Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Aloof busy? Oh, Lord . . . the PUA stuff

Was reading the stats for the blog when I noticed a pick-up artist (PUA) concept clearly embedded in one of the searches.  This was a search about what in PUA lingo is called "aloof busy".

Now, to preface, in the broad outline I'm fairly cool with a lot of the PUA logic.  But there are some specific tactics I shake my head at.  One of those is "aloof busy".

Aloof busy is this notion that the key to getting women is to seem aloof (that part's true, up to a point) and busy (which is not).  In other words, you should be a distant jackass who has no time for the girl.  The basic idea being that a high value man is aloof and occupied.  So, you want her to think you've got a cluttered schedule and that it will take time to fit her in.

The #1 issue I have with aloof busy is that it just doesn't jive.  It's a tactic that's basically begging guys to go overboard faking their alpha-ness.  It contradicts the much more valid PUA idea that whatever story you tell needs to have a fair amount of continuity to it.  I will tell you from experience, when I am busy, chasing women is just not very much in the cards.  Truly busy people don't have the free time it takes to play PUA game.

The #2 issue is this notion that there is alpha-ness in being busy.  I strongly reject this notion, again from personal experience.  Some of the busiest times in my life were also some of the least alpha times in my life, because I was chasing after other people's shit.  To be blunt, a truly alpha male has free time because he has the resources and/or the minions to handle business well enough to create free time.

Aloof works.  To a point. 

What point does it fail?

Well, it fails when you get to the point the girl feels completely disregarded.  It fails when you get to the point she wonders if you're gay.  It fails when you get into a relationship and then keep flaking just to show how aloof and busy you are.

If you think of sex as a chess match, then a lot of PUA material is about the open of the match.  While PUA material is handy in the middle and end games, it's mostly handy for creating strategic ambiguity -- essentially just to keep the girl on her toes and to not take you for granted.  In the open, PUA ideas work best at setting between 8 and 11 on the dial, depending on the girl, the setting and the chemistry.  After that, PUA stuff should be dialed down into the 4 to 7 range.  And sometimes you need to hit the fuckin mute button completely on the PUA game.

What do I mean?

In general, PUA stuff is a gambit.  It's an aggressive play in the hopes of an aggressive payoff.  But, like any gamble, the less risk there is in getting the payoff, the less need there is to push hard.  If a girl really likes you, you don't blast her in the face repeatedly with hardcore PUA sets -- you dial back all the "cocky/funny" and "aloof busy" and just try to be cute. 

There's nothing wrong with PUA.  It's a tool and deployed correctly it's a damned effective tool.  But, you don't use a 50-cal sniper rifle to waste a squirrel.

And that's where aloof busy is just wrong.  It's just too big.  It's too obvious a gambit.  It's so overboard that really you should only use it on girls that are essentially hopeless cases.  And since you shouldn't game hard on any one girl, you shouldn't over-game hopeless cases.  At all.  Ever.

I trash the pick-up community a lot.  Especially considering I find a lot of the conversation there to be interesting.  But, a big problem with PUA is not that the idea itself.  It's the hopeless guys who hopelessly deploy PUA in hopeless ways.

And aloofness in PUA is a big misfire, IMHO.

Worse, I'm not even certain that PUA actually teaches aloofness.  What exactly is "aloof" about the notion of being "cocky/funny"?  Not a damned thing.  Done right, cocky/funny is the diametric opposite of aloof!

What PUA really teaches is a hint of aloofness. 

Where I think guys go wrong is that scared, awkward penguins pick-up on the hint of aloofness and decide that's a great place to hide.  You have a guy who already feels invisible to women.  And what does he do?  He grabs the part of PUA that feels safe to him: the part that allows him to continue being invisible.

What PUA is trying to communicate to guys is that you don't race around being a lame horn dog or some attention monkey doing everything in your power to get a single woman to somehow trip over you and fall in love.  You play back. 

When I say "play back", I mean like an NFL free safety plays back.  An NFL safety is sometimes 20 to 30 yards off the ball at the beginning of a play.  But when the ball is in the air, he closes fast.  He plays back only until the moment is about to materialize.  And then he breaks with a controlled aggression.  If he has the quarterback totally fooled, he picks off the ball.  If the QB felt the play out, he drives on the receiver and tries to break the play up.  Failing that, he honors his position and cleans up the tackle.

