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Actually, it's a statement of conditional probability, conditioned on a woman asking a man for a drink in such a setting, often as a prelude to having any conversation at all.
(It's not, however, a great example of a cacheable response. Really, the whole point of it as a status/social skill test is that it is hard to fake!)
Anyway, here's the reasoning: if a man is asked for a drink, it may or may not be a test, conscious or unconscious. However, in all possible cases, the man is highly likely to improve the situation by skillfully declining or negotiating a quid pro quo, because the situation is still a signaling opportunity, even if the woman's attraction wouldn't have decreased upon acquiescence. (In other words, you either win, or don't lose - a positive expected outcome over multiple trials.)
For example, let's say it's one of those "nerdy women" -- she is not fishing for a drink, not consciously testing, and (probably) not unconsciously testing, but maybe has been taught that this is how you signal openness to being courted, or just doesn't think about it at all.
Well, in that particular case, it's an opportunity for a signal like, "Not a feminist, huh?" -- probably leading to a thought-provoking conversation about feminism, chivalry, and the impact of social trends on dating behaviors...
A conversation that wouldn't have happened if the response was a bland, "okay". If he'd simply agreed without further comment, maybe he wouldn't have lost any points, but he certainly wouldn't have gained any either -- he has simply failed to distinguish himself from any other man who lacks the social skill to finesse the situation. He is out a drink, and gets nothing except (maybe) the continuation of the conversation... assuming that her attraction doesn't mysteriously evaporate shortly thereafter, due to her unconscious lowering of his status.
But the (extreme) case of a nerdy woman who's both sincerely asking for a drink and won't subconsciously decrease attraction upon compliance, is actually the worst case scenario for measuring the advantage of the "never buy a drink without quid pro quo" heuristic... and yet it still comes out well ahead of compliance in the best case, and only slightly better in worst-case!
And in all other scenarios, such as a woman using this to get rid of the guy or to get drinks, using it as a filter for non-interesting guys, or even a woman who thinks it's normal but unconsciously feels less attracted to men who comply... the heuristic produces much better results on average than buying the drink does. (Assuming, again, the guy has developed the social skills to pull it off.)
Among other things, it's also a counter-filter, since the woman who truly has no interest in the guy outside his ability to procure alcohol will immediately depart in search of another sucker, no matter how skillfully it's done. For the rest, you still either win, or else you don't lose.
Of course, this is all conditional on the man's skill in making use of all the available information in the situation... for one thing, he's got to be socially calibrated enough to be able to tell the difference between the woman who'll respond to "Sure, bend over, you spoiled brat" vs. the one who'll respond to "Not a feminist, eh?"... and preferably be able to tell that before even starting the conversation. (Oh, and let's not forget that those two can be the same woman, in different moods!)
But that's the "software" way of doing it... the "coprocessor" way is that the guy ideally just believes that it'd be silly to buy a woman a drink without a quid pro quo (like Feynman's advisor) and lets their social hardware handle the details of responding.
Attempting to cache a specific behavioral response in "software" isn't going to cut it, though; the PUA methods that revolve around "canned" material are necessarily probabilistic and essentially manipulative. So, if there's a flaw in Roko's example, that would be it: caching a specific response pretty much guarantees it's not going to be done with a truly beneficial level of skill.
And yet, even in that case, it's still probably positive-sum advice, as long as the man continues learning and improving over the long haul.
Well, if "behave like that" is asking guys for drinks, then there's no conflict with what Roko said, since the situation will never come up.
However, if "behave like that" is responding with increased attraction to a display of confidence, tact, humor, and/or other social skills, I'd be surprised. (It's just that what you would personally consider to be such a display is going to depend on a lot of situational factors that a single canned response can't possibly take into account.)
I think this needs to be emphasised a lot. Also the differences between types of women. While a nerdy girl may not ask for a drink, they may ask for help with a heavy box. Now from the canned advice given this can be seen as a shit test, will the guy demean himself by lugging a heavy box to try and get with someone of my level. If so they don't want to be with a loser who lifts his own boxes. So a response like "Do I look like a shelf stacker?" said in a suitably amused tone, would be appropriate.
