something_else

That sounds like a pretty accurate assessment of pickup, although I (perhaps because I am biased) do not think avoidant attachment style is really a negative. I have quite a few deep friendship bonds and I've been in several long term relationships where there was a deep emotional connection, so I'm capable of attachment. I just don't really see why it's necessary to completely attach on to a person to the degree that a long term relationship requires. That is all very fair, I agree with basically everything here

I think the primary reason men end up casually dating for extended periods of time (probably myself included) is avoidant tendencies. You must sacrifice so much freedom to be in a relationship and to me that is rarely worth it. I think freedom is one of my highest values. Whether that is healthy or not is debatable. I can just maintain friendships and casual relationships and get all of my emotional and physical needs met while still also maintaining the freedom I enjoy. Most long term relationships I see are pretty miserable, though there are exceptions. Hedonism is chasing only pleasure in your life. Chasing some pleasure in your life is not really hedonism. Doing nothing fun or pleasurable sounds like a miserable way to live life, like at that point why even bother being alive. Life is about finding a balance of pleasure seeking and achieving longer term goals.

It's not really clear to me why pursuing pleasure is inherently wrong. It only becomes a problem if it is pursued to the degree that it severely interferes with other things in your life. Also, especially as a guy, dating casually can force you to confront a lot of your fears as well. It definitely grows you.

The guys who have success doing this have mastered convincing a woman that she was just so special that he had to approach her on the street. Meanwhile he has executed this exact same deception on 30 other woman that passed down that high street in past few hours. Success in this kind of thing is fundamentally based on deception because if the girls knew what you were doing they'd be repulsed.

It is not really inherently high value or low value. Some people who have a lot of casual sex are doing it unethically and unconsciously and some are doing it ethically and consciously.

If every now and then you approach a women you see while going about your day, that's totally fine, lots of perfectly normal but confident dudes do this. I don't think anybody takes issue with it. It's spam approaching every girl that passes down a high street that is quite toxic and rightfully perceived as creepy by women. The reason is because a man who actually had value and a social life would not need to do this, and so it makes you come across as incredibly low value, to the point of being a social outcast.

Mine is pretty high, but I never set out to "sleep with 100 women", I just kind of got there over several years by partying and travelling a lot. Largely all of this was done under the lens of improving my social skills and overcoming social anxiety rather than actual 'pickup'. Setting yourself a goal of sleeping with 100 women is quite odd, and I think pickup as a framework is quite degenerate in general. Especially the spammy high street kind.

This is nuanced, I suspect a lot of the stats here are skewed by things like gang activity, which your average man does not really need to worry about just walking down the street. An average woman is probably more likely to be attacked/injured/assaulted/harassed by random men on the street just because she is a woman. Your average man has probably rarely or never been bothered by a stranger on the street, while the average woman has somewhat frequently. This is why women fear walking down the street on their own more.

Yes, and if you give her nothing other than boring mechanical and logistical texting she will largely feel nothing towards you. Again, I'm not arguing you shouldn't be direct, I'm arguing that you should try to be engaging and interesting as well as direct, and that combining all of those together is where the skill in texting lies.

I'm not arguing you shouldn't be direct. I'm arguing that the skill lies in being both direct and flirty enough to build some chemistry over text while also moving things forward. Don't be so direct that you scare her or are boring, and don't text for so long that you end up wasting her time and yours. The text message chain you gave there is very formal and honestly quite boring. You should be playful, direct, and flirty. The age plays into it because most women from my generation have grown up on phones and thus expect you to have basic texting skills. If you end up in a relationship you're going to text a lot, and if you cannot do that in an interesting way from the beginning many women will interpret this as poor social skills / poor communication skills.

Yea I'm not suggesting you text for ages before going on a date, but you need to build at least some basic chemistry with a few texts. Even on dating apps, I generally send 2-3 flirty messages on the app then ask for a whatsapp, then a little bit of flirting, then invite out for drinks. If you are good at texting you can build decent chemistry with only a few messages. That is where the skill in texting lies. There's a dating app called Breeze which streamlines the dating app process by removing any ability to chat, they plan the date for you. It works somewhat well, but I have suggested it to something like 4-5 women and most of them were irked/scared by the idea of zero texting before meeting a guy, which shows to me that texting is at least somewhat important.

The vast majority of Gen Z or younger millennial women are going to want to establish some kind of chemistry over text before meeting up with you, which is very understandable. Yes, you should absolutely be using text to set up a date to see if there is real life chemistry but you should be doing this in a flirty way and not just a very logistical "hello, let's go for a date a location A at 8pm" kind of way which is what it seems like you're suggesting.

