Friday Night Fire – Turkey Day Edition

November 28, 2008

Ready to make the most of the holiday weekend?  We’re headed out to see two of Christian’s favorite DJs, Deep Dish, with a few new friends.  What’s going on in your world?

Recommended background music tonight: Human by The Killers.

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Audio Mailbag: Why’d She Flake?

November 25, 2008

Today’s question comes from Akash, and I really sympathize with his situation.

Yo Christian,
I need your advice man.  I was at yardhouse last friday, met to hang with some friends of friends and met this really cute girl at our table.  We talked for awhile, i REALLy felt like i hit it off – funny with out trying, a little cocky, a little nice, didn’t talk much about myself at all (which I LOVE doing), charmed her cousin as well, etc.  At the end of the night, i casually asked her outside ‘u wanna go get something to eat sometime?’ and she was like “yeah, we can do that.”  She really seemd really cool with the idea, not crazy about it, DEFINITELY not uninterested.
I took down her number, gave her a hug, and me and my friends bounced.
I was really surprised when i called her, and she didn’t call back (about 24 hours ago).  I know i sound lame and paranoid, but i know that if a girl is interested, she calls u back.  But this really the first time ever i’ve been truly, truly surprised that i didn’t get called back, and i really did want to hang with this girl, and i was so disappointed.
Should i give up man? call in a week? give her benefit of the doubt? or say fuck it and move on?  I really, really would appreciate your help on this one.
-Regular guy, Akash

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Friday Night Fire 2

November 21, 2008

Nick’s Friday Night Speech for November 21. Recommended background music: Touch the Sky by Kan-yeezee.

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Posted by Nick Sparks | Filed Under Crank Your Confidence | Comments 

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Are You Motherf*cking Kidding Me?

November 21, 2008

Its when I see garbage like this that I HATE HATE HATE being in this industry.  The following has been pulled from a sales letter that is as idiotic as the idea of bailing out the auto industry with TARP money:

Are you ready to discover one of the biggest secrets in building DEEP attraction with women?

No, it’s not to have good lucks, tons of money, or being famous.

As a matter of fact, it’s something that will completely blow your mind once you hear it.

Are you ready for this…

Confuse them!

But before I tell you how to do it, I want you to know something personal about me.  Something guarnateed to make your jaw drop…

Uggghghhhhghghghghghghghghghgh.

I’m serious, this is exactly how the letter reads.

Its funny, but also realllly sad that someone might actually buy this.

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Audio Mailbag: Do You Have to be Cold?

November 18, 2008

From Pedro, who writes very respectfully!

You know, all these techniques, all the stuff we learn and so on…don’t you think it takes a very cold man to be effectively in charge ? Let’s say, if I go consciously thinking on every thing I should do and every thing she is doing I will not sound natural, but very worried instead ! I have had far better results in situations when I interact just for the sake of it and with no intentions at all !

How to overcome this ? Or must we get to the conclusion that for being a PUA, unless you’re a natural, you must be a very cold guy ?

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Scrub Status

November 17, 2008

I sat depressed and alone in my dorm room overlooking NYC’s cherished Union Square, with Radiohead’s “Creep” sulking in the background.

I looked down with longing at the plethora of social interactions and couples that plagued that rugged Square, as musicians jazzed, bikers and skaters flew, and farmers and artists came to proudly display their respective masterpieces as the autumn leaves decorated the brick floor. Down there was a vast and diverse multitude of colors, art, vegetables, music, leaves, painted even more beautifully with human interactions that engender the most authentic emotions such as anger, depression, hate, joy, curiosity, and more importantly, love. Simply put, the square teemed with life…

But I sat, looking down, alone, void of emotions, in the darkness…

When I started college, I thought I was going to be a “baller” or a “player”. I thought I was going to have so much fun and get so many girls. Especially since I was entering a school in NY, New York, which is famous for a diverse set of the most beautiful women in the world. Since most of the male population going to my school is gay, I thought the chances of getting the girls that I used to only dream of in high school increased tenfold.

