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| Basic mechanics of attraction https://www.pick-up-artist-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=60743 |
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| Author: | actwell [ Sat Jan 23, 2010 7:06 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Basic mechanics of attraction |
Posting this here, because I can't post in the lounge This is motivated by the frequent question "how much/do looks matter" which betrays an ignorance of the fundamental mechanics of how your image (how people see you) is created and how it relates to your social power and sexual attraction. What a lot of you guys don't seem to realize or realize fully is that this (and most things in life) is about how good of an image of yourself you can paint in the mind of the other person (this may seem selfevident, but if you understood this fully you'd know whether and how much looks matter). This is about acting. All these set pieces and routines "touch her there, say this" etc etc. are about painting an image of yourself. Showing her that you are a certain kind of guy. YOU CAN SKIP THIS PART IN RED, it's not important Intro (skip this if you don't feel like reading it, not important): When animals get into conflict situations they engage in displays to determine the winner. What this is is an exchange of signals or information. They exchange information to try and determine which of them is tougher and stronger and therfore would win in a fight so that they don't have to actualy fight and risk death or injury. Poisonous species of plants and animal are usualy brightly colored to advertise the fact that they are poisonous and therfore not to be messed with. Scientists have found that gazelles, when they see a predator, sometimes leap up in the air befor making a run for it. Now this seemingly gives them no beneft, it doesn't get them farther from the predator, in fact it wastes energy and time that could be spent running away. The reason they do this is to tell the predator "look, I'm so sure I can outrun you that I'm wasteing my time and energy in clowning around, so you should go for that guy over there". This same prinicple applies to behaviour of humans, too. A rolex doesn't tell time better than a Casio and it costs more, but it tells people that the owner has dough. If you want to read more on this search handicap principle on wikipedia. The thing that we do here is think about how to send women signals that advertise our good genes. /intro One of the most difficult things to do for a person is to see ourselves as others see us, but this is extremely important when going after women (and in general in life). You have to be conscious of what your physical appearance suggest (meaning what character traits it suggests). When you make a character judgement about someone 80% of it is based on appearance. Jude Law's appearance gives the impression of someone who's devilish. You can look at an interview of his that's up on youtube with Conan O'Brien in which his behaviour does nothing to suggest any kind of devilishness, but he still comes off that way, because that's how he looks. As I said, your persona, your image, what you're percieved as matters, and appearance is 80% that, but a lot can be done by acting, showing proper signals. When a person first sees you they construct an image of you based on what you look like, what you're wearing, who you're with, what you're doing etc. This first impression can be broken, but it is important because every subsequent signal sent from you (signal meaning behaviour, what you wear etc - anything from which a person could draw an inference about your character) will be interpreted to fit with the first impression. Imagine you see a sweet looking girl passing down the street and she gives you a smile, you'd think that she was being nice and friendly, but if someone, before that, had told you she's very arrogant and condescending to people, than you'd wonder is that smile friendlyness or is she telling me I'm laughable. That's how you need to be thinking about these things. Everything you do and show is collected into a mix that makes up how a person perceives you. Because of this you have to be conscious of not only what your behaviour tells of you but what your appearance does, because, as I said, that's the majority of what makes up your persona. James Bond, Tom Cruise, Marlon Brando (or Stanley Kowalski), Dean Martin, Cary Grant, Jude Law, Tony Curtis, Clooney, Pitt, Matt Damon, Jim Morrison, Depp (various characters of), Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Collin Farrell etc etc - all these guys and their screen personas (or in case of some of them the different personas they played in movies) are very appealing to women but they are different and achieve their appeal in different ways (of course, there's a lot of overlap and a lot of traits that are always appealing). Here's a quote from an article about Cary Grant called "the man from dream city": "The romantic male stars aren't necessarily sexually aggressive. Henry Fonda wasn't; neither was James Stewart, or, later, Marcello Mastroianni. The foursquare Clark Gable, with his bold, open challenge to women, was more the exception than the rule, and Gable wasn't romantic, like Grant. Gable got down to brass tacks; his advances were basic, his unspoken question was "Well, sister, what do you say?" If she said no, she was failing what might almost be nature's test. She'd become over-civilized, afraid of her instincts - afraid of being a woman. There was a violent, primal appeal in Gable's sex scenes: it was all out front - in the way he looked at her, man to woman. Cary Grant doesn't challenge a woman that way. (When he tried, as the frontiersman in "The Howards of Virginia," he looked thick and stupid.) With Gable, sex is inevitable: What is there but sex? Basically, he thinks women are good for only one thing. Grant is interested in the qualities of a particular woman - her sappy expression, her non sequiturs, the way