The Four Flavors of Swag

A studly swagger is more than just a walk. It’s an entire way of being. And you’ve got choices. There are four (4) kinds of swag you can adopt: circumstantial, jerk, and more.

A man’s swagger is his foundation. It is the gait of his being and reflects everything about him – how he sees the world, himself, and the relationship between the two.

Even when you are standing still, the way you walk is clear. Because the way you walk isn’t always the way you move one leg in front of the other.

It’s about how you stop and turn, how you grab things, the way you move your hands when you speak. It’s the way you stand. It’s the way you speak.

And in this article, we will discuss how to make your movement swagalicious.

Why? Because women pay attention.

I remember once at a party, the girlfriend of my fraternity brother told me as I walked up to her:

“Hector, I knew that was you I saw earlier!”

“How’s that?” I replied.

“I saw you walking around the party earlier. The way you walk through a crowd is unmistakable.”

“Explain.”

“You...” she paused to think. “You look like you know what you’re doing. You’ve been here before and know how it all works.”

All I could do was smile. That was one of the greatest compliments I could be given.

Now, there are many flavors of swag. Let’s begin with the most basic.

Circumstantial Swag

This is the swag you have when you’re:

1. In an environment where you feel confident/comfortable

2. Coming off of a victory (and riding the testosterone wave of the winner effect)

And it’s not really something you turn on – it comes all on its own.

Say you are at your house, at the bar/gym/restaurant where you work or frequent, or are doing something you feel comfortable and confident doing.

Maybe it’s a soccer field and you’re the captain of the home team. Perhaps you’re about to do a card trick you’ve done a thousand times. You might even be about to deliver a speech on the Higgs boson after you’ve done a stupid amount of research on it (even if everyone else isn’t interested at all in what you’ll be talking about).

You’ll notice a slew of behaviors (even if you’re normally a meek person):

• Your voice fluctuates and you intonate more. This signals comfort and confidence. Uncomfortable people are very quiet and monotone, almost as if they don’t want anyone to hear or be interested.

• You speak louder and with more resonance/vibrato, because you don’t fear being heard and commanding attention.

• You will exaggerate gestures and accompany points/exclamations with hand gestures.

• You hold strong eye contact or are so focused in the midst of your craft/storytelling that you’ll look off into the distance with a sparkle in your eye – this gets people lost in your vibe, because you’re lost in it, too.

• You puff your chest out.

• You hold your head high, exposing your neck and chin, the best places to land a knockout or killing blow.

• You grab objects and move them with speed and determination.

• Your arms flow freely as you walk; you might even contract “imaginary lat syndrome.”

• Your facial expressions correlate with your tone of voice, body language, and words, unlike nervous guys who try too hard to be cool.

• You walk fast and determined, or slow and vigilant, with legs spread wide apart to make room for your massive balls.

• Your back is straight as a plank, with shoulders pulled back.

If you ever notice someone acting with these fundamentals, you probably thought to yourself, “Wow, he’s such a try-hard,” or “He’s a cocky bastard,” or some other critical thought.

That means he’s doing it right. When someone is in their element and seems a bit threatening or a bit too confident, then they will act as if they really are that good.

They are, however, not the strongest or most dominant man (we’ll get there soon).

Nevertheless, being an annoying, cocky, arrogant bastard is an order of magnitude better than being a meek, wimpy boy.

Not the absolute best of the best, but we can work with this.

And this annoying dominance is magnified even more if a guy is winning at something. It can be as simple as sinking a wad of paper into the trash or as intense as knocking someone out in an MMA fight.

He does something cool, then acts like he’s lugging around a 12-inch dick. This is the second circumstantial swagger, because it’s not necessarily a trained fundamental. It’s created by a surge of energy and testosterone. It’s more fleeting than being confident in a particular situation, and thus more volatile. When you feel this surge, you notice a few more behaviors:

• You feel daring; you want to try something risky. I’ve seen this in MMA fights, where a guy drops someone with a punch; after his opponent recovers, he will taunt him like Muhammad Ali and try flashier, riskier techniques, like a flying knee. In a more seductive situation, perhaps you make out with a girl or come back into a party after already pulling one girl home early; you will likely approach girls more confidently or try to get a much higher caliber girl than you’re used to. While some may tell you to watch your ego here, I actually encourage you to push the boundaries.

  If you’re going out at night after closing a great business deal or killing it on a test, use your testosterone boost. Don’t mitigate yourself to make others comfortable. The fundamentals you flash with this flux of energy will attract women like a beacon of cock, and the risks you take will make you even sexier. Make sure you use this energy wisely, too. Go for a threesome or try to land a bombshell. Don’t waste your boost of energy.