But after a pretty lame freshman year, I realized that NYC social scene was a totally new and mysterious world, and when I did go out to bars and clubs, I would be trapped on the side, watching people have fun, as I tried to pretend to be busy looking at my phone or pretended to be too tired as I sat in a corner radiating negative social energy or in PUA terms, demonstrating lower value. In class (and various other academic settings), in the gym, in the cafeteria, or in other social gatherings, I would be the guy that minded his own business and talked to my own friends. All I could think of when talking with girls was school work. (What a Loser!) If it was a pretty girl that I liked, I would keep the conversation very safe and formal, as if not to offend her. I was happy by the fact that she was taking her time acknowledge my presence, but relieved when she left because when she was around, I would be so tense. Worse off, I would go home and think about her, frustrated, knowing I could never get a girl like that to even be a friend. I oozed neediness, desperation, and depression, like I have a sign on my back with AFC written on it. Every weekend, I would have to depend on my friends who were a little better with girls to find where the next party was and be ready to drop mad money, because there was probably no way I could bring girls with me. After a couple weeks of leaching off my friends, they started to not pick up my phone calls. Two years have gone by in college, and I am no where near having the fun I thought I would have when I began as a eager young freshman. I found myself becoming more desperate and more frustrated with myself. To mark my inner depression and disappointment with myself, I started wearing hoodies covering my face, didn’t shave, smoked pot all the time, and started to stay in on weekends to play computer games, listened to depressing and slow rock and R&B about rockers and singers who had their hearts broken or just cried out in sexual frustration. Who knew that the complexities of the feminine mystique could so utterly break a soul of a man? I had officially hit the lowest point in my social life ever. I am a tool. This was absolute scrub status.

I had always been cool in high school. Everyone liked me, as a friend. I was a three season athlete, pretty good looking, tall, wide shoulders, kind of scrawny, and doing well academically as well. One huge selling point was that I had the whole house to myself senior year of high school, and I threw mad parties, but looking back, I felt like I was being used to throw parties and thus started the makings of one of the biggest tools/scrubs in history. I realized that when all of my sudden new found friends left me alone to clean the house by myself after almost every party. In the day, I realized I did not make an attempt to go out with friends, but stayed in and played computer games. I never had a girlfriend, but there were always some cute girls that showed interest in me, but whenever it came time to socializing with them, I was a failure. To hide my fear and pretend like I had something to offer them, I said I partied with college kids a lot when I really didn’t party or know that many college kids, and created this identity for myself as a “way too cool for school” kid. This resulted in never having a girlfriend during high school and not even having a prom date. I pretended like the girls were too low level for my taste, and played it off like I didn’t have any money for prom. Inside though, it stung like a bitch. But whatever, I thought that once I got to college in NYC, I would make cooler friends and meet hotter girls, and my high school friends would beg to visit me in the city and take them out. Up till now, none of my high school friends have shown a remote interest in visiting me.

That is absolute scrub status.

I tried to use the same game that I used in high school for college, pretending like I had a lot of offer, to friends and girls so that they would look up to me and respect me, when I really didn’t. And when compared to the promoters and millionaire parents’ children I was up against, there was no chance in hell. That was when I finally acknowledged that I was a scrub, a tool; someone that had been hiding behind a false mask of greatness when in reality, all there was behind that mask was a fearful boy who just wanted to be loved.

One of my few close friends started talking about “the Game”, and how these methods have improved so scrub status men into stars with women. I didn’t believe it at first, but in my desperation, I hoped something like the game did exist, and decided I would work on it in hopes that just possibly, I could accomplish my dreams. That was when I finally decided to get this area of my life handled. I saw an ad for “Conquer Your Campus”, priced reasonably, and decided to buy it. Seeing my credit card being charged for something that I might not be able to trust, written about an elusive topic by an unknown author was probably, in my mind, the most degrading thing I had ever done. It was like a proud acknowledgement to the financial institutions that run credit card companies and whoever was on the other end selling these self-help books that I am officially scrub status. After reading through the book, and re-reading it, and after a few months of trying to implementing the theories in the book, I realized that I didn’t improve that much. I blamed it on the NYC setting, which was very different from the campus college settings of the CYC e-books. But once again, I was trying to find a way to justify getting a refund for my money.

In fact, everything that the book said was true and I hated it. It exposed me for the coward I was. I realized I had been living a lie, a life with no substance. When I viewed myself as something not cool that I had to create a false identity with those I considered my friends, then something had to be wrong. In the process of trying to be this elusive cool, I had decayed into a scrub. But now that part of my life is over, and my mask is coming off. I realized that cool is a subjective thing. All my life, I had been trying to be cool according to other people’s view, when in reality, it was I, and only I, who had the power to define something as cool. So over the summer I spent a lot of time with my real friends and family just being me, exposed as naked for them to see, and I realized that to them, I am cool and they love me just the way I am. Now, with the help of some friends, Christian Hudson and Nick Sparks, I want the world to see how freaking cool I really am. And I know they’re going to like what they see…

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Friday Night Fire 1

November 14, 2008

Nick’s Friday Night Speech for November 14. Recommended background music: Mr. Brightside.

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A night out with nick sparks…

November 11, 2008

So what is a night out like with PUAs?

Shawty wanna thug? Bottles in da club?

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to party with these guys. Are they chill and cool guys, or are they just so focused on the game that they vibe out creepiness… I remember trying my first canned routine openers and attraction methods, and feeling the frustration of trying to run all these seduction programs locked in my head.

If you read the Game, they call going out with “wingmen” as “sarging” which makes the whole process something with a given set of rules with a clear winner and loser and an established goal. This was what I expected when Nick Sparks said lets go out. He also added the fact, “I’ve got a little bit of energy tonight.”

