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(I'm new, so I'm not sure if this is Culture War.)
Does anyone have any modern dating advice?
I'm interested in finding out what are the "real" rules that people operate under when it comes to dating, which might be different from the rules they ought to have or the rules they claim to have or the rules that they believe that they have (but subconsciously they use different rules). And of course the word "people" is very broad and presumably various subgroups operate in different ways, so I'd be happy for clarification on that point too. (And then of course individuals differ from the norms of the subgroups they belong to). Ideally I'd like to see some objective evidence, but personal experiences/impressions still count for something.
I identify with the difficulties in Scott's classic posts "Untitled" and "Radicalizing the Romanceless". Generally I'm paranoid about approaching women, because I feel like maybe they think I'm a creep and they're just too polite to say so. My biggest concern isn't that they dislike me per se; it's that maybe I've hurt the woman without realizing it. I'm very sensitive about that.
I've done dating sites and speed dating but I can't seem to find any connections. I should note that I have low self-esteem, so rejection is hard on me, which in turn makes it difficult to put myself out there. (Here's a question: How much time per week does the average single straight guy spend on dating sites etc., assuming he's actively looking for a date?)
I'm not a misogynistic incel, but whenever I talk about my dating woes a good portion of people feel the need to tell me "Don't be an incel!" when I haven't said or done anything remotely misogynistic. I figure the Motte is probably a good place to find people who understand my perspective.
I've been looking for dating advice recently, but everything seems contradictory. You're supposed to treat all people equally regardless of gender (which is great!), but at the same time you're supposed to conform to gender stereotypes and you should expect that most women will do the same. People tell me it sucks and it's not fair, but I'm the man and that means I have to initiate contact and get rejected a lot. They also tell me to be persistent but in the same breath they tell me not to be too persistent and it's not clear where to draw the line.
They tell me to be authentic but they also tell me to "fake it till you make it" and act like I'm a cool guy who dates people all the time. They tell me to express my feelings but they also tell me that "women can smell fear" so I should act confident even if I don't feel confident. They tell me to be honest but I've also had a (female) therapist suggest that I should tell some white lies to make myself more attractive. This woman gave a TED talk about her wonderful relationship with her husband (who sadly passed away) and she admits that the relationship began with lies: He falsely claimed to be a Fullbright Scholar to get her attention. Months later she found out the truth, but she was only angry for a short time. Ultimately, his lie made their whole relationship possible!
People tell me that women like it when you express interest in them, but also they think it's creepy. People tell me I must never express interest in a girl at her place of work, but the only relationship I had in the last 10 years began with that exact scenario, and the girl was flattered! (We eventually broke up, and since then I've also approached a few female coworkers at my own workplace, without success.) People tell me that if I show interest in a girl early on then I'm "too easy" and there's no "intrigue", so the appropriate thing is to give little hints about my feelings so she can pursue me. (In which case, apparently I'm taking the female role and she's taking the male role? I'm not offended by that; I'm just confused.)
People say that they met the love of their life on a dating app, but they also say that dating apps are trash and nobody likes them. (But even though everybody hates dating apps, apparently nobody can think of anything better to do.) People tell me it's ok to wear t-shits with the name of my favorite show or whatever (it displays my personality), but also I should never do that and the only way to be attractive is to wear solid colors with the occasional stripe.
One commenter on the Motte wrote "running a 'playing hard to get' game on a woman seems suboptimal. If you are looking for someone with whom you are authentically drawn to/compatible with, why set up these hoops or create a culture of deception within the relationship?", but in the next breath that same person wrote "it is also a risk to be overly eager. It's unattractive". But if I'm very attracted and I act like I'm only mildly attracted, doesn't that create a culture of deception within the relationship??
Long story short, I'm lost.
(And it surely doesn't help that I've got a long history of mental illness and isolation and thus I missed out on a lot of opportunities for social learning.)
I am actually bi, but in practice it's rare for a guy to get my attention, so I'm mostly concerned about how to approach women.
"Radicalizing" was written in 2014, and the advice at the bottom leads me to essays from 2001. It occurs to me that this might be woefully out of date.
Does anyone have any modern advice for me?
Yeah, no, you are gonna have to fix that if you wanna get anywhere. Try The Rational Male by Rollo Tomassi, followed by The Red Pill Handbook anthology.
BTW, if you liked "Untitled" and "Radicalizing the Romanceless", you will probably enjoy Scott's old ten-post sequence on gender, sex, etc. from his LiveJournal.
I've heard that "Red Pill" men are men who don't care about women's feelings or rights. I've heard that "Red Pill" men view women as objects to be manipulated for the benefit of men, at least when it comes to sex/romance/dating.
Have I heard correctly? Is this what the Red Pill Handbook says? If not, could you summarize the book for me?
It's hard to summarize books with hundreds of pages, especially when those books are, themselves, the collected summaries of thousands of blog posts and comments. But if I had to give you the elevator pitch...
Most of what you think you know about sex/romance/dating is a feminist lie, fed to you through a combination of the education system and the media, or people repeating falsehoods they themselves learned from school and movies and TV shows. These lies are useful to women and society, but harmful to you. The Red Pill metaphor comes from the famous scene where Neo chooses to wake up from the Matrix.
Once you learn accurate truths about women, men, dating, and sex, you will almost certainly choose to change your behavior. Both your new beliefs and your new behaviors will be extremely at odds with feminist dogma, and most people, being in thrall to that ideology, will indeed boil it down to you viewing women as objects to be manipulated for the benefit of men. But that is obviously not how a practitioner of the Red Pill would frame it; unlike fictional villains, real people don't usually think of themselves as evil.
