DISCONTINUED THREAD: Social freedom community challenge

[Vice]

Something to supplement and distill Andy's position: Andy is describing the Collaboration vs. Competition frame. I've struggled with this frame because it's very easy to get competitive against other guys, and I personally get a degree of lower-level satisfaction from beating the competition. However, that tends to be toxic and short-sighted, and that mindset will bleed into other social interactions in a counterproductive manner.

The following paragraphs are going to hold some nuance, so please bear with me:

I'm the one who came up with the "interrupt some guy poorly hitting on a girl" idea, but I failed to mention that I wrote it from a perspective of the girl not wanting the guy to be interacting with her. Once you're in the field long enough, you'll be able to tell the difference between a drunk douchebag with no game that's annoying her (and therefore creating opportunity to "rescue" her) and a guy who is stepping up in a positive way, as well as when a girl is actually interested in the guy. Also you'll be able to tell situations where guys just aren't going to get anywhere, and just cut in and hook the girl's attention. That's going to save the girl time by not having to pretend to be nice to him, gives you an opportunity, and the pain of being eclipsed by better game may force the guy to step up.

However, looking for specific situations where you can "rescue" a girl can lead to your Reticular Activation System (the part of the brain that scans for value and threats) to focus on a relatively rare occurrence that may also lead to a confrontation that some forum members may not be able to handle, all at the expense of possibly missing a better social opportunity.

Again, I really like the idea of the thread, but I think we can come up with some ideas that directly approach our goals in a constructive manner.

 

[einherjar]

interrupt some guy poorly hitting on a girl

Not on board for that one but yesterday I did what Tim Ferriss suggests in his 4HWW: Laying down on the floor in a coffee shop for 10 seconds.
Man, 10 seconds can be long af. It was weird at first, a few people even started asking if I was alright

I said I lost a bet, got up and bought the two who seemed genuinely concerned a coffee before leaving.
...
The mental aspect before doing it really was the worst part for me^^ The anticipation of shame, I guess.
During, however, I didn't really feel ashamed...after all, I didn't even know those people. Moreover, the guy and the girl I bought coffee for smiled and thanked me for it. Guess I wasn't the weirdest guy they encountered that day :lol:

 

[CainGettingLaid]

DISCONTINUED THREAD: Social freedom community challenge

I want to emphasize that I will respect the way you run this forum KillYourInnerLoser . It‘s your forum. I am grateful that you provide the infrastructure for connecting the self-improvement journeys of many guys. Out of that respect I will not encourage anyone to do this challenge.

However, instead of picking a different challenge, I am going to discontinue this thread entirely, for a few reasons.

The overall interest is low, despite my shameless advertising of it via tagging people. In the last vote only five people voted, including me. In the first challenge, zero people did the challenge, despite 15 voting and 5 even voting for the winning option.

Instead, people pitched in with a long list of objections to both the options in the vote, and the specific challenges.

Taken on their own, most of these objections might seem reasonable, but in their entirety, I believe they represent a pattern: People do not do the challenge. Instead people pitch in only when they want to give advice or complain about something they do not like about a specific proposal in the challenge.

The point of this challenge is to not cherry pick the challenges you like. That puts you at risk of letting your subconscious fear and social programming get the better of you. Overall, I believe the reason why this thread evolved the way it did is a mixture of a fundamental disinterest in the cause of finding social and mental freedom and people giving in to their fears and social programming.

Continuing this as a community challenge is not productive.

I had hoped to find at least some people that share the notion of social and mental freedom and it‘s value. I was hoping for there to be a bigger overlap with this goal in this self-improvement community.

However I now believe that social and mental freedom is at best a minor goal for people in this community.

Now that I think of it, I am not super surprised that the thread turned out the way it did. Imagine if Chris hadn‘t written the AA program as a program, but instead started a challenge thread like this and had put up all the individual days as separate challenges. Hardly anyone would have done all of them, just like hardly anyone tries and even less people finish the AA program. The share of people dedicated seriously to any goal are small. However a bunch of people would have pitched in on many of the challenge days like „this is creepy“ „this is useless“ „this is mean“ „you make yourself look like a fool“. The thread would have been a huge mess.

Due to the low interest so far I was gonna make a decision on whether to discontinue this threat anyways. I wanted to wait and see how many people participate in this month’s challenge before discontinuing this thread but the reaction to this month’s challenge tipped the scales on my decision quicker than anticipated.

Going forward I‘ll just post in my private logs if I do any social freedom challenges or I just won't post it at all.


Why should I try to always add to people‘s lives (or at least be neutral)?

While I will respect your decision KillYourInnerLoser , I must say I deeply disagree with the idea of always trying to add to people's lives or at least being neutral.

This is impossible. Take the example of dating. If you improve your own dating life or encourage and help others to improve theirs, you will always hurt others.

Dating is inherently relative, here are a few examples:

• If you improve your online dating, you will get dates that others aren‘t getting instead. You hurt them. You can only relevantly improve the dating situation for some guys, not for all. If all guys improve their dating profiles equally, then women will simply up their standards.

• We always talk of relative concepts like „become above average“.

• If I were to get every single men in my city to be dedicated and hard working on this forum, I would be fucked and my dating odds would diminish.

