Social Commentary

Despite our language and identities, people move in herds. You have three (3) tools to get the girl you want from her tribe: integration, separation, and absorption.

We think of ourselves as individuals. Separate, unique, we act entirely of our own volition.

Yet man is a herd animal. Cram him into a wall-to-wall, shoulder-to-shoulder crowded concert or train station, then spook the herd, and you kick off a stampede. People may die, crush others, or trample, as throngs of panicked individuals, each catching the sense of panic from the next, surge over and against each other for the exits. In the aftermath of some deadly stampedes, investigators can find no emergency and cannot even figure out what caused the panic.

Show a man a market craze that everyone is getting in on and watch him lose his mind. In China, peer-to-peer lending has exploded as the economy has declined, even though defaults on these loans are sky high and the prospect of getting a return is dim. A few months earlier in the West, a Bitcoin craze thundered across the market. It was unrelated to any improvement in the usability or acceptance of Bitcoin as a currency – in fact, over the past several years, Bitcoin has only grown worse as a currency. 100% of Bitcoin’s increased valuation was due to market speculators buying up Bitcoin to cash in on the craze. Yet during Bitcoin fever, everyone was an optimist, telling friends, family members, and coworkers to “buy, buy, buy!” Today, five months after the crush began, the price of Bitcoin has come very close to where it was before the stampede ever began; in the process, thousands of people made fortunes, and thousands of others lost them (I personally know a few folks on both sides). Every bit of those gains and losses came at the expense or benefit of someone else gambling the other way.

(side note: fun dub of a Russian music video a friend of mine who was heavily invested in Bitcoin shared with me during the peak of the Bitcoin craze):

These, of course, are extreme scenarios.

And much of the time, even for people aware of human herd mentality, the concept gets peacefully tucked away into a kind of “only in extremes” awareness. Only in extreme situations, we tell ourselves, do humans behave in mindless, herd-like ways. The rest of the time, we are those unique, separate, totally consciously in-control individuals we tell ourselves we truly are.

However, this isn’t how it works at all. Man, as a social animal, is every bit as groupish as ants, horses, biofilms, and wildebeest. More to the point for our purposes, if you want to peel a woman out of her group, or get her to do what you wish in public, an understanding of how grouping and herding works in the people you’d like to influence is key.

A lifestyle of hedonism, pleasure, and abundant bedmates is quite delightful. Yet if you are a playboy, have you betrayed your society to become one?

Society is changing.

Tectonic plates of social mores are rubbing together and creating earthquakes. The ensuing chaos can be seen all around the world, especially in the U.S.

On one side, we can break it down most simply by Liberalism vs. Conservatism. These are the eternal spectrums of any society. Right now, Liberalism is concerning itself with identity politics and claiming to align itself with two ethical principles – tolerance and compassion. These ethical principles naturally create support for causes like climate change activism, racial and sexual equality, and wide-open immigration policies. Whether this is wrong or right is not the focus of this article. I’m simply pointing out what is happening.

Conservatism is currently concerned with nationalist politics and aligning itself with two ethical principles – tradition and independence. The focus on tradition creates a “the law is right, no matter how you feel” framework, which then leads to a direct conflict with policies like open immigration. Independence-focused politics creates conflict with macro ideas like the EU, NAFTA, and the Paris Climate Agreement. With the victory of Donald Trump, an aftershock is now sweeping countries like Hungary and Poland (who were already quite conservative) and pushing their conservatism farther to the right.

Society is now swinging to the right, toward more conservative values. In fact, it has been for a long time. Liberalism has hit its peak and may decline soon, as its surge from the 1960s has begun to lose its momentum.

This is most evident in the arena of sexuality, which I believe (through observation) to be the control point of the rest of society. Everything seems to revolve around sex (at least that’s how I connect the dots).

And since society seems to be swinging to the right politically, that means some big changes are going to affect our attitude toward sexuality, which has both its pros and cons.

Not every transsexual wants you to know all the details. To not get catfished, you need to know how to spot a transsexual – and steer clear of traps.

