My Appearance on AXN’s The Duke
August 25, 2009
This was from a few months ago, when I was featured in an episode of AXN Asia’s The Duke. The filming took place in the winter. It was all sort of tongue-in-cheek, and we had a lot of good laughs.
The show’s hosts–Rovilson, Marc, and Eunice–were tremendous fun, totally laidback, professional, and down to earth, without any airs. And the after party was off the hook.
Thanks are due to LL for helping me burn the DVD and edit it into this clip. Enjoy!
My TV Panel on Singaporean Women
August 8, 2009
To all you Singaporeans, Happy National Day! Can’t wait for the fireworks to begin!
Here’s a fun TV show that was filmed a long time ago, but it has only just been released. You can find them on the Razor TV site here.
I’ve embedded below the last two segments and the first segment. You can see the influence of my friend, Zan, in episode 7 and of Brad P. in episode 8.
After doing quite a few TV appearances and interviews, I’ve learned a lot about the media. The number one thing is to stay positive. Some of my hardest earned lessons include:
1. Check with the hosts on set before filming begins about the nature of the questions and the general angle they will be taking. Don’t believe the assurances of the producers over email. They will say whatever they need to get you on set. I learned this the hard way from that old Shan & Rozz interview when the producers said they just wanted to interview people with interesting jobs, but then they took a somewhat hostile angle in the interview. They were all very nice off-camera, though, and Rosalyn did come around early on in the 45 minute interview.
2. Do your due diligence on the show and the hosts. This is somewhat related to #1. Prior to filming that Shan & Rozz show, I had never heard of either Shan or Rozz and knew almost nothing about Clicknetwork beyond the fact that they had only done one episode before mine and that they were an online TV station. I didn’t even think many people would see the show. I also didn’t realize that they were much more of a comedy act than an Oprah-style talk show.
3. Be very careful what you say. Err on the side of saying less. I’m still learning to control my tongue, realizing that the editors’ first and foremost priorities are their own interests. They may very well cut out your best parts and leave in your worst parts. That Shan & Rozz interview lasted about 45 minutes but was edited to a relatively strange 6 minutes.
4. Watch your health and energy levels, and feel free to back out if you’re not feeling well. I was in the middle of a flu and was full of Panadol and Red Bull during that Shan & Rozz interview. In fact, I was still sipping Red Bull right in the middle of the shooting.
I also was on a caffeine high from a big cup of Starbucks coffee right before and during this Razor TV interview. Watching the clips now, I notice I was talking pretty fast, probably too fast for my Singaporean audience, which is probably not used to my Canadian accent. Watch the caffeine intake.
Having said that, this TV filming with Jamie Yeo, Melissa, and Bryan was a lot of fun to do, and we had plenty to talk about. Enjoy! Feedback and flaming are welcome.
My Real Claim to Fame
July 27, 2009
Here’s my final column for the time being in Singapore’s second-highest circulation paper, The New Paper. I gotta say, I’m disappointed by the headline (”My many intimate dates didn’t lead to happiness”), which gives the piece a negative tone overall. Here’s a link to the article in their online edition.
Below is the original, full version of the article, with the parts that were left out of the published version in bold print.
The Real Claim to Fame
This will be my last column for a while. Ongoing writing projects have been piling up calling for my undivided attention, so I’m taking an indefinite leave of absence from contributing in this space.
Perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve learned in my journey of personal development has been the importance of thinking big and that it is never too late to pursue your dreams.
A few years ago, I was frustrated with my social life. I had been the social misfit and had never mastered those social skills that all the cool people in high school and college just seemed to know instinctively.
I embarked on a period of experimentation and learning to gain the experience and knowledge I missed out on. This involved initiating social interactions with thousands of interesting people, many of whom became my new friends.
I learned a lot about how beautiful women think and feel and about social dynamics overall. And I have endeavored to pass to others the lessons I learned.
Even more, I discovered a great deal of profound insights about myself and made some major and lasting transformations.
I learned that the most significant element in interacting with people is to be your authentic and best self. Be honest about who you are—your limitations and your strengths. As long as you are striving to improve yourself, never be ashamed. I learned that society often tries to impose its own arbitrary social norms, but that a real man determines his own reality.
It’s Never Too Late to Change
I took a stand on the things about myself that I’ve wanted to change for decades but never followed through with. At the ripe old age of 30, I got into the best shape of my life. I also took up new hobbies and learned new skills that I had wanted to pursue for many years but kept putting off. In other words, I stopped making excuses for myself and my social predicament, took responsibility for my own life, and got those parts of my life handled. I started to become my ideal self. And I have never before been happier.
Most of all, I concluded that while intimate encounters with many women may bring a lot of pleasure, it doesn’t lead to sustained happiness. So since 2008, I have instead chosen to have meaningful, long-term relationships.
Early on, during that time of social experimentation, I went on a string of intimate encounters lasting a couple of months. I had mentioned this to the reporter writing the original feature article on me that was published almost a year ago in The New Paper. But somehow the headline misleadingly proclaimed that this was my “claim to fame.”
Actually, in the international attraction industry, which does a brisk business every year in the tens of millions of US dollars, very few people even knew about that statistic. If anything, my real “claim to fame” is various innovations and advancements in a natural, direct style of interacting with women, which I have come to call, Genuine Game. It is predicated on getting yourself into the right place emotionally and mentally, and then expressing yourself honestly and with humor. For more on this, see the articles on my website.
What credentials do I have for coaching others in the social arts? The world of social coaching is unusual in that there is no governing body or set of verifiable standards. A lot of people masquerade as dating coaches. For me, usually, men start by hearing my story and identifying with it. They then read my articles and get my Dating 101 audio course. Then they derive tremendous help from them, so they know that my advice works. If they need feedback that’s more personalized, they’ll get in touch with me, and as I get to know them, I tell them exactly what I can and can’t do to help them.
While I lament the deceptive headline, I do not mean to imply that I think there is anything morally objectionable to casual encounters between mutually consenting adults, or that I have any major regrets about my past. Every man should at least have the freedom to sow his wild oats before settling down, should he choose to do so.
Those experiences contributed to make me the man I am today. Though it took me until my early thirties to figure things out socially and catch up in my facility in social dynamics, it is never too late to realize one’s dreams. Without those experiences, I would likely never have learned enough about women and myself or matured enough emotionally to approach and attract my later long-term girlfriends, who have enriched my life deeply.
While I let slip away much of my social life in high school, college, and my twenties, I now have a whole range of life opportunities open to me that I could have only dreamt of a mere five years ago.
It is never too late to become whoever you want to be.
Although I am on a writing sabbatical, you can still keep in touch with me by signing up for my mailing list, which you can find on the top right-hand corner of my website. Subscribers will get free excerpts of my forthcoming book as they become available. But sign up now as I will be closing the list to new subscribers in the very near future.
I owe a big thanks to the many loyal and supportive fans of this Dr. Date column. See you on the other side!
Dear Dr. Date,
What’s the best way to get a girl’s number?
Yours, Jerky Jeff
Dear Jeff,
This is the wrong question.
What you should really ask is, “How do I get a girl attracted to me?”
If a girl is attracted to you, it is quite easy to get her number. She may even ask you for yours first.
If she is not attracted to you, then it won’t matter how you ask, then the number doesn’t matter. If she gives you a number at all, either she will give you a fake number, or she won’t pick up or return your calls.
So how do you get a girl attracted to you? For more on this, check out the articles on my website and get a hold of the Dating 101 audio course. Let’s keep in touch, Jerky Jeff!
Required Reading
February 19, 2009
This was originally an article I wrote for Amped Asia that they posted on their website almost a month ago. I’ve just been too busy to cross-post it here until now.
The Reading List
Since the explosion of media coverage following the 2005 release of Neil Strauss’s New York Times bestseller, The Game, as well as the VH1 reality show starring pickup artists Mystery and Matador, which has finished its second season, the secret society of pickup artists has been thoroughly exposed and forced into the mainstream in America.
Yet even with the plethora of resources the secret society produces–ebooks, paperbacks, audio courses, DVD series, television shows–I find it utterly astounding that some adult American males still don’t know how to go about answering such simple questions as, “Should I pay for dinner?” or “Should I be her friend first?”
I guess this is a good thing for those who have already taken advantage of the secret society’s knowledge. Less competition.
But, c’mon! If you haven’t yet given the resources of the attraction industry a fair reading, do yourself a favor, and go check them out before you waste your time reinventing the wheel.
Perhaps the sheer amount of information available is too overwhelming. This I understand. Every month, another breakthrough product or 10-DVD series is being released. Who has that much time to go through everything?
Well, this is where one’s skills as a Ph.D. student, having learned to read a hundred books a month for one’s qualifying examinations, will certainly come in handy, LOL. But seriously, it’s amazing how many guys have supposedly read the same pages and paragraphs I have, yet have only garnered a small fraction of the rich knowledge contained therein. The erosion of critical reading and listening skills among the general population is disheartening, especially for a university professor.
I could recommend the excellent and free video resources available on the website of The Social Man, as well as their upcoming The Social Man Method. I could tout the latest Venusian Arts ebook, Revelation, as currently, the most comprehensive general resource on attraction science currently available. I could suggest the Infield Insider monthly subscription DVD series featuring hours of infield video footage and frame-by-frame analysis by Mehow and his guest pickup artist. Those are all outstanding resources among the hundreds out there.
