Again, A Defense of Pickup Artistry (PUA)

My buddy, Dagonet, recently wrote a superb blog post where he defends pickup artists (PUA). One of his many good points is that there is an almost visceral negative reaction to the term “PUA”. That reaction is all over the Internet. There are Tweets, blog posts, and entire websites that excoriate pickup artists for being “man-boys”, “losers”, and “selfish assholes” who aren’t thinking of society’s greater good. The following Tweet shows it quite well:

The Tweet links to a thoughtful blog post about moral ambivalence. The shaming language in the Tweet is standard stuff and generally used when PUA causes emotional distress that can’t be resolved by applying even a small amount of logic and reason. I responded to that Tweet with a Tweet of my own:

A collection of Tweets then cascaded down with fairly good points being raised by a number of Tweeters. The biggest objection to PUA was that men were not considering how their individual actions impact our culture at large. Such objections are a couple of decades too late and are no longer relevant. We are well past what “should” be and firmly in the land of socio-sexual reality.

Twitter is good for getting to the heart of the matter. It really doesn’t matter how PUAs are created. Learning and practicing PUA is a logical and rational response to the current cultural conditions regarding how men and women interact in a socio-sexual context. Through the various waves of feminism, women have been effectively released from the social contract between the two sexes. Until the Internet, most men were unaware that they were upholding one part of a contract and women had fled their part of the contract. Now, men know better. I’ve written about that previously and the comments on that blog post are excellent.

So men responded, almost predictably. In order to meet their socio-sexual goals, men simply applied their brain power to the problem of understanding how women respond to predictable stimulus vis-a-vis sexual attraction. Dagonet pointed this out clearly in his blog post:

The natural, and rational, reaction to this situation is to learn game. To become a “pickup artist.” What this really means– despite the negative connotation– is that a man takes active control of his sex life and decides to start maximizing the behaviors that garner positive reactions from women, and minimizing the negative. He also might actually discover new abilities, confidence, and more attractive ways to present himself physically (clothes, working out, hair style, etc.).

Speaking as a man who supports men and things masculine, there is nothing wrong with this at all. Our society liberated women to pursue any number of (approved by feminism) options. So, in the spirit of equality, it’s completely and utterly fair to free men to pursue any options they so desire and to free him of the pressure to sacrifice his very life on the altar of a society that sees him either disposable or completely invisible. Men needn’t be cultural cannon fodder.

But, like women, in order to pursue options, a man must learn new personal skills. Women now make up the majority college attendees and graduates to hopefully learn skills to enter careers. Men – especially young men – seek out and learn PUA to gain a skill set that allows them to pursue more options. That’s perfectly reasonable and rather balanced in the grand scheme of things. PUA skills will become increasingly necessary because of hypergamy and the imbalance between men and women receiving college degrees.

As a skill set, PUA can be used however a man sees fit. Given the strong negative response to those three simple letters, we can change up the nomenclature to mollify those with delicate emotional sensibilities. Let’s call this skill set “learned charisma and confidence”. That sounds so much better, no? It’s not sleeping around, a man uses his new skills of charisma and confidence to fulfill his relationship goals with the opposite sex. Isn’t it fun to bandy semantics? Wordplay aside, if a man wants to use his charisma and confidence find himself in horizontal repose with many women, I give him two thumbs up. If he wants to find a special woman with whom to secure an intimate and committed relationship, my thumbs remain up.

As an aside and as Dagonet pointed out, there’s an awful lot of political discussion amongst the guys in the ‘Sphere. This is not my bailiwick but it does make sense given how culture and politics are ultimately intertwined. I argue that men need to now act individualistically without much regard to how their actions impact either politics or culture. With a large number of men acting on a such basis, a collective and masculine inertia will commence, if it hasn’t already started. In his blog post, Dagonet spoke of how many men found a relatively unorganized but ultimately unified endeavor through PUA. When a sufficient number of men operate in concert – even if to be more successful with their relationship goals – a cultural shift for the benefit of men will inevitably occur.

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Racism In Dating?! (Not This Crap Again)

Start here. Read the article. Do some research on the author. Then come back to this blog post. Here’s a quote from the piece:

In 2014, the data-obsessed OKCupid calculated the odds of a user “liking” a profile on its Tinder-like service Quickmatch. When it comes to straight daters, they discovered that women expressed a strong preference for men of their own race. But one group of males fared particularly well outside of their race: Asian and Latina women showed above average odds of “liking” profiles featuring white men.