As a college student, its common knowledge that the more girls you bring out with you, the more fun you’re going to have… The Game calls the girls you take out with you while you’re sarging as “pivots”. Girls automatically demonstrate that you’re a man of higher value. However, on that night, there was just one girl, making the ratio of girls to guy, 1:2. Not a normally good ratio.

We started the night out by meeting at Nick’s place, had a couple 40’s, but no music. But despite this not being the normal pump-up, “party”, pregame scene, Nick compensated for all that. He was like a ball of energy! He just started talking, and I would just lean back, get comfortable, relax, and laugh and make jokes about the craziest things. Like before that, I did not know how making fun of a girl’s hometown could be so interesting. He would be touchy (Nick knows nothing of social boudries), upbeat, jumpy, with a smirk on his face that would never waver for a second.

By the time everybody was comfortable with each other, slightly tipsy, and all upbeat, we hopped out onto a bus to head to the bars in the lower east side. Normally, on a bus, people stay seated and quiet, minding their own business, and talk to each other in whispers. Buses can, in fact, be mood killers. But not so with Nick. As soon as he got on that bus, he spoke loudly, making his business everybody elses, but he didn’t care… He was having a blast- on a BUS…? It was obvious that we became the center of attention on that bus, and cute girls on the bus started looking our way, and I lost track of the time or stops. Some people would call this shameless behavior, but everybody else on the bus that we could potentially have been disturbing were looking our way grinning and smiling so call it whatever you will, but everybody was having fun… Yes, on a bus…

We walk into a bar, and like any other guy, I start looking around, observing the enviroment, checking out which girls are hot, and where the center of attention is. But not so with Nick… I don’t think he realized that people were standing around him. I think the only thing he noted was where the bar was and where the bathroom was, and started walking up to random people and next thing you know, there would be a bunch of cute girls surrounding him laughing and giggling. He didn’t analzye or nothing or run canned lines or openers. He just went in, and similar to the bus situation, that’s wehre the party was at. He didn’t care he who the center of attention was- he is the center of attention. The dude is just so freaking comfortable in his own skin. Next thing you know, girls were buying him drinks, touching him, sending him IOIs. To me it looked like magic because I could not understand what was going on. Just the fact that I was standing next to him was bringing me attention and getting me drinks and lap dances and IOIs. My favorite moment was when this fiesty and rather intrusive blond just grabbed my ass from the back when I was standing by the bar. Nick saw her and automatically started spitting his game, and next thing you know, she was grabbing him until she ripped his necklace right off his neck. He looked back at her in utter shock, (though I think he had it all planned out), and the girl looked at him in utter horror. She ended up being cool and buying each of us a shot. By the time we left, we were seriously the gravitational center of attention.

Then Nick moved us to a close place nearby, and made me start practicing my social magnetism. I thought that there was no order to the madness of Nick’s game. But in fact, there was some structure to the Nicks alluring methods. It became relevant when he made me open a set of 3 girls. He told me to go in, sit down, and tell them that they look like they are having the worst time of their lives in this place. I did, and lo and behold, there were opening up, talking, telling me some boring stuff about their lives. I realized that unlike Nick, I didn’t know how to escalate groups, and when things started to die down, I just said, “nice to meet you” and left. Nick scolded me for leaning and caring too much about the outcome. The best thing to do is just be so comfortable in my own skin, that I could talk about anything I want and cause people to get hooked into what i was saying. In order to overcome my fear of caring about the outcome, he made me go up to a random group of girls and say something that would automatically get me shut down like, “Hey, I really want to mack with one you now…” I went up, looked at all three of them, grinned, and said, “Yo, I really want to make out with one you now…” I knew I was gonna get shut down, and as soon as one said, “Ewww… NO!” I laughed and left. Then Nick went up to them, used the exact opener I did, sat down next to one of them, and within 30 seconds, despite using that horrible opener, had them laughing and enjoying themselves. I was like wow…

That night opened my eyes… I realized that “game” does exist… And it has nothing to do with looks and money. In fact, girls were throwing us drinks by the end of the night. Moreover, the misconceptions about gaming were totally thrown out of the window. The game is not a neurotic program that runs through the head, where there are rules, winners, losers, and goals, where there are equations where A + B = sex. The game is a characteristic, a built or natural trait, that allows people to lean back, have fun, and get the girl.

The game is not a sequence of events that takes place between a man and a girl, but rather, a different way viewing oneself, that changes the way other people, especially women, view you as an object of attraction.

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Audio Mailbag: Quick Wit

November 10, 2008

This week kicks off our weekly Tuesday audio mailbags (except we’re starting on Monday, because there’s a big announcement tomorrow).  So let’s start with Mike in Ann Arbor, the city I miss greatly.