Even though it is the best overall attraction arts e-book on the market at the moment, Revelation tops out at a very dense 322 pages. If a guy didn’t get through his first-year philosophy textbook, he probably won’t get through this one. If he doesn’t already have considerable field experience, he will likely be unable to appreciate the subtleties revealed in the footage in the Infield Insider, even after it’s broken down for him. A lot of it will go over his head. There is a reason most guys just “don’t get it”: They are blind to social dynamics, and until they train their instincts and develop their emotional and social intelligence, they will have a very hard time discerning what’s going on.
So instead of applying the mental discipline to go through such material, our hapless fellow turns to the vapid Doc Love columns of magazines and periodicals or the “pickup-lite” blogs dispensing feel-good dating advice (yes, I happen to write such a column, but I endeavor to make it worthwhile reading).
Don’t despair. There are resources out there that are suitable for beginners and those who just want to get their feet wet.
A good starting point before turning to any of the more advanced resources is my Dating 101 audio course available on my website. It has a 100% no questions asked two-month refund policy, so you have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain!
If you are an Asian man sick of people telling you that Asian men are unattractive or unsexy or whatever negative stereotype you’ve encountered, then sign up for my mailing list, and be among the first to get access to the upcoming The Power of Being Asian, which will be the best resource for Asian men in harnessing their Asian identity to become powerfully attractive to women of all races and cultures. Instead of seeing your Asian identity and all its associated negative connotations as holding you back, and instead of making race and ethnicity disappear as important factors, you will learn how to make these stereotypes work for you and give you an edge over the majority non-Asian race or ethnicity. You can sign up at the top right corner of my website.
Perhaps it is gauche to recommend one’s own work, so I’ll stop there.
For those who want an even broader, more general introduction to the social arts, then look into the foundational books that formed the inspiration for almost all the advancements in the attraction arts industry for the past ten years.
The Top Ten
First Category: Required Reading
1. The first book in this category is Dale Carnegie’s classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People. This was originally published in 1937. Almost every social skills book afterwards is a derivative of some sort. The guys in the seduction community who don’t see the value of this book are usually the really creepy ones with major psychological problems. No, I don’t mean you.
The insights contained in this book are so foundational that if you can’t apply these, you have no business looking into the headier stuff. For instance, Carnegie’s principle, “You Can’t Win an Argument,” was huge for me, an aspiring philosopher. I still to this day have lawyer and engineer clients who start intellectual debates with women and me, even in bars. They don’t realize how important it is to give up their egoistic need to be right or to have everyone know that they are right. It’s far more attractive to be unreactive, internally referenced, and completely confident in your own judgment, even if the majority disagrees with you.
Carnegie’s frequent admonition to “Be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise,” is what drives Qualification as an attraction technique. His humorous, “Give a Dog a Good Name,” explains much of the effectiveness of Intention Mapping. Many of his other principles illustrate “Alpha Nice” strategies.
If you want to learn how to develop social circles and entourages, the teachings in this book are necessary to master. You will need to learn how to befriend not just random girls, but more importantly, alpha males, high status people, and well-connected men and women. And if you can’t even apply Carnegie’s principles, you have no business running more advanced strategies.
A good supplement to Carnegie, which avoids the archaic prose and endless examples, is Leil Lowndes’s How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships. While Lowndes’s tips are fantastic, they are a little parochial and will go out of date and lose their effectiveness if they haven’t already. That’s what separates classics that stand the test of time like Carnegie’s.
2. This is probably a big surprise to newbies, but it’s no secret to the insider circle that Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich is a favorite among the top social artists and inspired a lot of its breakthroughs in inner game. Like Carnegie’s, this is another 1937 classic that has stood the test of time. His chapters on sex transmutation and auto-suggestion are must-reads for any man aspiring to mastery in a specialized field. My own program of affirmations and visualizations were first inspired by Hill’s recommendations. I still get a lot of inquiries about what I do for affirmations and visualizations. Do yourself a favor. Get this little book. Read it several times, a chapter a day until the lessons really sink in. Oh yeah, and you might get rich too!
3. For all the attention that Strauss’s The Game has brought to the community, his first book on the secret society is best taken as an entertaining read, NOT as a manual or blueprint for getting better with girls.
His more recent Rules of the Game, however, is a good how-to guide and presents a well-balanced perspective on attraction, with a proper amount of attention paid to lifestyle and identity. Out of all the attraction manuals you would find in your local bookstore, this is by far your best bet.
And it’s a good introduction to the most popular style of social arts and perhaps the method best suited to absolute beginners: Indirect game using scripted routines.
4. The most thorough step-by-step guide to the seductive arts is still Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction. Perhaps it’s biggest fault is that it is too thorough. Most lair guys don’t have the patience, motivation, or critical reading facility to get through the whole thing.
Greene draws on a lot of historical case studies, which I consider a real strength. If there is anything to the insights of the attraction community, then they should be found among the writings of exemplars in times past.
His character portraits are the most valuable part of the book. The true masters have thought long and hard about the different styles of social artistry, and many of them track the character types Greene lays out. It’s helped guide my own decisions about which attraction community teachings to adopt and which to lay aside.
His detailed description of the courtship process is skewed to indirect methods, but he also takes into account the strengths of the direct approach. The process he lays out is a meticulous breakdown of the steps in a typical courtship.
As with all the books in this must-read section, this book should be slowly absorbed and frequently re-read. A chapter or two a day is ideal.
5. This fifth book is my new Bible. I’ve been reading at least a chapter a day for over a year. Well, okay, I’ve lapsed recently, but I’m getting back to it. I credit this book for the most profound changes in my mindset toward my career, relationships, and my life as a whole. It’s given me the courage to make the hardest decisions I’ve ever faced.
David Deida’s The Way of the Superior Man is one of those books that will probably go over the heads of most guys starting out. But once you get to an intermediate level, this must-read will become the single most important book you could own. It holds the keys to real mastery. Incidentally, understanding of the teachings in this book can also be used to gauge a man’s current level of development.
Second Category: Highly Recommended
1. As a scientific account of what’s behind social dynamics and why some people are more attuned to social dynamics, this is likely the most accessible book available. Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships shows how advances in neuroscience, psychology, and various other fields have already unearthed a lot of the reasons for why community material actually works. Unlike the community ebooks, Goleman does not depend on facile appeals to evolutionary accounts. He doesn’t have to. Goleman’s classic Emotional Intelligence is also quite good, though not as directly applicable to social dynamics as his more recent work.
2. Cited repeatedly in Mystery’s Venusian Arts Handbook back in 2004, Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion has spawned a whole industry. This has become a classic in the attraction community. Cialdini is currently a Distinguished Graduate Research Professor at Arizona State University.
The six principles he elucidates in his book are all major concepts in the social arts: Reciprocation, Commitment and Consistency, Social Proof, Liking, Authority, and Scarcity. His book not only helped advance thinking in social dynamics, it also changed the way I saw myself, my relationships, my career, and my research in such fields as philosophy and religious studies.
3. Like Cialdini, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced like “chick sent me high”) is another renowned professor who has turned his research into an entire industry. His Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience explains what is behind the whole “being in state” teaching, which has become a hobby-horse of the boys at Real Social Dynamics though curiously, they make no mention of Csikszentmihalyi’s work. I read about his work in a philosophy class before encountering it in some of David DeAngelo’s DVD products.
This will help you understand why “being in state” is so powerful and the prime driver behind natural game, which has recently become such a contested term in the community, with Real Social Dynamics, PUA Training, Charisma Arts, and just about everyone else trying to lay claim to it, bereaving it of any significant meaning. Most have lost sight of the fact that Vin DiCarlo and Sebastian Drake were the first to come out with “natural game.” Csikszentmihalyi does a better job of explaining “being in state” than does neuro-linguistic programming.
But more importantly, Flow will explain how the experts achieve flow on a consistent basis, as well as the personality types of those most prone to flow experiences. He also draws on literature and data from a wide variety of cultures, periods, and societies, including Daoist and Buddhist teachings.
Interestingly, his son is a well-established scholar of early Chinese philosophy.
If you can maximize your flow experiences, you will be a happier, more successful, and more fulfilled human being. What better reason do you need to pick this up? On the subject of happiness and what it takes to get it, the relatively new field of positive psychology pioneered by professors at Penn, Harvard, and elsewhere, has a lot of great things to say, and the best introduction to this field is Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis
4. This list would be incomplete without some mention of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). The best general introduction I’ve found is Introducing NLP: Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People by Joseph O’Connor and John Seymour. The writing can be dry and pedantic in places, but the knowledge is invaluable. If you’re interested in NLP, save up a couple thousand dollars and take a course in it.
I prefer the more accessible NLP of Anthony Robbins. His Ultimate Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement helped take my inner game to the next level. You might also want to check out his Awaken the Giant Within, which covers the same material but in a different format.
5. And finally, I would be remiss if I left out some literature on evolutionary accounts of sex and relationships. Most attraction community ebooks appeal to this exclusively for their academic understanding of social dynamics. I find this one-sidedness disappointing. As bemoaned by many academics, evolutionary accounts are too ad hoc. You can pretty much come up with an evolutionary explanation for almost any perspective on social phenomena. Despite this, it is good to know the research. The best book on this subject is Robin Baker’s Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict and Other Bedroom Battles. The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley is also quite good.
