George Sodini Was At A Seduction Seminar

It looks like I was right about George Sodini knowing about the seduction community (or a niche of it, at any rate). He was at an R. Don Steele seminar for “picking up women” called “The Right Attitude Workshop“. (Hat tip: reader Thras.) I put “picking up women” in quotes because R. Don Steele is widely held to be something of a buffoon in the pickup community.

R. Don is the “PUA” that older guys with little knowledge of real game turn to, lured by his cheesy marketing claiming success at teaching older men how to pick up younger women. Ross Jeffries, a pioneer of game based on “neurolinguistic programming”, used to have it out with Steele on usenet back in the day. The end result of their spastic internet bickering was to make both men look like tools (Jeffries should have maintained more state control) and to serve as evidence that Steele is a poseur out of step with mainstream seduction science. That Sodini went to a Steele workshop for help in picking up women shows that Sodini was unaware of Steele’s poor reputation and the legitimate (and more effective) alternatives in the seduction community that were available to him. Whatever Sodini learned at Steele’s workshop, it wasn’t anything that would have helped him get laid or given him the tools to gradually shed his crippling betatude.

I stand by my claim that learning real game, not the breathlessly marketed cheeseball “techniques” for picking up younger women that one would find at a Steele workshop, would have helped Sodini find a woman who would love him, and thus avert the killings that he felt compelled by his demons to carry out.

***

Commenter Zdeno wrote:

Sodini definitely counts as a data point against the hypothesis that “every man can save himself, if only he knows GAME.” He was obviously aware of the seduction community, but the tools available to him weren’t enough.

This blog’s readership is generally accepting of HBD, right? We admit that intelligence, not to mention almost every psychological trait worth measuring, are all primarily genetically determined. Physical traits and athletic ability follow the same pattern. Why do we assume that game is uniquely malleable? It’s like as soon as we start talking about success with women, everyone’s a Gladwell-reading Blank Slatist.

I thus submit the following to the list pretty lies: Game is to a large extent genetically determined. In a polygamous society, some men will be left out of the sexual marketplace regardless of how many negs they memorize.

Define “save”. If by “save” you mean that every man can land a supermodel with expert level game, then yes, I would agree that is a flawed hypothesis. But if you mean, more realistically and less misleadingly of what the seduction community actually claims, that the great majority of men can improve their lot with women by learning game, then the hypothesis is true: The great majority of men in need of saving *can* save themselves with game. A guy similar to Sodini, with a years-long pussy drought weighing down his psyche and his balls, can go from involuntary celibacy to getting laid with chicks one to two points higher than what he is used to banging just by learning game. And by “game”, I mean the whole panoply of male mate value increasing strategies and tactics; from negs to wardrobe upgrades to avoiding the worst beta impulses when interactions with women don’t proceed smoothly.

As most of my readers are probably aware, I believe that genetic predisposition plays a large role in shaping our personalities and fate in life, and in limiting what we can achieve. At least, it plays a much larger role than what the current prevailing mis-wisdom would have you believe. This is why I am not a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian. However, neither am I a determinist. If genetic determinism were the be-all and end-all of human existence, then game would not work at all. You’d either “have the knack”, or you wouldn’t. But years of success with game by thousands of men of varying genetic blessings has proven that game is teachable, it is learn-able, and it will improve the love lives of, and the quality of women available to, the majority of men who make a serious effort to understand game and the nature of women.

There will always be those wretched omega outliers, those psychologically stripped betas, and those congenitally desperate losers in life who will not benefit from game. These pitiable shadows of men in our midst serve to remind us of the cruel indifference of the natural world, and the ultimate pointlessness of everything we do. And, yes, what this means is that some men, because of their inherent natural gifts, will find success with game sooner, and easier, than other men.

But does it follow from such a truth that game is a Blank Slatist wolf in womanizer’s clothing? Should we instead tell the left side of the desireability bell curve to hang up their cleats and go home to rot until the end of their days? No. Tell them the truth: Game will help you find sex and love. It won’t help you as much as, or as effortlessly as, better looking men, or richer men, or smarter men, or more charming men, or more adaptable men, but it will help. And that is the choice before you: To learn the art of seduction and at least give yourself a fighting chance to score more often and with women better looking and more personable than what you are accustomed to scoring, or to give up all hope and masturbate your life away to the gloomy flicker of an LCD while your fat cow American wife thrashes you to within an inch of your pride.

