Stop Looking At Girls From Across The Room

If you don’t first rid yourself of bad, beta habits, acquisition of positive, alpha habits will be harder to internalize. One thing I see men do all the time is glance up from whatever they are doing to look at cute chicks across the room in hopes of eliciting reciprocal flirty eyeplay. What usually happens next is… nothing.

Girls are not going to suddenly find you irresistibly attractive because your bedroom eyes keep checking them out. They might be flattered or spooked, but rarely aroused. To spark arousal in women, you have to talk to them, with either your mouth or your body. And that means closing the distance fast.

The main problem with multiplying glances is that it tends to become a fallback zone in which to comfortably escape from making the difficult choice of opening a girl and finding out if she’s worth your attention. If you want to go years in between lays, waiting for that one killer glance which will send a girl into your arms, then this “strategy” is for you. But most men prefer their love lives are less insufferably arid.

Refraining from looking around a room multiple times at every girl is a step toward washing the feeble beta from your soul and replacing it with a more powerful alpha frame of mind. You will be tempted, of course, to check out pretty girls. Resist it, and supplant that temptation with another one: to WALK UP to pretty girls and speak to them.

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Women Dabbling In False Identities

It seems the domains of vice that were once predominantly the purview of shady men have found purchase among women. A reader writes:

I have encountered a few chicks (very smart ones!) who enjoy using fake identities to make friends with men on the Internet and manipulating the information they provide. (I mean actually lying about themselves, revealing false information rather than simply declining to share true information.)  I’ve gotten good at smoking them out and leading them into inconsistencies. They never admit lying even though they’re caught dead to rights, and they often try to turn the tables by claiming to be offended at the lack of trust I show by doubting them, before running out of lame excuses and disappearing in embarrassment.

Sometimes, though, there is a genuine spark, which is unfortunate because even if under other circumstances a real relationship could happen, I won’t tolerate sock puppets and they won’t admit to behaving badly. What’s the best way to get these girls to fess up rather than run away?

(A “partners in crime” attitude is one possibility, getting her to tell about her other fake identities and helping her make them more effective, but although that appeared to work great for me once, it backfired because it made me take longer to realize she had told me a completely different set of lies, so I’d rather encourage truthfulness.)

What advantages do women accrue from crafting false identities over the internet?

1. Fat chicks can enjoy, for a spell, the attentions of high value men by posing as slender babes. Upside: An hour of ASCII attention beats zero hours of real world attention. Downside: There will be no real-life consummation, unless the fattie is psychotically blind to her revolting condition.

2. Thrill-seeking and attention-whoring chicks enjoy an exhilarating rush from the deception. Sometimes a lie is fun for the sake of it. Duping people is a power trip. As anyone who has dated a lot of sexy sirens will tell you, girls LOVE LOVE LOVE to role play. But, unfortunately for them, most men are not very interested in role playing, (real life for the average man offers enough drama as is). So what’s a girl to do? Well, she’ll take the initiative and fire up a game of one-sided role playing. Upside: More fun than talking about the weather. Downside: She’ll tend to attract lunatics who wear dresses made out of skin.

3. Daddy’s Little Abandoned Princesses Syndrome. D-LAPS girls are drawn to the idea of “starting over” with new identities because it is a psychological balm which helps suppress bitter memories of daddy’s unfathomable sayonara (often prompted by mommy’s equally unfathomable surprize divorce paper filings). These girls make a great lay because they use sex to extirpate their suppressed rage; just don’t expect them to always act in their own best interest.

4. Femme Fatales. Ah, the manipulative woman (but I repeat myself). These are the most dangerous breed of female; they lie less to assuage their egos than to separate the swooning man from his money. Or time. Or sanity. You scoff at the notion that any woman would be able to lie you out of your resources, but it happens all the time. To pick one example of the genre, there are plenty of stories of beta males scammed out of thousands of dollars by hot Russians they met online who were probably computer generated algorithms by some hack face deep in a bottle of wuuudka.

Update

Forgot an obvious group!

5. Married women with ovulatory cheatin’ in their hearts, trying to keep it on the down-low. It’s imperative that you identify these women, because you don’t want to deal with the blowback from banging a married woman with an ex-con hubby just released on parole.