So there you have it. The Top Ten books that will change your life. I recommend you go through them in the order I’ve laid out. The first five deserve slow and steady study, as well as repeated readings.
The Singles’ Scene in Singapore is Alive and Well
February 15, 2009
In this week’s column for The New Paper, I wrote about my reflections on a Valentine’s Day singles’ event I was invited to cover.
| The Electric New Paper : | |
| Dr Date | |
| Singles’ parties are alive and kicking | |
| SEVERAL clusters of attractive, single, Singaporean women awaited courageous men, or better yet, sociable men, to introduce themselves. | |
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| 16 February 2009 | |
| SEVERAL clusters of attractive, single, Singaporean women awaited courageous men, or better yet, sociable men, to introduce themselves.
In the midst of this scene, a cute girl pointed out ‘The Row’. While the rare man or two or three was richly rewarded by his newly made female friends for his social bravery, there was still the infamous ‘Row’ of single men lined up along the bar and along the couches against the wall, silent, unsmiling, and scanning the room for ‘targets’, which they would be too nervous to approach in the end. This was a scene from one of the ubiquitous singles’ events springing up all over the city leading up to Valentine’s Day yesterday. What to do if you ever find yourself an unwilling member of the infamous Row? Read my answer to today’s reader’s question below for more on this. Last Thursday night, I dropped in on one of these singles’ events, The Little Black Book Party, which was attended by good-looking men and women seeking increased efficiency in finding new friends and potential partners. For an entry fee less than the price of a regular cocktail, participants were given two drink tickets and enjoyed complimentary hors d’oeuvres, snacks, and canapes. The Little Black Book holds its singles’ events at different venues each time. This one was hosted by Le Noir at Clarke Quay. Past venues include The White Rabbit at Dempsey and Mimolette on Fairways Drive. If you want to find out more about them, join their Facebook group, The Little Black Book. This was not an overly contrived gathering. No awkward games, coerced interactions, or people on microphones interrupting your conversation with ‘announcements’ just when you were starting to make a real connection with your new friend. The natural flow of social dynamics prevailed. Good singles’ events provide the conditions for effective socialising-friendly, stylish Singaporeans who are self-proclaimed singles and (gasp!) open to being approached by complete strangers. Mix in discounted drinks and good music. And the stage is set for a fun night making new friends! Learn more about dating expert Dr Date at his website: www.powerofbeingasian.com. How do I approach girls at parties? Dear DrDate, I went to a singles’ event last week, but even though there were many single women, I didn’t know how to approach them. How would I get a girl’s number there? Yours, Boring Bernard Dear Bernard, Thank you, Bernard, for your letter, in which you asked a lot more questions. I’ll answer those privately. But let’s deal with this one first. In my column above, I mentioned The Row: That line of men standing against the wall of the club, staring ominously ahead or scanning the room nervously, not talking much to their friends and just being silent, unsmiling, trying to look cool and tough, and only interested in talking to a hot girl. These guys will most likely be going home alone. You don’t want to be caught in The Row. If you find yourself in The Row, ‘trying to be cool’, and actually, too afraid to talk to that cute girl in front of you, then immediately walk away. Take a breather for a few minutes. Step outside for a few minutes to get some air. Then, when you re-enter the venue, be the social guy. Talk to the first friendly person you see, whether it’s the bouncer, a random guy, or an old woman. Your opener can be as simple and effective as, ‘Hey, having a good time tonight?’ If you get a friendly response, follow this up by introducing yourself: ‘My name is . What’s yours?’ Work the room. Talk to every friendly person you see, guy or girl. You don’t have to talk to the person for long. Even just a minute will do to make a good impression. Eventually, you will make your way to that cute girl you didn’t have the courage to approach earlier. But now you built up for yourself some social momentum. Talk to her just like you’ve been talking to everybody else up to then. Remember, it’s perfectly normal and even a highly valuable skill to start conversations with total strangers. After you make emotional and social connections, see if the girl meets your standards. After this, it should seem natural for both of you to want to continue your conversation at another time. It could be as simple as ‘let’s trade contact info, do you have your phone with you?’ And then exchange numbers or e-mail addresses or name cards. I go into all of this in much more detail in my Dating 101 audio course, which you can find on my website. |
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Thought Leader Interview with Lance
December 29, 2008
You might remember when I mentioned that I was named, along with such guys as Sinn and Dave Wygant, as one of the top Thought Leaders in the community by Honey and Lance. Following up on that, Lance has been doing email interviews with each of the Thought Leaders, and he just posted his interview with me.
If you haven’t checked out Honey and Lance yet, do it now. You’ll thank me profusely afterwards. Their site is easily one of the most insightful, candid, and well-balanced forums on dating and relationships. Most notably, their probing analyses and entertaining writing have attracted several articulate and highly intelligent female bloggers who have been interacting with both Honey and Lance and generating great discussions.
Here’s the original post on the Thought Leaders.
Here’s my interview with Lance.
Happy Holidays!
Social Skills Matter More Than Ever
September 27, 2008
I found this great article on how important social skills are in determining career success these days. I usually don’t link to blog posts that are two years old, but there are quite a few other interesting posts on this particular blog.
Plus, I’ve noticed that an alarmingly high number of 20-something Singaporeans, Koreans, and Chinese are stuck in the sort of mindset you would’ve found in 1980s America, in which young people are herded into “safe” professions, thinking that job security and the deferred life plan (as Timothy Ferriss so aptly put it) are paramount. Banking, law, medicine. But with the recent crash on Wall Street, even finance is no longer safe. Um, unless you’re truly passionate about your work, c’mon, take a frickin’ break.
Be lost for a little while. Try new things. Try those crazy adventurous things you’ve always wanted to do but are just waiting until “the time is right.” I’ll tell you what: The time is never “just right.”
So few actually take the time to think about what makes life meaningful. Don’t get caught up in the hedonic treadmill!
Actually take a look at the decades of psychological research on happiness. I’m still shocked at how people know so little about happiness studies, and how ignorant we can be about our greatest goals in life.
Here’s the article.
For those using unblock proxies:
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/07/18/social-skills-matter-more-than-ever-so-heres-how-to-get-them/
I hope it vindicates the social arts as useful, relevant, and even necessary to success in life beyond just being good with women.
And here’s another interesting article.
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/11/15/stop-worrying-that-your-twentysomething-is-lost/
Peace and love, The Asian Rake.
Value is Relative and How to do Challenge Screening
June 19, 2008
Quick reminder: The new The Social Man bootcamp pages are up. I’ll be doing the July 11-13 NYC bootcamp, so go check it out: http://www.thesocialman.com/programs/spark.php
Value is Relative and Challenge Screening
“Value is relative.” I first heard this from Mystery in his classic Venusian Arts Handbook. I’m sure you’ve heard this from countless other teachers, puas, gurus, etc., as well.
But, almost everyone I’ve met has no idea why this matters and no idea that this is the secret to getting to the next level of game—getting girls you currently think are waay outside your league without having to manipulate them through any tricky techniques or run any “game.” This is the game of ‘no-game’ (or wu-wei for you fans of Asian philosophy).
It’s important at the outset to distinguish between high-value, high-status, and high-quality. I’m talking mainly about value here and only incidentally will what I say also apply to status and quality, though of course, status and quality are also relative, though status is less so. And of course, when I say “value,” I mean “social value.” I’ve been asked to expand more on high status game. Well, this is one integral component in interacting and attracting “high-status” women.
I must emphasize that you should forget all about what you’ve probably heard about “social value” and what it means. I don’t think anyone else has really elaborated on the secret weapon hidden in the idea that “value is relative.” Read this post with a fresh and open mind.
Note: This is the first article in a three-part series.
I’m going to discuss this on two levels.
1. The INTERNALLY-DRIVEN level: What’s going on in your mind and the correct mindset and frame to have.
2. The EXTERIOR level: What it often looks like from the outside, what someone who is listening to your conversations and watching you interact with people would see and hear.
1. The INTERNALLY-DRIVEN Level
Imagine you’re sitting with your buddies at the bar of a really nice nightclub. You’re just chilling and having a good time. Then in walks the most gorgeous woman you’ve ever seen. Perfect measurements. Silky, smooth skin. Turning heads with every step. Oozing sexuality with every breath. She’s surrounded by an entourage of admiring alpha males, fawning handlers, and devoted fans. What’s her social value?
It’s a trick question.
Some guys in the community think that what determines a hot babe’s (HB) rating isn’t how hot she is. They’re right about this.
What they say, though, is that what matters is how the other people in the venue perceive and act towards her. If she has a lot of admirers, if a lot of guys in the club think she’s the shit, then probably she’s as high as a 9 or even a highly elusive 10. Even if most guys would agree she’s not nearly as physically attractive as the drop-dead gorgeous girl sitting by herself at the bar, her social value, according to them, is determined by how other people view and treat her and thus, the higher value girl can in these cases be the less attractive girl.
