Play-by-Play Pick-Up Artistry

Last week I shared a five-minute video on X of a woman hitting on various men around a university campus that has now received nearly four million views. It’s such a beautiful social experiment because you see a series of young men put in the exact same situation and watch their reactions. You can observe the gradations in how confident men are and their readiness to capitalize on opportunities that come before them. We see everything from a guy freezing to one treating the situation as something that happens all the time.

I thought the video was so interesting that I suggested to Rob that we watch it and do a play-by-play. Watch the video here rather than listen to the audio alone in order to get the full experience. We critique what the men say, their facial expressions, and body language. What I love about the video is you get at least one of each of various types of guys you see in the world: confident black guys, the completely frozen guy, the nervous guy who just wants the situation to end, the boring guy, and even the guy who seems to be doing most things right but has something about himself that’s just off. Men should watch this while asking themselves which prototype they’re closest to.

I made the mistake of looking at the comments to my original post and saw a stream of incels making excuses for failure, which I then responded to. I don’t begrudge the men who lacked confidence or were unprepared. What I hate is the twitter guys who don’t see anything wrong with it. This culture of inceldom needs to be destroyed. Back in my day we had guys who couldn’t find women to have sex with them. What was less common was this sense of dejection, which is reflected in misogyny and the belief that looks matter for women anywhere near as much as they do for men. I noticed that a lot of them were MAGAs and one elsewhere complained about Hunter’s laptop. To be an incel is Low Human Capital. The pieces all fit together.

I don’t think being shy around women, or most people really, is something any man should accept. It’s fundamentally a reflection of a feeling of inferiority. You don’t become nervous around those you see yourself as above or equal to. I dislike people brushing aside shyness like it’s some harmless trait that is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a failure and should be treated as such.

Knowing exactly what to do in social situations is less important than having the right attitude. Every interaction with others – from the direction of one’s eyes to the speed and cadence of speech to how one smiles or walks – speaks volumes about an individual’s beliefs about himself and the situation he finds himself in.

Understanding the subtleties and nuances that create one frame or another is the first step towards building better relationships with other people. After we’re done watching the video, Rob and I share some general thoughts on self-improvement and meeting women, and why we disagree with Bryan’s advice that you should ask a girl to hold hands. I explain why it’s not a coincidence that the two best performing men in the video were black, which you would have expected if you read my article “Black Guy Hitting on Girls.” Finally, I put forward a view that I think might be an unpopular position, which is that developing social skills is one of those things where someone may be able to go from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile. Most other areas of life, like athletics or intelligence, don’t work like this.

If you want more on these topics, see the previous conversation between Rob and me under the title “The Sexual Marketplace as the Last Vestige of Our Darwinian Past”, and me on “How I Overcame Anxiety,” and “The Autism Horseshoe.”