By J. DeVoy
A recent conversation led me to contemplate how destructive being beta is – for the body, for the wallet and for the soul. Regular readers should not be surprised by the proposition that the “dark triad” personality characteristics of narcissism, machiavellianism and psychopathy attract women. Newcomers and naysayers should ponder why their women friends are always complaining about being ignored by the “assholes” they love.
Today begins the weekend. For the typical beta, this means one dinner date – possibly two – that might conclude with awkward kissing on her front step and unreturned phone calls. I’ll assume that each date will cost $80 in any real city, possibly up to $140 if he’s going to engage in the folly of trying to impress a girl with money – an idiotic proposition with anything less than a seven-figure trust fund or equivalent thereof, since having money above a fairly low point of sustenance has exponentially diminishing returns in the attraction market.
If he’s not on a date, the homo erectus beta is at the bar with his equally clueless friends, servilely buying drinks for girls they don’t even know. Want to subtly insult a woman and make her feel kind of cheap? Buy her a drink as a pretext to talking to her. Worse, it’s demeaning to the buyer, and communicates that his time and attention is so unwanted that he needs to provide something – in this case, alcohol – to get someone to pay attention to him. For our calculations, I’ll figure that this weekly misadventure costs $60.
On a cheap week, this routine costs $140, nearing $300 on more prosperous ones. This is before factoring in other demeaning expenditures like flowers, jewelry and other gifts that arise over the course of a year or lengthier courtships. It also ignores the probable costs of even reaching the “date” starting block, such as pointless memberships to dating sites like match.com. Assuming the average month has four weeks, the average monthly baseline cost of being a beta is $560, and as high as $1200.
(In contrast, not flashing money may be better strategy to get you what you want. If you don’t spend money on women, and ostensibly don’t have any, you won’t get shunted into the category of suitors with relationship potential. Thus, she’ll be less likely to hold out for a commitment when offering affection, as you will not be mistaken for a provider to be relied upon as a checkbook.)
And what does all that money get? If our example beta is an “average” man, it results in a lifetime total of 7 sexual partners. All that for the low, low cost of thousands of dollars and endless rejection!
Time spent sitting down and eating dinners is also time not spent in the gym. While betas wine and dine, waiting for the inevitable “let’s just be friends” ax to fall, they are not able to cultivate one of their most valuable assets – their respective bodies. Pop quiz: If you want to attract the best women you can, is your time better spent enhancing your physical appearance, or spending 3 hours listening to one girl talk about which of her friends she doesn’t actually like?
Worst, though, is the self-deprivation of the beta. Being beta means constant self-censorship and suppression of one’s true thoughts and urges – either consciously or due to social conditioning. Saying “that sucks” becomes “I’m sorry.” Monologues about her pet(s) inexcusably elicit any configuration of language other than “nobody could ever possibly care about this.” Instead of doing what you want, from seeing a concert to playing Nintendo, you cater to what she wants to do, when she wants to do it.
I wouldn’t take issue with any of this if it worked, but it doesn’t. The reward for self-denial and sacrifice is rejection. Loneliness. Nothing.
There is no good reason to be a beta. Aside from being a losing position in the dating market, it adversely affects every other important element of the beta’s life. It may not be easy to stop being a beta. It’s not easy to run a mile in under 6 minutes, or to bench press 250 pounds, or to write comprehensibly, either. Nobody disputes that these are worthwhile endeavors that pay valuable rewards with persistence. Ending beta servitude is at least as worthwhile, and provides meaningful gains – financially, physically and spiritually – immediately.
A few caveats: techniques for long-term relationships are different. You look callous, rather than desirable, by “forgetting” things like your anniversary or her birthday. At that point, you’ve won her attraction and long ago bonded – giving gifts is acceptable, even recommended, provided you maintain her attraction through other means. Also, it’s good to be a bit “beta” and occasionally pick up the tab on dinners for women who are actually your friends, free of romantic designs. Never underestimate the value of a handful of good, reliable (and attractive, if possible) female friends. Yes, this post has nothing to do with law, but neither does the “Holy Crap! Erin is Blowjob Girl!” post that dominates this blog’s Google referrals day after day. Somehow, you’ll live.