Now there is some sense here. This view of what defines a “high value girl” was partly created to help guys determine how they should “game” the girl. If everybody in the venue thinks she’s a 10, then you have to “game her as a 10,” whatever that means. This applies, so they say, even if, after you strip away all the external trappings of fame, like the entourage of bodyguards and handlers, she’s just a 6 in looks compared to that lonely beauty at the bar, whom no one notices but who most guys would agree is a 9 in looks. So this views holds that instead of rating girls based on how your dick feels about them, you should rate girls based on how other people treat them.
Before I point out the shortcomings to this view, I wish to highlight another alternative that has often been neglected.
Not only can we take into account how other people treat the girl, more importantly, we can take into account how she views herself. Why is this even more crucial than how other people view her?
In terms of how she interacts with other people, if she perceives her own social value to be really high, like a 9, and she has a killer strong frame, then, according to this second view, even if no one else in the bar thinks she’s a 9, she will respond to you as if she were a 9, and if you want to get her, you’ll have to take that into account and “game her” like a 9. This is the case when she’s very internally referenced and doesn’t give a shit what other people think of her; she “knows” that she’s a 9, and she will respond to you as a 9.
Imagine the opposite scenario, where everyone in the club thinks she’s a 10, but she herself thinks she’s only a 7. Are you going to “game her” as a 10? If you do, and she truly believes she’s a 7, then, according to this second view, you’ll probably blow yourself out, lacking believability or attainability.
This second view has a lot going for it, too. If you’re going to take into account other people’s evaluations of value, it’s often more important to take into account the girl’s own perception of her value.
While both of these perspectives are good, there is a much better way to determine social value.
YOU are the one and only judge of her social value. This is the strongest position to take.
If “social value” means what is valuable to society, then you can be a society of one. You can be the sole arbiter of what is important and valued. You are your own society. If you believe this strongly enough, and if your frame is tight, then other people will adopt your hierarchy of values. That’s the profound implication of the idea that value is relative.
In your reality, YOU are the only person whose opinion really matters. You can take everyone else’s opinion under advisement to help inform your final evaluation, but the only judgment that really matters is 
your own.
This is why being internally referenced, rather than externally referenced, is so important. Almost every natural and every great pickup artist I have ever met is at least 80% (if not more) internally referenced. That is, they look primarily to themselves and not to others in making decisions and forming opinions.
Here’s a simple example. Let’s say one guy really values tall girls, maybe because they remind him of runway models, and he thinks runway models are high value. When this guy sees a 6’ tall girl (182 cm), he immediately gives her a high score.
But then imagine another guy, who is into the cute schoolgirl type (note: the girl in the cosplay pic is an adult; apparently, some Japanese guys really go for this look). Maybe this guy is himself tall and doesn’t think being tall is all that big a deal (my experience is that most tall players, like guys 6’3” (190cm) and up, don’t really care that much about how tall she is). Or maybe all his ex-girlfriends were tall, and he doesn’t like girls that remind him of them. Or whatever. The point is that being too tall, like 6’, is actually a turn-off to him. So, he immediately gives the 6’ tall girl a lower than average score.
This is a pretty obvious example. We could run the exact same thought experiment on just about every feature: hair color, skin color, the shape and size of various facial features, bust size, hip size, etc. I’ve heard plenty of guys, especially in China, say they think Jessica Alba looks just okay, whereas I and plenty of other guys think she’s the bomb. That’s because beauty is relative.
But we’re not just talking about physical beauty here.
This really came home to me when I started to get really good at screening and qualifying. See my article on Believability.
My standards went higher when I actively and self-consciously took on a true screening frame.
Not only did my own standards go up, but I noticed they sometimes deviated from my wings’ standards. After all, the better you get, the pickier you get. For instance, while in America, I started looking exclusively for girls who were really into Asian culture. If a girl didn’t at least know the difference between nigiri sushi and sashimi, or if she wasn’t interested in traveling through Asia, I was instantly turned off. We could be friends, but I’m not going to bother investing 3-4 hours into seducing her.
This became really powerful for me because I realized that when I had TRUE STANDARDS, I could hold my own evaluations of women, and they would buy into my frame and would work harder to meet my standards.
Even if all my wings and all the guys in the club and the girl herself thought that she was a 9, if I thought she was just a 6, I would have a much easier time flirting, teasing, and busting on her than my wings and the other guys there. [Note: When you’re really smitten with a girl, it is often best to just drop the pretense and go genuine interest direct. In fact, if you’re going to do genuine interest direct, it is most effective if you are sincerely blown away by her. See my article on Believability for more on this.]
The converse was true too. Occasionally, a girl passed all my screens with flying colors, making me kind of nervous because I found myself really starting to like the girl and getting too attached to the outcome. Then my wing, who doesn’t value the same things in a girl could come along and have an easier time just being cool with her because he was not outcome-dependent and was ready to walk away from her.
I then realized that if your frame is strong, then the only determination of value that makes any difference to how you game is your own. The only thing that matters is how much value YOU give the girl.
Why? Because value is relative.
[And here I go on a slight tangent: This is why I don’t bother to give my girls ratings in my reports. I have rated girls on status relative to a particular environment as I did in my post on how hard it is for foreign guys in Asia (see Top Posts). In those cases, it is important to take into account how much status they have in their environment and to do that, obviously, you have to include other people’s opinions of them.
But to rate a girl on “value”? What does this really say? When I read a rating, like some guy says the girl he just picked up is a HB9, what does it generally tell me?
The only good reason to rate girls in your report is if you’re comparing or differentiating two or more girls in your report. That is, if one girl is a 9 and one is a 7, you want to say that you thought the first girl was two points higher than the second girl, and that’s why you picked the 9 instead of the 7 as your target. Or, if both girls were a 8, you’re telling me either girl could’ve been your target.
More often that not, a girl’s rating in a field report tells me A LOT more about the writer’s insecurities than about the girl herself. Rather than giving girls ratings, it is far better to give a vivid description of the girl and allow us to form our own opinions.]
All right, then, how does this make a difference in your game?
Before I go into a specific technique that you can apply right away, I’ll explain the mindset.
A girl may think she’s the shit. Everyone around her may think she’s the shit. But if you really, truly don’t give a shit about her, then she’s going to feel it, and if she’s emotionally strong and challenges you, you’re going to get a battle of frame control. If you win, which you should since very few people are really conscious of frame control, she’ll start to adopt your evaluation of her. She’ll start to work for your approval. You withhold your approval until she earns it. You escalate only when she’s earned it.
This is the power of screening and qualifying.
Another example: Many of the girls I dated in China were involved in the entertainment industry somehow. They often dropped names, trying to impress me, at least, that’s how I interpreted it. They would say something like, “And here’s a photo of me shooting that commercial with [the Chinese equivalent of George Clooney],” or “Here’s me on set with [the Chinese equivalent of Martin Scorsese],” or “I’ve worked on movies with [a list of famous directors and actors].”
The great thing is that I’m woefully ignorant of Asian pop culture. I know more than most Asian-Americans but that’s not saying much at all. One of my goals when I got back to Beijing last September was to catch up on all the pop culture.
Fortunately, before I really had a chance to do that I quickly realized that my ignorance was working for me. This is closely connected to frame control in relation to social value.
When these hotties were trying to impress me and recover their frame, it totally didn’t work.
They talked about how they worked with some famous person and then saw the blank look on my face and asked, “You know who [some famous actor or director] is, right?”
Me: “Uh, the name sounds familiar. But, no not really.”
HB: “What? Well, how about [some other famous person.] I worked on his last movie.”
Me (with a goofy smile): “Huh? Nope. Don’t know him. And haven’t seen that.”
Since I’m a “foreigner,” my ignorance is somewhat understandable.
Every attempt by her to impose her frame that she is the prize and has higher value totally fell flat with me because I honestly didn’t know who she was talking about. LOL. Eventually, I started to pick up on the names, but I am still to this day woefully ignorant of Asian pop culture compared to the average Asian local or FOB. And I’m now perfectly happy this way.
I kept interpreting their frame-control attempts as bids to impress me (as IOIs from her). And I’d reward them with qualifications as if they had just passed one of my screens.
Me (very casually): “Wow, that’s cool, though, that you’re in all these movies. You should show me one of those some time.”
HB (thinking either, ‘Gosh, I’m going to have to do a lot more to impress this guy,’ or ‘Geez, I’ll show him, and he’ll worship me like all those other guys,’ either of which work in my favor): “Uh, yeah sure.”
Now imagine this situation in the West. Some hot girl says, “My last boyfriend was Jamie Foxx, and he used to drive me around town in his Hummer. Sometimes, though, he’d be lazy, and he’d just have his driver take us around in the Bentley.” For the average guy, it’s going to be hard not to be impressed or intimidated.
But if you can hold your frame, you can totally turn this around. Your frame in this should be that you must be one mutha-fucking sexy dude because you don’t have a Hummer or a Bentley or any thing near the cash and accouterments that Jamie Foxx can provide, but this girl is still really into you; in fact, she’s so into you that she’s giving you her dating resume, trying to impress you.
I had to do this exact reframe when a girl snuck this in on me when I was tired and had my guard down. I knew who the male Chinese TV star was because she had already pointed him out to me in a magazine. And then the next day, she dropped the bomb that he was her ex-BF from a few months ago and that he used to drive her around in his Hummer or had his driver pick her up in either his Bentley or Benz. For their first date, he flew her and her girlfriend to a coastal city to accompany him for a week while he was filming on location. She said all this as if she was expecting me to be jealous. Clever girl 
Okay, my recovery wasn’t great by any means. But eventually, I was able to reframe it, and it all worked out in my favor. I was the guy getting unprecedented levels of compliance from a girl who’s used to men, including TV stars, supplicating to her and spending loads of cash and exerting tons of effort. (Note: If you don’t know why compliance is so crucial and don’t understand the value-compliance connection, then read up on Sebastian Drake and Vin DiCarlo’s classic articles on these subjects.)
