Hacker News Reader

While I agree with the general thrust of this, and am perfectly fine with the consequences and outcomes that redpill might land you if you're showing responsibility and taking steps to flirt with someone to such length -- I genuinely loathe appealing to a stereotype of women that are interested in this, because the kind of person it appeals to, or the kind of relationship it generates doesn't get me anything I like when it works!

That is to say, unless I feel like being more plastic than a Ken barbie doll, and less significant in identity, emotion, and purpose than the next 5,000 Ken models off the factory line, then I don't see how I couldn't possibly feel any more alone after applying redpill?

What I found after taking redpill and succeeding by their standards, I didn't find myself in any way happier or more at peace with myself, or happier in the company of anyone that is attracted to that. Maybe it has just been highly successful at producing traumatic experiences, which does help me grow. But there has been nothing redpill or the women it has been able to match me with that has been able to counter the type of gutless, "take-take", or just purely sexual tension-oriented relationships it seems to encourage men to get involved with! Those are highly destructive experiences if you're not careful.

My peace of mind is worth so much more than that.

I can respect redpill, because I understand what it's for. But I don't enjoy the people it connects me with. I think it boils down to a lack of a proper examination of personal happiness in redpill's promise at large, and i don't think they contend with that subject nearly as much as they should! (Though I can understand why the women like it, because it encourages men to not care about what they need to grow as a person, while essentially demeaning them to the point of being uncompensated and emotionally-deprived and ego-devalued sex servants =P)

Redpill is the extreme end of that path, not the middle ground.

Exactly. I think there's a huge flaw in even the toned-down version of that that both sexes buy into -- making a dating profile (or just their public personality) as generically appealing as possible. Yes, highlighting your travel and exercise pics to the exclusion of all else will probably get you more dates.. but how satisfying will the connection generally be? "Likes: food, laughter, exercise, travel, dogs" tells me maybe 1% of the information I need to know to determine compatibility.. especially when most people are exaggerating the importance of the travel and the exercise in their daily life. So the 'matches' made on those generic terms, in my experience, are largely unsatisfying and based on physical attraction -- not exactly the recipe for a rewarding long-term relationship.

Meanwhile, the people who were bold enough to actually talk about their more individualized interests got my attention and resulted in some great conversation and dates, even if they didn't result in relationships.

I fell into the trap in my 20's of being generically appealing. I did very well in the 'dating' market, had attractive partners, married a particularly beautiful one. Then I realized that 'success rate' meant squat other than a minor ego boost, and I was stuck with a person attracted to generically appealing me and not ME. And physical attraction fades.

Luckily I got out of that situation, started representing myself accurately, and I live in a large enough city to be able to find at least some women online who do the same. The conversation, dates, and relationships have been SO much more rewarding, because the people connect with ME and not a generically appealing version of me.

I think being generically appealing does build confidence, and confidence is important. But hopefully redpillers and all the generic profile creators online can eventually see the value of specificity.. and attracting quality over quantity. I think it'll breed a lot more happy relationships.

I've also applied PUA and redpill is toxic, mysoginistic trash. It's nearly impossible to find PUA stuff that's not toxic and mysoginistic.

The only reason I call it PUA is that I don't know what else to call approaching strangers I find attractive in a respectful and honest way, especially because it seems that where I live or the people I go out with never meet new people.

6cd6beb encapsulated it wonderfully, if PUA is taken as only this and not the manipulative alpha male b/s that is taught, I believe it can teach men a lot of perspective and respect towards the opposite sex:

[...] the general formula of "know your value, be confident and unapologetic about what you want, be ready to accept 'no' quickly and gracefully" is the buried gold. Maybe it's just me but grinding through failure after failure after failure taught me those things.

> I've walked the dark path of trying to implement "pickup artist" material(can't imagine that'll be received well)

It's really kind of a shame that the entire pickup community is judged by the scummy, the scammy, and the worst of the MRA/Redpillers (themselves judged by the worst among them) because they really do have the ability to help. Society has given us a completely broken model of how attraction works, and if you don't learn that that model is just something people talk about as a form of virtue-signalling, you try and apply it and find out just how crap it is. You get frustrated, angry, and depressed because the world doesn't conform to your broken model, and when you turn to people for help they feed you back that same broken model.

The real value of pickup isn't techniques, 'game', or tricks, it's showing you how utterly ridiculous that broken model is and helping you to construct a more accurate one.

Here is my two cents.

A) Is superior in every way.

Now let me fill in the gaps a little bit and maybe some-one else will find this information useful.

