I’m surprised by your reaction. You list only general benefits in social interaction and none yet in actual attraction, so I mostly asked my question, because you aimed the recommendation so specifically at straight men.
Do you think the improvements in social interaction you noticed are not big enough on their own to justify a recommendation, or do you think that anyone that is not a straight male would not get those same benefits out of it?
I think that if you’re not a straight male you might not get the same benefits. You might get something, but it wouldn’t be worth watching a twenty hour video series unless you have time to spare. It’s sort of hard to explain why I feel this way. The best I can say is that the discussion and atmosphere is very man-centric, and even if some of the advice applies to women as well, it would be hard to have it hit on an emotional level, hard to differentiate between things that would and wouldn’t apply to women, and hard to sit through all the discussion of nightclubs and getting laid to the relevant stuff.
Or, here’s another angle. The program goes something like “women are primarily attracted to men who are assertive, independent, confident, and leaderlike—the ‘alpha male’. Now I will spend hours upon hours talking about what this type of attractive man would do in a club. Okay, have you internalized this attitude yet? Surprise, you are now a little closer to becoming this independent, confident, leaderlike man, and this will help you in areas outside of women, as a nice bonus!” Can you see why this approach might not work for women?
If you still want to watch it, by all means download it and check out the first few hours for yourself, I might be wrong. But don’t blame me if you don’t find it useful. d:
EDIT: Apparently everyone disagrees with me, so maybe you should in fact go ahead and check it out. This is just my intuition, I guess.
The program goes something like “women are primarily attracted to men who are assertive, independent, confident, and leaderlike—the ‘alpha male’. Now I will spend hours upon hours talking about what this type of attractive man would do in a club. Okay, have you internalized this attitude yet?
It almost sounds like you must have watched a different movie series than I did. Or, perhaps, different parts felt salient to you than felt salient to me due to different pre-existing abstractions and intentions when watching. (Your testimony is useful to me.)
Well, there is that part at the beginning where he says “this program is like a secret code with many layers, each time you watch this you will find an entirely different message within”, etc.
I feel like the thing about leadership/dominance/confidence/assertiveness/independence is that it’s a wholly desirable trait for men. If you have it, women will want to have sex with you, men will want to be your friend, and employers will want to hire you.
But women have to deal with the dual memeplexes of traditional patriarchy and modern-day feminism present in our culture. Having this trait is probably not strictly desirable for women—there are pros and cons, sometimes it’ll come in handy, sometimes it’ll put people off. (I imagine.)
I kind of assume that a well-rounded woman should both be able to show indipendence/confidence, and have the social skills of a good team-player and negotiator. If commonly reported anecdotes are any guide, these qualities are not really fostered by either of these memeplexes. Conservative/traditional social norms do little more than stunt women’s confidence and assertiveness, but modern feminism does not really encourage them to be more assertive; it just makes them more rude and complaining, even in intimate contexts where this would otherwise be seen as highly inappropriate. Few people would describe an old curmudgeon as “independent”, “assertive” and “confident”, but somehow this description gets applied to women who do not behave in an appreciably different way.
What’s most likely is that becoming “awesome” in this context requires learning a complex set of strategies, which can’t be boiled down to any simple ideology. Men actually tend to face comparable issues, which is why you tend to see such a sharp divergence between “nice pushovers” and “naturally confident, overly aggressive jerks”—well-rounded personalities (i.e. not a pushover, but not inclined to physical aggression either) do exist, but they are comparatively rare. Some PUA practitioners have suggested that the women they approach can intuitively tell that they have such a conflation of good traits, and find it especially attractive.
but modern feminism does not really encourage them to be more assertive; it just makes them more rude and complaining, even in intimate contexts where this would otherwise be seen as highly inappropriate
I… really don’t see why this would be true. This kind of sounds like something a misogynist would come up to justify their beliefs. (Not to imply that you’re a misogynist, just that it feels to me like you might have absorbed a misogynist meme and forgotten to question it.)
Men actually tend to have comparable issues, which is why you tend to see such a sharp divergence between “nice pushovers” and “naturally confident, overly aggressive jerks”. Well-rounded personalities (i.e. not a pushover, but not inclined to physical aggression either) do exist, but they are comparatively rare.
In a way, being an asshole often comes from insecurity, and so can be a sign of lacking confidence/etc.. I sort of feel like the coolest, winning-est, most comfortable in their own skin dudes are probably also going to be some of the nicest.