However the nerdy girl might just want the box moved and be interested in people who can just get stuff done with a minimal amount of prodding. The appropriate response in this case is to help. Grumbling (with a grin) while doing so, or making a light comment about being owed one might show you aren't a complete push over and won't put up with too much of that sort of thing without something in return, would be appropriate I think.
I'd have a lot less problem if advice were couched in term of normal human interaction rather than just trying to get into an extrovert girls pants.
Hauling a heavy box is not at all analogous to the drink example. When a woman asks a man for help with heavy physical work, this puts him in a much better initial position status-wise. She is the weaker party, asking for necessary assistance from his greater physical strength. Helping a weaker party from a position of greater power is a first-rank status-winning move. Therefore, it's best for him to do it cheerfully with a "that's nothing for a man like me" attitude; grumbling and saying "you owe me" is a bad idea since it suggests that he actually finds it hard, rather than an act of negligible difficulty from his superior position.
Of course, if a woman regularly exploits a man for such favors or makes him spend unreasonable time and effort helping her, that's another story altogether. However, a random request for some small help with a hard physical task nearly always conforms to this pattern of status dynamics.
In contrast, when a woman asks a man to buy her a drink, she is asking him to satisfy a random and capricious whim, not help her as a weaker party from a superior position. Therefore, acceptance carries no positive status signals at all, but instead signals that he is willing to obey her whims for the mere privilege of her company. Compared to the box example, it's like accepting to pay extortion money versus giving to charity. The former is an expression of weakness and submission, the latter a dispensation of benevolence.
My point was more that the situations could be confused by people with broken social coprocessors and inappropriate behaviour translated across from one domain to another. Without a lot of explanation of the appropriateness.
Buying drinks can also be seen as someone weaker (financially) asking someone stronger. Considering that men earn more on average than women, and if you are picking up college girls and have a real job that is likely to be even more the case. So I don't see the way that these situations can be easily distinguished that way by someone without much social experience.
I agree about the grumbling, don't grumble about the weight, grumble about the time taken.
I have a few meta-rules of thumb in such matters:
Anything can mean anything.
Corollary: Never explain by malice that which is adequately explained by intelligence.
The rules are never what anyone says they are.
The rules may not even be what anyone thinks they are.
Nevertheless, there are rules.
It is your job to learn them, and nobody's job to teach them to you.
All advice, however universally it may be expressed, is correct only in some specific context.
Application of the last to the whole is left as an exercise. :-)
This whole list is brilliant. Particularly,
This makes "Never explain ... stupidity" a special case of this rule!
whpearson:
Well, yes, but that's what explanations are for. Once you grasp the underlying principles, it's not that complicated -- and more importantly, you gradually start to make correct judgments instinctively.
No, if you understand the status dynamic fully, you'll realize that you shouldn't grumble at all. Grumbling, of whatever sort, indicates that you assign a significant cost to the act, and in order to come off as high-status, you must make it look like it's a negligible expense of effort from your lofty high-status position, a casual dispensation of benevolent grace. As soon as you make it seem like you perceive the act as costly in any way, it looks like you're making the effort to fulfill her wishes, clearly displaying inferior status to hers.
Remember we are talking about nerdy girls, that is not the norm that the PUA deals with. I remember a recent post by someone saying that nerdy girls prefer men who dominate everything but them. I can't remember who posted it, at the moment.
Getting back to an earlier discussion of whether more women are wanted at LW..... anyone who's likely to show up here is nerdy. Perhaps it would be a good idea to remember, and keep remembering, and make it clear in your writing, that "women" are not a monolithic block and don't all want the same thing.
NancyLebovitz:
Assuming that there are non-Anglospheric folks here, this is probably an unjustified generalization due to a cultural bias. The idea that smart people interested in the sorts of things discussed here have to conform to the stereotype of "nerdiness" is a historically recent North American cultural phenomenon, which doesn't necessarily hold in other places. It's actually a rather curious state of affairs by overall historical standards.
Your observation is probably accurate statistically, though.
That's interesting. Any theories about what's going on?
People who appear socially low-status can end up in economically high-status knowledge-based professions in an industrial society, which upsets people's intuitions of how the social hierarchy should work. Put-downs have evolved for making things look right again.
