The elephant in the room

I rarely solicit guest posts but sometimes I just want the free content come across a concept too good to ignore. Daygame.com’s executive instructor Tom Torero has been exploring such a concept which we put to good use on our recent FSU tour. He’ll need no introduction to most of my readers, being widely considered one of Europe’s top daygamers and of course the author of the second best daygame book on the market. Tom, the floor is yours……

A street kiss close I caught *

Elephant in the room: a metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is either being ignored or going unaddressed. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.

Smoke-and-mirrors, a masterful illusion, distraction and persuasion. Traditional Game involves getting a girl to comply to sex through the use of tools and techniques that sweep logic and reality under the carpet. It’s no coincidence that the most notorious early pick up artists were magicians and persuasion practitioners. Artificially raise your value, cunningly lower hers, and let the reversal chase begin.

A massively underrated and underused concept in the seduction community is something I teach students called the “Elephant In The Room” (although I dissuade you, of course, from picking up elephants) where this traditional trickery is replaced with stone cold masculine honesty. Showing a girl how socially intelligent you are, and also how vulnerable you are, is massively attractive. More attractive than the perfect line or the whitest teeth. Honesty is the ultimate frame in that you’re saying: “I know that you know that I know what’s going on. I’m direct with my intentions and I don’t play games.”

The concept is especially applicable during the day, as there’s no flashing lights, pumping music or alcohol to help mask from the girl from what’s really going on. Stopping a girl on the street in the cold light of day encourages a student to refine his social intelligence and replace distraction with directness as there’s nowhere to hide. Women have hyper sensitive radars when it comes to bullshit, and without the shiny la-la-land vibe of a club then they’re even more clued up as to what’s going on. If she thinks you’re a pick-up artist on the street, then you’re dead.

“say what you see”

So what are some practical examples of this concept in action? First off, a golden rule that I teach students is to “say what you see.” This is much harder than it sounds in that you need to be fully relaxed and present to do this effectively, without the chattering monkey inside your head throwing PUA bananas at you.

Saying what you see and calling out awkwardness immediately diffuses whatever tricky situation you might come across, as it shows the girl you’re socially savvy and smart enough to understand the intricacies and nuances of human behaviour.

Let’s say you see a girl on her smoke break standing outside an office building. A beginner daygamer might charge up to her in approach machine mode and spurt out his usual lines about just seeing her and thinking she looked nice, then plough through her resistance with his usual structure and get frustrated when she stubs out her cigarette and nips back into work. Someone who understands the Elephant In The Room principle, however, would approach the girl with more of a twinkle in his eyes, a cocky smile and the following:

“Hey, I know you’re on your sacred smoke break and I’m taking away precious seconds, but I just saw you and think you look nice”

He’d then rapidly judge how she responded and tailor his conversation accordingly. Perhaps he’d call out how unusual it was for someone to come up to her, or the fact that all the other guys must think of doing it but they’re not brave enough. The same applies if you see a girl at a bus stop (call out the fact that her bus is coming) or inside a store (call out the fact that it’s unusual why you’re in a women’s clothing store). If you didn’t call out the awkwardness of the situation then she’d be thinking it, and wondering why you didn’t have the social saviness to spot it.

Here’s some other examples of calling out the Elephant In The Room when you’re out doing daygame:

• She’s doing a particular activity, and you use that as a situational indirect-direct opener
• You run out of things to say, and you call it out: “I’m sorry, my mind’s just gone blank, help me out a bit!”
• You feel heavy approach anxiety, and you call it out: “I don’t normally do this, and I’m pretty nervous right now….”
• She keeps glancing down at her phone and you mention it playfully
• She slowly edges away as you’re talking and you mention it playfully
• The interaction’s going well but you suspect that she has a boyfriend based on her investment levels, so you call it out non-reactively

Notice how the Elephant In The Room principle needs to come from a place of flirtation, not one of cold logic. You’re showing her that you are fluent in the secret language of seduction, not that you’re a people-watching sociologist.

Spot the PUA forum HB7.75

Krauser and I recently spent a couple of weeks in Russia where we realised that the Elephant In The Room principle could be used to great effect. Slavic women are excellent for testing your masculinity in that they have zero-tolerance for bullshit and expect you to be crystal clear with your intentions. We made sure they new exactly what we wanted through calling out the following:

• the fact that this was a male-female interaction where we were attracted to them and wanted to date them, not give them free conversational English classes
• what their relationship status was, and whether they liked British guys
• if they had enough free time to come on a date with us in our time schedule

Now I’m not suggesting that you replace all unspoken, sexy emotional subtext with cold logic, but in countries where the women test your polarity every few seconds then there’s less time for flowery language and vague flirtation. The same would apply in the UK or the USA if a girl is exhibiting Princess Behaviour and keeps trying to snatch the frame.

The Elephant In The Room applies to texting and to dating, right up until you’re getting it on. Here are some more examples:

• she keeps flaking on date requests, so you text her: “I didn’t have you down as a flaker…my secretary is not happy ”
• she texts that she’s going to be late, so you text her: “Ok, but you buy the first drinks as punishment”
• you spill the wine whilst trying to pour it elegantly and call it out
• she keeps taking long phone calls whilst on the date, and you call it out
• you’re both a bit nervous on the date, and you call it out
• you realise you’ve got food stuck between your teeth, so you call it out
• you spot that she’s hesitant to come back to yours, so you call it out: “I know you’re wondering if I’m a murderer, and I understand that this is all a bit fast, but come for one drink and I’ll have you home in a cab by 12”

Humility and honesty go a long way to cracking the code of last minute resistance in the bedroom. If a girl thinks it’s all too planned or too slick, then the barriers come up. If you call out that it’s “so fast” and that it’s “so random” how you met then she admires your social intelligence. Tell her you’re nervous if you’re nervous, show her you’re human.

