The Rawness

In Part 1, I discussed the theory that all things tie into how the fear of death and urge for any type of immortality shapes just about everything we do. Previously I’ve said humans are ruled by two drives, the drive to survive and the drive to reproduce, but I think the drive for immortality is an umbrella concept that successfully covers both the drive to reproduce and the drive to survive, and it also explains other strange aspects of human nature. In the next few installments I’ll give some examples. In this installment, we’ll talk about fame.

Fame

The urge to be famous has always been a part of human nature. But it’s become worse than ever in our modern society? Why?

I think the first reason fame obsession has gotten worse has to do with how secular our society has become. As each generation become less religious, the sincere belief in an afterlife also probably decreases, meaning that people have to focus on alternative ways of satisfying their drive for immortality. This causes us to focus more of our energy on wealth accumulation, power, status and of course fame. Fame is an easy way to at least ensure your name and image will endure forever, even if your body won’t.

Another reason for the increased fame obsession is the advancement of technology. Imagine the days before there was an international media. Before the invention of the telegraph, information could not travel faster or farther than people. And before the invention of the railroad and steam engine, people had severe limitations in how far and fast they could travel. What technology has done is increase the speed with which information travels and the geographic range that information can reach. Fame was much harder for the average person to achieve. You had to do something grand, good or bad, and you had to have some sort of talent. You had to be a war hero, a conqueror, a great politician, an infamous serial killer, etc. Now with television, radio, the 24 hour news cycle, reality shows, the internet and viral videos, 15 minutes of fame is easier than ever to achieve for the average person.

Take acting for example. No matter how charismatic an actor was in the days before modern technology, his impact was severely limited. Only people in his immediate community could see him. He could perhaps travel with his production, but there were severe limitations to how far they could go and how fast they could travel in the days before trains and cars were created. And he only had an impact when he was physically acting. He couldn’t be visually or orally recorded for later viewing or listening by people who didn’t see his performance in person. He performance couldn’t be broadcast to other places. He couldn’t even be photographed. The writer was more likely to achieve immortality through fame because his words were captured in writing. More eyes through the ages would be exposed to his written word than to the actors performing his works. This is why actors in Shakespeare’s day were considered extremely low status.

Modern technology, especially in the form of moving pictures, suddenly made the actor the most visible and transmitted part of a performed story. Out of everyone involved in the collaborative moviemaking process, actors were now the ones most likely to achieve enduring fame, thereby making them the closest to achieving immortality. These technological advances have turned acting from one of the lowest status jobs to one of the highest status jobs, as it became the best gateway for a human being to achieve immortality through fame.

And it’s not just people aspiring to be actors, models and writers that try to be famous. Think of the philanthropists, endowment donors and powerful people who like to name things after themselves, like the wing of a university or hospital, or the way Donald Trump names buildings after himself and tries to become a star. This is a way to make their name and image memorable even though their body will expire.

What all these traditional routes to fame have in common, though, is that they require some natural gifts, guts, wealth or talent. Conqueror, politician, matinee idol, tycoon…all of these are out of the realm of possibility for most people. But now with Youtube, personal blogs and reality shows, fame now seems more attainable to the masses than ever before. Talent, good looks, guts, money, none of that is a prerequisite anymore to fame. All you need is an exhibitionist streak and a total lack of shame. Delusions of becoming famous are as old as time, except now it doesn’t seem quite as delusional as it did before given current technology and media options.

The third reason for this increased fame obsession is the rising narcissism that comes from our modern culture’s self-esteem focused style of parenting. No one wants to disillusion or discourage children at all, no matter how unrealistic their goals or how much talent they lack. Everyone gets a gold star, everyone is equal, no one is a loser and everyone is a winner, everyone is a special, unique snowflake. Take a look at the American Idol audition process, where we see legions of untalented people deluded about their own abilities because no one in their lives ever wanted to criticize them and hurt their self-esteem.

