Reader Comment: Game is Nothing but Over-Hyped Bullshit

The following was posted by an anonymous reader on the "Peek into Project Hollywood" story, which I posted some months ago.

I wish I could've seen the light sooner, but over a year ago, I signed up to take online Pick-up courses with one of Vince Kelvin's Instructors who branched out and made his own unique system. I won't say who it is, but it's funny seeing some of the names in this article as this Instructor would team up with them to answer any questions "AFC's" such as myself had on phone calls. During my time in Pick-up, I'll admit I ran into your site a few times.

I thought "Oh, this is just some dude who's pissed-off that pick-up didn't work for him. He should've developed his "inner game", and cold approaching does work. So many women were receptive and gave me their numbers. He's just trying to make a website like PUAhate.com so he can cry about his experiences in pick-up. When all along he should've done this then that, and he would have success."

I read Johnny's book and one point that truly struck me, that was truly profound was that it's ok to be rejected. I remember back when I was in PUA, I had immediate success getting lots of numbers and scoring a couple of dates. Unfortunately the dates, didn't go so well because I'd turn into a social robot. Then when I decided to work on my "nightgame", I would get blown off sets like crazy for about half a year. Considering such little return on such large investment, it would've been wise on my part to stop. But because I was told that I'd eventually "get it", that I would be extremely successful with women one day. Yeah...all those lays, one-night stands, and casual relationships would never came. Though because I was told that it was okay to be rejected, like an idiot, I would keep going. So much to the point that the instructor felt sorry for me and gave me most of the lessons for free.

As I would view more videos, I would be given assignments like i.e. approach these women with this opener, then play this game, then work on establishing comfort. Then I'd reference back to the blown sets and those times I used those terrible openers, then to add these techniques to my repertoire. I thought to myself, I'm done! If I try to implement these techniques, they will cause me to think in the conversation and look socially-retarded like so many other approaches I performed. I'll probably get the set blown in my face again, I'm tired of this bulls***. After that point, I began to distance myself from "game" and realized it was nothing but over-hyped bulls***. I was sick of "DHV'ing", "establishing comfort", "playing the 5 questions game before I make out with her". None of this crap worked, and even when I did apply it, most chicks would look at me weird, stop the conversation, or laugh straight at my face. I'll admit, one thing pick-up did help me with was becoming a more social, comfortable, and confident person in many situations. But at the cost of my psyche, time, and hobbies. 

Now I'm happy that I stumbled upon sites like AttractionInstitute.org and your website. These sites give one a good idea of how to just be a regular guy casually dating women. All in all, when I look back at this experience, I find it funny that the guy I was back then would be criticizing the guy I am right now. Thankfully though, I've read Johnny's book and it truly highlights the disgusting snake-oil marketing campaign the PUA industry is. I'm just happy I found the light, I look forward to more of your posts Aaron.

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Reader Comment: Game only works if she's only interested, and then you don't need game anymore

Some days ago this anonymous post appeared in the comment section of "There is no Point in Pretending". I'll reproduce it here in full since it deserves broad attention.

This is extremely interesting, Alek and Aaron, and it rejoins a thought I had a while back, when a local PUA of my country was talking about the night where he approached two hot girls, and one of them warmed up while the other one remained cold. I remember thinking that if he got two different reactions from girls while saying the exact same thing and being the exact same dude, it obviously meant that their reactions had nothing to do with him or what he said, but came from whether they instantly liked him or not.

Isn’t it ironic that PUAs teach you to Game girls that you don’t know? Think about it: in a non-social circle environment, there are only two reasons for a girl to see you again after an initial encounter:
-She is interested in you.
-She is super social (in that case, there is a good chance you will actually never see her again even though you had a good interaction with her: she was just being her super social self).

Now here is where it gets funny: PUAs say that girls always assume that a stranger who comes to talk to them is hitting on them, which is only logical. That means that, whatever you tell her (and NO, going “indirect” does not fool anyone), she is deciding whether or not she is interested. And that’s the kicker: for her to react positively to your approach, for her to start talking eagerly to you, she needs to be very social or to be interested, and this interest, as correctly pointed out by Alek, will stem from non-short-term fakable things, basically your style and looks. In order to spit your nonsensical game, you need her to want to listen to you in the first place, either because that’s her way of being or because she already likes you. 