Really, isn’t the choice obvious?

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Did Michael Jackson Commit Suicide?

Based on the sketchy evidence that has come in so far, I don’t think this possibility can automatically be ruled out. Will we discover from the autopsy that his body was flooded with a massive dose of the painkiller Demerol? If so, was the overdose intentional or accidental?

What we know: Michael Jackson was 50. For a guy who didn’t want to grow up, turning 50 must have been a hammer blow to his already fragile prepubescently regressed psyche. He was in debt. Did the stress of a new worldwide tour to get him back in the black (innuendo intended) push him to the ultimate despair? He was underweight. As people age, their metabolisms slow and they begin packing on the unsightly pounds. There are only two (natural) ways to stay adolescent-thin as you age: Exercise, or eat a lot less. Michael Jackson didn’t look very healthy. Most likely, he solved the problem of middle age spread by drastically cutting down the amount of food he put in his mouth. Prolonged (as opposed to intermittent) intense calorie restriction can play havoc with a person’s psychological state, not to mention his health. Michael Jackson wanted to be white. No sense pussy-footing around that, it was as obvious as the caucasian inspired reconstruction of his face and skin, and his (very) white-looking kids. Did his living with being black finally tumble over into self-immolation?

Most importantly, Michael Jackson was fucked in the head from his father’s mistreatment. The manboy was robbed of a childhood (imagine having to hear your brothers banging groupies at the age of 11 as you hide under the bedsheets sticking your fingers in your ears). Jackson was a genuinely asexualized, emotionally stunted, and fantasy-prone age-regressed headcase. Did he believe, or want to believe, that he was still an 11 year old boy? It’s possible Jackson really did see himself as a little kid and it felt natural and normal to him to have boys over for slumber parties. Whether his adult-sized id led him to rest his chemically bleached penis in those kids’ hands is an open question, but does the pedophilic sexual urge of an adult necessarily have to be mutually incompatible with psychological self-identification as a young boy?

If Jackson imagined he was a boy, he would have most feared getting old. For him, aging would have been an encroaching horror he was unable to grasp, let alone cope with in the way most humans cope with the slow decay of their bodies — through the liberal use of happy clappy platitudes and a healthy sense of self-delusion. If you wake up and see a creature in the mirror looking less and less like the boy you think you are, it could send you off the cliff edge. Especially when the real boys you like having over for pillow fight parties start becoming more creeped out by “the old man” who wants to play with them.

Add up all the above, and the speculation of suicide as the cause of Jackson’s death seems reasonable.

Thoughts on Farrah Fawcett:

Cancer sucks, but anal cancer is just humiliating. How does one get anal cancer? I can think of three ways. Random misfortune, eating too much red meat, or taking HPV-positive cocks in the ass. The mind wanders…

Thoughts on celebrity deaths in general:

I’ll never get the outpouring of grief by people who have never met their cultural heroes and don’t know them from Adam. I must be missing the gene for abject celeb worship. When Diana died, the maudlin displays of garment-rending anguish reaffirmed my deeply felt disgust for the mass of humanity. Fucking no-life losers.

When someone I love dies, it’s a big deal. When a pop singer dies, I couldn’t give less of a shit. Unless I’m writing a dastardly blog post insinuating everyone’s blessed icon offed himself.

Thoughts on Michael Jackson and Game:

When a get rejected, I moonwalk away from the girl.

I think Virgle Kent could do a funny retrospective on the Gloved One.

‘Beat It’ was my favorite MJ song. Eddie Van Halen composed the guitar riff for ‘Beat It’. Does it matter that Michael Jackson didn’t write any of his songs? As a music snob and hobbyist guitarist/drummer/clarinetist/pianist, I used to be of the opinion that “pop stars” who didn’t write a lick of music were unworthy of stardom, but that’s a limited view. MJ had a distinctive singing voice, he was a great dancer and popularized a lot of innovative dance moves, and he had charisma, however eccentric. His hit songs are catchy and he had a flair for showmanship. Composing music isn’t the only measure of talent.

