I thought about some of the accusations the PUA crowd made regarding my article Why Cold Approaching is Mostly Useless. It just hit me that those are the guys who love to proclaim that they have found “a glitch in the matrix”, or a “secret loophole”. Their methods don’t give you any better results than “asking girls out game”, though. It’s quite funny that this camp now accuses me of going for “low hanging fruit” when I propose a simple procedure that really allows you to get more (and "better") girls with much less effort. Now suddenly their more complicated “loophole” is preferable to my “low hanging fruits” approach.
It reminded me of some of my opponents in my short chess career. I took up chess shortly after enrolling at university, and progressed rather quickly. After about a year or so, I was playing at a 1600+ level, which is quite decent for an amateur. If you play chess with people who are above the level of wood pushers, you often find guys (you won’t find many girls playing chess) who stick to belief systems that are downright ridiculous and do little to help them improve their game. This might remind you of some other fields.
For instance, some people believe they are superior even if they have just lost to you (again). Their accusations are that you lack insight into some of the finer elements of chess strategy, and may tell you about a so-called “weak pawn” you had here or there. The funny thing is that they could even be right, but if they have blundered away a piece, those minor strategic advantages are useless. In pickup, their accusations are normally plain wrong, though. Sure, you can get laid plenty without “showing vulnerability”. However, you can also “show vulnerability” all night long and not get laid in the end, while Joe Douche fucks his third girl in the bathroom stall.
Similarly, some people have accused me of making “ugly moves” in chess. When you have a clearly winning position, let’s say you are one piece up, you can forget about elaborate strategies. Instead, just force some exchanges, so that the material imbalance becomes more and more pronounced. (This is a method that some textbooks clearly endorse, by the way.) Sure, some may say it is not “elegant”, whatever this may mean, but it’s certainly very efficient. It has the added benefit that you can end the game quickly, and won’t give your passive-aggressive opponent the chance to pull of ridiculous psychological tricks like letting half an hour of their time pass just to annoy you. Further, if you follow a simpler strategy, you minimize the risk of blundering yourself (the parallels to pickup are obvious). There are many bad losers out there.
I don’t want to give you the impression that I was an amazing chess player. I certainly wasn’t, and I have lost plenty of games. However, I always had the decency to give up the game when I was in a clearly lost position, and I didn’t look for excuses because I didn’t see the point in mental exercises that amounted to absurd claims of “yeah, I have lost to him, but I am actually better because…”. No, buddy, you lost, and thus you can’t say that you are the better player. Whether you think you can get some “style points” for elegant wins (which probably all look crude anyway to chess grandmasters) is besides the point. It’s much better if you smash your opponent in 16 moves and less than an hour as opposed to a long and drawn out battle that takes up four hours. A win is a win is a win.
Likewise, if you get laid, but it takes you ten hours with a girl you are less compatible with as opposed to a one-hour date after dancing class with a girl you have something in common with, then I can only say that you should get your priorities straight. Something that takes longer is by definition worse even if if leads to the same result. It’s not that any of those “gamers” do better than anyone else, after all.
There is one important difference between chess players and PUAs. In chess, most players give up when they are in a lost position, and when they are in a clearly drawn position, they agree to a draw. It’s a matter of honor, honesty and decency. Those are qualities that don’t seem to be common among PUAs, though. All I see are plenty of bad losers.
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