Writing shortly after the carnage of World War Two ceased, Joseph Campbell released The Hero With A Thousand Faces. He contended that there is a fundamental narrative that is told and retold throughout the great stories of history. Beginning with Bart Homer and stretching forwards to airport bookstore paperbacks and Kung Fu Panda, there is one story – the “monomyth” – rooted deep in the human need for storytelling.

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man

That sounds kinda familiar……

The monomyth has been hard-coded into screen-writing advice given to Hollywood scriptwriters – have you ever noticed how every big movie seems to follow the same structure? They call it the Eight Point Story Arc but it’s just a stripped-down monomyth. Some Hollywood writers have even self-consciously structured their movie around Campbell’s model. Consider this comparison (source article here, I recommend you read his full discussion):

I contend that, due to some combination of evolution and cultural tradition, we naturally try to insert ourselves into a personalised monomyth. Read this next section and consider the typical “player’s journey” story, be it this blog or of course Neil Strauss’s famous work of fiction biography.

In a monomyth, the hero player begins in the ordinary blue pill world, and receives a call reads Roissy to enter an unknown world of strange powers game and events hot girls. The hero chode who accepts the call to enter this strange world start cold approaching must face tasks and trials rejection, either alone or with assistance an approach coach. In the most intense versions of the narrative (Tom Torero / Nick Krauser), the hero must survive a severe challenge, often with help. If the hero survives, he may achieve a great gift or “boon” intermediate game. The hero must then decide whether to return to the ordinary world with this boon start writing a blog or coaching. If the hero does decide to return, he or she often faces challenges on the return journey haters. If the hero returns successfully, the boon or gift may be used to improve the world fund a location-independent income from which to euro-jaunt forever.

There’s a reason we insert ourselves into the monomyth. We all like to self-aggrandise and mythologise our own journeys. Not only does it feel good but – more importantly – it cloaks a timid and highly unpredictable challenge with an air of inevitability. When watching movies we see the hero get into desperate straits and feel the dramatic tension but we know he’ll get out of it. Half of the excitement is waiting to find out what ingenious wheeze he’ll use to solve the problem.

The monomyth is a great meta-level inner game hack. By inserting ourselves into a grand narrative, the result of which is pre-determined, we calm all those “can I really make it?” voices that may otherwise cause us to give up.

Embrace the monomyth. Create your own. Let the power of mythology push you through the hard times and into the Final Act of….. younger, hotter, tighter.

Indulge me for a moment while I preen.

I’ve been out on a euro-jaunt with Bodi and Jabba (and Tom for the first week) since May 10th. In that time I’ve banged seven girls aged 22, 29, 24, 20, 20, 30 and 19 while I’ve also had my dick in the mouth of a 23 and 18 year old. I’m feeling pretty damn good about myself and it really brought something into perspective.

“you are only as old as the woman your feel” Groucho Marx

Game is allowing me to relive my youth. When I was 24 years old I met a 23 year old Japanese girl who became my wife. As I aged so did she and it was a very pleasant time in my life. Then, as regular readers are well aware, she left me and I was suddenly 34 years old and single. I really believed my youth was over. I’d had my time in the sun and now I was entering middle age. Perhaps even a mid-life crisis would beckon and I’d take up scuba-diving or cross fit or something.

Suddenly seemed rather fascinating…

Oh no! How things were to change….

There’s no such thing as a mid-life crisis for men. As Rollo very precisely explains, “mid-life crisis” is a feminine shaming term for the melancholy and restlessness a man feels when his wife is getting old. Put a nubile 20 year old girl in his bed and he’ll feel the fresh air of youth all over again.

Two days ago on a first date with an 18 year old, she asked my age. As usual I asked her to guess. She guessed 25 (I’m 39). Now that’s an extreme example but girls regularly comment that I’m young at heart, both looking and acting far more youthful than my age. I asked her what she thought about the 21 year age gap – “If you were from this country perhaps I wouldn’t talk to you, I’d expect you to have a family and be boring. But…. I don’t know. You’re English, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t seem strange. It’s normal to date an older man I think.”

An alternate strategy, yesteryear

Since time immemorial people have searched for the fountain of everlasting youth. Countess Bathory bathed in the blood of virgins in her seventeenth century castle. The Crusaders fought their way East chasing the Holy Grail. Whole legends detail the quest for youth. Humans don’t just fear mortality, they fear getting old.