By Email
By RSS Feed
The Legal Satyricon 
That was entertaining. :)
But it pays to be realistic when it comes to dating.
If “Malcolm” were not my middle name, “realist” would be.
For the sake of clarification: Is it your contention that my post is realistic, or grossly untethered from reality?
Neither.
My experience: I am a hopeless nerd. You might even say that I am a beta.
But I began to realize that many men were miserable because they wanted a “trophy wife” (in looks) and that there were women who would want me; these were the women with advanced degrees who didn’t fit the trophy mode physically. And it was a pleasant surprise to find that many of these were, well, pretty decent in the sack too!
So now-a-days I am quite happy with women who won’t appear on the cover of Cosmo; I leave the “high maintenance” types for the alphas. :)
Oh yes, I have lots of time for the gym too. ;)
I’m with you and can’t shut my brain off like some of my friends can. I know this one guy – smart, prolific writer, but will flip on the “u r” etc. game when texting younger girls. I can’t bring myself to do that. I’m creating limits to success in doing that, and maybe someday I’ll stop, but I just can’t do it now.
I’m more or less with you on the trophy wife thing – they are expensive, mostly because uninteresting dudes with gobs of money will throw the stuff at them. I think a 7-8 who keeps care of herself is best, but I’m less interested in career stuff as I get older. She should be able to support herself, but getting published, etc. doesn’t do anything for my attraction to her like hearing ringing from the kitchen, through a thick slavic accent, the words “Jay, do chu vahnt bluburries ohr strahberrees wivh yuhr vaffles?” I’d be satisfied with a less ambitious woman, but due to self-selection I end up with humanities PhD types and then wanting to kill myself as I read their needlessly verbose articles about a 2-week period in the life of some then-pregnant, now-dead peasant from village that no longer exists. This is to say nothing of the practical issues regarding their jobs – if any exist – being far away from wherever I am.
The bigger theme here is this: Being a man born after 1980 sucks. You missed the fun of the 1990s and much of the 2000s (or couldn’t optimally capitalize on the 2000s). Men born during this time fall into three general categories: alpha bros (15%), the faceless masses (55%), or psychopathic basement virgins (30%). Unless you’re in that top 15%, or can convince people that you are, your life sucks.
Not to be a cynic, but:
Most people are beta (or worse) by nature.
You know the bell curve. There’s 5% at the top who can go to law school, medical school, or another profession and come out as effective professionals.
There’s another 15% who work in middle management or are semi-professionals like computer programmers.
Then, there’s another 30% who work average joe office jobs or manage cell phone stores.
Beneath that, it’s food service and lawn care, factor labor and other specialties that we protect with unions because the workers are interchangeable cogs because they lack any specific competence.
It’s the same way with people.
At the high end, it’s power relationship and/or future partner hunting time.
In the middle, people fool around with casual sex and sad sack relationships.
At the low end, they rut like beasts and are shocked! amazed! surprised! when 15 futureless babies get borked out on the sofa.
Most betas are semi-professionals or average joe office job types. A whole bunch of PUA logic will help them do nothing but vulvaslam ugly office drones like themselves, and then claim these girls are porn stars on their blogs.
A better role for betas would be a traditional role which gets them to find whatever person roughly matching their abilities is out there, without the drama of dating and sex. They save thousands and hours of trauma, and get to the same place.
Something to think about.
I’m on the record as agreeing with you most of the time, and almost all of your propositions. The same as then, I agree with you here: Some men will never accept, nor do, the things that can alter their fate. I don’t doubt that a limited percentage of people are capable of accepting and embracing the knowledge needed to improve their lot with women. For a lot of people, getting laid is the motivation for a lot of large, expensive and grueling choices: going into a demanding career, buying a large car and needlessly larger house, buying expensive clothing, etc.
