Why the Scarcity Mindset is the worst thing a man can catch

[pipeman84]

I use myself as an example. I've said this a million times, but I'm 6'4" and 235-240 and one of the fittest guys at any gym I'll go to naturally. I'm easily in the top 5% of men, for my actual age it's even more unusual. Anyway, I've had women tell me I have a "dad bod" or criticize my appearance. I've been rejected by average women many times and had no success on dating apps or sites.

Reading the above, the saying 'it's your vibe, not your looks' came to mind.
The fact you got criticized on your appearance and told you have a 'dad bod' signals to me that you don't command respect with your presence and/or you mingle with some really low quality women.

 

[SW15]

I'm 6'4" and 235-240 and one of the fittest guys at any gym I'll go to naturally. I'm easily in the top 5% of men, for my actual age it's even more unusual.

6'1"- 6'4" is an ideal range male height. 235-240 is a great weight if it is mostly muscle. Body fat % would have to be taken into consideration.

6'4" and 230-240 is a physique of a top home run hitter in pro baseball or a linebacker in pro football.

That is a top tier male.

From a physical standpoint, only facial aesthetics would affect top tier status. Persona/charisma could be a factor in struggles. @sangheilios writes and presents well in this forum.

 

[Bokanovsky]

So go out, get bloody, love the journey not the destination and then stop to notice once in awhile.

There's a counterpoint to that. If the journey involves you constantly getting beat up, you'll end up a broken man who never reaches his destination. It's like the old adage, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". That may well be true. But there's no consolation prize if it does kill you.

There's a concept in physics known as fatigue limit. Think of bending a paper clip. You can do so a finite number of times. At some point, the metal will fatigue and break. Human psychology works the same way. Everyone has a limit in terms of how much failure and abuse he can take. Psychological damage is a real thing. The idea that one can go out there and keep failing until he succeeds is a fallacy. Some will succeed. IF they manage to make sufficient progress before hitting their fatigue limit. Others will not succeed. This is why I cringe when so-called "PUA's" encourage inexperienced incels to spam approach. That does more harm than good.

 

[Jesse Pinkman]

Back in 2022, I joined an online pickup group where you can find wingmen and I have long learned in going out and winging with various guys that most men cannot come close to cultivating an abundance mindset. Most men are not emotionally and mentally made for this lifestyle of spinning plates and going from women to women, it takes a special kind of guy (borderline psychopath or just straight out psychopath) to actually pull this off and not be miserable in life. It is also why in the world of men, very few are made to lead and most are made to be followers. Here are some things I have witnessed when seeing men out in action running game.

Most men have such god awful game and do not even realize it.

80% of the dudes I have winged with in my time doing daygame literally go up to girls, say "hi ur cute", spam that line about 20x times, get no results, and then complain about how awful a city or culture is for meeting women. Like at no point was there any thought or anything put into the approach, just straight up garbage spamming. It is not that these dudes suck so bad which is the tragedy, it is the fact that they are by definition insane. They do the same thing week in and week out, get flaky numbers, and then wonder years later when they still suck with women.

These are guys that are actually reading about game and practicing it, imagine how bad the guys who have never heard about game are most of the times. Ironically, I have found the best players to be guys who are just naturals and great at relating with people. It is like the PUA types have such a massive ego to go with their awful results, it is quite a sight to behold.

Most men these days have toxic behaviors and do not even notice it.

They are clingy, desperate, and tend to overwhelm you with attention. They need someone to talk to and cannot stand to be independent or by themselves. Most of them need someone and are too emotionally weak to have any solitude in their life. You talk to them and it is a depressing mess about how screwed their life is because they cannot find a wife at 30. They are negative, bitter, spiteful, and don't even realize how these emotions are offputting to most people. You feel drained as a guy who is normal speaking to them, can you imagine how women with options feel?

Most men feel entitled to quality women and a quality family life but do not realize how they have little to offer.