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Arnie

Lex was a ruggedly handsome man, mid-40s, and in shape from near daily yoga and martial arts classes. He was fidgety and frenetically hyperverbal and rarely came up for breath once he got rolling on a story drawn from his illustrious past and present lifestyle. And what stories! He ran a business in the recreation industry which put him in contact with a steady stream of young European girls. This contact often led to intimacy. Many patrons of his business would regale you with tales of witnessing Lex whisk some new 22 year old Polish hottie back to his quarters for a night of debauchery, only to do it again the next night with a new girl.

The four of us sat around the restaurant table swapping war stories from the field. Lex’s tomcat career was long and fruitful, but an undercurrent of melancholic nostalgia buttressed the impression that he had let one or two “quality girls” get away. He seemed, in a way, a traitor to his contentment — a victim of chance and his compulsions. Lex made a passing comment, barely noticed in the cavalcade of sex stories if you weren’t paying attention, that “it was getting harder out there” and he needed to adjust accordingly.

Zeets admired the unapologetically masculine lifestyle Lex chose for himself. Marriage, kids, social approval, clock punching and clock ticking? Fuck that noise. Lex lived on his own terms, in hock to no one but himself. Zeets playfully encouraged Lex’s telling of his numerous conquests and the game he runs on women in the big city. Lex was especially fond of “fruit stand game” where he would casually sidle up to a girl (Lex banged chicks of all ages, as long as they were younger than him) and guess what meal she was going to cook judging by the veggies she had in her basket. Since Lex was a competent cook, this banter would often segue into him inviting her over for dinner.

Trent, the fourth and youngest man at the table, also approved of Lex’s playboy adventures, but his approval carried more weight. Trent was a one woman kind of guy, always strapped into a long term relationship that lasted for years and eager to get back into one on the rare occasions he was single. Trent was no herb; he had the tools and the skill to seduce many women if he wanted, so his relatively monogamous existence was all the more intriguing.

Outside of the restaurant we parted, and Lex declined our offer to go to the bar for drinks and carousing. He was on his way back home to make a thousand calls. Lex could hardly focus on anything for long — his ADHD was legendary — and he barely stopped moving as we bro-slapped hands goodbye.

Around 1AM back at Trent’s apartment, as we were about to step inside, an older man, late 40s or early 50s, with a paunch and one shirttail of his light blue button down poking out of his jeans, greeted us with a weary but friendly expression. He introduced himself as Arnie and said he had been Trent’s neighbor for five years. Trent nodded his head knowingly as if he recognized Arnie, but later told us in private he had never seen the guy. He probably had, but it didn’t register.

Arnie was an affable bloke, and we stood outside in the mild air leaning against stair railings under the diffuse glow of the city lights for fifteen minutes talking guy stuff. We learned Arnie was never married, lived alone, and worked in a blue collar hands-on job, and that it was clear to me that he possessed the basic intelligence to work white collar if he so chose. He had lived in the city his whole life and his apartment was rent controlled. There was no chance he would leave, despite the landlord working hard to force out his tenants by passively ignoring repairs that needed to be done.

Arnie relished our company, that much I could tell. He asked us if we were planning to go out somewhere again that night. Trent mentioned the bar where he bartended and Arnie made a frown, explaining that that bar was too “hoity-toity” for him; he preferred down to earth establishments hanging “with the boys”. We laughed, because Trent’s bar is not really snobby, especially not for this city. We began turning our heads and shoulders toward the door and told Arnie we were going to call it a night. Arnie looked disappointed. “Well, another time, then.” He nodded at Trent. “Maybe I’ll meet you over at your bar sometime.” There was a hint of overeagerness in his gravelly voice.

As we stepped inside to leave Arnie behind in the streetlight-misted night, the door swung behind us with a slow creak. When it thumped closed, it echoed heavily in my ears.

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Plausible Apocalypse

I watched “Knowing” on a free movie internet database site. It’s about a kid from 50 years ago who predicts the future with dates and locations for tragic events that hadn’t yet occurred. The end times event prophecied by the kid is a giant solar flare that literally scorches the earth to a crisp. It was a silly but entertaining movie.