If women are embracing the traditional vices of men in greater numbers than ever before, then I take that as evidence that modern Western culture exerts a masculinizing influence on its women, (whether that is genetic, environmental, or both, I leave as an exercise for the reader). When the sexual and psychological polarity of men and women reverses, you can be sure the end of high civilization is near.

So what to do about this blossoming window into the female id? The reader asks:

“What’s the best way to get these girls to fess up rather than run away?”

His suggestion of a “partner in crime” strategy is fine if you want to get to sex quickly with no long-term consideration. Liars are just like trustworthy people in one respect; both want to be with honest people. Letting a woman know you are as much of a liar as her is not the stuff that beeyootiful romances are made of.

Another option, if you’re really interested in brazenly lying women as girlfriend material (and I would have to ask why you would be?) is the non-judgmental rapport building strategy. This is accomplished not by accosting the woman about her lies, but by sympathizing with her motivation for lying.

“You know, I feel you. I get it. It’s exciting to create a new identity and just run with it, and see what it’s like to live like a different person for a little while, to live like someone you secretly wanted to be ever since you were little.”

This empathy ploy will be more effective at coaxing her to open up about her lies, and from there you can dig at the truth. The key is non-judgmentalism and connection; players like to call this an “our world” routine, which draws the woman closer to you by erecting a false antagonism between you and her together against the rest of the world. In the end, though, women who love creating false identities for the purposes of gratifying themselves at the expense of trusting beta males are best left alone, hopefully never to breed so that their kind can be expeditiously cleansed from the gene pool. Luckily, condoms allow you to get your fuck on with them *and* clear your conscience of any anxiety that you may have sired a bastard sociopath in the act. Just don’t let her throw them away for you.  Keep your eyes on the used rubber, and see the disposal process through from start to finish. (Not kidding about this last part. I could tell you stories.)

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The Undercover Orbiter Strategy

Beta males who get stuck in the friend zone (“LJBFed”) with women are rightly mocked for their self-defeating clinginess and the burden of their blue balls. But the strategy — if it can be called that — to befriend girls that one would like to fuck must have some utility for some men some of the time, or it wouldn’t exist in the state of nature. And, if one observes women through the years, there are those beta male orbiters who do manage, through sheer force of persistence or ungodly patience for a stroke of luck to come their way, a tender five seconds of intimacy with their female friends which the girls immediately regret afterward.

So you might say the undercover beta male orbiter strategy is extremely long-term, with no guarantee of sexual closure. It’s a painfully slow and laborious process for extracting sexual favors from girls, so why then do some egregiously betas do it? Well, because for these kinds of weak men the pain of the subversive orbiter strategy is less painful than the pain of outright rejection from busting a move that would destroy all their hopes and the delicious uncertainty that acts as mental lube for their masturbatory daydreaming.

However, if approaching and hitting on girls with sexual intention is simply out of your realm of possibility, then there are ways to conduct your undercover orbiter strategy that will maximize your odds of a bang with the torment of your dreams. I lay them out here.

– Always talk about the girls you are dating, fucking, or seeking same from to your girl “friend”. Do so in a way that does not seem try-hard; that is, offer it up like an afterthought to some other topic that triggers the segue.

– Limit your friendzone time to drinking, shows, art exhibits, and house parties. Try to avoid shopping or other quintessentially girlie or best gay boyfriend activities. The object is to do friendly things with her that mimic real dates, while avoiding doing those things with her that strengthen her impression of you as “one of the girls” (who happens to have a penis, if the rumors are true).

– Immediately and without qualification change the subject when your girl “friend” begins talking about a guy she likes, or the dudes she’s fucking or wants to fuck. Once you go down that road, there’s no turning back from eternal LJBF hell. She will never see you as a sexual creature if you are willing to listen to her sob stories about other men plowing her clean.

– Don’t make a production of her wistful musings about other guys, though. Don’t change the subject by exclaiming your refusal to listen to her dating life; doing that opens her to suspicions that you really like her, and if your Undercover Orbiter strategy is to work, you can’t put yourself in a position of needy weakness. Better to change subjects by simply changing them, as if you didn’t even hear her comment about the serial killer she really wants to boff who offed her twin sister.