I just saw the David Cronenberg movie M. Butterfly, about a dude who seduces another dude who doesn’t know he’s a dude, and carries on an affair with him for 20 years and even convinces him they had a child together. All based on a true story (you can read about it on Wikipedia). What a weird movie that was (I’ve always loved both main actors, too – Jeremy Irons and John Lone. Terrific talents. Though this sure was a strange flick). Anyway, got me thinking about this topic.

A while back, I was out with a group of people in a new city. Our group consisted of five guys and four girls. Three of the girls were friends, but one was a little separate from the rest of the group. And this one... something about her triggered my “there’s something weird here” radar.

She was dressed in a sexy teal dress, and went around flirting with all the boys. She had an eye for me in particular. But to me, she looked like the women I’d seen in a cougar club in Del Mar; skin too-tight on the face (obvious sign of a face lift), lips full in an unnatural way (Botox?), dressed too flashy for an average girl. “She must be an older woman hunting for younger guys,” I thought.

At one point though, the guy I knew there leaned in and told me “She used to be a guy.”

Light bulbs went off. Ah... that’s what I was picking up on.

“Her last boyfriend didn’t find out until they’d been sleeping together for a month,” he said.

“Interesting,” I said. “How’d he react to that?”

“He was pretty upset,” my friend said.

This article is about how to not end up like that duped boyfriend, or some of the other men I’ve had transsexuals tell me about from their romantic histories (one, showing me a picture of a boyfriend, about said boyfriend: “He got used to it”). It’s about how to spot a transsexual – because not every transsexual wants you to know the truth.

Dumb guys didn’t spend their youth reading books or winning debates. Instead, they occupied themselves with reading people and winning babes.

Welcome to part 2 of this series. If you didn’t catch what I was getting at in the last article, I’ll put it simply.

Intelligent men have issues getting pussy. More specifically, by "intelligent men," I mean nerdy. They use big words, spend lots of time reading, aren’t good with people, and value their intelligence above everything else. That sort of guy.

How I used to be.

These men inevitably discover that it’s the moderately intelligent or even straight-up stupid men who get the most poonani.

Why?

As a woman ages, her tastes in men change. What does an under-21 girl prefer that women 32+ do not? Read on and find out.

As a man, your taste in women may or may not have changed as you’ve aged. I know a few guys whose tastes have changed over the years. Though I know many more guys whose tastes haven’t. I can tell you the only difference between the women I’m drawn to now and those I was drawn to 10 years ago is the girls I’m drawn to now are usually cuter. That is more simply a factor of having more choice with women now than I had when I was young, overweight, and romantically unskilled.

Women’s tastes in men, on the other hand, go through some major evolutions as they age. From between a girl’s late teens to her mid-30s, she shifts her tastes often dramatically.

Talk to most single women in their 30s about younger women and you’ll hear such women pan younger women’s standards in men. “Young women have the worst taste in men,” they’ll tell you. “The guys they go for are assholes with attitude. They have no taste.”

Male pundits normally regard this as a way for an older woman to make herself look more valuable in the dating market (i.e., she is more ‘refined’ than ignorant younger women) in order to make up for some of the lost value of her faded youth. And this “younger women are silly and foolish” frame does help older women do that. But there is a deeper reason so many single women in their 30s feel this way about those younger versions of themselves on the dating scene.

Before we talk about that though, we’ll talk about the different sorts of men women at different ages are most drawn toward. As always, game and fundamentals play a huge role here – the better yours are, the less you need to worry about fitting a certain template, and the better you’ll do even within that template.

Note that the age ranges we’ll discuss below are generalities. Some women may be more or less ‘mature’ than their ages (we’ll talk about that a bit below too). But in general, for the majority of women, you should find these age ranges fairly accurate.

Follow the journey of a young man from shy and dateless, to improving with women, to living the dream… and what happens after.

Dan trudges off to his Thursday morning class, another long day in an endless sea of them ahead. The sole bright spot for him is the girl with brown hair and glasses. She will be there. She’s always in his Thursday morning class.

When he gets there, he grabs a seat, then looks around, waiting for her to show up. She hasn’t shown up yet. The class slowly fills. Some kid takes the empty seat to his left. Damn, he thinks. I hoped it’d stay empty until she gets here. Close to class start time, he sees the girl with brown hair and glasses walk in. He stares at her; her eyes search the room, looking for seats, then briefly meet his. He thinks he sees her smile, but she quickly looks down. She hurries off to a far corner of the room to take one of the few remaining empty seats.