• You will probably be more dismissive of other men. As arrogant as this sounds, this will actually make you more attractive to women (that is, if you go unchallenged or beat your challengers). If someone calls you out for being a dick, depending on their status and the extent of their threat, you will probably have to defend yourself, or your dominance will plummet. This is why guys who talk a lot of shit before a UFC fight have to back it up and win by a margin equal to their shit-talking, else they suffer the wrath of critics (and if they lose, their dicks will shrink back into their bodies after the media and public abuses them).

  By being a cocky asshole, you announce to the world that you’re the shit – but you better back it up. Now, literally everyone will tell you to be humble, but most, if not all, only warn you out of fear – they don’t want you to outshine them. This becomes obvious when you see them in a winning position, using none of the social graces they recommended to you during your victory. Soon, I’ll give you practical reasons why you should chill out a bit, but when competing for females, it’s every man for himself, except with close friends (but even then…). So go ahead, be cocky and don’t let anyone knock your swag.

• You will break social conventions. This can mean being extremely loud, rude, offensive, sexual, violent, etc. Like with the other behaviors, this can get you into trouble if enough men with physical or social power decide to take you out (and girls might even do it, too, if you seem like a spoiled child). On the other hand, this rebellious attitude is also extremely attractive.

Obviously, if these factors are combined while in a familiar situation, and you also start winning, you can expect your testosterone to hit some insane levels. Use it however you like.

Having covered this, let’s move on to the three other flavors of swag.

Jerk Swag

Practically, this behavior shares all of the traits as the above, except it’s not circumstantial. This guy regularly walks around with an exaggerated swag.

I’m sure you’ve seen him. The wrestler who pretends he’s always about to walk onto the mat, even if he’s only walking to class, arms spread wide apart. Or the low-ranking gang member who is perpetually looking for a fight and holding eye contact for way too long with anyone who passes by him.

And you usually snicker and laugh at him, which is the correct response. It’s silly, laughable, and absurd.

However, unless you’re more dominant or confident than him, he’s doing better than you, no matter his absurdity. When it comes to attracting women, I’ll take the arrogant meathead over the snobby and snickering Noam Chomsky any day of the week. That’s why you see the hot fitness girl walking around with the really aggressive, tatted-up gym rat, and not Mister I-am-Above-Such-Arrogance.

Dominance is dominance.

If you have passed this stage, though, you can laugh. It’s silly, it’s try-hard, and higher-quality women will scoff. There are higher tiers of swag yet to be found (probably one of the douchiest things I’ve ever written).

Genuine Man Swag

The man who has passed through his arrogant phase, learned humility, and reached the point beyond the jerk. Instead of over-exertion, his power is control.

• He walks with his head level, only looking above people when he’s not in a social mood and in his own head. Other than that, he makes eye contact with people regularly while walking.

• His shoulders are pulled back but relaxed.

• His stance is wide, but his forward movement is slow and careful rather than aggressive and wobbly.

• His arms swing at his sides gently and in accordance with his walk.

• He’s a bit louder than most men, but he doesn’t try to speak over others unless it’s necessary.

• His voice intonates naturally with the beat and rhythm of his speech (high intonation when asking questions, dropping intonation when stating something, etc.).

• He uses very slow and controlled hand gestures and movements.

The list goes on and on, but you see the distinction between the jerk and the genuine man.

Control.

The genuine man exudes an air of pure control with his swagger.

The genuine man has the swag of a jerk but decides to control it, to take that confident energy and, instead, harnesses it through focus rather than intensity.

This is a good place to be, and most guys who I know are good with women are here. What’s great about this, too, is that when you do have circumstantial swag – when you’re in a familiar environment or kicking ass at something, be it a sport or getting girls – you know how to harness it. Watch Lionel Messi score a goal. What does he do afterwards? He cheers a bit, runs around, but doesn’t seem cocky or surprised; he’s done it hundreds of times and has fun with it. It’s a game to him, because, well, it is a game. He sees it for what it is.

So is this the highest level of swag? I used to think so. I thought that the genuine man was a status that is reached and then honed infinitely onwards. But I found that this can be transcended as well (and I plan on writing a full series about the next step I found, at the risk of sounding like I’m writing a script for friggin’ Dragon Ball Z, what with all of my “levels”).

This next guy’s swag is over 9,000.

The Best Swag is No Swag

Part of me is wont to use this trite old Zen phrasing.

The best game is no game.

No mind is the best mind.

Stuff like that. Fortune cookie BS, ya?

Well, it only sounds paradoxically retarded when you read it. But once you see it happening and feel yourself doing something that sounds like a paradox, you realize that it’s only a paradox from one side. On the other side, it makes complete sense.

What if, instead of walking with your head held high, you actually walked with a bit of a bend in your neck and sometimes gazed at the floor. But instead of looking meek, you actually look up to see women smiling at you – or men, especially large and more dominant men, moving out of your way, neither feeling threatened by your domineering presence nor cocky at your apparent submission.

What if you were just too goddamned lazy to speak loudly? What if you saw the effort to be dominant as tiresome and try-hard. You sometimes contemplate never speaking at all.