But then of course there obviously also exist plenty of alpha male types who are assholes because they don’t really care and can get away with it. In the end, I think niceness and confidence are mostly orthogonal traits.
Well, admittedly, I was going by reasonably widespread anecdotal evidence. You’re right that this is something that could be used to make feminism look bad, but—speaking personally here—it struck me as the sort of thing that’s quite likely to happen as a purely unintended consequence, with no bearing on the broader issue of feminism as a social or political movement.
Unfortunately, it can be hard to find more nuanced or evidence-based treatments of such issues, because things like feminism tend to have strong halo effects or ugh fields attached to them; most folks will think of them of “good things” or “bad things” altogether, but not many will “pull the ropes sideways” in order to improve overall outcomes in win-win ways.
In a way, being an asshole often comes from insecurity, and so can be a sign of lacking confidence/etc..
The thing is, many insecure folks find that being more of an asshole is an eminently viable way of making up for their insecurity, since it gives them some situational confidence, or something which can substitute for it—hence they never bother to fix the more basic issue. I agree that some especially cool and confident guys are quite nice; they can afford to be, after all. But my worry is that this might be a rare occurrence.
Well, admittedly, I was going by reasonably widespread anecdotal evidence. You’re right that this is something that could be used to make feminism look bad, but—speaking personally here—it struck me as the sort of thing that’s quite likely to happen as a purely unintended consequence, with no bearing on the broader issue of feminism as a social or political movement.
It seems hard to imagine that feminism wouldn’t make women more assertive and confident at all, only rude and whiny. I don’t see how that would work in theory, and I don’t see what real life evidence would lead you to that conclusion. Unfortunately I have no idea how you would attempt to empirically try to figure out the validity of this claim.
Anecdata: last year I went to a hippie school where out of two hundred students or so there wasn’t a single “out of the closet” Republican, so it’s probably fair to say that feminism was pretty big. The girls there were all unusually very assertive/confident/leaderlike, and yet I didn’t get the feeling that they were ever rude or whiny, although I’m not one hundred percent sure what behavior you’re picturing. I never saw anyone yell at a man for doing anything un-feminist, if that’s what you’re talking about, except for maybe one or two exceptions. The girls at the normal school I went to before that were probably ruder overall—a lot of “bitchy hot girl” types.
The thing is, many insecure folks find that being more of an asshole is an eminently viable way of making up for their insecurity, since it gives them some situational confidence, or something which can substitute for it—hence they never bother to fix the more basic issue. I agree that some especially cool and confident guys are quite nice; they can afford to be, after all. But my worry is that this might be a rare occurrence.
I sort of feel like when you’re “living in reaction”, as Tyler might say, your level of niceness almost has more to do with the defense mechanism you choose than it does what you actually think of other people. Being nice is submission, being an asshole is self-handicapping. But if you’re confident enough that you can actually be free to act in the way you want, then you’ll be nice if you actually value other people’s happiness, and an asshole otherwise. (This is an over-simplification, obviously.)
For what it’s worth, I feel like the nicest guys I’ve ever met have all been very cool and confident, and the biggest assholes I’ve met have been spread across nerds and cool guys. The biggest asshole I’ve ever hung out with was a very alpha dude, but a few months after I met him I heard that he tried to kill himself and was finishing high school in a rehab facility, or something like that. So there’s more anecdata, I guess.
For what it’s worth, I feel like the nicest guys I’ve ever met have all been very cool and confident, and the biggest assholes I’ve met have been spread across nerds and cool guys.
Note that this is what I would expect a human to perceive even if the cool, confident, tall, attractive or powerful people in question were either equally nice or slightly crueller than their lower status counterparts.
but modern feminism does not really encourage them to be more assertive; it just makes them more rude and complaining, even in intimate contexts where this would otherwise be seen as highly inappropriate
I… really don’t see why this would be true. This kind of sounds like something a misogynist would come up to justify their beliefs. (Not to imply that you’re a misogynist, just that it feels to me like you might have absorbed a misogynist meme and forgotten to question it.)
The error seems to be overstatement of the degree to which those two traits are incompatible. The claim after the ‘just’ is true but does not (in theory or practice) exclude also encouraging more assertiveness. In fact, practicing being rude would likely result in more assertiveness via the mechanism of comfort zone expansion.
