Trouble with Neo-Direct | Girls Chase

Trouble with Neo-Direct

Is Criticizing the Friend Zone or Neo-Direct Harmful to Men?

Chase Amante's picture
neo-direct criticismA reader claims our criticisms of neo-direct have given him approach anxiety. Were we wrong to criticize the friend zone and neo-direct?

Commenting on my article on a study about what sort of compliments women respond best to, reader “Anonymous dude” writes:

Maybe guys wouldn't be twiddling their thumbs and stopped approaching women, worried about what to say and how to open if you didn't come up with this arbitrary confusing "neo direct" concept that makes some guys too self conscious and puts them too in their head. Especially when people that you've hired from your own team open "neo direct" not going to name people.

Just saying there may be some validity in this neo direct concept since i've seen this pattern of guys opening women in very simplistic ways and getting sporadic results and eventually plateuing but it's not like you're showing how to approach effectively or what one would look like. Reading about this made me too concerned about whether i'm running ineffective game that's a waste of time that I stopped approaching almost altogether.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term neo-direct, it’s a term I coined two years ago to put a label on the “shoot your shot” philosophy so rampant in modern red pill, man guru advice you see on Youtube, in forums, and everywhere else. Alek Rolstad wrote a proper series on it, “The Trouble with Neo-Direct”, which you can read here.

This simplistic method is the 2020s analogue to the friend zone of the 1990s and 2000s – the conventional wisdom, no-skill-required tack every guy and his brother took and recommended to every other guy to take to try to get women.

What the friend zone was to guys back then, shoot your shot neo-direct is to men today.

But, is there some validity to neo-direct?

Should you ever use it?

And… have I harmed men by opposing it?

How REAL Direct Game Works... Compared with Neo-Direct

Alek Rolstad's picture
real direct vs. neo-directReal 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 Did Direct Game Pickup Grow So Popular?

Alek Rolstad's picture
direct game pickupIt 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.

Neo-Direct Game, Simping, & Women's High Standards

Alek Rolstad's picture
neo-direct gameGuys who try ‘gaming’ women with this new-style “neo-direct” game aren’t gaming girls. They’re simping IRL. Which explains the harsh rejections neo-direct gamers get.

Note: I will be criticizing super-direct (neo-direct) game in this post. However, I want to emphasize that I am not attacking direct game. I have previously been harsh about direct game, but those posts were mostly a criticism of super-neo direct game that I intend to criticize here. I will clarify further in my next two posts. I have a post on direct game coming out soon and will explain how to run it properly to get maximum efficiency and consistency. Stay tuned.


Hey guys.

Today I want to add my take on women and high standards in the era of social media and simping. I want to link this phenomenon with the surge of neo-direct game.

Direct game has become more popular lately.

However, the new form that has become more popular (which Chase calls “neo-direct game”) mostly teaches men to spam-approach on the street, show interest, and hope for the best.

These techniques have done nothing good for men, aside from giving them the balls to approach girls.

Girls with inflated egos from social media, plus the high amount of simping, only leads them to hunt for more validation. With this new form of direct game, you give her exactly what she wants. But now, you are not of much value to her—that is, unless she is looking for sex. Your odds are low since it is more likely that she would just call an F-buddy to satisfy her needs rather than going along with a stranger from the street.

Never have men obtained such bad results as they have using this approach to pick up. I have read reports on forums (some are from our own forum) of guys doing 100 approaches and only getting two lays. Those numbers don’t shock me, considering the style they apply.

What shocks me is that these results are considered normal. They are not. These men have been misled.

Such a ratio is not normal for someone who has made hundreds of approaches. The number of guys sharing these numbers may seem like outliers, but they are not; it is common. They do have one thing in common: they all used this super-direct approach.

Some guys are stubborn and stick to this bad routine because that’s how some of us are. (I have been guilty of this myself). Others just give up. The latter guys come to our forum or post in our comment section that women have too high standards. Chase wrote an amazing piece on the subject. I am not adding anything to his brilliant post.

It makes sense that many men think that women today have high standards. If you opt for super-direct game (neo-direct game), you will often get rejected. From there, it is easy to assume that you are not enough for her and that women’s standards have gone up drastically.

