and right home for sex as documented in their blogs, they are on the other side, as in they have far above normal social intuition and skills. Now we see that in order to get to there, 3-day bootcamp or a 1-hour workshop will not allow us tunnel through the curve of normal distribution. We first have to join the rest of humanity, and be normal, yes, we are starting at special end of the curve, as in Forrest Gump special in the social arena.

Take a typical Friday night, do you have friends during the week invite you to events/activities for the rest of the weekend? And on that night, do you have people texting you, calling you, and tempting you to join them? On a day-to-day basis, do you talk with friends regularly, about some funny shit that went down which made you both laughed your ass off?!

Or are you busily reading and taking notes about some posts in seduction forums/blogs, and then you go online to match.com to test them out? When Friday night comes around, do you go through your long list of "wings" and call them out to "sarge?" Do you prepare mentally or on a notepad of what you will say to girls when you call them up?

A normal social person would answer yes to the first 3 questions and probably don't have a clue to the last 3 questions. Now we have a glimpse of what I mean by a normal and social person. If your answers to the last 3 questions are yes, then it's a good sign that you have much work to do and bootcamp is just the beginning. And if you have taken more than one bootcamp, then it's an even more troubling sign; unless, of course, you were duped into taking one from a fly by night self-proclaimed pickup artist who teaches it but has no demonstrable evidence that he can connect with people (especially he's the stalker type who projects his paranoid psychosis onto others), much less picking up a girl.

Many have voiced to me that my blog has a negative tone. I agree because it's about time someone be critical in examining this sociological phenomenon. I'm not an expert, but I have seen many, even been "sarging"/winging with many "community" guys, who are simply societal rejects. They are beyond hope and yet they doggedly think that they hold some secret formula to success and even worst, they think they have a great inner game and they have this individualistic superiority attitude looking down at commoners. What they don't realize is that they are way below the curve and will probably never make reach the median in terms of their social skills.

When I was growing up, I thought (as one reader does) that anyone can be anything. You know, the typical Horatio Alger's story of a real-life American Dream. As I have gotten older, mentored some people, guided/helped many more, I discovered we are not equal... Some of us are simply better at certain activities than others. This diversity is a good thing. Some people become famous movies/TV stars, professional athletes, professional pickup-artists, bona fide hustlers, and especially in the "community," expert code monkeys, not one is necessarily better than other.

If we are to randomly select one from each of these categories, no matter how much we train, goad, bait, push, pull, they simply won't get it. Sure, bootcamp/workshop can make a difference if these people commit to working at improving themselves, but at a certain point, it's time to move on. Some older guys are acting out the Peter Pan syndrome as if they can stay young and do what kids do; Peter Pan is a work of fiction and he never got to "light up" Tinkerbell. Even professional athletes have a point that they either break-through and become superstars, or forever destined to play backups or bench warmers. And for many reading this, the bad news is, they never have been, never will be a "pickup-artists" because they are incapable of being normal.

The first step to start self-improvement is a realistic assessment of where we are. If we don't know where we are in relation to others, how do we determine when we have arrived our destinations? I know, many will argue that this is a self-determined journey, but believe or not, we don't live in a small shack out in nowhere alone, if we want to pickup girls, we have to be where people gather. If people disperse whenever you arrive, it's about time to correct that problem first before thinking about taking anyone else home.

For the rest, who are still young and just joined the community, as in below 21, leave and make friends. Just because it's on VH1 doesn't mean this is cool... even if there's another show that will be on MTV2. I am guessing, based on those who are masters now, the optimal age is for guys to be out there picking up girls is between 21 and 30. If there's an age that chess grandmasters normally peak at, I'm pretty sure there's a similar window for developing social skills. Sure there are exceptions, just as there are supposedly "straight" guys who everyone else thinks are gay; there are also unicorns/tooth faeries/easter bunnies/Santa Claus. Have you met one lately? Never argue with biology, nature always wins.