Singapore Pick Up Weirdo and Lairs…
September 14, 2008
I guess when you stand up, you’ll get noticed, and others will try to chop you down.
For those who don’t know, there are online forums of random guys who share tips and thoughts on getting better with women.
These forums are called “lairs.” There are at least three lairs in Singapore alone. These lairs organize meetings for these guys to meet other aspiring “pickup artists.”
My experience with lairs in several different countries has been largely disappointing. Over 90% of the lair members are downright creepy and have major psychological issues. Pickup weirdos.
This past weekend, I got sucker-punched by a new pickup weirdo who introduced himself to me outside a club. He was with a big gang of lair guys, a few of whom I know and count as friends.
When a friend introduces me to another guy, I’ll treat the guy like a friend. I’m friendly. I let my guard down. I let you into my circle. I’ll even introduce you to my girls.
The last thing you should do is to try to AMOG me (trying to assert your alpha-ness and social authority) in front of one of my girls.
Even while it’s happening, I give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this is just the way you are. Maybe you’re new to the scene. Maybe you don’t know that you’re stepping on toes. Maybe you’re incredibly insecure and need to pee on the tree to feel like a man. So I throw you a bone.
But no. The air of superiority, and the naked assertion of ego is unmistakeable.
So you win the little AMOG battle. You pump up my girl’s buying temperature. She gets giddy, subconsciously feeling that two men are fighting over her. I learned something very important about this girl.
But more significantly, that pickup weirdo just lost a potential friend… for now, anyway.
Choose your battles wisely. Especially when there isn’t even a war.
Peace and love, The Asian Rake.
Outcome-Independence and How to Have Fun!
May 24, 2008
In response to helpful comments and a couple of emails on my article on why I hate the word, ’sarging,’ I wish to clarify something. I am criticizing the word ’sarging,’ but not the act itself of purposely flirting with women you don’t yet know.
Yes, you need discipline to get really good at anything. Over the years, I applied a LOT of discipline and perseverance to getting good with women, especially in connection with visualizations and affirmations, as well as with going out on a consistent basis.
Until you’ve developed the habit of going out on weekends on a regular basis, you will always need that initial push to leave the comfort of your home and go to a place that is conducive to meeting hot women. But this push will only be necessary until you’ve developed the habit, which for me, was about 3-4 months of consistently going out for at least two nights a week. For daytime, decide how much you want and can devote to this and work this into your weekly schedule.
I still clearly remember having Christian remind me over the phone when I was first starting out, “Dude, it’s Friday night. Get out there!” Not too long thereafter, this changed to, “Dude, it’s Thursday night. Get out there!” I no longer needed the push to go out on Fridays and Saturdays. I had already scheduled it into my weekly routine.
In my first couple of months, I even had to do community service for running a red light (I pleaded for community service rather than paying a fine, the cheap grad student that I was) for 4 hours every Friday and Saturday until midnight. I was pretty exhausted on those nights. But guess what? I stuck with my routine and still put in at least an hour, and sometimes two, every one of those nights. And I have the Field Reports to prove it! I even wrote pages of analysis after having spent just one hour in the field. It would have been easy to just use the community service work as an excuse for not going out, but I didn’t. And that took determination. But once it became a habit, I actually really missed going out.
(Sidenote: The next major reason guys aren’t progressing as fast as they could, besides having the wrong mental focus in-field, is that they aren’t reflecting and learning enough from every single interaction. I made interaction-by-interaction adjustments to my style. Just one hour in the field usually produced at least three interactions full of lessons.)
It’s a lot like going out to the gym and doing regular workouts. When you first start out, it takes discipline to hit the weights. You have to push yourself to go. But once you work it into your schedule and start seeing progress, you begin to look forward to your workout. I hit the gym three times a week and have a pretty rigorous workout with a trainer. I often travel for weeks at a time, so it interrupts my progress, but whenever I miss a workout, even on vacation, I feel it in my muscles. I can feel myself getting flabby and slow. I can feel my muscles atrophying. And I can’t wait to get back to the gym. Actually, a major factor in my hotel choices these days, right after price and location, is the quality of the fitness center.