A woman who doesn't want a generalization applied to them? :)
But that is an extremely normal human interaction.
You haven't clarified the all-important context. Is this a friend? Stranger? Do they need boxes moved often? What are your goals? Friendship? Company? Just getting a good feeling from helping people out?
Certainly, the default response, assuming a member in good standing of your extended tribe, is to help. This doesn't make it the "appropriate" response for all goals and contexts, however.
Agreed. Don't see anyone talking about "just trying to get into an extrovert girls pants," though. The rough consensus I'm seeing lately from proponents of learning normal social interaction is that it is useful for improving interaction with people in general.
Aaaaaaaugh.
As someone who is fairly good at predicting my own behavior in various counterfactual situations, I'd like to hereby offer to tell people how I'd react to lines about which they are curious. I don't know to what extent I'm in the reference class anyone's aiming for, but if the information would be useful, there it is.
Alicorn: Hey, wanna buy me a drink?
pjeby: Not a feminist, huh?
Alicorn: Aaaaaaaugh.
Am I parsing you correctly?
I know it's an act of terrorism for me talk about Alicorn, especially given this topic, but ...
She's really not someone whose reactions are characteristic of the NT, average intelligence women that men would approach in bars, so knowing what she would do is probably not going to be helpful.
Wait, you realize that Ghandi was a gigantic racist, who hated black people (as well as the minority groups in his own country), right?
LOL good catch. Still, the KKK advocates violence and hides their identity in protests, so they're not quite kindred spirits.
I would not actually say "Aaaaaaaugh." in that situation. I'd probably say "Excuse me?" and then there would need to be a rather excellent recovery or I'd stop interacting with the person. (I'm granting for the sake of the exercise that I'd ask for a drink in the first place, even though in real life I don't consume alcohol.)
Which is precisely why the offered hypothetical is worse than useless in this case.
Bear in mind that in the circumstance being discussed, asking for a drink is like asking someone to hand you $5 -- for no reason at all other than than that you asked, and the fact that they are a male.
To presume that you would react in a certain way, conditional upon first having done something so utterly foreign to you in the first place, is like saying what you'd do if the moon were made of green cheese, only ISTM you'd have a better chance of being right in that case. ;-)
Well, pretend the bar serves something I'd drink. Say I'd get a virgin pina colada. I could imagine asking for one of those.
I might also ask girls, if the environment gave me high enough priors on them being bi/gay.
So, your moral compass allows you to use other people's sexual preferences as a money pump?
(And no, that's not a line, although now that I've said it, I suppose it could be reworked into a LW-friendly response to a drink request. Needs more humor, less judgment, though! Hm, maybe "Are you trying to exploit my hardware preferences as a money pump?" A little too double-entrendreish, though. These things are really situational, and not at all suited to cached responses.)
I can't actually think of any situation where asking a question seems to me to be immoral. It can't be a denotative falsehood, so it's clear on the "lying" front; there's nothing else obvious it could be that would be wrong. I suppose it could be mean, or impolite, but this doesn't even appear to be that to me. I wouldn't badger anybody about buying me the beverage, which would be mean.
This is a request which is slightly different from a question. Some requests are considered immoral when there is a power or status differential. University lecturers and students provide an example where some requests are widely considered immoral.
Point. Questions/requests that predictably create a sense of obligation in the hearer to do something they ought not feel obligated to perform may be wrong. I don't think I can, let alone do, project enough power in a casual setting to make anyone feel obliged to buy me the liquid of my choice, although I suppose it's possible I'm mistaken.
Okay, this has me curious - is there actually a subset of pickup that is designed to tell me what to do, instead of telling people what to do to me? That would be news to me.
And apparently a "Playette FAQ" as well. (It makes heavy use of PUA terminology like "one-itis" and "IOI", though.)
I haven't really read ASFin almost 20 years, so I didn't know about the Playette stuff. Funny story, though: I can attest to the value of the "whiff" technique in the Playette FAQ, because my wife used it in our first email and phone conversations, back in 1992... and well, um, it worked out pretty well for both of us. ;-)
*pokes around*
Meh. This reminds me of advice columns, only with worse punctuation.
