I argue two things: 1) Overcoming anxiety and 2) calibration.

If you focus on those two things, everything else will fall into place through time and experience. It will all take care of itself. Body language will begin to project strong, confident posture, guys will start to behave dominantly and aggressively, connections will become stronger. I could go on and on… these are all side effects to mastering the two skills above. This raised a discussion on the local Boston board after I gave the talk to the group there. Below is an abridged version of my responses to that discussion:

“If half the stuff doesn’t matter, and we don’t bother to address them, how can we improve ourselves? Like you said, you did a fair amount of “game bashing” at the seminar. But you’re at a level that all your skills learned flows out of you. I’m at a level where I’m thinking this, slipping here, fumbling there. If I adopted the “it doesn’t matter” mantra, I’d never improve, and thus never get laid.

What do you recommend, then, for guys who are starting out?”

I guess I didn’t explain myself well enough in the seminar because that’s not what I meant at all.

Of course you still need to learn things. That’s the calibration part. Learning to be calibrated with women is a huge part of it. But you’re still falling into the (erroneous) mindset that pick up is something that is studied and mastered… it’s not. It’s something that is DONE and PRACTICED. You will never master it. And you will never ever completely know the “right” way to do it. You will just learn what is “better” for you, and this will be learned through experience.

The greatest component of your improvement is going to come from pushing through those moments of “oh shit, I don’t know what to do next,” and trying something, ANYTHING, with the full realization that it probably won’t work the first time. The biggest component of your improvement is directly proportional to how much you can overcome your fear and anxieties with women.

This thread is a perfect example. [Name redacted] is asking a lot of trivial and unimportant questions about shit tests and why girls do them. In the end, the only thing holding him back is the fact he cares so much about shit tests. For whatever reason, they trigger a lot of fear and anxiety in him. If you stop caring about shit tests, they cease to be a factor.

If you stop worrying about exactly what day to follow up and what voicemail to leave, then it won’t be a factor anymore. It’s trivial.
If you stop worrying about whether you’re escalating in the right place or not, then it won’t be a factor anymore. It’s trivial.
If you stop worrying about what exactly to open sets with, then it won’t be a factor anymore. It’s trivial.

This drive to control and understand everything prior to doing it is just a product of our fear to ACTUALLY DO IT. Dude, girls don’t care what you open them with. They don’t care what order you touch them in. They don’t care which day you call them on. Seriously…

What I’m prescribing is the “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach to pick up. Action without thought is better than thought without action. Follow the 50% Rule; i.e., make sure you’re consistently pushing all of your interactions forward, and then apply the lessons of calibration to them afterward.

AFTER you’ve tried and failed, is when you go back and say, “OK, what could I have done better?” or “Why did she react that way?”

Until that point, any analysis or worrying about what to do is just a product of your fear — fear of rejection, fear of intimacy, fear of sexuality, etc.

So to answer your question, what I do with newbies, is I give them very simple and basic outlines of what to do, and then continually push them to be as aggressive as possible. Once they’ve gone out and tried a bunch of stuff (most of which completely freaks them out), then we take a minute and discuss why it worked or didn’t work. More often than not, their results improve extremely quickly.

———————

I’ve been heavily and deeply influenced by my time overseas the last year. Not only the various cultures and wide array of new experiences, but my time hanging out with various naturals, and now having more experience coaching on my own for the last year and a half. This blog will soon be converted over into a new blog on another domain. All of the material over there will reflect this new perspective on everything. For once, the name I’ve used since I begun coaching, “Practical Pick Up” will finally earn its namesake.

I’m done screwing around with a lot of the horseshit that passes for “theory” in this community. I’m interested in what works… nothing more, nothing less. And for the first time in my life, I think I finally have a strong grasp on the essence of “what works.” It doesn’t involve spirituality, meditation, state pumps, lording clubs, social proof, routines, games, looks, qualification, pacing, letting go of your ego, fast escalation or any of that. These things are all side-effects and/or minor boosts. They should not be your focus.

What DOES work is the systematic identification and destruction of one’s sexual anxieties, followed by practical reflection on which behaviors work and don’t work for you. Not what behaviors work for me. Not which behaviors worked for Neil Strauss or Mystery, but for you.

