Guest Post: Virgil Kent's Nexxt Level Up: repeated evidence against game (by Shackleford)

Shackleford is back with another brilliant analysis of the "manosphere". This time, he shows that some people don't even know what they are writing about and in fact prove the opposite of what they intended.

Unbeknownst to Virgil Kent, his new site Nexxt Level Up provides repeated evidence against the legitimacy of mainstream PUA tactics, as well as Roissy game. This is not too surprising; Virgil Kent always seemed apart from the PUA cult and more like a relatively normal dudebro that was into randomly banging girls. He piggy backed onto Roosh's audience many years ago, but the general tone of his work is far less whiny and preachy than that of Return of Kings and Heartiste. That said, his content isn't all that engaging or deep, but he still provides solid gold evidence against the usefulness of mainstream game concepts. Let's review:

Example #1: http://nexxtlevelup.com/game/dc-and-little-california

This is from the post "DC and Little California", in which Virgil is completely unenthused about going out but ends up taking a girl home. We find out in this story, however, that the process of hooking up was easy, almost as if the girl was already attracted to him and all he had to do was not fuck up. In fact, that is exactly what happened:

Again there was something cool and nonchalant about the whole thing. Nothing weird or hesitating like the last one, it’s as if she saw me and decided before talking with me that she would be ok with sleeping with me if I didn’t fuck it up or turn out to be gay.

Note that Virgil did pull a DHV move by showing that he knew the bouncer, but the evidence in the story reveals that she was already attracted to him on first sight.

Example #2: http://nexxtlevelup.com/game/autopilot-game

This is a guest post by a dude named Nate, who has stood up to the racists of the Roissy-sphere, so he can't be that bad. I also thank him for posting a pretty strong rebuke of game. The above post, titled "Autopilot Game," describes a journey in which a man starts out using PUA tactics only to find out that they are practically worthless: key sentence is that the narrator of this story "starts going out more" because of PUA, which of course produces some results despite these tactics, not because of them. The narrator realizes this eventually:

Maybe, you start to wonder, maybe just maybe something is wrong with the rulebook. After getting slapped the previous night, you can’t stop thinking about it. It nags at you every day. Certain thoughts creep in, seemingly heretical in nature. Maybe the playbook is stupid? Maybe it sucks? Nah, remember where you came from. But… maybe the playbook/rulebook was made for people who need rules, for those who need set plays and guidance? What if you don’t need those anymore? What if you’ve outgrown capital G “Game”?

No, Nate, you are correct: the playbook is stupid. As we find out at the end of this story, the narrator finds success by following his own path and focusing on the girls who are already attracted to him, and finds out (surprise!) that "negs" and "shit tests" are almost completely irrelevant in this type of scenario:

At the bar, you see this hottie eyeing you two tables down, but before you can even make your approach she pops up behind you and introduces herself. Your buddy knows the score and leaves immediately, and you draw her close while getting to know each other’s names and stuff like that. After a mere two minutes, you are making out already and she’s feeling your arms. As if on autopilot, you guide her to the barstools where you can sit close, drink, and enjoy each other’s company. Even though she’s new, nothing else about this interaction is. You smile, laugh, even compliment her a couple times because after all, she does look very nice tonight. You have forgotten what a “shit test” is because you haven’t gotten one in forever, or at least if you have you didn’t even care to notice. You take her to a nearby club because you enjoy getting your grind on in low lighting, and by one o’clock she’s in your bedroom, taking her clothes off.

This naturally ends with the narrator - having settled into his own niche - realizing that reading game blogs is counter-productive:

The next morning, mildly hungover but otherwise feeling great, you check in on those blogs you used to read religiously but hardly any of it resonates with you anymore. Not that there is anything wrong with any of it, but as a custom built machine you know exactly what you do or don’t need to do to the point that even thinking about it does more harm than good.

Example #3: http://nexxtlevelup.com/game/the-tyler-chronicles-never-give-up-on-the-night

This is my personal favorite post, because it contradicts one mainstream game trope ("looks don't matter") and one Roissy-game trope (the tendency to overthink every fucking part of an interaction). Virgil establishes right away that the subject of his story, Tyler, is good looking. Virgil addresses this directly by implying that it's his game, not his looks, that gets him laid:

This is the guy betas will scream at the top of their lungs, “Game only works if you look like that”

Unfortunately, evidence from the story reveals that it is precisely Tyler's looks that got him laid. The evidence is contained within Tyler's description of first encountering the girl who he would later hook up with:

I saw a girl to the right of the attendant stand looking my way. She was a very sexy red headed girl wearing a thin leopard long sleeve shirt over a grey shirt. I was the only one standing in that area. I caught her looking again. My blood started pumping.

Tyler gets her number and later takes her out on the date in the Boston area. The funny thing about this story is that Tyler makes a couple of mis-steps during this date that could've have pointlessly derailed this girl's desire to sleep with him. First of all, he takes her to a loud, crowded frat bar in downtown Boston, where she acts justifiably uncomfortable. He senses this and recommends going to a bar in her neighborhood. She agrees and he follows her in his car to her neighborhood, which leads to the single most amazing part of this story, the part where his loyalty to Roissy concepts of mental-masturbation and over-analysis almost prevent him from an easy lay:

I started following her. We approached a green light that turned yellow, and she gunned through it. Did she just do that on purpose?? Fuck this….I stopped at the red light and decided I’m heading home. 

Seconds later she called, “Did I just lose you?” “Yes, you ran a red light. It’s getting kind of late anyways…” I was too tired to drive all over Mass, and I was annoyed. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry! I’ll pull over until you reach me!” Her tone convinced me to stay.

You can almost see his Roissy hamster wheel ruining the night: "she ran a red light!!! This is a shit test!!! The only way for me to pass it is to go home!!! Trying to follow her after this is beta!!! I have to push every part of this interaction in my favor or it's over!!!"

Fortunately for Tyler, he decides to follow her, she suggests they skip the bar and go to her apartment, where she finally opens up, and then banging ensues. This implies that the whole charade of going to bars to finesse her for hours was pointless in the first place.

Conclusion

While Virgil Kent is a friend of Roosh's and former friend of Roissy, we can see pretty strong evidence from his stories that traditional PUA game plays a non-existent role in both his and his collaborators' successes. The girls in each of these stories were initially attracted to the guys, and all the guys had to do was be cool and escalate. Despite this, the subject in his last example almost fucked it up by freaking out over the girl running a red light. Moral of the story: it's not that complicated.