(2) Intermediate

Women often claim dates and hookups “just happen!” to them. But do they? And if you’re a man, is there a way to tap into things “just happening” yourself?

We have a member on the forum named Beam who recently committed to an exclusive, monogamous relationship. He has a girl he really liked, but he was also at a breakthrough moment in his game. True to the trend I identified in my article on guys taking girlfriends just as they're hitting game breakthroughs, his girlfriend sensed it and pushed hard for exclusivity, and Beam, figuring she's a great girl, granted her request.

Anyway, we chatted a bit about how he could best maintain his woman skills despite being monogamous. He tried telling his girlfriend he would still approach (whoops), but as you might expect she shot that down fast.

What I said was "you'll be able to flirt in natural settings, but if you try to push yourself to approach, your motivation for that will wane, and you'll probably feel conflicted about it, too."

He replied that that was already the case, and he felt conflicted already doing street approaches... but that flirting naturally with cashiers and checkout clerks or chatting up cute girls at a bar he was out to with buddies felt fine.

He volunteered that maybe because day game was what he was best at, that was why he felt conflicted, since those were the approaches most likely to lead to indiscretions.

That's not the reason though, I said -- it's because a day game approach is a conscious, deliberate one... whereas a flirtation with a cashier or a girl you chatted with while at a bar you were at anyway with friends is not; that, rather, is simply something that just happened.

Russell Brand oozes electric charisma, of a very specific archetype: he is the Savior, who will sweep you away from dreary ordinary life to a world of fun, enlightenment, and orgasms.

Ready for another charisma breakdown?

Last time we discussed John Wayne, who exemplifies the 'King' charismatic archetype.

Today we'll be looking at a different charismatic archetype... the Savior. Our Savior will be Russell Brand.

Russell Brand, a Savior?

Oh yes. Russell Brand uses his charisma to lead people toward salvation. It's no fluke he's jumped into the political space, casting light on issues of he believes need leadership and encouraging people to be free (like in his recent short, fun video highlighting the military-industrial complex operating within American news media).

With Brand's beard and long hair, he even looks like a certain famous Savior (and indeed, has his own filmed performance on the subject entitled Messiah Complex).

If we look at how he interacts with women, we'll see that there, too, he embodies the role of the Charismatic Savior.

Let's have a closer look.

Hector’s irreverent, forward, crass style of direct seems to violate all the rules of ‘good game’. Yet take a closer look, and it’s obvious how this form of seduction succeeds.

All right gents, here's the clarifying article you've been waiting for!

Since Alek Rolstad came out swinging against the stupidly-simplified "just shoot your shot" style of 'game' we're now calling 'neo-direct', readers have been asking, "But what about Hector?"

Hector's 'sexual direct' approach to seduction appears to be everything both indirect and classic direct are not: bold, immediate, in the girl's face, relentless. It seems to show all the cards to the girl and removes any hint of intrigue.

A brief review of how his approach appears to work might make you think it's little more than neo-direct wrapped up with a bit of spunk ('force of personality', perhaps?).

Alek asked me to resolve the apparent conflict between what he teaches and what Hector does, not knowing enough about what Hector is doing and not wanting to be the one to critique a colleague.

So, I had a chat with Hector to clarify some of the points I needed clarification on.

It led me down a rather enlightening path toward understanding not just Hector's game, but a better understanding of a key difference between good game and bad game, as well.

I think you will enjoy this piece!

Women debate the morality of an extramarital affair while married to a man you don’t love. Why do different women view things differently?

I had a girlfriend tell me about a hornet's nest she kicked in the comment section of some gal's blog online.

Usually this girlfriend would read economics blogs and watch university lectures on philosophy. But she was into psychology as well, and sometimes she'd read blogs written by women chronicling their messy lives and tempestuous love affairs on a women's private blogging site.

One day, the female writer of some blog she'd been following entered her latest update. This writer had a loving, devoted husband, who was much more in love with her than she was him. The guy did a lot for her. Meanwhile the writer complained about how annoying her husband was and talked about how she did not love him back. There was a man she'd known whom she'd been in-love with in the past, but he'd moved away to care for his dying parents. Eventually he returned and the writer and he met up, the writer seduced him, and they started sex. He only got a few thrusts into her before her period started though and they ended the sex, the writer deeming it 'fate'.

This kicked off a variety of opinions from the female blogger's followers in the comment section. Some women cheered her on. Some women expressed confusion over why she'd cheat on a good and loyal husband. Other women asked why she was with her husband in the first place if she didn't love him.

My girlfriend, a hothead (most of my girlfriends are), dashed off an annoyed comment explaining to one of the confused women that, "That's just how she is. She is going to keep going back to that man, and then she is going to have a full affair with him, and she will never tell her husband." Then she wrote to the writer "Just tell your husband! Just tell him, divorce him, be brave, and be with the man you want!"

Then she added a little zinger at the end implying she knew the writer would never do this and would instead continue the affair in secret behind the trusting husband's back.

This kicked the hornet's nest, and a flurry of outraged women rode to the blog writer's defense, slinging mud at my girlfriend in ferocious defense of the mercurial writer's tempestuous lifestyle, beginning a day of exasperated reading and responding by my tenacious girlfriend.

Real direct game has a lot of nuance and flavor that overly simplistic “neo-direct” lacks. What are the differences? All spelled out for you to see.

Hey guys, and welcome back.

