I do have things to suggest, but they were for narrower subgoals. (I was going to suggest something like, when it comes to being communities, that there needed to be some way to credibly signal that men have the same potential for commitment that they expect out of churchmen, but that’s not helpful for a nascent group that isn’t at the full community level yet.)
Maybe you should start by trying to figure out actual helpful suggestions, and then we can worry about whether people will be offended by them.
No, the problem with self-censorship is that you don’t get the chance to see the controversial speech in the first place, and if you’ve been here long, you know how muted such speech is going to be.
(BTW: my older brother is depressed by his lack of success with women. I’d like to point him toward some helpful seduction resources but 1) I don’t know how to do this without embarrassing him because, you know, it’s dating advice from his younger sister and 2) I know a significant subset of that stuff is really kind of misogynist and nasty, and I’d rather not support that. Anyone have any brilliant ideas?)
Like I said before, I don’t have expertise on PUA, but I do have expertise on the phenomenon—that of being unable to convey an understanding. Recent comment on the matter. For starters, the most common problem with women giving such advice is that they tell men what they want (i.e., if they already were attracted to a man, what would be “icing on the cake”) rather than what would work (i.e. what actually attracts them),
So, you should first make sure you have introspected on what exactly your desires are, to the point that when you say, “do this not that”, you know why he should do this rather than that, so that he can assimilate an actual understanding and be able to make such inferences without your help. (I remember a thread a while back that I won’t link where a woman was trying to give advice but it was clear she did not meet this standard and so failed to deconfuse anyone who wasn’t already deconfused.)
Your brother will not mind getting advice from his younger sister—men do far more self-debasing things to level up in this department—so long as your advice is actually effective (not the “icing on the cake” type I described above) and grounded in serious introspection rather than just giving socially acceptable platitudes.
Serious introspection is very important. One problem is that what comes to mind for behaviors correlated with attractiveness are those correlated with maximum attractiveness, and behaviors associated with maximum attractiveness are correlated with that because they are otherwise generally unattractive behaviors that are being conspicuously overcome by the maximally attractive.
Imagine a wolf pack in which the males fought for positions in the hierarchy. The lowest ranked make might signal his harmlessness to the other low-ranked males by failing to plant his feet when among the pack, thereby making himself disadvantaged in any fight, and we might find him frequently standing on three legs. The top male might conspicuously display his unconcern with challengers by failing to plant his fourth paw and spend a lot of time on three paws. Female wolves might reasonably advise a young wolf to model himself after the top wolf...but this would be naive. A young wolf modeling the three-paw stance would never be mistaken for the alpha wolf. So too a human should be wary of advice to “just be himself and not hide his emotions. like John Mayer”. That would be bad advice. (Wolf behavior made up on the spot by me [I think] as an analogy.)
I recommend browsing through this site and isolating those posts which will least make him feel bad, and sharing those.
I think there is plenty of potential to be tapped from this field—as long as it’s not coming from the wrong place.
What I’m concerned about is hard to describe, but what first springs to mind is what the opposite problem would look like.
Lets pretend we were a mostly-female group trying to attract men, and somebody suggested “well, we know what attracts men, ladies taking their clothes off!”
While I’m sure the membership would increase… it might not be quite the dynamic we’re aiming for. I think the same would happen if we tried to apply “attracting women” suggestions that are brought from the “only trying to have sex with them” subset of PUA
I am aware, though, as you have reiterated, that there are several fields of PUA that are more about understanding what women really want (even if they don’t know themselves).
I would actually, treally ruly (even though I’m a woman) be interested in hearing some suggestions based on knowledge gathered by these people.
Would you be willing to put in some work tracking down stuff in this subset of the field and coming up with some suggestions based on it?
(I remember a thread a while back that I won’t link where a woman was trying to give advice but it was clear she did not meet this standard and so failed to deconfuse anyone who wasn’t already deconfused.)
was this person doing this because she was a woman… or because she had a common lack of a particular social skill (just like many non-women)?
When I read comments like this, I’m reminded of this xkcd comic
I do have things to suggest, but they were for narrower subgoals. (I was going to suggest something like, when it comes to being communities, that there needed to be some way to credibly signal that men have the same potential for commitment that they expect out of churchmen, but that’s not helpful for a nascent group that isn’t at the full community level yet.)
No, the problem with self-censorship is that you don’t get the chance to see the controversial speech in the first place, and if you’ve been here long, you know how muted such speech is going to be.
Like I said before, I don’t have expertise on PUA, but I do have expertise on the phenomenon—that of being unable to convey an understanding. Recent comment on the matter. For starters, the most common problem with women giving such advice is that they tell men what they want (i.e., if they already were attracted to a man, what would be “icing on the cake”) rather than what would work (i.e. what actually attracts them),
So, you should first make sure you have introspected on what exactly your desires are, to the point that when you say, “do this not that”, you know why he should do this rather than that, so that he can assimilate an actual understanding and be able to make such inferences without your help. (I remember a thread a while back that I won’t link where a woman was trying to give advice but it was clear she did not meet this standard and so failed to deconfuse anyone who wasn’t already deconfused.)
Your brother will not mind getting advice from his younger sister—men do far more self-debasing things to level up in this department—so long as your advice is actually effective (not the “icing on the cake” type I described above) and grounded in serious introspection rather than just giving socially acceptable platitudes.
Serious introspection is very important. One problem is that what comes to mind for behaviors correlated with attractiveness are those correlated with maximum attractiveness, and behaviors associated with maximum attractiveness are correlated with that because they are otherwise generally unattractive behaviors that are being conspicuously overcome by the maximally attractive.
Imagine a wolf pack in which the males fought for positions in the hierarchy. The lowest ranked make might signal his harmlessness to the other low-ranked males by failing to plant his feet when among the pack, thereby making himself disadvantaged in any fight, and we might find him frequently standing on three legs. The top male might conspicuously display his unconcern with challengers by failing to plant his fourth paw and spend a lot of time on three paws. Female wolves might reasonably advise a young wolf to model himself after the top wolf...but this would be naive. A young wolf modeling the three-paw stance would never be mistaken for the alpha wolf. So too a human should be wary of advice to “just be himself and not hide his emotions. like John Mayer”. That would be bad advice. (Wolf behavior made up on the spot by me [I think] as an analogy.)
I recommend browsing through this site and isolating those posts which will least make him feel bad, and sharing those.
I think there is plenty of potential to be tapped from this field—as long as it’s not coming from the wrong place.
What I’m concerned about is hard to describe, but what first springs to mind is what the opposite problem would look like.
Lets pretend we were a mostly-female group trying to attract men, and somebody suggested “well, we know what attracts men, ladies taking their clothes off!”
While I’m sure the membership would increase… it might not be quite the dynamic we’re aiming for. I think the same would happen if we tried to apply “attracting women” suggestions that are brought from the “only trying to have sex with them” subset of PUA
I am aware, though, as you have reiterated, that there are several fields of PUA that are more about understanding what women really want (even if they don’t know themselves).
I would actually, treally ruly (even though I’m a woman) be interested in hearing some suggestions based on knowledge gathered by these people.
Would you be willing to put in some work tracking down stuff in this subset of the field and coming up with some suggestions based on it?
Just nitpicking but
was this person doing this because she was a woman… or because she had a common lack of a particular social skill (just like many non-women)?
When I read comments like this, I’m reminded of this xkcd comic