I wondered about the odds of such an event happening, and if a real life rogue monster solar flare would cause the worldwide firestorm depicted in the movie. Then I read this:

Over the last few decades, western civilisations have busily sown the seeds of their own destruction. Our modern way of life, with its reliance on technology, has unwittingly exposed us to an extraordinary danger: plasma balls spewed from the surface of the sun could wipe out our power grids, with catastrophic consequences.

The projections of just how catastrophic make chilling reading. “We’re moving closer and closer to the edge of a possible disaster,” says Daniel Baker, a space weather expert based at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and chair of the NAS committee responsible for the report.

It is hard to conceive of the sun wiping out a large amount of our hard-earned progress. Nevertheless, it is possible. The surface of the sun is a roiling mass of plasma – charged high-energy particles – some of which escape the surface and travel through space as the solar wind. From time to time, that wind carries a billion-tonne glob of plasma, a fireball known as a coronal mass ejection. If one should hit the Earth’s magnetic shield, the result could be truly devastating.

A coronal mass ejection causing the deaths of tens of millions? Yes, but not by firestorm. By a total disruption of services.

The second problem is the [electricity] grid’s interdependence with the systems that support our lives: water and sewage treatment, supermarket delivery infrastructures, power station controls, financial markets and many others all rely on electricity. Put the two together, and it is clear that a repeat of the Carrington event could produce a catastrophe the likes of which the world has never seen.

[…]

First to go – immediately for some people – is drinkable water. Anyone living in a high-rise apartment, where water has to be pumped to reach them, would be cut off straight away. For the rest, drinking water will still come through the taps for maybe half a day. With no electricity to pump water from reservoirs, there is no more after that.

There is simply no electrically powered transport: no trains, underground or overground. Our just-in-time culture for delivery networks may represent the pinnacle of efficiency, but it means that supermarket shelves would empty very quickly – delivery trucks could only keep running until their tanks ran out of fuel, and there is no electricity to pump any more from the underground tanks at filling stations.

Back-up generators would run at pivotal sites – but only until their fuel ran out. For hospitals, that would mean about 72 hours of running a bare-bones, essential care only, service. After that, no more modern healthcare.

The article goes on to describe more nightmarish consequences of an unanticipated CME. And how difficult and time-consuming it is to replace the transformers fried by a massive solar plasma ball of death. Our entire way of life — the decadence of our modern economy — would begin to grind to a halt within days of the event. You wouldn’t even be able to recharge your Ipod. The SWPLs would be running around useless like chickens with their heads cut off.

Right now, the only countermeasure we have is NASA’s ACE orbiter probe which can relay information about solar activity to earth with 15- 45 minutes of warning of any incoming solar storms. But this probe is old and failing. And a huge CME can travel much faster than a typical geomagnetic storm, leaving our power companies with too little warning to prepare by either shutting down or re-routing the electrical systems.

This should be a priority for NASA before any manned space flights to Mars. I don’t want my Quake Live interrupted.

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A Cat Lady Bares Her Soul

Craigslist is coughing up some gems lately.

Reasons I Like My Cats More Than Any Man I Have Dated in the DC Area – 23 (For Anti-Cat Man)

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Reply to: XXX
Date: 2009-01-27, 10:00AM EST

Dedicated to the old, cat-hating man…I’ve provided a list of reasons that my two kitties are better than any of the men I’ve gotten involved with in the DC area.

• My cats have never taken me on a date to the 7/11.
• My cats have never pretended to be the love of my life, then disappeared into thin air without even the courtesy of a post-it note explanation.
• My cats have never lied about being Navy SEALs. Not once. Actually, my cats don’t lie AT ALL.
• My cats are ALWAYS in the mood to cuddle.
• Cleaning up after them is much easier than cleaning up after a man.
• My cats have never drunk half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s then tried to break my arms.
• My cats have never lied to me about being married to try to get me into bed.
• They’re not afraid to show their love and affection, which is unconditional.
• My cats are VERY intelligent.
• They aren’t obsessed with Asian women.
• They would NEVER intentionally hurt me.
• They clean themselves daily.
• They aren’t insecure.
• They’re very low-maintenance.
• They have never betrayed me.
• They like ALL different kinds of people…blonds, brunettes, redheads. Because they’re not fixated on narrow, exclusive sets of physical attributes.

