What is the most socially retarded thing you have ever done?
Spilt a drink over someone you fancied? Involuntarily soiled yourself in polite company?Brought up the subject of necrophilia to the recently bereaved?

The definition of a social retard is someone who is incapable of responding appropriately to his or her social environment in the presence of others and often lacks insight of their inabilities.
It seems like a given that we try to not be socially retarded in order to maintain our value and/or attractiveness.

Today I am going to talk about how you can be a social retard to skyrocket your social interactions. An intelligent one. Fucking genius. Basically breaking norms knowingly and safely without judgement, leads people into that naughty naughty frame which as a child gives us that certain thrill and attraction towards breaking the (social) rules.
If you are able to demonstrate such a high awareness of social nuances in a given situation, that you can break social rules in a knowing manner, you will demonstrate social intelligence and more value than a six pack of Pound-stretcher boxers. This means breaking the rules, deliberately, with the intent that you know that the rules can be broken. Kind of like stickin’ it to da man.

This is nothing new.Take your average fancy dress party.Or stereotypical hen party.People use these as an excuse to dress up badly, breaking social rules in a knowing manner. And by doing so, enhances their social value and garners loads of attention. Why else would anyone wear a Borat mankini?

In this thing we call Game, this concept is as old as the hills, dating back to even the earliest recorded methods. For example, years ago it was generally the social norm as a guy, to go out with the guys, talk about the footie, have a few pints, chat up some birds and hopefully, pull.(Oh, it still is!?) Women went along with this but in general, it was a numbers game. However, let’s say, some guys of the Stylish or Mysterious persuasion, decided to break out of the “social norm” and went to talk to girls, starting a conversation with, “Hey guys, me and my friend, blah, blah, blah……who lies more, cats or dogs??”
Then she thinks, wow, this is unusual, these guys are doing something different to all those others, they seem interesting, I’ll hang with these and see how it pans out….and it’s a valid question, I’ve never met a cat who I’ve fully trusted, dogs seem more open, but what are they hiding etc. etc.And the girls stick around because they enjoy the originality of the interaction.
This works tremendously well at its inception.

A word of warning. The problem is when such a conversation becomes ingrained as a routine part of one’s social acumen, then, it becomes, well, a ROUTINE. And by definition, this is not a response to the social situation, rather a repeated behaviour. You see, the whole point of social value is to exhibit a range of behaviours to demonstrate the ability to handle yourself socially. This cannot be replaced with “one size fits all” behaviours (the erstwhile magic pill), as they prevent you from responding to the social situation in Real-time.

The key to this is creativity. Our creative minds are most active when we are relaxed, comfortable and stimulated. And when we are chilled, we are at our most socially calibrated. This enables us to have the maximum awareness of what’s going on in the environment.

We unconsciously become aware of how others are behaving and our own behaviour inadvertently follows suit. For example, if most people in an environment are low energy, we naturally follow this socially proofed behaviour and go low energy.This is the socially normal thing to do. If we get into the habit of noticing these things consciously, we can break the behaviour, such as exhibiting bursts of high energy. The trick is to exhibit that you understand the socially proofed behaviour, not are oblivious to it. At the most basic level, this is the idea of matching and leading, i.e. you match people’s behaviours so you are in rapport, then progressively change your behaviour so they follow you by changing theirs to stay in rapport.

Now if that’s the basic principle, then this can be applied to a variety of behaviours and this can get quite outlandish. Dance when no one else is dancing. Be loud when everyone else is quiet. Be sober when everyone else is drunk. Get your cock out for no reason. Now (disclaimer), this is not an exact science. I shall refrain from delving into examples, as outside of a given social context, they become routines.I would say that the intelligent social retard is someone who is socially experimental. As soon as you know you are flowing with the social norm, think about what would happen if you broke it. Then do it. Even think of the worst thing you could do in that social situation. Then do it. Try not to break (m)any laws but the point is learn the boundaries of social convention for yourself. You will be surprised that often, what you think might happen if you break social convention, will produce the opposite effect. Aim to bring adventure or mischief, and people will value some escapism from regular social convention.

So next time you are out, or even going about your dailies, think of the people around you and notice their fundamental adherence to social convention. Notice how you feel naturally drawn to match those behaviours.Watch how everyone plays along to their social programming, and then….introduce a little anarchy!!………

Stay classy!

Shamwow

Greetings and Salutations,

I wanted to cover something inner gamey, so I thought I would talk about self fulfilling prophecies. These things seem to come up all the time and commonly get in the way of a student’s success in game.

