- Joined
- Oct 9, 2012
- Messages
- 5,976
It's not going to be an incel hotbed Oh Pry. No need to worry about that.
I don't think anyone who's one of the angry political incel types wants anything to do with a website called "Skilled Seducer", unless it is just to troll.
If he is just here to troll, he is going to get a swift ban hammer.
One of the things we'll be adding shortly after the launch is a way to report members as trolls or a few other things.
On the old mASF forum there was a way to flag posts as a few undesirable things, such as:
I think the "newbtard" label is a little mean-spirited, but we can probably do something similar to that, albeit a little gentler.
The others though -- flame war, KJ, troll -- they're all great, and I want those tags.
What happened on mASF was when a thread got flagged like that, the thread name would be crossed out, the line would be greyed out, and you could still click it but it was obvious the community thought it wasn't a worthwhile post.
We'll get a system like this set up that makes it easy for guys to squash threads and label posts that need it.
We also intend to have a reputation system that'll make it easy for us to identify members who are getting voted to hell, to take a closer look at them and see if we think they're spammers, trolls, overly negative, or otherwise need to get a warning or a boot. (there's a way to flag posts now, but only a fraction of the ones that need flagging get flagged, probably because it isn't obvious. I regularly run across a spam post on here that's 6 months or a year or two years old that we missed)
I mean, if it ever got to the point where Franco and I hadn't been on the forum much in a while, and no one had pinged us to tell us there was a problem, and a bunch of trolls or incels or what have you got on here and did a hostile takeover, as soon as I found out I'd be back on here with the banhammer of fury chasing all those guys out of here.
==
As for the market, yeah. It's smaller now, for a number of reasons. Part of it is a lot of guys have soured on women. It's much worse now than it was when I got in. You had incels then, though not by that name, but they were a small percentage of guys. There's a lot of them now. A lot of incels, a lot of MGTOWs, a lot of guys who have just totally given up trying to get laid, blame women for their lack of pussy, and are very, very bitter about it. These guys want nothing to do with anything that purports to teach them "how to get" women, because it feels like being asked to suck it up and put in still more work for women, and they've already reached their limit and thrown the towel in.
Another part is The Game is a distant memory, no one reads it anymore, and as that's retreated from consciousness, and no other blockbuster books or movies have come out that have made regular guys say "Wow, I can totally do this myself, too!" it's started seeming like something that's either really hard to do, or just pure snake oil, to average guys. Which was exactly what it seemed like to average guys pre-The Game. So this is more a return to normalcy than anything. (I've actually been mulling over writing my own Game-esque book, that would be my own story, sucking with women, studying with different guys, learning various techniques, hitting various milestones, dealing with a bunch of drama, just so we can have something to give to new guys that makes them say "Wow, this IS possible!"... only thing stopping me is how personal a book like that is, and means airing a bunch of dirty laundry from when I was younger and making a lot of mistakes with women who really cared about me, and I'm on the fence about whether I actually want to do that or not. Still debating)
And yeah, all the clownishness that came out after The Game. Mystery was sort of the original clown. He was GOOD, but he was a clown. And then you had a bunch of guys who came after him who were NOT good, but were clowns. The media portrayal also constantly forced PUAs into one of three camps... every PUA shown in the media was either a.) an evil manipulator, b.) a clownish inept, or c.) a reformed and/or mainstream-friendly novelty. Cs were boring and soon forgotten, As were icky, Bs were just off-putting. Nobody wants anything to do with any of those, so you get this besmirched image, to the point where "pick up artistry" is this gauche fad no one wants to have anything to do with anymore. We've always tried to mostly steer clear of that name here, even though it is probably the best term to describe what guys are doing. But nobody wants to consider himself "a pick up artist" because it's such a ruined label.
Chase
I don't think anyone who's one of the angry political incel types wants anything to do with a website called "Skilled Seducer", unless it is just to troll.
If he is just here to troll, he is going to get a swift ban hammer.
One of the things we'll be adding shortly after the launch is a way to report members as trolls or a few other things.
