Being an ethical asshole

... SUCKS! There are so many juicy tidbits I want to blog about here. I can blog about minor offenses like guys taking advantage of girls because these girls don't know American culture, and how these guys are not man enough to pick up girls who know our local custom & way of life. Or there are some hearsay stories that are borderline if not outright criminal.

Instead of preying on vulnerable girls, let's focus on being vulnerable. Most seduction methods focus on attraction and they rarely talk about what keep relationships going. Sure, I'm all for tacitly flipping attraction switches in order to elicit IOI from girls at the initial part of our interaction. Attraction is necessary AND sufficient for sex, but what keeps people together? What strengthens our bonds with girls? This goes beyond showing our interest for them and beyond compliance tests in order to get them to invest into our interaction.

Friends have asked me because they wondered how I keep my relationships going for such a long time. Good sex helps, but ultimately, it's about being a normal guy. What that means is that I have hopes and dreams, failures and successes, strengths and vulnerabilities. But through all that happened in life, I am here and be who I am today. Girls look, not just for the fun happy social guy, but also toward their guys for strength and stability.

I know I shouldn't have, but I have mocked people who try to change their miserable lives. Deep down, I appreciate how hard they are trying to improve themselves. But ultimately, we must have a sense of who we are, what we are here to do, and how we fit in the world. Answers to these questions may be vague and of course, change with time. It's one thing to change our wardrobe, change our posture and the way we stand, or perhaps, our outlook and even how we conduct ourselves. But we must not violate our own and societal moral code in order to get girls.

A few more fashion tips

Some readers emailed me asking for specifics, so here are a few more tips I picked up from chatting with sales people:

1. Dark hair, dark shoes; light hair, lighter shoes
2. Darker complexion, create contrast by wearing clothes not as saturated in color; reverse for people with pale complexion
3. The current fashion trend is form fitting clothes
4. Colors for this past summer were: yellow + green; colors for this winter are: brown + purple
5. Shoes with slightly rounder tips are back in
6. Wear one piece that stands out: tie, belt buckle, necklace, watch, body piercing jewelry,...

Those are just guidelines I follow. As always, clothes look as good as the person presenting them... Lean back, walk with hip first, then shoulders & head. Use the doorway as a reminder to work on posture, walk, and smile whenever you walk through one.

The second step

Before even taking a bootcamp, definitely spend what you are willing to spend on a bootcamp or any PU materials on your looks & presentation. Looks matters A LOT and first impression, whether we like to accept it or not, is extremely important. This is one major area that is neglected in any seduction literature and bootcamp.

The myth that we can get any girl anytime anywhere is a joke. The second myth is that if we have good inner and outer games, we can pick up girls; which is also untrue. Going to a bootcamp wearing your best clothes for going church on Sunday won't cut it. BradP talks about sexy stereotypes in his fashion book. I would sum it up as either look good by being classy or edgy. Classy means that we convey that we follow fashion trends and I'll talk about how we do that. Edgy means that we have to show that we know what is fashionable and we break one or two rules just to show we know but we also value our individuality, see rock stars, magicians (e.g. Mystery), and other performers. This is how peacock theory is evolved. Edgy looks, i.e. peacocking, will invite girls to open, then it's a great way to learn to deal with shit tests (i.e. interest/intrigue).

How much to spend? How/where/what to shop? If you decide to take a $1500 workshop, be prepared to spend that much on your wardrobe. I would even go as far as to say that if you can't afford to take a workshop, you have to spend that much on clothes... not necessarily on one weekend, but over the course of a few months. There isn't a way to pick one look and it would magically transform you. The first step is to look through GQ and other fashion magazines for men. Find the hairstyle, clothes, shoes, and the image that fits with your personality you want to convey to the type of girls you want. Go to a salon and experiment with a few different hairstyles. Same with going to department stores and ask them for advice for what would look good on you. If you want to go for the uniquely edgy looks, then shop at boutique places, where they carry one or two of the same items, they will be either extremely expensive or very cheap.

I'm hesitant about recommending people to shop with their friends (even female friends). Most friends already have an image of you and they tend not to go out of their way to help you change your look because change is often what we all fear. I'm a strong advocate for people to look normal, blend in with the social crowd first rather than shocking people by looking crazy. Changing what we look outside will first affect how people respond to us and if we have a bit of social intelligence, will eventually alter how we view ourselves. In the beginning, we are what we see, how people react to us is the reflection that we see. Later on, we can work on changing inside, but even if we think we are the shit, and if girls disperse whenever we talk to them, no amount of inner game, delusions, and reframing can change that reality.