An exception to the Elephant In The Room principle is breaking sexual tension. If you’re sitting in the cocktail bar, looking deeply into each other’s eyes, and there’s the crackle of sex in the air, then there’s no reason to call out the Elephant and say: “I want to kiss you now then take you home and have sex.” That would be a sign of a complete lack of understanding when it comes to seduction. Rather than these situations and silences being elephants, I call them the panthers in the room. Dark, smouldering, powerful and sexy. And completely necessary.

Krauser used an extreme example of the Elephant In The Room on one of his recent dates, although this is not for the faint hearted or to be used by beginners:

K: You are fascinated by me. You find me attractive and very interesting, like no man you’ve met before. You’ve realised that we are not compatible in the long term but you are curious how it would be to have sex with me. So right now you are trying to decide whether to come home with me and have sex, or to go home and sleep.

Her: Yes, that’s about right.

Call it out. Neutralise the awkwardness by commenting on it. Whether it’s a pigeon shitting on your head mid set or the fact that she’s too tall for you, say what you see and point out the elephant. Fingers crossed it will morph into a panther. Now that’s magic.

Tom’s book is available to buy from: Lulu

* Before you all ask, yes that was a legit street kiss close. Took about five minutes from the open. While observing I saw him do the eyes, the proximity and overheard him mutter something about “doing something crazy” so I knew to get the phone camera ready.

Stateless Game

Emotional control is the foundation upon which all game rests. By mastering your emotions you can direct your vibe which will in turn align all of the micro-behaviours that a girl’s hindbrain reads. Good micro-behaviours (i.e. subcommunication) leads to imprinting the girl with a positive intuitive assessment of you and thus smoother interactions. This is why some men can do almost comically bad conversations and still get the girl – they were excelling at the 90% of communication that is non-verbal.

It’s generally believed that achieving good state is the core of good game. The argument goes as follows: Wake up feeling good about yourself and head out onto the streets. After a few awkward warm-up sets you’ll start to slip into a social vibe, gradually building momentum. Eventually a run of good interactions cause you to “hit state” and then you can open everything, hook everything and that’s when the magical sets happen.

This is not wrong. It’s just a massive pain in the arse.

Chasing state, yesterday

The reality of daygame is that there simply aren’t enough pretty girls around to keep the momentum flowing. There aren’t enough girls that you can afford to waste the first ten sets trying to hit state. Ok, you could do it but it’s so wasteful. You know your game is getting tighter if you get more girls, better girls, and expend less effort. Hamstringing yourself to the goal of peak state prevents progress because:

• Trying to force yourself into state takes alot of emotional energy and is inauthentic. You are trying to make yourself feel something you don’t actually feel.
• Once you start to improve your state you become outcome dependent on keeping that little glimmer alive. More emotional energy expended.
• In the long periods between sets you get into your head trying to keep your state. Holding your state up is like holding a medicine ball in the air. Eventually you tire and it drops.
• You can frame yourself over the long term into a negative thought pattern of “I’m only successful when I’m in state” or in the short term of “I won’t approach this girl because I haven’t hit state yet”
• Girls can sense the inauthenticity if you’re trying to state leech from them, as with your wings. You can end up in destructive state wars with your wings until one or both of you crash (noobs should especially watch for this “value tap” behaviour from more experienced players)
• Daygame becomes much harder work than it ought to be. You are giving yourself an internal opponent to fight. It’s a fight that doesn’t need to happen.

Peak state is good. When you hit it, embrace it. But don’t try to manufacture it. Far better is to drill yourself in stateless game. It’s advanced stuff and not for everyone but give it a try. Essentially you are following this principle:

I feel however I feel and that’s okay. So I will use this authentically and rely on that authenticity to carry me through.

I’m coming to believe that authenticity trumps state (and is equal to vibe*). Forcing a high state is essentially qualifying to the girl by telling her “who I am at this moment is not good enough to get you, so I will expend great effort in forcing myself to be a happier version of myself just to impress you”. Instead just accept your current state. For example:

• If you’re feeling flat and low energy, work with that. Maybe do light side-on opens at a traffic light rather than run-around front stops. Let your vocal tone stay light, flat and disinterested.
• If you’re feeling cocky, go that route. Ostentatiously stop a hard-walking girl, let your eyes shine, smirk insolently and use an outrageously teasing opener.
• If you’re feeling horny, go sexual. Pick out a girl who has the ovulating vibe, eye fuck the hell out of her, encroach her space. Hold that hand a long time.
• If you’re completely lacking creative inspiration just tell the girl she looks nice and drop a generic cold read and tease on her. Leave silences, let her talk.

Stateless game, today

Stateless game is not a list of instructions to follow, its a mindset. Fundamentally you are shrugging the weight of “hitting state” from your shoulders. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Do you think those approach monkeys running up and down Oxford Street every evening are happy? Allow yourself to instead reach a zen-like calm of whatever will happen will happen. Just flip over those stones, let your authentic state come out, and rely upon your well-drilled Game to just navigate the set for you without getting in your head about state. There’s nothing to be scared of on the streets. Conserve your mental energy by exerting emotional control. You are not pushing water uphill, you are letting it find its natural level and then swimming in that.

And then should peak state ever creep up upon you, milk it while its there and don’t mourn its absence when it leaves.

* Crudely put, state is the power of your energy glow / aura and your attunement to the micro-rhythms of the street. Vibe is your internal level of calm, balance and boundaries. State is far more volatile than vibe.