When the move occurs, I’ll be removing almost all posts on my personal experiences and will definitely be deleting the random posts. To some, the subjects I will write about on the new blog may seem elementary on the surface, but there will be reasons that I will start over from the beginning.

After five years, and over 400 posts, I feel like I’m just now beginning to share what I’m capable of teaching.

But with all of my traveling recently, and since I’m planning to travel a lot more in the next year or two, I figured it’d be good to build up a profile and figure out what I’m doing.

Now, I realize that there are a lot of “online game guides” out there, that purport to help you create perfect profiles and give you proven formulas, and blah, blah, blah. But as usual, I think this is blown out of proportion (to make sales and make money), and a lot of what you’ll read in this post will go against those guides. In fact, a lot of what I’ll say here is going to go 100% against what you read around most sites and forums for online game. But hey, this is what I found that works.

What I will say is that online game is by far the easiest way to meet and lay new women. As a newbie, it takes almost no effort to get started and talking to new girls. As an experienced guy, it’s basically like on-demand pussy. It’s so easy, I don’t know why every guy doesn’t at least dabble in it.

So without further ado, I give you Entropy’s “Online Game = Lolz, Guide to Meeting Girls Online”

1. Your Profile and Pictures barely matter at all.

If this guide can be summed up with one sentence, it would be, “Online game = solid game.” What I mean by that is that 90% of your success/failure is going to come from your emails and correspondence with the women. Before I started my foray into online game, I spent a lot of time on websites and forums trying to get a vague idea of what I was doing before I started.

I read all about putting up pictures that display value, constructing a challenging, yet intriguing profile that qualifies girls, picking unique and exciting interests, etc.

Honestly, I don’t think most girls even read your profile. And the one who read your profile first are never going to message you anyway. On two sites, three cities and six profiles, I got only 3 girls messaging me (out of over 100 views) because of my profile and two were ugly and the other one flaked. In a lot of my emails, I referred to stuff mentioned in my profile, and a girl never once said anything about it. One of the girls I went on a date with told me point blank that she didn’t look at my profile, just my picture to “make sure you weren’t ugly,” (her words).

To further prove my point. Here was my initial profile: a shitty cell phone picture of myself (something OKCupid tells you explicitly NOT to do), and Chuck Norris Facts with my name instead of Chuck Norris’ (i.e., “Mark’s first job was as a paperboy, there were no survivors.”)

I sent out 15 emails to 15 attractive girls. I got 6 responses. From what I’m told, from guys who do a lot of online game, to guides I’ve read, to dating sites themselves, that 30+% response rates are considered good. My retarded profile with a crap photo that says absolutely nothing about myself got a 40% response.

To FURTHER prove my point. I later went back and created a “straight” profile, where I talked about myself, my good qualities, what I’m passionate about, etc. I then added cool pictures of me snowboarding, me with friends, me traveling. Response rate? 40%

I then went back AGAIN and created a “challenging” profile. The first line of my profile was, “I’m a horrible boyfriend.” I then go on to talk about how I travel a lot and don’t have time for women who will waste my time. My response rate? 40%

I have a friend who is very good at online game. He’s been doing it for years and has banged dozens of women from it. His current OKCupid profile is a picture of a velociraptor and the most absurd profile I’ve ever seen (included lines such as, “I invented Tuesday.) He’s STILL pulling ass at the same rate with it.

So there you go. If you have solid game, your profile doesn’t matter.

2. The Rule of Online Game is to show Some Class

Women online seem to be very sensitive to you having some class.  This is pretty self-explanatory, but we might as well cover it. Women join online dating sites for two reasons: 1) they’re too old/fat/ugly/shy/busy to meet guys normally and 2) for whatever reason, they only meet douchebags at the bars that they go to, and they’re sick of it. Since we’re only interested in messaging attractive girls, we’re dealing almost 100% with women who are frustrated with dealing with guys who have no intelligence or class.

You throw on top of that the fact that most guys on these sites send offensive and obnoxious emails like, “hey baby, u fukkin sexy, holla at me grl, lol,” and women on here have a LOT of appreciation for a guy who can write well and express himself well.