The funny thing is that PUAs do sense that some girls are initially more responsive than others, but, because of their deluded view of the world, they think that if the girls is non-responsive, it’s because they weren’t “alpha/unstiffled/detached/in the Now/etc” and therefore they need to stay with her and try to “plow” and persist as much as possible until she warms up. They also account for initially warm girls by the fact that they sensed their alphaness or whatever before they opened their mouth.

It is just crazy the extent to which these guys can go to avoid seeing the obvious. When you do Game on a girl, she has to be willing to listen for you to demonstrate your attractive qualities. And if she is willing to listen, she is interested already, by definition

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Guest Post: Virgil Kent's Nexxt Level Up: repeated evidence against game (by Shackleford)

Shackleford is back with another brilliant analysis of the "manosphere". This time, he shows that some people don't even know what they are writing about and in fact prove the opposite of what they intended.

Unbeknownst to Virgil Kent, his new site Nexxt Level Up provides repeated evidence against the legitimacy of mainstream PUA tactics, as well as Roissy game. This is not too surprising; Virgil Kent always seemed apart from the PUA cult and more like a relatively normal dudebro that was into randomly banging girls. He piggy backed onto Roosh's audience many years ago, but the general tone of his work is far less whiny and preachy than that of Return of Kings and Heartiste. That said, his content isn't all that engaging or deep, but he still provides solid gold evidence against the usefulness of mainstream game concepts. Let's review:

Example #1: http://nexxtlevelup.com/game/dc-and-little-california

This is from the post "DC and Little California", in which Virgil is completely unenthused about going out but ends up taking a girl home. We find out in this story, however, that the process of hooking up was easy, almost as if the girl was already attracted to him and all he had to do was not fuck up. In fact, that is exactly what happened:

Again there was something cool and nonchalant about the whole thing. Nothing weird or hesitating like the last one, it’s as if she saw me and decided before talking with me that she would be ok with sleeping with me if I didn’t fuck it up or turn out to be gay.

Note that Virgil did pull a DHV move by showing that he knew the bouncer, but the evidence in the story reveals that she was already attracted to him on first sight.

Example #2: http://nexxtlevelup.com/game/autopilot-game

This is a guest post by a dude named Nate, who has stood up to the racists of the Roissy-sphere, so he can't be that bad. I also thank him for posting a pretty strong rebuke of game. The above post, titled "Autopilot Game," describes a journey in which a man starts out using PUA tactics only to find out that they are practically worthless: key sentence is that the narrator of this story "starts going out more" because of PUA, which of course produces some results despite these tactics, not because of them. The narrator realizes this eventually:

Maybe, you start to wonder, maybe just maybe something is wrong with the rulebook. After getting slapped the previous night, you can’t stop thinking about it. It nags at you every day. Certain thoughts creep in, seemingly heretical in nature. Maybe the playbook is stupid? Maybe it sucks? Nah, remember where you came from. But… maybe the playbook/rulebook was made for people who need rules, for those who need set plays and guidance? What if you don’t need those anymore? What if you’ve outgrown capital G “Game”?

No, Nate, you are correct: the playbook is stupid. As we find out at the end of this story, the narrator finds success by following his own path and focusing on the girls who are already attracted to him, and finds out (surprise!) that "negs" and "shit tests" are almost completely irrelevant in this type of scenario:

At the bar, you see this hottie eyeing you two tables down, but before you can even make your approach she pops up behind you and introduces herself. Your buddy knows the score and leaves immediately, and you draw her close while getting to know each other’s names and stuff like that. After a mere two minutes, you are making out already and she’s feeling your arms. As if on autopilot, you guide her to the barstools where you can sit close, drink, and enjoy each other’s company. Even though she’s new, nothing else about this interaction is. You smile, laugh, even compliment her a couple times because after all, she does look very nice tonight. You have forgotten what a “shit test” is because you haven’t gotten one in forever, or at least if you have you didn’t even care to notice. You take her to a nearby club because you enjoy getting your grind on in low lighting, and by one o’clock she’s in your bedroom, taking her clothes off.