Even the "red pilled" guys are desperate for family and a wife. These men are bitter, spiteful, draining, clingy, and a mess to be around but feel like they are entitled to a decent wife and kids. Women with a choice, which they have these days, are not going to want to spend a minute around that when they can have a guy that gives them the high life, fun parties, and incites the fun and great emotions in them. Gone are the days where she has to settle down with some bitter drunk who lives an average life because the town told her to. Now she sees what is out there on social media and knows she can have it so she goes for that.

Most men just didn't adjust and live in wishful thinking, especially guys who follow the red pill and manosphere.

The 1950s are not coming back. The stone ages are not coming back. Things are going to get worse for the average loser and he better adjust or be like those herbivores in Japan. Women are not going to change for the better and no amount of coping, clinging to religion, or any of that is going to change it. Women will keep having more options as time goes on.

All of this stuff of she will turn 30 and starve is cope. With the recent cougar and MILF fetish going on, even women in their 50s that look good will have wealthy men with thirst and good looking guys piping them up. It isn't going to go well for the average guy.

The gap between the haves and the have nots gets bigger every year.

The market is getting more competitive, standards are rising, and more men are being left behind. The gap between the haves and the have nots when it comes to game, sex, and dating is getting massive. If a man has no value to offer, he is getting left behind and rotting. It will only get worse year over year and nothing is going to stop it. Maybe sex robots and legalizing prostitution would help ease things but the man who never grew up from being a child who clings to the emotional love from a woman better get a dog or turn to religion. That's life son.

 

[Divorced w 3]

There's a counterpoint to that. If the journey involves you constantly getting beat up, you'll end up a broken man who never reaches his destination. It's like the old adage, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". That may well be true. But there's no consolation prize if it does kill you.

There's a concept in physics known as fatigue limit. Think of bending a paper clip. You can do so a finite number of times. At some point, the metal will fatigue and break. Human psychology works the same way. Everyone has a limit in terms of how much failure and abuse he can take. Psychological damage is a real thing. The idea that one can go out there and keep failing until he succeeds is a fallacy. Some will succeed. IF they manage to make sufficient progress before hitting their fatigue limit. Others will not succeed. This is why I cringe when so-called "PUA's" encourage inexperienced incels to spam approach. That does more harm than good.

Not exactly. The journey included a map. If you don’t take some time to read, learn and immerse then you may as well not leave your house.

 

[SargeMaximus]

It’s hard not to have a scarcity mindset these days where you can literally be banned from society for something you say. Things get scarce real quick at that point

 

[BeExcellent]

Preach @Jesse Pinkman preach. Everything you said is spot on.

Men must adapt or be left behind. It is, in a true sense, modern survival of the fittest.

 

[Bokanovsky]

Another thing to add is that success generally breeds success while failure generally breeds failure. This is true of every aspect of life, from finance (the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer) to sports (think of top quarterbacks, tennis players, etc. who reach the top and stay there for a long time) to success with women. Think of all the people who never amount to anything in life. Not all of them are lazy or stupid. Many simply haven't figured out how to seek out and capitalize on opportunities.

The obvious question is how does one become successful without already being successful? There are two possibilities. The first involves being extremely lucky. The second involves optimizing opportunities for success and, just as importantly, minimizing opportunities for failure. Make no mistake, you will still experience some level of failure. But as long as you experience at least some level of success interspersed with your failures, you will be able to improve, adapt and excel. If all you experience is failure, you will get nowhere.

 

[forcerecon01]

Geomaxxing is so crucial now

 

[sangheilios]

Reading the above, the saying 'it's your vibe, not your looks' came to mind.
The fact you got criticized on your appearance and told you have a 'dad bod' signals to me that you don't command respect with your presence and/or you mingle with some really low quality women.

I haven't all women say stuff like that to me but I've had it occur several times. It's got nothing to do with vibe or charisma or any such nonsense, these women most likely legitimately believe these things. Several years back there was this photo of Jason Momoa on the beach and all of these women posted on his social media about him having a "dad bod". To those not aware, these actors or fitness models, bodybuilders, etc. don't retain a body fat percentage of 10% or under year round. He literally looked like he had been on a bulk or just eating normally lol. The interesting thing is that he is in better shape than any man these women had ever dated or slept with.