All class, Dan thinks about her. He waits at the end of class, packing his books up slowly. He glances over toward her – it seems like she’s packing up slowly too. At last, after most of the class has filtered out, Dan makes for the exit, and so does the girl with brown hair and glasses. He lets her get right in front of him. She doesn’t look at him, but she glances down and wipes her hair back over one ear. He can’t tell, but he thinks she might be smiling. He feels like he should say something – this is his chance! – but he doesn’t know what to say. The both file out of the classroom; she heads off in one direction. Dan’s headed the other. He slowly walks away from her.

He doesn’t feel bad though. He feels even more certain she might like him now. And next class – he knows – will be the one he makes it happen in.

The semester passes this way. Many days the girl with brown hair and glasses doesn’t notice him or give him any signs, and he thinks she’s lost interest. Sometimes she gives him some little look, or plays with her hair while almost glancing in his direction, and he thinks she must like him still.

Once she sits two seats over from him, and he almost says something to her. He spends the entire class full of nerves, pushing himself to say something. In the end, he tells himself it’d be too awkward trying to talk over two seats – he’ll wait for a better opportunity. Next class, he’ll get a better opportunity.

As summer turns to autumn, then autumn to winter, the semester draws to a close. The fallen leaves on the ground are covered by a light dusting of snow. Finals are over, and it’s time for the students to head home for the holidays.

“Maybe the girl with brown hair and glasses will be in one of my classes next semester,” Dan tells himself.

The roiling Harvey Weinstein Hollywood sex scandal was caused by a unique mix of perversion, sexual power dynamics, and the twilight of feminism.

In late 2017, The New York Times broke a story on Harvey Weinstein paying off sexual harassment accusers. A few choice excerpts:

“[A]fter being confronted with allegations including sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact, Mr. Weinstein has reached at least eight settlements with women, according to two company officials speaking on the condition of anonymity. Among the recipients, The Times found, were a young assistant in New York in 1990, an actress in 1997, an assistant in London in 1998, an Italian model in 2015 and Ms. O’Connor shortly after, according to records and those familiar with the agreements.

...

The allegations piled up even as Mr. Weinstein helped define popular culture. He has collected six best-picture Oscars and turned out a number of touchstones, from the films “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Good Will Hunting” to the television show “Project Runway.” In public, he presents himself as a liberal lion, a champion of women and a winner of not just artistic but humanitarian awards.

...

Dozens of Mr. Weinstein’s former and current employees, from assistants to top executives, said they knew of inappropriate conduct while they worked for him. Only a handful said they ever confronted him.

...

After she arrived, he offered to help her career while boasting about a series of famous actresses he claimed to have slept with.

...

“She said he was very persistent and focused though she kept saying no for over an hour,” one internal document said. Ms. Nestor, who declined to comment for this article, refused his bargain, the records noted. “She was disappointed that he met with her and did not seem to be interested in her résumé or skill set.””

Not long after, a recording broke of a 2015 NYPD sting investigation, in which Weinstein can be heard trying to cajole a 22-year-old Italian model up to his hotel room:

Weinstein and Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, the model he attempted to get up to his hotel room.

Rose McGowan accused Weinstein of rape. Stories surfaced of him cornering women and making them watch him masturbate (once into a pot in a restaurant kitchen). And then the dam burst. To-date, 91 actors, producers, and other members of Hollywood have been accused of sexual impropriety, courtesy the #MeToo campaign. Women, en masse, have come forward with accusations against men – particularly men who held power over them.

Why this time, though? There have always been sexual accusations against powerful figures. Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, Donald Trump... just to name a few of the most prominent ones. Some of the accusations swirling around these figures are worse than anything alleged against Weinstein; Cosby is accused of drugging women to rape them. Many of the varied claims made against Clinton over the years sound like something out of a B-level political thriller, with all the rape, murder, and coverups you can dream of.

Yet despite all the controversies around and accusations leveled at powerful political and media figures, the dam never broke before. But this time it did. Why now? What does this ‘Gropocalypse” and its #MeToo campaign tell us about men, women, and sexual power dynamics in the professional spheres?