This naturally ends with the narrator - having settled into his own niche - realizing that reading game blogs is counter-productive:

The next morning, mildly hungover but otherwise feeling great, you check in on those blogs you used to read religiously but hardly any of it resonates with you anymore. Not that there is anything wrong with any of it, but as a custom built machine you know exactly what you do or don’t need to do to the point that even thinking about it does more harm than good.

Example #3: http://nexxtlevelup.com/game/the-tyler-chronicles-never-give-up-on-the-night

This is my personal favorite post, because it contradicts one mainstream game trope ("looks don't matter") and one Roissy-game trope (the tendency to overthink every fucking part of an interaction). Virgil establishes right away that the subject of his story, Tyler, is good looking. Virgil addresses this directly by implying that it's his game, not his looks, that gets him laid:

This is the guy betas will scream at the top of their lungs, “Game only works if you look like that”

Unfortunately, evidence from the story reveals that it is precisely Tyler's looks that got him laid. The evidence is contained within Tyler's description of first encountering the girl who he would later hook up with:

I saw a girl to the right of the attendant stand looking my way. She was a very sexy red headed girl wearing a thin leopard long sleeve shirt over a grey shirt. I was the only one standing in that area. I caught her looking again. My blood started pumping.

Tyler gets her number and later takes her out on the date in the Boston area. The funny thing about this story is that Tyler makes a couple of mis-steps during this date that could've have pointlessly derailed this girl's desire to sleep with him. First of all, he takes her to a loud, crowded frat bar in downtown Boston, where she acts justifiably uncomfortable. He senses this and recommends going to a bar in her neighborhood. She agrees and he follows her in his car to her neighborhood, which leads to the single most amazing part of this story, the part where his loyalty to Roissy concepts of mental-masturbation and over-analysis almost prevent him from an easy lay:

I started following her. We approached a green light that turned yellow, and she gunned through it. Did she just do that on purpose?? Fuck this….I stopped at the red light and decided I’m heading home. 

Seconds later she called, “Did I just lose you?” “Yes, you ran a red light. It’s getting kind of late anyways…” I was too tired to drive all over Mass, and I was annoyed. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry! I’ll pull over until you reach me!” Her tone convinced me to stay.

You can almost see his Roissy hamster wheel ruining the night: "she ran a red light!!! This is a shit test!!! The only way for me to pass it is to go home!!! Trying to follow her after this is beta!!! I have to push every part of this interaction in my favor or it's over!!!"

Fortunately for Tyler, he decides to follow her, she suggests they skip the bar and go to her apartment, where she finally opens up, and then banging ensues. This implies that the whole charade of going to bars to finesse her for hours was pointless in the first place.

Conclusion

While Virgil Kent is a friend of Roosh's and former friend of Roissy, we can see pretty strong evidence from his stories that traditional PUA game plays a non-existent role in both his and his collaborators' successes. The girls in each of these stories were initially attracted to the guys, and all the guys had to do was be cool and escalate. Despite this, the subject in his last example almost fucked it up by freaking out over the girl running a red light. Moral of the story: it's not that complicated.

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The Psychology behind DHVs

I'm always amused when a PUA shill comments on this blog and makes statements that literally make me laugh out loud. A couple of months ago I wrote a short post about a "real life DHV" that was relayed by a member of the forum. The gist was that if you have status then you don't need to demonstrate that you do because it's obvious.

I was thus quite amused when some deluded guy recently wrote the following:

You don't understand the psychology behind DHVing at all. Demonstrating Higher Value doesnt mean you have to have higher value. Obviously a person who is considered "High Status" in our society doesn't need to demonstrate higher value....it's obvious and it is demonstrated naturally. If a nerdy guy of average social status wants to bang supermodels, he has to demonstrate that his value is higher....it doesn't matter if it actually is or not. The type of guy used in my example can NOT bang supermodels consistently without utilizing DHV. There are the rare hotties out there that get turned on by low self esteem or nerdy guys but that's an exception, not the norm.

Part of me wishes that this guy is just taking the piss, but I do suspect that he is serious. The delusion is nothing but staggering. We've been discussing recently that any kind of short-term sexual interest is based upon traits that can't be faked, such as height, or simply just physical attraction. For any kind of long-term interest, however, women take other aspects of the guy into account, such as how much money he has. Of course, this can't be faked so well either.

