The other night I talked on the phone with one of my buddies. We'll call him Mark. Mark is one of a handful of guys I've met my whole life who I'd consider a 'Natural.' We've known each other about 8 years; he's a couple years older than me and was really the one who showed me the ropes before I found the community. In fact, I remember being horrified when he was telling me how should handle a girl who was being wishy-washy at the time that I was all caught up on: "Dude, just look her in the eyes and, say, 'You're such a fvcking b1tch,' but, like, say it with a smirk". I didn't take his advice, but some of his brashness rubbed off on me and I ended up sleeping with her. We'd go out and game girls before I knew what that was.
Mark's love life, the whole time I've known him, follows this pattern: Mark falls in love with a girl, he cheats on her. She either retaliates & he can't believe she'd treat him that way and goes on an absolute rampage (like two girls the same day or driving cross country to kick it with all his exes--Mark has exes everywhere). Or she'll break up with him & he'll stop at nothing to win her back. If he wins her back, the cycle repeats itself. Often Mark'll be at different stages of this process with multiple girls simultaneously. I remember one time, after pining after an ex for months & being depressed, he looked at me, laughed, and said: "Dude she's busted anyway."
And, every now & then, he'll put himself through period of self-enforced celibacy that never last too long.
The rest of his life is, in general, a train wreck. Mark is short, chronically on the rocks financially, and rarely in a position to shower regularly. But he's fun to be around, has friend everywhere he goes, and is never short for female attention. Hot, ugly, single, married, young, old, doesn't matter to him. In the time I've known him he's dated everything from good girls from wealthy families to total drug addict degenerates.
But, for all that, Mark is pretty self-aware. He generally can tell you why certain things work with certain girls and even why he does the things he does--even if he's powerless to change the cycle. However, I think, for the most part, this is all done retroactively. In the moment, he's just being Mark.
In short, I don't think he's ever had reason to look up how to get girls. But over the last 8 years, Mark has had access to something we all do: The Internet. When I last saw him a couple years ago, he went off on a spiel about something related to Alpha males to explain the social dynamics we'd found ourselves in at the time. On the phone the other night, he said something about Incels. My guess is he stumbled upon a couple things online that made sense to him and explained why his life moves the way it does.
The point of this post is this: whether you get your knowledge of women online, or you got it from your dad, or your older brother, or because you were popular in high school and had opportunities to practice, every guy is running some sort of game. They all got their knowledge from somewhere. No one is just born with it--and I've yet to meet the guy who, at all points in his life, found himself in the opportunity to just be flawless with women & didn't have to learn a few hard lessons along the way. Mark, I think, probably just benefited from his natural emotional instability; in high school, he probably benefited from being the rebel who did drugs; in the process, he got enough exposure to women to formulate his 'game.'
There's a tendency to pedestalize or even envy guys who didn't have to actively learn game. Just because you had to consciously gain knowledge doesn't cheapen the value of that knowledge. Having to actively practice a skill set doesn't diminish the value of that skill. If you met me in the past couple years, you'd probably think that I was 'a natural'--and you'd be right--at this point I don't think about what I'm doing; I don't do awkard sh1t anymore, I can make it look effortless--BUT you wouldn't see the amount of time I put into getting to this point, you wouldn't see me at home on a Saturday night reading advice from anonymous dudes online, you wouldn't see the blowouts or the bad nights. Like I said, Mark probably didn't have to consciously learn game; but you're naive if you don't think every guy alive hasn't stumbled onto some game-related advice online at some point. And the outcome is the same, no matter how you learn it.
Mark's love life, the whole time I've known him, follows this pattern: Mark falls in love with a girl, he cheats on her. She either retaliates & he can't believe she'd treat him that way and goes on an absolute rampage (like two girls the same day or driving cross country to kick it with all his exes--Mark has exes everywhere). Or she'll break up with him & he'll stop at nothing to win her back. If he wins her back, the cycle repeats itself. Often Mark'll be at different stages of this process with multiple girls simultaneously. I remember one time, after pining after an ex for months & being depressed, he looked at me, laughed, and said: "Dude she's busted anyway."
And, every now & then, he'll put himself through period of self-enforced celibacy that never last too long.
The rest of his life is, in general, a train wreck. Mark is short, chronically on the rocks financially, and rarely in a position to shower regularly. But he's fun to be around, has friend everywhere he goes, and is never short for female attention. Hot, ugly, single, married, young, old, doesn't matter to him. In the time I've known him he's dated everything from good girls from wealthy families to total drug addict degenerates.
But, for all that, Mark is pretty self-aware. He generally can tell you why certain things work with certain girls and even why he does the things he does--even if he's powerless to change the cycle. However, I think, for the most part, this is all done retroactively. In the moment, he's just being Mark.
In short, I don't think he's ever had reason to look up how to get girls. But over the last 8 years, Mark has had access to something we all do: The Internet. When I last saw him a couple years ago, he went off on a spiel about something related to Alpha males to explain the social dynamics we'd found ourselves in at the time. On the phone the other night, he said something about Incels. My guess is he stumbled upon a couple things online that made sense to him and explained why his life moves the way it does.
The point of this post is this: whether you get your knowledge of women online, or you got it from your dad, or your older brother, or because you were popular in high school and had opportunities to practice, every guy is running some sort of game. They all got their knowledge from somewhere. No one is just born with it--and I've yet to meet the guy who, at all points in his life, found himself in the opportunity to just be flawless with women & didn't have to learn a few hard lessons along the way. Mark, I think, probably just benefited from his natural emotional instability; in high school, he probably benefited from being the rebel who did drugs; in the process, he got enough exposure to women to formulate his 'game.'
There's a tendency to pedestalize or even envy guys who didn't have to actively learn game. Just because you had to consciously gain knowledge doesn't cheapen the value of that knowledge. Having to actively practice a skill set doesn't diminish the value of that skill. If you met me in the past couple years, you'd probably think that I was 'a natural'--and you'd be right--at this point I don't think about what I'm doing; I don't do awkard sh1t anymore, I can make it look effortless--BUT you wouldn't see the amount of time I put into getting to this point, you wouldn't see me at home on a Saturday night reading advice from anonymous dudes online, you wouldn't see the blowouts or the bad nights. Like I said, Mark probably didn't have to consciously learn game; but you're naive if you don't think every guy alive hasn't stumbled onto some game-related advice online at some point. And the outcome is the same, no matter how you learn it.