The Rawness

I ended up with an extra, brand-new copy of this book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely.

This is how Publisher’s Weekly describes the book:

Irrational behavior is a part of human nature, but as MIT professor Ariely has discovered in 20 years of researching behavioral economics, people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion. Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why cautious people make poor decisions about sex when aroused, why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart and why honest people may steal office supplies or communal food, but not money. According to Ariely, our understanding of economics, now based on the assumption of a rational subject, should, in fact, be based on our systematic, unsurprising irrationality. Ariely argues that greater understanding of previously ignored or misunderstood forces (emotions, relativity and social norms) that influence our economic behavior brings a variety of opportunities for reexamining individual motivation and consumer choice, as well as economic and educational policy. Ariely’s intelligent, exuberant style and thought-provoking arguments make for a fascinating, eye-opening read.

Sounds cool, doesn’t it? Haven’t read it yet, but I look forward to it.

Since I have this extra copy, I figure I’d have fun with it and do a giveaway. So what I’ll do is have a commenter contest. Starting from today, every comment made for the next two weeks will be an entry into the book giveaway contest. Anywhere in the world is fair game, I will pay to ship the book to you regardless of where you live should you win the contest. The catch? I’m not going to reveal the judging criteria. It could be sheer quantity, it could be intellectual insight, it could be humor, it could be a random drawing, or it could be a combination of one or more of the above. Or maybe I haven’t come up with the criteria yet. I’m not telling. Just comment away and see what happens.

Also, there’s no time limit for the posts you comment on. You can comment as far back as my very first blog post if you want. Hell, you can even comment on the “About” page. If commenter frequency increases during these two weeks I’ll make the giveraway a regular event.

Also, I’m travelling to Sweden and Amsterdam in August. If anyone lives in those places, has lived in those places or has even just travelled there, please share your insights, advice and travel tips with me in the comments section below or via email at t (at) therawness (dot) com.

Bonus Videos from the book author:

Here he talks about online dating and how the less specific you are about yourself, the more likely people are going to be to fill in the gaps with positive, appealing information. Tell me if his logic sounds familiar.



Here he discusses who the best presidential candidate is. Note that he commends Obama for using a lottery system for a one-on-one dinner to raise funds rather than a traditional, large fundraising dinner where everyone who pays gets to attend. Using the lottery system led to a much more passionate response and increased fundraising. And what is a lottery an example of? Click here for a hint.

I rarely write about a book before reading it, but the premise of this one seemed so interesting I couldn’t resist. I bought the book Radical Honesty, The New Revised Edition: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth by Brad Blanton because the premise of it seemed so challenging: brutal honesty all of the time.

In this Esquire article, a magazine writer meets Blanton and plans to practice radical honesty himself. Here’s how he describes the movement:

The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough — a world without fibs — but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you’re having fantasies about your wife’s sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It’s the only path to authentic relationships. It’s the only way to smash through modernity’s soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing.

When the journalist meets Blanton, he encounters a man who totally practices what he preaches:

My interview with Blanton is unlike any other I’ve had in fifteen years as a journalist. Usually, there’s a fair amount of ass kissing and diplomacy. You approach the controversial stuff on tippy toes (the way Barbara Walters once asked Richard Gere about that terrible, terrible rumor). With Blanton, I can say anything that pops into my mind. In fact, it would be rude not to say it. I’d be insulting his life’s work. It’s my first taste of Radical Honesty, and it’s liberating, exhilarating.

When Blanton rambles on about President Bush, I say, “You know, I stopped listening about a minute ago.”

“Thanks for telling me,” he says.

I tell him, “You look older than you do in the author photo for your book,” and when he veers too far into therapyspeak, I say, “That just sounds like gobbledygook.”

“Thanks,” he replies.” Or, “That’s fine.”…

“I’m glad you picked your nose just now,” I say. “Because it was funny and disgusting, and it’ll make a good detail for the article.”

“That’s fine. I’ll pick my ass in a minute.” Then he unleashes his deep Texan laugh: heh, heh, heh. (He also burps and farts throughout our conversation; he believes the one-cheek sneak is “a little deceitful.”)