First of all I wanted to tell you that I’ve learned a lot from your emails and have put many of your techniques to use with positive results.  And it’s great to have a PUA that doesn’t just want to sell you shit all of the time and that actually sends out emails frequently answering to common problems among guys.  Thank you.  Now on to the real reason I sent you this message.
I was at the gym earlier today and after working out I went to the little cafe to get a quick after workout protein shake.  As I walked up I wasn’t really paying attention to the cashier and was just looking at the choices of shakes they had.  As soon as I found what I was lookiing for I moved my eyes down to the cashier.  In front of me was by far the cutest girl I had seen all day.  She asked me what I wanted and I made my order.  There wasn’t anyone waiting in line so I just waited at the counter.  I payed within 30 seconds and she tells someone to make the shake.  Then she turns to me with this flirty smile and says “Soo, did you just come in or did you just get done working out?” Now at this point I am thinking she is just making small talk and I am kind of tired from working out and my conversation gears were pretty much shut down from a silent workout, so I tell her I just got done.  She responds by saying “Oh really? You don’t look like you had a very tough workout. (As she looks down at my biceps)” Now after she says this I know she is flirting with me because I am in very good shape and it is very obvious that I work out on a regular basis.  My conversation gears don’t even budge, so I chuckle slightly and flash a small smile.  She says “Your supposed to laugh, it was a joke.”  “Right. Heh heh.” I sarcastically respond.  Now my gears begin to budge slightly, but my mind just goes blank, I have nothing to say AT ALL.  I stood there trying to flirt back but my mind just wouldn’t let me.  My shake came up pretty quick so I say have a nice day and leave.  As soon as I walked out the door I felt like punching my self in the head. I had a chance to get this cute and interesting girl’s number and straight up blanked like a freaking amateur.  Now the question that I wanted to ask is this:  Do you have any techniques on how to get those converstion gears rolling right away after being in an environment where your almost completely silent the whole time?  I would love to know a quick fix to this problem, so that if this happens again I can be ready.

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Relationship Tests

November 6, 2008

There’s a notion floating around – an accurate one, in my experience, that a strong woman will test her guy from time to time to make sure that he’s living up to the title of ‘man’. Let’s talk about these tests.  I like to differentiate them – there are reinforcing tests (good), and destroying tests (not so good).

————

A reinforcing test is meant to reinforce your strengths and abilities. These come from women of high value, who see you failing to live up to the value they see in you. For example, she challenges you to…
- stand up for yourself with friends who treat you poorly
- perform better at work
- devote quality time to your family

Where do these come from? A woman will test you this way when you’re being WEAK or LAZY, and if she’s any sort of intelligent, you ignore them at your peril. She sees something in you that you’re not living up to, and she’s alerting you to it.

Good mothers occasionally do this to their grown-up sons, as well.

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The second type of test, the destroying variety, comes about when she is insecure about the relationship. They come from women of lower value – certainly women who perceive their value as lower than yours – who want to tear you down. For example, she…
- seeks constant reassurance and commitments of your love
- gets insecure or jealous when you talk to other women
- tries to hold you back from achieving and being happy

In all of these cases, the woman is seeing you grow or take steps in a direction that threatens the stasis and stability of the relationship. She knows, or feels, that she is at risk of losing you, and rather than supporting you and becoming stronger herself, she tries to hold you back.

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Depending on how you define them, I’ve been in somewhere between five and eight long-term relationships, and here’s an interesting thing I’ve learned: the weaker and more insecure that you are, the more susceptible you are to the second kind of test. And the stronger and more confident you become, the more you can expect the former type of test.

If you’re dating a girl casually, but she has a different perspective – she puts a lot of weight into what she sees as a budding relationship and is holding out for more – then you can expect passive-aggressive forms of the destroying test when she starts reaching her breaking point. Maybe you didn’t make your expectations clear, or maybe she is willfully ignorant of them. Interestingly, I’ve found that when I’ve been in these situations, I am occasionally unaware of the tests – the relationship is just not that important so I don’t process her negative comments. Obviously, not the hallmark of a great relationship. And while there’s something to be said for being mindful of the girl’s feelings, at least the relationship is on your terms.

Another point of interest: reinforcing tests are harder to accept and deal with. There were a few points when one of the ‘best’ girls I’ve ever dated – we were together for about two years and she was very strong and supportive – threw these at me, and I reacted very emotionally. In retrospect, she was calling me out on things that I wasn’t ready/able to confront. But I learned a lot from the experience, eventually took it to heart, and grew tremendously (and we’re now friends and have a lot of mutual respect – so there can be happy endings).

It should be noted that men do this stuff to women too. Raise your hand if you’ve ever been insecure and jealous with a girl you’re dating ;)

Posted by Christian | Filed Under Dating Done Right | Comments 

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