There might be an absolute aspect of enhanced overall dating if all guys become better, but not majorly. The amount of female sexual interest and attention will not increase hugely. And on the flip-side the overall effort that goes into the dating domain increases, counteracting this benefit.

So encouraging some guys to improve their dating lives by improving body, style, social freedom and so on HURTS other guys because they now have less dates and need to put in more effort than previously to get what they used to get or what they could have gotten had you not encouraged others to improve their dating skills.

As a coach or mentor it is easy to shield your mind from this reality. You mostly interact with those who are the relative winners. On top, the effects on the many relative losers are small individually so it‘s easy to ignore them or to claim there is no effect.


What is your point Andy?

You ask me where I would be if you and Chris had a competition mindset and therefore would not have set up your websites.

However, there is absolutely no contradiction in trying to help some men while still viewing them as competition. I am competition for you, but not much because I am on the other side of the globe. That is why I am your brother in arms more than your competitor. If setting up your website would imply that every single guy in your city improves their dating massively, it would indeed massively hinder your dating. I believe you would correctly see them as too much of a competition and would not set up your website.

Accepting or embracing competition in general does not mean that you have to abandon a cooperative mindset with other men. Cooperation can be helpful even if someone is somewhat of a competitor. A wingman can help you more than the fact that you helping him better hit on girls hinders your chances with girls.

So I don‘t really understand that argument. I am competition for you, just not competition enough.

Another way I can interpret your argument is as me and Chris help people out, you should also be kind to other people. This is why you should try to add to people‘s lives or at least be neutral. I get the vibe that you feel like your behavior is somewhat morally good and you are telling others they should strive to be so as well. If that impression is wrong, please let me know.

If you and GoodLookingLoser truly believed that you are improving people‘s lives, you have been fooling yourselves. You have helped and are helping the people around you while hurting others. That‘s it. You got what you wanted in the dating domain, now you want to give back and use the opportunity to make a living. That is cool. Do not get me wrong. I am grateful to you and Chris because you have helped me. But I do not believe you have made the world a much better place.

To argue I should not "hurt“ others because of that makes no sense because you are hurting others as well. You „give back“ not to all men, but instead to a small group of men in your proximity, whether it may be your friends or strangers that stumble across your website.

In the dating domain, always trying to add to people's lives or at least being neutral at best works for the people close to you. If you count in the indirect effects on everyone, you are not purely adding to people‘s lives or being neutral. You are also hurting many of them.

What principle do I prefer instead?

A much healthier and consistent philosophy is the following: Try to do things that are positive or neutral AS A SUM. Importantly, also take yourself into account. For example if you improve your dating success, you are hurting the dating success of others, but in sum, it is somewhat neutral, so it‘s Ok.

Just to preclude superficial counter-arguments: One could argue that this principle justifies stealing. If you steal someones car, you hurt them and improve your own life. So isn‘t it neutral? No. In sum it is negative because the other person picked that car specifically, it had sentimental value to him and so on. Furthermore you are undermining work incentives by underminding property rights.

The idea that you are not allowed to hurt anyone is a useless ideal simply because of the relative dating world we live in. It is also very much akin to a Mr. Nice Guy mindset, trying to not step on anyone's toes.

The pure cooperation mindset is oftentimes a good mindset to make your own life better. You will avoid conflicts, people will like you and so on.

But it is absolutely not anything that is founded in any type of morality or generalizeable principle for the betterment of the world or people‘s lives in general.

More importantly though, abstaining from any kind of direct competition hurts your options to improve your life. Why should you abandon these options? After all, there is no clear reason why indirect competition is acceptable while direct competition isn't.

Don‘t get me wrong. I am not advocating being an asshole. But it is good and reasonable to sometimes take the things you want in life even if you are taking them from someone or if it means you doing something that hurts others in order to get something that you want.

This is by the way broadly accepted in this community. One of the core concepts of GLL‘s „game“ is physical screening. Of course this is gonna „creep out“ the girls that are not DTF. It is not a pleasant experience for them, it "hurts" them. Nonetheless we accept it as a great tool for Getting Laid. Should we abandon physical screening?


Last words

As for the specific example at hand, how much are you hurting the guy really? Is it as severe as you think it is? Please take into account what Vice spelled out about this. His points are obvious unless you give the challenge an uncharitable reading. You aren't going to pick an interaction that both parties are enjoying. You will pick one in which the girl is visibly not having it. So you are interrupting a guy who would have gotten rejected anyways. So what? How big of a deal is this really? Have you never been interrupted when hitting on a girl? If the guy is serious about getting laid, this will not stop him.

So you are hurting a guy in a non-severe way. In return, you get an increase in social freedom. Possibly, you help a girl and possibly you have a great night with her. Not too bad according to the principle I proposed.

I can not really comprehend the severe reaction to the proposal of this challenge.

Ironically, you guys are freaking out over a challenge that is intended to increase your social freedom by breaking social norms. And you are freaking out on it based on the fact that it violates the widespread but inconsistent/impossible norm of „do no harm“.



Lastly, I want to point out that the following quote was an ironic exaggeration, in case that was not noticeable. I obviously don't advocate "squashing" other guys or or becoming a douchebag in the more literal sense of the word.

It's time to become a next-level douchebag and squash the competition.