There are no shortcuts. Don't believe everything you read online.

Online anons can claim whatever

Don’t believe everything you read online and every story you hear. Many stories are implausible, and this is coming from a guy who has had lots of fun lays with hot chicks. Some stories may have elements of truth but many lie by omission at the very least.

I was reading one of Krauser's books and am reminded of why,

You see what I did there, comparing myself to Casanova? That's what players do. We blow smoke up everybody's ass. Our relationship to humility is complex; we must fake it with girls to induce them into emotional intimacy, and we must genuinely humble ourselves in private to work on our inner game issues.

Then

The near misses and sense of falling behind were bad enough. It didn't help that Steve had been talking about a couple of guys who were doing well at precisely the point I wasn't. They weren't really cold approach guys, but they were game-aware. One was a former student in his mid-fifties. Apparently, he played at being an aristocrat. He wasn't particularly rich, but he fronted the image of it and went on gold-digger websites like SugarDaddy and MissTravel.

(I kind of do the opposite of the mid-fifties guy: I try to downplay work and money, even though I could flaunt both. I have seen guys try and I think basic masculine identity and polarity work better and are truer.)

But it isn't what it seems,

He'd subsequently dug around and talked to the guy some more, and it turned out he'd been fronting to Steve only marginally less than he did to the girls. While he was indeed getting some decent success, it wasn't quite as good or free as he'd claimed in the original story. Per the photos, the girls weren't that hot. Moreover, there weren't that many of them because a lot of girls turned him down when they discovered he'd lied about himself.

This guy had done a respectable effort at hustling - it's not easy for a fifty year-old man to bang young hotties for free, after all - but like most people he'd dressed it up into something larger than it was.

Sound familiar to you, if you've been reading online anon seduction stories for a while? It should. It sounds very familiar to me.

Especially for guys who say they slay while also achieving many other goals,

There's a tension between chasing women and accomplishing other things in life. For all their seductive pleasures, women are dream-killers. So long as there's a sniff of hot pussy wafting along the air, I'm off like a hunting dog chasing a scent. I couldn't multi-task this area of my life.

Really being a player if you are not already extremely good looking or have some other advantage is extremely hard. Being a player is a part-time job in itself. There are no shortcuts but I've tried to be efficient and that has also driven me towards the consciously non-monogamous community. Chances are that if there's a shortcut to sex I've tried it.

All have drawbacks. Some fit my personality.

Consider two other things I have written,

• “You only see the tip of the spear.”

• “There is no easy way: there is only the hard way.”

They both elaborate the themes you’ve been reading about.

Until you meet a guy in real life and spend some significant time around him, there’s a solid chance that there are things he says online that don't wholly match up with the rest of his life, even if it is only by omission.

To conclude the Krauser bit,

The lesson of both older men's hustles was the same lesson I'd been learning for years: consistently banging younger-hotter-tighter is difficult. Every man who is pulling it off has dedication, fortitude, a spark of ingenuity, and above all – a system. I had yet to meet the man who was getting younger-hotter-tigher handed to him on a platter.

Same… I have seen some stupendously wealthy guys use money to get it (I think there is a kind of rich-guy-hot-younger-girl circuit in most major cities, and I have seen glimpses of it in mine). I have seen some guys with unusual lifestyles pull it. But this is like 1 - 2% of men and I doubt they are reading this.

Krauser says that he notices patterns in his game and that some of those patterns were "well-theorised, because I'd discussed it with friends, like Tom or John." It's hard, I won't say impossible but very hard, to become really good at anything without some help, from friends or mentors to help you, and from some rivals to push you. If you are attempting to do something totally alone you will likely never get as good as you could be. A scene really helps.

I have never gotten as good at game as I could have because I have never met anyone truly committed to reaching the top. Most guys who get into game or going out to meet women just want to find a nice, pretty girlfriend, and once they get one they stop. They don't question the underlying structure of the date-marry-children social script.

While you need to not believe everything everything you read, you should know that progress is possible, that hard work does pay off eventually, and that you can improve yourself from where you are now. Almost everyone around me, including colleagues, and all my normal friends think my total aversion to sugar, indifference towards cars and many other consumer goods, and disinclination towards marriage is weird.

I see them putting in average effort and getting average outcomes. Every day you have a choice between picking up the video game controller or the barbell. You have a choice between practicing the skill that will lead you to the beter job or watching TV. You have a choice between stuffing your face with basic carbs or learning how to roast sweet potatoes and beets. The choices you make will impact everything that happens in the course of the rest of your life.

All of us are living in an "unnatural" environment, by many metrics. This has bad aspects (gross food, sedentary lifestyles, car-based travel that requires no physical effort) and good aspects (can f**k many hot women if you achieve masculine polarity and learn game, can be better than many other people, can travel the world on airplanes, can read as many books as you have time to read, which is a new phenomenon most of you don't take advantage of). Once you realize this you should try to take the good parts of the environment and jettison the bad. This is hard. If there are two themes in all my writing they are "this is hard" and "achieve masculine identity and the rest will follow."

I said that you will accomplish more if you choose to do so, and you will, but "more" and "better" are relative. If you improve your life and don't accomplish some of the things some guys here claim they have, don't worry about it. Those claims may not be meritorious. Work on yourself every day and positive things will happen, but online anyone can claim anything. Watch real life with your own eyes.

There are no shortcuts, but there are some high-value guys who aren't any good at delivering that value. For them, a little game and encouragement can create spectacular results. I wouldn't call that a shortcut, however. I'd call it learning to deliver what you've got.