Well then, Asian Rake, it sounds like you do think we need a “clocking in” mentality when we’re first starting out, even though later on, it becomes a habit that we look forward to.
Here’s my answer: This “clocking in” mentality is fine for getting yourself TO the venue. But once you’re there, drop that right away. You should not be thinking of this as “work” while you’re IN the venue.
When you’re IN the venue, you should be having fun.
If you are thinking, “Oh fuck, I’ve been standing around talking to my friends for an hour now and haven’t done a single approach yet. I better get out there and get to work. I better clock in and make a dent on my thousand approaches. Okay, let’s see… (scanning the room) where are the targets? …,” then you have already tainted your approach. You’re already fighting an uphill battle. If you carry this mentality into an interaction, you WILL be sucking value rather than giving it.
The fatal mistake here was that you weren’t having fun in the first place.
What to do instead?
1. Have fun!
2. Make other people have fun.
3. Then see if that beautiful girl really meets your standards.
4. And remember to manage the logistics.
That’s really all that should be going on when you’re in-field.
Notice that this post is only about the first step: Have fun!
See my other posts, like Believability, How to Project a Sexual Vibe, and other posts in my Top Posts widget in the sidebar for more on the other steps.
So the question is, how do you have fun in a club?
I will tell you a secret to getting on the “first-class seat in the express flight” to elite game:
If you do not yet enjoy clubbing, then it will be very hard for you to meet and attract women in a club.
If you do not yet enjoy shopping malls, then it will be very hard to for you to meet and attract women in a shopping mall.
If you do not yet enjoy cafes and bookstores, then it will be very hard for you to meet and attract women in cafes and bookstores.
If you do not yet enjoy bars, then it will be very hard for you to meet and attract women in bars.
So, what lesson can we derive from this?
Learn to enjoy the environment of the venue for it’s own sake, not just as a place to meet women. Otherwise, you will very likely not be having fun, and hence, you will not be projecting a good vibe, and hence, all your sub-communications will be off, and hence, you will be severely tainting every interaction you start there.
One of the first things I learned from Christian Hudson was how to have fun in bars and clubs. I naturally enjoy bars so that was easier. But how to have fun in very loud clubs with music that I didn’t particularly care for and with nowhere to sit unless you’ve purchased a table with very expensive bottle service? Well, that took a little longer to figure out. But once I did, my results in clubs skyrocketed.
People have different ways of having fun in clubs, bars, cafes, bookstores, shopping malls, heck, even supermarkets. So I’m not going to tell you how to have fun. That’s something you have to figure out for yourself. Plus, you can read more detail on this in an earlier post on Being Unselfconscious. I can, though, tell you how I have fun in the bar and club environment, since that’s the one that is most foreign to most guys starting out.
To be truly outcome-independent in a bar or club, you must be completely content with yourself and enjoying your time without having to chat up a single cute girl.
Whoa! What are you saying, Asian Rake? Are you saying that I should go to a club and not talk to a single girl? Not do a single approach??? How the hell am I going to amass my thousand approaches like this?
If you are not yet able to have fun in a bar or club all by yourself and not purposely “cold approaching” a single “set,” then … YES. The first order of business for you is to learn to enjoy yourself in the venue for its own sake.
A big turning point for me was learning how to sit at a bar by myself, not talking to a single “set,” simply soaking in the ambience, savoring my martini, and chilling out. Sure, I talked to people. I talked to the bartender. I talked to the nice couple next to me. I talked to the older women on the other side who were enjoying a night out of wine tasting. But I never considered any of these interactions to be “sets.”