I experimented with this as well, purposely sending 4-5 emails to girls that were absolutely ludicrous and over-the-top… in one of them I pretended to be a white rapper, and in another one I told a girl I wanted to throat-fuck her like a jackhammer. Needless to say, I got no responses.

All of my responses and especially all of my WARM responses came from emails I sent that were a combination of respectful, intelligent and flirty.

Later on, I kind of adopted a “formula” for my emails which ended up gaining more like a 40-50% response rate. The formula followed the following format.

Subject – You want an intriguing subject that will get her to at least read your message. If she’s hot, she’s getting like 20-30 emails a day, so you need yours to stand out. Stuff like, “You just reminded me that…” or “I bet you can’t guess…” and then continue the sentence in the first like of your email.

[Compliment] – I compliment her right off the bat. I don’t know if this is “theoretically” sound or not. But I personally think a lot of girls are online to get validation, so you might as well compliment them in a classy way. I got a lot of girls replying saying thank you and even something like, “With an email like that, I have to respond!” Compliment something thoughtful, something like, “I really like your style,” not another, “You’re fucking hot, lolz.” Don’t over do it. Just one sentence.

[1-2 Quirky About yourself] – Keep this very brief, slightly funny and slightly interesting. Something like, “My name is Mark. I’m from Texas, I enjoy the color blue and living in the southern hemisphere.”

[1-2 Sentences about her] – This is optional. If she’s really hot, I’ll take a minute and skim her profile for something interesting to comment on. Something like, “That’s cool that you like Tango dancing. I lived in Buenos Aires for a while.”

[1 Open ended question] – This is to give her something to respond with.

Most responses you get will be very short. Girls rarely write more than 1-2 sentences back, and I’ve even gotten some messages back as short as 2-3 words. This is where “solid game” comes in. Following with the correspondence with a nice mixture of teasing/playfulness and comfort/interest is important. Be creative. The more you stand out from every other boring guy who messages her, “so what do you like to do? lolz” will pay off in the long run.

3. Women online require a lot of comfort before they meet up.

Most women who do online sites have dealt with a lot of creeps, weirdos, guys trying to use them, etc., etc. The biggest mistake I made when I started, was I immediately tried to get them to come out and meet me after 2-3 emails. Just about none of them were comfortable doing this.

From what I found was girls needed to trade 2-3 emails before they were comfortable giving me their number and/or Facebook. From there, I’d trade 2-3 texts/chats with them before they’d be comfortable agreeing to meet up. All in all, this would take place over the course of 4-7 days.

This is the annoying thing about online game. It’s not time consuming, but it’s very slow-paced. A lot of times these girls don’t check the site more than a couple times a week, so often times you wait 2-3 days between emails. What’s also very frustrating is a lot of these girls are emailing back and forth with like 6 different guys, so they give you very short, terse emails. It’s kind of counter-intuitive, but I think you should be writing emails slightly longer than her and continually try to get her to invest more by qualifying her and asking her questions multiple times per email.

I haven’t found a way to rush this process yet. It was frustrating too because on my last two trips, I waited until the day before I left to start emailing girls in those cities. Invariably what happened was although I got some warm responses by the time I got there, the girls weren’t ready to meet up and hang out until it was time for me to leave.

I imagine if you created a consistent practice like emailing 5 new girls a day (should take 30-45 min tops) every other day or something, you’d get a really nice funnel going. And with how big dating sites like OKCupid and Plenty of Fish are these days, it’s waaaaaaay more than possible.

4. Girls You Meet Online are Easy Lays… Just Make sure they’re not fat

This is self-explanatory. If a girl is having to resort to a dating site to meet cool guys, then chances are — whether it’s because she works constantly, because none of her friends are single, because she lives in a lame part of town — she’s going to be hot and ready to go when she comes out and meets you. Also, women online have a reputation of being a little bit on the nutso side, although I haven’t had to deal with this too much.

The other bane of online game that I HAVE had to deal with (luckily only once) is girls who show up a good 10-20 lbs heavier than their pictures. Beware of girls pictures. This is a good reason to friend them on Facebook before you meet up with them — you can get a solid look at recent pictures of them.

