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The doer alone learneth.

Friedrich Nietzsche (from Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

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We are creatures of habit. Life is a succession of habits. Smash the bad ones, inculcate new ones. Human psychology can be your best friend or your worst enemy.

This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time.

~ Slender Man

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If you're weak and shy and submissive, get over it.

David DeAngelo

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Alex Hotseat 2: Content Highlights

In response to criticism following the Alex Hotseat review, I've decided to include a bit more of the actual content of the Hotseat. As a preamble, this is not anywhere near a minute-by-minute breakdown of either day’s events: merely two personal highlights I chose to analyse. Personally, since post-production for each feature film and compilation reel took Alex approximately seventy two hours, with the footage itself the result of months of work, I'd say this more than a fair compromise. As a note to the reader: an important aspect of Alex's approach to game that you will want to bear in mind is that you should just let yourself be a bit more relaxed and allow yourself room for error in pushing your comfort zone more than usual. As I believe I mentioned last post, Julien was quoted by Alex following a conversation at the back in saying 'I never realised how retarded your verbals are'. Though he got a laugh from the crowd, it's no joke...

Example One - Bearded Joe’s Boyfriend

A week on and I’m spending more nights out now enjoying being relaxed in-field. Obviously an important component of this is being amongst friends, whether they're into game or not. Bearded Joe is the nickname of one such friend of Alex’s, and make no mistake he's a solid wingman. Wherever you see the guys' fluffy face come into view, you can pretty much be assured you're about to bear witness to some A-grade winging.

One such occasion occurs somewhere near the end of the night. On this occasion, bearded Joe is standing with Alex, the two of them repugnantly shooting the shit, when along walks by a blond Finnish supermodel. She's accompanied by a guy friend, but expectantly it's not two minutes into the interaction before bearded Joe is off physically escalating with the guy. My attention focused on this wonderful piece of comedy, the cameramen adjust their angle to focus on Alex.

As he proceeds to begin talking about his job where he 'teaches guys how not to be retarded’ (at photography - his personal hobby and routine to minimise questions and have to try to explain what he does for a living), the guy reappears - Bearded Joe in tow - to check up on the girl he's 'with' and generally be a bit butthurt. Bearded Joe draws him away again and the girl, expectantly, starts getting caught up trying to justify how dweeby and pathetic all Finnish guys are (sigh). Alex gets her number, before he and bearded Joe let them on their merry way.

Having just winged his buddy Alex like a master, almost K-closing the dude, Bearded Joe wins the last line in this segment of the film: 'that was fucked up... He was actually really into it.' Having recently had the best time out in a good long while this week with a wingman myself, I can safely say I wouldn't have even stuck around until the end of the night, let alone closed without another guy there who I'd met at free tour and thus knew was on the same wavelength.

Obviously, for building that core self-confidence integral to Tyler’s perspective, there's nothing better for you than going it solo. But the advantages of having even just the one friend are obvious: you can be much less outcome dependent; you have an authentic DHV as you're no longer just the loner in a nightclub chasing women and you potentially have a partner in crime that will help you with obstacles, from the 'nutritionally undisciplined' friend, to the chode chapherones.

Example Two – The First Set Of The Night

As I've pointed out, my wingman this week mainly helped make the night pleasant enough during otherwise quiet moments; I was therefore willing to stick around and get the girl working alongside him as the club entered closing time. Now one of the reasons my game is still largely incomparable with the sets Alex featured in Hotseat is because his wingmen are called assistants and carry cameras. You could argue either way that this puts pressure on Alex to perform well or mindfucks him into state. What he emphasised in the commentary clips is that he had to learn to screen for logistics really well and fast when filming for Hotseat.

This in mind, it's still possible - but very unlikely given other sets where he stuck around about four times longer than the average guy there would have done - that he bailed prematurely on his first set of the night in his second feature film. But this itself, assuming you take his word, is a demonstration of his understanding of the game. It's no spoiler to me that he hooked up with an 8 going on a 9, in my opinion, later on, but seeing him turn down a set re-emphasised how you really do have to start seeing the night as a whole.