Reflections on daygame

….After a year has passed since his wife’s death, the King takes a new wife, who is beautiful but also unutterably wicked and vain. The new Queen possesses a Magic Mirror which she asks every morning: “Magic mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?”. The mirror always replies: “My Queen, you are the fairest in the land.” The Queen is always pleased with that, because the magic mirror never lies. But, when Snow White reaches the age of seven, she becomes as beautiful as the day and even more beautiful than the Queen and when the Queen asks her mirror, it responds: “My Queen, you are the fairest here so true. But Snow White is a thousand times more beautiful than you.”

This gives the queen a great shock, and she becomes yellow and green with envy, and from that hour her heart turns against Snow White, and with every following day she hates Snow White more and more. Envy and pride, like ill weeds, grow in her heart taller every day, until she has no peace day or night. The Queen orders a huntsman to take Snow White into the deepest woods to be killed *…

I used to be quite into Brazilian Ju Jitsu. Our local club had an horrific churn rate as new guys would come in to class and not come back. It was easy to know who would stick around – the unassuming guys who had come to learn. It was equally easy to predict the first day dropouts. They’d be wearing some tough guy clothes, perhaps insisting on wearing a coloured belt they’d picked up in a sports centre grading mill. They’d certainly have a stiff pride about them. Then one of our scrawny blue belts would wipe the mat with them. The ego death was simply too much to take. Their buffer had been overrun and their self-image could not take the real-world evidence that they simply weren’t as tough as they thought they were. So it is with Game.

Newbies are often told that the girl isn’t rejecting you, she’s rejecting your approach. This is only half-true. When you street stop a girl she is holding a mirror up to you. Only it’s not your flattering magic mirror telling you you’re the coolest in the land. She’s doesn’t care for your buffers or your pretty lies. She feels an instinctive emotional reaction to what you present to her and she makes the flirt/escape decision in a heartbeat. The mirror speaks the truth.

It takes only one session of daygame, one run of five consecutive blowouts to realise you ain’t all that. You are not as high value as you led yourself to believe. The weak among you (most men) will scurry back behing the buffers. The stupid will plod on without processing the evidence becoming increasingly angry approach machines. Only the smart and dedicated will process the feedback honestly and realise “I have a lot of work to do on my value.”

When a girl rejects you she is giving an assessment on your entire sexual market value.

Now there are fine gradations of this and while its not necessarily true on any single set it is true in aggregate over the session. Even if she has a boyfriend you’ll see flickers of attraction if she fancies you. Even if she’s in a mad hurry you’ll see her light up a little. It’s only when your SMV is way below hers will she eye-roll, sigh and give you the “how dare you hit on me” response. If that happens, sure get angry that she’s a rude bitch if you want, but process the feedback of why it happened. You ain’t all that.

When a high value woman refuses to have sex with a low value PUA, that is the sexual market functioning correctly.

So granted that you are getting blown out alot and an uncomfortable rate of bad responses, what are you to do? Step one is accept the reality. If you’ve been hit by a bus its not bravery to throw yourself back in front of the next one. Self-diagnose your approach to see what was off about it. Was it shaky vocal delivery? weak eye contact? lack of intent? angry vibe? A good daygame approach requires hundreds of microbehaviours to align into a single well-delivered whole and that’s not easy at all.

If your technique was acceptable its time to look deeper. Did you fail to correctly calibrate to the context such as by opening her as she’s coming away from a cash machine, or chatting animatedly on a phone? Did you adopt a try-hard alpha posture as a buffer to rejection that is transparent to everyone but yourself? Get someone better than you to offer straight feedback.

The problem might be deeper still.You may be hitting on girls above your league. Oh sure, that’s PUA heresy that its not all in your head. Its manosphere heresy that a woman might be too good for you. But if you’re a runtish chode hitting on 19 year old models you should be expecting nothing but harsh blowouts. You’ve got nothing to offer her. Perhaps the answer is to stop approaching hotties and do some serious work on your value. Get to the gym, get a make-over, travel, educate yourself. Make yourself the kind of man a hot young girl would expect to be having sex with. I’m thirty-eight years old and usually hit on girls around their early twenties. This is a huge ask and I have to be bang on my vibe to pull it off.

All men build buffers around themselves to flatter their self esteem and avoid rejection. Every single one of us, myself included. Root them out. Figure out how you are fooling yourself. The easiest single step is to go out into the street and open ten girls. Welcome the responses they are giving you. The harsh blowouts and the flat zero-attraction chats are offering you far more constructive feedback than any online forum can. Compile a wealth of this information, figure out where you stand, and then make a promise to yourself that from this ground zero you will build yourself up.

Accept the reflection that stares back at you.

* Sending for the woodsman = getting angry at the players who are outperforming you.  ”But I’ve been doing game just as long as you, I’ve done just as many sets as you… why aren’t I banging hot girls…. waaaaahhhhhhh”. I’ll bet those other players process reality far better than you do.

An interview with Daygame.com

I tend not to do any talks or interviews anymore but after putting a few beers down my neck, Tom Torero persuaded me to chip in on the latest of Daygame.com’s weekly-ish podcasts. We spent about an hour discussing the topic of Long Game and in particular the lifestyle of travelling internationally to clack girls. Listen to it here

Setting the frame in Skype sex chat

An integral part of maintaing a Euro-harem is facebook and skype. Such a wonderful technology for building rapport, attraction and keeping yourself entertained over long distances. As a favour to my dear readers I’ll go into detail on how to set up a good sex chat. Remember that birds don’t think like us and get turned on by different things. Keep this in mind at all times. How do you want her to feel, how do you want to move things along…. Girls get turned on by the psychological interplay and environmental scenario of sex. You want to be getting that right before moving on to the in-out part of the sex. Here’s a chat from last night where I had Serb A masturbating. Read and learn.