No topic is off-limits. “I’ve slept with more than five hundred women and about a half dozen men,” he tells me. “I’ve had a whole bunch of threesomes” — one of which involved a hermaphrodite prostitute equipped with dual organs.

What about animals?

Blanton thinks for a minute. “I let my dog lick my dick once.”

As I mentioned before, I haven’t read the book yet, but the premise really does interest me. I know that I’m just not the personality type that could totally follow the practices of the movement 100%, but I’d love to incorporate radical honesty into my life as much as I could.

What do you think life would be like if we embraced Radical Honesty all of the time? Hard to say, but here’s an example of what first dates might turn into:

Improvement over the current model or no?

Recommended Reading:

Happy Friday.

I’m a master of snap judgments.

Looking at this couple, a few words spring to mind. For him, I picture a life of being whipped, emasculated and eventually miserable. She, on the other hand, screams narcissism, entitlement and self-absorption. That poor man. The article describes her as Chidi Ogbuta of Allen, TX but doesn’t even bother giving the groom’s name, which is very indicative. He’s apparently just an extra in this epic movie that is his wife’s life:

Ogbuta said she had asked the groom for a “unique, personalized wedding” and he carried out the request “without reservations.” The cake took about a week to consume, with many guests stopping by to help.

Can you imagine how she’s going to financially bleed him dry if she’s already starting off like this? That cake is in no way cheap. She put the cake together by working with women in two different cities, a pastry chef and a separate woman to mold a likeness of the head. It must have been a logistical nightmare (and a financial nightmare for him).

“The cake actually fulfilled my childhood dream,” said Ogbuta, who said that she had long thought it would be fun to have a doll made in her likeness. While her fantasy never happened, she said the cake was pretty close.

I get the impression she was overindulged as a child, and is now going from spoiling parents to a whipped husband.

But I’m sure this is the worst of it, right? I’m sure she’ll show a lot of financial restraint during the marriage. And I’m sure compromise will come easy to her. And when they argue, I’m sure she’ll be empathetic and understand his point of view and value him and his needs as much as she values her own, right? But honestly, I don’t blame her. I blame him. If he’s dumb enough to tolerate that, why shouldn’t she go for it?

See the slideshow of the wedding here.

From Angelo De La Vega in response to the post Some Things You Cannot Explain:

Guidos and Nazis are just about the worst examples of humanity. I will, however, give the Guido some credit for a stream lined approach to women: cockiness, cocktails, and cocaine. These precious commodities assist trashy whores in easing the residual emotional pain from whatever childhood rape trauma they experienced.

Not just funny, but painfully accurate. In fact, I now designate this dating tactic of cockiness, cocktails and cocaine as COC-3. The COC-3 method is allso popular with Hollywood agents and producers, except with bottle service thrown in for good measure.

Check out Angelo’s crass and hilarious blog Bittersweet Amalgam too.

Watch this video:

First off, a little mood music:

((“Wonderwall” by Ryan Adams))

Musclebound pervert/comedic blogging genius VK came up with an awesome idea for a theme week of blog posts featuring posts from Roissy, VK, DC Hero, Roosh and yours truly. The theme is Perfect Woman Week. Roissy kicked it off Monday and killed it on the spiritual poetry tip. VK followed up on Tuesday, pulled a head fake and a crossover dribble and shocked us all with his romantic sensitivity. And today is my turn. How the fuck do I follow after that? I can’t compete with those touching posts, so I’m going to take it in the opposite direction and show my age with a good old-fashioned angry, yet hopefully constructive rant.

I’m not single anymore, which means I’ve stopped searching for the perfect woman because I feel I’ve gotten as close as I’m going to get to that. And I’m also 33, which means my expectations are totally different than what they were when I was younger. Like most men, my standards for the perfect woman changed as I aged. They started off low at around 16-18 when the perfect woman was basically any girl that had a pulse and would agree to have sex with me (and honestly, I think if push came to shove the pulse would have been optional). That was the sheer quantity stage. I didn’t care if she looked like Monica Bellucci or Monica Seles. The standards changed again in my late 20s when my game really started sharpening, I started making better money and I started to realize I was a prize. That was when I really started demanding more from women in the looks, personality and ambition departments. But after a lot of dating in the big city, you reach the point where I am now and your standards change from a laundry list of superficial features about hair, looks, height, etc. to just one simple overarching feature: respect the male ego, self-esteem and identity. I think more than anything this is the common thread in why a lot of relationships fail. This is more important than anything else to me now, because so few modern women know how to do this anymore, especially after progressive and radical feminism has really done a number on their heads.