I don't even really blame this on women but more so on overall body image issues that many seem to have due to social media. I've seen tons of these "fitness" guys that are on magazines or on youtube with my own eyes in person. Literally none of those guys look anything remotely like that in real life, I'm being 100% serious when I say this. One guy in his photos on social media you'd think was this super jacked and ripped guy. When you see him in person he is maybe 5'4" and looks like a completely average guy that you'd see at any gym, he's also a massive jackass btw lol. I can cite a ton of other examples that are like this. There is one guy that goes to my gym that has done collabs with big fitness youtubers and again he looks completely average for a male gym goer lol. What I'm getting at is women are seeing these pictures on instagram or in movies and they think that is a realistic look for men when it's generally incredibly enhanced in regards to lighting and angles but also with steroid use, diuretics and very strict dieting.

Side note, it's also possible that women do stuff like this to fit men because they are intimidated or want to take a man down a peg or two. At the end of the day, we could spend countless hours debating this back and forth with no real conclusion. The take home is that these women are to be avoided, easy solution.

 

[BeExcellent]

Another thing to add is that success generally breeds success while failure generally breeds failure. This is true of every aspect of life, from finance (the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer) to sports (think of top quarterbacks, tennis players, etc. who reach the top and stay there for a long time) to success with women. Think of all the people who never amount to anything in life. Not all of them are lazy or stupid. Many simply haven't figured out how to seek out and capitalize on opportunities.

The obvious question is how does one become successful without already being successful? There are two possibilities. The first involves being extremely lucky. The second involves optimizing opportunities for success and, just as importantly, minimizing opportunities for failure. Make no mistake, you will still experience some level of failure. But as long as you experience at least some level of success interspersed with your failures, you will be able to improve, adapt and excel. If all you experience is failure, you will get nowhere.

All true. It’s also who you surround yourself with.

 

[sangheilios]

@Jesse Pinkman

I partially agree with what you mention here.

For your first point, it's legitimately a difficult prospect for men to go up to a woman that is a complete stranger and make anything come of it. Complete cold approach is hard and genuinely has a much lower success rate unless the woman is highly attracted to you. Think about it, this woman knows absolutely nothing about you so her guard may be up. However, I agree with your point about spam approaching with the same strategy, seeing no results and then giving up. I feel a big part of this is simply because these men just have absolutely no idea what else to do in a situation that is quite honestly not easy to navigate. A lot of this is going to come down to situational context, if you are at some wholesale club, like Costco, and there are tons of people around it's not conducive to success. Something like a bookstore or even a grocery store that is quiet is totally doable. A good way to practice something like this would be to just talk to a female employee at a store and become acquainted with a conversational setting. With that said, the overall culture right now does not really encourage random strangers to interact with one another, I feel COVID especially made this much more pronounced.

As for men's negative behaviors, I totally agree but I feel that it is stemmed from just overall poor dating market experiences with little to no success. A lot of men are also in a place where they feel under or unappreciated, not just with dating but even in the workplace. Most jobs see you as just another number and would think nothing of replacing you. Most men are also stuck in mundane jobs that really provide them with no real happiness. To make it worse, they are often in jobs where they grind day in and day out and still struggle to meet ends meet. They may have to pay over 50% of their income for some garbage 1 bedroom apartment. Think about it, how the hell could you possibly be happy living like this? I'm not at all in this situation but I can imagine being so and how that would change me for the worse.

Now the part about the haves/have nots in dating I also agree with. Women are just not impressed by much these days and have much higher standards of men than ever. For boomers, if they were just decent men and had a job it was UNUSUAL for them not to find a woman and end up having kids, a house, etc. There's only so much a man can realistically improve and it's kind of an endless circle of diminishing returns. You have to earn a ton of money to be considered dateable but then you are working so much that you don't have time for dating or relationships. If you are in a relationship, you aren't home enough and emotionally unavailable lol. You can only be so fit per your genetics, do men have to resort to extreme dieting year round just to be considered good enough? Do these men have to start taking steroids, something that can potentially alter their health tremendously? The dating market is harder for men than ever but at a certain point it's going to result in men giving up all together or placing substantially less value on relationships and children. I honestly see the current dating climate in the modern world continuing to get worse and further spiral overall population decline and perhaps collapse unless something changes. Women also don't value traditional roles like they used to, and they are unhappier for it, and do not place as much importance on marriage.

