The advocacy of ‘confidence’ in this context is properly about alief, not belief. You can appear and feel confident while also being well-calibrated with respect to the consequences of your social moves. Incidentally, I have to agree that the advice from reddit is high-risk—I would not support it unless perhaps you had very strong evidence that the woman is attracted to you, but even then, some residual risk remains.
I disagree about the externality from unwanted interaction being “priced out”, since freaking people out is something guys would want to avoid at all costs.
I read a lot of PUA advice as basically counselling guys like this: there’s nothing to lose from an unsuccessful approach, you know that, so update your aliefs accordingly. The downside’s all in your head. So, they agree guys start by worrying about freaking people out, but their line of thinking is that that doesn’t actually matter. Except, that part is all tacit. I think the prominent men writing the advice are mostly very low empathy, so they don’t actually understand why normal guys have that aversion.
Second, I see what you’re saying, in that you don’t have to be nervous while you make some well-calibrated move. But, a move that offers a graceful out is going to be less confident, too, just along a slightly different dimension. I’ll get personal here: I use online dating sites, and I’m a bi male. So I make and receive advances quite regularly.
Going through my message history on a popular site that isn’t exclusively about casual sex, this advance slightly irritated me, and I didn’t reply:
Sydney_fella80: top or bottom?
Here’s how I phrased a message with basically the same intent, to a girl who said she was on the site for NSA sex, and partially indicated her interests:
Hey,
I find you quite fantastically hot, and I’ve always wanted to hook up with a top girl (and bottom for one, specifically). I’m pretty far from your stated type though, so no worries if you’re not keen. If not, just take this as some NSA admiration.
Cheers
Matt.
I gave her an easy out by raising a likely reason to decline my advance for her—which she took, in a very friendly reply. The message was confident in the sense that it suggested that rejection wouldn’t faze me, but was not confident at all about the advance succeeding—which is conventionally considered less attractive.
Online the stakes are really low, because you can just not reply. But a differently worded advance can still make the other person feel slightly flattered, or slightly gross.
there’s nothing to lose from an unsuccessful approach
This is mostly correct, conditional on following ‘good practices’ when approaching (and an aspiring PUA will want to do this anyway,in order to minimize effort and maximize the probability of being successful). Basically, the unstated assumption is that if you manage to freak out your ‘target’, you’re most likely doing something very, very wrong. It’s not just a numbers game.
I agree with your point about always “leaving a line of retreat”. AIUI, this is actively discussed in good PUA advice.
Line of retreat is also discussed by feminists (and I advocate it as well, and always make sure to explicitly include it.)
Also ties into the complaint of some woman (source not remembered) who seemed to be coming from a feminist framework, who complained about nerdy men who became too attached too quickly so that saying no became too costly to say to somebody she respected.
The advocacy of ‘confidence’ in this context is properly about alief, not belief. You can appear and feel confident while also being well-calibrated with respect to the consequences of your social moves. Incidentally, I have to agree that the advice from reddit is high-risk—I would not support it unless perhaps you had very strong evidence that the woman is attracted to you, but even then, some residual risk remains.
I disagree about the externality from unwanted interaction being “priced out”, since freaking people out is something guys would want to avoid at all costs.
I read a lot of PUA advice as basically counselling guys like this: there’s nothing to lose from an unsuccessful approach, you know that, so update your aliefs accordingly. The downside’s all in your head. So, they agree guys start by worrying about freaking people out, but their line of thinking is that that doesn’t actually matter. Except, that part is all tacit. I think the prominent men writing the advice are mostly very low empathy, so they don’t actually understand why normal guys have that aversion.
Second, I see what you’re saying, in that you don’t have to be nervous while you make some well-calibrated move. But, a move that offers a graceful out is going to be less confident, too, just along a slightly different dimension. I’ll get personal here: I use online dating sites, and I’m a bi male. So I make and receive advances quite regularly.
Going through my message history on a popular site that isn’t exclusively about casual sex, this advance slightly irritated me, and I didn’t reply:
Here’s how I phrased a message with basically the same intent, to a girl who said she was on the site for NSA sex, and partially indicated her interests:
I gave her an easy out by raising a likely reason to decline my advance for her—which she took, in a very friendly reply. The message was confident in the sense that it suggested that rejection wouldn’t faze me, but was not confident at all about the advance succeeding—which is conventionally considered less attractive.
Online the stakes are really low, because you can just not reply. But a differently worded advance can still make the other person feel slightly flattered, or slightly gross.
This is mostly correct, conditional on following ‘good practices’ when approaching (and an aspiring PUA will want to do this anyway,in order to minimize effort and maximize the probability of being successful). Basically, the unstated assumption is that if you manage to freak out your ‘target’, you’re most likely doing something very, very wrong. It’s not just a numbers game.
I agree with your point about always “leaving a line of retreat”. AIUI, this is actively discussed in good PUA advice.
Line of retreat is also discussed by feminists (and I advocate it as well, and always make sure to explicitly include it.)
Also ties into the complaint of some woman (source not remembered) who seemed to be coming from a feminist framework, who complained about nerdy men who became too attached too quickly so that saying no became too costly to say to somebody she respected.