What it takes to succeed as a man
There’s an interesting analysis showing that most people who haven’t gone on a date in the last year aren’t trying. Guys think dating is hard—too hard on balance for many guys in terms of effort vs. payout at first glance, especially when compared with the experience most women have on online dating (OLD). I’m sure the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of Gen Z, who fought in World War II, will agree about how hard dating is. Your ancestors fought mastodons; you are afraid of asking a girl out. Meanwhile, the guys who learn cold approach f**k like Hefner in his prime.
The free versions of dating apps don’t appear to work well for most men anymore, if at all, including some guys I know who check all the boxes:
Tall
Good looking (8+)
Great photos
Clever bio
College degree
Financial/career success
When guys like that aren’t getting quality matches on the apps (and OLD is, tragically, the most common way people meet today), it’s fair to conclude online dating for most men in 2023 is hard.
Women can match with a large number of men on the apps they find physically attractive without having to pay, but those men are either:
Good looking ballers with game who aren’t going to settle down…because why would you when you can sleep with huge numbers of women with little time or emotional investment (which is why “are we dating the same guy” facebook groups have become so popular)?
Good looking but lacking social skills, game, and/or an understanding of how to run a date.
Personally, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for women when it comes to dating, both because the market is the result of female choice writ large, and because a height-weight proportionate woman with any semblance of a social life will have options to be with men who are good looking, successful, and kind/decent human beings.
Single women who cry “where are all the good men?” are too picky in relation to their own age, life path, and/or SMV. For example, if you don’t want to have kids, you’re over 35, you’re a single mom, and/or you have a laundry list of particular choices, etc, you’re going to have fewer options of lower quality than a woman who’s not as picky. Life is a game of trade-offs, and the more specific you are about requiring men to be a certain age (a lot of women won’t date older men or younger men because they’re more concerned with social expectations than what they find attractive), race, height, salary, the smaller your pool of potential suitors has become. If younger women want to choose 25 year old immature, douchebag guys because they think dating a guy in his 30s is icky, then…OK, but that IS a choice they have 100% control over, not some inevitable result of a cruel and indifferent world. Popular girl culture tells women they should manifest what they want in life, which the opposite of good advice. If you want something out of life, you need to work to achieve that outcome, not hope that it will magically be conjured into existence through good vibes.
I have sympathy for men on only one metric: it takes a lot of work to become the sort of man women find valuable, and there are very few people who will tell you that directly and even fewer who can truly tell/teach you how to become one. However, almost every man understands that to sleep/have a relationship with beautiful young women requires being high value, deep down, on an inferential or biological level. So it’s a thin, if valid excuse at best.
After all, we don’t want to become rockstars and allstars and leaders for no reason—we want to do so because we know those guys get chicks. When my son expressed awe watching a cheerleader thrown somersaulting into the air and I asked him if he wanted to be the guy throwing her, he said, “no, I want to be the guy she’s cheering for.” Never been more proud of my boy—but he’s eight years old, and if he knows, then you, dear reader, surely know too.
The information is out there. When The Game came out it was a revelation, and finding honest information about how to learn game and seduce women was difficult, but now The Red Pill is referenced in popular culture, and dating gurus abound on YouTube, along with myriad player blogs such as this one.
However, as RedQuest has pointed out, most guys don’t care…enough…to make the initial effort. I’ve said most guys, in my experience as a coach and a guy who’s been in the community for a while now, can’t do effective cold approach. But in actuality, it’s not that they can’t—it’s that they won’t. They don’t care enough.
Because if they did, it’s not hard to do. It might be scary at first, but it’s not as if it can’t be done. It’s not even weird, and data shows that most girls want you do it. I’m not asking a 300lb guy to do 10 pull-ups or a short guy to grow six inches. I’m saying: go talk to some girls. Say hi. Ask them how their day is going. Tell them you think they look nice or you like their outfit. If you feel like it, shoot your shot and ask for a number. To start it really is that easy. And, if talking to a random person seems terrifying, there are ways to learn how to quell that fear, or at least overcome it. We’re the most social species on the planet—we’re built to talk to each other. I’ve taught incredibly neurotic, anti-social guys to do this, so it’s nowhere close to impossible—it’s that, again, as the aforementioned post points out: most guys don’t care enough to really try.
Most guys have or can create multiple chances a day to talk to girls. Maybe he’ll get rejected, but he won’t get cancer, have his parents disown him, or lose his job because a girl turned him down after asking her on a date. At the very least he’ll gain self respect and earn hers too if he’s kind about it and not an asshole if she says no. And remember: if you do this enough, some will say yes!
Cold Approach isn’t the only answer either. Guys can pay for the apps and learn how to use them in the most effective way possible, develop a sense of how to use IG and/or Tik-Tok as a dating app, develop a funnel of girls through social circle—hell, if he was really bold he could move to a better location or even go international.
Guys also have the option—just like women—to put their best foot forward. Small and skinny? Get in the gym. Bad photos? Hire a pro, or learn how to get better at taking them yourself or ask friends to take more. Sloppy appearance: spend some time/money updating your wardrobe—if you’re not sure what to buy, ask a girl to come with you, or ask chicks at the mall to help. As my GF points out continually, girls work very hard to look sexy, spending time on makeup, hair, skincare, fashion, etc. If your appearance is a problem, there are solutions if you care enough to find them; most guys, if they apply themselves (fitness + fashion), can get to a 7 in terms of SMV, or at least a high 6. That’s good enough to get with chicks most guys would be very happy to have in their beds.
Only 40% of men throughout history have passed their genes on. Not too long ago, there was a fair chance they’d die from starvation or a spear in the chest, and in the interim, sure, maybe the guys living in the mid-to-late 20th century had it a bit easier, but guess what? They ALL had to either meet girls through social circle or cold approach. *Gasp* they had to go talk to a girl and risk rejection. If you listen to music or watch movies made before 2010, this point is made explicitly: guys understood that if they were going to get laid, they had to go talk to girls.
Plus: all Gen Z and Millennial girls have is their sluttiness. That’s it. They want to show off their bodies on IG and Tik-Tok and have fun and fuck. Social media has made them into narcissistic validation seeking machines, and they want YOU to win. But you can’t win if you’re balls deep in a 64oz Mountain Dew playing video games while stoned.
If this all sounds daunting, start by taking small steps. An analogy I’ve used with students is this: to max out your SMV and learn game, you need to fill up a bucket. Each time you go to the gym, find better clothes to wear, go talk to a girl, make good choices about your diet, work on your career/mission, etc., you’re putting water in the bucket. The only catch is that the bucket has a small leak—but it’s very small, so as long as you’re continuing to fill it with water, it’ll eventually become full and you’ll start getting chicks once that happens.
For some guys it’ll take a fair amount of time to fill that bucket, but trust that it will eventually become full if you continue doing the work.
“Do. Or do not. There is no try.” - Yoda