 

[sangheilios]

@Jesse Pinkman

Imagine this

A man has to have a good career or have money, go to the gym regularly/be fit and just be a solid guy all around.......just to have a chance at dating a fat girl, a single mom, etc. Does that sound like a sustainable dating market to you? What do you think would happen if this trend continues to grow as time goes on? This idea should alarm you tremendously and the scary part is that this a very real issue. I'm not sure how old you are, but in my lifetime I will see the consequences of what we are seeing in our modern world.

 

[eli77]

Ok. Fair. But there ARE women who will take an interest in the guy. Oh wait, he doesn’t like those women?

Beer bellied bald guys or socially awkward incel types are not going to suddenly end up with a Victoria’s Secret model. But that seems to be the expectation around here. That’s the fantasy the adult entertainment industry has successfully sold, and there are many average women who are just as invisible as the average man.

Water seeks its own level. If a man is not pulling what he wants he has 3 options:

1. Take stock objectively and level up himself
2. Take stock objectively and accept the options he does have
3. Leave the game entirely

That’s it really. That is true for any man or woman. Some people have more options. It is what it is.

Physically if you're short bald and ugly you better have some steady stream think on being short in itself is a handicap not everybody that I went to high school with knows about this website and it's a shame cuz how far i'll divorce and on the second marriage if they had a place like this to come to probably wouldn't end up that way you make a valid point

 

[Bokanovsky]

I haven't all women say stuff like that to me but I've had it occur several times. It's got nothing to do with vibe or charisma or any such nonsense, these women most likely legitimately believe these things.

No dude, they are saying it to take you down a notch. Pipeman is right. Something about your demeanor signals that it’s okay to mess with you. I’ve never had a b!tch tell me that I have a dad bod…lol. If this happened, I’d probably have a big laugh about it…and then tear down her appearance in a particularly nasty way.

 

[sangheilios]

No dude, they are saying it to take you down a notch. Pipeman is right. Something about your demeanor signals that it’s okay to mess with you. I’ve never had a b!tch tell me that I have a dad bod…lol. If this happened, I’d probably have a big laugh about it…and then tear down her appearance in a particularly nasty way.

There is no such thing as game. When women make comments like this it's either an attempt to tear you down, as you mentioned, OR they legitimately believe that. A lot of the posters on here severely underestimate the degree of pickiness many women have towards men. These women could also just be delusional/nuts, lesbians or simply not attracted to men that they do this to in order to validate why they aren't interested. I've had women, those that I was not interested in, point out an obese woman and tell me that is my league. Do you think they are doing this to mess with me or because they actually believe that? This one I'm not so sure of but I genuinely feel that they believe this stuff based upon what I've seen.

I've literally said things like "you realize I'm taller and in better shape than any man you are going to date, right?". The thing is, you really don't want to respond to stuff like this from women, it shows that they are getting under your skin but it also makes you look like a tool depending upon how you specifically react to it. I feel it's better to just ignore it and avoid that woman, easy solution.

With that said, I believe that the more insecure a woman feels around a man the more likely she would be to make remarks like this. Here's a good scenario that I can cite from many years ago. I had met this cute asian girl in 2018 when I was out on a friday with a group of people. Anyway, we later met up on a first date to go mini golfing together, it's cheap and laid back. We were waiting for a group of people ahead of us to finish the course and she randomly asks me how many relationships I've had.

Now why do you think she is doing this?

It's because there's a very likely possibility that she is afraid of getting involved with a man that is a "player" and she is feeling it out. Maybe she had been cheated on in the past or has been pumped and dumped one too many times. Depending upon the answer itself, as well as how I go about it, will possibly give her some insight into this.