Instinctively we are repelled by people who get old before their time. At university I had a friend called Mark. We used to call him “trainee middle-aged” because he seemed determined to lock himself down to the accounting job / wife / surburban home as quickly as possible. He couldn’t wait to turn into his dad and did so around age 23. He skipped most of his youth. Madness. James Dean he wasn’t.

One pernicuous effect of the Blue Pill is it functions like early-onset Alzheimers. A fresh-faced new graduate will stroll into London with a head full of dreams and a life of opportunity stretching ahead. Within two years he’ll have a wardrobe of blue shirts and M&S suits, a credit card balance and a career-oriented girlfriend. Another couple of years and they’ve moved in together and go to Ikea on weekends. That stuff ages you.

Game is the real fountain of youth. Done correctly you stay forever young in mind and spirit. Twenty years after fucking your 20yr old university co-eds you get to fuck them all over again. It’s like a time machine.

Yes, Daygame Mastery is written by H.G. Wells.

For the gold standard in daygame instruction, try my new book Daygame Mastery.

Chaps, here is a long discussion I recorded with Tom Torero on what male SMV is and how to deliver it through the various types of game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jz8q4TNIsk&w=480&h=360

Oh my god…. I can’t believe it! Nick has written a directly-practical post without any mental masturbation……

Lampost
Imagine you’re walking out of Venue Two on your first date. You’ve already regaled your girl with funny stories and interesting takes on historical events so she’s been giggling. Her hand went soft when you inspected her nail polish and now as you walk down the street perhaps she’s “accidently” bumping into you. It sounds like the kiss is on, but she hasn’t quite put herself into position.

Perhaps the venue seating arrangements screwed you. Your favourite booth in the corner was taken so you ended up sitting opposite each other in rickety chairs with a coffee table between you. You tried pulling her in a little and she didn’t seem to take the hint. Hmmmmmm. What to do? You have to make your move before the window closes and you stall out. Time for a gambit.

Pick a visible feature on the street about twenty metres away. A lampost, a letter box, a shop front. Whatever. Then as you’re comfortably walking side by side, point at it.

Venue 2.5

You: Can you see that letter box over there?
Her: Where?
You: There, the red one.
Her: Yes
You: When we get there, I’m going to kiss you.

Her reaction doesn’t matter. Maybe she giggles and goes red. Maybe she goes silent. Maybe she pushes back with “no you won’t”. None of that matters. You are Making Your Move so you must follow through. It doesn’t matter if you actually get the kiss, it matters that you were ballsy and calm about going for it.

Don’t rush. Perhaps deliberately go silent as you walk, letting her head spin with anticipation. Don’t babble. If she seemed playfully receptive then make a joke out of taking your sweet time. Fasten your shoelace, check out a shop window – so she knows you’re deliberately dragging out the moment.

And once you arrive at the letter box, turn her to face you, tilt up her chin with your fingertip, and kiss her.

Success

GoogleTranslate
I’ve spent a lot of time honing my girl-doesn’t-speak-English first dates. It’s really not as tough as it sounds so long as you have wi-fi and GoogleTranslate app on your phone. So imagine you’re sitting back in a lounge chair in the dark upstairs room of a cafe. She’s on the seat next to you. She seems to like you and the physical escalation has been all amber or green lights, but the verbal escalation is clumsy.

You’ve already written “I like your eyes. Big and crazy, like a raccoon” which got a giggle. What now? You’re in seperate seats with big arm-rests. Even if she wanted to, she can’t put herself into position for the kiss. But she’s perched on the edge of her seat while you lounge in yours. When you leaned in to tell a story she never retreated to maintain distance. Ok, it’s probably on. How to bridge the gap?

Hold up your finger in the “wait a minute, I want to say something” manner and then type into your phone:

“I’m going to kiss you in thirty seconds”

Look playfully serious, like you are choosing your words carefully. Be patient. Then hit Translate and hand her the phone. She’ll likely give a deer-in-headlights look. Hold your frame. Look peaceably at her and don’t fidget or fill the gap. She’ll start typing. Something like:

“I hesitate”

Take the phone back, and with a thoughtful expression type:

“20 seconds”

Let her stew. Don’t say anything. Be calm, like the oak tree. Then type “10 seconds” and show her that.

Finally, sit up on your chair and take her hands. Put them over your shoulders and pull her in for the kiss.

Might as well agree logistics while you’re at it

These two gambits are easy and yet appear super-ballsy. She gets to experience your sense of purpose and direction, while also getting precious delicious moments of anticipation.

While travelling in Moscow, dependable first-gen daygamers Tom and Ramy were having a lot of idates and screening coffees. The further you travel East, the more false positives FSU girls give you and this creates its own set of problems. In the beginning you’re wide-eyed – “wow! so many super-hotties and they all want to come on dates with me!” you think.