So what is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

The term was first used by the sociologist Robert Merton. Basically it is a prediction or belief which may or may not be accurate, that comes true via the behaviour of the person. To risk descending into geekery, a good example is in the plot of Star Wars Episode III. Anakin Skywalker has a vivid dream about his wife Padme’s death which he takes as a premonition. His obsession with this and trying to prevent her death leads him down the path of the dark side of the Force hoping to acquire the power to give immortality,but he ends up actually facilitating her death and becomes Darth Vader. A common example in game is the thought that, “She’s hot, she’s out of my league, she’s bound to reject me.”Largely a limiting belief.This leads to the girls response, whatever it may be, being interpreted as a “rejection.” This reinforces the “she’s bound to reject me” part and this becomes a belief carried forward to the next interaction.

So what is happening?

Here comes the science bit. It all has to do with a part of the brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). Don’t worry about the funky name, but its basically a filter that exists to enable us to shortcut things being taken in by our senses. As a simple example, let’s say you are really hungry. Your brain has a tendency to zone in on things related to food, and filters other things out. It becomes hard to concentrate on things other than food. Even KFC is an option. That is your RAS filter at work. The hunger (the event) primes your brain so the food options stand out (activation).

So how does this apply to game?

The RAS filter is also an evolutionary tool. If there is a perceived threat, the RAS can be activated to identify tangible threats easily in the hostile environment so we can more easily defend ourselves. This is normally following being aware of a threat (an event) priming the brain to identify hostility (activation). The stronger the event the more lasting is the activation. So a bad response from a girl makes us feel icky inside (an event). The subsequent activation is based on preventing another icky feeling and highlights any signals that might represent another bad response. As a result a blowout or rejection is only defined by us, not the girl.

It is worth noting again, that this neurological response originates from something helpful. Experience creates learning for future experiences, and if we have experienced or even learned second hand about bad rejections, we intuitively steer away from situations which may make us feel bad. It’s like spending the night in a cage with a tiger is not guaranteed to get you killed, but our intuitions tell us it may not be a good idea. Our RAS filters are so helpful in fact, that when we approach situations which may result in us feeling bad (oh, like approaching a girl), it tries to deter us away by pre-empting a bad feeling. Enter Approach Anxiety. Our RAS filter makes us expect a certain response, but cleverly it also feeds into everything else that we are doing like body language and micro-communication to make the expected outcome more likely. In other words if we are expecting the interaction to go badly, the things we are doing unconsciously will make it more likely to go badly. The girl will intuitively pick up on these micro-communications, sense that something is up and the interaction goes badly.

So how can we change our RAS filters?

The first step is awareness of when we are being affected by these filters. They give us a view of the world that may be helpful in some situations but often no longer serve the purpose. So we need to take the Red pill before we can “change the Matrix.” Once we find out what our unhelpful RAS filters may be, we can replace it with something helpful. Using the common example from before, “she’s bound to reject me”. We first need to challenge the prophecy. What is the evidence behind this? How can we logically know this without actually approaching the girl? Once we realise that our RAS is being unhelpful, it is our right, nay our duty to replace it with something more helpful.

The stronger the emotional experience then the stronger the effect it has on our RAS. The bad feeling of “rejection” is perceived as a strong emotional state which has a potent influence on the RAS. This programs it to generalise in future interactions. The process goes: that felt bad, it means she doesn’t like me, so girls don’t like me. The RAS subsequently looks for evidence (no matter how tentative) that reinforces itself and this manifests in our anxiety. You may notice that a person might interpret random trivial things like the girl staring at her drink, as a sign of imminent rejection, and this has an effect on the proverbial mojo.

The trick is to develop an RAS full of positively reinforcing experiences and to minimise the negatively influencing ones. Your RAS is constantly changing so is influencable at all times. Therefore, it is useful to “re-frame” negative experiences into positive ones. Ergo treat every response as an indicator of interest. As such, you may “fool” your RAS into a more positive and productive state. Eventually it will interpret the environment gathering evidence to reinforce the positive state. Also it will ignore factors which may otherwise stop you. Make your prophecy one of success. Spend some time “warming up” your RAS, by having a few simple interactions which have a high likelihood of being positive, such as helping someone out, giving someone a random compliment or asking for directions. Once you have a few positive interactions, your RAS will begin to expect subsequent interactions to be positive and flow more easily. If you want to look at it from a more esoteric perspective, then yes, you may call it the Law of Attraction or the Secret. Positive thinking brings positive outcomes. Or what would Ron Jeremy do?Whatever works.

Ultimately, it is good to learn to expect the responses that you want. Immerse yourself in the best environment with positive successful people to achieve it. And be careful what you wish for.

Stay Classy,
Shamwow.