First step is to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself `do` you find yourself physically attractive? Do you have good posture, Do you have a low 10%-16% body fat percentage? Are you dressed to impress or just dress just it over with?

If you answered no, then 10000% work on those aspects of yourself first before wasting time with dating apps and also meeting people in person.

For the remainder or if you're curious keep reading.

You're going to have to come to the realization there are going to be certain percentage of women out there who want to have sex with you. You're going to appeal to a group of women, Hispanic, Greek, Asian, Caucasian, Indian and age groups. How are you going to find this out? You're going to put yourself out there and be judged by women. It sux's, you're going to get some women who're going to receptive to you and there are some women who literally will run away from your approach to them. Though that is going to be the only way you're going to find out what type of Women are attracted to your personality and your appearance.

Finally, forget dating app's. Unless you're the top 5% tall guy with a six pack and a fantastic smile you're wasting your time and money.

Time that is better spent approaching women and learning.

> First step is to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself `do` you find yourself physically attractive? Do you have good posture, Do you have a low 10%-16% body fat percentage? Are you dressed to impress or just dress just it over with?

I've had exactly none of those things and I have had a fair degree of success with women. In fact, when I started bodybuilding/lifting, I found that my sex drive became unbearably strong and would scare away many women due to how aggressive I had become.

The key is not trying too hard and becoming a good conversationalist/wordsmith. That's what I like to call the right hand path. Of course, there is also the left hand path as well. That involves using pharmaceutical agents such as nootropics like Phenibut or GABA PAMs like Etizolam, but the cost is possible addiction, so I wouldn't recommend it.

I think there's some truth in that. If you're dating you should definitely be putting your best foot forward and part of that means exercising, buying some nice clothes, getting your hair cut etc. When I was dating I also made an effort to work on my "social" presentation. For me that meant trying to take in some relatable media: seeing popular films, reading more widely and just trying to make sure I had topics I could talk about which weren't videogames and sci-fi novels.

I don't think you need to be in the top 5% physically at all. Perhaps if all you want is a hook-up that helps, but I got plenty of dates and I'm now engaged to a woman I met on Tinder and I definitely am not some greek sculpture.

Dating app's I would recommend healthy body fat% and that is 16% to 20% range. Although I still recommend meeting people in person instead of dating apps as the odd's for guys are really stacked against them.

Although I'm mostly for hook-up's for guys bellow the age of 30. I don't think its healthy for a guy to meet one women and declare her the love of his life. Women in western countries have it too easy to make a mans life living hell.

The biggest player I know is/was short and overweight. He however was always looking, fairly charming, and had reasonable expectations.

When the shirt comes off that dad bob isn't going to impress anyone also its bloody unhealthy and put you a serious risk of CHD and diabetes. Yes you can get women with being short and overweight, just you have to ask yourself the type of women and the expectations of women that you pull in are.

~25% body fat is that grey area before obesity where there are minimal health impacts especially when short due to low BMI, and plenty of women may find you attractive with the shirt on. It's approachable in a way that 15% body fat percentage tends to be off putting.

What is also important is the way you move in that body. Posture and flexibility, balance etc. Martial artists and dancers get an insta-boost just from that, no matter the rest of their appearance.

> 15% body fat percentage tends to be off putting.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4892674/ `Also of note is that observers adjusted both the attractive and healthy male body figures to consist of approximately 16% fat and 80% muscle, given a mean body weight of 78.24kg for the subject identities. The figure of 16% lies within the healthy fat range of 8–21% for young adult Caucasian males `

15% is actually very close to the ideal attractiveness for males.

~25% Body Fat https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4995441/

25% BF isn't much to go off, but above 25 BMI you're putting yourself at un-necessary risk. 25% BF still is very high. Heath wise you should look at 8–21%.

> C) you learn a lot when you try this stuff. A lot.

It basically teaches you how to do sales and run a lead-to-conversion pipeline.

I knew a guy who ran his own personal CRM.

I think the real "strategy" is to be comfortable being alone and to meet people in real life.

Of course you learn a lot by doing something day day out until it works.

One important part IMO is that you are optimizing a very specific skillset, and depending on your goal it might not be an optimal for you.

It’s the same as driving for days around town in your car to learn how other people drive, how they react to your car, how your town is structured and dramaticaly improve your driving. You’ll gain invaluable insight from the experience, but from your perspective for instance you could have prefered grinding on tinder instead.

TLDR: people choose their battles

"I could totally do that if I tried"