1. I want to pull her in with something that has immediate buy-in while also covertly emphasising that I’m making this up as I go along and thus its showing my spontaneous creativity. She has no doubts this is a personalised experience so that ups the attraction and rapport.

2. Details, details, details! You are feeding her imagination, in this case the archetypal road trip. I had in mind the road scene from Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Picture it in your own mind and then paint a picture with a few brush strokes. Make those details masculine and cool.

3. Don’t forget her other senses. Men are visual but women want to know the touch and smell.

4. It’s playful. Don’t take yourself seriously. Give her little images that bind her to you specifically, imagining how you are not just a random male.

5. Drop in your own habits that she knows you have. Girls know I care about good whiskey and Cuban cigars. It all builds that little world to suck her in and feel right there, next to you.

6. Tell her what she’s doing. What she’s doing in the story sets the frame for how she will act, which part of her character will come out. How would this story go differently if I’d said “You have your head buried in a book, something long-winded from Tolstoy”? Not necessarily worse but all the details need to be consistent with where you plan on taking this. I want it to be a wild adventurous story. If I’d wanted to paint her as timid and nerdy I’d have used the Tolstoy line.

7. Bring her in as a co-creator on the non-essential elements, make her work a little and feel some influence.

8. Future projections always have an element of farce from her. She’s a silly little girl who would soon send the world spiralling into chaos without your firm hand to keep things in order. Put her in the clumsy box.

9. This is telling her which character to play and how to feel. The energy is high, flirty, adventurous. Much different to her pulling out a flask of cold tea (which would subconsciously lead to a relaxed, not hot, vibe).

10. This time I’m playing up her agency, letting her be predator. It suits her temperament and switches things up from the usual where I dominate everything. This story is about her being wild and horny, chasing me, impressing herself upon me because she wants the sex. A nice frame.

11. More colour to feed her imagination, more fleshing out of the uninhibited bad girl character I’m setting her up as. While typing I considered having her flash her tits at the drivers but it felt wrong so I toned it down.

12. Tell her how to feel. You tell her to be hot, excited, sexy, hungry, desperate or whatever. Not bored. Never bored. You are building the emotional linkage now for how you want her to generally feel around you in future.

13. I’m reluctant. I have a mission that she’s distracting me from. Ease her into that qualifying frame where you have the value and she’s trying to persuade you to have sex. Notice I’ve built up to it, after scene setting. It feels natural within the story.

14. Playfully reassert the frame that she’s a force of chaos.

15. She needs a reward for this sexually exciting behviour. She wants you to be turned on at the thought of fucking her. And girls get a spike from hearing about hard dicks.

16. Don’t lose track of the little environmental details that make the story feel real. I get more inconsequential buy-in from her.

17. More of her as sexual predator, escalating.

18. She’s winning me over now. I’m finally throwing away my cigar and turning my mind to fucking her. She gets the thrill of validation.

19. Continuing on the theme of her being the wild uninhibited ball of steamy sexual energy. I want her to know she can be like this with me in real life. It’s all a set-up for future actual sex. Giving her permission to bring out this side of her.

20. Reward and qualification. Tell the girl what you like about her, what turns you on. You’ll get more of it in future.

21. Detail, detail, detail. Put yourself into the story and communicate with your senses. Pick out a smell, a touch, a quirky detail and make it come alive. Girls put themselves deep into the story so feed that.

22. At several points in the story I hammer home her obsession with my dick. Girls are obsessed with dick, that’s just life. Play on it, position her as obsessed with your dick. Frame her as worshipping the cock, her biggest source of happiness.

23. You’ll get this alot. Accept it, enjoy it. Girls want to work for you.

24. Ah, the danger element of public sex. I like to throw in unforeseen plot elements. A few weeks earlier we were having sex in an underground hidden WWII-era Luftwaffe airfield. Mid-way through she clumsily kicked over a helmet and the resulting clang woke up the Nazi zombies. Plot twists!

25. A roughness-dominance spike that flows seamlessly from the narrative.

26. Still letting her be the predator.

27. We are a long way into this story and I still haven’t fucked her. As the storyteller, I’m making her wait, building up her anticipation, letting her get wetter and wetter. This is frame control – the sex proceeds on my timetable. She’s naked before me.

28. Hammering the frame of wildness. Telling her how desperate she is for my dick inside her.

29. I’m taking control. She’s turned me on enough to earn a fuck so now she’s going to get one. She’s no longer the predator, I’m driving this figuratively as well as literally.

30. Decisive manly action. I’m in charge now so the little details reflect that. She’s going into the docile “waiting to be fucked” mode. Which she wants. No girl can remain predator with me.

Daygame infield video analysis: An intermediate guy

I’m aware that six lay reports in a row could make my blog a little one-dimensional. Let’s have some theory….. The community grinds ever onwards and as new guys come through the ranks they tend to set up little coaching businesses, usually a bit earlier than they should. I’ve been guilty of that myself. I keep my eyes peeled, curious to see what these new guys bring to the table. Here’s an infield I saw for the first time last night. I’ll put in a commentary.

Overall I give it 5/10. Servicable. Approach 100 girls like this and you’ll get ten decent numbers, if you’re as good-looking as this guy. It does enough to convert girls who quite like the look of you, are available, and open to the idea of a street stop. It’s how to get a Yes Girl without fucking up too badly. However if the girl is unconvinced or a bit difficult (a Maybe Girl) then the inauthenticity, lack of higher level social creativity, and general lack of electricity will turn her off.