And in all honesty, in some ways, they have gone up. I will add a different perspective to Chase’s theory that doesn’t really conflict.

This “neo” super-direct game is no different than simping on the internet. Women indeed get plenty of attention from hungry, desperate men online. Just look at the surge of “sexual” services on OnlyFans.com, and all the attention-whoring on Instagram. Even Tinder is now used primarily as a tool to gain new followers on Instagram.

What we see coming out of neo-direct game is brutal. It is simping. Most beautiful women are used to such behavior. Even those who are not completely histrionic on social media will get some level of simping from different dating apps or elsewhere.

All this is because the internet facilitates two factors:

  • Male simping

  • Female attention-whoring

The internet motivates simping because this behavior in real life (especially night game) often results in a harsh rejection.

Why?

In real life, women have to reject to get rid of such men so they don’t annoy them or follow them around. There is also the danger of some men becoming sexual harassers.

Yet harsh rejections are not needed on the web because everyone is behind a screen. The men who follow a beautiful woman online either live far away or have no way of finding out where she lives. If an online fan goes too far, she block him, report him, and have him banned. So she does not need to reject harshly.

Men can stick around online since it does not pose any danger to her, and it can benefit her social status and validation. Instead of harsh rejections, women may give men a “like” to their comment as a pitiful reward, and if they are lucky, they even get an “Oh, you are so nice :D” comment.

However, once back to real life, women reject a stranger’s approach as a safety measure, especially when he is too pushy and forcing her into a corner. Remember that women have a risk-averse nature. (Read my theoretical post on female state control for more information.) A woman will usually choose the safe option, to reject, even if she considered you cute or interesting. She doesn’t know you and wants to play it safe. Smiling back and playing along will signify that she accepts your approach, which could potentially drag her into something she may later regret.

This fact has always been true. The club served as the main ground for attention-seeking behavior in the past,. (This still happens in clubs today, but the web now outcompetes it.) It’s why women have their shields up in clubs. Constantly dealing with frumpy and bitchy women, leading to plenty of harsh rejections, demotivates many men from using simping-like behavior in clubs. This is the reason why indirect game was revolutionary back in the 2000s. It was the opposite of simping behavior. It was a countermeasure to the harsh rejections men would face in clubs.

I'm Changing Messaging on the Whole Women's Standards Thing

Chase Amante's picture
women's standardsMore and more men are arguing women’s standards are over-inflated. Does it help to argue against that… or should we be aiding guys to sidestep those standards?

Meta post here.

Something's been bugging me for a few years now, feeling like this shift is occurring in the men's space and I'm not keeping my thumb on it totally accurately. After I did two posts on standards last week, I mulled it over over Christmas weekend and I think this whole thing about standards is actually it -- and that we need to make a bit of a course correct here.

For years we've had more and more men drifting onto the site complaining women's standards are too high or that women "aren't worth the work" to get. What began as a trickle became a deluge... then a tidal wave.

Initially, I treated these guys as a nuisance.

I placed them in the same category as feminists telling us we should die or guys telling us pickup is wrong because it's manipulation or that premarital sex is wrong because it hurts women or goes against God's law or what have you.

Then as more and more of the 'too high standards guys' appeared, I just continued treating them that way because I was already in that habit.

They'd come back, claiming it didn't matter what I was saying; if I didn't agree with them I just "didn't get it."

Again, everybody with a strong belief system does this: feminists say we don't get it when we don't accept the patriarchy, "pickup is wrong" folks say we don't get it when we tell them it's not wrong, etc. It's a world views thing.

Yet at the same time, I've watched the seduction space slowly but steadily decline, even as the number of men declaring women's standards are too damn high and women aren't worth the work has exploded.

I've started to realize that unless I can speak to those guys, in a language that clicks with them, I am going to fail to serve what has over time become the majority of men out there, most of whom are frustrated, lonely, and feeling helpless. Arguing with them over whether women's standards are or aren't too high doesn't accomplish that.

So I had a good think, and I realized we need to switch around how we are coming at things a bit here.