something_else

From what I gather, conformity is largely about labels. You can run without identifying as a runner. You can workout without identifying as a gym bro. You can philosophise without identifying as a philosopher. If you think of a lot of the non-conformist people you know, they probably rarely ever describe themselves as any of these “-er” suffixed nouns. It can be very comforting to describe yourself as part of a group but it’s also very limiting.

There are core elements of PUA model that are valuable, but there is SO much bullshit and immorality. I've always framed it more as a journey to improve social skills and confidence, if I happen to get laid along the way then that's great. I think that's a much healthier way to view it than fully identifying with the pickup model or becoming a 'pickup artist'

Sorry, that was a typo on my part. I meant monarchy. And yea it reminds me of some of the ideas discussed in random political debates I had with mates in high school

The biggest thing that’s helped my confidence has been having friends I can be fully myself around without getting judged. It teaches you that showing your real personality is actually safe. When you’re younger, especially if you’re not neurotypical, you get punished or mocked for being yourself. You learn to filter everything and hide the parts that make you you. Having close friends with whom you can relax around and actually express your personality is huge for undoing that. You need people you trust, who’ll be honest with you but still kind. It also helps to go to busy, social places with those friends. You feel safe showing your real personality around new people because even if someone doesn’t like you or thinks you are weird, you’ve still got your solid base of friends to fall back on. And once you start doing this, you realise most people don’t think you’re weird at all. Those parts of yourself you used to hide end up being the things new people like the most.

Yea I recently went down the Curtis Yarvin rabbit hole too. His idea for a technocratic anarchy is FUCKING INSANE. And he seems to be a big influence on many powerful people in the US right now.

They’re actually both AI, I found the original source lol.

When you think about it there are things in the second one that make no sense. The layout of the bar is weird. Why is there such a narrow corridor to the left? Why are there wine glasses stored randomly on the bar? Why does she have a cup of tea/coffee and a cocktail, that’s an odd combo no? Visually it looks very real but there are parts of the scene that make little sense upon examination

Just use your best photos for now, then as you become more sociable use better pics

It might work, it could get you a few extra matches. But it’s better to just actually be sociable and get some organic photos that way. Otherwise you’re creating a false persona and you’ll feel pressure to maintain that inauthentic persona when you meet up in person, which is a recipe for disaster

That discomfort is usually just incompatibility once you have basic social skills. Even if you don’t, it helps tremendously to have the mindset of “I’ll try my best and if it doesn’t click it just wasn’t meant to be”

Clubs and bars can be pretty scummy and yes, the learning curve is steep if you’re starting from zero social skills. But the whole point is to push your comfort zone. That’s part of what makes them great for this as well, if you can be sociable there you can be sociable anywhere. Bars/clubs also have many other advantages if you wanna build your social skills. Some that come to mind: Nobody is really going to remember if you say something slightly weird because everybody is drinking and the environment is generally pretty relaxed/casual. You have a lot more leeway to just be yourself without any consequences of acting a bit weird It’s very socially acceptable to talk to strangers There are so many people there that you WILL find people you get on with if you talk to enough people Once you get into a good frame of mind and you’re with some friends, they are actually very fun places to be, esp if the music is good

Exactly. This was one of the biggest insights I had regarding social skills. Eventually I realised that when this happens it is not a reflection on my own worth or social skills, it’s just a lack of chemistry. It isn’t my own fault. Some people you will have chemistry with and some you will not. When you don’t have chemistry with a person 90% of the time it isn’t because you’ve done anything wrong, it’s just not meant to be.

Obv it helps to have money when it comes to long term relationships, but you don't need to be loaded like OP is arguing. You just need to have a stable income. If you're making at least the median income for your city/area you're doing absolutely fine and you will be able to find women who want to date you. OP is arguing that you need to be like top 1% income in order to have any chance whatsoever at getting into a relationship as a guy, which is blatantly false.

Six figures was an arbitrary number to begin with. Now you’ve applied inflation to an arbitrary number to get an even more arbitrary number. I’ve met very few people under the age of 30 making $270k per year, and zero under the age of 25. All I can really think of are a few Silicon Valley software engineers while travelling, and I assure you they were not rolling in women. I also met dirt poor Indonesian surf instructors making $20 a day who were dating perfect 10 western backpacker girls. The vast majority of people I have met under 30 are not earning this crazy money, yet are dating just fine. I have a feeling your mind has been heavily warped by living in massive US metropolitan hell holes where you need to earn insane money just to live above the poverty line. The rest of the world is not really like that, and while there are women everywhere who only care about money, there are plenty of normal women in most cities too. It just all depends on where you live, who you surround yourself with and how interesting of a person you are, but you’re being extremely general and oversimplifying everything to “if you don’t have money no woman will ever love you” because that is just blatantly false.