Consider this passage from the book Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths Behind America’s Favorite Addiction:

In her book, [Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before] (2006), Twenge argues that this rise in self-esteem is the direct result of programs in our school systems, which have increasingly promoted the idea that kids need to feel good about themselves in order to reach their potential. During the 1970s and 1980s, she notes, the number of articles about self-esteem psychology and education journals doubled, and during the 1990s thatr number rose by another 50 percent or so. Eventually scores of children’s books on self-esteem made their way into classrooms. According to Twenge, once classic in this genre is The Loveables in the Kingdom of Self-Esteem (1991). It begins: “I AM LOVEABLE. Hi, loveable friend! My name is Mona Monkey. I live in the Kingdom of Self-Esteem along with my friends the Loveable Team.” A page or so later kids learn that they can enter the kingdom only if they “say these words three times with pride: I’m loveable! I’m loveable! I’m loveable!” Over time, Twenge says, our commitment to teaching self-esteem in the schools has been institutionalized in programs and entire curricula. One popular program, called Magic Circle, requires that one child a day be given a badge reading, “I’m great.” The other children take turns praising the “great” child, and their compliments are written up and given to the child to keep. The ritual comes to an end when the chosen child is asked to say something good about himself or herself to the group.

Twenge concludes that our efforts to boost self-esteem in the classroom have fueled an epidemic of self-importance and narcissism…

There is other evidence that narcissism is growing among young people. The psychologist Harrison Gough, for example, found that college students in the 1990s were far more likely than those in the 1960s to support narcissistic statements like “I have often met people who were supposed to be experts who were no better than I.” Twenge has done a study on narcissism, too. In 2002 she and two other researchers analyzed the results from 3,445 people who had completed the Narcissism Personality Inventory (NPI). The NPI asks subjects to rate the accuracy of statements such as “I can live my life anyway I want to” and “If I ruled the world it would be a better place.” Unfortunately, the NPI has been in use only since 1988, so Twenge and her colleagues were unable to compare their results with much earlier ones. They did find, however, that narcissism scores were significantly higher among people thirty-five or younger. This led Twenge to two conclusions: that younger people are probably more narcissistic, and that everyone born after 1970 has been thoroughly indoctrinated by the self-esteem curricula of thw 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. In Generation Me, Twenge theorizes that American schools are essentially “training an army of little narcissists instead of raising kids’ self-esteem.”

If, in fact, our school systems are inadvertently bolstering narcissism, aren’t they also inadvertently encouraging kids to seek the accolades of fame?

In summation, the immortality drive is the major driving force behind human nature. Fame is the most enduring and potent form of immortality humans can actually achieve, but because it used to be so hard for the average person to achieve people channeled their energy into satisfying the drive for immortality in other ways. But now, thanks to increased secularism, improvements in technology and media choices, less barriers to fame and a stark rise in narcissism, fame seems more achievable than ever to the average joe, which has driven our obsession with it to new heights.

Next installment, Immortality by Proxy.

Recommended Reading:

One example of inductive reasoning is this post I did, where I came to the conclusion that all the problems that plague people invariably fall into the categories of either a deficiency in vision or a deficiency in discipline.

Another example is this post where I talk about how all of our motivations and actions boil down to trying to satisfy two drives, the for survival and the drive to reproduce. Survival and reproduction directly and indirectly explain our motivations for doing just about everything we’re driven to do. I was satisfied with this for a while, but something felt incomplete about this analysis, and it gnawed at me. I felt the analysis could be taken one step further. I felt that I could generalize further to create a single, broad umbrella category, one all-encompassing drive of which the drives to survive and reproduce were subcategories. And then it hit me: immortality. The drives to survive and reproduce are subcategories of the drive for immortality. Everything we do is to satisfy our drive for immortality.

The beauty of the broader Immortality Model is that it helps explain some aspects of human nature that don’t neatly fit into the survival and reproduction catergories, such as the need for religion and the drive to be famous. Religion offers immortality in the form of an afterlife. Fame offers immortality in the form of having your name and image and exploits live on long after your physical body expires. This is why all the logic and reasoning in the world will never be able to eliminate organized religion from humanity. It’s humanity’s last ditch-effort to achieve immortality, especially the closer one gets to the expiration of their physical body as they age.

The Immortality Drive plays itself out through three urges: (1) the urge to achieve immortality by extending your physical life and its impact on the world as much as you can, (2) the urge to distract yourself from thinking about the fact you are physically going to die and may not have a spiritual afterlife or reincarnation awaiting you, and (3) the urge to ensure spiritual immortality after physical expiration. People usually live life balancing these three urges as follows:

(1) distracting themselves from thinking about the inevitable reality of physical death with the possibility of no afterlife while

(2) maximizing their physical impact on the world by trying to keep their bodies alive as long as possible while spreading their genes into the next generation and chasing status, power and fame, all to ensure that their name and genes survive their physical expiration, and finally

(3) engaging in some sort of religious belief to hedge their bets just in case and to give themselves hope that spiritual immortality actually is achievable.