Then, I learned to have fun on my own in a loud dance club. I learned that I can stand at the bar with a drink, soaking in the ambience with a smile on my face, staring into space, letting myself fall into trance with the beat … all by myself. Sure, I talked to people, very briefly of course, as it was a loud club. I talked to the bartender. I clinked glasses with the group next to me. When the alpha male there saw I was alone, he invited me into their group and poured me a drink. Then a group of three girls started eyeing me, I walked over and clinked glasses with them. Then one of them started asking me the buying questions (where are you from, etc.). There were nights when I sat at the bar of a big club all by myself, just chilling, and women actually approached ME! Nothing of any consequence was conveyed in words. It was all the vibe, conveying passive value, good body language, and managing logistics.
Last night, I sat at the bar of a huge dance club all by myself. I was just sitting there, enjoying the ambience and staring into space. It was 4am. A guy sat next to me, chatting to a girl on the other side of him. She was wearing a tight dress that showed off her long legs. She had silky long black hair that framed a doll-like face. She looked over at me. We locked eyes. She was talking to the guy while looking at me. The guy had his back to me and kept talking to her. He looked like a wuss. I walked over to her other side and planted myself at the bar. I said, “Hey,” and smiled. Turns out the wuss was her boyfriend but they’d only been going out for a month. He looked scared and came over, trying to AMOG. Pathetic attempt. I felt sorry for him. This girl was way out of his league. She asked for my number. And then they left. On my way home at 5 in the morning, the sun was rising in Beijing. And she phoned me…
You see, all this started because I was having fun all by myself with a grin on my face. My energy was all coming from within. I didn’t need anybody to make me happy. I was perfectly happy just chilling out with my drink. I wasn’t seeking anything. I was just … being. This is what it means to have a vibe that offers value. You are the party.
My fun these days when I go out is not dependent on any girl’s reaction. It’s dependent on me and me alone. I remind myself, “If I don’t meet a single attractive girl tonight, I’m still going to have fun because my purpose tonight is not to meet girls; it’s to have fun!”
Go out there and have fun tonight!
Happy playin’, The Asian Rake.
Why I hate the word, ‘Sarging,’ and How “The Game” F-cked Us Up
May 22, 2008
I had the pleasure of hanging out with two good friends (Natural-MD and Wing-S) this weekend. I haven’t hung with them in a while because they live on the other side of town and have been busy with relatives and other visitors on the weekends. And now Natural-MD actually has a real girlfriend (the ‘exclusive’ kind).
We had some drinks, played pool, and flirted with a few girls as we went about having fun. I was reminded of the pure pleasure of going out and spending time with guys just for the sake of it… And how it got me my first six out of seven girls when I returned to Beijing last September.
Natural-MD pulled out his usual arsenal of gay jokes, telling me repeatedly that my ass is too loose from the last time he and his friends pulverized it and reminding me that he was built like a horse while mine was well, too small for much good. LOL.
I’ve learned not to be offended. This was all about getting out of your fucking head and stopping that voice in your mind that questions and challenges everything and that ego that always wants the “truth.
We’re just shooting the shit. We’re loud, dominant, out of our heads, fucking with each other (lol), and most importantly HAVING FUN.
Is this ’sarging’? I don’t know. But it attracts a lot more hot women than does going out with guys who are ’sarging.’
I can often pick out these ’sargers’ before I even meet them. Their eyes dart too and fro, looking for their next target. They look restless, as if they feel like they should be doing something more productive than having fun. They want to “get to work.” They suck energy from the room. You get the feeling when they talk to you that they want something from you, desperately. They take value from you, even when they’re smiling. You get the feeling they’re using you for something rather than just enjoying the moment. Of course, the more they do this, the worse it gets. They go spiraling down. I try not to get caught in their backwash.
The first and foremost thing you should do when you’re “out to meet girls” is: HAVE FUN. Read my post on Being Unselfconscious for more on this.
Many ‘community’ guys and lair members contact and try to meet up with me to go ’sarging,’ as they call it in their emails and phone calls. I have nothing against them personally. I’m an active, contributing member of the local lairs, and I fully support helping guys grow in their quest to become better with women.
