Thursday, January 24, 2013

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.

14 comments:

  1. good work. nexxt level up also is taking a stand against the hbd scientific racism the roissysphere is so fond of:
    http://nexxtlevelup.com/everything-else/the-truth-behind-the-hbd-cult-prt-1

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  2. Who really cares anymore? Yeah it's all about looks, money and status. No need to keep going on and on.

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    Replies
    1. You are Strawmanning

      ---

      A straw man is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[3] This technique has been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly in arguments about highly charged, emotional issues.

      ---

      Perhaps one reason to continue to clarify is because some people distort/misinterpret or misunderstand the point?

      Some do it on purpose (shills)
      Some do it due to mental barriers to understanding the finer distinctions.

      All in all, continuing to clarify, explain until people get the actual position, instead of a caricature as you just posted is useful and the only choice really.

      Delete
  3. The flip side of this is, what about guys that no girl is attracted to? I've never been chatted up or gotten more than two minutes' conversation from a girl I was chatting up before she politely excuses herself. In public, bars, etc., all women studiously avoid eye contact with me, even the fatties. Should I assume that my looks are too ugly and I should spend my life on more productive pursuits than women?

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    Replies
    1. I know nothing about you, but before you give up, at least consider the possibility to improve your looks, and your life in general.

      Delete
    2. Raymond - Help Is Here

      "what about guys that no girl is attracted to"

      No such guys exist. Though I know HOW IT FEELS to believe that, because I had believed that and spent many years believing all women hate me and no woman likes me.

      I JUST HELPED A CELIBATE GUY BREAK HIS LIFELONG CELIBACY USING A NEAT TRICK, just the other day (I'll uncover the trick at the end of this comment)

      "I've never been chatted up or gotten more than two minutes' conversation from a girl I was chatting up before she politely excuses herself. In public, bars, etc., all women studiously avoid eye contact with me, even the fatties. "

      Let me give you an example.

      -> Here's me, having a dry spell, no chick is talking to me, every chick diverts her eyes or cuts conversation when I try to talk to her... Women on the street all divert their eyes. I feel like the world's biggest loser and I'll never have sex again

      -> I go and have three one-night-stands in a week, I feel like the boss and like every chick in the world loves me

      -> I go out, chicks start hitting on me everywhere I go, chicks stare at me on the street, and chicks love conversing with me in the same groups I felt shunned up to a week ago.

      WHAT HAPPENED? I looked and dressed the same before and after, but the reactions I got from chicks were completely opposite.

      I don't want to go too much into social psychology and perception, but it's feedback loop. When you feel like no chicks want you, you do 2 things a) You act in ways which cause bad responses (ends up a self-fulfilling prophecy) b) your perception is skewed, and you interpret everything in the worst way possible. Without knowing it you're using hostile voice tone or akward body-language and people respond it, but you're not even aware you're doing it

      SO WHAT IS THE SOLUTION. AND HOW DID I HELP MY CELIBATE FRIEND THE OTHER DAY?

      So I have a friend who has been mopping for months about how he's an older virgin, and he's never been liked by chicks, and how all chicks reject him, and how he should just give up on chicks altogether because no chicks will ever like him, bla bla bla bla...

      Guess what I did?

      I TOLD HIM TO PROVE IT

      Now I know that a lot of that belief comes from vague misinterpretations and such, so I CHALLENGED HIM TO PROVE that he's unlikeable to chicks.

      This is the challenge I gave him:

      -> You have to GO OUT and get rejected by a 100 chicks in a ROW. IF YOU DO, then you have EARNED the right to give up on chicks.

      -> If you get rejected by a 100 chicks in a row, then you have PROVEN beyond the shadow of doubt that no chicks like you, and you may safely move on with your life and go do other things
      (part 2 follows - motivation)

      Delete
    3. (part 2)

      NOW - what would your motivation for doing this be?

      How would you push yourself to go for 100 rejections? It's simple, you're not doing it to get laid or get chicks or dates or interest or makeouts or anything.

      YOU'RE DOING IT FOR THE CLOSURE effect. Make sense? Let me assure you something. I know you have doubt. In fact your comment says you do. You're not certain you have no chance with girls.

      If you give up on chicks and pursue other things, you will spend the entire time being torn apart and unable to focus. You will keep getting thoughts about "maybe I should try with chicks again? What if chicks don't really dislike me"?

      SO DO IT FOR THE CLOSURE. Go out there, prove to yourself that all women hate you beyond the shadow of a doubt, and if you prove that successfully, you may move onto giving up chicks forever.

      What happened to my friend? Only a few days from starting my experiment he got several dates (his first ones in his entire life).