Conclusion: Despite my initial impressions of it years ago, I think online game is worth doing, for just about any guy. If you’re a newbie, it’s free and easy practice. In fact, it forces you to practice your calibration and your interactions in your emails, which is some of the most valuable practice you can get. I’d say, don’t worry about your profile. Join a free site, and just start emailing 20-30 women each week. It’s just some much-needed practice that’s really hard to get early on, especially if you have trouble approaching. This will help you quite a bit. Also, eventually you’ll get some girls out and maybe even get laid, which will do a lot for your confidence.

If you’re an experienced guy, then online game is basically free pussy. I’ll admit, I’ve yet to meet up with anything of amazing quality. But to meet cute girls who are pretty easy lays, while casually emailing for 30-60 minutes a day, it’s great. I imagine if you kept up with it regularly, you could consistently have 2-3 dates and 1-2 lays a week. Also great way to get out of a dry spell. Definitely recommend it.

My buddy Bobby Rio (from http://www.tsbmag.com) has had the hookups for years in the Dominican Republic, and last summer started this event which was totally off the hook.

This year, he’s recruited myself and Rob Judge (http://www.datehottergirls.com) as well as 8-10 guys learning pick up to hit the DR and party it up like rockstars. We stay in a druglordish villa on a tropical beach, we party it up VIP style every night, all food and expenses are taken care of, and Bobby’s got the hook ups so that there will be 10+ hot girls in the pool WHEN WE ARRIVE.

This event is all about having fun with beautiful women and relaxing first and foremost. Having a bunch of awesome wingmen and getting free advice from the coaches is just a side perk. Oh, and the beach isn’t bad either.

Last year, every single guy on the trip got laid — some even laid more than one girl. Basically, we spend all day partying by the pool with the girls. And then at night we hit the clubs VIP-style and bring back even more girls to the house. Rinse and repeat.

There’s even a complimentary white water rafting trip thrown in to scare the hangover out of you.

This trip is non-profit — the coaches and Bobby make little to no profit off of it. Every dollar is put towards expenses for the group and more partying.

Testimonials:

If you’re interested, here’s what you need to know:

• It’s August 12-15.
• All expenses covered.
• Get to hang out with two professional PUA instructors and spend the week winging with them.
• Complimentary white water rafting trip.
• Bobby’s arranged for some of his girl friends from last year to be IN THE POOL when we get there. So yes, HOT GIRLS ARE GUARANTEED.
• This is open to ANYBODY. Any skill level. This is NOT a bootcamp, but a great way for like-minded guys to get together on a beach and party our faces off, while learning about pick up on the side.

The running price for this was going to be over $1,575+ per person (not counting airfare). But Bobby’s told me that I can personally bring three guys for a $1,200 discount price.

That’s $1,200 for an all-expenses-paid, all-inclusive, VIP partying, pussy-palace-living, pick-up-fest, in one of the most beautiful locations in the world.

If you want in, shoot me an email me at entropy@practicalpickup.com. There are guys flying in from as far as England and Germany for this, so it’s going to go fast. My guess is I’ll have my three guys within a few days.

More Info:

• http://www.tsbmag.com/wingman-weekend-retreat/
• http://honeyandlance.com/mansformation-w…estimonial

At this point, after spending a significant amount of time in all of the major cities in the western world, and meeting a significant amount of the coaches from around the industry, something occurred to me. This occurred to me after going out in London — I was taken aback by their seeming worship of “posh” and how the pretension in their clubs revolving around status is probably only rivaled by LA.

And here’s what I noticed: look at all the guys who are insanely good from London (AFC Adam, Beckster, Extraction Tim) and all of them were/are top promoters, are socially networked out the ass, and play the social status card hard for big success.

By the same token, all of the great guys from New York City (Brad P, 60 Years of Challenge, Rob Judge) have styles that involves escalating extremely hard and fast. Brad P has his “blow me or blow me out,” as well as 20 minute bathroom pulls, 60 with his “escalation is attraction” and Rob Judge mauls girls with a startling amount success.

