(2) Intermediate

What is the MGTOW movement all about? Do MGTOWs reject women, love, sex, and society? Or is the phenomenon about something else...?

On my article “Quit Letting Girls Off the Hook So Much”, Jimbo asks for my take on the MGTOW movement:

“That whole MGTOW movement. It seems to have gained steam lately. Their two main talking points are: – Women want to spend their prime years screwing around bad boys and then when they become less desirable they want to settle down with a good man to provide for them. So screw it, I’m not gonna be neither! – Marriage is a trap wherein in a woman grabs her man by the nuts because of all the divorce laws that favor her hugely nowadays and also because of her greedy nature. So screw it, no marriage from this guy!”

Yeah, the whole MGTOW thing is an interesting phenomenon.

I’ve clashed with MGTOWs on occasion when they get into the whole ‘rah rah join our cause’ routine... I’m not really the club-joining sort.

But the rah rah MGTOWs aren’t necessarily representative of the movement overall. So what I’d like to do today is take a look at the ‘men going their own way’ movement and share some thoughts on it from a somewhat broader perspective.

The alpha female is the dominant girl in her group, and to get her, you’ll have to be a little different than you will be to pick up her follower peers.

It’s been nearly three months since I wrote the first installment in this series, “Girls in Groups: How to Tell Who’s a Leader or a Follower.” I finally just sat down to write Part II: how to pick up the leader.

If you didn’t read the first part of this series, click back and give it a read. If you can’t tell the difference between leaders and followers, this article won’t do much good. We’ll talk about identifying some of the signs of leadership vs. followerdom here too, but that first article’s the real roadmap on this.

Once you’ve read that, let’s talk alpha females. First off, why would you want to pick up the leader of the group? Aren’t those usually the toughest, meanest chicks? And aren’t they often the fat or ugly ones?

Well, not necessarily on that last. And as to the rest, it’s all part of the fun.

You know how vital it is to pick a venue with the kinds of girls you want. But how do different venues influence a girl’s openness to various things?

Venue selection is crucial to making your days and nights out go better.

Pick the right venue, and you can leave with a girl’s phone number (or with her arm-in-arm)... Even if your fundamentals aren’t yet too tight and your game needs work.

Pick the wrong venue, and no matter how smooth and attractive a fellow you are, it’s like riding a bicycle through a salt marsh.

So how do you know what the right venue is?

Alek’s discussed this topic already in his article on venue selection:

• Picking Up Girls: Selecting the Right Venu e
  

... and I’ve discussed it somewhat in my ebook on it and my article on bars and clubs:

• Finding Your Niche
• How to Pick Up Girls in Bars and Clubs
  

Today, I want to talk about a somewhat different aspect of venue selection: I want to discuss how to pick the right venue for your style of game and your preferred type of interaction.

Want an easy way to get girls to come join you on an instant date or back home? This advanced invite works even if she’s on the fence.

One of my favorite invites is the “come join me” invite. It’s flexible, fun... and surprisingly nuanced.

I actually spent years experimenting with this invite, with it often falling flat. It took me the longest time to pinpoint what the problem I was having was, too.

I’d chat with a girl, it’d go great, and then it’d be time to change venues or invite her home. And I’d say:

Me: Hey, I’m going to go [do whatever]. Come join me.

And the girl I was talking to would nearly always respond with:

Her: Thank you, but I think I’m going to just [go do whatever].

Occasionally I’d get a “yes” or a “yeah, okay, sure.” But most of the time she’d beg off.

And then one day I figured it out.

Strangeness, oddity, quirk: these might not sound like the traits of an attractive man. Yet, they can be very compelling – and most attractive men have their quirks.

“I swear I’ve never met a man who has your knack for lack of social grace. If you weren’t naturally charming, someone would have stabbed you by now.”

— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

One of my closest friends sent me this quote from our favorite fantasy novel. He said that it reminded him of me.

And, although I have been likened to water by some and a lion by others, I’ve always thought of myself as a fool.

The kind of foolishness I speak of is that of the Fool card in Tarot.

He skips through the world like a child, eyes to the sky, head in the heavens, knapsack on back, and always on the precipice of a great fall (like, literally, he’s about to fall off a cliff). As a fool, I’ve always been attracted to foolish, weird, and strange people and things.

One of my earliest fascinations was with the antagonist from the video game Final Fantasy 6. His name is Kefka, and he is a nihilistic, psychopathic, murderous villain who dresses like a jester.

He begins the story as this weak mage, carrying out the orders of his emperor, laughing at everyone and everything. And then, by the end of the game, he becomes the God of Magic and literally destroys the world, all whilst laughing at everyone and everything.

Strangely, he is one of the most beloved, if not the most loved villain in all of Final Fantasy. His appeal is akin to that of DC’s The Joker (and the creators of Final Fantasy probably drew influence from him for Kefka’s personality).

Others in fiction who work off the same premise are characters like Elodin from the Kingkiller Chronicles, Wit from the Stormlight Archive, The Comedian from Watchmen, or even Rust Coehle from True Detective.

They are wild, batshit insane, and yet terribly charismatic despite having a natural inclination for ungraceful behavior.

Hypergamy is her tendency to date or marry ‘up’. She wants the best, richest, highest status guy she can get, they say. But science disagrees.

One of the memes of the manosphere is that the women of Western society are ardently in pursuit of the wealthiest, highest status man they can get. The qualities women are said to prize most of all include:

• Wealth
• Status
• Looks
• Fame
• Other forms of power
  

Manosphere pundits call this phenomenon ‘hypergamy’.

‘Hypergamy’ originally described the practice of marriage into a higher social or economic class by women. The manosphere has expanded that definition to describe women’s desire for and tendency to pursue men who are their ‘betters’ in some way or another for hook ups and relationships, as well as marriage.

I’m not a fan of the manosphere alpha-beta redefinition, but I have no qualms with its expanded definition of hypergamy. Seems like a natural fit for the term, especially in our present sexual/romantic environment.

So, let’s discuss.

Is hypergamy bad for you?

How big are its effects?

And, how must you adapt?

She’s over there, but you feel so nervous about going up to meet her. Maybe she’ll reject you; maybe she won’t be nice. There are a few things to realize if you feel this way, though.

What could you achieve with women if you were fearless?

Think of all the things you could have done and said.

I myself did not start off doing this void of emotion. It used to be so bad for me that I would shake uncontrollably from just the thought of approaching a random person. Everyone has felt this way to varying levels of potency at one point in their life or another. So what is there to do?

You will never completely rid yourself of this. Over time it will dissipate more and more but it will always be there. Yet you can elevate yourself from it. I personally have come a long way from where I used to be. From my meager one approach a week to now being able to approach on command whenever I want.

How do I do this? Needless to say it is not because I conquered my fear but instead because I learned to approach in spite of it. And you can too. You can go into a venue feeling out of it and leave it feeling like a god consistently by taking on the right mindsets and actions. What are they?