0:05 – Graphics tip you off that these are intermediate guys who are getting some success but still captured by cheesy community values.

0:11 – Look at her clothes and mood relative to everyone else in the shop. She’s showing lots of skin and immediately sparkles. This girl is likely DTF so you should sexualise early and see how she takes it.

0:12 – It already sounds fake and boilerplate but to give him credit he’s gotten his intent out early. The opener is a chance to inject some humour, creativity and make it specific to the girl. So only rely on canned openers if your mind has gone blank.

0:18 – The interview begins, putting the onus on her to do the work before she’s really figured out who she’s dealing with. I prefer to spend more time assumption-stacking so I can take it out of the boring daily chit-chat and put some electricity into it. Vibing is meant to be fun. The fact she accepts the invasive early questioning is another clue she’s DTF.

0:21 – Item one on the cheesy PUA shopping list of phrases. It’s too much of a leap from the flow of conversation. However despite this being a mediocre set so far she’s still laughing and responding well. Mostly that’s expressing pleasant surprise that a man is chatting her up rather than attraction to this particular man but its still a positive emotion so he can work with it.

0:25 – Cheesy PUA shopping list spike #2

0:31 – Cheesy PUA shopping list spike #3. We’ve now confirmed that this set is a fake showy chit-chat with no authenticity or sexual tension. It’s too light, it’s not grounded. He’s going to have to dial that down or end up with a flaky number (he does, a bit).

0:37 – I like his solid unreactive body language and although he’s dressed a bit cheesy-PUA at least he has a look that will polarise girls. I suspect this set is surviving entirely on the body language and balls of opening direct rather than the lame shit he’s spouting.

0:52 – I dislike how clumsy the “tell me about yourself” is, but I also like that its finally introduced authenticity and not trying to be too smooth

0:56 – Qualification, which she rebuts with a question about him. This set isn’t a car crash because he’s got enough fundamentals and she’s the right girl in the right mood. It’s still going well.

0:59 – Rapport laughter from him. There really needs to be some drive-by sexualisation now. The girl seems generally DTF and she’s testing to see if he’ll be the guy who offers her the dick she hasn’t had for a while.

1:24 – This is a great time to get her investing and opening up but he keeps interrupting. Control the urge to talk. My rule is never interrupt her when she’s speaking unless you are deliberately breaking rapport. Whoever is talking is qualifying.

1:34 – DLV about not commiting to surfing and then awkward laugh. When you talk about yourself you should be giving little glimpses of your life as the Most Interesting Man In The World. Don’t overegg it, just glimpses. Control the urge to politely self-deprecate.

1:43 – DLVing again by positioning her above. Now there’s a chance that he’s got a cheeky grin and eyes that say “I’m only saying this because I’m so confident I can patronise you”, so this could be either way. The video isn’t sharp enough to know which.

1:46 – She’s snatching the frame to direct the conversation

2:03 – After running with it, he snatches the frame back with an investment question. Good move. His body language is very relaxed now as he’s realised she’s there for the taking and her momentum is completely killed.

2:12 – Too agreeable. This is where the London School would be giving non-commital nods and say “ok”

2:23 – “That’s awesome”. He’s found a DTF girl who just likes the look of him and now he’s in danger of wrecking it by seeming too impressed with her and too happy just-to-be-there.

2:42 – She’s biting on the qualification

2:54 – She’s rapport-seeking, which is a great sign. Rather than accept and mirror it I’d suggest vacuuming, being an uncommited listener, and saving the approval for the date. This girl is actively trying to get herself laid.

2:58 – He’s totally unreactive to all the people milling around so the love bubble never pops. That’s good work.

3:09 – He’s got attraction, rapport and investment so this is a good time to go for the number. I think this girl has idate and SDL written all over her so I’d have stretched it out another couple of minutes then bounced. But maybe he’s the one with a time constraint, in which case I’d set up a Same Day De-Lay by meeting her later that afternoon.

3:36 – This is an IOI and also a warning that his material is too fake. Throughout this set we are seeing a mixture of good work and bad missteps. It goes to show that if a girl is right for you, you don’t need to be perfect. Anytime he drops the ball, she picks it up and hands it back to him.

3:40 – Cheesy PUA shopping list spike #3

3:52 – Destroying the earlier authenticity and she responds with nervous laughter. You don’t need that overgaming attraction shit when you’ve already moved into authentic communication. It telegraphs a lack of belief that you already have the girl.

So to recap

Strengths

• Solid polarising look that distinguishes him from all the schlubs and shows he’s taken care of his image (and is therefore invested in himself).
• Direct open and doesn’t undermine himself by neutralising that intent and becoming the gay-best-friend later in set.
• Relaxed non-reactive body language and eye contact. Imposes frame that it’s completely normal to chat to her in a supermarket.
• Moves the interaction along through vibing, investment and rapport before picking the right time to take the number.

Weaknesses

• Very fake. Almost everything he says is a mini-routine from an internet forum. There’s no flow.
• Much too agreeable. Where’s the sexual tension?
• It’s a missed opportunity. This girl was DTF and could’ve been bounced. By failing to see this there’s a good chance she’s disappointed in him and will flake in favour of a man who will give her the dick.
• Mentally subtract his look and body language and instead focus on what he said. Was there a single ounce of creativity or interesting conversation there? No. He hasn’t displayed high level social skills or given a window into his world either overtly nor covertly.