Another strategy that I've seen insecure women use on men is to make comments or behave in a way to lessen them internally. I knew a guy that was in a relationship with a woman and she said to him that she could "go on a dating app and have him replaced in a week".

Now why do you think this is?

It's because when women do this it potentially puts them in a position of power in the relationship. This may prevent them from getting cheated on or getting dumped by the guy, etc.

It's got nothing to do with game and simply related to the woman you are involved with, what her internal motivations are and how you behave in the interaction.

I also feel that whenever women act like this you should just assume they are crazy or simply not attracted to you. There is no sense debating it, you simply next these women and move on with your life instead, easy solution.

 

[PlatoPacks23]

ok.. but the scarcity mindset IS the inherent natural state of a guy who is not currently having options. Like... what is the alternative? Monk mode?

 

[Divorced w 3]

ok.. but the scarcity mindset IS the inherent natural state of a guy who is not currently having options. Like... what is the alternative? Monk mode?

The alternative is go out and start creating options

 

[pipeman84]

I've literally said things like "you realize I'm taller and in better shape than any man you are going to date, right?".

If you drive a Ferrari, and invite someone for a ride around town and he says: 'what's with this sh!tty car you're driving', do you a) start explaining: man, are you blind? this is a Ferrari, it's this year, this horsepower, cost me this much yadda yadda or b) simply ignore him and drive away.

I knew a guy that was in a relationship with a woman and she said to him that she could "go on a dating app and have him replaced in a week".

Now why do you think this is?

Because he was a beta with no self-respect (if he had any he wouldn't even date that kind of woman, let alone getting into a relationship with her) and she was a low quality woman walking all over him.

 

[Divorced w 3]

There's definitely a lot of truth to this.

Very few men legitimately will only go for super hot women well beyond their actual level, this does happen but it's fairly rare. Most men would be totally fine going for their looks match or even dating down, sometimes by quite a bit. In fact, there are many men who have virtually no standards at all. Very unattractive women will have options, if a woman is chronically single or struggles to land men for a relationship there is something wrong with HER. Most guys are willing to put up with a lot if there is a chance at a relationship, this will vary depending upon the overall desperation of the man and/or the degree of attraction he has towards the woman in question.

The dating market is also substantially different now than it was for men of generations past. Many baby boomer men that ended up getting married and having children would quite literally be incels in today's world. The expectations that men need to live up to are far loftier now than what they went through. Back then, if you were a normal guy that had a job you could land a woman that was roughly your looks match. There are tons of men in this "average and normal" category that struggle in the dating world. Yes, some of this could be due to poor "game" or life circumstances but it's also heavily due to the standards women have and the overall dating market.

I use myself as an example. I've said this a million times, but I'm 6'4" and 235-240 and one of the fittest guys at any gym I'll go to naturally. I'm easily in the top 5% of men, for my actual age it's even more unusual. Anyway, I've had women tell me I have a "dad bod" or criticize my appearance. I've been rejected by average women many times and had no success on dating apps or sites. The vast majority of men are not 6'+ or in really good shape, so what does this say about the overall dating market as a whole and how women often view men? Are all women like this, absolutely not, but enough of them are where it's both directly and indirectly an issue. Lets' say 25% of women have this mindset, this renders even more men incapable of finding a match and the normal women that are available are either locked up or become entitled due to the sheer amount of desperation from men that have gone months or years with no success.

We can debate this all day long, but this is the reality of the modern dating market. I really think the only thing to do is accept it for what it is and learn how to navigate it to the best of your ability. I believe that the market is hyper competitive and that you need to have a lot going for you to have success, or at the very least pretend that you do lol. This could involve being on point with fitness, finances, etc. but there is only so much you can realistcally achieve here. I also beleive that it may be better for men to simply check out all together or just put very little thought into the dating market and just living life. I actually see this latter option becoming more and more the norm.

6’4 235-240, they’re probably not wrong about your dad bod, otherwise you better be benching 400.

I am 6’3, and at the peak of my physical this summer I was 215, 12% BF, not quite ripped but defined,. I

So you’re either a body builder or you’re fat, and you have to be honest with yourself about it.