You’ve Still Got A Long Way To Go, Baby

The other evening I was kicking back with Paul Janka, laughing over the sorts of stories you’d imagine Paul Janka and I would laugh over.

As we were talking, I realized I’d first heard of Paul from his Dr. Phil appearance. Hilariously, at the time I thought his method was “outrageous,” as I was zealously following the dogmas of another pickup method (rather hopelessly, I might add.)

Once I started getting real-world results (i.e. waking up next to beautiful women), I realized Paul’s method was incredibly potent and dead-on accurate. If there’s more than one way to skin a cat then there’s certainly more than one way to pick up a girl.

That experience caused me to reflect on how my mindset has evolved (and, at times, regressed) as I've come through the pickup community.

Furthermore, I realized many community guys go through the same five stages I did. By identifying and understanding these stages, you can avoid the traps and pitfalls that keep guys from achieving success with women or, worse, giving up altogether.

Here they are:

Every guy who studies dating advice has his story of how he got into it. Regardless whether it was a book, TV show, or just a random Google search, most guys compare discovering the pickup community to when Neo swallows the red pill in The Matrix. Suddenly everything you thought you knew about women and dating is wrong. All the “glitches” you never understood finally make sense. Guys finally see the wiring of social interactions.

This first phase typically lasts one to three months. During this time, the nascent pickup artist is elated, quick to talk about “game” with whoever will listen. Many guys tell their non-community friends, believing everyone can benefit from the secret knowledge of this subculture (which is usually a big mistake). Often guys read pickup and dating materials voraciously and many even go out and approach lots of women.

Most of all, guys think about and ponder community concepts, making it difficult to concentrate on anything else.

After spending enough time enamored with the community, often an “us versus them” mindset develops.

Words like “AFC” or “chode” saturate the community guy’s vocabulary as he develops an identity as a guy who “knows” the deal, disparaging those ignorant “chumps” who lean in when they talk to women and don’t have the slightest clue as to what “IOI” means.

This condescending phase can pass quickly, or sometimes not at all. The superior attitude many aspiring PUAs develop against the “average guy” is completely ironic, as they’re mocking guys who are sometimes better with women than they are. Yet, because these “regular” guys don’t have a fact sheet of pickup community knowledge memorized, they are somehow inferior to the studious community pupil.

Once a pickup student has sufficiently isolated himself from the world of “AFCs,” his connection to the community grows even stronger.

In the words of John Donne (an Elizabethan pickup artist if ever there was one), “No man is an island.” As such, the “us versus them” mentality bonds fledging pickup artists together.

And whenever there’s a mob, a ringleader will emerge.

It doesn’t matter if that leader is a commercial guru, local lair organizer, or just a guy who’s good with babes, guys will latch onto these “leaders” and devour their every word.

If you research “cult behavior,” you’ll realize it coincides with much of the “transformation process” espoused by the pickup community. Namely, it forces ritualistic behavior (“You have to do x number of approaches a day”), it promises a utopian “pay off” for your allegiance (“You’re gonna get the HB10s, dude !”), it censors much of the outside world (“That’s just your social conditioning talking, bro !”), and, most obviously, it portrays gurus as infallible pickup deities whose authority should never be challenged, only accepted.

During this phase, starry-eyed guru worshipers are dogmatic in their guru’s beliefs. This leaves them impervious to reason, as they only accept the reality of what they’re told. If you’ve ever flamed someone on a message board for something like “going direct” or “going indirect,” you have probably have gone through this phase.

As obnoxious as guru worshipers are, most guys (including your humble narrator) have fallen into the “guru worship” trap.

As soon as a guy develops a modicum of skill with women, there’s no better way to prove it than to flame some newbies on an Internet message board. What better says you’re a ladies’ man than typing up some patronizing responses to a question like, “What should I say to girls ?”

Unfortunately for anyone who discovered the pickup community after the publication of The Game (which is pretty much everyone), you’ve probably been flamed by some hotshot Internet poster. Whether it was too little inner game, too much ego, or anything in between, someone with a 1,200 post count probably laid the butthurt down on you … interwebz style.

Hilariously, guys who flame newbies are just proving their own newb status. Any guy who is truly good with women doesn’t need to prove it by mocking some clueless newbie.

In a lot of ways, the community reminds me of high school. The seniors give the freshmen wedgies and heckle them, yet they don’t realize they’re still just seniors in high school. They still have a long way to go before they become true players for life. The same is true with self-important flamers of newbies: you’ve still got a long way to go, baby.

Finally, the light at the end of the tunnel.

Or, in the case of the seduction community, it’s the babes at the end of the cult.

Once a guy achieves his goals in getting his love and sex life handled, he can look back and realize how foolish the community is for complicating something as simple as hooking up with girls. Ironically, the only reason hooking up with girls became so simple is because he went through the foolishness of the community.

Normal guys who have lady-getting skills are easy to identify, but hard to notice. That’s because any guy who’s good with women knows having “game” isn’t about acting outrageously, bashing newbies, worshipping gurus, or hating on non-community guys.

Instead, being good with women is all about balancing the (helpful) community information with your authentic personality.

It’s unfortunate that most guys who enter the seduction community never reach this point. Many get stuck in a “limbo” phase above, perhaps spending years worshiping a guru or amassing an unimpressive message board archive of snarky advice. Other guys simply give up, as that’s what most people do when things get challenging.

My only condolence to anyone who hasn’t yet reached their goals, but is reading this article, is to keep at it. I hope by simply identifying the phases you can expect to encounter as you progress in the seduction community that you will expedite your progress.

Moreover, as the community expands and the information improves, you will reach your potential faster and with less effort.