Videos like this are good for the intermediate guys to compare themselves against. You can see which bits are getting you your results but also see what needs to be eliminated or built upon to get to the next level. This guy is doing quite well and seems to have the right attitude. We’ll likely hear more from him in a year or so.

Bedtime stories for big girls

Lately I’ve been rather uninspired in my Skype chats, not really feeling the pull to be fun and creative. That’s not an especially good thing when you want to keep your Euro harem happy. So tonight as I lay tired on my bed with Serb A pestering me for a video chat I decided to leverage the wonders of the internet with these two aids.

A quick google search of “bedtime stories” found some free sites with illustrated stories. I told her to brew a cup of tea, get comfortable and imagine she’s lying next to me as I read a story. Girls like the sound of a man’s slow deep voice, especially non-native speakers because they love the accent and the perfection in a native speaker’s delivery. Then there’s the obvious framing of when her dad used to read her stories. Big time rapport on the cheap.

I read her Pickles The Cat. What a great story for winter when she’s couped up in her apartment most of the day. Framing the big bad world outside as scary and exciting. Get the girl to open the link to read as she listens to you.

Next I teased her a little on how when she’s being feisty she reminds my of Droopy the Dog, then sent her this clip to watch together (from 2:12). Vintage kids cartoons are great for that.

Easy rapport. Everyone’s happy.

My loveable Fiat Punto

I’ve just come back from an idate with a cute little Italian girl I picked up at Trafalgar Square. In itself nothing remarkable so you’ll only hear the story if I end up banging her. As I was ramping up the verbal escalation to test for the SDL she started telling me how her first boyfriend (of six years) was pretty boring and didn’t inspire her to try hard in the bedroom. When I get a girl on this topic I usually start the sexual framing where I’m the superhero and every other guy is shit.I also trotted out this story:

lovable and dependable

Imagine you’ve just passed your driving test so you go out and buy yourself a Fiat Punto. It’s cute and you drive it around the city for a while. You like driving. It’s pleasant, you like being behind the wheel. You like your Punto. After a few years its getting old so you buy another car. You like Puntos, so you buy a newer one. You drive that around some more. It’s comfortable and you’re used to it. You’re a Punto fan.

One day, your friend throws you his car keys. “Here, try my Ferrari”

Me, in metaphor

You get behind the wheel, put your foot down and ….. wow! It’s amazing. You can feel the raw power of the engine throbbing through the seat, your hands shaking as they grip the wheel. Every turn is a perfect grip. The feeling of control and of riding the power is incredible.

You finish the drive with your breath coming fast. Your heart beating. You feel exhillarated. Like walking on air. You throw the keys back to your friend, a huge smile on your face.

And then walk back to your Punto. Your little, cute, slow Punto. It’s just not the same anymore.

Needless to say she was dripping wet at the end of this little story, biting her lips, her mind racing frantically.

Excessive self-regard and male power

I just had a bit of a ding-dong with Steve Jabba over breakfast this morning as we were discussing some of the implications of his recent post on the three levels of Game. I thought I’d put a few notes down here for my readers’ edification.

My mother is a shrewish frame-controlling narcissist. Well up into my mid-twenties I’d not even seen anything unusual about this so thoroughly had I bought her frame as normal. Gradually as I got more life experience, discussed things with my brother, and spent longer periods of time away from her due to my living away from my hometown I started to see her behaviour more objectively. Don’t get me wrong she wasn’t a malignant narcissist and she has always been very giving in putting her children’s interests first. For a long time I even considered my childhood idyliic. But that frame-controlling…… here’s a sample conversation:

Her: How was your day?

Me: Pretty good. I’ve been looking for a new camera for a while. There’s a new Nikon advance companct I think I’ll buy

Her: um [impatient]

Me: I want something that’ll fit in my pocket but is pretty good at taking photos in low light, because then I’ll be able to carry it around on my travels but still get decent photos when I’m in pubs and

Her: [interrupt] Yes, pubs. You’ll love this new client at work. The family is…

Me: [interrupt] That’s got nothing to do with what we’re talking about.

Her: Yes, yes yes. So this new client…. [prattles on for half an hour about her job while I overtly show no interest]

My mother is incapable of talking about anything except herself and in particular whatever is at the front of her mind at that moment in time. She’s also got an extremely aggressive frame-push conbined with zero calibration and a refusal to listen to or learn anything new. Her reality is so strong that absolutely nothing can penetrate it unless there’s a predetermined spot prepared for that new information to occupy. Like transplanting an organ if there’s the slightest incompatibility the new information will be rejected out of hand. The frame-push is so strong she’ll constantly interrupt people and follow them around the house to keep chipping away. I’ll say things like “Stop talking to me. I’m trying to read” and it’ll just bounce off. She cannot process the world as it is. Feedback is not allowed into her complex reality-weave.

I consider this a learning disability. In earlier times she’d likely have been murdered.

So that’s what I grew up with. Whereas my father just rolled over and “yes dear”ed his way through the marriage I fought it the whole way through my childhood until I’d internalised the same frame. Narcissistic contagion. A strong frame combined with zero calibration is a recipe for social ostracisation as you dominate social gatherings without taking due care that others are enjoying the situation. Before long they just avoid you. I do that now with frame-controlling weirdos – although I can easily rip the frame off them I just see no point in expending the energy so I just freeze them out of my life.