– You’re going to want to invoke feelings of latent jealousy as much as possible. A girl “friend” that you are orbiting may not consciously perceive you as a potential lover, but when she sees you holding court with other girls, or flirting with one of her friends, her instincts will kick in and she won’t be able to control a growing desire for your preselected malehood.

– Use her as a target for practicing your teasing skills. A platonic girl friend (but you know better, don’t you, tiger) presents an excellent opportunity for honing your cocky teasing skills. And a welcome bonus is that she may start to want you after all your gentle insulting.

– Once in a while, she’s going to unload that “I fucked a hot dude last night” conversation bomb. Do not react negatively, even though you will feel intense burning jealousy mixed with disgust. In fact, do not react at all. Raise an eyebrow, and say something along the lines of, “Tell me more when the wedding date is set.” The idea is to ridicule her idea of a fulfilling dating life. More good replies: “Your parents would be proud”, “Hey, congratulations, you magnificent slut!” (say this with a shit-eating grin), “This is news?”

– Your one advantage, if you can call it that, is that you are the guy who is “there for her” when times are tough and she needs a shoulder to cry on. Occasionally, like when Jupiter aligns with Uranus and her oxytocin levels are off the charts, a girl will feel strong intimate feelings for the emotionally available and sensitive beta male. That’s when you leap in. You’ve been laying the groundwork for months, perhaps years, and now it’s time to cash in your “terrific guy” chips for a shot at her weepy vulva. Bust your move by gently stroking the back of her hand for hours. Progress to giving her many more hours of cunnilingus when you’ve gotten an unambiguous green light for bedroom intimacy. (Your green light will need to be unambiguous, because pushing hard for sex over her coy protestations will strike her as terribly incongruent with your personality, and she will recoil.) Finally, be prepared for waves of regret to wrack her mind in the morning, or even as soon as when the tip of your penis grazes her labia. Allow that she will need this time to regret her actions, and take the necessary precautions to avoid a feminism-inspired legal imbroglio by wiring your place with audio and video recorders the day before she arrives. You can never be too safe.

– Finally, preemptively dump her after the first time you bang her. Yes, that’s right, unceremoniously dump the girl of your dreams, your White Womb. As her confirmed beta orbiter, there is little chance she will want more sex with you after her moment of weakness (that’s what she will think it is), let alone a relationship, if you do not take steps to push her in that direction. And pushing her in that direction means pushing her away from you. There’s nothing more infuriating, and hence, more alluring, to a woman than a man who has inexplicably made himself less available to her after sex. Especially when that man has spent so much time prior being the guy she could count on. This is script-flipping on steroids. You must make her stop seeing you as her reliable, sensitive, asexual friend, and that means you need to start becoming less reliable, less sensitive, and more sexual. A preemptive dumping is just the strong medicine a girl “friend” needs to being the healing of her “regretiness”. Don’t do it the very next morning, but don’t wait too long either. You have to get the jump on her before she hits you with the “I don’t want to ruin our friendship” sermon. Timing is critical. You want to be the bearer of that message before she is.

– If you are slow to act, and she manages to “dump” you first, you have a counter maneuver. Agree with her. “Yes, this was a mistake. We need to stop so we can remain friends.” (Never mind the bizarre logic of this statement; with women, emotions are what matter.) Then, in the days immediately following, see her once, and then cut off all contact for a few weeks (or months, as the circumstances require). Cutting off contact means taking a full day or two to reply to her texts or vmails or IMs, and not making a big deal about it when she inquires why you are being distant. Act as if she is the one imagining things are wrong between you two.

– This is hamster manipulation of the highest order. You are the one instigating the Distancing Protocol, while blaming her for perceiving something that’s “all in her head”. This contradictory tactic spares you from leaving an impression of butthurtness, and keeps her in a constant state of self-doubt. From such fertile psychological ground sprouts the chaser-chasee inversion algorithm, a seduction ploy that is the special sauce which underlies every womanizer’s exotic power over their prey.

