I had a weird experience the other night at the bar. This guy always brings these pretty girls with him, a little prettier than he thinks he deserves, trying to seduce them with lame tricks he saw on the internet. He’s got spunk, I’ll give him that, but it’s easy to see he’s not quite comfortable in his own skin. “Gosh,” I go, “If I can see that after seven cups of the cheapest beer they have on tap, imagine what his date is seeing.”
Just then, he goes to the bathroom and leaves her alone at the bar. I happen to be a few seats away. She boredly looks my way and starts chatting with me. Oh horror, I came here to not talk to girls. I would go to the guys-only bar, but they’re kind of weird there.
Her date comes out of the bathroom and stops dead in his tracks, as if he ran into an invisible wall. He just stands there assessing, confused, occasionally checking his phone as if he's reading a flurry of internet posts on what to do in this situation. His girlfriend is still talking to me, my chatting is on autopilot, but she seems genuinely interested in whatever surface level banter the back of my brain is spewing.
I can tell the guy is uncomfortable. He's done this before. One time he actually left the bar and I was forced to bring his girl back home with me. (She didn't have a ride.) My wife was pissed. Now he's standing there again awkwardly... I'm just waiting for him to come up and give me a "yo" then take this girl back, but he's frozen.
Oh wow! He made a post about it! I think this is the same guy!
Damn playa, I was just chillin.
There are a lot of good techniques this guy could use to get over the hump in this scenario. A lot of repliers had good ones. Come up and interject in the conversation and amplify on what the other guy says. Get between them. Etc. A good portion were along the vein of “stop being a pussy.” But it’s in his replies that I found the problem, not his original post.
On The Black Philip Show, once or a few times Patrice told female callers— and I’m paraphrasing—“I can tell you’re not charming, because we’ve been talking on the phone for 30 seconds and I don’t like you. If you talk to strangers like this, imagine how you must talk to your man.”
The poster of that thread instantly gave me the ick in his replies. Imagine the horror show for that poor girl watching him try to keep his composure and smoothly roll out charming seduction techniques from his internet-provided utility belt. She sighs, “I was just trying to get laid.”
He tries to convince every replier that he’s actually total legit and cool, and also that whatever advice they have that he doesn’t like doesn’t apply here. Because reasons. In doing so, he inadvertently convinces everyone that perhaps he is not as legit and chill as he thinks. But for others, we noticed that in the original post, where he says “Interject? No, I would never do that.”
Why? Clearly some pickup artist shyster convinced him that was a beta move or something. “Never chase ! And if she ends up going home with this guy wondering where you’ve been for an hour, then—”
People will claim I’m whimsically misrepresenting the situation, that the guy, I mean me, actually was trying to flirt with his girl and the girl wouldn’t have initiated the convo with a stranger, etc, and that’s true, but I’m not misrepresenting the poster as he’s represented himself—weak-willed and unconfident in anything but a system, but not in himself. It’s okay, his mentor will help him with that next week in the online seminar.
What he never asks is “What do I actually want to do in this situation?” He fantasizes (for the millionth time) a scenario where he acts with perfect grace and machismo, dominating the scene and the target of his attraction, where he banishes or buddies up with the competition, where he wins and gets the girl and the pootang he doesn’t know what to do with. But the vivid scene vanishes as he remembers his reality, a treacherous tightrope between hopelessness and the desperate application of rote techniques.
What’s the problem? He doesn’t believe in what he’s doing. Not deep down. You can tell. He doesn’t know who he is, and more importantly, he doesn’t believe in it.
And this is the big takeaway for me: don’t blame him for asking advice, even on Reddit. Blame him and everyone else who tries to explain why the advice they receive doesn’t apply to them, even if they’re right. Because a wise man would not only be appreciative, but assume that there’s something to be learned even from advice they disagree with, even if it came from a dumb maniac.
A wise man can take the good from the bad, and a fool can take bad even from good.
The 1001th hard part
The hard part of giving advice to young guys is however many piecemeal techniques you give them, the advanced tactics used by these young soldier is still divorced from the trials and tribulations in which they were formed for the salty veteran. Sometimes their use constitutes a good rule of thumb, sometimes they are implemented really awkwardly, but the worst scenario is where a young soldier thinks all of life is just canned techniques and loses touch with himself.
Patrice’s philosophy was explicitly mainly for older guys, 30+, with some experience under their belt, probably trying to settle down, keep a girlfriend they already don’t like at all but do love. It’s a philosophy that challenges you to draw from your experience and the inherit frustration you feel from years of messing up with your woman, probably several of them— to stay happy by getting in touch with yourself.
That makes it hard for younger guys, who are by definition still learning who they are and what they want. The average twenty year old’s frustration with women can’t even begin to match the immense disdain of a thirty year old man, or the titanic apocalyptic hatred of a forty five year old divorcee.
And as Patrice had to explain multiple times to members of the general public who couldn’t possibly grasp or assume context, that hatred isn’t the type that makes you cut two dozen women into pieces, it’s the type that makes you sick of listening to their nonsense. It’s the type that makes you disgusted with yourself enough to take responsibility and change the tynamic.
The difference of experience always makes it a mind-jarring balancing act when slipping wisdom to younger guys, because on one hand you want them to learn from your mistakes, but on the other hand, mistakes are what you learn from. You know they’re going to fuck up—a lot— but you’d like them to maybe not fuck up quite as much and quite as badly as you, the same way being paralyzed from a skydiving accident might have spiritually transformed some people, but I’m not going to not pull my shoot so I can experience the same journey.
A point?
Who, me? I didn’t think anyone was still listening.
To the OP and the millions of other people in the same ballpark, you really do have to focus on building up a philosophy. That’s what Patrice said and that’s what I’ll expound on till the day this blog dies in a week.
Building a philosophy about who you are and why you do things transcends the question of whether you need to get confidence to get a girl or whether getting a girl gives you confidence. I have my opinion about which is more common, which is the rule vs. the exception, but I also have an asshole. The point of building a philosophy is that your foundation drives you and nothing else.
To the OP et al, this experience at the bar was another push to build your philosophy. You fucking it up like you (and me) have fumbled the bag a million more times is another push. You, whoever you are, reading this post is another part of it.
What happens now is what you do with it.