For instance, she had never purchased a present for a man ever, except her dad. Meanwhile, she was treating me to stuff and putting in all kinds of effort, doing things she had never done for another man before. She verbalized this to me later on.
All this was because I was able to hold my frame that she was trying to impress me and that I am a 10, regardless of material possessions, which are actually irrelevant if your frame is strong. If your frame is strong and you have your fundamentals handled, girls will gladly give up beachside mansions, first-class flights, and chauffered Bentleys just to ride on the back of a bike with YOU.
In conclusion, the social value of a girl can be determined solely by you. If your frame is strong, it really doesn’t matter what other people think her value is, nor does it even matter what she thinks her value is.
Granted, most people will not have the mental and emotional strength or the “inner game” necessary to bend a girl who thinks, along with everyone else in the club, that she’s a 10.
So work on it. Visualizations and affirmations are crucial, as are positive experiences in–field. I’m sure hypnosis would help, though I haven’t tried this route myself.
If you truly believe that you are a 10, and you really do have high standards, then what everyone else thinks is a 10 may really only be a 7 to you. And if your frame is strong, then everyone else, including the girl herself, will begin to view and treat her as a 7 instead of a 10.
Then again, a girl that you judge to be a 10 may seem to your wings and even to herself to be only a 7. And that’s fine, too, as long as you realize that your estimation of her is higher than most people’s. If you sincerely think she’s a 10 and that everyone else is just blind to her “real” value, then you should hold to your evaluation and be internally referenced here. If you do this right, the 7 will totally fall in love with you for seeing the 10 inside her.
So in the end, if your inner game is tight, the only opinion that truly matters is your own.
2. The EXTERIOR Level
There are many ways that this kind of frame control can play out. I will describe one method that I’ve developed to aid me in maintaining my frame with certain types of girls that I value more highly than most.
I call it Challenge Screening.
I’ve used it to good effect on models, actresses, dancers, stewardesses, musicians, visual artists, and other professionals.
While I’ve now learned this technique well enough that it comes naturally and relatively effortlessly, at the beginning, I had to apply a lot of mental focus to trick my mind into throwing off the limiting beliefs that came from being externally referenced.
Basically, Challenge Screening is different from screening and qualifying in that it’s a more intense application of profession-specific screening delivered in a more serious, matter-of-fact tone. The qualification (reward) is reserved until her bitch shield drops.
You should apply Challenge Screening when you feel intimidated by a girl’s social standing and feel that it is making her arrogant or snobby and hence, that it is at the foundation of the bitch shield she is putting up between you and her.
A key component here is your sub-communication, which is hard to describe in words. If you really don’t believe in your frame, then it won’t matter what you say. She’ll see right through you. That’s why the inner game is so crucial. But I’ll assume that you’re well on your way to handling the mindset and beliefs aspect of it.
This technique is ideal if you’re intimidated by girls of a certain type, for example, models, actresses, go-go dancers, strippers, or whatever.
It requires that you know something about the industry that intimidates or impresses you.
Think for a moment about an industry or field that you know a lot about. For me, that’s jazz. A lot of people think they know something about jazz. But my experience is that the vast majority of them really have no clue what they’re talking about, and I can find this out just by asking a few simple questions. When I find the rare jazz aficionado who does know what he’s talking about, I get quite excited and become much more invested in the conversation. This is the dynamic you’re after.
A girl says she’s a model. Your reality is: Well, you’ve dated models. You’ve had models as your best friends. You know the industry. So you’re going to see how much of a model she really is, if she knows what she’s talking about, and if she’s worth your time. That’s the frame.
Keep in mind that if your frame and inner game are strong, you won’t have to consciously employ this technique. It’ll just come naturally as a result of your high standards and social calibration.
The best way to illustrate this is to give you a taste of dialogue.
Here’s Challenge Screening applied to a fashion model.
About a minute into the interaction, HBModel says in a snobby tone: “I’m a model,” expecting you to be intimidated.
Some guys, especially back in the heydey of Mystery Method, might have said, “Oh, really? A hand model?” But the correct frame here is that she is trying to impress you. So that neg would take the interaction backwards, punishing her for her good behavior (trying to impress you). Instead, you should reward the “IOI” with further interest.
Me: “Yeah, you’ve got a great look (said casually, but with genuine appreciation). My ex-girlfriend worked with Elite in Hong Kong (again said casually). Do you do mostly print or runway?”
HB (looking shocked that you’re not worshiping her yet): “I do a bit of both… (pause; hold the tension)… but mainly print these days.”
Me (nodding with approval): “Hmm… photographic is very competitive these days.”
HB (smiling): “Yeah, I just finished an all day shoot. I’ve been on my feet the whole day.”
Me (smiling back): “You need a drink girl! Cheers to that!”
At this point, Challenge Screening is over. The model has let her guard down. You’ve shown competence over her world and shown that you are not intimidated in the least by her occupation or beauty. In fact, you are in a position to evaluate and approve of her. She sees you as the dominant person in the interaction. You can proceed as normal.
What if she continues the bitch shield? Then, continue with Challenge Screening.
I will give you an extreme example. This only happened to me once. I use this to demonstrate how far you can take it.
This happened with a drop dead gorgeous, very tall, tanned, and toned Chinese model with perfect curves, dreamy almond eyes, and sporting black, skin-tight spandex tights and a thin, tight black sweater showing off her perky 34 Cs.
It started the same:
About a minute into the interaction, HBModel says in a snobby tone: “I’m a model.”
Me: “Yeah, you’ve got a great look (said casually, but with genuine appreciation). My ex-girlfriend worked with Elite in Hong Kong (again said casually). Do you do mostly print or runway?”
HB (looking shocked that you’re not worshiping her yet): “I do both… I just did a shoot today.”
Me (nodding with approval): “Hmm… photographic is very competitive these days.”
Here’s where it differed:
HB nods, but doesn’t say anything. She looks a little bored.
Me: “Are you exclusive or freelance?”
HB (looking a little surprised that I asked this): “Uh, I’m with [well-known international agency].”
Me: “Do you do much testing?”
HB: “Uh, no not much any more.”
Me: “Good for you. So you must have done some editorial then.”
HB (starting to turn to face me more): “Yes, I just did one last week for [some foreign fashion magazine that I forget now].”
Me: “Nice. Those are really prestigious.”
HB: “Thanks.” Then silence, but she kept looking at me.
Me: “How many go-sees are you getting in an average week?”
HB: “Go-sees? A lot lately. Usually, about two or three.”
Me (light reward kino on the arm): “Nice. Your agency booker must really like you.”
HB (turning completely to me and smiling): “Thanks.”
Me: “Are you thinking about moving into acting?”
HB: “OMG, how did you know? I had a part in that Feng Xiaogang movie (big name Chinese director), [name of a fairly recent movie]! We were on location for months! Here, look at these pictures.” She then took out her camera and started to show me amazing shots of a remote region of western China.
Challenge Screening over.
I got this question train from Leil Lowndes’s How to Talk to Anyone About Anything. An awesome book I highly recommend.
To make it easier for you to see what I was doing, here’s the bare bones question train for models. I use this as kind of a cheat sheet.
Fashion Models
“Yes, you have a great look.”
1. Do you do mostly print or runway?
a. Print→Photographic or print is very competitive.
b. Runway→It takes talent to twirl on runways.
c. Showroom→”What are your special tricks for staying cheerful during long hours showing clothes to buyers?”
2. Are you exclusive or freelance?
a. Exclusive→”Which agency are you signed with?”
3. Do you do much testing?
a. For wannabes and newer models
4. Have you done any editorial?
a. Editorial→Most prestigious fashion shoots
b. Catalog or advertising→What pays the bills
5. How many go-sees/look-sees/castings do you have in an average week?
a. Low→Express admiration that she doesn’t have to go running around to get work.
b. High→Express admiration that her agency booker must really like her.
6. Do you plan to move into acting?
7. Do you have your head shot or composite with you?
a. “Nice commercial shot, but it doesn’t capture your tremendous presence.”
Now obviously, you shouldn’t just shoot these questions out one after the other. Weave them into the conversation in a natural way. Ask the first question, listen to her response, and respond to that. Don’t just ask the next question in a mechanical manner. Only if she gives you silence or a one-word answer should you jump directly into the next question. You want to avoid sounding like an interviewer or setting off a confrontational vibe. This is you screening her to see if she’s really “all that.”
Remember that this is just what it looks like from the outside. You don’t have to use the exact questions. If your frame is right, and you know something about the industry, you’ll come up with the right questions naturally. These questions are just suggestions to get you started.
If you use these questions, you will very likely not have to go past question three. Just showing a little dominance over their “world” is enough.
It’s also good to mention a personal connection. I like to mention that my ex-girlfriend was with Elite in Hong Kong, or that my current girlfriend is a fashion model, or that I’ve sworn off dating models.