One of Alex’s commandments contrasts with a misinterpretation about the idea in the 'old school' pickup community of frame control. You have to discount shit tests and keep laying down DHV stories and positive emotional spikes to build attraction. 'Attraction is not a choice' as a mantra from the mouth of Mystery himself, is backed up questionably (or arguably, depending how much you take this shit seriously) by evolutionary psychology.

The sad fact is that I unfortunately took this misconception and made it the centerpiece of, not just game, but my life to some extent, ironically becoming a somewhat insecure authoritarian type with no emotional spectrum and scarcity. This example illustrates that such a way of viewing a set and indeed your life is fundamentally retarded - you cannot control the world, only the frame you lay down. So if you find you're getting obsessed with laying down positive emotions and still not getting results you want, just one night a week try and do something retarded like talking about your cat that died or something. The most retarded part of game is that sometimes when you're not even trying shit just works.

“Always work twenty bpm above what’s required, then you can comfortably pull back when it’s showtime.” ~ coit105

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Alex Hotseat Review - Just Be A Man

Given that one of Tylers' pointers to newbies was 'to get out of your mothers' basement and go out', the last place you might expect to find a group of RSD members/fans would be the basement of a Hilton hotel through the early evening in the midst of a high street. Yet this unlikely hovel provided the setting that Alex, one of RSDs most dedicated coaches and veteran of the community, decided to provide his students with over a recent weekend.

His free tour speech on the Thursday leading up to it went surprisingly deep for what I expected from the guy, and it's not something he's uncomfortable doing, if the weekends' events themselves were anything to go by. He played extended reels ('feature films') of sets he'd game throughout a night, every so often interspersing the raw footage, sometimes from multiple angles, with commentary either as a pre-recorded part of the feature or spontaneously and live as he saw fit throughout. What you got, then, was a real presentation.

It's not as though this was the Alex show, however. He began both days at 1pm and rounded off with encouragement and inspiration to go out at 10: applying whatever it was you might have learned. He even provided ample opportunity for one-on-one questions, which were the only occasions when he quietly delved off-topic somewhat; he showed off his skills in a car racing game for his tablet and flicked through some of his top holiday snaps.

This free and easy attitude was not something that lost him respect or command over the crowd either. The vigilance and mature patience was something that you just don't get in a regular lecture. It was a truly respectful and hospitable learning environment for a topic everybody there was obviously eager to learn. It's really difficult to find something to fault with the Hotseat.

Especially when you consider the fact that every facet of game was covered to some degree. If Alex himself didn't step in, by pausing the footage to speak or letting the pre-recorded narrations play by themselves, he was laying bare his mindset with his unique HUD. Julien - a surprisingly complementary companion for the duration of his London stay - may or may not have called his verbals unbelievably retarded at one point in the back of the room. But it's clear when you see his various post-production annotations on screen that the whole time Alex - words or no words - knew what he was doing or at least had the background to make his product work for whatever part of pickup you're familiar with.

With such an innovative display of his understanding of game fundamentals, he needn't have paused it every so often to go into a brief tangent on why the logistics meant this girl probably wasn't going to be down or to point out that in fact he at least partly owes this set to his wingman flirting with the dude she's with...

Yet he did.

Multiple times.

Personally, I found I learned the most from his day game clips, but really in two days he covered everything I can imagine you'd need to know about. If I'd paid the 185 pounds for it, there's no way I'd have asked for a refund and that he spontaneously handed me the programme for free on Thursday was probably too much validation for my ego, since I bailed with only a few hours of the 'bonus day' (Sunday) reels to go in order to head home and analyse some recent approaches. Regardless, I'd definitely recommend you keep an eye out for Alex’s content from here on out and take commandment #1 of his manifesto with you into every set, because he certainly did and there's no doubt the guy's a winner.