Having multiple accounts is a bannable offence

You're a 100% certified fruitcake bro

Basically just use condoms and get tested regularly. Most STDs are not all that bad especially if caught early. HPV does scare me, but I've had a lot of partners and managed to avoid it. If you can see the sores on somebody then obviously don't sleep with them. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a lot of partners, but it is a bit odd to specifically go out of your way to increase your body count or set specific numbers as a target, I'll give you that. If you party a lot and date casually, your number will increase pretty fast. I don't think there's really anything all that wrong with it as long as you practice safe sex and don't treat people poorly, lead them on etc.

It feels off to you because this woman is shrouding selfishness and delusion in spiritual language to make it seem more acceptable. This is your gut telling you that she's spouting twaddle This is what's called the "appeal to nature" fallacy. Just because something is natural doesn't make it correct. Almost every human used to feel compelled to enter brutal wars with other neighbouring tribes, yet we have realised that despite this being in our nature, it creates awful outcomes. Because of this, as we developed we have chosen to ignore this impulse because we know it is ultimately bad for us. The people who still follow this natural impulse end up in gangs, dead, or in jail. Another example is that our 'nature' tells us to gobble up as much sugary and fatty foods as possible, but we as modern humans know that this is bad for us in excess and so we choose to ignore this impulse. The people who follow their 'nature' here end up obese and dead from heart disease at 50. Men do not know instantly. They may have a sense that a woman is good marriage material quite early on but ultimately unless you have lived together for several years you really have no idea if marriage is a good idea or not. Most of these historical arranged marriages were between the wealthy land owners and upper classes, and they were filled with misery and infidelity. It was not uncommon to marry the person your family chose and then continue fucking about on the side with other people you actually liked. The common people mostly chose their partners themselves as well. Again, tradition is not a good thing to base your opinions on. A lot of traditions are stupid and don't apply to the modern world. It's interesting to think about, but it is not a good model for relationships. In general I would avoid outsourcing your love life strategy to other people, especially influencers who benefit financially from preaching systems like this to you.

Very few men reading this will think "this is what I want in life" She's basically saying the man should take on all responsibility while the women gets to live a life of zero stress, ease and luxury. How is that fair? In many ways this is worse than the level 1 relationship because in the level 1 relationship is purely transactional and everybody involved knows, while this level 3 relationship is basically the same, but the woman is trying to screw over the man and extract as much from him as possible with intent. This is a power dynamic that heavily favours the woman, and imbalanced power dynamics generally create very unstable relationships filled with hatred, resentment and misery. This is a feature, not a bug. It takes a long time to work out if you're compatible enough to spend the rest of your life with someone, and the consequence of getting this wrong is extremely high. This isn't a decision that should be made within less than a year. 3-5 years is typical in Western countries, that's a pretty decent amount of time to spend with someone to figure out if you're compatible enough to marry. 3 years is where most relationships start to show cracks, because before that you're still hyped up on love chemicals. The level 2 relationship with two compatible and conscious people will be far more of a 'conscious' relationship than what she proposes for level 3.

If you consistently feel people aren't contributing energy to the conversation then it is worth bearing in mind that you are the common denominator there. It could be that you are either coming across too intense (when you're in the "I'm trying to make myself more interesting" state of an introvert learning to be more extroverted) or too quiet (when you're in full introvert mode) The key to quality connection and conversation with energy is that both parties have to be comfortable and relaxed. If you want people to contribute more energy, counter-intuitively you have to help them feel relaxed and comfortable around you. Casual humour, genuine compliments, and shared activities are some of the best ways to do this. Gifted extroverts do it quite naturally, but for us introverts it requires more practice. We tend to either come across as too intense/serious or too quiet, finding the balance is hard.

I think it is actually quite a big issue. You see it on this sub-forum a lot; guys asking very specific, useless, and theoretical questions about conversational frameworks, vague questions about women's psychology etc. It's clear a lot of these guys are consuming manosphere/pickup type content and that's where this type of flawed thinking is coming from. For guys who struggle socially, the pickup theory is a massive (and tempting) trap, because it makes you feel like you're making progress when you're spinning your wheels. Social theory becomes a bit more useful once you already have some basic social experience. It is akin to giving a beginner a book about basketball strategy. Beyond the basic rules, a beginner will not improve much by learning the theoretical strategy if they can't even dribble and move around the court with the ball. It's putting the cart before the horse. With any practical skill, theory and strategy are things that become valuable at later stages once you're already good at the practical basics. Realistically unless you have a basic social skills locked in and some friends, you don't really have any business learning any pickup theory. Even then, I have a pretty strong bias against framing things in a pickup context. I think it's more ethical and more generally applicable to life to view it as developing social skills, as a side effect of which you will get better at flirting and chatting up girls.