So, how is a nerdy guy with no real-life achievements ever going to bang supermodels? He wouldn't even get access to them since they hang out in a different scene. At least last time I checked, Heidi Klum wasn't going to "hackathons" to bang out a cheap iPhone app with a bunch of her supermodel friends. Just insinuating that a nerdy guy could "consistently" bang supermodels is nothing but laughable. But, hey, with a few DHVs it might work out well. How many supermodels did Mystery, the inventor of DHVs, bang? I'd venture it's a grand total of zero. Yet there is the seduction community myth that anyone can bang any woman. It's quite astounding how gullible some men are.

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Free 170 page Ebook: Johnny's Journey

Johnny's Journey: Critical Lessons from my Involvement with the Seduction Community is a free 170 page ebook, written by Johnny Anti-PUA in collaboration with Aaron Sleazy.

While Debunking the Seduction Community detailed many of the wrongdoings and often downright fraudulent activities within the seduction industry, Johnny's Story presents a unique view based on the personal experiences of a guy who was mislead by the "community".

Some highlights of this book are:

- How PUAs exploit vulnerable and inexperienced men
- The cognitive dissonance the average community guy goes through
- How to recover and eventually free yourself from negative influences
- Mental traps, like feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, and how to overcome them
- How even legitimate PUA coaches get corrupted
- Popular myths within the PUA community put to the test

Johnny's Journey contrasts PUA claims with reality. If you are somehow doubting PUA claims but can't quite articulate them yet, or if you have a lingering feeling that something is seriously wrong because the world just isn't like your favorite PUA describes it, then I can only encourage you to carefully read through this book.

In an appendix, Aaron Sleazy discusses related issues, including areas he has not much talked about before. In addition to a revised version of the popular article "Why Cold Approaching is Mostly Useless" he covers issues such as:

- Fear of rejection
- Why male virginity is a societal fiction
- Why you shouldn't be afraid of the "perceptiveness" of women
- The relative importance of looks, money and status
- Some reminders on how to fix your dating life if you don't know where to start

Click on the link below to download the book in PDF format:
Johnny's Journey

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There is No Point in Pretending

In his guest post, Alek Novy made the important point that it is impossible to improve your chances with one particular girl. Of course, there are more or less universally attractive features, and on the other end of the spectrum, there is an element of randomness. Imagine a woman goes out and desperately wants to get laid. In that case it's sufficient to be the first guy who is just good enough, and you'll get laid. However, once you move past one-night stands, your personality and lifestyle play a much bigger role. For a relationship, or even just for a fling, girls surprisingly care about what kind of person you are.

If you're familiar with "old school" game like Mystery Method, then you may remember that one of the biggest fears of those losers was to "run out of routines." Having a girlfriend was seen as an elusive goal, only achievable by true masters, and even then only after years and years of practice. The issue is that it is certainly possible to claim to be someone you are not and keep the facade up for some time. A "gamer" may read that he has to like animals to be more attractive to girls, because many girls like animals. Thus, he creates his own little "routine" and tells fake stories of how he liked to play ball with the neighbor's dog when he was a kid.


Let's just assume he has a normal night out for a "gamer" and approaches women indiscriminately. Ten or fifteen in a row shoot him down, until he finally comes across one that thinks he'd kind of cute --- and then she finds out that he likes dogs too! He gets lucky and gets laid. Big deal. He thinks he's really onto something with his little animal routine. However, if the two start to date, there will be a big problem. After all, he just doesn't like animals at all, and animals may play a big part in your life. So, for how long do you think the deception can last? You won't fake to be a dog lover if you don't like dogs.

If this wasn't clear enough, then let's discuss a travesty you can witness in more exclusive nightclubs weekend after weekend: A couple of guys put their money together for bottle service. None of them has money, because otherwise one of them would invite his buddies and pay the bill. Now they all chip in a few hundred dollars and hope this gets them closer to pussy. They all try to act as if they're rolling in dough.