However, an immediate red flag and complete turn-off is when guys try to gain rapport with me by using PUA terms like ‘negs,’ AA (approach anxiety, not alcoholics anonymous, though the second kind of AA might help you with the first, lol), A2, DHV, and worst of all, ’sarging.’ I heard this was first used by Ross Jeffries in connection with his cat or something similarly creepy
[EDIT: Notice that I am criticizing the word or term, 'sarging.' I'm not criticizing the actual activity of meeting and attracting women, which some guys annoyingly refer to by this creepy RJ term, 'sarging.' See my next post for more clarification.]
When you call the activity of going out to meet girls ’sarging,’ you set it apart from what you do in the rest of your life. Rather than thinking about meeting and attracting girls as just a part of your everyday lives and an expression of their natural and ideal personalities, you instead isolate it to some clearly demarcated and now anxiety-ridden time and place.
Stop acting as if chatting up that cute girl in the bar is something special or out of the norm. You’re just being social!
Realize that you are a MAN who goes after what he wants. If you are a man like that, then you will naturally approach that breathtakingly beautiful girl across the room and tell her that you saw her standing there and that you just had to meet her, and then you stand back and wait to see if she meets the rest of your standards.
A lot of what was taught in the earlier days of the community, the period featured by Neil Strauss in his The Game, was created to protect fragile egos. And instead of fixing the ego problem, guys try to go Neil’s route, which was the much more difficult and arduous one, and they get on the four-year gravy train through hell and back.
They do it the hard way, rather than take the first-class seat on the express flight.
Stop trying to protect your ego. Grow up. Don’t hide behind the term, ’sarging,’ or pretend it’s just an arcade game.
Instead, go out and HAVE FUN. And while you’ve got that big, crazy smile on your face from laughing at the hysterically funny thing your friend just said, turn to that cute girl next to you and say, “How’s your girl’s night out going?”
Now don’t get me wrong. Neil’s book is a phenomenal read. I was entirely riveted by it. It inspired me to improve myself in that area of my life. But there are a few aspects of the book that had a really deleterious effect on the next generation.
One of these is that The Game glorifies going out to meet women apart from having fun with friends. It’s like he and Mystery are ‘clocking in’ each time they enter a club. It’s like work for them. They don’t make it sound fun at all. They go out, armed with their weapons and club kit, ready to do war. He makes it sound like some kind of milestone when he ditches his normal friends in order to clock in time at the club. Granted, I’ve written myself about avoiding people who are negative influences in your life.
But finding positive influences and true friends who are happy to contribute to your self-development and to meeting your goals is something you should be doing regardless of whether you want to get better with women. That’s the right message.
The wrong message is that going out to meet women, or worse, ’sarging,’ is something special that you are doing.
Not ’sarging.’ No, not ’sarging.’ Don’t ever use that word around me.
As my good friend Sebastian likes to drill into people:
1. Have fun!
2. Make other people have fun.
3. And then see if that hot girl really meets your standards.
Happy playin’, The Asian Rake.
The Best Way to Wing (or The Best Way to Help Your Friends Help You Meet Women)
January 31, 2008
Back in the US yet again, in advance of some gigantic snow storm, yet again…
A couple of posts ago, I wrote about how the secret of the natural was his uncanny abilities to control his state. That got me thinking about a related and very important subject.
One of the factors that sky-rocketed my results was meeting and hanging out with certain people, including naturals, and NOT going out at night with people who were holding me back.
I’m going to be frank here. I have no doubt that some of you have friends who are actively, but unknowingly, preventing you from getting to the next level. I would never advise you to ditch your friends, especially ones who’ve stood by you and whom you’ve known for a long time, no matter how geeky or socially awkward they are. However, it is very likely that some of these friends, and this includes most community guys, are actually hampering your efforts.
Keep them as friends. Just don’t go out with them while you’re looking to meet women or cool guys. If they are chess buddies, or X-box buddies, or basketball buddies, or whatever, continue to do those things with them. But really, either start going out alone and build a new social circle, or hang out with your cool friends who “get it” when you’re looking to meet women. This might sound harsh, I know. But you’ll cut years off your learning curve this way.