All of the “routine” methods of pick up (Love Systems, Mystery, Style, Mehow) all come from southern California. Much of the inner game only/authenticity styles of game (AMP, Sean Messenger, Pickup101) come out of San Francisco. Guys in Vegas — Nick Quick, Epik, Start Being — all shit on ideas of comfort game or inner game and focus on pumping the girl’s buying temperature — to which I say, well, no shit, you’re in Vegas. The coaches from Dallas a few years ago (Sinn, El Topo, Captain Jack) all focused on sexual framing and qualification.

I could go on and on… Even Vin DiCarlo and I (both from Boston) have a similar analytical style in which we calibrate our game around connecting with each woman’s specific personality. This also struck me, as being back in Boston… it just feels easy again. Like I’m unconsciously wired to pick up women in Boston and so I have to try 50% as hard here as other places.

There may be something to it. There may not. But food for thought.

Everywhere you go, things are different, but they’re mostly the same. I have a theory (surprise, surprise). There are different phases of visiting a new place. The first phase is the honeymoon/vacation phase. It’s the first 1-2 weeks you’re somewhere. During this period, everything seems incredibly unique and different. All of the minor alterations to your daily life are vastly apparent — look, they drive on the left side, oh their street musicians play African music, children pickpocket!

Eventually, this subsides and you segue into the next phase, the adjustment phase. This lasts anywhere from 1-3 months. It’s when you slowly enmesh yourself in all of these slight differences, and you begin to notice that really, all of the important things are the same from country to country. People go to dinner with their families the same way, friends invite each other out the same way, people view vacations and work the same way, people even complain about traffic the same way. What’s different are the minor details.

What consistently amused me in my travels is how every place I went, people would tell me with pride that, “this is how we do things in X country!” not realizing that they do things the exact same way in 11 other countries. By the same token, I was consistently amused by silly questions about America… stuff like, “How big are the highways there?” Or “Are university campuses bigger than this in America?” or “How friendly are the drivers in America?” These questions can’t possibly be answered. America has 300 million people and is very diverse. In fact, the answer is the same as every country: it depends. There are asshole drivers in Holland just like there are in the US and Argentina. There are good friends and bad friends in Argentina just as there are in England and Israel. The details change. That’s it.

Cold approaching is a horrible way to make friends. This was a stark realization I had while in England. After traveling more or less non-stop for 9 months, I realized something horrifying: I had barely made any true, life-lasting friendships. That’s terrible. That’s one of the major reasons for traveling.

Don’t get me wrong, I met TONS of people. But they were all acquaintances, short-term friendships, or little flings. Very, very, very few of them I could see myself keeping in touch with long-term or ever seeing again. But what really blew me away was when I looked at how I got to know the few people I planned to keep in touch with. Despite cold approaching hundreds of people, and hooking up with a couple dozen girls, today I only keep in touch with two. And they’re both women I slept with.

Everybody else that I still keep in touch with (anywhere from five to 10 friends), I met through social circles, events or in hostels. This is despite spending the vast majority of my time cold approaching. Imagine if I had just spent my time making friends instead!

This really became apparent to me when I looked back on my experience in Argentina. My friend and I basically spent a six weeks straight going out and approaching girls. Unfortunately, we had very, very little results to show for it, especially in the long-term. Before I had arrived, he had gotten in with some guys he met at tango classes and had a large and wide social circle of friends to hang out with. After about 30 nights of cold approaching, we had next to nothing to show for it as far as meaningful connections or relationships. Just a couple drunk hook-ups and girls who were flaking on us.

England was what hit the point home though, as I spent my entire time there coaching. When you’re coaching you don’t have time to go out and make friends, you’re too busy coaching and cold approaching everybody. I can honestly say, despite the dozens of people I approached and the two girls I hooked up with, I will never see or speak to any of them again.

This brings me to my next conclusion…

Having a stable social circle and emotional home is highly underrated. I worked for a solid year straight in order to be able to live this lifestyle. I dreamed about it, fantasized about it and really thought I’d be kind of operating on a new plane of existence as far as lifestyle was concerned.

In a lot of ways, that’s true. On the surface, it’s absolutely true. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining for a second about all of the traveling I’ve gotten to do and all of the experiences I’ve been fortunate enough to have. But socially, what I’ve gotten is dozens of acquaintances and short-term friends, and I’ve barely spent any time with my long-term friends, my real friends.