The trappings of civilisation

The manosphere didn’t exist in my twenties. I had no vocabulary to describe these dynamics, just blue pill psychology. It never crossed my mind that twenty-five years of resisting a frame-controlling narcissist had a hugely positive silver lining: (i) a bulletproof frame (ii) a strong regard for protecting my own self interest. I struggled to reconcile these attributes with society’s expectations and my own moral code. Put simply, I felt like my animal brain was a barely-domesticated pitbull straining on a leash held by my human brain. The thin veneer of civilisation that covered the beast inside existed only because of a constant restraining effort on the part of my learned logical forebrain. If I let the pitbull off the leash it would just run amok. Not high-school-shooting-amok (I felt no hate to society or urge towards violence) but that the pitbull would just run directly to whatever it wants and take it, consequences be damned. Then like a dog owner cleaning his dog’s shit off someone else’s front lawn, I’d have to deal with embarassment and social fallout as I try to return my self-opinion to that of a gentleman. A respectable member of the community. So I consciously learned to moderate by behaviour to prevent the pendulum to swing out to the extremes – I came to deny myself both exhuberance and anger. I learned state control and a poker face.

Of course this barely-civilised barbarian schtick is a big part of why women fell for me. Blue pill beta that I was I felt it but couldn’t get it into my logical brain.

Many men remember their first encounter with the manosphere (taking the red pill) as a Great Liberation. It’s the moment when a respected elder teacher puts his arm around your shoulder and says “It’s ok to feel like this. You aren’t the only one. Your feelings and secret theories are right. It’s the world that’s wrong.” Women get the same immense relief when I put them in their place.

in touch with his core

Now I see that men are supposed to impose themselves upon the world. Men are supposed to put their own interested front and centre. Women are attracted by men who do this and feel secure around them. You do need to put the leash on the pitbull in order to navigate through society. Unrestrained alphas don’t last long in modern society – sure we can point to some apex alphas who are killing it, but that’s survivor bias. The road to successful alphadom is littered with the graves of failures. To build the metaphor further, you need to accept your inner pitbull. Accept the aggression. Accept the animal spirits. Accept the urge to chase the car down the street and piss against a lampost. Don’t forget you’ll need a wise owner on the end of the leash lest the exterminators come around with a court order.

And don’t for a moment consider exchanging the pitbull for a poodle.

Your life is a project…. accumulation

I have written how I consider men’s lives to follow three fundamental phases: foundations, accumulation and maintainance. Don’t overthink this it’s just a convenient mental map to be deployed where useful. So let’s consider the second stage which typically begins upon graduating university or beginning an apprenticeship.

Goal: Max out your manly talents of intelligence, creativity, wealth-generation, physical competence

The accumulation phase could equally be described as “setting yourself up for life” or “becoming the best man you can be”. It’ll typically take you the whole of your twenties. Whereas the foundational phase was building the well-rounded basic skills of life taking advantage of the general education granted to children while side-stepping the weakness inherent in kids of not knowing who they are or what direction they wish to go in, the accumulation phase is about specialisation. Society channels you down predetermined tunnels as a kid fixing everyone on more or less the same generic path. Where foundation is Call of Duty (“follow the NPC”) accumulation is Deus Ex (“augument and choose”). I’ll let you in on a little secret right now:

There’s no money and no status to be had from being a generalist. All the upside is in specialisation.

Specialisation, in the future

1. Choices

What does that mean to you, dear reader? First off you have to carefully marshall your intellectual, physical and emotional resources. Make careful decisions on what skills you seek to acquire.

• The payoff for any given skill is wildly disproportionate to its difficulty
• If something is enjoyable, its probably not lucrative. Expect to make tradeoffs
• Scaleable skillsets are a huge gamble

Consider language learning. It’s a difficult task involving hundred of classroom hours and, to be fluent, living in a country where its spoken as a native. I had university friends doing language degrees and almost exclusively the only ones who got good jobs did a joint honours with another skill. Spanish on its own will help you navigate South America but it won’t add a penny to your salary unless it’s combined with a real money-making skill such as accounting, engineering or law. Speaking of language, they are not all created equal. Japanese takes approximately three times longer to learn than Spanish or French and it’s only useful for one country. Serbian is bloody difficult and only useful in one small country where per capita income is only $11,000 and they all speak English anyway. Why on earth would anyone learn Serbian unless they are fully commited to living there for years on end? It’s just a dumb waste of effort.

Consider the UFC. That’s the biggest-paying promotion for the sport of MMA. There’s only one PPV every six weeks or so which only has six TV fights per show across all weight divisions. So that’s twelve fighters getting TV-level paydays per show making an annual total of TV-paydays about 104 slots. Assuming you are fighting at that level and get offered a slot, it’ll be a minimum of six week’s training with its attendant costs. Probably 20% goes to your manager and gym. Assuming no medical costs or long injury-related layoffs, fight four times a year, and assuming you win every fight (so statistically 75% of fighters won’t manage even this) you are spending 24 weeks in training and getting by on four paydays. Now go look at how much these guys get paid.

Shocking. Truly shocking. And this is at the most lucrative end of the sport. The top guys do fine (well, not compared to £80k per week footballers but fine compared to normal guys) but look past the top 5 names. Most MMA guys are taking <£10,000 a fight. Drop down to the next level of show and its <£1,000. For six week’s work. I make that in two days sitting at my desk. When I have a bad day at the office I don’t get beat up too.

The lesson isn’t that I’m awesome and fighters suck. The lesson is some careers are far better than others despite being considerably easier and considerably less risk. The 437th-best lawyer in London earns considerably more than the 10th-best London MMA fighter and that income is far more stable. My advice is treat the exciting careers as a hobby.