Last week I shared the history behind direct game and how it came to fruition. I countered common issues beginners often faced with indirect game back in the day. Direct game developed to respond to these issues:

• Indirect game caused auto-rejections if done uncalibrated and incorrectly (by going too far or not showing interest when warranted). On the other hand, direct game solved this issue by being direct.

• Girls who do not have a minimum threshold of interest can show mixed signals from the get-go. This required the man to convey attractive traits to spike interest before they get her to chase. Direct game solved this issue by screening out those girls who did not have this small initial spark of interest.

• Many beginners back in the day suffered from being friend-zoned by women due to too much passivity and the fear of sexualizing the interaction since sexualizing was synonymous with escalation, which means showing interest. Due to the fear of showing too much interest (the dogmas of indirect game say to show interest sparingly/don’t show too much interest), many men ended up with escalation anxiety. Direct game took a shortcut to solve this issue since the contradiction between escalating (showing interest) and “don’t show any interest” disappeared as direct game vouches for showing interest.

As you can see, many issues were solved with the surge of direct game.

Today, we will see how the good old-school direct game is NOTHING like neo-direct game, now all over the internet. Neo-direct game says you should approach any girl out of the blue and hope for the best, with little or no pickup tech, frame control, or calibration. This is not direct game.

Let’s discuss what the old-school direct game really is. It is nothing like neo-direct game with its terrible ratios, over-simplistic, and inefficient tools. Direct game is a well-thought-out and complex method with many strengths.

FYI: Yes, I have experience with direct game. I have read plenty of material by direct gamers, and I have also known direct gamers who were good.

How available can you make yourself with women? When do you become too available… vs. too unavailable? Use the 4 availability questions to balance your availability.

In seduction and in relationships, there are times it's more helpful to be available to a woman, and times it's more helpful to be unavailable.

Most guys err too far toward one side or the other.

You have for instance the typical nice guy, who makes himself as available as possible to women. Because he is so absolutely available, women don't respect his time, or him, for that matter. He ends up in the "he's nice but he's just not my type" category.

Then you have the guy who understands the game a little better but is too absolute in making himself unavailable. He gives women only slivers of availability and shuts off the availability tap on a moment's notice. This guy gets called 'dick', 'asshole', 'jerk'... though he does get the girl more often than the overly available nice guy. However he still misses out on a lot of women too annoyed at him or who have already quickly moved on when he made himself unavailable.

So what you want is not to be too available, nor too unavailable.

You want to be in the Goldiocks zone of availability: just available enough, while still being scarce.

What's that look like though?

It seems like every guy runs direct game on the girls he meets these days. But how’d direct get to be so popular? It wasn’t always so…

Hey guys.

So today I wanted to share some clarifications on a subject I have discussed in-depth in 2021: namely the whole “direct versus indirect game” subject.

If you have been following my posts over the past year, you should know by now that I am a strong believer in indirect game – namely the type of seduction where you do not reveal your cards (your interest) until she has shown some interest first.

This entails that you must keep her knowledge of your interest in her ambiguous until you manage to build some compliance (or call it “build attraction”). Once you have managed to do exactly that, you will get signs of interest in return, at which point you can reciprocate and show interest back. The amount of interest you show in return depends on how much interest she shows you; you more or less calibrate accordingly at all times.

There are forms of indirect game that are more passive (indirect) than others… yet in strong opposition comes this new trend of neo-direct game, which is all about expressing your interest in her right away. The cat is out of the bag – she knows you want her, and you’ve just got to try to make it happen by convincing her that you are a great potential lover.

Already there we can see how the frame is totally off!

She is now in power… since you are clearly the one chasing her.

She has a higher perceived sexual market value and therefore she gets to dictate the terms. Here she can set very high expectations in terms of her standards. This is how you end up facing highly inflated standards – or rather, that is when you become a guy who gets to deal with those high standards, since men who did not give her all that power will not be facing those high expectations because they never allowed the other party (her) to set them in the first place.

This is exactly what I discussed in my previous post. There I discussed how this neo-direct game, where you constantly show interest from A to Z without ever keeping your level of interest in her ambiguous, without ever showing any mixed signals, and sometimes without ever using compliance-building techniques… or if those were used, they were only used sparingly.

It is easy to conclude from my previous post that indirect game is the solution to the problems that stem from simping and dealing with women’s inflated standards (which we saw only come fully into play when you allow her to express them by setting a frame that gives her the power to do so).

I wouldn’t rush to such a conclusion though. Now, I have in the past been very harsh towards direct game. This is due to two reasons:

1. The surge of poorly done direct game or this overly direct form of direct game (neo-direct game) leading to cringe interactions between men and women. These cringe results led me to wanting to debunk it fully.

2. I personally still believe indirect game is better – that is… (and I may be biased here) because it gives you a better meet-to-lay ratio, since you will have a chance to get some girls you wouldn’t get otherwise (that is, compared to using a non-indirect form of game: that is, direct game).

But this does not mean that direct game used the right way is necessarily bad. This may seem contradictory to things I have said about it in the past. But I need to do a mea culpa. Everything I said in those posts still holds true, in the sense that keeping your levels of interest in her ambiguous is the way to go because it gives you:

• More compliance
• Smoother interaction
• A more solid frame – thus more control

All this still stands.

But this does not mean all direct forms of game contradict all these aspects.

This post is meant to give you guys a clarification on this issue.

In this post, I intend to discuss how this trend of neo-direct game came to be, going through the history of the seduction community. I want to tell you why and how direct game came to life and why and how it eventually turned into neo-direct game.

In my next post, I will pay homage to the good old school direct game – the one that truly worked. If you are a fan of direct game, you will love my next post.