We have to master the basics: fitting in first, learn to be normal, be among social people, and gradually we will form good relationships with people. That's why I keep warning to newbies joining the community to stay away from guys who have been in this for a few years but have no social circles other than trolling forums and lairs for wings. There's something inherently wrong with them to cause them to be stuck at their current situation. Unfortunately, most newbies don't know and are repeatedly being misled. If people can't form relationship with other guys, how will they maintain relationships with girls?!

The first step is determine where we are... and changing our looks is the second. Girls and even most guys are extremely nice, they would never want to outright hurting anyone; I attribute most guys who don't improve because no one has the courage to tell them that they are not normal, they need to change to fit in, and if they can't, they should resign & be happy with their position in life. Not everyone is born social, just as 1% of almost any population is schizophrenic, and there's a rising epidemic of autistic kids. Such is life. If we are to avoid the same fate that has befallen most lair guys, we have to take small incremental steps to be normal.

A meta-update

There are several yet-to-be published blog entries on the basics of approaches, building a connection, conveying identity, and disqualifications. But they have not been posted yet because I'm not happy with them. Unlike many wannabe dating "coaches" who plagiarize materials from others and claim as their own, my blog posts are a reflection of my journey, my progress, my failures, my successes, and some from people I socialize with. There's no reason for me to make people believe in something that I'm not and this blog should be as comprehensive as I can make it.

The reality is that I don't come up with that much new materials and I don't want to rehash what other experts have posted. I want to include my experiences and how I have successfully (and sometimes, failed) to implement different tactics and strategies. The fun part of writing this is about sharing... and the ego strokes of having others read my bullshit. I don't have completely new materials of mine to push and I don't try to get people to enroll in some lame courses/workshops just to prove that I am some sort of a fucked up "leader of men." I already have a job I enjoy, I have a group of reliable colleagues, I have a group of supportive friends who are not afraid to call me out if I lie here.

Those who seek/desire something are forever condemned to get what they don't want. Let it all go and ye shall be!

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.

Deep thoughts

"Attempting to change the world through external effort is like a man, who by breaking a mirror, thinks he is changing his face."

I came across this thought-provoking quote recently.

My style of being a lazy, boring guy

I hate walking up to some girls to open them. Being the lazy guy that I am, I usually just sit down at a table. The last one I remember, I started having small talk a guy sitting next to me. Our conversation was boring and learning from Juggler (his materials, not directly from him), i.e. be a nosy guy, he introduced me to his party of people, who were there for his gf's 22nd birthday. I don't peacock normally so he was giving me some advice on dating and how I should lock up a girl while I'm still in college, which was what he did. His girl was fun and so were all her friends.

They all turned out to be coworkers at a fancy restaurant with all those hot waitresses. Perhaps I was being a boring beta male, AFC, he invited me to go visit him at his restaurant, left me his card and wrote down that he will hook me up if I go there next time with friends.

Then I made some comments to a couple sitting a few seats away from me, we started talking. I don't remember what I said, but it was pretty clear to the guy sitting next to her knew that I was hitting on her. Again, using complete Juggler style, I started talking about the difficulty of maintaining a committed relationship. While her guy sitting to her left, she confided to me (sitting on her right) that she was still talking with some guy back home. We vibed for a bit longer. There might have been attraction, IOIs, or whatever else, I didn't look for them. Funny how her guy placed his hand on her left knee while I was teasing her on her right.

My friends came back from their approaches. As I got up to leave with my buddies, I just handed her my phone to enter her contact info, which she did, while the guy was sitting right next to her.

The "sarge" was very low-key, from afar people saw that I was just hanging out with my friends, nothing special. I was not the dancing monkey, I was not the entertainer, and yet, we connected even with her boy next to her. This was something I hope to continue: Being normal, social, low-key, just another guy who can connect with people. Sure, I used some community routines, I told some canned stories, I teased her a bit, but more than 90% of our conversation was either fluff or emotional rapport, very spontaneous conversation threads of being in the moment.

Why do I bring this up? I want to highlight that depending on the vibe of the environment, types of people, I have been working at this for a long time to develop the right calibration; the important thing is that I am surrounded by positive people who are fun. There's no one size fits all method, it's about incorporating what works and be calm, be chill, have fun, be social, deliberate and lead. I'll post my story of how I literally dragged a girl out of the bar to go back to her place in 20 minutes.