[Note: I’m ignoring the part about the online dating website about white folks seeking white folks]

I’ve written about this before and each time this accusation of racism in dating preferences erupts like an infected cultural cyst, it must be cleaned up with alacrity. First of all, “data-obsessed” is a great thing. Data shows patterns of human behavior. Data shows generalizations, a good thing for helping to understand human nature. Don’t like it? Tough shit, sociologists and psychologists need such data. OKCupid has some of the best research of real, honest human behavior based on real actions, not some bullshit surveys rife with sample bias.

Hey Tracy Clark-Flory, how about “my body my choice” be applied to attraction preferences between the sexes? Imposing still more social expectations on attraction and dating won’t make the process any easier. Such expectations only serve to increase personal frustration. If a woman prefers one type of man, where do you get the vile conceit that you can apply some sort of pressure for her to change her perfectly natural preferences? Dating preferences are private. Attraction happens between our ears, away from the prying eyes of politically correct busy-bodies anxious to transform dating into a delusional utopia.

Wait, there’s more!

In a blog post, OKCupid’s Christian Rudder refrained from labeling these preferences as racist. “On an individual level, a person can’t really control who turns them on—and almost everyone has a ‘type,’ one way or another,” he wrote. “But I do think the trend—that fact that race is a sexual factor for so many individuals, and in such a consistent way—says something about race’s role in our society.”

Good for Rudder. He’s a data guy, not a politically correct guy. He’s also clearly aware of the perils of collecting such data. Ever hear of the term “hate facts“? Rudder certainly has so he selects his words carefully. Private human behavior is not politically correct. What happens between our ears is the zenith of privacy if it’s not spoken or acted upon. Until the thought police becomes real, attraction can’t be enforced by social justice warriors or even shamed by that same group of cultural miscreants.

Tracy Clark-Flory is attempting to play the race card in a game where she, and her unpleasant ilk, are unwelcome. Think of a party crasher with bad manners and poor hygiene. Attraction is not a choice. It can’t be shamed. It can’t be negotiated. Anyone who falls for such nonsense is clearly not ready for dating. The ugly stink of political correctness must be washed off before attempting to start using online dating websites. As well, dating is not about achieving cultural ideals. It’s about fulfilling personal relationship goals. Let’s wrap up with a last quote from the article:

In other words, swiping right on a white guy seems more innocuous than navigating over to Where White People Meet, but on a societal level, it just might be a smaller expression of everyday racism.

“Everyday racism”. No, everyday social shaming from you, you horrible person. I recommend that every online dating user swipe how he or she decides based on his or her own personal preferences. This applies to everyone, straight or not. As someone who provides attraction and dating information based on reality, I will never shame a woman into desiring a short guy. I won’t shame a guy into desiring an overweight woman.

Something else I haven’t mentioned in this blog post, my own individual dating experiences and preferences. Why? Because it’s none of anyone’s fucking business.

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Attraction, Dating, And Aspirational Lying

Researching, observing, and experiencing attraction and dating has taught me that human beings are not particularly honest. We lie. This is central to the human experience. Of course we talk a good game about honesty because we’re socially expected to be honest and talk about being honest and expecting everyone else to be honest. That’s mostly true but quickly falls apart when verbal behavior crosses swords with attraction and dating.

The dark triad man is remarkably adept at aspirational lying. That man will say almost anything to achieve his goal, especially in the social context of seduction. The female equivalent of the dark triad man, the Cluster B woman, behaves in the exact same way but with different content in the lies. Call this meta lying. We state who we want to be, not who we are.

Since I couldn’t find a solid, concise definition of aspirational lying, I’ll provide one for my astute and intellectually curious readers:

Aspirational Lying – A type of dishonesty where an individual makes untrue statements describing herself/himself as what they aspire to be or how they currently behave. The purpose of this type of lying is to increase one’s self-esteem and ego or increase one’s attractiveness and desirability to others.

Here’s some additional background for your edification and intellectual fulfillment.

This form of lying pops up in predictable places. Certainly it’s painted thick on online dating profiles. A 43 year old woman states her age as 39. A man who is 5’7″ tall describes himself as 5’9″ tall. This is incredibly common. It’s so common that even the most naively honest feel pressure to also aspirationally lie on his/her online dating profile.

Aspirational lying can easily ruin socialogical studies. It’s a crime against intellect when both social researchers and journalists fail to recognize that survey answers reflect how the respondent want to be perceived, not how he or she actually feels or behaves. Stupidly, this even applies to anonymous surveys. Human beings can too easily wallow in such profound stupidity when affairs of the ego are involved. Such lies are not for the survey-takers, the lies are for the person responding to the survey.