An excess of one urge in a person or society though can lead to a deficit of the other urges, or vice versa. For example, secular and athiestic people and societies have little to no faith in the existence of immortality through an afterlife or reincarnation, so instead they channel all their energy into the urge to distract themselves from death with no afterlife, often through excessive hedonism, substance abuse or chasing as much power, status, sex and fame as they can during their lifetimes. Since this physical life is all they have, they need to maximize it. At the other end of the spectrum, the extremely religious are so confident of the existence of an afterlife that they don’t feel the same need to engage in hedonism, substance abuse and materialism as others. For these people, there is no possibility of no afterlife, so these distractions are unnecessary. Look at suicide bombers to see this dynamic taken to even scarier extremes. Suicide bombers have so satisfied urge (3), the need to believe that a spiritual afterlife is achievable, that they are able to totally disregard the first urge of physical self-preservation and largely disregard the second urge of status-seeking.

To Be Continued…

I’ve had some friends who have made fun of my obsession with human nature in the past. They claim it’s ridiculous to play game. I’ve been told that obsessing over human nature is manipulative. I’ve heard things like “I don’t need to know stuff like that, I prefer to just be myself.” If I ever recommended a good article or book or piece of advice concerning dealing with people, they would just laugh it off.

Yet every time one of these same people had an immediate high-stakes problem that required a grasp of social dynamics, they’d suddenly be pressing me for advice, anecdotes, tips, articles, or book recommendations…anything that would help them with their current scenario. We could be in a nightclub and they are asking for tips on what to say to a girl they just met at the bar. It could be an ongoing business negotiation that was going back and forth for a few days that was going nowhere. It could be a girl whose number they got and spoke to a few times and the whole thing just fizzled out and the girl was no longer calling them. It could be a family dispute that spun out of control. Whatever it was, these same people who were above reading books and having discussions on social dynamics suddenly had an immediate problem that had them scrambling for such a solution.

This is a perfect example of what I call The Hustle Mentality. In the streets, you have people who look busy and are always going from one short-term hustle to another, whether it’s mixtapes, weed, bootleg clothes, incense and oils, dice games or whatever else they can get into. They are staying busy, putting in a lot of time toward making money and finding opportunities, but it’s all in a very reactive way. But you also have middle-class hustlers who carry the same mindset, just in a more respectable environment. Instead of thinking of one long-term proactive plan that will allow them to make more money in the future without having to work so hard, they bust their humps working like crazy in order to keep putting out little financial fires: make enough money to pay this bill here when it comes up, make enough to buy this new unecessary gadget when it hits the market, etc. They don’t focus on lining up a newer and bigger opportunity until the old one is snatched from them and they are now desperate. They won’t think about getting more education until their current job becomes obsolete. This keeps them in a state of perpetual catch-up.

There are a lot of people who have the hustle mentality when it comes to relationships. They don’t think about understanding the opposite sex until their current relationships sour. They don’t think about having backup plans until the primary plans already in danger. They don’t try to really master the principles of the art of negotiation until they are already well into a negotiation.

Do you know what that’s like? It’s like waiting until you’re drowning to try to learn how to swim. You’re too busy trying to keep your head above water to properly focus on the things you need to learn. Or it’s like trying to master a sport during the big games rather than during practice when the stakes are lower. Learn things when you don’t need to use them. Success is when opportunity meets preparation. If you wait until the opportunity actually comes to start preparing, you’re screwed.

So most of the time when these friends of mine come to me for solutions after they already are waist-deep in the problem, I do my best to help them, but it’s like the old adage says, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” But I do my best to help them, thinking “Okay, even if it doesn’t work this time because it’s too late to turn this specific scenario around, hopefully this failure will cause them to be more proactive about learning social dynamics in the future. This failure will make them say “Never again!” and spur them to learn all they can from the experience and do their best to prevent a reoccurrence. But this rarely happens. Once they fail, they tend to return to their previous complacency until they’re faced with their next personal dilemma. They’re just stuck in that hustle mentality.

Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, has a concept similar to hustle mentality in his book The 33 Strategies of War. It’s called tactical hell. He discusses it in two blog posts.