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Persistence: The Underrated Alpha Male Quality

At a social gathering with friends and lovers, I witnessed an attempted pickup unfold between an alpha male and a cute girl. We were a merged group of three girls and two men, including myself, and everyone there was known to me in more than a passing fashion. (I use the term “alpha male” as shorthand to describe the constellation of personality traits he possessed which gave him an advantage in the mating market. He is not a particularly good-looking man, but I suspect most girls would say he is at least not hard on the eyes.)

The girls with me knew that said alpha male was single and looking, (ladies, we’re ALWAYS looking), and pow-wowed with each other to find a third girl they knew to be single as well for a possible alpha male-cute girl love copulation. Apparently, not only do girls want alpha males for themselves, they also want them for their friends. It’s that primeval female harem-managing mentality rising to the fore.

One of the girls briefly absconded to another room and returned with a girl friend in tow who she wished to introduce to the alpha male. (I love using these terms because I know how much it chafes the asses of the right sorts of people.) The third girl was in transit to another subgroup, and her slightly puzzled look suggested that she did not know why she was being pulled over. After a round of hellos, I watched and listened, from as sly a vantage point as I could muster under the circumstances, the conversation that ensued between the alpha male and the cute girl summoned to unwittingly participate in his machinations.

She looked him over as he began speaking, and I could tell there lacked any sort of insta-spark of delight at his physical countenance. Nevertheless, a man does not become an alpha male by abandoning all women who don’t instantly take a shine to his looks. For the first minute or two, she would periodically glance at the girl friend to my side with that “why don’t you join in on this conversation so that I can impatiently slip away like a thief in the night” eye squeeze that women are so naturally adept at executing.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to a certain, subtle SWPL rejection where all feelings are spared in the most sadistic manner possible: the vibe turned in his favor. I can’t tell you the exact moment of redemption, but I can say that the energy between them got a boost in the second or two after he dropped what can only be charitably described as a couched insult.

“Well at least you’re still in your heels. Most girls like you are trading in for flats at this hour.”

Her head snapped back. She was at full attention. Gone was the exasperated sideways glance for a rescuer, replaced by flushed indignation that is the telltale mark of blood pipelined directly between the hamster and the vagina. A few hollow protests to the contrary notwithstanding, she fell quickly into his orbit and they were off to the races. He had pricked her safe and secure but ultimately flimsy bitch bubble, and she could not be happier for it.

Now some of you readers are sure to lay the credit for his success on that convo-refueling neg which slices and dices bland boring expectations like a ginsu. You’d only be partly right in your assumptions. You see, the neg was really just a culmination of something else, some other ineffable quality, that alpha males have in mass quantities: persistence.

Not that cringing, awkward, pushy, socially uncalibrated persistence that a few oddly aggressive beta and omega males employ, but the calm, controlled, almost serene persistence that doesn’t spook girls and which signals a strong, dominant masculinity that women crave. It might be more precise to call it “steadiness” rather than persistence.

The alpha male at this function knew she wasn’t immediately into him. The way he handled this “setback” wasn’t to slink away like a defeated herb, or pump up the volume in a desperate last gasp maneuver to capture her attention. He wasn’t implicitly apologetic for the convo lull (as if it was his responsibility to keep everyone entertained), nor was he giving any outward sign that he felt any pressure to perform.

He simply stayed rooted at his spot, never wavered in his eye contact, maintained a neutral vocal cadence, and never stupidly smiled to occupy dead air as so many less confident men are wont to do. He just kept… listening. And talking. And raising a single eyebrow. And leading the topic of discussion. And refraining from showing any discomfort with her feints to escape his company.

And that was how he won her. Slow and steady and persistent and unshakeable. His body language and unperturbed social grace was the foundation upon which she was able to lean for evidence of alpha maleness. The neg was only icing on his seductive cake. The best time to drop a neg is when it is least expected, not when it is obviously a craven effort to “win over” an intransigent girl. For him, the neg was an adjunct that complimented his entire game repertoire.

The alpha male is both aloof and persistent. His aloofness is more a vague impression that flows from his attitude, and his persistence is a dagger that sneaks up on women and chips away at their coyness. When you can finally grasp that seeming contradiction and apply it in real social interactions, your game will have matured immeasurably.