Business marketing is chock full of aspirational lying. It’s so pervasive that it’s easily ignored. “Most”, “best”, “greatest” are superlatives that have become effectively meaningless. Or, such marketing becomes part of confirmation bias. A product’s attributes are described by the marketers and the consumer of the product goes through some mental exercises to justify a purchase decision. based on those described attributes.

On something of a side note, actually working to improve one’s self is the opposite of aspirational lying. Such efforts are the actions, the lying is just the words. However, a woman’s efforts that are simply cosmetic (no analogy intended) are a bit less clear-cut because make up is a temporary effect. Plastic surgery is a clear-cut (groaner analogy) example of actions over the mere words of aspirational lying.

When it comes to dating, it’s important for a man understand and account for such dishonesty. I’ve already brought up this is in a recent blog post. But that’s simply the online dating profile. Cluster B women present a very different scenario of lies. This requires a level of serious observation and the willingness to overlook the extraordinary sexuality of such women. “Crazy in the bed, crazy in the head” is not just a locker room aphorism shared amongst the guys. Men need to be completely aware of common and predictable feminine behavior, the good and the bad.

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Let’s Try To Fix Online Dating

One of the biggest problems with online dating is the vast number of messages that attractive women receive from men. This makes the online dating experience too frustrating for both sexes. Too few women get bombarded with too many messages. Those women are forced to weed through the terrible mediocrity of those messages. Ordinary men get fed up because their response rate is so low. This is a lose-lose proposition for everyone including the online dating company.

Another huge problem is that too many people don’t take online dating seriously enough. They don’t log in particularly frequently or respond enough to incoming messages. They also don’t even open messages before deleting them. This is not online dating, it’s “catalog” dating, a serious limitation with online dating where the assumption is that there is always another profile, another member of the opposite sex available for a date.

A solution to this is to limit the number of incoming messages a woman can receive in a certain interval of time. Even if she deletes the message(s), no more messages can be received until the next interval of incoming messages commences. Mix it up it further by introducing a random element of time, 30 days, then 17 days, then 23 days, etc. That interval is never revealed to any user.

When a woman receives the the maximum number of incoming messages for that given time period, her profile is not available for display, it is completely hidden. There is no incoming message queue or waiting list. As well, the more incoming messages and pace of those messages, the fewer number of future messages she could receive for the next incoming message time interval.

Here’s another bit of functionality that would very much stir up this new hypothetical online dating website. Once a certain threshold of incoming messages is reached and she hasn’t responded to any of them, a woman cannot send out any type of message to a man, not even a “flirt” or “wink”. She can still view profiles but even if she views them, the men are not notified that the woman has looked at their profiles. The ability to send outgoing messages is determined by the response to existing incoming messages.

As for that responses to incoming messages, there can be two options, “Start a correspondence”, and “No, thanks”. This is a simple check box. If the person receiving the incoming message is sent a message with the “Start a correspondence” option selected, the two may continue messaging each other regardless if the original receiver’s incoming message queue is full or not. If a “No, thanks” response message is sent. The recipient is made invisible to both users, permanently removing both from seeing each online again.

To ensure that the two people escalate into a phone call or text, the number of back and forth messages is limited also. One of the messages must include a phone number that might be validated through a text through the system. The purpose of all this involvement with technology in the communication is to help push along the corresponders into an actual date.

Other solutions would be to only allow message deletion to occur after it has been opened and the sender’s profile displayed. Deleting an unread message without reviewing a profile completely defeats the whole online dating process. Having users read messages and the associated profile before acting encourages using the online dating website seriously.

Of course, the profiles are validated so that scammers, catfishers, and other users with things to hide are not permitted to sign up. That automated technology now exists and is in use by at least one online dating website. This functionality will likely become the trend for the future given how scammers have saturated existing online dating websites.

By acknowledging that men and women behave differently with their online dating efforts, such functionality essentially acknowledges and supports those common online dating behaviors. There’s no attempt to inflict social expectations on the process. Yes, this new online dating would be for heterosexuals only.

This new functionality would be required for creating better online dating profiles. This would naturally include photos (for both sexes) and more involved text descriptions. There would be one section requiring that both male and female users describes what he/she offers a potential paramour. The minimum number of characters required for this section would be greater for women than men. Women still haven’t figured out they have to describe specifically what they have to offer in the context of attraction and dating.

