something_else

It doesn't intrinsically bother me anymore but when I first read it several years ago it did, and it made me reflect on the language and terminology I used to talk about women. I realised I was often doing the same thing in reverse thinking it was OK and harmless, which it is not. I suspect many men do still get that feeling when reading it, yet still talk about women in an equally objectifying way. This thread is an example of that. There is a degree of value exchange in relationships and there likely always will be, but the mindsets of pickup or FDS are unhealthy because they focus far too much on that value exchange and end up objectifying the other gender to an almost psychopathic degree. If you want to practice pickup and have lots of casual sex as a guy then have at it, or if you want to find a rich husband as a woman then have at it. But there's no need to approach these things in such a rigorously manipulative and degrading way. There are ways to do it more ethically.

Most of the content on FemaleDatingStrategy or adjacent advice is not that mainstream, most women would disagree with the majority of it. Just read through their Wiki and ask if you really think that the average woman would agree with what you're reading. Most would not, therefore it isn't mainstream. Talking about women in an objectifying manner is actually far more mainstream than the inverse. --- Interestingly, on a separate note as a general response to this thread: The way you see women on FemaleDatingStrategy talk about men is quite similar to how men in the pickup/redpill community talk about women. They use similar terms like high/low value, manipulative strategies like push/pull or 'hot cold' as they'd call it, focusing on getting what you want while giving as little as possible in return. If you're casually dating women then you're likely part of this manipulative game too, which is fine. But it's hardly fair to then get butthurt when you see women reflecting the same energy back at you. The energy of: take as much as you can while offering as little as you can get away with in return. How men feel reading FDS content is exactly how women feel when reading men talk about pickup and casual dating. It isn't a nice feeling, and for men it should make us more aware of the emotional state we create in women when we talk about them in such ways.

These are tiny numbers. Is your argument really that 35 non-citizen ballots in all of Iowa and 42 non-citizen ballots in all of Tennessee are part of a nationwide voter-fraud conspiracy by the democrats? Many of those are also only potential non-citizen cases, not even the number of confirmed cases. Even the worst case here of 2,724 out of 18 million in Texas is pretty inconsequential. Texas often has voter margins in the order of 1.5 million votes. 2.7k isn’t putting a dent in that. They lawyered up because the DOJ was asking for vast quantities of completely unredacted voter rolls containing sensitive and personal information about citizens of those states. Many states understandably argued this would be a huge privacy violation. You’re conflating stale registrations with fraudulent votes here. Identifying the people who moved away or failed to vote through several elections does not correlate with fraudulent or illegal voting in any way. If I move to Thailand tomorrow I’ll still be registered to vote here in the UK for a while, probably years. Does that mean that while I’m gone my vote is going to be stolen by an illegal immigrant to boost up our left wing party’s vote count? No, of course not. Yea, Oregon should probably have managed its voter role better, but them fucking that up isn’t evidence of a nationwide democrat conspiracy, it’s evidence of mild incompetence in the face of a very challenging administrative task

You’re claiming a nationwide conspiracy but the only evidence you’ve offered is an unsupported assertion that “blue states refuse to validate voter information” and a video about legal ballot collection (“harvesting”) in California. Neither demonstrates widespread fraudulent votes. If you’re alleging millions of illegal votes, you need evidence of millions of illegal votes, not speculation about what could have happened.

The burden of proof is on you. You are claiming there is a massive nation-wide conspiracy. This is something you need to prove. “Everybody knows it” is not remotely enough evidence to support that claim.

Do I think making a deal is an easy task? No, of course not. So don’t start a totally unnecessary war in the first place. He’s been flip flopping between announcing final peace deals and total annihilation of Iran for 6 months, yet neither of these things ever seem to materialise. It’s all empty promises and hollow threats, that are also conveniently posted at just the right time for stock market manipulation. My actual point, which I think you failed to address, is that Trump is erratic, and eroding the world’s trust in America as a stable country. Most of America’s allies are trying to figure out how to distance ourselves from the US because we are seeing the US as an increasingly unstable and unreliable trading (and military) partner. This will bring the US to ruin in the long run. Trump does not care about this, he does not care about the US, he cares only about enriching himself, his family and his friends. To address one of your other claims, Iran doesn’t want nuclear weapons to bring about end times. They want nuclear weapons for the same reason the other countries that have them wanted them; deterrent. Iran has a long history of Western interference, this war is the next iteration of that. In their mind if they have nukes the US (and Israel for that matter) will finally leave them alone.

Depends what you mean by hard drugs. Don't go anywhere near things like heroin, fentanyl, or meth. MDMA isn't really a hard drug, it's a combination of a stimulant and a psychedelic. It's not especially addictive, though it is definitely harmful if taken regularly. When taken at most once every 2-3 months the risk is very low, and it can offer quite good insight into things, bring you closer to people, help you work through trauma. It's a very fun substance. Even cocaine, which is classified as a hard drug, isn't that bad. You're not going to get addicted to it or die from taking it a few times. I wouldn't recommend it though, not necessarily because it is particularly high risk, but because the risk to reward ratio is terrible. It doesn't do a whole lot despite its reputation. You feel slightly more talkative and less tired for like 20 minutes and the risk just isn't worth it for that shitty experience.