Not so, sir

After your fifth consecutive date-to-nowhere you realise shininess is a double-edged sword. It doesn’t matter that she’s a 5’11” greyhound with heels and immaculate fashion if she’s only there to practice her English and gaze at the strange species Homus Englishski. The new problem of False Abundance is you have so many phone numbers you have to write them all down and keep an Excel document for scheduling dates.

A dirty rotten timewaster, yesterday

I once dated 21 different girls in 7 days. Only fucked three of them (and another two on a return visit after long game).

The positive edge to the sword is you can practice hardcore screening and escalation. That’s the kind of thing that let’s you finger three different girls on three consecutive days inside cafes in mid-afternoon (story and audio to follow). You are so concerned to avoid wasting time (rather than avoid losing the girl) that you can push hard. Now, fingering them fast may be something of an over-compensation so let’s instead consider a strategy Ramy developed.

During the questions game, ask this:
“What do you like about me?”

Really, you can be this blunt with Russians. Once you’re used to it, you’ll find you can be that blunt with any girl. The authenticity shines through and cuts the crap. Generally I’ll ask this question after I’ve done the Age and Approach debrief questions. Girls will always answer it and you can calibrate from their response.

• “I like that you are native speaker so I can practice my English” = probably a timewaster, expect to need to give her The Talk later
• “You are so bold and direct, like real man” = great, you’ll be making The Move soon
• “You are interesting, with much life experience” = great, continue your MIMITW game

Girls tell you how to seduce them if only you are perceptive enough to process their words. So I’ve been using this question on almost every Day 2, especially for daylight coffee screening dates when my evenings are already occupied with Day 3s and 4s. Just last night while out with a pretty young student I realised there’s an extra advantage to asking this question…….

We are all well-aware that girls are creatures of the Now, buffeted around by whimsy and emotion. Just because she’s feeling vague woolly feelings of attraction for you now does not mean she will do so tomorrow morning when the love bubble has burst. So it’s good to lock it down.

Moving hands south imminently

Right now, on the Day 2, she’s feeling good. Her hindbrain likes you, but perhaps your game has been so smooth and covertly-conveyed that her forebrain hasn’t really engaged with it. She’s got this odd forebrain/hindbrain conflict where the latter likes you but the former hasn’t gotten the message. Thus the attraction is epheramel – it depends on her hindbrain, which blows around like a ship on a stormy sea. So even if you kiss her she might wake up the next morning not fancying you much. The date is just compartmentalised as a “nice experience” and the notch recedes from view.

So force her forebrain to acknowledge that she likes you.

It will crystallise the fact of “I like him” so that the next morning it’s accepted, and durable through time. This question uses the hindbrain pleasure of the love bubble to force the forebrain to get on board, and she actively constructs the reasons for her answer. You’ve given her Forebrain Fodder.

I am proud to announce the launch of Daygame Nitro second edition. I know what you’re thinking….

“I torrented the first edition and feel a bit guilty about it. How can I ever restore my daygame karma?”

Repent, sinner. I’m giving you the second chance you scarcely deserve. If you head over to Lulu and buy this book I guarantee the daygame gods will push two teenage tourist SDLs your way within a week.*  The video below goes through the content and flicks through a paper copy so you can see exactly what you’ll be getting.

To summarise, here’s answers to the obvious questions:

1. What is new in the second edition?
The first edition was 36,000 words. I rewrote all of those and added an extra 30,000. So it’s almost double the size. Some chapters have been expanded (for example a long sexual future projection in the idate chapter) while some entirely new chapters are added on Vibe, Emotional Rollercoaster, Polarity, Connection, Physical Escalation, SMV and Cold Reading. Click the preview on the Lulu page for full contents.

2. The first edition looks like your mum did the graphic design. Does this one look better?
Yes. I paid professional copy editors to clean up the prose, a layout guy to make it look nice, and also commissioned custom interior / cover art and a flowchart girl.

3. Who is it aimed at?
Nitro is designed to get a beginner up to intermediate level (one new lay a month), whereas Mastery is meant to get one-a-month up to three-a-month and a point higher in quality. So long as you’ve done at least fifty sets the concepts of Nitro will connect well with your experience.

4. I don’t like these hardbacks. When is the Kindle coming out?
I really don’t know. I’m not averse to it, but nothing is planned in the near future.

Note interior is in B/W

Buy DAYGAME NITRO here

* Complete lie. Guarantee is pure fabrication.