This flips the online gender power dynamic. Attractive women (and a few men) must pay more to get more messages. Regular women pay the regular rates because they are not bombarded with messages. For those people, the free trial period that includes all functionality can be extended. Of course, if a woman wants to pay more to have her desirability validated more, she’s welcome to it. This also forces women to take online dating more seriously. With fewer incoming messages, she must evaluate the profiles more carefully and act on them by sending a response in a timely manner.

While this new functionality applies mostly to women, it can also be applied to men who get lots of incoming messages. They, too, would have incoming message limits applied just like the popular women. In effect, the sex of the person doesn’t impact the core functionality of limiting messages and other features. There are, however, some features and functions that are sex-specific. Men and women are different, especially in the context of attraction and dating.

These system features both slows down online dating yet speeds up parts of it. Women (all popular singles online, in actuality) must be slow to review profiles displayed through incoming messages yet quick to respond. The haste is enforced with the vanishing message and profile after a certain period of time. If the woman doesn’t respond, the man’s message and profile is completely hidden from that woman. Her rejection through inaction effectively turns into blocking a profile.

There would also be functionality to encourage users to be more serious.
Popular message recipients would be encouraged (the carrot) to log in more often – and therefore taking the process more seriously – by increasing the numbers of allowable incoming messages by a modest amount until an eventual limit is reached. That amount would need some additional research and would be based on algorithms that would dynamically change that amount.

The opposite of the login frequency carrot is the stick where the profile is completely removed from searchability if the login frequency drops below a certain threshold. Of course, warnings would be sent out. Additionally, if the woman doesn’t respond to messages within a certain time interval, her profile visibility on the website decreases to the point of complete invisibility, even if a user name search is done.

The text descriptions in profiles would have a minimum number of characters and photographs. The backend system would, of course, require the primary photo to be a face shot and any improper photo could be flagged for speedy removal. As profiles are validated, that face shot would match the user. Also, profiles could be flagged for not including a full body photo. Hell, the profile wouldn’t even get approved without such a photo.

For an interesting thought experiment, the system could screen for a list of prohibited profile terms like “princess”, “diva”, “queen”, or any phrase that speaks of excess entitlement. That list would be dynamically modified through a review process by the website moderators so that new profiles would be rejected with an appropriate error message so the user could modify the profile .

There would not be an Android or iOS version of the website. Squeezing in a bit of online dating while on the go is not healthy for dating in general. Because fewer messages are available to read, the person reading them shouldn’t be staring into some wee phone screen hoping to find a match while sitting at a stoplight. A personal computer or tablet displaying the full website is required. Here’s another thought experiment – the website can only be accessed when the user is completely alone. Camera and software technology in the PC or tablet could do that.

Also, there would be no algorithms to match people automatically. The user knows what he or she wants, not simply a person selected by a bit of software, regardless of how sophisticated it might be. I certainly believe in the power of technology but I also believe there are some human actions that cannot be replaced by computer programs.

With the weaknesses of conventional online dating causing increasing frustration despite it’s still growing popularity, there simply must be new solutions to address that frustration. Of course, the suggestions I presented comes under the “it’s so crazy, it just might work!” category.

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Online Dating Profiles – How To Figure Out Women’s Lies

It’s well-established that most of us lie to some degree on our online dating profiles. There are plenty of websites and blogs to help women find the lies on men’s profiles. Because my primary priority is to help men, I give you the list of potential lies that men must face when evaluating a woman’s online dating profile. I also give some solid tips for identifying those lies.

1. Fuzzy photos. Cell phones and digital cameras have gradually improved over the years. The megapixel count has increased and this means generally sharper images for recent photos. So if you see a fuzzy photo, it might be older. Bear in mind that some online dating websites will re-sample images to make them smaller in terms of memory. Photos may also have an upward memory limit. This will make photos less than crystal clear.

2. Outdated fashions. Women typically chase fashion styles and are willing to spend lots of money to be up to date. If the photo has outdated fashion styles, it’s an older photo. This requires, of course, that a guy has to know what’s in style now. Consult some women’s magazines on this and pay careful attention to what women are wearing as you are out and about. This includes shoes, accessories. A woman’s age does certainly impact her fashion she wears in public.

3. EXIF data. This is meta data hidden in digital images. It includes when and where the photo was taken among other information I’ve experimented with some Plenty of Fish photos and haven’t found much in the way of EXIF image data. However, it’s worth checking, regardless. It’s very easy to do and this Google search results page provides links to websites that look for that data in images.

4. Stolen photos/fake profiles. For free online dating websites, this can be a huge problem. Thankfully, there are ways to do searches to find similar images.
Google images and Tineye are good resources. Use them both.