On the old mASF forum there was a way to flag posts as a few undesirable things, such as:
- Newbtard: someone posting wet-behind-the-ears newbie stuff, like "I bet if someone asked enough girls if they wanted to have sex, he'd get a yes" (it's kinda correct, but also something that's been discussed to death already, and clearly a newbie thought)
- Flame war: if the thread is just a couple of guys trading barbs, it'll get the Flame War tag
- KJ: if it's a keyboard jockey post (some guy coming up with hypothetical tactics that aren't based on any actual field experience), KJ label
- Troll: if it's obvious the guy is just trying to troll, he'll get the troll tag
I think the "newbtard" label is a little mean-spirited, but we can probably do something similar to that, albeit a little gentler.
The others though -- flame war, KJ, troll -- they're all great, and I want those tags.
What happened on mASF was when a thread got flagged like that, the thread name would be crossed out, the line would be greyed out, and you could still click it but it was obvious the community thought it wasn't a worthwhile post.
We'll get a system like this set up that makes it easy for guys to squash threads and label posts that need it.
We also intend to have a reputation system that'll make it easy for us to identify members who are getting voted to hell, to take a closer look at them and see if we think they're spammers, trolls, overly negative, or otherwise need to get a warning or a boot. (there's a way to flag posts now, but only a fraction of the ones that need flagging get flagged, probably because it isn't obvious. I regularly run across a spam post on here that's 6 months or a year or two years old that we missed)
I mean, if it ever got to the point where Franco and I hadn't been on the forum much in a while, and no one had pinged us to tell us there was a problem, and a bunch of trolls or incels or what have you got on here and did a hostile takeover, as soon as I found out I'd be back on here with the banhammer of fury chasing all those guys out of here.
==
As for the market, yeah. It's smaller now, for a number of reasons. Part of it is a lot of guys have soured on women. It's much worse now than it was when I got in. You had incels then, though not by that name, but they were a small percentage of guys. There's a lot of them now. A lot of incels, a lot of MGTOWs, a lot of guys who have just totally given up trying to get laid, blame women for their lack of pussy, and are very, very bitter about it. These guys want nothing to do with anything that purports to teach them "how to get" women, because it feels like being asked to suck it up and put in still more work for women, and they've already reached their limit and thrown the towel in.
Another part is The Game is a distant memory, no one reads it anymore, and as that's retreated from consciousness, and no other blockbuster books or movies have come out that have made regular guys say "Wow, I can totally do this myself, too!" it's started seeming like something that's either really hard to do, or just pure snake oil, to average guys. Which was exactly what it seemed like to average guys pre-The Game. So this is more a return to normalcy than anything. (I've actually been mulling over writing my own Game-esque book, that would be my own story, sucking with women, studying with different guys, learning various techniques, hitting various milestones, dealing with a bunch of drama, just so we can have something to give to new guys that makes them say "Wow, this IS possible!"... only thing stopping me is how personal a book like that is, and means airing a bunch of dirty laundry from when I was younger and making a lot of mistakes with women who really cared about me, and I'm on the fence about whether I actually want to do that or not. Still debating)
And yeah, all the clownishness that came out after The Game. Mystery was sort of the original clown. He was GOOD, but he was a clown. And then you had a bunch of guys who came after him who were NOT good, but were clowns. The media portrayal also constantly forced PUAs into one of three camps... every PUA shown in the media was either a.) an evil manipulator, b.) a clownish inept, or c.) a reformed and/or mainstream-friendly novelty. Cs were boring and soon forgotten, As were icky, Bs were just off-putting. Nobody wants anything to do with any of those, so you get this besmirched image, to the point where "pick up artistry" is this gauche fad no one wants to have anything to do with anymore. We've always tried to mostly steer clear of that name here, even though it is probably the best term to describe what guys are doing. But nobody wants to consider himself "a pick up artist" because it's such a ruined label.
Chase
Maybe not now when it doesn't serve the business yet - Zac