This really does a number on you. File this under the “should have been obvious,” but having a stable social circle is totally integral to being happy and emotionally stable. The last month or so of my traveling has been filled with depression and homesickness. I’m dying to get back to the US. One, for the familiarity and some stability, but primarily because I can hang out with people who really know me… my real friends.

And chalk up yet another reason why cold approach sucks. When you remove casual sex from the equation — which after five years, I think is finally gone from mine — cold approach is high effort for little long-term reward. I’m not saying that I’m NOT going to cold approach… but I think prioritizing it to such a high level in the community may be a mistake. And it’s DEFINITELY a mistake for guys who don’t have a stable circle of friends and people who care about them.

Pick up is a uniquely Western development. And finally, the last observation, is that in some countries, parts or all of PUA theory just cease to work. You begin to realize that things such as language barriers, race and pre-selection play just as big of a role, if not far bigger, in many places than your actual game does. Pick up is a wholly western idea, designed for western women, to be used by western men. This isn’t to say that it wouldn’t work at all in a place like Japan or Ukraine or Egypt… it’s just to say that you should expect some major differences and expect to spend a lot of time calibrating yourself.

The picture to the right is a picture of Louis Vuitton supermodels without make-up or hairdressing. Link to pictures of ALL of the Louis Vuitton models with no makeup or hairdressing is at the end of this article.

Out of the hundreds of emails I get from guys, the ones that consistently annoy the hell out of me more than any others are the ones usually regarding so-called HB10’s. I get asked stuff like, “Do you lay tons of HB10’s?” or “How do I get an HB10?” quite regularly. Well, that depends… what’s an HB10? Beyond the obvious subjectivity (my so-called 10 is your 7 and vice-versa), this expectation boggles my mind on so many levels — and we can thank all of the shitty PUA marketing and Strauss’s book for it.

But seriously… I literally only see 6-8 physical “10’s” in a normal environment PER YEAR. So how the hell can I (or anyone) consistently lay them without owning a modeling agency or being Tommy Lee or something? Enough simply don’t exist!

And that’s assuming you’re talking about the stereotypical “10,” the model type. Some guys’ ideal girl is a suicide girl with tons of tattoos and a punk haircut, or a corporate executive with a smoking body, or even a curvy girl with gigantic EE tits.

So how the hell am I supposed to know? And who says HB10’s are gamed differently anyway? In my opinion, 95% of the difference between gaming a really hot girl and an average girl, is managing to not get nervous in front of the really hot girl (easier said than done). The rest takes care of itself. She’s a person too… in fact, often times the hottest girls are the most polite and friendly ones. They’re used to getting hit on.

The other thing that drives me crazy is when the idea of “high quality women” is referred to as nothing but models, strippers, gogo dancers and high-end club girls. I get a handful of guys every year coming to me saying, “I want to get really high quality girls… you know, the ones in the club with the fake tans and tiny skirts.” Or they don’t say that directly… but that’s what they mean.

First of all, the answer is pretty easy… develop really good flash game, learn some dance floor game, dress immaculately and if you can, become a promoter. That will more or less do it.

But I try to warn these guys who have obviously never spent a lot of time with these types of girls… Not that all of these girls are bad or anything — I mean, you have your normal cases of the crazies and ditsy blondes — but mainly the vanity and misleading expectations. The fact that these girls literally put in hours and hour and hours into their make up, their hair, their skin, and their clothes every week, that when you DO pull one, often the girl you wake up next to resembles nothing to the one that you went home with the night before. And the fact that, a cerebral, intellectual guy who reads pick up advice online is probably going to have little to nothing in common or to talk about with a girl who spends two hours a day on her hair.

Call me old fashioned… but I get five times more excited when I see a naturally tall and beautiful girl in normal clothes on the street during the day, than I do one of these girls in four inch heels and a pound of eyeliner in the club. I’ve just had too many of these girls turn out to be unexciting and boring once I get them home. And on top of that, sometimes they’re not even that hot… When the make-up comes off and the dress comes off and everything sags half an inch… you’re like… oh, she’s just a normal chick… who’s really fucking vain.

Or maybe I’m just jaded… check out the supermodels below and decide for yourself. Some of them are naturally very beautiful… but many of them are not.

Louis Vuitton models with no make up