IsiMan84 wrote:You can call it limiting beliefs, but I call it reality. The friend Triumvirate speaks of is who most would call an Average Joe. He would be Luke Wilson in Idiocracy. He has no unique redeeming qualities, and I mean none. He's one of the most boring habitual people I've known in my life. He goes to work, goes home, plays Skyrim for God knows how long, faps the night away, and goes to sleep. If he comes out once a month to sarge with us it would be a modern day miracle. He probably has a gym membership collecting dust somewhere.
He irons all his clothes on Sunday night for the entire week. It's not because he's too busy to do it during the week, but because he plays everything safe and never takes any chances. He's not rich, he's not poor, he's not anything. Not a member of any organizations, clubs, societies. I think he played recreational kickball once. Has maybe 100 friends on Facebook, and keeps that list short. He basically just exists. I know it sounds like I'm badmouthing him, but this is his life.
All that being said, this guy absolutely kills it on Match.com. Enough so that he doesn't feel he needs to improve himself in any way, or go out with us. Refuses to read any PUA material. Somehow the idea got in his head that he's entitled to decent/good looking girls, even though he hasn't done anything to earn it. He probably gets an average of one date a week. So he's taking one girl out a week...and more often than not, never hears from them again. Or the shit goes quickly downhill from that point. Most likely because they realize how unspecial he is. But they saw his picture online, nothing seemed threatening, so they gave him a chance. He had been telling me for years I should join Match, but I didn't see it as necessary.
But after we both moved to DFW and seeing how many dates he was getting, I said to myself, "Self, you could get on Match.com and kill it just as well or better than him. You're actually cool and have a large network of girls and people in real life. This will be a breeze."
Let me give you a quick background on myself. I was one of the guys in college a lot of people knew (enrollment of 25k). I was a D1 athlete, 6'3", not ugly, an engineering major, minored in Spanish just to meet some non-engineers. Was in three or four organizations. I knew the athletes, I knew the nerds. Modified my car just to learn something new. I slept 4 hours a night just so I could do it all. Went out every weekend if I didn't have games/meets. And when I had time, banged the occasional broads. Our friend from above complained it wasn't fair that he wasn't getting chicks like I was. That was six years ago.
Fast forward to today. I'm in as good if not better shape, put on 15-20 lbs of muscle, still compete at the level I did in college, play in adult soccer leagues, coach kids over the summer, and got my master's degree in a completely different part of the country, just because I wanted to try a new environment. Put some money together, got a really nice car. I'm usually out 3 nights a week, socializing, meeting girls, whatever. I have the tendency to attract people to myself if I feel like making myself seen.
So you get the gist. I don't completely suck, nor am I the spawn of Satan.
Anyways, I signed up for a week-long trial on Match.com. If the turnout was good I'd consider giving it a full month. I didn't half-ass it...I pooled all my resources for this shit. I read PUA material on how to make the most attractive profile and uploaded pictures of me doing anything you could think of. Spent about 3-4 hours a day going through profiles. Maxed out my daily message limit sending a combination of everything: personalized messages, funny and playful messages, straight to the point messages, whatever.
In that week, I sent out a total of 200-250 messages. Yes you read that right, two hundred to two hundred and fifty. And when I ran out of messages I winked the shit out of the rest. I was bringing the best I had to the table. I was killing it in real life, so online was going to be ka-razy! Even if I totally flopped and only managed to meet 10% of the girls, that's still 20 to 25 dates!
I got nothing. Motherfucking nothing.
I amassed a total of 6 or 7 replies, and managed to get the email addresses or numbers of about 4 or 5 of them before the trial ended. None of those turned into meetups. That comes out to a 3% reply rate, 2% number close rate, and 0% meetup rate.
You may be saying "What the fuck IsiMan84? You're like 1000% more valuable than your friend, you should be shutting that site down."
Oh yea, I forgot to mention something about myself earlier.
I'm black.
Not 'The Wire' black, not 'Carlton Banks' black, just regular black.
Being black is to online dating what country western is to a young person's music preference: most people like everything but that. A multitude of profiles I went through were looking for only White/Caucasian, and occasionally that plus Hispanic. I saw more profiles with every choice except black checked than ones with it included at all. If not one of those choice combinations then it was 'no preference'. Which means they were just too lazy to check any boxes, or didn't want to look like they were discriminating.
But that's just what I can see from my end. On their end, if they're actually searching (God forbid they don't get 100+ messages a day as it is) they're getting results based on their preferences, so guys like me won't even come up. My picture could have been of me sitting on a stack of money with Brad Pitt while Angelina Jolie blew me for everything she was worth, it wouldn't have mattered. So my only foot in the door is the message/wink I was sending, which is most likely ignored just from looking at my picture.
Oh and I forgot to mention, just based on the sheer numbers, roughly 50-75% of the girls I messaged/winked were white. And of the 5 emails/numbers I got, only one wasn't black.