The harsh reality of daygame is most men will never get it. That’s partly because most daygamers are an adversarially-selected bunch of weirdos (as indeed I was when I began) but mostly because it’s just an enormous ask:

Start talking to a hot young girl, who doesn’t know you, and then fuck her with nothing more than your aesthetic and charisma.

To pull that off consistently on girls younger and hotter than you is basically a super power. I’m surprised top players aren’t asked to be in the next X-Men. So while I was sitting in a cafe with Tom looking out over a nice FSU plaza, we reflected on a simple question: why aren’t more men able to pull this off?

I see all the hot girls walking around and I know that with a bit of effort I can get some of them. So that’s exactly what I do. What’s stopping all the other men doing the same? Why is it that despite hundreds of bootcamps, one-on-ones, seminars and at least a few thousand men going through the London Daygame mill I can literally count on my hands how many are good?

There are invisible barriers to daygame that aren’t mere technique and will be imperceptible to everyone below the intermediate (one lay a month from hard graft) level. These are the things that are no longer in my reality but used to be like a forcefield holding me back.

Where have all the overweight socially maladjusted men gone?

1. Sting of rejection
A girl’s reaction shouldn’t affect your sense of self. When she’s walking down the street with her headphones on and daydreaming of her next pair of shoes she’s not thinking of meeting men. Opening her well will usually shock her out of this but there will always be girls who brush you off and keep walking. Assuming she stops there’ll be girls who give you a “what do you want?” look and you can’t quite get rolling – so another rejection. Or maybe you get the compliment out and get the “thanks but no thanks”. Or you get excited with the number close and she doesn’t reply. The only two certainies in life are death and daygame blowouts. For as long as you feel the sting of it, you’ll find ways to avoid being in that position, which leads me on to……

2. Meta-weasels
…. the ego is ingenius in it’s ability to avoid damage. In addition to the usual street weasels (“she’s too hot”, “she looks busy” etc) are the lifestyle weasels that prevent you even being in a position to open a girl. Just recently Tom met a guy who appears to have the Euro-jaunt lifestyle set up but he seems to spend all day in a cafe reading books and not opening. It’s quite acceptable to go see the art gallery, the museum and the opera house on your first day but that’s it. A good daygamer is a piss-poor tourist.

You must want this more than photos outside the Opera House

3. Blowout streaks
Everyone has strings of blowouts. If you’re good-looking and confident they’ll be short strings that barely phase you but you’ll still get them. If you’re a short Indian chode opening Russian catwalk models blowouts are pretty much the only thing you’ll get. It’s quite dispiriting to have a run of good results, perhaps a few quality lays, and then suddenly every girl acts like you’ve sprayed on woman repellant. Daygame is about keeping many balls in the air simultaneously in order to pull off a magic trick. It’s so easy to drop a ball or too and then not even get a girl to stop for you. And then you’ll start doubting yourself. “Was I really any good at this? Does it even work?” The typical newbie daygamer doesn’t have the reference experiences or mental grit to push through these streaks, nor the self-diagnostics to correct whatever is causing the blowouts.

4. K-selected signals
Almost every daygamer wants to be the Nice Guy. He’s absorbed too many Disney fairytales and has turned to daygame to get the Good Girls and not those Nightclub Sluts. He’s kidding himself. The sexual market rules are always in effect. It’s always a darwinistic fight whether on the club or on the streets, and the girls are operating according to the same mating schema. Daygame is to nightgame what tennis is to squash – useless ill-coordinated slobs are going to fail in both sports. Daygame fools you into thinking you’re not in competition with all those other cool charismatic men simply because you can’t see them at that moment in time. No. Hot young girls always have options and you’d better be either (i) her best option or (ii) a side-dish she can’t otherwise get.
So drop your Disney fantasy. Daygame is dirty and animalistic.

Boyfriend material. No chance of SDL

5. Weirdness
For every cool daygamer I’ve met, I’ve met six or seven normal everyman types who have a chance to make it. For every normal guys, I’ve met a couple of weird freaks who have no chance at all. Like the LSS guy who lives in a tent in an Essex forest and has had three phone numbers in ten years – because he’s not only homeless but he looks and smells homeless. His stupid weirdo ego prevents him addressing the one obvious problem. Then there’s all the little Indian chodes asking me “how many sets I need before hot Russian girl become in my harem, Mr Krauser?” or the frame-control PUA freaks who “open” me with a Yad-Stop then completely ignore my friend while trying to get a free consultation. Just the other day I met such a guy and he had weird bug eyes and his shoulders looked like he was halfway through a shrug. He wasn’t physically deformed, just a lifetime of being weird had etches itself into his muscle memory. That can conceivably be undone but it’s a hell of a job. And until them every girl is thinking “ewwww!”