Another favorite industry of mine has become stewardesses or “flight attendants” (the PC term).
My personal connections are a couple of ex-lovers of mine. I might even show her photos of my ex-lovers in their Singapore Airlines uniforms. That always get nods of approval.
Here is my cheat sheet for the bare bones question train for stewardesses.
Flight Attendants
1. Who do you fly for?
2. Do you fly international or domestic?
3. What’s your favorite layover?
4. Do you bid for routes?
a. Are you senior enough to get the routes you want?
5. What kind of travel privileges do you get?
I usually don’t go past question three. I got these from Lowndes’s book as well.
Here are a couple more of my cheat sheets.
Musicians
1. What instrument do you play?
2. Are you working on anything now?
3. Do you do any studio work? Do you play in clubs?
4. Are you gigging now? Do you have a steady gig?
5. Do you prefer playing live or in the studio?
6. Are you signed to a recording contract?
a. How did your record chart? How many units did it do?
7. Do you think a recording artist can do better on a major label or an indie?
8. What artist influenced you when you were starting out?
9. Who are the outstanding makers of your instruments?
10. In what direction are you taking your music now?
Dancers
1. What kind of dancing do you do?
2. Are you performing now?
3. Are you in a company?
4. When is your season?
5. What are you performing this season?
6. Have had you had the opportunity to do any work as a soloist or a principal?
7. Do you get most of your work through auditions or recommendations?
If you know Lowndes’s book, you’ll recognize my debts.
I’m a bit of a musician myself, so I can go into a lot more depth for musicians depending on the genre of music they do. For dancers, I usually don’t get past question three.
The whole point of Challenge Screening is to help you assert your frame. This is most obvious with models and actresses, but I have met recording artists and high-level professional dancers who think they’re all the shit, too.
Remember that this is only for girls who think their social value is much higher than yours and hence, try to use their occupation (pop star or famous dancer) as a bitch shield to intimidate you. You just need to show you’re not intimidated and that you can connect with her and show dominance over this part of her world as well.
I’m giving out my cheat sheets here, so you better appreciate it I’m keeping my cheat sheet for actresses to myself, as that’s proven especially productive for me
I encourage you to develop your own cheat sheets for whatever field or industry you’re interested in.
Ideally, you will not need to memorize or consciously apply any techniques. If your frame is strong, then other people will be sucked into your reality and will naturally adopt your value hierarchies. That’s ultimately what you’re aiming for. Techniques like Challenge Screening are simply provisional tools to help you in the process of achieving that stage.
Feedback appreciated ☺
The next installment in this series will be on how Reality is Subjective and why this is important.
Happy playin’, The Asian Rake.
Outcome-Independence and How to Have Fun!
May 24, 2008
In response to helpful comments and a couple of emails on my article on why I hate the word, ’sarging,’ I wish to clarify something. I am criticizing the word ’sarging,’ but not the act itself of purposely flirting with women you don’t yet know.
Yes, you need discipline to get really good at anything. If you’ve listened to my interview with Christian Hudson (www.thesocialman.com/asianrakeintv.mp3), you know that I apply a LOT of discipline and perseverance to getting good with women, especially in connection with visualizations and affirmations, as well as with going out on a consistent basis.
Until you’ve developed the habit of going out on weekends on a regular basis, you will always need that initial push to leave the comfort of your home and go to a place that is conducive to flirting with women. But this push will only be necessary until you’ve developed the habit, which for me, was about 3-4 months of consistently going out for at least two nights a week. For day game, decide how much you want and can devote to this and work this into your weekly schedule.
I still clearly remember having Christian remind me over the phone when I was first starting out, “Dude, it’s Friday night. Get out there!” Not too long thereafter, this changed to, “Dude, it’s Thursday night. Get out there!” I no longer needed the push to go out on Fridays and Saturdays. I had already scheduled it into my weekly routine.
In my first couple of months, I even had to do community service for running a red light (I pleaded for community service rather than paying a fine, the cheap grad student that I was, lol) for 4 hours every Friday and Saturday until midnight. I was pretty exhausted on those nights. But guess what? I stuck with my routine and still put in at least an hour, and sometimes two, every one of those nights. And I have the Field Reports to prove it! I even wrote pages of analysis after having spent just one hour in the field… and then I often emailed them to Christian for feedback. LOL. It would have been easy to just use the community service work as an excuse for not going out, but I didn’t. And that took determination. But once it became a habit, I actually really missed going out.
(Sidenote: The next major reason guys aren’t progressing as fast as they could, besides having the wrong mental focus in-field, is that they aren’t reflecting and learning enough from every single interaction. I made interaction-by-interaction adjustments to my style. Just one hour in the field produced three interactions full of lessons.)
It’s a lot like going out to the gym and doing regular workouts. When you first start out, it takes discipline to hit the weights. You have to push yourself to go. But once you work it into your schedule and start seeing progress, you begin to look forward to your workout. I hit the gym three times a week and have a pretty rigorous workout with a trainer. I often travel for weeks at a time, so it interrupts my progress, but whenever I miss a workout, even on vacation, I feel it in my muscles. I can feel myself getting flabby and slow. I can feel my muscles atrophying. And I can’t wait to get back to the gym. Actually, a major factor in my hotel choices these days, right after price and location, is the quality of the fitness center.
Well then, Asian Rake, it sounds like you do think we need a “clocking in” mentality when we’re first starting out, even though later on, it becomes a habit that we look forward to.
Here’s my answer: This “clocking in” mentality is fine for getting yourself TO the venue. But once you’re there, drop that right away. You should not be thinking of this as “work” while you’re IN the venue.
When you’re IN the venue, you should be having fun.
If you are thinking, “Oh fuck, I’ve been standing around talking to my friends for an hour now and haven’t done a single approach yet. I better get out there and get to work. I better clock in and make a dent on my thousand approaches. Okay, let’s see… (scanning the room) where are the targets…,” then you have already tainted your approach. You’re already fighting an uphill battle. If you carry this mentality into an interaction, you WILL be sucking value rather than giving it.
The fatal mistake here was that you weren’t having fun in the first place.
What to do instead?
As my good friend Sebastian likes to drill into people:
1. Have fun!
2. Make other people have fun.
3. Then see if that hot girl really meets your standards.
4. And remember to manage the logistics.
That’s really all that should be going on when you’re in-field.
Notice that this post is only about the first step: Have fun!
See my other posts, like Believability, How to Project a Sexual Vibe, and other posts in my Top Posts widget in the sidebar for more on the other steps.
So the question is, how do you have fun in a club?
I will tell you a secret to getting on the “first-class seat in the express flight” to elite game:
If you do not yet enjoy clubbing, then it will be very hard for you to meet and attract women in a club.
If you do not yet enjoy shopping malls, then it will be very hard to for you to meet and attract women in a shopping mall.
If you do not yet enjoy cafes and bookstores, then it will be very hard for you to meet and attract women in cafes and bookstores.
If you do not yet enjoy bars, then it will be very hard for you to meet and attract women in bars.
So, what lesson can we derive from this?
Learn to enjoy the environment of the venue for it’s own sake, not just as a place to meet women. Otherwise, you will very likely not be having fun, and hence, you will not be projecting a good vibe, and hence, all your sub-communications will be off, and hence, you will be severely tainting every interaction you start there.
One of the first things I learned from Christian Hudson was how to have fun in bars and clubs. I naturally enjoy bars so that was easier. But how to have fun in very loud clubs with music that I didn’t (and still don’t) particularly care for and with nowhere to sit unless you’ve purchased a table with very expensive bottle service? Well, that took a little longer to figure out. But once I did, my game in clubs skyrocketed.
People have different ways of having fun in clubs, bars, cafes, bookstores, shopping malls, heck, even supermarkets. So I’m not going to tell you how to have fun. That’s something you have to figure out for yourself. Plus, you can read more detail on this in an earlier post on Being Unselfconscious. I can, though, tell you how I have fun in the bar and club environment, since that’s the one that is most foreign to most guys starting out.
To be truly outcome-independent in a bar or club, you must be completely content with yourself and enjoying your time without having to chat up a single cute girl.
Whoa! What are you saying, Asian Rake? Are you saying that I should go to a club and not talk to a single girl? Not do a single approach??? How the hell am I going to amass my thousand approaches like this?
If you are not yet able to have fun in a bar or club all by yourself and not purposely “cold approaching” a single “set,” then … YES. The first order of business for you is to learn to enjoy yourself in the venue for its own sake.
A big turning point for me was learning how to sit at a bar by myself, not talking to a single “set,” simply soaking in the ambience, savoring my martini, and chilling out. Sure, I talked to people. I talked to the bartender. I talked to the nice couple next to me. I talked to the older women on the other side who were enjoying a night out of wine tasting. But I never considered any of these interactions to be “sets.”
Then, I learned to have fun on my own in a loud dance club. I learned that I can stand at the bar with a drink, soaking in the ambience with a smile on my face, staring into space, letting myself fall into trance with the beats … all by myself. Sure, I talked to people, very briefly of course, as it was a loud club. I talked to the bartender. I clinked glasses with the group next to me. When the alpha male there saw I was alone, he invited me into their group and poured me a drink. Then a group of three girls started eyeing me, I walked over and clinked glasses with them. Then, one of them started asking me the buying questions (where are you from, etc.). There were nights when I sat at the bar of a big club all by myself, just chilling, and three separate women practically propositioned me for sex (and they weren’t pay-for-play; I made sure to find that out). I haven’t bothered to write reports on these because other than having a long backlog of LRs to write, with these in particular, nothing of any consequence can be conveyed in words. It was all the vibe, conveying passive value, good body language, and managing logistics.
