With the advent of online dating, Old School PUA tactics have morphed into a new expression of attractiveness, based on three qualifying traits.

Readership: All; single men;
Theme: Dating and the SMP
Author’s Note: This post expands two comments NovaSeeker left in response to Lexet’s post, Charting the Red Pill World (2021/3/26). Novaseeker started drafting this post on 2021/5/17, but left it unfinished. In his absence (due to work), Jack has taken the liberty of finishing this post.
Length: 1,550 words
Reading Time: 5 minutes

The New Red Pill for Online Dating (OLD)

In general, guys, there is a large movement among the young away from the kinds of things most of us might associate with “Old School PUA”, a la Heartiste / Krauser / Roissy / Rollo / Roosh / etc. (AKA the “Original Red Pill” or “ORP” dating from 2008-2018 or so), and towards a different set of practices. I think this change is largely because of a shift in socialization habits in which most young people, women and men alike, are now spending so much of their social lives online that they are frightened to be approached by strangers IRL.

In his post, Charting the Red Pill World (2021/3/26), Lexet described evidence for this shift as a recent emphasis on basic interaction skills.

“The personalities on YouTube who have returned to “tactics” interact and/or coach young men on a daily basis. They are far more in tune with Zoomers than the rest of us. What they are saying is that their subscribers/fans/clients not only don’t know how to talk to girls, but often times, they can’t even hold a conversation with other people! It’s a result of them being raised in a “social media world.”

It’s hard for us oldsters to believe that younger guys and girls can’t even strike up a conversation with someone of the opposite sex. But Lexet provided us with a closer look at the social malaise among the younger set in his Film Review of The Dating Project (2022/2/11). Apparently, there is an overblown emphasis on sex and hooking up, and the accompanying dissipation has brought with it a sense of annui about dating and relationships in general.

The new set of practices is focused much more on…

  1. “Looksmaxing” — This was a sidelight for the ORP but is a main part of current RP due to the rise of apps, all of which emphasize looks as primary.
  2. “Text Game” – The ORP eschewed texting as a rule, which is simply not an option in the current world of online dating (OLD)/dating apps. You need to be good at it!
  3. “Conversion” — i.e., the transition from virtual to real, being able to interact smoothly in the real world.

Of note, that last point is a serious challenge to many Zoomers.

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This is in effect a new toolkit, and a different one from what the ORP proposed, because the environment changed dramatically. It’s a new “Red Pill”, and it isn’t really “PUA” at all. It’s just the basic skills young men need just to date successfully in a “normal” (that is not bars/clubs/pickup context) way. Because most of the young set grew up with a solid dependence on the internet, most real social skills are the hardest challenge of all. In contrast, older men, most men above 40, and almost all men north of 45 have had to develop social skills in order to survive.

A couple of interesting viewpoints about online dating for men have been posted over at Aaron Renn’s site, The Masculinist. I’ll use these to form the bases of a couple case studies, to emphasize my above points. Note that both of these guys are Christians.

Case Study 1 — Success

The first case study is from The Masculinist: How to Make the Most of Online Dating (2021/3/25). This article covers a user who has gotten positive or even great results in using dating apps. (Click on the link to read the details.)

Of note, this guy was rather short by women’s standards (only 5’6″), however, he was well muscled and in good shape, and he has never had any issues attracting women.

First, he “looksmaxed”. That isn’t only about how you actually look, it’s about how you present yourself in the app. After initial lackluster results in terms of women responding to him, he changed the pics in his profile to a set of professional photographer taken pics made during a trip to Europe a few years ago. He is also a generally very fashionable, upscale dresser, and this showed in his photos. After this one change, his responses from women skyrocketed.

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Second, he focused on text game, both in his profile text and in his interactions. His key emphasis was on cocky-funny, teasing, hypergamy, light-heartedness, and not being a die-hard killjoy Christian hardass in profile and text.

And he rightly notes that texting has to lead to a fairly swift real life meet (within a week or two), otherwise it generally goes nowhere.

Third, he focused on “conversion” — that is, real life skills in interacting with people, with women, to get better at talking with women and therefore better at the process of interacting with someone in person, once you have passed the app screen.

Finally, it’s notable that the successful guy used Bumble, which is an app that is women-centric in that women have to initiate all contact — men can only talk once a woman has messaged them. So it has the in-built strategy of waiting for women to approach you, once you make your peacock display. The successful dater in Renn’s article did this, because he had the peacock to display, if you will, and notice that he was also indiscriminate — he had no selection/review strategy at all — once he had his pro pics up, he simply “yes” swiped every woman the app sent him, waited to see who approached him in text, and took it from there.

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Case Study 2 — Failure

The other article is a negative review of OLD from a guy who wasn’t very successful.

The Masculinist: My Experience with Online Dating (2021/3/22).

Renn’s article explains pretty accurately the algorithms the apps use for matching, and why this is generally terrible for most normal guys.

This guy likely was not nearly as physically attractive relative to the kind of woman he was interested in dating. He was able to date women, but that’s different than attracting women in a dating app environment which, as he says himself, puts you against the best of the best. He almost certainly didn’t spend $500 on professional photos for his app profile like the successful online dater guy did. So he bombed point number 1.

His text game was hamfisted and his response timing was off cue. He couldn’t turn text convos into dates within a very short time frame, so he blew point number 2 as well.

Since he didn’t get many dates, he didn’t have the opportunity to dive into point number 3. So looksmaxxing with the profile images and acing one’s text game are obviously crucial to the process.

Unfortunately, Renn’s recommendation here (date women for practice just to get better at speaking with women in a dating context) seems to me to be a chicken and egg problem — if the guys aren’t getting dates, they’re not going to be getting the experience they need to get better at dating in person. It’s a catch 22 situation for men who struggle in dating, I think. It goes back to Scott’s Trajectories.

Σ Frame Axiom 14, AKA The Law of Trajectories (Scott): What we learn through feedback loops early in life sets a trajectory that we follow throughout the remainder of our lives. It is exceedingly difficult to deviate from this trajectory, but small deviations are possible for a small number of innovative megafaith individuals.

Instead, I would recommend that guys should looksmax physically, and then also presentationally by upping your game with professional photos if you want to do well with attractive women on a dating app (and as the unsuccessful guy pointed out in his post, you can’t even see attractive women on the app unless the app detects that you have a chance with them first).

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Conclusions

After reviewing both case studies, we can see that both guys were capable of attracting women outside apps, but note that the opportunities to do so are limited in various ways. So there isn’t really a substantial difference in attraction that accounts for the different results.

The key differences between the two men were in the approach. The successful guy pretty much followed the three points I mentioned at the top, whereas, the unsuccessful guy didn’t make the most of himself in those ways.

In general, I think the successful online dater’s approach is valid if you are very good looking and able to display that well in an app (it sure helps if one is naturally photogenic), and then couple that with very good textual and in person charm. That, to me, means a guy who is in the top 10-20%, which I think clearly the successful online dater guy was. I don’t think it’s really very transferable to other guys, at least not most of them.

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