$270k? Why that specific number I’m sorry but you have to be either chronically online or a bit thick to believe that if you’re not making more than precisely $270k then no women will ever look at you. And yea, of course there are women out there who only care about money. The goal is to fucking avoid those women, lol. It sounds like you’re not doing a good job with that based on the opinions you’ve formed.

Let's assume you have 6 pics to fill up on Hinge/Bumble (probably the best two dating apps in most places) then a good template for a profile is something like this: Pic 1: Professional or high quality photo of yourself with a clear view of your face (this should be the only staged pic, the rest should be natural or it will likely end up look like a LinkedIn profile unless you really know what you're doing) Pic 2: Full body shot of you doing something cool or interesting Pic 3: Group pic where you look confident and sociable Pic 4: Another shot of you doing something cool or interesting Pic 5: Another group shot where you look confident and sociable, ideally with a different group of people Pic 6: Cute/funny/hot pic, basically a wildcard photo where you can express some personality, humour, or show off more of your good looks if you have them. If you have a nice body, show it off here but in a non-douchey way e.g. a beach pic Bio/prompts should be something short and witty, and they should encourage a girl to swipe right or ask you about something. It helps if the bio ties into one of your pics. In my case I have a pic of me holding a giant rat in my profile and my bio is "Yes that's a giant rat I'm holding, it's a cool story and you should ask me about it" You don't have to follow this template exactly, but it's a solid starting point.

I don't think anybody here denies that woman have many challenges to face in dating as well, but that doesn't mean that you can't empathise with some of the struggles men have instead of just dismissing them. In general it's better if both men and women try to understand the issues faced by the other gender as much as possible instead of just trying to one-up each other on the victim scale, that's not very productive. In fact it actually makes the problems both genders face worse because it increases hostility and resentment.

Build a solid social circle. Holy fuck, that supercharges your dating results. I tried for years to do things without many friends and it's such a handicap. Dating apps may work well for you too, but you need good pics. It took me like 3-4 years to get solid dating app pics, almost all of them are from travel.

It always freaks me out when I see high ageplay scores because I know what questions it asks for that category

I think corruption is too strong of a word for this. I suspect if the mother was known amongst the community of these churches they'd have helped her. Christian churches are very cliquey from what I gather and they'll be very supportive of members, but not very supportive of random people unknown to the church. I also suspect that if the mother went there in person she'd have been offered more help as well. Buddhists make a bigger deal out of helping everybody they can regardless of their relationship to the organisation.

I'm similar. I had two tiny draws off a joint my friend has and it was almost like I'd taken a low strength tab of acid. Insane. They thought I was making it up. I think this explains why I HATE smoking weed around other people, especially when I've been drinking. It makes me incredibly hyperaware, paranoid and anxious.

I’m having more success on dating apps than ever. I’ve used them at three different ages, 17 (was allowed on tinder at the time), 21-22 and now at 25. At 17 I barely got any attention at all. At 21-22 I got some, but rarely from girls I actually thought were cute. And now at 25 I finally feel like I’ve got it on lock. The success largely comes from having really cool travel photos from a year of backpacking. I also look a bit better than I used to in terms of style and grooming

You're right, but what I think you're missing is that in order to transform your life from that of a socially anxious basement dwelling neckbeard into that of a work of art will require a lot of effort. It isn't something you can just 'do' or 'be' on a whim. I don't particularly like the framing of a lot of pickup advice but it is a good first step to get a man out into the world and talking to people. I think framing it as 'pickup' is a fundamental mistake because, like you say, it's very needy. It has a lot of very negative connotations and for good reason. It's much better to instead frame it as building social skills, but a lot of the stuff involved is very similar regardless of what you call it. It largely just involves forcing yourself into social situations, pushing your comfort zone socially, making friends, and yea, trying to get laid. I'm sure you'd agree that none of this is inherently bad behaviour. Most men go through a stage like this in their late teens to early twenties without even really knowing what pickup is, it's just a natural stage of male development that got formalised into pickup at some point.

I don't doubt there is some truth to this. There's a good quote: "Society views men as disposable agents and women as precious objects" which explains this quite well. Because men are typically seen to have more agency, they are blamed for their actions much more. While women are seen to have less agency and control over their behaviour, and therefore society sees them as less inherently responsible for their actions. While it sucks that men are often blamed more, being treated as actually having agency is of massive benefit too. For example I expect if you conducted a similar experiment which attributed credit to positive actions, men would receive much more credit than the women would for the same actions.

Are you financially capable of moving into a serviced apartment or built-to-rent style place? A lot of them offer social events for residents, it's a very easy way to make friends and reduce the feeling of isolation. Moving into one of these places was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Like you I used to struggle with isolation, but now I have a really solid friend group living in the same building as me. It's amazing. The downside is they're really expensive.