That is basically the only framework you need. Trying to use a complex framework for a conversation will just make you seem robotic. If you want to improve your conversational skills, have lots of conversations with new people.

Many of these men at 18-20 have already been sucked into the pipeline when they were like 12. It's hard to blame them when they've been bombarded and brainwashed from such a young age. At that point helping them is a question of de-programming, not blame. For 35-40 year olds, they should absolutely know better. On that we agree. I know a dude who is that age who's super into the manosphere and he is an asshole, he gets no sympathy from me. Yes, it is indoctrination, that is my point as well. You originally argued that it isn't indoctrination and that it is an active choice from these men. If I'm honest I'm struggling to understand what your point is overall here because this sentence is a complete 180 from your original argument. Yes, but it is not always reasonable to expect young adults indoctrinated from the age of 12 or younger to be able to question and think critically about whatever they were indoctrinated with. It is buried deep inside of them by that point. Some will escape by themselves, many will not without outside help and support. Your original argument was that this is not a pipeline and that these men are fully responsible for their own choices, which if we are talking about 25+ year olds I think is somewhat valid. But bear in mind that the majority of manosphere 'consumers' are under 25. The 'producers' in the manosphere primarily prey on tweens, teens and broken men.

I mean if you are with the right girl, this stuff doesn't feel boring. Generally it's also good to have shared interests so that the stuff you do together is stuff you both enjoy.

Yesterday, I went on a date with a girl who suggested we play a game, and it turned out to be so great that I want to share it Maybe you’ve heard of it before (I found out later that Teal Swan wrote about it), but it was new to me. It’s fun and a good way to make the conversation flirty. There are two stages. I won’t spoil the second stage here—you should come up with your answers and reasons first. You can click the link below to read about it afterward. Three Questions Game The gist of the first stage is to ask these three questions and have the other person give deep reasons for their answers. The questions are: What is your favourite colour? What is your favourite animal? What is your favourite body of water? (e.g., waterfall, bird bath, whirlpool, river, lake) Think of your answers and some deep reasons why you chose each one. Then, read the blog post to see what stage two is. Deep answers go beyond “I like blue because it’s the color of the ocean.” Instead, aim for something like, “I like green because it is energizing, natural, and symbolizes growth and change.” It would be even more fun if you share your answers here before checking out stage two! Mine were: Used to be blue when I was younger because it was soft, comforting, and peaceful, but in recent years I’ve switched to red because it is fierce, passionate, striking, and exciting. A swan, because they are elegant and aesthetic. They can also fiercely defend themselves when necessary. And since they can fly, they have a lot of freedom, often migrating across the world together. A whirlpool, because they are wild, powerful, and exciting. They also evoke feelings of awe, like many large and powerful feats of nature.

I usually agree with your points, but I think this one is being overthought a bit. It very clearly is a pipeline, and it disproportionately affects vulnerable kids. In particular, I think this is where the framing goes off: I don’t think that implication is there at all. What’s actually happening is much simpler. Young boys, often in the 8–16 range, are being pulled into algorithm-driven content loops that progressively normalise these ideas. At that age, their ability to critically evaluate what they’re seeing is limited. It’s not that they have zero agency, but their ability to make an informed choice is heavily constrained. It’s very similar to how young girls are influenced into makeup and beauty standards early on. We don’t describe that as a fully independent “choice” because it clearly isn’t. The same dynamic exists here, just in a different direction. As they get older, I agree more with your point. At some stage, people are responsible for their views and actions. But early exposure matters, and it’s exactly why this content targets younger audiences so aggressively. Not directly, but it plays a role. Isolation reduces social feedback, which makes it harder to develop empathy and calibrate behaviour. That doesn’t excuse anything, but it does increase the risk of someone adopting unhealthy views. Because, in many cases, it’s upstream of the problem. A lot of harm towards women ultimately comes from men who have developed unhealthy views early on. If the goal is to reduce that harm, then creating healthier men isn’t excusing behaviour, it’s addressing the root cause.

Yea, exactly.