5. The “angles” and lack of a full body shot. The younger men talk about the “secret Internet fattie” (SIF) and it’s a thing. If a woman identifies her figure as “average” and doesn’t have a full body shot, it’s very likely that she’s a SIF. Women are also very good at posing and fashions to tone down the curves. By the way, “curvy” is fat.

6. She’s too good to be true. If a guy gets a message or return message from a truly sexy dame, it’s time to be really suspicious of a fake profile. Use the photo searching tips from item four before responding to the message.

7. The age factor – 29, 39, 49, 59… This is a classic. If any woman claims her age to be any number with a nine as the trailing integer, add at least four years to her age. Verify that by taking a very hard look at her photos. Hands and facial wrinkles don’t lie. Actually, add at least two years to every woman’s claimed online dating age to get a more accurate estimate of her actual age.

8. Various hair lengths in the photos. Here’s a general rule of thumb – the shorter the hair, the more recent the photo. I have yet to meet a woman who grows out her hair as she gets older. Eventually, they all become Q-tips after about 60 years old.

9. Her self-described figure. Average is generally overweight because the average American is over weight. There is a huge exception – foreign-born women. When they say average, it’s actually slender or athletic when compared to American female bodies. But guys, if you’re overweight as well, you’re not going to get a good response rate from slender or athletic women.

There might be more and I’m sure my clever and thoughtful readers will contribute in the comments. As well, perhaps validated profiles will squash many of these lies. Such lies are what drives matchmaking services.

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The Future Of Online Dating

Sean Rad, Tinder’s CEO recently gave an interview that was described as cringe worthy.

He  says he has a lot of theories about “hook-up culture”, including “that feminism has led to it because now women are more independent and pursuing their desires. And that leads to both parties being more sexually active. It’s not because of Tinder.”

Tinder is owned by Match Group Inc. This recently formed online dating conglomerate was forced to update its SEC IPO filing because of Rad’s extemporaneous remarks.

The future of online dating is going to be determined by one primary factor – the self-reporting nature of online dating profiles. In effect, too many people lie. These aren’t necessarily malicious lies. They are most often lies of omission and lies of aspiration. We don’t tell the whole truth and when we make an attempt at truth in our online dating profiles, we say what we want to be, not what we are.

The lies in profiles make online dating a very bad experience rife with disappointment and frustration. For online dating companies, the challenge is privacy. Verifying information is actually a straightforward technological process. The blockades to truthful, verified online dating profiles are mostly about laws and our own human behavior.

We want to lie on our online dating profiles. We actually need to lie on our online dating profiles because there’s an arms race of bullshit even if unintentional. When one person lies on an online dating profile, it becomes tacit permission for another person to lie. The cycle has been repeating every dating cycle since online dating was invented. In an effort to make us more marketable, we exaggerate, we obfuscate, and we prevaricate.

There’s also a need to control our personal narratives. When we link up to other databases (if we could) such as credit ratings, employment records, marriage and divorce records, police reports, we lose control of our own information. With our digital past in hot pursuit, we can’t craft a new life away from our previous mistakes. For post-divorce singles, this is especially significant because the end of a marriage comes the opportunity for personal change and transformation.

A secondary factor is the catalog mentality – especially in major metropolitan areas – where we happily reject a person knowing full well that there will be yet another profile to evaluate. Some mobile apps are attempting to deal with this. I wrote about it previously.

Here are my predictions for the future of online dating –

1. Mobile apps will continue to grow and possibly overtake PC, browser-based online dating. Delayed matching will be a common feature intentionally or because of premium pricing structures. The culture of sexually hooking up will still be the order of the day for the younger demographics and will also bleed up into the older demographic. The expectation of sex isn’t ending any time soon in the context of dating. Sean Rad was only somewhat right in his interview, feminism did unleash the unrestrained sexuality of youth but it needed something like Tinder to facilitate that unrestrained sexuality.

2. Validated profiles will seriously divide online dating subscribers into two categories with pros and cons for each group. Singles that pay will select validated dating where profiles are checked against existing databases through a background check. It’s already starting with ValiDATE, an online dating service that is being rolled out in various cities as it grows. The expense of validated dating will also serve to weed out the validation queens and entertainment seekers. Paying fees keeps people serious about their dating endeavors. Online dating services without validated profiles will get short shrift. Of course, hackers or the seriously dishonest will find ways to work around the database connections that are used to validate profiles.

3. Videos will gradually become a greater part of all online dating websites and applications. The ability to store and display videos will add a very important dimension to profiles far and above the ordinary photos. Good videos will allow for much better expressions of one’s personality. This, of course, will create specialists who will help create those videos for online dating profiles. It’s up to the online dating services to solve the technical issues.

