Seenstr - Hacking Human Nature

There was a good deal of controversy over this episode, starting from the first airing of the preview. Let me just get my thoughts out of the way on the issue before I get on to my recap of this episode.

Anyone who sees kids and adults in the same room and immediately thinks of sex is disturbed. When I saw the preview for this episode, here is, almost verbatim, my thoughts: “hey, that’s a great idea. If you can hold a child’s attention, you can certainly hold a woman’s attention, and, kids are great at tossing out shit-tests”. Sadly, a lot of people saw the preview and immediately their thoughts went to sex. I feel bad for these people. There was nothing sexual about this challenge, and anyone who saw something sexual about it has severe emotional issues. There were a couple posters on the VH1 boards who wasted no time drawing a connection between the two and posting their thoughts about it in a public forum. Scary.

Alright, on to the episode. The guys were presented their reward challenge for the week: to tell the story of “Goldilocks and the 3 Bears” to a group of little girls and try to hold their attention. The winner, as decided by votes by the girls, got a “top secret” gambit from Mystery in a 1-on-1 private lesson. It was a pretty good one, too. More on that later.

Joe D was probably the best here. He engaged the girls by encouraging their participation, and let’s be honest, red faced fat boys always do well with kids. Everyone else was kind of a wreck. The eventual winner, by vote, was Pradeep, although his performance was lame. Although the other guys hinted at his “cheating” (by pointing at himself when each girl was asked to vote), in reality he probably won because he threw himself under the bus. He pretty much invited them to torture him, and of course kids find that fun. That sort of attention-getting would not work too well with an adult woman, who would just revel in the abuse and then move on. At any rate, he won.

Mystery’s “top secret” gambit, as I said earlier, was a good one, although his claims that he’s never shared it with anyone seem a little strange, since I’d seen it before going back about 3 years.

At any rate, the gambit involves asking a girl to hold her hands together, fingers interwoven, with the index fingers sticking straight up, touching at the tips. You then say something along the lines of “I have to get back to my friends in a moment, but right now we are together, like your fingers are now. But when I leave…”

Separate her index fingers here, so they are about an inch apart, and finish off, “… we will be apart.”

At this point you stall a couple seconds, enough time for her fingers to fatigue a bit (don’t wait too long, just buy yourself a good 3 seconds or so). Then you start to swirl your index finger around hers, muttering about how “eventually though, look what happens. As time passes, the inevitable occurs…” And so on. Her fingers will, under fatigue, return to a touching position. At this point, she’s a little stunned, not knowing how or why this happened, and you lean in for a kiss on the cheek. Then you get back to your friends and let it sink in with her.

This routine involves a little bit of NLP, in that it creates an association in her head. She now feels drawn to you, because her mind has made the association between her fingers and the two of you, and you’ve planted that suggestion in her mind. NLP won’t really let you manipulate people. If she was attracted to you at all, you will merely be strengthening the attraction. If she found you loathsome before you started the routine, she will simply reject it and return to her life.

There is something more important in this routine, which Mystery touched on only briefly: he calls it physical compliance. I’m a little more old school. I simply call it body language. Part of the art of seduction is reading your target for signs of attraction. In this case, if you grab a woman’s hands and she instinctively lowers them, she is showing you both attraction and comfort. If she is showing you attraction only, she will bend her wrist and point her fingers down, softening her muscles and making herself more feminine. If she is attracted and comfortable, she will also lower her hands. She does this because she is starting to view you as a possible boyfriend, and when a boyfriend grabs his girlfriend’s hand, the next logical step is to drop both hands to your sides. If you have a girlfriend (and she actually likes you ), give this a try. Grab her hand and see what she does.

More than the little NLP routine, the ability to read body language is much more key. It only occupied a couple seconds of this episode, but it was the most important.

Back to the show and on to the club. The boys are expected to open sets, and build attraction. Forget the canned routines here, the idea is simple: be interesting. If you are interesting, she will be interested. The guys are also introduced to the concept of negging, and DHV – demonstrations of higher value. The trifecta here is:

1. Be interesting
2. Demonstrate your social value through storytelling, engaging the group, and showing minimal interest
3. Knock her self-image a bit through negging

Simple. That’s really all there is to it.

Joe D and Joe W were on fire. Joe D in particular is a natural. My money is on him at the moment.

Kosmo is really blowing it. He nailed it on the head when he said “my head got in the way.” There is no better way to demonstrate low value than to constantly seek approval from another person. “I’m not that funny, am I.” “Are you bored?” Ugh, that was painful to watch. Trust the material.

Fred is the one guy I think has absolutely no hope. 45 years without a woman… its just too late, my friend. And worse than that, he completely ignores what he’s taught and goes off on his own. And he fails. Mystery said it succinctly: “keep trying what you’ve always done, and you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten”. Indeed. I posted a week ago about the power of psychology — we can be told what we need to do, and what we need to not do, and yet we’ll keep on doing what we’ve always done. Fred is the epitome of this. He fails, he has no clue, and yet he rejects the advice of a guy who’s business is teaching people what to do. I’m just fascinated by that.

Pradeep cut Fred out of a set Fred opened. Although it provided a moment of hilarity (I had to re-watch the end of the episode I was laughing so hard), it demonstrated that Pradeep is not a good wingman. More interesting, it offered an opportunity to give you guys a bit of info that you probably didn’t know. When you do something like this to your friend, or you start shitting on your buddy in front of a girl to build yourself up, you are actually doing the opposite. Why? Because you are announcing that your friends are turds. And worse, you are announcing that the only way to build yourself up is to cut a turd. Think about that for a second. You are trying to demonstrate high value, and yet you are saying “hey, I came here with a dork who I don’t respect, because no one else would hang with me tonight.” The opposite is to say “hey, I’m with a good guy who I’ve known forever. Not only is he badass, he’s hanging with me tonight because I’m badass.” And if you cut him out of a set he opened, you are demonstrating that you treat people around you like shit. A woman doesn’t want to be with a guy who would treat his friends like that. In fact, what a woman really wants is a guy who will take care of her. If you can’t take care of your friends, how can she expect you to take care of her? The better attitude is to go into the club with the mentality that if your wing hooks up, you will be twice as happy as if you hooked up. Women will pick up on this. First, it shows you care about your people. Second — bonus! — it shows that you have options. Hey, I’m not desperate to get laid, as evidenced by the fact that I’m thrilled my friend is hooking up right now.

Moving on. Brady sucked, so did Scott, but at least Scott is putting all he’s got into it — he’s trying, and that’s wonderful. Brady just went off script and the result was some of the lamest conversation ever — “Do you come here often?” “What do you guys do?” “How do you all know each other?” Pathetic.

Joe W won immunity, and chose Pradeep (why?) as one of his wings. Bad move, that is the last guy you want on your wing. Fred, thank god, got sent home.

Next week: kissing. And I’ll talk then about how to get a kiss before you even leave the club.

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