First in this one:

Tactical hell is a way of thinking that you sink into when you lose a sense of the broader perspective. This is usually caused by the stress of immediate battles: in this case winning each election as it pops up. In tactical hell, you are constantly reacting to what your opponents give you, to each one of their aggressive attacks. You are continually fixing problems as they happen. You think you are being strategic in your actions, but you are merely responding to events, never guiding them.

The Democrats have been in this mode for quite some time. It is the source of their misery. Once you enter tactical hell, you cannot get out because it requires taking a step back, suffering some short-term defeats in order to set up long-term gains. This is nearly impossible in the hell mode because you think everything is at stake in the immediate battle, when in fact there is a larger campaign to wage. Because the Democrats have lost their soul and any sense of vision, they cannot take the big step of crafting a campaign. They exist as a kind of negative field force, held momentarily together by the sheer implosion power of the Republicans.

This quote was from 2006, and ironically it ended up applying to the Republicans in 2008.

He also discusses tactical hell here:

[M]ost of us exist in a realm that I call tactical hell. This hell consists of all of the people around us who are vying for power or some kind of control, and whose actions intersect our lives in a thousand different directions. We are constantly having to react to what this person does or says, getting emotional in the process. Once you sink into this hell, it is very difficult to raise your mind above it. You are dealing with one battle after another, and none of them end with any resolution. It is very hard for you to see the hell for what it is; you are too close to it, too mired in it to think of any other way. Because there are so many people now vying for power in this world, and our attentions are so distracted in many different directions, this dynamic only gets worse and worse.

Strategy is the only answer. This is not some dry academic point of contention, or me trying to sell more books. You can read plenty of other books on strategy. It is actually a matter of grave importance, the difference between a life of misery and one of balance and success. Strategy is a mental process in which your mind elevates itself above the battlefield. You have a sense of a larger purpose for your life, where you want to be down the road, what you were destined to accomplish. This makes it easier to decide what is truly important, what battles to avoid. You are able to control your emotions, to view the world with a degree of detachment.

If a person tries to suck you into their battles or problems, you have the necessary distance and perspective to keep away, or help them without losing your balance. You see everything as a strategic concern, including how the group you lead is structured–for mobility, for morale. Once you are on this track, everything becomes easier. A defeat or setback is a lesson to be learned, not a personal affront. Success does not go to your head, make you overreach.

There are false strategists in this world who are nothing more than master tacticians. They look like strategists because they are able to manage immediate problems with a degree of aplomb. They know how to fix problems. They get ahead, or rather they are able to just raise their heads above the water. But they inevitably slip up. I consider President Bill Clinton to be an example of this. As compared to an Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, true strategists.

Being a hustler is better than being an outright lazy bum, but in the long run it’s nothing to really especially proud of. The hustler may be making it happen right now, but flash forward to next year and the year after or even ten years from now and the hustler is likely hasn’t advanced that far in the big picture. Remember, the best time to try to master something are the moments in your life when you least need to use it.

Recommended Reading:

UPDATE: [NOW WITH TEXT!]

You know, even as a kid I always had a strong attraction to Joan Jett. I’m talking as young as 8 years old. Growing up, I always thought I was the exception and not the norm. She’s pretty but she’s not especially curvy, is very pale, has a raspy voice a lot of guys may not find feminine, acts very tomboyish/dykey…yet she always drove me crazy. And not even in spite of those things, almost because of those things. As an adult I’m starting to realize I’m not the exception either, a lot of dudes feel the same way. Seems a lot of straight women though don’t see why a guy would like her because her vibe is so masculine.

I think there’s such a power that comes from androgyny, a power to simultaneously repel and attract. Any philosophers or social critics out there who have really tackled the subject of androgyny through the ages? I’m sure Robert Greene has discussed it in The Art of Seduction, but I’ve yet to read the book.

I love putting these two clips side by side because both performers are known for playing up androgyny and blending male and female archetypes in their presentation. Who comes off more manly? Who’s more feminine? I find it interesting and ballsy that Joan Jett doesn’t change the words and refers to herself as male (“I’m a natural man/Doin’ what I can”). Who has a better manly swagger? Who is the better seducer of the audience? Both performers are using their masculine and feminine sides in their performances: who is better at using the masculine aspects of seduction in performance and who is better at using the feminine? The more you compare these two clips with gender role issues in mind rather than purely on techinical music issues, the more of a mindfuck it becomes.