Maybe once you’ve got this part of your life handled, you can take them out and show them a thing or two. But for now, follow this advice or pay the price.
Or, you could move to a new country and start from a clean slate there 
Haha. Btw, I’m only half-joking about that one.
Okay then, go meet some guys or gals who WILL help you in developing your skills in the social arts. What traits are we looking for?
Apart from the obvious “cool” factor, that is, they should be well-dressed, well-groomed, socially savvy, confident, etc., there is also one all-important characteristic they should bring to the table that relates directly to improving your social life.
When you guys go out together, you must be having UNSELFCONSCIOUS FUN!
“Oh, duh. That’s obvious,” you’re probably thinking. Well, the “having fun” part is obvious, but what about the “unselfconscious” part?
Here are some signs that you are NOT having unselfconscious fun:
The usual, such as:
-Freezing up and just standing against the wall. Being wall-flowers.
-Standing or sitting at the bar not facing or talking to each other and instead trying to “look cool.”
-Talking about game tactics in the venue and the whole time thinking to yourselves, “I should approach. I need to approach.”
-Doing the lap around the club, looking for “sets.”
But also:
-When you do an approach, your buddies are just standing around, watching and evaluating you. They are (explicitly or not) checking your body language, your tonality, your delivery of routines, etc. and then after the interaction, they either:
a) Judge your performance and analyze your interaction. They say, “Not bad, dude! But…” and then they start to give you pointers. They say you did this and this, and that’s not good. Instead, they say, you should do such and such, “Next time, body rock out before you deliver that line,” etc.
b) Or, they likewise judge your performance and analyze your interaction. But, they conclude that you did well! “Congratulations, dude! That was awesome! You’re the man!” You probably didn’t think that this would be an example of how NOT to wing, but yes, it is. Your buddies are still too self-conscious. They are still judging you, analyzing your performance, and then giving you their immediate feedback.
The only time this is called for is during a time-intensive training, like in a bootcamp, in which there isn’t the luxury of time, or if it is an emergency and the error is egregious yet easily corrected. Otherwise, you’re f–king up everybody’s state by doing this.
If you and your buddies do these things, then I’ll tell you right now, you are doing well DESPITE this mindset and behavior.
I know that the vast majority of lair guys have this mentality when they go out. I’d say it’s like 98.3%. This is one reason why the guys who get really good really fast actually don’t hang with lair guys much during their steep learning curve. Instead, they find a series of naturals and learn directly from them, or they take a bootcamp with a guy who really knows his sh-t and can teach it.
What’s the most effective mindset and behavior to have when you go out to socialize?
Like a friend of mine likes to say, “Let’s go f–k around!”
This means we are out to amuse ourselves. We don’t give one damn what the girl thinks of us. We are NOT looking for validation from them to gauge our skills. We do not need a good reaction from them for us to have fun. We are just plain amusing ourselves.
One perfect compliment to this mindset is a game my buddies and I like to play. The game goes like this. One (or all, haha) of us goes in and says the most direct thing possible as an opener, like [stepping inside the polite zone], “OMG, you are beautiful. I’m in love with you [shaking your head in disbelief at how gorgeous she is]. Who are you?… Come here!” and motion her towards you.
If it goes well, great.
If it doesn’t, and the girl shrieks in mock horror and runs away, which unfortunately doesn’t happen nearly as much as I’d like, … great! Why? Because when I return to my wings, they are doubled over laughing, not at me, but at the whole situation! We all find it f–king hilarious! Then, it’s the next guy’s turn to go in super-aggressive.
It’s a WIN-WIN situation.
Pretty soon, just because we’re having non-needy, non-validation-seeking, unselfconscious fun, we’re all in interactions that escalate really f–king fast. Not one of my buddies is judging or evaluating anything. They’re not high-fiving me for doing well and they’re not consoling me when the girl doesn’t react so well. We are all outcome-independent.