That depends on what exactly your goal is. Typical men can boost their sexual attractiveness to women by changing their behavior far more than vice versa, so it's unsurprising that there is a much greater body of expertise aimed at men in this regard. Also, getting sex is pretty much trivial for women and requires no particular skill. However, commitment and long-term relationship strategies are important and nontrivial for women too, and on better game-oriented blogs, I've often seen good discussions about the mistakes women make in this regard. Trouble is, realistic treatments of this issue tend to bring up even more ugly truths and end up sounding even less PC than the ordinary PUA stuff.
Can you give a couple examples?
Alicorn:
Like in everything else, humans make bad decisions due to biases in matters of mating and pairing too. However, these particular biases are male- and female-specific, and pointing out the latter is easily perceived by women as an affront to their sex, which makes realistic discussion very hard.
But since you're asking, here are some instances of such biases. None of them are universal, but each is held strongly by non-negligible numbers of women and leads them to decisions they later regret. One example is when women overestimate the attractiveness of men they can realistically hope to attract for serious permanent commitment, given the higher attractiveness of men they can attract for temporary relationships and short-term flings without any real commitment on the man's part. Another is when women underestimate the speed with which their looks and reproductive abilities deteriorate with age. Yet another is the refusal to acknowledge that women can be greatly attracted to some very nasty personality types of men, not despite them but because of them (google "dark triad"), which leads some women to entering disastrous relationships with such men. Then there are also many wrong beliefs about what personality characteristics of women are truly attractive and pleasant to men and apt to attract their loyalty and commitment in the long run.
There are other examples too, many of which would probably sound more controversial. Even these I listed can provoke much worse reactions when put in less abstract and detached terms, which is typically necessary when forming concrete advice.
You're bi, right? You could probably make use of much of the advice for straight men if you wanted.
I find it nasty to read. It's not intended for me, even if I'd be interested in some of the people it's about interacting with.
This is a general comment about the PUA material I've read.
It comes off as lonely. There's no hint of enjoying someone's company, or hope that a someone could enjoy the writer's company if not manipulated into it.
Yes. Sometimes I get a sense of simmering resentment underneath it all, especially on the subject of "nice guys" vs. "jackasses".
What the PUA people call "day game" (approaching women in everyday life, instead of bars and clubs) can verge on the concept of enjoyable company, but from my limited reading on the subject they don't seem to cover day game nearly as much. They say it's more difficult than "night game".
It's a little like something in a famous essay by Eric Raymond on "good porn" vs. "bad porn". (Just google on those phrases to find a copy -- I don't care to do that search from a machine at work.) Following a personally conducted scientific examination of porn pictures on the web, he concluded that men looking for porn are not looking for depictions of attractive young women posed as if about to have enjoyable sex with the viewer. The porn industry knows what sells, and pictures of that sort, that Raymond called "good porn", formed only a small minority. They are looking for what he classified as "bad porn": pictures of an absolutely joyless activity, all hard faces, cold stares, and fetishistic trappings.
ETA: Eric Raymond's essay is on his own blog here, and he's updated some of the links that were broken when I first read it, so you can see some of his experimental samples.
Depends where you look. Some of that stuff is indeed written in such tone, and it's true that some of it advises sly and dishonest tactics. On the other hand, here's the story of a man who saved his marriage by applying insights he gained on game websites (the blog might be NSFW for foul language, though it's on the blogroll of Overcoming Bias):
http://roissy.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/relationship-game-week-a-readers-journey/
What emotion or thought is this onomatopoeia intended to signify?
Frustration.
OK let's try this. I've faced this situation maybe hundreds of times, and am curious as to how you compare to the girls I typically see.
Alicorn: Hey, wanna buy me a drink?
cousin_it: (smiles happily and shakes head)
Your response?
Then it would probably depend on how much I wanted to talk to you in the first place (where this includes, factored in, how charming the happy smile is). If not much, I'd probably shrug and go back whence I came. If more than not much, I might say "Aw, why not?" - not to try particularly to extract a drink after all, but out of curiosity and to have something to have a conversation about.