Never listen to man-haters aka feminists who claim that women don’t like persistent men. They do. Women love persistent men who are persistent from a position of want, not need. Women don’t love the idea of persistence because they associate it, perhaps justifiably, with overly aggressive meatheads throwing themselves at random vaginas during garbage hour. But now you know that there is better way to be persistent. And that you are doing honor to your alpha male ancestors by pursuing that scared little bunny to the farthest corners of the warren, instead of turning tail the first time the bunny hops away a few feet from your swiping paws.

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Confronting Vs Ignoring A Manipulative Girlfriend

I-dawg writes:

Good stuff, man. I can’t tell you how much easier your blog and a rough knowledge of Game in general has made my dating life. Here’s a question for you though: how do you handle a steady girlfriend who wants to hang out with one of her now-married Ex’s (and his wife) from ‘back in the day’? It doesn’t sit right with me, but she keeps pestering me about it. Unfortunately, my stripper-ex has moved 1000 miles away and gotten married herself, so I can’t just agree-and-amplify by hanging out with her.

First, it’s almost always bad news when a girlfriend wants to “hang out” with an ex “from back in the day”, regardless of her ex’s current relationship status. You may as well start visualizing his cock sliding in and out of her right now.

You can take this to the bank: A girlfriend who want to hang out with an ex does so for only two reasons.

1. She wants to fuck her ex.

2. She is manipulating you for fun and profit.

Either way, it’s a red flag that your relationship is sailing for rocky shoals.

Don’t think for a minute that just because your GF candidly tells you of her idea to see her ex means that she isn’t thinking of fucking him. Quite the opposite; girls will usually drop bombs like that to alleviate the guilt they feel from harboring illicit thoughts of infidelity. It’s a major hamster rationalization that sounds something like this in their pretty little heads:

HAMSTER VESSEL: I can’t stop thinking about my ex.

HAMSTER: If you do something about it, it won’t be your fault if you warn your boyfriend first.

HAMSTER VESSEL: If I warn him, he’ll dump me! Or act clingy and beta and that is a huge turn-off I can’t abide if I want to marry and divorce him someday.

HAMSTER: What are you worried about? You’re just thinking about hanging out with your ex.

HAMSTER VESSEL: Yeah, hanging out! It’s his fault if he gets insecure about that.

HAMSTER: Now you’re getting it. And, hey, while your talking to me, can you pass me an aspirin? This spinning is giving me a headache.

My advice, friend, is to test the waters for which emotion is motivating her actionable offense against you. Is she really daydreaming about her ex, or is there something amiss in your relationship that is causing her to lash out like a mischievous impette? If the former, you should dump her first so that you can glide out of her life with that all-powerful hand which will give you a confidence boost for future pickups. If the latter, you have the luxury of deciding whether you want to play along and devise tactics which will reel her back into your orbit, or fuck with her head before delivering the sayonara shiv.

To determine where she is coming from, I suggest initiating the “instill dread” protocol. Do you detect whiffs of jealousy? Does she seem bothered by your flirting with her sister? Do your “late nights” at work get her worked up? Or does she seem blasé about your machinations? You could also call her bluff, but, as you said, counter her oh-so-innocent offer with your own suggestion for you to see your ex. “Funny you say that… my ex is in town and she emailed me to get together for lunch. I suppose we’re both cool with this, then?” Watch for facial tics that reveal she isn’t cool with that bargain.

The nuclear option is to straight up deliver an ultimatum. “If you see your ex, our relationship is over. These terms are non-negotiable.” If she’s bluffing, she’ll recant her suggestion. If not, she’ll act annoyed and say something like “we’ll talk again when you’ve calmed down.” If she was thinking about leaving you anyhow, she’ll just use your ultimatum as the excuse that she needs to dump you free of guilt.

Many men will be tempted to confront an unruly girlfriend who asserts her desire to see her ex-boyfriend. Confrontation is the useful strategy in some cases, but it’s not what I consider a go-to option. Confrontation can just as likely blow up in your face as smooth over problems. Cavalierly ignoring a manipulative girlfriend can be useful in measured doses, but as a strategy tends to diminishing returns the longer she knows you or the deeper any problems — like her roaring cuntery — fester.