Judging this as a whole package (music, performance, stage show, presentation of self, emotional connection) rather than just judging on technical song composition, which artist do you think is ultimately more appealing and successful in their interpretation?

More things to consider: how would the context be different if Joan Jett was singing this song backed by a band of women like she was when she was in the Runaways when doing this song rather than backed by a bunch of guys? Does she ever successfully come off as “one of the guys?” There is, to me, a sense of male bonding that comes off in the Glitter version that I don’t quite feel in the Jett version. Maybe it’s because I’m a guy and she’s so pretty, and on some level all guys feel a little intimidation at the sight of a pretty woman, but I can never forget the fact that she’s an attractive female and start thinking of her as one of the guys. I feel her band is the same way, there’s is an emotional distance from the band and a way she stands apart from them that makes me think they never forget that fact either. (Side note: to me, even players are also intimidated by a pretty women, they just don’t let it freeze them up but rather view it as a challenge to conquer and harness the nervous energy in a positive, controlled way to propel them headfirst into the challenge. They hide and control their fears better). Glitter’s performance however really feels like a group of guys bonding and having a blast. I also wonder how my feelings toward both performances would change if I was a straight woman, gay man, or gay female?

Also, even though I’ve always lusted after Joan Jett and never could forget she was sexy no matter how masculine she acted, it also felt weird and “too girly” to me when I saw her flash the camera in a bikini in this video. For most hot women, it would be awesome, but from her, it just seemed…wrong.

Lions

Years back, I was hitting the bar scene in the Lower East Side of NYC. The night was still young, and my boy Grip and I were in the last stop of our pub crawl, feeling just buzzed enough, and then we came across this African guy. I don’t remember how the conversation started because we were all well on our way to getting trashed, but at some point this African guy starts giving us his philosophy on men and women.

“Men are naturally noble creatures,” he said. “Society has made men like women. It’s made men afraid of their own shadows and afraid of what they really want. We were born to be hunters, it is our instinct, it is who we are. We have a natural desire to both be predators and to be regal.” This was the greatest pro-man pep talk we ever heard. And his deep African voice and accent just made it sound that much more regal and inspiring.

“You are a lion!” he continued, his voice rising majestically. “A hunter, a protector, a king! Do not settle! If you want something, go for it! Fight for it! You deserve the best, if you see a beautiful woman tonight, remember you are a lion and go over to her! Don’t be afraid, you are a hunter, a proud lion, this is your birthright. Don’t let society emasculate you!”

Grip and I started getting pumped. “Fuck yeah!!! We’re getting laid tonight! Lions!” We kept going back and forth like this, ordering shots, hollering at every girl we could see, and at this point our confidence level was peaking.

After the African guy left us, we were still on an outrageous self-esteem high. The guy was inspirational, like the Tony Robbins of the drunk singles scene. At that point Angelina Jolie could have walked in, and I would have stepped to her like she was just some chick from around the way and demanded some action. It was still only midnight, the crowd was bustling, there were hot girls aplenty, our confidence is soaring…it had all the makings of a classic night.

Fast forward to 3:30 AM. The herd has thinned and the prize specimens have all escaped or been captured by others. Not many choices remain. Grip and I were sloppy drunk and well beyond coherent at this point and were just trying to having a casual conversation with each other and barely succeeding. We gave up on chicks at this point. We look over at the other end of the bar and see our new African friend from earlier talking to this short, stocky pasty-complexioned overweight girl. No debate on this one, the girl is pretty awful looking. Kind of like a fire hydrant made of marshmallow that someone dressed up and put a wig on.

Out of respect (and shame and embarrassment) for him, we didn’t plan on saying anything to him or blowing up his spot, but as he glanced over at us our expressions must have given away what we were thinking, because he immediately walked over. He leaned in close and said slowly, in a low voice, “Sometimes the lion must eat grass.” Then he walked away.

I’m sure there was a life lesson in there somewhere, but I’m not sure what it was.

Dogs

Another bar, another long bygone year. Being young and naive, I was still at the age when my primary strategy for dealing with really hot women was flattery, eagerness and niceness. A friend of mind gave me the advice that the hotter as girl is, the more I should treat her like I would treat an ugly woman. And if she’s really hot, I should be borderline cocky and arrogant. This seemed counterintuitive, and I was skeptical, but I told myself I’d give it a shot sometime.