4. Traditional matchmaking will continue to grow but assisted with online dating so the matchmaker can use it to find a larger pool of singles to match with clients. Regardless, validated online dating and traditional matchmaking will become serious competitors unless clients have the deep pockets to afford the matchmaker’s fees. Online dating can go from the low-end of free online dating websites and mobile apps to high-end of validated profiles. It can not, however, compete with full-service matchmakers.

5. Niche online dating websites will chip away at the big boys from Match Holdings until that company buys them up. This will be an ongoing process. I strongly suspect that entrepreneurs behind niche online dating websites have an exit plan of being bought by Match Holdings so they can profit handsomely. Business is business, after all.

Online dating can’t fix the issues of human behavior. The best that the technology behind it can do is to facilitate how us humble humans can meet one another. It was an excellent idea for online dating websites to organize live events. But such events are not the core competency behind the algorithms and databases driving online dating technology. People still need to meet face to face. After all, the purpose of online dating is to stop online dating. However, that’s actually not good for business.

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Unleash The Neg!

[Note: I had originally intended to make this a video podcast but the ideas here do best in writing, not me talking at my video camera.]

Over four years, I wrote about the self-esteem crisis facing American girls and women. Here is the salient paragraph from my original blog post.

Simply put, contemporary female self-esteem is far too high. Girls and women think too highly of themselves. Whether a teen-aged princess or a middle-aged goddess, females value themselves far in excess of the social/sexual cultural realities as well as the evolutionary psychology realities.

Self-esteem is one’s sense of self-worth. It’s when a person has a strong internal sense of self. Self-esteem and confidence are certainly related. Red Pill wisdom states that a man should have confidence. It’s the emotional power to overcome adversity and grow from it. As women are qualitatively different from men, her emotion strength to simply survive adversity. There is a difference here.

Be wary of many sociological and psychological studies about low self-esteem because they can suffer terribly from selection bias. Simply put, when asked if a person could be the victim of something, that person will answer in the affirmative. This very much applies to women more than men. After all, to the victim goes the spoils – from attention and sympathy all the way to expensive government social programs. But the worst manifestation of getting the social spoils is freedom from consequences of individual decisions and actions.

When it comes to attraction and dating, there are some seriously ugly downstream effects of excess female self-esteem:

• Loss of humility
• Being bossy and domineering
• Indulging in the “having it all” myth
• “I’m always right” or “I always get what I want”
• What “I want” becomes “I deserve”
• Extraordinary pickiness
• Willful ignorance in the face of demographic facts
• Loss of empathy
• Increased “bitch shield“
• Overestimation sense of one’s dating “market value”
• The princess/queen fallacy (check the online dating profiles for those words of self-description)

None of these make a woman more attractive to men. Successful dating coaches know this and have a tremendously challenging balancing act to perform with their female clients. They must rein in the female ego and encourage feminine attractiveness. At the same time, women are awash in social messages such as “love yourself” and “You go, Grrl!”

To circle around to the title of this blog post, it’s important that men have a technique to deal with a woman’s jumbo self-esteem. In old school Pickup Artistry (PUA) is the concept of the “neg“. This word is both a verb and a noun. It is also one of the most controversial elements of PUA techniques.

The neg is intended to be used carefully and with nuance and subtlety. It is not a verbal hammer to be wielded with clumsy impunity. In the context of a woman’s over-inflated self-esteem, the neg can be something fairly neutral. I’ve used this line with great success:

“I see you have that whole self-esteem issue under control”.

This line is not an insult, it’s a statement to acknowledge a woman has no shortage of ego. It puts her on notice that the man can see through her bluster and facade. It’s also a reminder that the man seeks feminine qualities, not masculine qualities clumsily tacked on to a female body.

Using the neg must be done with masculine confidence and with a strong element of flirting. Delivered with a wry smirk (gentlemen, practice that look), the neg can be devastatingly effective in poking a necessary hole in a woman’s unrealistic self-esteem. Of course, if a woman is insufferably awash in ego, it’s time for the nuclear option.

I read that this is a Swedish quote regarding women – she should be happy, humble, and grateful. Is there anything wrong with this? I don’t think so. Note: A reader from Sweden corrected me regarding that quote. According to that comment, it’s “Happy, horny, and grateful”. That fits well, too.