Most people aren't opposed to it because yea, it's probably a good idea to be relatively secure with voting in the long run. SAVE act is probably too extreme, though. In person voter fraud is basically non-existent as a form of election fraud, it's almost entirely inconsequential. It just doesn't scale well because it's incredibly hard for somebody to coordinate millions of people to commit in-person fraud on a large scale. So if it isn't really an issue, ask yourself why is it that republicans want it so badly right now? The reason is because it will disproportionately impact the democrats by reducing the number of minorities and young people who can vote, not because it will prevent the democrats from orchestrating a nation-wide voter conspiracy. What do you think is going on? There are two types of voting fraud the SAVE act will reduce: In-person voter fraud e.g. lying about who you are (estimated to happen 1 time out of every 20-40 million votes) Non-citizens voting (estimated to affect 1 vote out of every 1 to 2 million votes) Both are incredibly rare. To the point where it's basically a non-issue. So I have no idea what you think is going on here to be honest. The stats suggest absolutely nothing.

I thought the deal with Iran was made already? Or was that last week after the previous deal turned out to be fake? Ohhhh wait, you're talking about the deal he made the week before that. Oh no? That wasn't real either? Ahh, the one he just announced this morning right before the stock market opened, that's the one you're talking about. Do you think it will be real this time, or will that be fake like the last 12 times as well?

There are definitely exceptions to this, but I actually find that shared goals can ruin friendships for me. I don’t want to be thinking about long term future stuff all the time with friends, I want to chill, relax, live in the moment, and do fun stuff. Shared hobbies are good, but getting competitive or serious over goals surrounding them can ruin friendships, deep friendships come from spending enough time just vibing in each other’s presence for no purpose other than enjoying each other’s company There’s a concept of a doorbell friend which is somebody that you would be genuinely excited to see if they just randomly rang your doorbell without them telling you they were coming. That’s a good metric for deep friendships

From what I have heard about your pickup journey and the way you're talking here (which I relate to a lot) I think you're probably quite high on the avoidant scale. That can cause you to avoid friendships or other close/deep connections. I still struggle with this to a degree as well, though in the past year or two I've built some much deeper friendships (which I certainly hope will be lifelong) and it's one of the best things I've ever done. There is no single number, but I feel like a solid group of 3-5 close friends that you enjoy spending time with for no specific purpose other than vibes and fun is one of the best things you can have. It isn't transactional, you don't need to constantly worry about providing or exchanging value, you can just vibe. It's great for your mental health to have people who like you for you, and not what you can provide them.

"I was only joking!" excuse when called out for poor behaviour Classic

You don’t have to be attractive to get your foot in the door with women enough to show off personality and conversation skills, you just have to not be unattractive, or repulsive. Most men can achieve that with basic grooming and style unless they’re very very unlucky genetically.

Oh almighty stage Yellow overlord, please hand me down thy pearls of wisdom so that I may one day have an ego as large and bulbous as thee

Exactly

I'm sorry, but I can't help but feel intense cringe when reading this. Whenever somebody talks about 'being yellow' like this it almost certainly means they aren't, because somebody who was actually stage yellow would not phrase something like this.

@Joshe This has generally been my experience as well. I have always found that the more I tried to think about game or pickup frameworks and apply concepts from them, the worse I was actually perceived by women. I've always done better by not overthinking it, focusing on improving my social skills, making friends, going to social places with lots of girls.

Ironic

I genuinely thought this was a parody, I thought you were mocking OP until the last sentence 😂

A good fallback for starting a conversation with anybody is a Barnum statement. Statements that almost everybody feels like apply to them but still sound personalised “You look like you’re either gonna be the nicest person I’ve ever met, or like you’re going to ruin my life” It’s somewhat manipulative but as a means to an end for getting into a deep conversation it works well

I know this first hand. I was a loner most of my time between high school and my early twenties. I resorted to going out to bars and clubbing alone to build better social skills. It worked to a degree, but I don’t have a single person from that stage of my life who I still talk to, and I was still deeply insecure at the end of it. I also had baseline social skills already which is why that was even viable. Now I have a solid social circle of 4-5 great friends who I love dearly, and it has almost eliminated my social anxiety. I wish I had prioritised building that first instead of going straight to cold approach. Deep friendships are where you learn who you really are and how to express that in a way that is appealing to others.

I’m not talking about social circle game, I’m talking about making genuine connections with people and building friendships without the sole purpose of it all being to get laid. The kind of friendships where you can actually go and do social stuff together and just have a good time. That’s the path to developing basic social skills if you have none. This teaches you basic social dynamics, and most importantly it teaches you that socialising is actually fun, and not just a barrier in your way to getting laid. Cold approach can be good for developing social skills, but if you’re weird or cringy and don’t possess even basic social skills it’s just going to make it worse for you. You’re going to be continually told how weird or strange or awful you are which will totally destroy your self-image. Not to mention in a small town you will end up with a reputation.

This is not a downside! This is called growing up

No reputation is also a problem as it means no status. No status + weird gimmicky approaches will put you solidly in the loser category in the mind of most women Women don’t really want a nobody, or somebody with nothing to lose. They want a man who is somebody. You don’t need celebrity status to clear that bar, a good group of friends that you do fun social stuff with is enough. You have the wit to be entertaining and sociable, this is something that’s definitely achievable for you and it’s where you should direct your energy if you want to get laid. I guess if you’re not doing these gimmicky approaches too often you may have avoided a negative reputation for now, but certainly don’t risk tarnishing your reputation anymore. In a town of 60k people most people know each other and stories about the weird guy who pretended he was married to try and get laid is exactly the kind of story a girl shares with her friends and laughs about

Dude, in a small city like that you’ve got to approach this by building a social circle. With some of the stuff you’ve told us about here I’m willing to bet you already have a fairly negative reputation in a town that small As I’ve said, you’re spinning your wheels because you’re trying to learn to drive in a car without any tyres. Learn basic social skills and get a social circle going and you might actually get somewhere.