So on this night it was my friend Beethoven (short for The Beethoven of Bitches^TM) and me drinking in a Brooklyn Bar. It was a decent crowd with some definite cuties.

Beethoven and I were sitting at the bar catching up. A hot hipster blonde and her friend nearby were getting hit on left and right by guys and playfully shooting them down. This was a giant ego boosting night for them; you could tell this was their normal Friday night routine: go out looking hot while teasing some eager, desperate guys they had no plans of hooking up with. There was a group of typical guys standing behind our chairs with their backs to us, and Hipster Blonde and her friend were on the other side of the guys getting their asses kissed making small talk. Hipster Blonde squeezed around the group of guys and interrupted Beethoven and me.

Hipster Blonde said to me “Do you mind if I put my jacket on the back of your chair?” My first instinct was to eagerly say “Sure!” Then I remembered the advice about treating a hot girl like an ugly girl and acting arrogant.

I looked at her expressionlessly. “Let me think about it.” I turned away as if visibly annoyed and in deep thought. She stood there holding her jacket in her outstretched hand, speechless and with an expression of utter disbelief. I turn back at just the exact moment before the silence would have gotten uncomfortable and say playfully with a smirk, “Yeah, I guess you can.”

She playfully replied “Oh really? Are you sure it’s okay? I’d hate to inconvenience you.” I knew she was intrigued She probably couldn’t remember the last time I guy wasn’t eager to give her whatever she wanted. Or acted totally unimpressed by her.

We bantered and traded barbs for a bit, and then just when it was getting good I said “All right, well you should get back to your friends,” and pointed at the crew of eager cornballs she was just speaking to. Her friend was still with them, alone. Before she could respond, I turned back to Beethoven and went back to our conversation.

10 minutes later she came back, this time with her friend. It was obvious the friend was being brought over to get a look at me and give a second opinion. Women love getting the friend’s second opinion and approval.

She interrupts us again. “Hey, I came back to get my jacket.”

Exasperatedly, I say “You again? You’re just full of annoying requests, aren’t you?” I turned to her friend. “Is she always this demanding? How do you put up with it?”

She and her friend gave each other an expression that’s a mix of mock shock and laughter. They were loving the cockiness. I’ve got them now. She smiled and teased, “You’re just mad because I’m prettier than you.”

I gave her a slightly bemused look, scanned her from top to bottom like I was evaluating her, then rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.” I charmed them both a little bit more, made them laugh, then turned back to Beethoven and my drink. In my head though I was thinking, I can’t believe the more I act like a dick, the more it works. How much farther am I supposed to go with this?

Hipster Blonde took her jacket, and she and her friend walked to the back of the bar where the couches were, occasionally turning back to look and giggle. I didn’t keep the conversation going because I knew it was a given she’d make an excuse to come back. I wanted to convey to her that I had zero neediness and unlike most guys was not desperate.

I walked to the back of the bar 15 minutes later to go to the bathroom. From my peripheral vision I saw Hipster Blonde and her girlfriend in the corner, tapping each other, whispering and pointing at me. Now I knew I really had her. All I had to do is wait for to come to me. It was a guarantee.

Sure enough after I returned to my seat at the bar, she came up behind me the moment I sat down. She asked if I had a light because she wanted to go out and smoke. I said no. She didn’t budge. I just kept hitting her with cockiness, aloofness and little playful teasing insults, and she just seemed to be loving it.

No one was more shocked than me. I just couldn’t believe that this approach was actually working. It just seemed wrong and counterintuitive and the opposite of every piece of dating advice I was ever given in my life. I’m pushing my luck, I told myself. I better switch gears before I blow it. Even though my new approach was working, I told myself it couldn’t keep working and reverted to the typical approach. I decided it was a good time to give her a compliment.

“Hey, remember when you said I was mad because you were prettier than me? Well, I didn’t want to admit it, but you are quite pretty I’ve got to admit.” I gave the compliment with a nice, earnest grin. I figured after all the arrogant cockiness and insults, she deserved and would appreciate some heartfelt sweetness.

Her expression changed abruptly. Smile left, jaw dropped, silence. She suddenly looked disappointed.

She leaned in close and said slowly, in a low voice, “If you’re going to be a dog, be a rottweiller. If you’re going to be a bitch, wear a skirt.” Then she walked away.

Unlike with the night with the African, I understood Hipster Blonde’s life lesson immediately.

Best advice I ever received.