Long Time Coming

For too long, I've left this land fallow.

This started as a journal, chronicling my first steps away from The United States of AFC. Now I intend to reboot this space, so that stories about my successes and failures take a back seat to larger ideas, systematic thinking on sexual politics, social structure, mores (and more).

But I'm driven back by more than my own ambition this time. The landscape for pick-up has become frightening, riddled with sexism, racism, and classism that masquerade as hard truths that expose "pretty lies." Even worse, the best free tactical advice and training come from those who rely on these crutches the most. Pick-up has become toxic, it has become insular, and worst, it has become shortsighted and ideological. This is exactly what pick-up was designed to circumvent - a set of rules that govern interactions and exclude people because they are not suited to play by them.

Young men read the work of bigots and it makes them more successful. You don't have to be an expert in social psychology to know that shared success breeds affinity, that behavior creates belief, and that compliance is easiest to compel when there are no dissenting voices (see respectively Robbers Cave Experiment, Stanford Prisoner Experiment, and Asch Conformity Experiments).

I will not remain silent while a noble art is turned darker and darker, ruining men and women in the process.

These are the commandments that will rule discussions on this blog:

• Content shall be useful.
• Fact checking shall be rigorous (where possible).
• Honest sex / gender differences will be discussed without sexist rhetoric.
• Honest race / SES differences will be discussed without racist or classist rhetoric.
• Elements will be investigated as part of a system.
• Alternative explanations will be explored.

Pick-up is the combination of sex and the scientific method. The progress of science, of human understanding, has always been held back by our own bigotry. The same is true for game, even though it is a discipline in its infancy. This space will be used to bend the arc of the future of game towards justice.

More to follow.