More than any other strategy, daygame is a test of how normal you are. Weirdness will always fall flat when there’s no alcohol, flashing disco lights or female super-horniness to mask it.

6. Nowhere leads
A combination of the other barriers listed here will tend to result in a guy getting phone numbers to nowhere. Now you are fully aboard the emotional rollercoaster. You get the sickening dread of approach anxiety, the euphoria of a girl hooking and chatting, then the validation of the number close, and then the dull let-down of her not responding. Inevitably you’ll obsess for days over it, trying to figure out the perfect recovery text. And finally give up. Get yourself a pile of these false leads and you’ll get into the “is daygame worth all this effort” meta-weasel.

7. Hack mentality
“Dear Tom. I love your book, perhaps I do one-on-one with you. Me your fan. Your infield very good!!!! So Mr Tom, where is easiest place to get laid?”

Everyone wants to avoid the market. Whether it’s a corporation shovelling cash in lobby groups, a feminist mandating alimony laws, an established PUA moving to “lifestle game”, or a noob looking for Pussy Paradise – the emotional driver is always the same: I don’t want to be subject to the rigours of the free market because it’s too hard / I don’t think I’ll win that competition. Combine this with the natural chode avoidance of making significant changes and you have the hack mentality.

The PUA cartel saw you coming and will sell you magic pills and 3 Secrets To Make Her Wet as long as your credit card is below it’s limit. If you’re looking to score something for nothing, you’ll end up with nothing. Daygame is hard. Very very hard.

8. Quality overreach
When you see a really hot girl with a boyfriend, have a good look at him. He’s not a short pot-bellied old man with a comb-over and ill-fitting Primark t-shirt is he? Hot girls only have sex with high value men. Now, as daygamers we are lucky that there is a carefully-honed system to deliver that value in a short space of time but….. the value has to be there. The single biggest piece of value a daygamer can have (and which at least 60% don’t have) is… a personality.

The fuck ladder is real. If you’re currently getting occasional 5s then you needn’t bother opening higher than a 6. By all means do so as an experiment in breaking limiting beliefs but know that you’ve got no hope in hell of fucking them. Go dig up a photo of the hottest girl you fucked in the last two years. That’s what you should be opening. If she’s a 5 then leave the catwalk models to the men who actually have a chance.

Good luck with that, fatso

And yes, you probably bristled at the last two paragraphs. Going for turbo-hotties that blow you out is actually avoidance – you are avoiding girls you might fuck because getting blown out by the 6s is a bigger blow to your ego.

9. Spoonfeeding
The first generation of London daygamers figured it out for themselves. Tom, Jon, Antony and I were hitting the streets and trying new things. We’d experiment with how many steps to take before coming in on the front stop, what hand position, when to ask the name and so on. There wasn’t a Daygame Mastery out there for us to read so we figured it out for ourselves. That’s called self-reliance and it’s a universally attractive masculine trait. We also read whatever we could get our hands on and stripped out the goldust to incorporate into the model. At no point did we ever think somebody would just hand over the answer. That would’ve been weird.

We accepted that the world is a cold unyielding place and if we wanted to get sex, we’d better solve the problems put in our way. Now I look at some of the emails I get, or long rambling blogposts in the manosphere and it seems few people want to work for it. Wanting to be spoonfed is an entitlement mentality which will stop you improving.

10. First day abroad
Every one of the above barriers slams down hard when you try a Euro-jaunt. You’ve probably built yourself up over a few weeks while waiting for the flight date. This is it, pussy paradise, you’re gonna hit it hard. Burn the town with a crazy number farm and get some hot foreign birds! And then you arrive in your apartment, put down your suitcase and look out the window. Shit has just gotten real and all those insecurities rise up. If you’re not careful you’ll wig out and spend the whole trip buried in a cafe reading blogs.

They don’t just fall into your bed

Daygame is not the easy answer to getting laid. There’s a reason more people don’t do it, and there’s a reason most people who do either give up quickly after the bootcamp honeymoon, or they are relentless weirdos who get nowhere. So when I’m sitting in a Prague pavement cafe looking at the hot teens stride past in hot pants and think “I might have a piece of that” it’s no longer a surprise to me that there’s not more men doing exactly the same.

If you want to learn daygame the right way and maximise your chances of success, check out my book Daygame Mastery