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Beware The Self-Fulfilling Prophesy

I recently got a call from my buddy, Mark the musician. He’s a regular reader of my blog and lives in South Florida. As he studies Red Pill wisdom, he’s very in tune with the reality of life, not the fantasy of life. Mark is very aware of physical appearance and his lifestyle. for better and worse. As a single guy in a high-profile profession – he plays bass in local and traveling bands – he’s often asked about his relationship status. He’s single and not currently dating anyone.

When asked about why he’s not dating anyone, Mark is too honest with his response. He freely admits that he’s short, bald (shaved head), 48 years old, and lives with his aging mother so he can help her out. He also admits that his job is music, not exactly a source of steady income. As he said during our phone conversation, he thinks logically about himself. This is the peril of masculine introspection. He knows too well his shortcomings.

“Men think logically and that includes thinking about himself” he accurately observed. This is amplified by adhering to Red Pill thought where direct honesty is far more important than stupidly unrealistic social expectations. This, however, presents a serious dilemma for men. We soundly criticize women for having a wildly unrealistic self-perception of attractiveness. Red Pill guys can go too far in the other direction regarding self-perception if they are too realistic. It comes to this: “I see too many unattractive, unchangeable things about me so women will never find me attractive”

Such realism can cause a self-fulfilling prophesy. There is nothing wrong with realism until it knocks down a guy’s confidence. This is exacerbated when certain elements of masculine attractiveness are beyond a man’s control. Height is the biggest example. Once a man hits a certain age, he’s not growing any more. The same applies to hair loss unless drastic measures are taken. But weight can be lost, social skills and confidence gained, and charisma learned.

A conventional, and accurate, tenet within Pickup Artistry (PUA) circles is “have irrational self-confidence”. This is easy for the dames because they think emotionally. A post-wall woman uses a mirror as a time machine to the past when her desirability was at its peak. She can do this because her emotions alter how she perceives herself. This, by the way, is a sub-species of the rationalization hamster. Men, being the kings for logic, reason, and realism look at the mirror and typically see their real selves, not some fantasy version thereof.

Such realism is good for masculine self-improvement because a man can see what needs improvement that can be improved. But the realism is a double-edged sword. It can be far too easy to evaluate one’s attractiveness in a negative light. This is horrible for a man’s confidence and is easily perceived by others, particularly women.

Thankfully, there is a cure. I give dating advice for women that can be applied to men but with a variation. For the woman, I advise that when she sees a man she finds at least one good thing about him. For a man, I advise that when he looks in the mirror he sees one good thing in himself, preferably more than one. If he sees something that can be fixed, he envisions that changes that must be made to himself, by himself, and for himself.

In Mark’s case, he does NOT resemble a typical late-40s guy. Through his occupation as a musician, he has cultivated a unique look that bespeaks youth, not middle-age. As well, his Red Pill attitude blesses him with the knowledge that he can work on the parts of himself that he can change. This includes leaning on the side irrational self-confidence.

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Two Video Interviews!

In the first interview, Dan Silverman interviewed me about some of the issues facing men in regards to dating. In second interview, I asked him about his dating coach and matchmaking business.

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Dating Apps – Technology Versus Biology

When the smartphone was released, it was inevitable that some form of online dating would find its way onto the small screens of iPhones and then Android devices. Sure enough, along came Grindr, an app for gay men to find each other. Then came Tinder, something mainly for the heterosexual crowd. I won’t comment on Grindr because that market isn’t what I write about. Tinder, however, has certainly had an impact on the heterosexual “dating” scene. Dating is in quotations because Tinder has a reputation has an app used for primarily for sexual liaisons, not establishing relationships beyond such encounters between consenting adults. A note about terms, an “app” refers to software that runs on smart phones or smart devices such as tablets. Tinder is not the traditional online dating website such as Match or OKCupid.

Tinder was first greeted very cautiously by the pundits. As general location was part of the user’s profile, safety (for the women, of course) was the initial concern. Because the specific user location was not revealed in Tinder, that concern was appropriately brushed aside and users flocked to the app. It also helped that it was free at the time. Within a relatively short time, users were swiping left and swiping right on the profiles with photos originating from the users’ Facebook accounts. But all was not joyous in dateville. Tinder’s user interface function brought out common human behaviors that aren’t harmonious with actually meeting people to form lasting relationships.

The basic and serious problems can be categorized thusly:

1. Users who are not serious about meeting… at all. Tinder devolved into a bar game or a validation fix. In this category are users who swiped (right or left, it doesn’t matter for these users) strictly for the purposes of entertainment or confirmation of his or her (mostly her) desirability.
2. Too many choices too soon. This is the catalog mentality that all online dating suffers from. Swiping left (rejection!) is far too easy because there’s always another profile displayed.
3. Rudeness and crudeness mostly from guys sending messages to girls once a mutual match occurs. This is fallout from Tinder’s reputation as a sexual hook-up app. Guys simply assume that the girl he matches with wants a sexual encounter and soon.