Last night, I sat at the bar of a huge dance club all by myself. I was just sitting there, enjoying the ambience and staring into space. It was 4am. A guy sat next to me, chatting to a girl on the other side of him. She was wearing a tight dress that showed off her long legs. She had silky long black hair that framed a perfect doll-like face. She looked over at me. We locked eyes. She was talking to the guy while looking at me. The guy had his back to me and kept talking to her. He looked like a chode. I walked over to her other side and planted myself at the bar. I said, “Hey,” and smiled. Turns out the chode was her boyfriend but they’d only been going out for a month. He looked scared and came over, trying to AMOG. Pathetic attempt. I kinda felt sorry for him. This girl was way out of his league. She asked for my number. And then they left. On my way home at 5 in the morning, the sun was rising in Beijing. And she phoned me…
You see, all this started because I was having fun all by myself. My energy was all coming from within. I didn’t need anybody to make me happy. I was perfectly happy just chilling out with my drink. I wasn’t seeking anything. I was just … being. This is what it means to have a vibe that offers value. You are the party.
My fun these days when I go out is not dependent on any girl’s reaction. It’s dependent on me and me alone. I remind myself, “If I don’t meet a single hot girl tonight, I’m still going to have fun because my purpose tonight is not to meet girls; it’s to have fun!”
Go out there and have fun tonight!
Happy playin’, The Asian Rake.
Believability: The Key to Elite Game
March 31, 2008
Ask the Rake mailbag time!
Here’s an emailed question from David L.:
“Hey Rake,
I’ve loved your LRs! They’re so detailed, I’ve read them over and over and have learned a lot. In your later LRs, you talk about believability. You’ve been saying that you’d explain it in more detail. When? I’ve been waiting.”
Okay, David L., no prob. Here we finally go!
In my interview with Christian Hudson, which you can access here: http://www.thesocialman.com/asianrakeintv.mp3, I also mentioned a concept about which a lot of guys have inquired. There’s enough demand that I feel I owe it to you guys to get it out there.
Believability becomes the determining issue when you have your fundamentals down, that is, when your body language and tonality are solid and when you have a strong sense of your identity and your own value. For me, I don’t think much about “value.” I try to live my life the way I want, going for the goals I feel are important to myself, and giving it my best. Value is relative (a subject of another upcoming post). So I don’t bother actively to “demonstrate higher value.” It’s not something I do. I just am. At this point, believability really becomes THE most important issue, in my experience. That’s why I call it the key to ELITE game.
I must acknowledge Sebastian Drake for early inspiration on this, as I build on his teaching of attainability that is part of his VAC theory. I’ve found that whenever I explain attainability to guys, I get a puzzled expression, like they’re thinking, “Uh, why on earth would she think she couldn’t attain ugly ol’ me?” Among other benefits, believability will address the misconceptions arising from the misleadingly coined “attainability.”
I’m building here on things I’ve learned not only from Sebastian Drake, but also from Christian Hudson, Wayne Elise (Juggler), and Mystery (edit: and Sinn).
Caveat: Believability is not necessary just to get laid. Here’s a preview of my basic structure, which a lot of guys have asked about. It’s super simple. In fact, since I focus on internally-driven game, my mechanics deal only with the bare basics. It’s as simple as ABC.
A: Approach
B: Believability and/or Buying temperature
C: Close.
Ha, that’s it. Yep, as I said on the recent interview, I don’t think about techniques much at all anymore. After the approach, you can lay a girl just by pumping her Buying Temperature. I wrote a LR in which I did just that and pulled the girl in under a half hour, and she was super cute. But those are the exceptions. Nine out of ten times, you’ll have to rely on believability rather than on pumping BT alone.
Believability gets at the issue of whether the girl feels she can believe your sincerity, that you really do mean what you say in your compliments and verbal rewards, and that your kino escalations make sense emotionally.
She does not need to believe that you want to have sex with her. Every hot girl will automatically think that she can attain sex from you. That’s not what’s in question.
What she craves to know is that you appreciate her for being more than just another sex object.
How do you accomplish this? There are two kinds of content and two methods.
The two kinds of CONTENT:
1. Personality characteristics
2. Physical qualities
Note: You might think that #2 contradicts what I just said about appreciating her for being more than just another sex object. But what #2 gets at is that she is not JUST ANOTHER sexy girl. She must be the most sexy, beautiful, gorgeous, or whatever, girl you’ve seen all day, week, month, or ever. That is, she is not just another girl from whom you just want sex. If you tell her that you think she is so beautiful that you had to stop her and tell her so, then you had better be thinking to yourself that she really is so beautiful that you’d do something as bold as that (though you do this relatively often b/c the world has an abundance of beautiful women). This is of course applicable to direct game and aggressive sexual escalation (Ciaran’s “shock and awe”).
The two METHODS:
a. Verbal believability
b. Physical believability
I’m going to go through the two kinds of content first and along the way, point out how you can use the two methods for each kind of content.
PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS
The most straightforward way of doing this is to use a two-step process. The first step is Screening, and the second step is Qualifying. Qualifying is used all over the community, but I learned it first from Sebastian Drake.
I like to say that S&Q is my bread and butter. S&Q is the only technique I am conscious of during an interaction.
Screening & Qualifying done properly:
-Shows that you genuinely have high standards.
-Allows her to earn your attention and affection for her non-physical qualities.
-Shows that you appreciate her for her special characteristics and for meeting your high standards.
First, you should have reflected on what you’re looking for in a woman. I know almost all of you know what kind of physical traits you want. The funny thing is, almost every time I ask a guy what he’s looking for in a woman, the first (and only) things he tells me are her physical traits—how tall she is, her bust, waist, and hip measurements, her hair color, etc. Dude, this is one of those reasons why you’re not getting laid yet. Haha. Sure, I have a pretty good picture (several actually) of my ideal physical woman. But what we’re after here are her non-physical qualities. Otherwise, you’re just the next creepy guy.
Think of at least five non-physical traits and write them down. To give you an example, I’ll give you an abbreviated version of my current list.
The “bad” girl character traits I like (credit to Tengen for pointing out the ambiguity in the original wording):
Open-minded. Non-judgmental. Non-jealous. Non-possessive. A girl who “goes with her feelings.” Spontaneous. Adventurous in life. Sexually adventurous. Independent.
The “good” girl character traits I like:
Loyal. Mature. Cultured. Sophisticated. Caring. Affectionate. Responsible. Understanding.
I look for a girl who combines the “bad” and “good” girl character traits, the more the better! In addition, I’m also looking for the following more personalized qualities.
-Loves East Asian culture, especially its movies, art, music, history, fashion, and food (the last is a deal-breaker)!
-Loves to travel and experience new cultures
-Appreciates the arts and has some artistic talent (dance, drama, music, visual arts)
-Passionate about life and is a positive and optimistic person in general
-I’ll omit the rest; you get the idea.
These are examples of what I screen for. You should come up with your own list. That means you’ll actually have to pause and reflect for a minute or two.
Take a moment to do it right now. Reflect and write down at least five non-physical traits you want in your ideal woman.
For you to pull this off properly, you should genuinely want these qualities in a woman. It’s really up to you how much you’re willing to compromise on any of them. For me, she would have to be insanely hot for me to compromise on any of the above. And even then, I would have to be looking just to hook up.
This is NOT merely a technique. This is a whole frame of mind. It includes what others have called a SCREENING FRAME. You should have this frame throughout the interaction, from the approach to the close and over the long-term.
In fact, this should be your frame in life, not just with women, but with everyone. You should be a man of high standards, who knows what he’s looking for in women, in friends, in a job, in colleagues, employees, etc.
Here’s the technique, with props to Sebastian Drake upon whose teachings I am building here.
STEP 1: SCREENING
A. Verbal
These can be in the form of either statements or questions. In general, statements are better and stronger than questions. Contextualize your statements and questions. Don’t just ask or say them out of the blue. For example, talk about a time when you or your friends were X before you ask her how X she is.
These should roll off your tongue as if they’re the sort of things you say or ask everybody you talk to.
You can do this as questions or as statements. Examples:
-“I like X.”
-“Being X is really important to me. It’s something I really like about so-and-so friend.”
-“All my friends are X. Hmm, you seem X. Am I right?”
-“You strike me as an X person. You’re X, aren’t you?”
-“I can tell you’re very X. But are you Y as well?”
-“Are you more X or Y? You’re not Y, right?”
-[After talking passionately about some travel-related topic,] I say, “So where do you like to travel?” (this is a positive presumption which implies that she does in fact travel; credit: Juggler)
-“You have that artistic air about you/You look artistic. What kind of art do you do?” (again, positive presumption; credit: Juggler)
-“All my friends are adventurous. It’s something I look for in new friends. What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done?”
-“Uh, you don’t get jealous easily do you?”