I think that traditionalism would save a lot of people a lot of problems. Since your average, middle of the road 5 was drunkenly pumped-and-dumped by an alpha 4 years and 15 pounds ago in college, though, she fixes her attractiveness to that star, blind to the realities of context, age and change. Women’s expectations have made it difficult for a average dude to land someone at his level, or slightly lower: he’s dealing with a bunch of princesses awaiting their prince. Men have unrealistic ideals too, but less unrealistic – i.e., he wants her to cook, clean, enjoy sex and be pleasant, vs. a 400-point checklist – than women, and are more realistic about the prospect of being contentedly alone if they don’t settle.
I have many issues with PUA-type tactics. It’s time consuming and not conducive to things like reading, thinking or other intellectual pursuits. On a mass scale, it’s not good for civilization either. I think the number of people who practice it are exaggerated, though. Even with Mystery having a TV show, the corner of the blogosphere where we reside is tiny, with perhaps a small fraction of the readers commanded by Jezebel or Gawker, and even fewer people effectively practicing what it preaches. To that end, based on my observations, I think it’s a fairly self-selecting community, where most who encounter it cannot even believe what is written, and those for whom it does not work, they wash out pretty quickly.
The alpha/beta distinction is, in my opinion, important because a lot of people who could and would be happier following their alpha impulses are well educated and neutered by years of genteel parents, feminist universities, and a suffocatingly liberal work environment (“put that Obama sign in your cubicle, comrade, OR ESLE” – HR). Aside from indulging their curiosity, most smart guys don’t want an endless life of flings, and want a long-term monogamous relationship, realizing the personal and societal value in having one. Giving them these tools makes such a goal attainable and increases their happiness. In my experience, intelligent men do better with game, either because they have the analytical ability to see when and how it works, or because it affirms their natural responses and desires, allowing them to be publicly indulged, and with positive outcomes.
So I suppose my contention is that some “betas” are not naturally betas, but cowed into being them for a number of reasons. Applying these principles will help them. As for natural betas, faking it until they make it – which they never will – will at least enhance their dating prospects, albeit probably not permanently. Even if we have reservations about the manner in which this happens, I think we can agree that we do not want to have the most industrious and valuable members of society sitting alone, unfulfilled and pissed off that some degenerate has to pay child support to three or four different middle-class women he pulled into the muck with him, while they’re constantly “LJBF’ed” and unable to get to the starting block. At best it hurts their morale and productivity, and at worst it promulgates a Sodini scenario. I know moral relativism bothers you, but absent total system change – which I support, and think most socially conscious people would – this is the best way to keep valuable, productive people from lives of misery. And on the upside, their viability in the attraction market limits opportunities for the truly undesirable to participate.
Thank you for such a detailed, intelligent reply.
Here’s what I find most interesting:
I think most people are cowed into underconfident, broken roles even given their natural level of ability; however, the solution is probably some form of social order, not taking these people who lack direction and trying to give them tools to enhance their direction. They lack it.
In many ways, what gets them into the beta role is the desire for independence. They do not want to follow an orthodoxy, thus are left to their own devices to figure out dating and relationships. However, like most of us, they can follow a rubric well especially if it uses a time-honored method. Especially computer science nerds.
I get where you’re coming from — I think — however, in that encouraging men to be half-men and sit back and take it not only makes them betas, but lurking resentful people who are most likely to end up in that Sodini scenario you describe. If they had some way to act out their inner impulses in a controlled and organized fashion, they’d be happier than the muffled screams for attention they are now. We only have to look at online trends like 4chan/Anonymous to see how much our betas are struggling. :)
Wondering if you read about this…
http://www.slate.com/id/2220535/
Yes! Well acquainted with the article. http://roissy.wordpress.com had some brutally incisive, and hilarious, commentary about it and Japan’s sad state as a land of men who pay to hold hands and fight only for the right to marry pillows and anime characters.