Just like telling lies to a girl, pretending to be rich when you aren't won't work for long. What if you meet a girl at such a club, and make her believe you're a big spender? Let's say you pulled all the punches and rented a fancy sport car for the night, and you even got a room in a nice hotel. How long will you be able to keep this up? After all, it's not the case that you'll be able to take that girl to McDonald's or Domino's Pizza afterwards. Hard indicators of status such as money are quite difficult to fake, which is precisely the reason why some women pay close attention to it.

No matter how you intend to do it, it's pointless to attempt to trick yourself into the pants of some girl. Telling fake stories won't work, and neither will you be able to pretend that you are more popular than you are, or that you have more money than you do. Even if you are able to dupe a girl in the short run, they'll quickly figure out that you were just making it up. At this point, your little house of cards will collapse. This is why it's absurd to pretend to have certain interests in order to appear more attractive to women, and it's just as absurd to ruin your credit score by spending money you don't have.

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Guest Post: What "game" is and isn't (by Alek Novy)

In the following guest post, Alek Novy dismantles "game" once again. In particular, he is responding to the claim that you can become more attractive by changing a few minor things. For instance, Mystery and Love Systems want to tell you that you have to approach from a 45 degree angle. Others tell you to pepper your language with "NLP anchors", and whatnot. The number of bullshit ideas in the community is endless.

The concept of "creating attraction" is fraudulent as demonstrated by science. I've argued and proven this over in length, I won't have time to argue now (I have a life, so no time). But basically, you can become more attractive in general by

• Adding muscle, removing fat
• Getting plastic surgery
• Getting status in a given circle/community
• Making lots of friends and raising your social status
• Money
• Money
• Money
• Fame

However, becoming more attractive to one specific chick doesn't work since it involves:

• Personal compatibility (you could try to fake it, but you don't read thoughts, so you don't even know what to fake)
• Being her type (genetic matching displayed through facial shape, skin type, body ratios, unique smell signature of your individual body etc)

You can become a more attractive person (scientifically validated to making a significant difference, go lose 50 pounds and tell me how many more dates you get, same with getting an expensive car).

You cannot, however however merely speak or stand or ask for the date in a "different way" and suddenly get drastically different results. You will still get roughly the same amount of yes responses per 100 chicks. No game believer has ever shown to get a yes per 100 chicks asked more often than a control subject (the control would be average beta-guy game by your terminology).


You can learn how to get laid more often, but that doesn't have anything to do with "creating attraction through walking, talking and acting differently" (the fradulent concept that all game is based on).

So I said that it is possible to learn how to get laid more, right? What is it that you "learn" when you learn how to get laid more? Oh, just how to

• meet more hot women 
• ask for sex more often

As for improving your ratio? (how to get more yes-es per 100 attempts)? That's simple too... It boils down to

• identifying which chicks are likely to say yes to you
• asking in a way that doesn't scare women away. 

That's pretty much it.

For example I've quadrupled the amount of lays I get during this past year. All it involved was simply building a life where I meet and am friends/acquintances with more super-hot women than you could ever even "open" doing cold-approaching. I literally am friends with hundreds of hot women (models, tv personalities, etc etc)... But that all falls under how to be rich and influental and well-connected and "how to network and build social status", not "game". Though I'm sure a game guru is about to claim to have invented networking skills any day now (I'm sure Dale Carnegie stole his ideas from a game blogger).

Asking for sex requires either balls or social intelligence. You could either ask every woman if she's down to fuck outright (experiencing a ton of rejection) or you could learn how to test and tell which chicks are likely to say yes, and only ask the hottest leads to come over to your place (pretty much what I do).

That's it. A PUAtard might chime in and go "Durr, my favorite PUA teaches us about IOIs too, and he also talks about how to network!" or "A guru once told me to join the gym!" But that's not the point! Game is not defined by what it shares with other disciplines, what defines game is its unique claims. Yes, one of the 52,456 PUA methods might also teach you to for example make lots of female friends - but that's not game, that's common sense. The game part is where he the guru claims that by standing differently or constructing sentences differently or communicating differently you will cause the woman to desire your cock more than otherwise. This is the fraudulent part. Get it?

The unique claim of game is that you can "create attraction" by merely displaying or acting out certain traits (not possessing them, merely acting them out). But this claim is without basis.

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