It's much the same with women.  You only play back until the moment materializes.  Once the moment materializes, you get in there and you finish the damned play! 

And some safeties just get burned so much they wash out of football because all they can do is play back.  They never close, they never drive on the ball, they never finish.  And eventually, they lose their value altogether and cease to be useful.

Does that sound like a lot of guys you know?

Remember, there's a hint of aloofness.  And then there's just being so goddamned distant the girl isn't sure at all what you're doing.  At some point, if you want a woman, you have to make it known.  When PUAs are talking about kino and escalation, that's what they're talking about.  Aloof only gets you so far.

Trust me.  I speak from experience.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

What bring y'all here?

This blog is starting to get some real traffic!  Holy hell, people!  (BTW, you could comment more, ya know.)

I was looking at the traffic stats and I was interested to see three particular questions bring most visitors here.

1.  Why do women like aloof guys?
2.  How do you date an aloof guy?
3.  Why are men aloof?

So, let's take a hack at these questions.

1.  Why do women like aloof guys?

I always thought this question answered itself, but apparently there are a whole bunch of needy and eager guys out there who can't face facts.

First, try to think about life from a woman's perspective.  She runs into jackoffs every day who are giving her the "hey, baby" treatment.  Just today I saw a guy in a car literally stop traffic just to sexually harass two chicks who were pushing baby strollers.  Think very hard about the difference between that guy and the more stereotypical aloof guy.

Second, eagerness in sex is weakness.  A man who seems desperate is doomed.  No one wants to screw the person who is acting like this is their last chance to ever fuck.

Third, men with options don't need to pine for one girl.  Girls want men with options, because men with options are ideal sexual candidates.

Fourth, aloofness signals self-control.  Self-control is a key leading indicator in human behavior of success.  People with high self-control tend to do better in school and work.  People with high self-control tend to master skills.  People with self-control . . . well, they have self-control!!

Aloofness is a big sexual signal.  That's why women are drawn to it.

2.  How do you date an aloof guy?

Oh, dear. I wish I knew the answer to this one.

The best answer I can give ya gals is this: work your way into his life if there's an avenue to pursue.  The women who have gotten the furthest with me got there through work relationships, school relationships and other interactions.  The women who've gotten the furthest with me had relationships that did not start sexual at all.

The other option is to just be a sport fuck for me.  Although those never went very far.  But, it's an option.

One thing I'll say about my aloof behavior is that a lot of it arises from the fear that I'm going to pay hell.  I'm a lot easier to be with if I don't feel like the other shoe is going to drop.

Which leads me to #3 . . .

3.  Why are men aloof?

Obviously, I can only speak for myself here.  But . . .  I don't trust.

I come from a tough background.  I have a low opinion of love and relationships in general.  I've seen more than enough bad shit -- especially between couples -- to confirm that bad shit is not something I'm in the market for.

When I say I don't trust, I don't mean I don't trust easily.  Nope.  That implies that at some future point I'll come around if you try hard enough.  I won't.  Don't bother.

I don't trust.

Distance at least screens for the most eager ne'er-do-wells.  If nothing else, if I do let you through, you're committed to whatever scam you got going.  It's not a path to love . . . at all.

Worse, women love it.  Women eat that shit up.  So, why should I do anything different?

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The economics of women and jerks

For a long time I've had a theory stewing around in my head.  I want to share it.  So, here goes . . . and feel free to ignore as much of this as may annoy or repulse you . . .

The idea that women like "bad boys" (read: jerks) has been around about as long as human beings have had the faculty of language.  Everyone has a theory.  It's caused by hormonal fluctuations and menstruation.  It's a trick to get more attractive males and then make weaker males raise the offspring.  It's just women being dumb.  It's male patriarchy run amok.  Whatever.

What intrigues me is how little anyone ever mentions the economic side of chasing jerks.  Look at the most successful men on the planet.  Very few of them are good human beings.  Lots of them are downright destructive assholes. 

I've long pondered a simplified theory of jerk attraction.  Are women pursuing jerks because of economics?

I want to preface this with two thoughts.

