Vibrators and Blow-Up Dolls

I think it's safe to say that mainstream media systematically ridicule men. Or can you, off the top of your head, tell me about a movie or TV show that portrays a woman as emotionally unstable, unreliable, or incompetent? Those traits are nowadays apparently the sole domain of men. Man-bashing of that kind is so common that you may not even notice it any more.

If you need a reminder, check out this video:

(That guy has created a series of over a dozen videos that collect and discuss depictions of misandry in the media. Check it out if you've got the time.)

An Encouraging Message from a Reader

This was recently posted in the comments section of the post So, how healthy is the PUA Scene? I thought it deserved to be seen by a greater number of people.


I am so happy to have found the idiocy of this scene early on. The straw that broke my back is when I started hanging out with someone who wanted me to be their wing and assured me that he was having epic nights going out and that he had slept with 100+ girls in his life. This idiot had internalized almost every single PUA material out there that he could quote things verbatim. Being that he was my height (5"8) and bald and was getting as many women as he claimed to be getting excited me. I was hopeful at the prospect of hanging out with him and learning and benefiting.

Feminist Power Fantasies

Have you ever been in a situation in which people were expected to make small talk, and you were asked in which historic epoch you would have liked to live in? I think it's an absurd question, but it's one that enjoys some popularity. Especially women seem fond of that kind of daydreaming. However, as soon as people explore this topic, they make one serious mistake: they refer to the elites, the aristocracy.

Don't get me wrong, this kind of comparison is of course perfectly legitimate if you happen to be the Queen of England and ask yourself whether any of your ancestors might have been a happier parasite than you are. However, the vast majority of people aren't quite so lucky. So, the next time a girl asks you a question like that, before blabbering about how fabulous it must have been to have lived in the baroque era, tell her to think about the fate of the common man. Suddenly, this comparison isn't quite so sexy anymore.

Yes, Virginia, of course you would have lived in Versailles!

Do women really hold all sexual power?

There is a lot of bullshit in the mainstream media. I find it especially irritating when clearly subjective opinions are presented in an allegedly objective manner by people who have a hidden agenda. One such example is the claim that women have all the sexual power in the world. Of course they don't. (Hint: it's mutual).

There is a longer backstory behind this post, and it seems worthwhile discussing it openly. I recently took an online course in Behavioral Economics on Coursera. The teacher, Dan Ariely, is knowledgeable and also lovingly flippant at times. For instance, he started every lecture with an inappropriate joke, and plenty of the examples he used might have easily offended some people's sensibilities. As a bonus, there were guest lectures at the end of each week, given by professors teaching in behavioral economics or related disciplines like psychology.

In week 2, though, I saw some giddy woman in front of the camera, telling about her "research". She was making some rather daring statements, such as "women have all the sexual power", "women decide how soon in a relationship sex happens", or, my favorite, "men's sexuality has no worth". Of course, she referred to the mainstream media model of dating, according to which a guy has to wait three weeks before some chick will spread her legs for you. Needless to say, in her little world, this applies to "all women", and we as men are at their complete mercy.

Sex, Porn, and Voluntary Celibacy

In the comments section to my recent post on Google search trends regarding the main figures in the seduction industry there was an interesting debate. A PUA believer (shill?) claimed that because interest in search terms like "picking up girls" was high, the seduction industry must be in great shape. You can probably quickly find out what the problem with this line of reasoning is. If not, then feel free to refer to my response to that comment.

An anonymous commenter chimed in, ridiculing that position by referring to the ever-rising interest in sex and porn to further illustrate the absurdity of that argument. Here's the graph, taken straight from Google Trends. It shows interest in the keywords "sex" and "porn" over time, and look at the success story "porn" has become:

"sex" (red) vs. "porn" (blue)

So, why would you prefer porn over sex? I don't want to read too much into this data, but I couldn't help but think of the rise of the MGTOW community. A relatively prominent position in this scene is to choose voluntarily celibacy, or simply pay for sex, instead of following some made-up social conventions. You know, nonsense like that the wedding ring is supposed to cost the equivalent of half your annual income, or that fat women have a "great personality" and all that jazz.

So, how healthy is the PUA Scene?

It's been a while since I actively looked into the mainstream seduction community online. My perception certainly is that while there are new fads like currently Simple Pickup and Roosh, the main players have been on the way out. The other day I researched traffic patterns via Google, and look what I found:

Neil Strauss

This is celebrated author Neil Strauss, on a slow but steady downward slope. The other players --- no pun intended --- in this business didn't fare quite so well. On the other hand, Neil Strauss is quite prominent due to his other books, which helps him keep his popularity up.

Can you guess what the following graph represents?

Mystery Method

It's public interest in Mystery Method. Mystery represents mainstream (idiotic) PUA game more than anyone, given that he was the most prominent character. Thus, this graph is presumably more indicative of the scene than any other. Note the sudden spike in 2007, followed by a continuous slide.

Up next: Real Social Dynamics.