A quick sample of Red Pill beliefs:
Sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive. Women are the gatekeepers of sex, men are the gatekeepers of commitment. Men are the expendable gender.
As a consequence, men are attracted to the majority of fertile-age women. Women are only attracted to a small minority of men.
Therefore, fertile-age women are able to easily have casual sex with men who are completely out of their league relationship-wise (rock stars, Olympic athletes, etc.) and often become deluded about their actual Sexual Market Value.
Women and men are attracted to different things. Men are primarily attracted to youth, beauty, fertility, purity, and nurturing. Women are primarily attracted to height, status, power, money, violence, sexual experience, and dark triad traits.
This explains why men age like wine, while women age like milk. Youth, beauty, fertility and purity are things that can only ever go down with age, while status, power, money, and sexual experience tend to increase with age.
Ipso facto, any dating advice which assumes men and women are the same is nonsense. Few do this explicitly, but many do it implicitly by failing to give out different dating advice to different demographics, e.g. "be yourself".
A surprisingly common mistake is projecting the desires of your gender into the other gender. For example, a woman in her 30s complaining about the lack of attention from high-quality men despite the fact that she spent her youth getting a fancy degree, a good paying job, a nice house, an expensive car, cool hobbies, etc. Not understanding that men don't give a fuck about any of that and would rather date a broke but cute 18-year-old waitress.
Women become infertile much faster than men. By 35, usually too late to have children. If plan to have 2-3 children, should be married by 30 at the absolute latest. In our culture, where you are expected to date and cohabit for a few years before marriage, means a surprisingly short window between the time a woman becomes legal at 18 and the time it is too late for her to find a husband. Goes double for middle-class and upper-class women, who are expected to finish a degree at 22 before even thinking about marriage.
Women often follow a dual-mating strategy of sleeping with high-value men in their sexual prime, then settling down with a reliable provider in their later years. This is called Alpha Fucks, Beta Bucks. You want to be the Alpha Fucks, or at least avoid being the Beta Bucks.
Some implications of this information to your own life; self-improve, lift weights, never commit to a woman over 25, never commit to a woman with children, pretend you have more sexual experience than you do, project confidence, never appear needy or desperate, etc.
Is there evidence for this? I read an article that says men and women face similar disparities in the top X% of your gender getting a disproportionate amount of attention: https://qz.com/1051462/these-statistics-show-why-its-so-hard-to-be-an-average-man-on-dating-apps . For instance the top 1% of men get 16.4% of the likes from women, while the top 1% of women get 11.2% of the likes from men. So it's worse for men, but not a huge difference really
Is there evidence for this? Some sort of survey or something? (Also, how do we separate nature from nurture?)
How is "high-value" measured in this case? You said earlier that women are primarily attracted to "height, status, power, money, violence, sexual experience, and dark triad traits." Are you saying that women value these traits in their sexual prime, but cease valuing these traits when they get older?
What's wrong with settling down with a reliable partner?
Why not? What would happen if I did that?
Has it occurred to you that lying might have negative consequences? If I'm actually feeling needy or desperate for whatever reason, isn't it better to seek out people (romantically or otherwise) who can deal with the emotions I actually have, instead of wearing a mask all my life?
Personally I have a long history of being smothered by masks.
For the first 2 questions regarding evidence: I am sure there is a lot of peer-reviewed evidence out of there of all sorts of quality. But the real proof lies in the fact that anyone (man or woman) in modern Western World can state these sentences in a small trusted friend group, in appropriate wording, and they will be taken as self-evident truths. Indeed, this is usually very good way of smoking out "hidden truths" of a society.
This is a correct understanding. Many women choose more reliable types of guys later in life if they are still on the dating market.
I am not totally sure but I believe the OP's thinking is that women will age and lose beauty/fertility very fast after this age. There might be some "purity" considerations at play here as well. Dating and hooking up with many people inevitably makes one much more cynical after a while and you have to stunt your powers of emotional connection a bit to deal with a series of breakups without going mad. The child thing sounds like an off-shoot of this.
I believe the idea is that after a couple of times you won't be lying anymore! A lot of red pill stuff is best thought off as a for-dummies guide and not a life-long strategy. The target demographics is people who are absolutely clueless, and the ideal case is to change their perspective and give them some practical tips so they understand the rules of the "game", get a feel for it, and then do their own thing.
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You may feel like she's better off alone than with you. You might be wrong about it (and hopefully you're in the process of becoming wrong on that count by improving yourself and becoming more self-sufficient+attractive).
If you act like she's better off alone, you'll likely convince her. Don't have to give women excuses to reject you, they manage fine by themselves.
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Solid overview.
However, some of those points might be better characterised as black-pilled nowadays. Also—soft, euphemistic blue-pill language is somehow leaking through: e.g., “sleeping with”.
Taking the chatGPT "overfit on bland inoffensiveness" approach and overfitting on TRP guru books doesn't make a good style guide.
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Are there pills of many different colors? Can someone give me a glossary?
Quick overview:
red pill: explained above
blue pill: the antithesis to the red pill, accepting social norms around sex
black pill: a grim and hopeless take on the red pill view
purple pill: the theoretic best of both words of red pill and blue pill
iron pill: disregard women, obtain lifts
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