I am a bit of an outsider here, I really only found this sub-community like 48 hours ago by accident and I did not know there was an official body of knowledge around this. Red Pill approaches seem really cynical, amoral frankly and they shouldn't work but they do and they do so well it's kind of sad. At work/school all of the time, I find myself following the 48 laws of power all of the time and every time I am successful those laws are at the root of it. Advancing in an academic setting really is a bunch of posturing and manipulations as much as it is merit based and I can't lie that I find myself leaning on some of those laws all of the time.

And look when it comes to women or life, the nice guy approach garners you no respect. If you're always available, people take you for granted and walk all over you. When some girl with a boyfriend tries to flirt with me to get me to help her study for an exam, I tell her no and tell her to get her boyfriend to help her instead. I might come across as a dick but hey, at least I have some self-respect. I'm sorry but I'm not going to listen to your boy problems for 5 hours under your pink blanket fort. I don't care. Listening to people's problems is a PROFESSION worth like $100/hr. If I'm not getting that or something equivalent then no I have better things to do with my time. Again this might seem cold, but why should I care? My time and attention is earned the same as anyone's not just automatically given.

At the same time, receiving love or sex isn't automatic and something that men can take for granted either. I've come to accept that no one is going to love me enough to stab someone in the face to protect me just because (my mom really didn't like it when I was almost kidnapped as a child). That kind of loyalty doesn't come automatically and maybe it won't ever be there, but the psychology of that kind of commitment is not easy to achieve. I don't necessarily fully embrace what Red Pill thinks about this topic, but certainly catering to a woman's needs all the time doesn't produce this kind of love if it is indeed possible. I'm not nearly so cynical on women's integrity up to a certain point but that being said no one gets divorced and there are essentially no single mothers where my parents are from so it doesn't really fit the american familial breakdown model RP presents.

The sad part is that the RP approach to women...kind of works. You would think that women are not that dumb, but I've seen women who were incredibly intelligent collapse into classical male-female dynamics in a heartbeat even though they are so different in the workplace. Certainly, I think that women in the workplace is great and I have seen many do quite amazing things, but that is apparently irrelevant. I've seen women, who I respect a lot as colleagues, really fall to pieces if a man they like is ignoring them. And I'm not proud but, every time I blow off a girl a little bit and slowly warm up to her it produces the intended result. I'm not saying that this is the wholly RP approach, but simple manipulations are work sometimes.

And all of this is depressing. The fact that after all of our talk of how evolved we are...we're supposed to be better than this. But we frankly are not. We're just animals. We're not any better than them. We're irrational, we don't live up to the weight of our own lofty ideals, and we're all easily manipulable. RP shouldn't work but I think it's time we all admit that if you really think you're above it...you're a bit naive.