The first two problems are probably as the result of girls using Tinder. Girls love the attention and the availability of so many options leads to a constant left-swipe rejection. The last problem is all about the men. Men are more biologically assertive sexually so it shows regarding the messages they send on Tinder. All three issues with Tinder originate primarily from the DNA-based behavior of human beings as a species. The app did a fine job of capitalizing on that.

But those complaints and the backlash became stronger and stronger. Tinder’s strengths very soon highlighted the weakness as described above. As the dating app is business, fees were eventually established. This also served to curb some of the entertainment and validation seeking users. But the remaining two problems couldn’t be sufficiently addressed with something as simple as imposing a fee on serious Tinderizers.

Enter the dames to create some competition for Tinder. First up, Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB). This app was designed to address at least two of the serious Tinder issues. By working with a user’s existing social network circle of friends (Facebook again), the app only serves up matches within that circle of online friends. Also, matches are only presented one at a time and only for 24 hours. This means that the user viewing the match has time to evaluate but with a deadline. Perhaps this results in a high mutual match rate. I don’t know if the match is ever presented again but that person could be tracked down via Facebook if necessary.

This solution to Tinder’s problems is actually quite elegant. The catalog mentality is stifled and by mining into a user’s circle of friends, overtly sexual messages are also limited if the CMB user is reasonably prudent with her social media friend choices. A guy sending a dick pic or an overtly sexual message is going to think twice if the woman of his digital (double entendre, right there) affection is connected to his friends. The “he’s a creep” story gets started that way.

CMB won’t be a big online dating app. It will attract the smaller number of users who have patience and who are serious about their dating efforts. It won’t make it big, like Tinder, because of incredibly short attention spans, the need for instant gratification, and choice addiction. Should, mirabile dictu, CMB become huge, some of my faith in humanity will be restored.

Next up to take on Tinder’s problems is Bumble. It’s quite recent to the dating app market. Also, it’s founder and creator actually got her start over at Tinder. There was a messy breakup and the Bumble founder went on to do her own thing which was, of course, Bumble. The young woman wanted to create a “respectful” online dating app experience. So she implemented a couple of key features to make the experience better for women.

First and most importantly, once a mutual “like” has been established, the woman must send a message within 24 hours or the match vanishes, poof! Forever! If the guy is really patient, he can extend only one match for another 24 hours. That’s some pressure, right there. Like with CMB, this might serve to nudge women along to actually reach out first, something that is mostly lacking on Tinder where the assertive guys reach out first with often sexual forwardness. There is some very interesting and perceptive commentary on Bumble from the Red Pill guys over at Reddit.

CMB and Bumble have something in common regarding their user profiles. Unlike Tinder (created by men), the other two apps have fields for education, occupation, and employer. Those apps were created by women. The young woman behind Bumble actually described that app as being more feminist. I’ll write a filthy limerick for the first commenter who spots and describes the cognitive dissonance there.

Where all three dating apps succumb to human nature is that only a relatively small percentage of men are perceived as physically attractive to women. Given that CMB only presents one match at a time, there can’t be a quick dismissal. The two individuals must carefully consider if a message is going to be sent. But Tinder and Bumble allow for a quick transition to another profile. Worse, Bumble forces the woman to make a further decision if she is actually going to send a message to the fellow with whom they have a mutual match. It’s an extra level of filtering and that’s not necessarily a good thing considering that girls tend to look for a reason to reject a guy.

This extra scrutiny required by both CMB and Bumble makes the education, occupation, and employer information more important. The guy might not be the most attractive physical specimen but those three pieces of information could sway a girl into creating a match or sending a message. This is hypergamy at work. “Well, he’s losing his hair but look at his thick and wavy occupation! His bulging college degree! He drives such a great employer!” You get the idea without me mashing up too many more awkward analogies.

To be fair and honest, I have not used any of these online dating apps. I have researched and read the news reports and user reviews. Tinder and CMB are available for both the iPhone and Android phones. Bumble is currently available on the iPhone. Please note that there is currently another Android app called Bumble but this is not the online dating app.

Technology in the dating sphere is responding to market forces. Some of those forces are based on our biology. This is why there are photos in the online dating profiles. We respond to a person’s looks, for better and worse. Some of those market forces are based on social expectations, hence Bumble’s feature that mandates a woman sends the first message. But in the end, biology always wins.

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