Nicolas Taleb writes well on the risk/reward payoffs of scaleable careers. The general self-improvement advice is choose a business / career where you can scale upwards. Acting, music, software are classically scaleable careers. If you can be Seinfeld (syndicated worldwide), or have Gangnam Style (200+ million youtube views), or write the next Angry Birds then you can rest on your royalties. The problem is survivor bias and winner-takes-all. The very nature of a pyramid business structure is that only one pharoah is buried in it. Freakonmics has a great essay on how the scaleability of the drug dealer business model means almost everyone earns less than minimum wage and sustains themselves on the dream of being the one Mister Big. Don’t gamble your life’s trajectory on being that one guy. If you truly believe you’ll overcome unsurmountable odds buy a lottery ticket. And stay away from battlefields.

Yes, that’s me

In summary, choose your career wisely. Don’t be afraid to switch careers before you become too committed. Your risk appetite likely differs to mine but here’s my dream list of career conditions:

• Based on a real skillset that is difficult to learn (e.g. accounting, medicine, architecture)
• Most of the population is literally unable to compete (e.g. requires too much abstract thinking, training period is too stressful, entry costs are too high, apprenticeship is difficult to obtain)
• Nature of the job cannot be adequately offshored or automated because it relies on high-trust thinking, verbal knowledge, quality decision making, and personal contact (e.g. law, computer programming)
• Stable income stream with a large pool of commoditised jobs (e.g. accounting, contract law, computer programming, consulting)
• EDIT: I haven’t read this book but it looks like a great resource for choosing a career: “Worthless”

2. Excellence

Once you’ve started on your career your main goal is to become really good at it. Shine your star as bright as you can. Take real passion in excellence for its own sake. Ignore all those office-politics TV shows and books that would convince you advancement is all about who you know. No. Right up until you hit senior management advancement is what you know. Consider pick-up: what is the more successful strategy (i) learn the secret code to bullshit women into your bed or (ii) become the kind of high value man that pretty women want to sleep with? Precisely. When you know full well that every single day you go into the office you are producing high quality work, when every single product you deliver to a customer is best-in-class…. the money will keep rolling in. I’ve read all of Robert Green’s books. He’s right in his 48 Laws of Power and his 33 Strategies of War but these are only effective at the margins. Consider them defensive positioning so that the passive-aggressive office freaks can’t hurt you. Do not willingly engage in such petty power games or you’ll take on the character of your opponents. Never wrestle a pig. You both end up covered in shit but the pig likes it.

An internet forum HB8

At the beginning of your career things are rather nebulous. Your academic record matters but both you and your prospective employer know your basically a know-nothing kid who needs to be trained up on the job. So heading into an interview your vibe, character and potential matter alot. Five years down the line it’s all about genuine markers of geniune skill. Do you have the industry-standard qualification? Do you write the industry-leading program code? How many sales did you bring to your last company? Whatever the metric is, you are on stronger ground having acheived the matric through being excellent at your job than bullshitting your way through with gambits you learned in a self-help book. The business world is not as dumb as you may think.

3. Intelligence

Your twenties are your peak brain-forming years. You can google yourself all the studies showing how artists are most productive in their twenties, how creative thinking is maxed out in those years. By spending your twenties feeding your mind you will become more intelligent. I’m lucky – I spent the whole of my twenties straining and challenging my mind quite naturally by taking a difficult study-intensive job, reading hundreds of books, writing for several publications, learning a foreign language, cerebrally learning martial arts (in addition to the raw physical side), playing intellectually engaging video games etc. I was not simply sitting on my sofa with a bag of Wotsits watching X-Factor. You must find challenge in your twenties. Work is a great place for it but also consider your leisure time. Learn expert systems. Take joy in it, whether it be chess, crossword puzzles or Starcraft. You must read alot, with a good portion of those books being stimulating rather than mere entertainment. Set yourself little projects within your hobbies. Here’s a sample of what I did in my twenties:

• Learn how global financial and economic flows work. I found five top quality technical blogs to read daily and deepened my knowledge of sectors through reading about 45 books. It took eighteen months.
• A deep dive into Japanese culture. I studied the language at a school, watched lots of anime with English subtitles, and read English-language translations of major Japanese fiction.
• Micro-analyse fighting arts. I watched a few hundred MMA and kickboxing shows live, analysing the fights as I watched rather than limit myself to letting in wash over me. I read theory pieces on technique, followed the major magazines, learned what I could from fighter records (and to predict future fights), tried to pick out moves in fights to practice in the gym etc.

Those are my hobbies, don’t feel obliged to mimick them. Notice a common trend is my frame was to identify intriguing questions and then set out to answer them. Even the dryest blogpost on sub-prime ALT-A mortgage servicing fees becomes fascinating when it’s the answer to a question you’ve been asking yourself. That’s how your brain glows.

Accumulation is by its nature a forward-thinking phase with considerable deferred gratification. You’ll take alot of manly pride in building your castle but there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s alot of hard graft. You must be prepared to work hard. There is no shortcut because your brain and body require the hard work in order to reach their potential. Even if somehow inexplicably you were to stumble upon a suitcase full of millions you could not shortcut this process. Sure, you’d be financially set for life but all those other male attributes would wither on the vine.

Done correctly, you will end the accumulation phase towards your early thirties with the following dimensions to your character:

• Clever as fuck
• A highly marketable skill set so you need never fear unemployment
• A huge reservoir of interesting knowledge about the world, it’s culture and history

Congratulations. You are now entering your SMV prime holding four aces.

Becoming closer to this

*NB* – I didn’t touch on physical culture, fashion or other lifestyle areas. I’m assuming you know you should continue working out and learn to dress well. By necessity this post can only touch a few concepts so don’t think this is all there is. And of course don’t get married. I’d also add don’t buy a house or do anything else that ties you long-term to one place and high monthly payments. I’ll discuss that more in the final part…….. and btw, this is my 500th post.