I have no problem with women being equal to men. But feminism messed women up by trying to convince them that being equal to men meant being exactly the same as men. And this is wrong. Women can see themselves as equal, but they shouldn’t be seeing themselves as being the same. Women today have been trained to become men with long hair and vaginas. Progress to women has increasingly become getting the corner office, working long hours, going to grad school, racking up sex partners, not learning to cook or do housework and binge drinking on the weekend, while giving up a lot of the things that made them unique and strong as women. And Sex and the City definitely didn’t help things but rather just fueled their delusions. Instead of complementing the male gender, the female of the species now aims to duplicate the male gender, and she’s lost a lot of what made her so special to begin with. But the worst part of modern feminism? It made it so that any attempt to please or cater to a man was automatically seen as a sign of weakness, self-hate or even glorified slavery. If a woman chose to stay at home and be a housewife she was a pariah. Cooking for a man or doing housework became a form of oppressive servitude. Then it reached the point where catering to and building up the male ego became the same as devaluing your worth as a woman.

Feminists still wanted to get married, yet felt if they tried to please men in order to get husbands like their mothers did they’d be selling out their feminist prinicples and turning into their mothers (never that!). Since they didn’t want to “sell out” and go overboard to please men, they came up with a better solution: churn out a new generation of feminized men, indoctrinated by the media and universities to not only never expect to have their male egos and male identities ever catered to, but to think that having a male ego and male identity at all was a source of shame in itself and was evil! We have men out there now screaming about the male patriarchy and women’s issues even louder than most feminists, yet they’d never think to even once consider much less assert their rights as men. Deep down though these men still have the needs and egos of men, yet are trained to feel guilty about having these needs and egos because they’ve been trained to see them as misogynistic or oppressive, and as a result they don’t express them. Or don’t even realize they have these traditional male needs. They just know they are lacking something and don’t know what it is (which is why I think movies like Fight Club and 300 resonate with so many modern men). Is it any wonder that the more “enlightened” our society becomes, the harder it is for people to find life partners and the divorce rate skyrockets through the roof? Some women won’t give men what they want because they feel it’ll compromise their feminist ideas, while other women want to give men what they want but can’t because men have become so emasculated and confused about their male identity they either can’t express what they want or worst-case scenario, don’t even know.

Which is where I come in. Women, I will teach you how to be the perfect woman in a relationship. Not just for me, but for every man. Stop listening to beta males and bitter, delusional feminists. Listen to an actual man and I’ll set you straight.

