Is starting a pickup community dangerous?

[Jayson G]

I have a personal development community I'm growing, sort of like Leo's actualized community. 

I recently read The Game - Neil Strauss, and my mind was blown wide open. Now Owen's Tyler Durden Fight Club thing makes sense. 

I then started thinking about how all the pickup stuff shut down - mystery mostly, neil strauss gone, David DeAngelo gone, even people who don't admit that they were pretty good at game (Tim F., Tony Robbins, etc.) deny game to avoid a pickup community. 

But I can see the value in a pickup community, but combined with many other fields to form a holistic community. But it would be cool to target the pickup related people from a fight club angle. 

But I'm worried about attracting cult psychology (fight club) into the community that might toxify it, or incels or red pill or just rapey or disrespectful people towards women. I wanted to create sort of conscious pickup, as healthy as possible, but a sort of revival of The Game community that seems to be largely dead since RSD tanked. 

Are the dangers avoidable? What are some ways to prevent this danger? @Leo Gura you made it work without toxifying the community, and Im not nearly as conscious as you but Im able to spot and cut out BS posts and people from the community who toxify it. 

I dont want also a takedown of a holistic community just because there's a pickup angle that a group of people might want to destroy, like they did to RSD. 

Looking for some light to be shown on this. I'm excited to sort of revive game, based on the book The Game, but done in a conscious grown up way, but also Im worried about getting a bunch of toxic minded men in the community. Is it worth it? I also really wanna do this fight club imagery stuff (not in a cult way, but sort of an underground community way, but then again is that cultish? I don't know much about cults, but I know I've avoided cults of all kinds my life being open-minded with various perspectives. 

[Emerald]

The real issue here is that the reason why pick-up communities are toxic is that 'wanting to get better with women' is often just the presenting symptom of a deeper root issue with feelings of shame.

So, pick-up communities and communities of men (like Red Pill, Incels, MGTOW, etc.) or even more conscious male communities that deliberately try to get away from how these other manosphere communities are, tend to be rife with feelings of shame surrounding pressures to match up to a particular Masculine ideal.

These communities are actually communities where the #1 shared bonding factor is NOT getting good with women or being more Masculine or anything like that. Instead, the #1 shared bonding factor is collectively agitating and soothing shame.

It's like those scenes in the movie Midsommar where everyone in the community are crying and screaming together and collectively sharing the pain. But men's groups aren't aware of that yet because collectively sharing pain isn't seen as Masculine, so it must be made unconscious.

And the people that criticize them tend to vilify them and not see the human factor there... and thus don't notice that collective shame is at the root of all the problematic behavior in the groups.

So, that awareness of shame isn't there yet. And so, what happens is that men get together to try to match up to the Masculine ideal... or to lament feelings of being unable to match up the Masculine ideal. And these feelings of shame are often seen as women's responsibility and women's fault.

This is what leads to a lot of misogyny proliferating in these groups. And even if the guys in these groups are relatively conscious that misogynistic bit will be there because the main thing they feel shame about is their Feminine side.

So, if you want to start a conscious men's group... start a shame support group for men.

And if you want to start a conscious men's group that's oriented to dating/relationships... then throw away any and all notions of needing to match up to Masculine ideals (as this is where the shame comes from and where most of men's issues with meeting women comes from too). And instead focus on teaching social skills and emotional intelligence in conjunction with basic skills with meeting and dating and developing relationships with women.

You would also want to focus on how to differentiate "problems with dating/approaching/meeting women" and "problems with shame" as the latter is often confused with the former.

[Mada_]

@Emerald Pickup done correctly will save a man from becoming an Incel, not turn him into one. 

[Emerald]

10 minutes ago, Mada_ said:

@Emerald Pickup done correctly will save a man from becoming an Incel, not turn him into one. 

You're misdiagnosing why someone becomes an incel in the first place. 

People don't become incels because they are bad with women. People become incels because they feel ashamed of themselves.

And becoming and incel and having trouble meeting women are both symptoms of the deeper root of shame. 

If an incel realizes he can find a girlfriend, it will fix the symptom-level problem, but it won't fix the deeper problem which is shame.

If an incel gets a girlfriend, he will just have shame and a girlfriend. And perhaps he may graduate into more of a Red Pill perspective. But even though Red Pill is a bit more empowered than Incels, they both have an equivalent amount of shame because the root is the same.

[aurum]

1 hour ago, Jayson G said:

Looking for some light to be shown on this. I'm excited to sort of revive game, based on the book The Game, but done in a conscious grown up way, but also Im worried about getting a bunch of toxic minded men in the community.

If you want to start a conscious men's group, you can't make it about pickup. The community as a whole is still far too immature for that.

You need to make it about things that conscious grown-ups would be interested in. Things like inner work, developing intimate relationships, conscious communication skills, etc.

[Jayson G]

@Emerald there's definitely that aspect of feelings of shame of not being ideal, but I'll give a perspective of sort of normal drives that drives much of the community: 

- a desire to date a ton of girls, just because of high sex drive and stuff .. being able to date anyone you want, talk to any girl you want at any time, that if we land in a new city and see a girl at the airport we approach effortlessly and strike up a conversation. 

- wanting to better ourselves as a man, less out of shame, but more out of a positive desire to reach our highest potential

- wanting solid social confidence 

etc. 

Now these are some of the main drives of PUAs. 90% of PUAs have such drives as the main drives, and these drives are not problematic as you see. But of that 90% of PUAs, 80% of PUAs will do some nasty things to satisfy those drives like heavy manipulation, canned routines, etc. 

But there is that 10% of PUAs who have healthy drives, and want to satisfy it in the healthiest way possible. And yes there's going to be some manipulation. But what I mean by that is that even flirting is a form of manipulation. But everyone does that, and without that there's no great relationship at all. So a small degree of manipulation is needed. 