(Caveat:
1. If you’re going to play this game, remember to do it in big, loud dance clubs. On higher status girls, I’d say the same things, but go light on kino at first.
2. Remember the second objective when going out to make friends: MAKE OTHER PEOPLE HAVE FUN. Make sure your teasing and f-cking around takes into account the enjoyment of others. Don’t be mean or bullying. This is covered in my post on being outcome independent. The first objective is to have fun yourself, and the third is to make connections with people from a screening frame.)
Why is it bad for my buddies to congratulate me when the interaction goes great? Aren’t they building up my confidence and making me feel better by doing this?
When you go about life, you should already have the mindset that you are THE MAN. You are a 10. Believe it.
Now, how would a 10 act when the girl goes ga-ga over him? Would his friends be surprised? Would they high-five him and congratulate him? Hell, no. It’s just expected. It’s as expected as Steve Nash hitting that free throw. It’s as expected as Joshua Bell nailing those arpeggios in a Mozart concerto. It’s as expected as James Bond getting that beautiful girl in the movie. Duh.
It is crucial that you and your buddies reinforce each other’s images of yourselves as 10s. By high-fiving and congratulating each other in the venue, you are actually UNDERMINING that whole frame, mindset, and belief. No wonder guys just can’t get it in their heads that they’re 10s.
When you or your buddies come back to the group after an especially spectacularly-run interaction, the most you should do is give him a slight nod of respect. Then, continue like normal. Leave the celebrations until the next morning.
Or better yet, find something more important to celebrate together because after all, we should all have higher priorities and purposes in life than getting women.
Now, here’s a personal reason why this kind of mindset was so effective for me. I’ve discovered that I am naturally externally-referenced. That is, I naturally look to others for feedback on how I’m doing.
This manifests itself in different ways. In school, I didn’t know whether the paper I wrote was any good until my professor gave me an A. In music, I didn’t know whether my jazz solo was any good until I heard the enthusiastic applause from the audience or the evaluations from my teacher or the adjudicators. With women, I didn’t know whether I had gotten a 6 or a 9 until my buddies were all congratulating me on getting a really hot girl or chiding me for thinking that 6 was a 9.
Of course, the downside of this is that sometimes, I had a great paper but an awful professor who for whatever reasons, was blind to a good argument. Or, I had an adjudicator who preferred old-time swing over 70s free jazz, so didn’t like when I played outside the chord changes. Or, I had buddies who are virgins and jack it to pics of silicone implants and can’t appreciate natural beauty, which I like.
I’ve since learned that with expertise and experience comes confidence in one own’s judgement. So I’ve developed my academic abilities so that I know for myself when I’ve got a good paper. I’ve honed my ear so that I know what a good jazz solo sounds like. I’ve trained my eye so that I can make an informed, expert assessment of what I find beautiful, not just in women, but in art, architecture, design, and fashion. Over time, I developed confidence in my own trained intuitions.
In meeting women, I doubted myself way too much. I listened way too much to the bad, but well-intentioned, advice of other guys at my level or even below. It’s far better for newbies (or even intermediates looking to get advanced) not to be giving each other advice at all, especially in the venue. But instead, to just focus on having UNSELFCONSCIOUS FUN. Do that first, and everything else will begin to make sense and fall in place.
Worst of all, whenever I was lucky enough to get myself into state, they’d disrupt my state and bring me out of it by doing one of those things I mentioned above.
When is it right to evaluate and analyze your buddies? If you’re going to do this at all, the best time is at the end of the night or the next day, when there’s no danger to breaking your state. That’s why on the best bootcamps, the debriefing is at the end of the night, or even better (’cause you never know when the night will really end), the next day.
When you go out tonight, take on this mindset. Just be cool guys having fun and completely independent of any validation from the women you’re interacting with. It doesn’t matter whether it’s going well or poorly. Just be in the moment. Laugh at yourselves, at her, at your buddies, at life. Life’s short. Live it up!
Happy playin’, The Asian Rake.
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