The best strategy is structured, and builds upon itself as the circumstances warrant: start with a calculated amusement and teasing, coupled with a distant and condescending regard of her offer, followed by active steps to screen her motivations, and then finally a bold statement of your intolerance for her shit if it need come to that.

Whatever you do, don’t do beta. That means, no “aww, honey, let’s talk about this”, no “do you not love me?”, no “what did I do wrong?”, no “what do I need to do to make it better between us?”, no “why do you want to see your ex?”, no “do you still love him?”, no begging, no pleading, no supplicating, no butthurtness, no white knighting (“i’ll kill the guy!”), no manboobery (“but i thought he was a jerk to you last time you dated?”), no uber-manboobery (“i’m a card-carrying feminist! isn’t that what you wanted??!?”), and no promises to love her fitter, happier, more productively.

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The Natural’s Dilemma

The Natural — the man who has a seemingly otherworldly ability to entrance women. The Natural — not the CEO, nor the jet fighter, nor the doctor — is the man most men secretly admire and wish they had some of his mysterious mojo.

But in reality he does not possess any magical abilities out of reach of ordinary men. The Natural is similar to the self-taught pickup artist, with the critical distinction being that the former assimilated the lessons of love earlier in life. His masterstrokes paint the canvas of women effortlessly because he has been in training since he first noticed that girls and boys are different. If you break down the game of Naturals, you’ll learn that their maneuvers and tactics and strategies, far from being indefinable essences that only a very few lucky can lay claim to, are in fact identical to the blueprints of learned game.

Neither is the Natural necessarily good-looking. Many Naturals, perhaps most of them, are nondescript in the looks department. But because there is good reason to think a lot of them have inherited the Dark Triad suite of personality traits, they are skilled at presenting themselves in a way that projects their sex appeal, or invents it whole cloth, if need be.

No, what the Natural has that mere mortals don’t is this: UNSTOPPABLE CONFIDENCE. They had the ALPHA ATTITUDE at a young enough age that it became ingrained to such an extent they rarely yield to the temptation to doubt their appeal to women.

But the Externally Validated Natural who has spent a lifetime leaning on his looks/social connections/fame to get laid has a dilemma. As a reader puts it:

I’ve said it many times before, the most pathetic thing in the world is a natural who has lost his mojo.

The very blessing that makes The Natural an early adopter ladykiller is the curse that hobbles him later in life when challenges arise that introduce cracks to his impenetrable edifice of entitlement. You see, the Externally Validated Natural has not bothered to learn the crimson arts. He has not mastered the state control that is necessary when inevitable dry spells occur, or when glances from women are fewer and farther between, or when uppity women with visions of mcmansion upgrades dancing in their heads give him shit he is not accustomed to receiving. He has never studied how to remain aloof and indifferent in the face of female fickleness because he has rarely experienced what life is like as a beta male who must battle to be loved, rather than watching love fall in his lap like autumn leaves.

The Natural who understands on a more than superficial level the nature of women, and who has a working familiarity with game concepts, is a force ten charmer. Most Naturals don’t; they do the right things without knowing how or why they do them. When success eludes them and the expected warmth from women is missing, they are left with nothing, no storehouse of knowledge or pride of past successes achieved through self-aware hard work, to pull them up from a dangerous downward spiral into the betatude they never quite understood either.

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Evidence That Peacocking Works

Peacocking — the art of wearing outrageous ensembles and eye-catching baubles — is much-maligned, both within and without the seduction community. Nowadays, when people hear the word “peacocking”, they scoff as their minds race to images of pickup artist Mystery and his gigantic furry hats, eye liner, jumbled bracelets, and Victorian long coats.

sure he looks ridiculous, but are you banging girls this hot?

CH is on record as agnostic on the effectiveness of peacocking, at least as the term is conventionally understood. My impression is that there is a high risk that an improperly balanced effort to peacock will more harm than help a man’s pickup cause.

But in point of fact, I do peacock, if not nearly to the extent that pre-fatherhood Mystery did. My clothes won’t make me an automatic focal point at social events, but neither does my style ape the drabness of herbwear. I prefer styling myself with hints and suggestions of a free spirit residing within.