“Always work twenty bpm above what’s required, then you can comfortably pull back when it’s showtime.” ~ coit105

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Watch your thoughts for they become words. Watch your words for they become actions. Watch your actions for they become habits. Watch your habits for they become your character.

Margaret Thatcher

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Preliminary thoughts on Mystery Method

Since getting out of a long relationship, I have discovered that being single is both easier and harder than I expected. It is easier to be emotionally alone than I thought it would be – and, frankly, if I’d known that earlier I would have ended the relationship sooner. But it is harder to be sexually promiscuous than I thought, too – I can’t escape the feeling that I could be doing a lot better than I am if I had a better social technique.

These two discoveries have led me to Game, via some friends, and bloggers like Heartiste (aka Roissy) and a few other manosphere bloggers. (As a side-note: the manosphere is not to be conflated with the Mens’ Rights Activist movement; my impression is that they are quite significantly different. I generally regard MRAs as victim complexes with little interesting to say; I think the manosphere often has some very important insights that I don’t see elsewhere.) 

So, on the recommendation of Heartiste, I picked up a copy of The Mystery Method. These are my thoughts about it so far – with the VERY BIG proviso that I haven’t really ‘field tested’ any of this: It is interesting to see the stages of pick-up described as mechanically as Mystery does it. TMM breaks pick-ups into three stages – Attraction, Comfort, Seduction – which each has three sub-stages. For an utter neophyte, this is extremely reassuring and makes the book at least *feel* quite useful.  It is a lot more of a handbook than some of the other Game stuff I’ve come across. The Real Social Dynamics stuff I’ve had recommended to me by friends on this blog has seemed interesting but shallow; at times the Blueprint Decoded videos feel like a very verbose and long-winded way of saying “be confident”. Yes, OK. But how? In that respect TMM is far more helpful. A lot of the canned lines in the book seem utterly ludicrous, and not only can I never imagine myself saying any of them, I cannot imagine ANYONE saying them. I’m not sure if this is a cultural thing (i.e. Americans say the funniest things), a time thing (maybe when this was written sounding like a cheesy moron was the ‘in’ thing) or a class/education thing. As with a lot of Game stuff I’ve read, there is a certain assumption of physical confidence that I suspect is necessary for a lot of things to work. There are a few references to ‘maintaining frame’, which I gather is more to do with self-assuredness, but I think an innate, confident body language that is rarely referred to explicitly is much more important here than is suggested. It feels good to read the ‘original’ PUA manual. Yes, I know Mystery isn’t really the original, but for my purposes it’s enjoyable to read a foundational text, even if a lot of it is a bit naff and useless. Even the naff and useless things probably have an element of truth to them. I’m a bit more than half way through TMM. Once I try it out in the field a bit and finish the book I’ll write a follow-up post here. ~ Underhill

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The gratification comes in the doing, not in the results.

James Dean

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Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.

Søren Kierkegaard

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Identity is not static

Following constructive feedback, I've decided to reel back a little bit and go back to the basics of biology and self-motivation. Call me a traditionalist, but I like natural selection; the idea of evolution can really put you in your place. This is hardly something that applies to anyone and everyone - all I really can say is it keeps me modest in times when I'd otherwise be going crazy getting high off myself. We all know that feeling by now.

Of course, modern biologists have to maintain their modesty in order to retain the philosophical rigour of Darwin, Mendel and other founding fathers of contemporary biology. If they didn't, they'd be called out through the processes of the scientific method and their reputation would be put at stake. For career biologists, this could essentially mean hours and hours of work would be undone due to not maintaining consistency. There is, however, a controversy amongst biologists that even modesty can't solve. The line is still yet to be drawn over what constitutes a species. It might not sound important, but the fact is there are idiots in the world who are trying to displace their frustrations by essentially continuing the debate over what constitutes a race under a more euphemistic title. At least, that's my take on the issue. Take it or leave it. It's not the point I want to address here.