I see you actually read my post. I did concede the point that black men get the fewest responses from all female ethnicities. I don't think that's a limiting believe because there is a lot of data to support that to be the truth.
My point is that over the years, men have constantly bitched and moaned and groaned about how online game doesn't work. Over the years, I've dabbled and toyed and played around with online game most with little to no success. But, in the last year, maybe year and a half, I've found that my game is much, much more effective. If I'm not getting 2 legitimate contacts a week then I'm thoroughly shocked. And, I don't send out a lot of emails either. The ones I do send out are just highly effective because I figured out how to do it online. I'm not saying I'm some kind of Casanova I'm just saying that I figured out how to run my game online and to run it well.
You seem to blame not being successful online purely on the fact that your black, which very well may be the case. I'm not here to dispute that in any way. But, if you were to list the biggest reason you get blown out in real life I bet it would be because you're black. It's an unfortunate commentary on society, but that's just the reality. Off the top of my head, I can't think of even one of the many women (other than black women), and my data set is large enough to be satistically significant, I've been with that has ever showed interest in, was open to, or have ever been with a black guy (I take that back, I remember one). Maybe it's because we're in the South, which is probably as good a guess as any. I find it sad because I've dated all different kinds of races and I'm a white guy...shit, I would fuck the shit out of my downstairs neighbor (she's black) if it weren't for our community rule that we don't fuck neighbors.
Based on those conversations with various women in my past, I can see how white men will almost universally have an advantage over a black man. It sucks, but, like you said, it's reality.
My argument is that guys try to run online game, fail at it miserably, and then blame it on how they look. I don't think that's the case at all. I think it has a hell of a lot more to do with how you're running your game online than it does if you're some good looking stud. The guys that say online game doesn't work aren't any different than the guys that join the community and quit. They quit because they didn't succeed, for whatever reason, then they turn around and shit all over the concept of game, online or in real life. The guys that succeed know better. It's no different than in real life game, it takes time and effort and work. The thing that makes it more difficult is that you don't generally get any feedback from which to calibrate your game. This is why it takes more trial and error. But, once you get it to work, it works for you 24/7. Shit, I got an email last night while I was boxing and one this morning on the way into the office. I didn't solicit either one, they just sent them to me. What's wrong with running game while your doing virtually anything other than running game? Not a single thing.
I appreciate all of the value that you've created as a man. From one man with value very similar to yours (i.e. grad school, great paying job, verisitle, fit, etc.) I'll say that having all of that value is bad ass. In fact, I used to base my entire theory behind pick up and being successful at it on creating value and projecting that value. But, now, I realize that although it's bad ass and awesome, in truth women don't really care all that much about it these days. If you're not getting a woman's vag to tingle, then you're not getting anywhere with her. Value be damned. I had an LTR of almost three years that ended about this time last year. She had a kid and was twice divorced. I had zero intention of marrying her or even living with her. But, she was fun, I loved her, and she was a great lay. That didn't stop me from cheating on her more times that I'm proud to admit. She suspected, in fact, I'm sure she knew. But, she stayed. She stayed because of the tingles. Over time, those tingles went away and she meet someone else that made her tingle. An ex-con without a job. Living in a shit hole in Mesquite. I lapped him in value, but her pussy answered to him and not to me any longer (I grew apathetic of her and more focused on my 'side projects' with other girls). They're engaged. Value is good, but if you're not making her vag tingle then it's all for shit. Online game isn't about projecting traditional value, it's about making an emotional connection and getting her vag to tingle. You CAN do it online. It's easier in real life, but it can be done online.
Shit man, all game is about is connecting with women on an emotional level. Value doesn't have as much to do with it as most like to believe. It just gives us the confidence to try with beautiful women...call it a self-esteem backstop. If your personality isn't wisking her away to a new, exciting world then the amount of cash you have in the bank, your cool car, muscular physique, etc. doesn't make that much of a difference. Women respond to how they're treated and how you make them feel, not all of the value you possess...that value is just used as a tie breaker. Status is what women use to measure men. It starts with how does he make me feel, is he pinging my emotions, pulling my emotional levers, making me laugh, and what can he offer me in the world (which is how value comes into play...all of the degrees, great jobs, cars, clothes, physique, etc. is just a way of communicating to her that you're intelligent, driven, healthy, etc.). The value you have is just another soft measure of who you are as a man, another way to project your personality and if you're capable of protecting her, understanding her emotions, and how to deal with her. Value's not actually required if you can just figure out how to pull the right emotional levers and get her vag tingling and continue doing it over the long haul.
No scientific studies are required to prove that out, just walk around on a Saturday and you'll see all of the evidence you need to realize that 'value' as we see it isn't as important as we tend to believe.
And, I'm a little confused. Did you do this test 6 years ago? Because, if you did, the online world is drastically different today than it was then. So much so, that it's not even comparable.