Into the cacophony of ridicule hurled by naysayers at men dressing like fops comes scientific evidence, albeit indirect, that peacocking will make a man more attractive to women.

Recent research has found that people with so-called “dark” personality traits are more physically attractive than others. […]

Nicholas Holtzman and Michael Strube of Washington University in St. Louis were interested in looking at the relationship between physical attractiveness and people’s tendencies towards narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. They wanted to find out whether these three traits, referred to as the “dark triad,” are associated with a greater ability to successfully enhance one’s physical appearance.

To test this idea, they invited 111 college students (64 percent women) into their laboratory. Each student was photographed soon after they arrived.  Then, after taking this initial photograph, each student asked to change out of their own clothes and put on a pair of gray sweatpants and a t-shirt.  Women were instructed to remove any makeup, and anyone with long hair was asked to pull it back into a ponytail. The students were then photographed in this more natural state. Holtzman and Strube showed both sets of photographs to a group of strangers who rated them in terms of physical attractiveness. By comparing the attractiveness ratings of the dressed-down and dressed-up students, the researchers were able to determine how much each student was able to make themselves more appealing through flashy clothes, makeup, accessories, etc.

Next Holtzman and Strube assessed the students’ personalities and their tendencies towards narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. They asked the students to rate themselves and to provide email addresses for a few of their friends so that the researchers could ask them to provide ratings as well. This combination of self and peer ratings was used to calculate a final set personality scores for each student. Furthermore, the students’ ratings on narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism were combined into create a composite “dark triad” score.

The dark triad score was positively correlated with their “dressed-up” attractiveness – a finding that mirrors previous findings. However, the dark triad score was not related to ratings of physical attractiveness in the dressed-down photos. In other words, people with dark personality traits are not seen as more physically attractive than others when you take away their freedom to wear their own clothes and makeup. People with dark personalities seem to be better at making themselves physically appealing.

The findings reinforce previous research showing that narcissists are more popular than others, literally at first sight.

People who are best at making the most of what they’ve got — a talent which can be accurately described as peacocking when applied to physical presentation — are very attractive to the opposite sex. Take away their ability to peacock, and suddenly they are not so attractive anymore, at least as measured by the pre-interactive appearance they radiate during first impressions. And those people who possess the “dark triad” personality suite are the most skilled peacockers and manipulators of others’ perceptions of them.

Keep a few points in mind about this study.

1. The researchers examined the physical aspect of people with and without dark triad personalities. This study says nothing about the charismatic pull that dark triads have over others beyond their physical appearance; what might otherwise be called dark triad game. Other studies have found that dark triads exert great attractive influence on others based on the strength of their charm and narcissistic self-regard as well.

2. The facial good looks or lack thereof of the study participants were irrelevant to its conclusions. Those dark triad students were the same, as far as facial bone structure is concerned, in both their self-constructed and “natural” photos. So it was not their facial shape that made the difference in people’s opinions of their attractiveness between their peacocked and natural photos. It was how they chose to dress and present themselves that made the difference in perceptions. The “only looks matter” trolls will have to search elsewhere to find a tool to massage their prostates.

3. This study is good news for average-looking men: you can bump up your raw physical attractiveness to women by adopting a more avant-garde style of dress and comporting yourself with the mannerisms of a sociopathic megalomaniac. And my personal observations confirms this: I know a few gnarly-looking men who are catnip to women because they dress like creations from a fantasy novel aimed at women. Even my perception of their objective looks is fooled.

Remember that a man’s “looks” encompasses far more variables than does a woman’s looks. Women get significant boosts to their beauty rating from wearing makeup, an augmentation which directly alters their facial countenance, but men get boosts from an assortment of lifestyle changes, including dress, body language and facial expression. This is because women rate a man’s “appearance” using a more holistic algorithm than that used by men when they are rating a woman’s appearance.

Before any of you haters, trolls, or robotic spergs comment here, I suggest you read this post. If it is clear to me you have not read that linked post, you will be summarily cast into the hellfire of Mount Dork. You’d probably enjoy that, wouldn’t you?

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