So when faced with the decision of whiny man versus loyal cats, I’ll go with the cats any day…

******

She sounds like one of my exes. Always bitching. Her standards are way too high. What’s wrong with 7-11? With the right attitude and cocky smirk a guy can turn a microwaved burrito into a cherished romantic memory for the girl.

How much you want to bet she completely forgave him and had a squirting orgasm that night after he tried to break her arms in a drunken stupor? Women… their tales of woe fall on deaf alpha ears.

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Happy New Year!

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Psycho Stalker

Psycho stalker
Qu’est-ce que c’est?
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
run run run run run run run away
oh oh oh

When you experience the love of many women you are bound to have an unfortunate run-in with a stalker. The formula goes like this:

Number of girls in your lovemaking career + Disparity between your higher value and the girl’s lower value = Odds of wild-eyed stalker ruining your carefully cultivated lifestyle.

Based on my experiences and the stories I hear from friends, you can expect one potential stalker for every 10 women you bed. If you’ve bedded 100 women without incident, the odds of the 101st woman being a stalker are still 10%, but in the bigger picture you are really playing with fire. Your luck will run out. Even worse, if your value is more than 2 points higher than hers, the risk of initiating her stalker module sequence doubles and the degree of psycho behavior intensifies as the market value differential increases.

Example:

1,000 girls banged + 5 point average difference in value = 99.99% chance you had at least one bunny boiling stalker in your life.

Glenn Close’s character was 5 points lower than Michael Douglas’ character, so the result was no surprise to any man who understands how the market works. What were the writers thinking? Glenn Close is a horseface.

To be sure, there are other factors that influence any one girl’s chances of having a psychotic episode on your ass after being dumped. If she came from a broken home, that will boost the odds considerably. Past or present drug addiction is a leading indicator of latent stalker issues. Flakes are especially prone to transmogrifying into crazy stalkers; the airheaded dippiness that annoys the crap out of you when you are trying to get your notch with her is the same mental imbalance that causes her to thrive on the manufactured drama of an emotionally explosive breakup.

Here are some warning signs to watch for:

• Did she come onto you? Major red flag. Desperate, exceedingly horny girls don’t take kindly to being dumped. If a girl says “I have a bet with my friend that I’m going to take a man home tonight”, and then she publicly assaults your mouth with her tongue, you had better have an extrication plan ready after you’ve banged it out.
• She’s a different race than you. “Exotic” girls are more likely to freak out on you after a dumping. My guess is that girls who date outside their race are the type of outliers who engage in all sorts of crazy behavior.
• She’s a former fatty. If you’ve been pumped and dumped your whole life, you’re really not going to like it when you get dumped as a thin girl. She’ll think to herself “I look great now! Why am I still being treated like a one night stand?” On the other hand, many former fatties are so inured to getting dumped that one more doesn’t much faze them.
• She’s a virgin. Be gentle with these rare birds. They are a dying breed.
• She’s under 25. The more hardened and cynical a woman is, the less likely she will go insane after a breakup. Young girls are flooded with bonding emotions that older women simply don’t possess anymore.
• She orgasms easily and vaginally, multiple times. If the girl cums effortlessly during intercourse, your cock will be like a drug to her. Withdrawal is a bitch.
• She’s making plans for the next date before you’ve finished shooting your load across her back. These are the types of girls who spend more waking hours living in fantasyland than in reality.