What I do want to talk about is what other groups around the world identify as. Take the Tarahumara. In their native tongue, it means running people. If you have time to watch the link, you can see why. Drinking is a lifestyle for them, but the beer is more carbohydrate than alcohol, as is highlighted, in order to help them run extremely long distances. The rest of their entire culture revolves around this theme, hence their linguistic association with their central activity.

What I'm trying to get at is that what you identify as is as valid as you want to make it. Robert Greene can write as many books as he wants, but 10,000 hours may not be enough, or in fact may be far too much, for you to consider yourself accomplished at whatever it is you're aiming towards. Hell, if some of the brightest minds of our day can't define when a homo sapien begins and ends then a Tarahumara begins whenever the fuck people start calling him/her a Tarahumara.

Last year, when I started getting into meditation (to a greater extent than more rounded self-development), a close friend of mine remarked that I was really coming into my element. I knew she was right, because I'd worked at just letting myself be. A bit too hard as some of my own peers reviewing this may be able to attest... But two quotes come to mind in this vein, from my old boss and my driving instructor respectively. As I leave you with them, I can only hope that anyone reading this has the capacity to recognise the truth in them whilst also staying mindful of the fact that quotes on the Tumblr are usually unreliable, incredibly out of context and misassigned.

'Mate, I influence what I can. What I can't, I leave to the rest of the world, but what I can influence, I will.' - Karl Marx

'When you're on the road, let the other driver focus on what his car is doing and you focus on what your car is doing. That is how the rules of the road run.' - Ghandi

Seriously now, stay excellent this Saturday night dudes :)

“Always work twenty bpm above what’s required, then you can comfortably pull back when it’s showtime.” ~ coit105

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The richer and more various the substance that is combined, the more sublime is the resulting form.

William von Humboldt

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Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not from within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

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Love has always been a mockery / Of those in love and scared to be lonely.

"Love is Greed" by Passion Pit

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Red-arsed shit testers

Ok, so my last post was a bit of a stretch for a debut. I’ve been out, or chasing a target, every night for almost two weeks now and have some information for you; I stand by what I finished on. It has to feel like a matter of life and death or else you may as well give up. I remember watching this video in second year, when I wasn’t meditating through my (apparently alcoholic) lecturer’s odd ramblings about various cute mammals and thinking how bad the baboon’s frame control was.

I was out a couple of weeks ago and managed to casually build a beautiful amount of social momentum before I found a target. I was in the midst of the fucking shit testers, shoving their red arses all up on me (literally, I had her on my lap in an arm chair at one point and they were scrambling over each other for room on the arms on either side). I only surrendered when someone came in for a hug and announced to us two quietly that she was suffering from a serious illness in a sombre tone. Still don’t know if it was a shit test or not.

‘Life or death’ mentality cursed me that night...

I didn’t want to burn the bridges that night and risk looking like a dick in front of a lot of dudes I usually respect. For those of you familiar with Tylers’ video from some time ago where he uses the analogy of the cave man that kills then buttfucks a lion and found it as hilarious as I did, this analogy should ring your bell good too. Later on in that video, Derrick (or the guy off shot talking to Tyler) mentions that if you’re not willing to go that far you didn’t deserve the girl and, as Marxist as it sounds, I have to concede this point – if you don’t clock in the raw labour, you won’t get the high value targets.

To sum up then: go out; hit those 40:1 odds; walk out of the situation a beastly leopard who proved his point and avoid angering tribes of Derricks’ students on the way home unless you’re down for a necro-bestial gangbang.

��Always work twenty bpm above what’s required, then you can comfortably pull back when it’s showtime.” ~ coit105

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Lifestyle protection.

Nas, referring to condoms

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While we speak, envious time will have already fled: seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.

Horace