Summary:

The Red Pill is a toolbox, an abstract framework comprised of knowledge, facts, ideas, and best practices which can be applied to real life in countless manners. Using my experience as an example, I examine the translation of abstract concept into actionable solutions.

Body:

I first came across TRP through Rollo's blog and it took me a while to even realize what was being talked about. I had no interest in game, picking up chicks, or positive masculinity at the time. The discourse into human nature intrigued me though. More importantly, I was perplexed by my nature. This is a story everyone here is familiar with. Where my story – all of our stories, actually – diverge is in how I interpreted what I read and how that translated into a solution tailored to the circumstances of my life.

Note: this is an example. not a guide. just so everyone's clear.

Lack of Basics

Let's start with the first step everyone talks about: improving appearance. It's hard advice not to see and, naturally, I took a good look at myself. I'm known to be described cute, mildly androgynous, and reasonably built. Which isn't a bad starting point. Shouldn't be hard to make something solid out of that.

„You lift, bro?“ The cry goes out.

No. Won't work for me. Birth defects coupled with prior experience has shown me time and time again I can't compete with my peers. It's a swamp of frustration where biological limitation rubs up against ego and willpower. I can and often do push myself well over those limits but the amount of effort and diligence required to achieve even a marginal improvement, forget about effort required to gain noticeable benefits, is too high. Easier to play cute.

„Beta!“ our readers cry.

Admit it; you thought it. And that's the same thing I thought. But Rollo wasn't really focused that much on physical appearance in his writing and that made me think. The interesting discussions seemed to all be about behavior. So I figured: screw the physical part. Let's take a closer look at the rest of the material.

This kicked off the ongoing process of transforming theory, ideas, and experiences into solutions that work for me. But before we can even talk about solutions, we have to understand the person intending to use the solution. I realized pretty early on I didn't know too much about myself. The result was...

Mandatory Introspection

Note: for anyone who has trouble remaining objective when examining themselves, I suggest beginning with events far in the past. This removes ego investment from the picture and allows you to generalize in broad strokes. If you don't have enough experience to draw on... I don't have a better suggestion, sorry.

Quick self-portrait: I get on extremely well with women compared to both natural alphas and betas (d'oh). Actually, that isn't accurate. I have almost no male friends. I don't orbit. I've always had a girlfriend and always replaced her within a month. I have low sex drive. I'm an asshole who plays natural dread and has low empathy. I can argue almost any woman into tears or submission and repair the damage after. I have no trouble with LTRs unless it's me who looses interest. I'm irrationally overconfident. Oh, and I lie. A lot. Without meaning to.

Note: if you're familiar with human psychology and RP material, the pattern should be evident.

To uninformed me, that all seemed a bit unusual for someone recently unplugged, especially during those first few months as realization that RP was a thing sank in. I had no idea what the hell was going on. In my head, I'd always been the sweet, nice guy. The trusted beta. Who, uh, rarely paid for anything, has abused virtually every girl he's been with, has no trouble ripping a girlfriend apart, reducing her to tears, and making up?

„Well, that doesn't sound right,“ someone thinks.

It's about the time that realization set in I decided the RP interpretation which has been so successful for so many men was not going to work at all. There's no point increasing overt dominance as all that does is elicit more abuse on my behalf. And plate theory is a waste of time without a high sex drive. The no female friends rule is kinda crap too because I'd have no friends at all. Well, shit, there go the rest of the TRP basics.

„Is this even RP,“ another voice wonders.

An Individual Solution

What I realized was I was going to have to get creative, do my own legwork, and improvise. Nothing new there. Question was where to start. There wasn't really a 'guide' for this side of TRP so I asked myself what defined me most.

The answer was simple: how I interact with people, which is on an emotional level similar to how women do. I don't argue logic or fact, though I can if need be. I play on emotion. I create ideas in people's minds, make them feel valuable and trusted, and that formed the core of what I've come to consider 'emotional' or 'mental' game. Not an endorsed term as far as I know.

Problem was, the more I applied theory, the less it looked like game. The way I acted, spoke, approached, none of it was anything like the majority of posts here and elsewhere described. Worse, it sounded almost 'beta' when taken at face value. Surely I was doing something wrong? More study, more experimentation, and yet my butchered version of game worked too. It avoided the majority of 'beginner' issue being discussed here and felt more natural than overt approaches.

To be clear, the game I implement is different from what I consider the 'stereotypical alpha' variant and will be noticed as such by women. The reason for this is the unusual communication style; pander to emotion without losing frame - ensnare her mind even if she isn't quite sold on physique and work from there.

It's a mix of 'alpha' cues / responses and something that resembles powertalk, just spoken in 'emotionalese'. Basic premise is you mirror someone's emotional state (so you know what effect your words will have on them) and then just keep saying what's most likely to sound nice. I don't know if just anyone can do this. But what will happen is you will seem to connect on a (I'm told) extremely deep level. There were some posts back in the day about DT discussing this or a similar phenomenon. Dunno if there's been more about it since, or even any serious study, but that's basically it.

Adapted and Applied

With semi-internalized RP and solid communication skills, as I soon learned, you can do a lot more than just talk. Motivate a fellow man in ways usually reserved for women - words, I mean words. Translate conversations between men and women who are speaking past one another (very useful in business). Or, (an example I used elsewhere) get a girl turned on and desperate to fuck by debating the benefits of far-right ideology. Maybe you'd prefer to argue with a woman about the most ludicrous topics and not have to capitulate or use overt dominance, thereby allowing a polite but non-submissive end to sticky arguments. Or you can rip someone's emotional guts out and leave them wondering what the hell just happened (not that I recommend that – seriously, it isn't healthy).

Note: this bears to be said, though it seems to have seeped through by now. There is absolutely nothing cool about emotional abuse and low empathy. I admit it's useful. But people, no matter how well informed they believe themselves to be, chronically underestimate how deep this rabbit hole can go.

Another thing I learned is that, provided you aren't horribly screwing it up, you get more than one chance in almost every conversation - even cold approaches, contrary to popular logic. So if something doesn't work, or isn't going quite as expected, adjust on the fly. Throw potential solutions at the wall and hope one works, just like back when learning 'game'. If trial and error leads nowhere, we can always abandon the pursuit, mull over what went wrong, and try again tomorrow.

As a result, I do not have rules or principles for game. I do not have plans for what to say or do and I actually don't expect anything to come of it. All I have a rough framework of ideas backed by knowledge and guesswork. The 'game' that people experience is improvised on the fly along with everything else. It just doesn't look that way.

This isn't to say rules such as those often talked about on TRP should be all tossed out. Hell, no. They hold true in most circumstances and betray deeper truths. I'm just saying they are not the only way to go.

Take a heated argument. Do you really have to clamp down with dread? Or breakups. Do you really have to hard next? I've tried the default solutions and a few other ones and don't notice that much of a difference. Benefits and drawbacks, sure, and what works depends on the person and the circumstance. It just seems kinda silly to rule out what could be an interesting new experience just because, in most cases, option A is the preferable option.

Then again, that's my personal application of RP. It doesn't have to align with anyone else's just so long as it does what it's intended to: improve my life.

Conclusion

RP theory is universal. The way it's applied it is not.

Everyone is responsible for their own practical implementation of the principles described in the RP 'toolbox'. To ensure this solution is compatible with the person actually using it, one must critically reflect on and validate information and ideas as they are incorporated into this design.

Failure to do so does not necessarily mean the solution will not work, but it will most likely lead to a sub-optimal or dysfunctional result.