her voice bobbles. She isn't going to be pushed to the wall as soon as she's alone with him. With Grant, the social, urban man, there are infinite possibilities for mutual entertainment. They might dance the night away or stroll or go to a carnival - and nothing sexual would happen unless she wanted it to. Grant doesn't assert his male supremacy; in the climax of a picture he doesn't triumph by his fists and brawn - or even by outwitting anybody. He isn't a conqueror, like Gable. But he's a winner. The game, however, is an artful dodge. He gets the blithe, funny girl by maneuvering her into going after him. He's a fairy-tale hero, but she has to pass through the trials: She has to trim her cold or pompous adversaries; she has to dispel his fog. In picture after picture, he seems to give up his resistance at the end, as if to say, What's the use of fighting?" But you have to keep in mind that all these guys look a certain way and that that greatly plays into what they are perceived as. Now all these guys are good looking and that's a great deal of their appeal, but their good looks suggest traits that are appealing and that's why they are considered good looks. Connery's appearance suggests confidence, and we know that can be shown through posture, manner etc. A lot of Nicholson's appeal is mischeviousness, we can replicate that too. There are also appealing traits that these guys have that are mostly unrelated to their looks, like Paul Newman's rebbeliousness - given the right set of circumstances, we can show that, too (what this is is a show of masculinity by showing a strong will and refusal to submit to authority). (I'm not saying that there is no appeal to good looks beyong the appealing character traits that they suggest) That said, you have to be conscious of what you look like and how it affects how you are thought of. Tom Cruise (before, when he was the hollywood goldenboy and not weird) and Hugh Jackman, for example are very nice all the time and attentive in public (interviews and such) and this is very charming. But, if someone who looks like a geek would replicate their behaviour, he would come off completely different. He would be thought of as the nice guy who never gets any women and is always very inhibited etc and that he's being nice because that's the only way a girl will talk to him or look at him. The reason for this is that those guys are very good looking and no matter how much nice and calm etc. they behave they are never going to come off as that nice guy geek. In the article about Cary Grant that I quoted above a passage says that in spite of his behaviour "he's too good looking to be on the level". Niceness and attentivness from a powerful (powerful, of course, meaning great social worth, not physcial power) person is interpreted differently than the same thing from someone who's not powerful. If you look like Dustin Hoffman in most cases if you say something that suggest that you're a ladies man (meaning you're trying to give that impression), you won't be able to sell it and people will think you're trying to be somethign you're not. Even if you ARE a ladies man but the person you are talking to has seen no evidence of it, you should be careful about doing it. Of course, if you're a good enough actor and find a way to sell it, it's possible. But if you look like him, find different ways to be appealing. Be funny, witty, fun, devilish. If you were short but good looking in a kind of slightly boyish way like Tom Cruise, you must know not to try and present yourself as a tough guy, or you will, again, come off as trying to be something you're not (again, if you know how to sell it and the circustamces are right you can do almost anything - look at Ed Norton in American History X - before that movie he didn't look one bit a tough guy, yet I believe him in the movie, because he's a good enough actor, but are you? Would you know, as he does, not to resort to making mean faces and such macho mannerisms that you see in Rap videos that most people would when trying to look tough?). Of course in different situations you must behave differently. Say you're a kind of guy who gets into a lot of fights and that's where your appeal to girls comes from, but there are certian situation where you can't show that and therfore must find another way to be appealing. You can't fight in a classrom, you can be funny and miscivious there. The things that you can say to a girl one on one you can't say if you're in a big group, so you find a different way to be appealing. Say you run into a pack of girl friends and you know one of them so you start talking, you have to find a way to be appealing. You can't punch anyone, maybe the situation is such that you can't convey confidence, so you have to find something else - be fun, witty, funny, if you're sufficiently good looking you can be nice and attentive, if the situation's right you can start flirting or bantering with one of them or whatever other trait you can think of that you can show in that situation to make you look appealing Also, different girls like different kinds of guys (though of course, there are some traits that all of them like), and some of your success will depend on being able to recognize what a girl wants to see. What I am most interested in learning from PUA forums and my fellow PUAs is novel ways of showing appealing traits or combinations of traits in different situations. One way of doing this is to look at toher guys who are appealing to women, characters from movies, shows, people IRL etc etc and break down and analyse why they are appealing and how they achieve this. I'll write some examples of this later in case you don't know what I mean (you can read that article "man from dream city" to get the idea)... There's a lot more I can write about this, the principles of the thing as well as specific techniques, also my particular case, which is interesting, but I don't want to write a too long post (too, late) that no one'll read... |
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