First?  I think jerk sexualization is a leftover of more primitive times.  A thousand years ago, frankly, if an adult male could get away with being a jerk it meant something.  Back then, if a guy was a jerk to other guys, those other guys always had the option to kill him.  So, an adult male who was a jerk and still alive had demonstrable power.

Second?  I think women are somewhat overinflating their expectations because of perceptions perpetuated by television.  This is, I suspect, the female equivalent of guys who hold out for a porn star.

In modern times, in civil society, a man can be a jerk and not pay a real price.  In this regard, I think jerk attraction hurts women, because jerks are trading on leftover biological impulses that react to signals that aren't as meaningful as they used to be.  Truth be told, if women are filtering for jerk behavior in modern times, they need to filter not just for jerks but to filter out fake jerks.  Otherwise, they may be giving overly aggressive losers more of a fighting chance than they deserve.

Think about how many women put up with guys with serious defects.  How many women are attracted to guys with drug problems?  How many are attracted to guys with criminal records?  How many women are attracted to guys who can't hold down a job due to authority issues?

Evolutionary game theory doesn't offer much of an explanation for this behavior.  Women should never, ever give some fuckhead with an arm full of shitty tattoos and track marks a chance at sex.  Yet, there is a decidedly strong minority of women who.  And frankly, a majority of women have had at least one serious boyfriend who was a pure fuck-up in that sense.

It shouldn't happen.  But it does.  Why?

The best explanation in my view is that women are mistaking a signal that used to mean something.  In the far past, the jerkish disregard for the well-being of themselves and others was a meaningful signal.  It meant you were a king or a knight or a man of some importance.  Think something along the lines of how samurai were allowed to kill random peasants in feudal Japan.  Think of medieval nobles invoking the right of First Night and screwing other men's wives.  Think of old school mobsters catting around with other mobsters' girlfriends.  It used to mean something to be a miserable jerk.

But now?  Any loser can act like a jerk.  Worse, a lot of women seem to get hot and bothered for this signal even if it is coming from an obvious loser.  A lot of decent women have at least one chronically unemployed ex-boyfriend (or a drug addict or a felon or just a fuck up with authority issues).

The thing I think modern women are getting wrong is they seem to be unable to separate the pure sexual signal of jerkdom from all the other evidence that a man is a loser.

Clearly, male aggression and disregard still has value.  There are still man successful jerks out there.  But, women are too often conflating jerk behaviors with being successful while not stopping to consider obvious, objective measures of success.

Worse, a lot of women rationalize this behavior.  Oh, he needs help.  He just needs someone to believe in him.  He needs to get clean.  He needs to find Jesus.  Whatever.

Of course, that's all bullshit.  A successful jerk doesn't need any of that.  Only a fuck-up needs any of that.

What women are doing is rationalizing their irrational behavior against the obvious fact that they are making a bad call and everyone can see.  If you let a loser fuck you because you can't disambiguate the jerkishness from the fact he's a loser, then you too are a fucking loser.  BUT . . . if you let a loser fuck you because you're "there for him" "in his time of need" . . . well, now you're a fucking saint, right?

We humans live in a world we are not evolved to live in.  Our sexuality is defined by tests of behavior that is often counter-productive in the modern world.

A thousand years ago, an aggressive jerk could only make it to adulthood by being a successful hunter, a soldier, a nobleman, a leader of men.  Otherwise, he'd be brutally removed from the breeding pool long before he got to reproductive age.

Today?  An aggressive jerk can be a drug-addicted loser bouncing around girlfriends' trailers (or housing project apartments) until he's carted off to jail.  In the process, he sires a bunch of kids he'll never pay for.  And worse, some dumb bitch will be sitting outside the jail waiting to bathe him in love the minute he's released from prison.  In the modern world, a loser can repeat that cycle into his 60s if he manages to not overdose or piss off the wrong bad guys (the real bad boys).

When it comes to bad boys, women would do themselves an immense favor to separate their tingly feelings from pure, obvious, empirical evidence.  Aggression can be a good thing.  But, far too many women mistake the blank indifference of losers for the casual coolness of winners.

Women need to find the economic core of the impulse to seek out jerks.  Women need to realize that getting all romantic over a jerk isn't an end point but a starting point.  There is a real economic argument for jerks.  Don't get me wrong.  But, women need to become more empirical.

Until then, though, men can exploit that.  And act like jerks.