But by talking about these important drives, I know I'm going to attract a lot of that crowd who has the healthy drives, but will do nasty things to get there. That's the worry. 

I get your point of shame, and there definitely is elements of that, but there's an overwhelming factor of other drives. If it was primarily shame, people wouldnt undertake a massive journey that is learning pickup. 

And yes there is also an aspect in communities of "needing to live up to masculine ideals", but I wouldnt undervalue the importance of masculine ideals. It helps to have some form of compass. Otherwise guys get stuck in their needy behaviors, fearful, unsocial, etc. behaviors. 

[Emerald]

@Jayson G There will always be an interest in improving skills with dating/meeting women/sex among men. That's not where the toxic element comes from.

The toxic element comes from shame... which stems from the pressures that I mentioned.

The issue is when men consciously believe that they just want to get better with women/dating... but in actuality are unconsciously looking for a salve to alleviate the shame.

This is when the drive to connect with women get's pretzeled into the drive to alleviate shame. And men don't consciously realize that they're chasing two rabbits.

[Jayson G]

@Emerald Honestly I never did a strong investigation into shame, this is pretty new to me, but I'll definitely look into it. 

Also I never got to thank you, you helped me like 5 years ago on a call, took your advice and that contributed to getting me out of a dark emotional pit. Thanks for that a lot. 

[Leo Gura]

Starting any kind of community is dangerous. But especially one around the pursuit of sex by immature and desperate men.

[Jayson G]

@Leo Gura Yeah that makes sense, people will do just about anything to get their way when they are desperate, and a host of other problems. But then again I think, how can I create a holistic personal development community and not talking include an aspect of dating, and getting that part of their life handled. 

Right now Im leaning more towards the angle of not including any pickup content, but that might change in the future. 

But do you have any important lessons for ensuring the least toxicity in a community in general? I would assume: a) removing toxic and low quality posts, b) removing toxic people from the community, c) basic general rules like no promotion, no hate speech, no racism, no sexism, etc. d) good moderators, and I can learn to properly manage moderators .. anything important I'm missing? 

The community is part of a larger online university, with different masters teaching, so that in itself should lower toxicity, with the consciousness of these masters trickling into the community discussions. 

[Emerald]

2 hours ago, Jayson G said:

@Emerald Honestly I never did a strong investigation into shame, this is pretty new to me, but I'll definitely look into it. 

Also I never got to thank you, you helped me like 5 years ago on a call, took your advice and that contributed to getting me out of a dark emotional pit. Thanks for that a lot. 

I'm very glad to hear that. Thank you for letting me know.  

[Leo Gura]

27 minutes ago, Jayson G said:

But do you have any important lessons for ensuring the least toxicity in a community in general?

The most important thing is for you to develop yourself into a mature and conscious leader, with integrity. Otherwise your community will turn into a cesspool from your own corruptions.

Edited April 9 by Leo Gura

[Jayson G]

@Emerald

[Jayson G]

@Leo Gura If I take Eben Pagan for example, I would say he's a mature conscious leader, though somewhat corrupted with his marketing mindset. But overall he had a net positive on the business world. He's into spirituality but not super deep into spiritual work. 

So from his example, I plan to develop myself into a mature conscious leader, even with spiritual work, but I don't know about going super deep with spiritual work. But as long as I'm proactively doing personal development work, purifying my psyche, etc. this path seems like it is doable?

 

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, Jayson G said:

If I take Eben Pagan for example, I would say he's a mature conscious leader

He is a good role-model.

[Jayson G]

@Leo Gura gotchya, these are great insights. 

[Dodo]

20 hours ago, Mada_ said:

@Emerald Pickup done correctly will save a man from becoming an Incel, not turn him into one. 

Pickup is a spiritual crime. Its pussy hunting. Its distespectful to women. Its stealing good girls from good men before they even meet, because the good girl gets kinked and horned up by a bad boy player.

In reality these days its so much harder to get a girl, pickup communities make it harder.

So now I have entire communities going after my potential future wife, and want to bang her like animals, amazing. 

Ive read The Game by Neil Strauss long ago, and I only respected Neil Strauss from that book, all the others Destiny Tylers etc were all disrespectful pussyhunters who have no idea what love is. 

Tree of Love vs Tree of Perversion

How do we want humanity to evolve. 

[Leo Gura]

@Dodo It's important to keep the following context in mind:

Many men are natural pussyhunters, regardless of pickup. Pickup just formalized the activity and gave it a name. But pussyhunting is a natural aspect of masculinity regardless of you views of it.

It does not take a lot of brains to be interested in pussyhunting.

Edited April 9 by Leo Gura

[Thought Art]

Most men were severely shamed against their healthy drive to pussy hunt.

You are strong men. Women love you. Trust in God brothers.

Edited April 9 by Thought Art

[Dodo]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Dodo It's important to keep the following context in mind:

Many men are naturally pussyhunters, regardless of pickup. Pickup just formalized the activity and gave it a name. But pussyhunting is a natural aspect of masculinity regardless of you views of it.

Its true masculine is supposed /likes to be powerful and controlling, while feminine to be weak and submissive..

 

 I get that many guys like to be powerful and many girls like to be submissive...

 

But Leo, have you ever felt the jolt in your stomach when the sweet innocent girl you love cheats on you behind your back with some cheap player who has love for her only in his dick (lust) and not in his heart(love)? ..And your whole life spirals in the wrong direction because of that...

 

There definitely need to be highly conscious aspects incorporated to a pickup community, so its members are shaped in the image of God and are NOT pussy hunters, but love hunters.

 

Edited April 10 by Dodo