But then, without warning, you switch to being very big in your movements, simply because you feel like it. You feel a surge of energy and want to share it with everyone else. You smile and infect everyone around you with your vibe.

A girl smiles at you; you feel the energy radiating within, so you wink at her and smile back, a bit more energized by the circumstance, and let the testosterone fill your whole body.

Then, you randomly revert back to silence. You gaze up at the ceiling, making weird faces in response to the conversation going on in your head. You’re gracefully strange, neither trying to be cool nor trying to be humble and controlled. You’re just being. A quote from one of my favorite fantasy books actually inspired this article and perfectly embodies this notion of no swag.

“As Vashet approached, the first thing I noticed was that she didn’t wear her sword on her hip. Instead she slung it over her shoulder, just as I carried my lute. She walked with the most subtle, solid confidence I have ever seen, as if she knew she ought to swagger, but couldn’t quite be bothered.”

p. 722 – Wise Man’s Fear

That. That. That.

“… she knew she ought to swagger, but couldn’t quite be bothered.”

If that doesn’t scream power to you, I don’t know what does.

Imagine someone so aware of their own power that they couldn’t be bothered to show it to anyone, because why bother?

A perfect example of a no-swag walk is Kanye West in his Runaway music video. When he gets up from the table and walks to his piano. That walk. It’s perfect. Kind of goofy, but still confident:

Hector Lag

My fraternity brothers used to joke about how slow I sometimes was to react to things. I’d laugh at a joke long after everyone else had already finished laughing, giving the impression I was slow. Other times I’d mull over something someone said for far too long, and they’d wonder why I didn’t understand or respond, especially if their statement was mundane and didn’t warrant any deep introspection.

But I would still take my time, because maybe their mundane statement gave me a good idea, or reminded me of something. Whatever it was, I chose to react in my own world and at my own pace.

It was the opposite of any conversational swag. But there was a power to it. And now I embrace it entirely, sometimes taking a very long time to respond. Funnily enough, people remain quiet or even get nervous while I chew on their words. I don’t mean to intimidate, but this does tell me that my patience communicates a sense of importance to them – if I respect my patience and words enough, they should, too.

A funny scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers perfectly illustrates this. Merry and Pippin are pissed that the Ents are taking forever to decide whether or not they’re actually hobbits (and not orcs), and if they’re gonna go merc Saruman at Isengard.

His response?

“You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.”

Treebeard is the real OG.

As you do or say something, take pauses.

Funnily enough, telling you to do this will sort of defeat the purpose of “not trying.” You might end up looking like an idiot (like I apparently sometimes did to my fraternity brothers) or like you’re trying way too hard to appear dramatic. I suppose, however, that the only way to learn how not to try, is to try not trying enough times that you figure out you can’t do it. Alan Watts explains this perfectly here:

If you want a great example of how this works in person, watch some videos of Tom Waits... Especially this interview:

His demeanor, speech, mannerisms – I mean, look at the way he sits. Where are all his fucks? Not sure, haven’t found them yet.

How Do You Fix Your Shirt?

I was thinking of a way to stack all of these guys up to each other in one single movement. Then, somehow, the image of a man fixing his shirt came to me. I remember in high school how probably the smartest kid I’ve ever known would very often get nervous, sit up straight, fix his shirt haphazardly, look at it from every angle to make sure it was good, then look around to see if anyone noticed him fixing his shirt. It was in one moment kinda funny, but in another moment very revealing, that even someone who I considered a genius was insecure about the way his form looked, how his shirt fit. And he wasn’t simply nerdy smart, he was also super popular and very socially talented.

Thus, fixing one’s shirt will be our final example. Because why not?

• The nervous man: he fixes his shirt hurriedly and hopes that no one sees him.

• The jerk: he fixes his shirt smugly and exaggeratedly. Then he returns to his wide, arrogant stance.

• The genuine man: he fixes his shirt slowly and gentlemanly. Afterwards, he resumes his modest and controlled position.

• The man with no swag: he looks curiously at his shirt and spends a few seconds debating whether or not to fix it. If he does, he does it goofily and perhaps a bit too slowly. If he doesn’t fix it, then he puts his hands back in his pockets, because it’s comfortable in there.

Swag Away

Never thought an article on swag would go like this, did you? Neither did I. I’m as surprised by my writing as anyone who reads it.

But reflecting on it, I’m glad I went past simply the way one walks, and tackled demeanor in general. It feels more coherent and cogent.

Another realization, upon reflection, is something that I often tell guys – don’t try to skip steps. Work with what’s in front of you and fix what needs to be fixed. If you’re new to all this talking to other people business, don’t try to not try. You’ll just look stupid.

Be cocky. Be exaggerated. Swag. Then, refine and improve over time.

Or maybe not listening to me and jumping as many steps as possible is the most swagalicious thing you can do?

Swag on.