B. Physical
You want her to put some work into her answers. You’re aiming for a 50-50 workload here. After you make the statement or ask the question, pause and hold the tension (credit: Juggler on the Vacuum). Freeze your body language, and look at her expectantly. Lean back a little as if you are judging her and are a little skeptical that she will have a good answer. After all, you have high standards. Apply social pressure. High-value people expect others to answer their questions and respond to their statements.
If she doesn’t give you anything after you pause, resist the urge to fill the silence with babbling. Look away or withdraw your body language slightly to let her know she’s losing you. Then slowly turn back to her if you want to give her another chance.
I usually give a girl three strikes before I move on. It’s up to you how much you’re willing to compromise on your standards. Remember, though, it’s much more powerful if your standards are genuine. I’ve had plenty of girls that I’ve nexted come find me later in the night because they were so impressed because I held to my standards and walked away.
If she gives you a great answer, which she should if you did this right, you should reward her, which brings us to step two.
STEP 2: QUALIFYING
A. Verbal
You now give her a verbal reward. I like to sprinkle in the word “friend” (credit: Sebastian Drake on the counter-intuitive use of “friends”).
“Wow, you really are X. I like that.”
“Mmm. You’re so X.”
“It’s really cool to hang out with such an X girl.”
“Wow, you’re so X. Cool.”
“You’re so X. I love it.”
“Okay, okay, you’re X. You can be my friend now.”
“I love having such an X friend.”
“You really are X. I’m glad we can be friends.”
“So you are X. You’re just like all my friends!”
“Man, you are X. It’s great to become friends with you.”
“Geez, you’re just like my friend Jennifer.”
“You remind me of a lot of my friends. You’re so X too!”
By rewarding her after she meets your screen, you are verbally escalating. Another way to put this is that you are escalating on her high points (credit: Juggler). If you stack enough of these screens followed by qualifications, pretty soon, the girl will be begging you to escalate big time kino.
If you feel that she isn’t taking the compliment well, you should release her from her discomfort by injecting a “backhand rejection” (credit: Mystery on bait-hook-reel-release). Here are the backhand rejections I use.
“But don’t get a big head, … or I’ll have to spank you… maybe I’ll do it anyway.”
“I knew this would happen. I’d compliment you. You’d get a big head. And then I’d regret it.” (credit: Johnny Savior)
“Too bad you’re not my type.”
“But you’re too cold/arrogant, etc.”
Back-turn.
B. Physical
Your verbal rewards and escalations should be accompanied by physical (kino) rewards and escalations. Start off small. Give her a friendly squeeze on the outside of her elbow or her outside thigh. Pull her in for a big hug. Look deeply into her eyes with a puppy dog “where have you been all my life” look.
A lot of guys have written on kino escalation. One of the best descriptions of this is Vin DiCarlo’s Kino Escalation Ladder. You can find this for free online.
Basically here, you use S&Q as reasons for your kino escalation.
You screen her. She passes. You verbally reward her with qualifications while also physically rewarding her with kino escalation. It all makes sense to her rationally and emotionally. She’s earned your affections and now she gets to collect her rewards.
To give you a better idea of how this would work, here’s an excerpt. Notice how I hold off on my approval until she gives me something worth rewarding:
[A minute into the interaction, I say, it’s great to be back in town.]
Me: I just got back from backpacking through southwest China. We were in Sichuan and trying to get Tibet, but with all the rioting there, they wouldn’t let us in. Had a blast
, though… So where do you like to travel? [looking at her expectantly]
HB: Oh, I like southeast Asia.
Me: Cool. Which part?
(notice she gave me so little, so I only gave her a one-word answer)
HB: Uh… Thailand!
Me: Nice. So what do you like so much about Thailand?
(again, a one-word answer deserves a one-word reward. Expect more.)
HB: Oh, I don’t know.
[Me, holding the silence and tension while leaning back with a skeptical look.]
Me: Well, a lot of guys like Thailand for all the cheap sex. I’m assuming that’s not why you like it.
HB: Haha, no.
Me (smiling): ‘Cause if it was, that’s okay, too. I’m not judging.
HB: Haha, no.
[Me, looking at her expectantly.]
HB: Oh, … I loved the beaches. We spent the whole week on these beaches that were almost completely deserted. What a nice change from the crowded beaches in China.
(wow, this is a lot. So many possible threads to take here.)
Me: That’s awesome. My best friend was there last month, and she showed me all these awesome photos of them scuba-diving. It looked absolutely beautiful. What was the most adventurous thing you did while you were there?
HB: Uh, oh, yeah. We took a little boat out to explore the small islands off the coast. And then we went diving off the boat. We were swimming with the fish!
Me: Damn, you’re like adventure-girl! I like that you about you. Gimme the rock, HB!
[HB gives me the rock and smiles big-time]
Me: You’re really making me want to explore Thailand now. The closest I’ve been is Bali. You know Bali? [wait for the nod] The beaches there were divine, and the surf’s awesome! [HB nods vigorously]
HB: Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard!
Me: I went surfing for the first time there, and I totally wiped out, like over and over and over.
HB: Hey, me too! Well, I was in Thailand, but yeah, surfing’s a lot harder than it looks.
Me: Hey, if you like southeast Asia, you must have been to Singapore.
HB: No, not yet, but I really want to.
Me: Cool. I was just there a few weeks ago. Man, it’s like a food-lover’s paradise! I haven’t had so many different kinds of curries in one place before.
HB: Oh, I’ve heard. I love curry. That’s all we ate in Thailand.
Me: Thai curries are so diverse. Yellow curry, green curry, red curry, and they’re all sweet and spicy at the same time!
HB: I know, I love it!
Me: Wow, you’re an adventurous eater, too! That’s cool. Mmm, okay, you pass. [Pull her in for a big hug.] We can be friends now. [big smile]
This girl opened up after just a little bit of probing. It can get more complex depending on the type of girl. In the near future, I’ll write an article describing “Challenge Screening,” a slightly more advanced technique, which I’ve used to great effect on pretentious girls who are usually high-status, like models, actresses, rich girls, and the like.
NEW EDIT: Remember to transition from platonic qualifications to sexual ones later on. See my post on How to Project a Sexual Vibe for more on this.
PHYSICAL QUALITIES
In most cases, you will probably want to escalate on non-physical qualities. But if the girl is already into you, or her buying temperature is already quite high, you can screen and qualify her on her physical qualities and kino escalate very rapidly.
Since you’re screening her on physical qualities, you don’t need to ask any questions. Just by looking at her, you can tell whether she’s passed the screen. Duh. So basically, it’s all about how you qualify her.
I first learned this kind of escalation from Natural-MD. I later read a report by Ciaran of RSD who described a similar technique.
A. Verbal
Your compliments should be over the top.
“OMG, that red shirt is making your breasts look really luscious right now. It should be a crime to wear that.”
“Stop looking at me like that. You’re making me really turned on… no, stop it… really.”
“OMG, your lips are so sexy. You have no idea how hard it is for me not to kiss you right now.”
“There’s something about you… I can’t figure it out… But I just can’t resist touching you here… and here… and here…”
Again, calibrate. If she’s uncomfortable, make sure you use “backhand rejections.” See above.
You can also excuse yourself by saying:
“Okay, okay. I’ve got high standards. You can’t just take over my brain like this. Stop it. I’m not that easy.”
B. Physical
Of course, the whole point of this kind of screening and qualification is to escalate kino really fast. So be bold. This takes balls. And very solid inner game.
With each verbal escalation, you should be touching her in the relevant places. If you’re qualifying her on her lips, grab her face with your two palms and kiss her. If you’re complimenting her breasts, caress her breasts. If you’re talking about her ass, grab her ass. Basically, using this kind of escalation, you can get to a makeout in a matter of minutes.
With the kind of over-the-top verbal qualifications you’re giving her, your physical escalations must be just as over-the-top! When you say she’s just so amazingly gorgeous that you had to stop and meet her, you should be as wide-eyed and mesmerized as you would if you were talking to the woman of your dreams.
Act as if you can’t control yourself, that you know it’s against social propriety to grab her ass (or whatever), but that you just can’t help it, and that you’re trying really hard to stop. And that it’s all her fault for causing you to lose control b/c she’s just so damned hot. You’re just over the edge of self-control here.
When doing a direct approach like, “Hi, I saw you walking by, and I just wanted to say, I think you are … beautiful… And I wanted to come over to meet you,” I like to make it seem like I’m overwhelmed by her beauty. My eyes are wide open with a doe-like expression (they’re probably dilated too), my stance is lilting as if I’m almost going to faint, and while my voice is clear, I don’t hesitate to add a little trembling.
BUT once I’ve approached, I’ve always still got the SCREENING FRAME, as if at any moment, she could say something stupid and fail my non-physical screens, and I’ll lose my attraction for her and have to next her. Btw, this is genuine.
There’s not that much technique to building believability on physical qualities. It’s pretty straight-forward. It’s the mental and emotional state and frame that carry the day.
So there you have it.
Believability is about whether she can believe that you like her as more than just a sex object, that she won’t be just another notch on your bedpost.
The easiest way to do this is to compliment her on her non-physical traits, but you can also give her over-the-top compliments on her physical qualities. Remember that these always work best when they’re genuine.
By doing this, you can escalate kino very very fast. Stack the screens and qualifications one on top of the other, and boom, you’ll be making out in minutes and in bed with her before you know it.
Happy playin’, The Asian Rake.