I'll be optimistic and assume the latter option happens! I've heard this reply several times, here's what happens next:
Alicorn: Hey, wanna buy me a drink?
cousin_it: (smiles happily and shakes head)
Alicorn: Aw, why not?
cousin_it: (keeps smiling, almost laughing, eyes half closed, reaches with arm to catch her waist)
In fairness, you can't give an informed reply to that because you can't assess my physical attractiveness over the Internet, but I can just tell you the decision tree from this point. The girl either plays along or evades. If she plays along, I keep doing what makes sense. If she evades, I turn away to the bar without lingering even a second. You'd be surprised how many girls thus NEXT'ed later come back :-) Of course I don't mean to imply anything about your behavior!
Yeah, going for the waist at that point would get a shriek even if you managed not to tickle me, and not in a good way. I don't care if you look like Sean Maher. I'd escape (and it would feel like escaping, not like something more neutral like "disengaging" or whatever), and if I was with any female friends I'd warn them you were grabby. I might do an evaluation of how the bouncer would react if informed, but I have low priors on getting help for "socially acceptable" invasions of space.
I think you misunderstand cousin_it's reference to "physical attractiveness". He's filtering not for whether you think he's good-looking, he's filtering by whether you are physically attracted to him at that moment in time, and open to the possibility of doing something about it, preferably as soon as possible. (This doesn't necessarily mean sex, btw, just being physically companionable and open to exploring the chemistry further.)
Anyway, if you're someone who's aversive to being touched by strangers, this will obviously filter you out.
I'll be honest here -- girls kino-ing me (i.e. touching to show interest in this way) used to freak me the fuck out. I wouldn't shriek, but I would definitely respond in a negative, abused-cat kind of way.
And I used to rationalize this response as being not just different but better and more right(eous) somehow than the dog way of doing things.
Nowadays, though, I realize that it's irrational to pretend I'm going to change everybody into cats or even that it's necessarily a good idea! (If everyone's a cat, who's going to do the stroking?)
So, while a stranger rubbing me the wrong way might make my hair stand on end, I have learned not to hiss, scratch, or run when I'm pawed by a dog person of whichever sex. Tolerating the discomfort or politely disengaging or explaining my issues with touch produces a better long-term result than just freaking out.
I've endured a fair number of lectures from my parents about how it's rude to freak out when strangers touch me. Here is why I go on doing it anyway:
It is always startling. I do not expect strangers to touch me, and I can't read them well enough to come to expect it when it's going to happen. This gives me little opportunity to prepare a response.
It often sets off sensory issues. I can tolerate accidental, very brief incursions into these issues by people who know about them and will stop instantly if they hear the relevant word, but anything prolonged may well have me curl up in a ball and scream. And it turns out that people are confused, or worse, think it's funny, when I try to explain these issues. If they are confused enough, or think it's funny enough, to go on touching me in a non-approved way while I try to explain in an increasingly hysterical fashion, I will wind up doing something far less socially acceptable than just freaking out and escaping.
I don't think that every random person is a rapist, but I think some of them are, and if I'm later in a position of having to go to the cops, I want every witness who saw me with the accused to have noticed that I established a precedent from the start of not wanting to be touched, because sexual assault investigations are nightmarish enough as-is without the kinds of whispers a history of "kino" would create.
There are certain kinds of touch that are quite safe. I will shake hands. I love hugs. Backrubs are awesome. I often ask to pet people's hair and am perfectly happy to permit the reverse. But the only context where I would be okay with someone grabbing me around the waist would be if I were in an ongoing relationship with them and they knew to stop on a dime if I utter the words "that tickles".
To be clear, I am not saying that it's "rude"... I'm just pointing out that in my case, it has been more useful to adapt. This should not be construed as an implication that you can or should do so.
(looks up Sean Maher)
Oh no, I look nothing like that. I look like a dork, not a movie star :-)
I feel bad that this behavior would scare you. Honestly I don't know that I ever scared a single person in my life, man or woman. I mean, you could probably beat me up if you wanted to :-) Humorous shrieks are a common girl response; scared shrieks, no. But... okay. I'm playing a numbers game anyway, some form of evasion is the expected response.