1. Realize that men view things differently than women, and those differences in view are equally valid and worthy of respect. Don’t try to turn your man into a woman. Don’t try to make him resolve his problems like a woman. Don’t chastise him for not thinking or emoting or talking things to death like you. You don’t have to understand why he sees things so differently than you, but you do have to respect his differences as equally valid. Men are not inclined to talk in circles about every problem until they’re emotionally drained. Respect that. For you it’s cathartic, for us it’s hell. It doesn’t mean we respect the problem less than you do, it just means that what’s a therapeutic method for you is not necessarily one for us.
2. Respect and faith in abilities are more important to a man than love. This is the hardest for a woman to grasp, and it’s an ugly truth, but if you don’t grasp and accept this you’ll always have relationship problems. If men had to choose between feeling (a) loved yet disrespected and inadequate or (b) unloved but respected and competent, a vast majority would choose choice (b). To men, love without feelings of respect and adequacy from their partner is a more hellish fate than receiving no love at all. And if you don’t give them respect and a feeling of competence, they will seek that validation elsewhere. I don’t just mean from other women, although that’s likely. It can be from a hobby that they know they’re good at, it can be at the gym, it can be from sports, it can be from writing in his study, it can be from his male friends that make him feel like he’s a great guy…there are tons of places he may withdraw to to get the validation he feels he lacks from you. Which in turn may cause you to nag him for not paying enough attention to you. Which in turn may just drive him further into his alternative source of validation. And then you get a vicious cycle.
3. Even the men who appear the strongest secretly have a fragile ego. One of the biggest secrets men have is how delicate our egos are. If you publicly build up your man’s ego, whether in front of his friends, family or even total strangers, he will think you’re the most wonderful woman in the world. Yet feminism and the media has given woman some strange mental block about this, as if doing so is some admission of weakness on their part. I call this the Claire Huxtable syndrome. I know it’s blasphemy for an ’80s kid to say this, but I hate the Cosby Show and I really fucking hate Claire Huxtable. Every chance she got, she emasculated Cliff for laughs in front of his parents, his friends and even his own children. And a generation of Americans ate it up and grew up thinking it was hilarious. Try watching several episodes of the Cosby Show now and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Cliff gets up, tells some story from his youth about some accomplishment he was proud of and may exaggerate a little. And almost immediately afterwards here comes Claire to set the record straight, poke holes in Cliff’s ego and embarrass Cliff by letting everyone know “what really happened.” And it ends with everyone in the room laughing at Cliff’s expense. Nowadays we see this dynamic as the norm in the media when marriages are depicted in sitcoms and commercials. It’s always depicted as cute and harmless. Is it any wonder public disrespect of men by their significant others, whether in the form of backhanded compliments or “harmless jokes” or outright chewing out, is practically an epidemic now? Below is a perfect illustration from the show Girlfriends, except instead of making it seem harmless, to the show’s credit it actually shows the devastating effect such behavior has on a man’s self-esteem:
4. Fuck his brains out. Self-explanatory.
5. If he’s telling you what’s wrong with the relationship, and your bitter manless friends are telling you something different is wrong with the relationship, listen to him over them. Those bitches are manless for a reason. And misery loves company. (this especially applies to black women, who for some reason seem to especially give a lot of weight to what their chronically single and bitter friends think)
6. Respect his ambition. Women tend to be geared more toward security. We as men understand that. Men, however, have a need to conquer. To hunt. To compete. To master things. Modern society doesn’t give us that many avenues to exercise those needs any more except in our careers, which leads to a lot of frustration in the modern man. So unless your man is talking about taking some seriously foolish or dangerous risks, support him in his personal ambitions to the best of your ability, even if you can’t totally understand them. Make him think he can achieve his lofty goals, and let him know you’ll still love and respect him even if he tries and fails. A real man would rather try his best and fail than never try at all.
7. Don’t let your looks go. Call it shallow, but men are programmed by nature to be visual creatures. We can’t help it. Just because you aren’t biologically and culturally programmed to value looks as much as we do doesn’t mean you should dismiss men’s preoccupation with looks as shallow and stupid. This is one of the easiest ways to keep your man happy, yet so many women foolishly underestimate and slack in this area.
8. Being a provider is at the core of a man’s identity, even if you make money too. So be sure to show appreciation for what a man contributes as a provider, and be understanding of a man’s depression when he feels like he comes up short in this area.
9. Be an interesting person. Have hobbies (shopping doesn’t count).  Have topics you like to read about.  Be able to converse on a wide range of things.  Have well thought out viewpoints. Travel and have experiences.  Have a wide range of friends.  In this age of narcissism and self-absorption, too many people presume they’re more interesting than they are for no apparent reason.  Don’t be one of them.

And there you have it. My perfect woman. And the perfect woman for a lot of men out there I suspect.

And tomorrow this guy drops some knowledge about the perfect woman. I can’t wait.

This one is long, but if I may toot my own horn, it’s so damn good and important that I suggest you take the time and read it all.

This is the final part of a 3-part series. Part 1 is here. And here’s part 2.

This series has been all about compliance, or getting people to do the shit you want. Earlier I discussed the first two parts of the three part formula: believable authority and Earn-Reward Method. Now for the third and most powerful element: intermittent rewards. Intermittent reward strategy is just some crazy ass shit. It’s probably the second most powerful motivator out there next to avoidance of death. And out of the three elements of compliance, it’s also the most manipulative.

You see, the first two steps in gaining compliance, which were believable authority and Earn-Reward method, can get great results on their own. But when you add in intermittent rewards, the compliance gets taken to higher, more extreme levels. It can escalate the compliance to obsessive, even self-destructive levels.