What to do if you have a stalker:

• Number one rule: CUT OFF ALL CONTACT. Ignore her calls, texts, emails, etc. If you see her on the street, walk on by as if you don’t recognize her. The most innocent backsliding on your part will only encourage her to continue stalking. You don’t want to give her even the slimmest shred of hope. In 90% of stalker cases, total radio silence usually does the trick in two to three weeks.
• Lay down the hammer of hurt. If ignoring her doesn’t work, and she’s stepped up her stalking to sitting on your stoop waiting for you to return from work, you’ll have to get medieval on her. “You dumb fucking psycho cunt, I despise you, I hate you, your pussy is gross, you disgust me beyond words, I want you gone now and if I ever see you near me again I will notify your family and friends what a raving lunatic you are” should put an end to it.
• But if it doesn’t, you’ll need to escalate to defcunt level 3: Actually DO notify her friends and family. She needs an intervention, and public shaming is your best ally.
• In case you’re worried she might do something drastic: Threaten to call the cops. Some girls are so fucking crazy they’ll come at you with a weapon, or they’ll enlist the services of some big meathead they know and make up a story about how you hit her in a bar, and you’ll come home one day to this guy hiding in a bush with a bat in hand. If you think she is capable of doing that, you may want to consider calling the cops for real. It sounds kind of pussy-ish to deal with an obsessed girl by slapping a restraining order on her, but it’s more pussy-ish to explain to your future wife that you’re infertile because a girl kicked you in the nads.
• Trump card: Move out of the country.

I remember this time I banged it out with a chick who, in hindsight, met five of the bullet points I listed above. I made the mistake of replying innocuously to one of her many texts she sent throughout the following week. Two weeks later, on a Saturday night at 1AM, my doorbell buzzed. I jumped because my doorbell sounds like a cow being zapped with 10,000 volts. (If I could locate the wiring, I would disconnect it.) I could hear her outside, shuffling around and mewling for me to come to the door. I turned off the bright hallway light, locked the bolt lock and chain lock on my door, and peeked through the blinds for half a second. Her eyes were spinning. Luckily, I didn’t have a girl with me in my place at that moment, so I didn’t have to worry about explaining the situation. I went back to watching my movie, hoping she would go away. Ten minutes passed. Silence. Phew, she left. Relief.

At 2AM, the doorbell crashed against my eardrums again. Fuck the bitch is back! She must have rung all the doorbells in a spastic panic because my adjacent neighbor answered the door. I overheard their conversation. “Is [moi] in? … I don’t know, you want to check? … Yes, could I? I have these snacks for him.” He let her into the building and she knocked on my door. My heart raced. “I don’t think he’s in … Ok, let me just try once more … Ok, suit yourself, but people are trying to sleep.” Knock knock knock! I turned off the TV, computer, and all the lights and sat in the quiet dark, wondering if I should confront her or call the cops. No worse time to start a battle with a psycho chick than at 2AM. I imagined how a confrontation would go. She would cry and scream and maybe accuse me of rape as my neighbors gathered at their stoops to watch the drama unfold. No, I decided against it. She was unstable enough to cause a major scene, and if I could escape without being identified as “that guy” who has weird stalker chicks coming to his home in the dead of night, I would. So I played possum. I jumped into bed and pulled the blanket up to my chin, dreaming of happier times.

Twenty minutes later (although it felt like a year) she left. I woke up the next morning, bleary-eyed, to a bag of snacks sitting outside my door and a text from her:

i’m so sorry i don’t know what got into me. i’m erasing your number. i’ll never contact you again. best of luck.

I did not reply to that text. I noted with wry irony the “best of luck” face saving maneuver and then proceeded to show her text to all my friends later on. We scornfully laughed in that way guys laugh when we’ve dodged a bullet.

Update

Commenter PA wrote the following:

Half-seriously, how about this as the very last resort against a stalker chick, if leaving the country doesn’t work:

Tell her you are deeply in love with her, send her a new gushy Hallmark card every day, tell her that you see yourselves married, tell her that she’s special, call her at work about how she’s the most beautiful thing that ever walked into your life, and then break into sobs when you tell her that it’s been so long since you were touched when the two of you first made love…. and so on.

If nothing else, that oughta kill the stalker-love, no?

As I wrote in reply, this is the nuclear bomb of counterstalker tactics, and like with all weapons of mass destruction, you run a high risk of catching a lethal dose of fallout. *When* it works, it works perfectly. She will run to the hills. The problem is when it doesn’t work. If you’ve been an alpha for too long, you may have a hard time effectively simulating a lovesick beta. If it backfires, you are stuck with a stalker who is setting up a gift registry with Williams & Sonoma.

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