      THE TRICK IS -----> Your mind lies to you. Even if you claim you've been rejected your entire life, you might have only had 2-3 actual rejections (clear, non-ambigious).

      When I SAY "get 100 rejections". They have to be CLEAR unmistakable rejections. Talking to a chick and her turning her HEAD does NOT COUNT. You have to ask a chick from a social circle you've been chatting with if she wants to come over to your house and she says no (that counts). Or if you approach a chick and you ask her if she wants to join you for cofee and she says NO (that counts). If you message a friend from college/high-school and ask her to hang-out for cofee to catch up sometime and she says NO (that counts).

      Some chicks turning her head, or cutting a conversation short DOES NOT COUNT. And it would take 50 pages for me to explain why it doesn't count and you're causing it without knowing. Just go do this experiment, get 100 rejections in a row and PROVE TO ME that no chicks like you. I DARE YOU. I Say you're lying. PROVE it to me.

      Delete
    4. That's pure gold Alek. Indeed, the mind lies to you, and PUA is in full force entrapped in faulty human mental distortions. I don't know if you read the book "Psychobabble" and "You are not so smart" (I think both by the same author), they go into these phenomena in great detail.

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    5. Alek, is this friend of yours the blogger who writes The Black Pill blog?

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    6. Alek, is this friend of yours the blogger who writes The Black Pill blog?

      I wish. BlackPill is the only celibate guy I've been unable to help overcome it. BP's cognitive distortions and defense mechanisms are some of the strongest in the world. I'd quicker be able to become an NBA athlete than convince BP he can end his celibacy - that guy is just on a whole other level...

      Delete
  4. VK and Roissy are still tight they talk frequently with each other on twitter

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    Replies
    1. Can you provide links to being friendly and tight on twitter? Whenever I see them talk to each other on twitter lately, it's usually VK calling Roissy out on some new race war theory. I don't see much friendly banter between the two, just debating.

      Even if they are still tight behind the scenes, VK is still taking steps to distance himself from a lot of his more unsavory aspects.

      Delete
    2. I really don't have time to go through all of their tweets especially Roissy's mad men ramblings. However it's commmon knowledge that VK/Roosh/Rooisy are tight

      Proof

      http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRz1phiY11cpyeaHgzXGfL4QHxmOxXrOuBby14x0i2Baj4BYHLi
      Rooisy at the bar with friends and VK

      http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS3N9_T0_B_mcnIX_6rwYpirDjLp2LUImA5HsB_TiNzpTvhp-Vr
      More evidence of friendship




      Delete
  5. Virgil Kent has addressed this post indirectly on his website:

    http://nexxtlevelup.com/game/moving-without-the-ball

    I appreciate that VK did not jump into the usual ad hominem attacks or dogmatic shilling that usually accompanies game defense, but he misrepresented our argument. Here is a choice quote from his article:

    "This is the classic tale of how being good looking doesn’t guarantee you getting sex. This is what people who deny game fail to understand just showing up with good looks may get your foot in the door but there are still a million ways to blow it. Attempting to be funny, cool or edgy, sometimes just opening your mouth will do more harm than good."

    My response to this is that I agree. Good game primarily involves acting on a girl's initial attraction and not fucking it up. None of the posters here deny that one can mess things up by acting weird or dumb with a girl who is already attracted to you. What we argue is that you can't create attraction by faking DHV, faking alpha, passing shit tests, doing routines, or telling long stories. In fact, most of these things would fall under the category of what VK describes as "doing more harm than good" by opening your mouth. They won't create attraction, and they are more likely to kill existing attraction than escalate it.

    The only written evidence of these things "working" in the PUA manosphere is from Roissy. Ignoring the general suspect details of Roissy's stories, People should understand that Roissy is a 6"4" good-looking guy that lived 10 feet from the highest concentration of drunken girls in the US. Roissy claimed that game "quadrupled" his results , but I'm willing to bet that it simply involved more approaches. Furthermore, I've seen tall, good-looking white dudes get away with the most ridiculous behavior and still have certain girls fawning over them. One of my good friends, who fits this physical category, was literally chewing his own face from too much cocaine use one night, and the girl he was talking to was still staring at him as if he were Christ resurrected.

    My point is: yes you can screw things up with your behavior, and sometimes you can get away with acting like a fool, but the key point in all of this is that she has to be attracted to you first. And for those of you who think I'm saying "looks are 100 percent important," that's not the truth at all. Both myself and a number of my friends are not great-looking, yet we do fine. Anti-PUA Johnny is short, yet he does fine. The point is that unless you are in that top 5 percent of looks that Roissy falls under, spam approaching without consideration to context or environment is ridiculously counter-productive (it's probably counter-productive even to those in that top 5 percent). You have to be more tactical and aware.

    ReplyDelete

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