It depends on what you mean by “assertiveness”. On a broad reading of the word, there is basically no sharp distinction between assertiveness and just plain meanness, rudeness or even manipulation—it really all depends on how broad your “comfort zone” is! A strict reading of “assertiveness” would require markedly higher standards which cross into negotiation skills, such as being pointedly aware of other parties’ positions and interests, and perhaps expressly acknowledging them. This meaning tends to be more commonly used these days, especially in combination with other useful skills such as confidence and independence.
Thanks for explaining. I suspect I might be put off by it, based on the way you described it earlier and here, but if I might benefit from it I’d like to give it a chance. I would like to be more assertive, independent and confident, just not with the goal of attracting women. Based on this and the other responses I think I’ll give it a shot.
I won’t be able to get a hold of it now, but I’ll check it out once I can.
I’m surprised by your reaction. You list only general benefits in social interaction and none yet in actual attraction, so I mostly asked my question, because you aimed the recommendation so specifically at straight men.
Do you think the improvements in social interaction you noticed are not big enough on their own to justify a recommendation, or do you think that anyone that is not a straight male would not get those same benefits out of it?
I think that if you’re not a straight male you might not get the same benefits. You might get something, but it wouldn’t be worth watching a twenty hour video series unless you have time to spare. It’s sort of hard to explain why I feel this way. The best I can say is that the discussion and atmosphere is very man-centric, and even if some of the advice applies to women as well, it would be hard to have it hit on an emotional level, hard to differentiate between things that would and wouldn’t apply to women, and hard to sit through all the discussion of nightclubs and getting laid to the relevant stuff.
Or, here’s another angle. The program goes something like “women are primarily attracted to men who are assertive, independent, confident, and leaderlike—the ‘alpha male’. Now I will spend hours upon hours talking about what this type of attractive man would do in a club. Okay, have you internalized this attitude yet? Surprise, you are now a little closer to becoming this independent, confident, leaderlike man, and this will help you in areas outside of women, as a nice bonus!” Can you see why this approach might not work for women?
If you still want to watch it, by all means download it and check out the first few hours for yourself, I might be wrong. But don’t blame me if you don’t find it useful. d:
EDIT: Apparently everyone disagrees with me, so maybe you should in fact go ahead and check it out. This is just my intuition, I guess.
It almost sounds like you must have watched a different movie series than I did. Or, perhaps, different parts felt salient to you than felt salient to me due to different pre-existing abstractions and intentions when watching. (Your testimony is useful to me.)
Well, there is that part at the beginning where he says “this program is like a secret code with many layers, each time you watch this you will find an entirely different message within”, etc.
It depends on whom they are trying to attract. (I do like independent, confident, leaderlike women, but I guess the majority of men don’t.)
I feel like the thing about leadership/dominance/confidence/assertiveness/independence is that it’s a wholly desirable trait for men. If you have it, women will want to have sex with you, men will want to be your friend, and employers will want to hire you.
But women have to deal with the dual memeplexes of traditional patriarchy and modern-day feminism present in our culture. Having this trait is probably not strictly desirable for women—there are pros and cons, sometimes it’ll come in handy, sometimes it’ll put people off. (I imagine.)
I kind of assume that a well-rounded woman should both be able to show indipendence/confidence, and have the social skills of a good team-player and negotiator. If commonly reported anecdotes are any guide, these qualities are not really fostered by either of these memeplexes. Conservative/traditional social norms do little more than stunt women’s confidence and assertiveness, but modern feminism does not really encourage them to be more assertive; it just makes them more rude and complaining, even in intimate contexts where this would otherwise be seen as highly inappropriate. Few people would describe an old curmudgeon as “independent”, “assertive” and “confident”, but somehow this description gets applied to women who do not behave in an appreciably different way.
What’s most likely is that becoming “awesome” in this context requires learning a complex set of strategies, which can’t be boiled down to any simple ideology. Men actually tend to face comparable issues, which is why you tend to see such a sharp divergence between “nice pushovers” and “naturally confident, overly aggressive jerks”—well-rounded personalities (i.e. not a pushover, but not inclined to physical aggression either) do exist, but they are comparatively rare. Some PUA practitioners have suggested that the women they approach can intuitively tell that they have such a conflation of good traits, and find it especially attractive.
I… really don’t see why this would be true. This kind of sounds like something a misogynist would come up to justify their beliefs. (Not to imply that you’re a misogynist, just that it feels to me like you might have absorbed a misogynist meme and forgotten to question it.)
In a way, being an asshole often comes from insecurity, and so can be a sign of lacking confidence/etc.. I sort of feel like the coolest, winning-est, most comfortable in their own skin dudes are probably also going to be some of the nicest.
But then of course there obviously also exist plenty of alpha male types who are assholes because they don’t really care and can get away with it. In the end, I think niceness and confidence are mostly orthogonal traits.
Well, admittedly, I was going by reasonably widespread anecdotal evidence. You’re right that this is something that could be used to make feminism look bad, but—speaking personally here—it struck me as the sort of thing that’s quite likely to happen as a purely unintended consequence, with no bearing on the broader issue of feminism as a social or political movement.
Unfortunately, it can be hard to find more nuanced or evidence-based treatments of such issues, because things like feminism tend to have strong halo effects or ugh fields attached to them; most folks will think of them of “good things” or “bad things” altogether, but not many will “pull the ropes sideways” in order to improve overall outcomes in win-win ways.
The thing is, many insecure folks find that being more of an asshole is an eminently viable way of making up for their insecurity, since it gives them some situational confidence, or something which can substitute for it—hence they never bother to fix the more basic issue. I agree that some especially cool and confident guys are quite nice; they can afford to be, after all. But my worry is that this might be a rare occurrence.
It seems hard to imagine that feminism wouldn’t make women more assertive and confident at all, only rude and whiny. I don’t see how that would work in theory, and I don’t see what real life evidence would lead you to that conclusion. Unfortunately I have no idea how you would attempt to empirically try to figure out the validity of this claim.
Anecdata: last year I went to a hippie school where out of two hundred students or so there wasn’t a single “out of the closet” Republican, so it’s probably fair to say that feminism was pretty big. The girls there were all unusually very assertive/confident/leaderlike, and yet I didn’t get the feeling that they were ever rude or whiny, although I’m not one hundred percent sure what behavior you’re picturing. I never saw anyone yell at a man for doing anything un-feminist, if that’s what you’re talking about, except for maybe one or two exceptions. The girls at the normal school I went to before that were probably ruder overall—a lot of “bitchy hot girl” types.
I sort of feel like when you’re “living in reaction”, as Tyler might say, your level of niceness almost has more to do with the defense mechanism you choose than it does what you actually think of other people. Being nice is submission, being an asshole is self-handicapping. But if you’re confident enough that you can actually be free to act in the way you want, then you’ll be nice if you actually value other people’s happiness, and an asshole otherwise. (This is an over-simplification, obviously.)
For what it’s worth, I feel like the nicest guys I’ve ever met have all been very cool and confident, and the biggest assholes I’ve met have been spread across nerds and cool guys. The biggest asshole I’ve ever hung out with was a very alpha dude, but a few months after I met him I heard that he tried to kill himself and was finishing high school in a rehab facility, or something like that. So there’s more anecdata, I guess.
Note that this is what I would expect a human to perceive even if the cool, confident, tall, attractive or powerful people in question were either equally nice or slightly crueller than their lower status counterparts.
Good point, I forgot about that.
The error seems to be overstatement of the degree to which those two traits are incompatible. The claim after the ‘just’ is true but does not (in theory or practice) exclude also encouraging more assertiveness. In fact, practicing being rude would likely result in more assertiveness via the mechanism of comfort zone expansion.
It depends on what you mean by “assertiveness”. On a broad reading of the word, there is basically no sharp distinction between assertiveness and just plain meanness, rudeness or even manipulation—it really all depends on how broad your “comfort zone” is! A strict reading of “assertiveness” would require markedly higher standards which cross into negotiation skills, such as being pointedly aware of other parties’ positions and interests, and perhaps expressly acknowledging them. This meaning tends to be more commonly used these days, especially in combination with other useful skills such as confidence and independence.
I think that mindslaver-like situations may be more frequent in real life than you think.
Thanks for explaining. I suspect I might be put off by it, based on the way you described it earlier and here, but if I might benefit from it I’d like to give it a chance. I would like to be more assertive, independent and confident, just not with the goal of attracting women. Based on this and the other responses I think I’ll give it a shot.
I won’t be able to get a hold of it now, but I’ll check it out once I can.