If you're not having fun, you're missing the point
Eat the cookie and enjoy the promiscuous lady. You'll be fine.
There was a time when our dark corner of the internet would have told you the ideal “alpha” man was a guy with every minute of his life accounted for.
Physically fit. His diet on lock. He doesn’t touch sweets or alcohol, barely touches carbs, is at the gym every day putting in the work.
Professionally successful. He excels at his job, makes good money, is in line to keep moving up and making even more. He puts in the work keeping up with all the new developments in his field, networks with others, and is professionally well-connected.
Socially skilled. He has a large network of acquaintances, knows people around town, works the room everywhere he goes, and his game is on point.
Knows useful skills and interesting hobbies. He takes the time to learn how to do things. He reads non-fiction, barely wastes time with fiction books, movies, television, recreational internet use. He sees content consumption as another task he does to learn things and improve himself.
The above describes the ideal man. Someone every woman should want to be with and every guy should want to be.
Except the guy described above kinda sucks with girls and barely has any friends.
Because he’s no fun.
Women don’t want to hang out with a guy who won’t try one of the chocolate chip cookies she just baked — her mom’s recipe — because it doesn’t fit his diet. And won’t sleep in with her on Sunday because he works out every morning. Then won’t take her to a 4000 calorie boozy brunch. And won’t stay out late with her because he doesn’t drink, doesn’t eat past 8:00, and has to wake up early for the gym tomorrow. Guys don’t really want to be friends with that dude either.
When a guy’s entire internet history is workout and diet advice and videos for how to build and repair stuff, the only books he reads are history, philosophy, self-help pop psychology, and how-to/do-it-yourself texts, he’ll never watch TV with you, and every time you’re out, you feel like he’s working the room to see what he can learn or how he can advance or improve, that guy is zero fun.
Even among our own community, there’s a reason one of the most successful internet manosphere shows there’s ever been involved dufuses getting women drunk on White Claws and yelling at them. While everyone laughs at you if you attentively tune into the “serious content producers” and take notes, hoping to finally learn the magic silver bullet that will improve your life. Those White Claw dudes may have been silly clowns, but they were entertaining.
And when women read literotica smut and whatever the latest book club fiction is, while you bust out your copy of a self-improvement manosphere book and your highlighter, ready to learn yourself some truths and some skills, there’s a reason you keep that to yourself in public. Even among other men, if you talk about the books you’re reading, they’re not angry at your misogyny. They’re bored. What you’re reading sounds boring.
One of the core social skills that often gets overlooked is knowing how to have fun. People like having fun, people like being around fun people, and people like seeing fun people succeed in life.
Being fun helps you be attractive to women. It helps you make friends. It even helps you professionally.
When a woman’s out with a guy, the number-one factor for whether or not she’s going to go home with him is whether she’s having fun.
The big-ticket items — looks, money, social skills — still matter a lot.
If he’s ugly, that’s not fun. She’s anxious about what other people in the room are thinking, what her friends would think if they met him, whether she’d even find anything likeable or enjoyable if the clothes came off. Anxiety’s not fun.
Same deal if he’s socially weird. She worries what people will think if she’s seen with a weirdo, about being ostracized from her friend group because they don’t want her weirdo guy around, whether the guy will say or do weird stuff that pisses her off or makes things un-fun for her.
Same deal if he’s too broke, or too wrapped up in his internet ideology to have fun with his money.
But in addition to the big-ticket items, a guy needs to just plain be engaging, entertaining, and fun to be around. That short ugly guy who always gets the girls and you have no idea why? It’s because he’s fun. When a woman laughs at him and calls him ugly, he doesn’t get uppity and tell her she’s mistaken. He laughs too and asks if she’ll switch seats so he can buy the girl next to her a drink.
We call it “the game” because games are fun. Even if you don’t win all the time, it’s still fun to play. If you’re not having fun playing, you’re missing the point of the game. Definitely learn from your most glaring mistakes, but if you’re busting out your highlighter to take notes and running off to research every facet of this game, it’s not a game to you any more.
There’s a place for self-improvement, a place for growth and knowledge. But that place is not every minute of your entire life.
If you hit our dark corner of the internet, turn right, and walk a few more miles, you reach our buddies in the “traditional conservative” sector, or “trad” for short. Those guys agree that men should never be having fun.
Apparently, as men, we have some kind of duty to women, children, society, humanity, God, etc., to never, ever have any fun and to always be working, grinding, bettering the lives of people around us. And the only fun we’re allowed to experience is the satisfaction of doing that duty.
Those guys don’t get girls either. They get partners, who graciously allow them to serve the partnership.
The fun guys? They get the spark.
They get the girls who light up when you walk into the room. The girls who text first. The girls who drag their friends over to meet him because “you have to see this guy”. They get the wild nights, the inside jokes, the “remember that time?” stores.
They get laid because she’s having a good time and doesn’t want the night to end yet.
They get her effort and investment because she’s enjoying him, not just tolerating him as part of his partnership expectations.
Of course, being fun doesn’t mean being a degenerate party animal or a dancing clown. It just means you’re not allergic to joy. You can still deadlift as much as six women and split a pizza at 11:PM. You can still finish a big project or close a deal at work then go have a few drinks with the boys instead of rushing home to prep your pre-workout for tomorrow before jumping into bed for your nine hours.
You can still read philosophy when you’re alone … assuming you actually enjoy that and are’t just checking off a box so you can say you self-improved for an hour today. (Maybe buy and read my book when it comes out instead! I have two more great book ideas I’m going to jump on once I get this one edited and published, btw!)
But when you’re with people instead of alone with your dense book and highlighter, feel free to quote stupid movies, roast your buddies, and make the girl you’re with feel interesting — even when maybe she’s not.
If you’re sacrificing fun in some intense quest to maximize your life, or maybe out of some sense of duty, that’s the path toward a future wife who respects you the way you respect one of your reliable employees. Dutiful. Low drama. Zero heat.
The grindset “alpha” is an admirable guy. He can still get girls, mind you. But if he’s not fun, he quickly stops being the guy who gets nudes at 2:AM because his plates can’t stop thinking about him. Being impressive works a lot better if you’re both impressive AND fun.
Being fun is a skill, of sorts. And one worth practicing. It’s not the opposite of self-improvement. It’s the point of self-improvement. Why get your body right, your money right, your mind right…if your master plan after all of that is to reward yourself with a chicken breast and more podcasts on stoicism?
Internet men: Eat the cookie, have the drink, watch the dumb movie, tell the story about the time you screwed up spectacularly in school and laugh at yourself, stay out late, say the inappropriate thing that makes the table lose its shit, flirt with your wife like she’s the hot bartender — Be the guy people actually want to be around, not the guy people ought to logically feel like they should be around on paper.
The guys who win aren’t the ones who never slip up. They’re the ones who built something real, then had enough sense to enjoy it.
Be dangerous when you need to be, disciplined when it serves you, and fun the rest of the time. The world has enough serious men… God, does it ever. But not enough men who make us feel alive.
Go be one of those. The cookies taste better that way.
I used to know how to do this... Vague impressions remain. But, life has this way of wearing you down, of turning that childhood energy into adult obligation. There is a cycle to life. Here's a hypothesis... Your ability to have fun, which largely means to be care free for at least a little while, is highly correlated with your "surplus capacity".
When you're a child, your parents shoulder a lot of the burden of real life, which makes it *easier* to be the "fun guy", probably through high school and, maybe, through college. Your burdens are light and you have loads of "surplus capacity". So, your stress and anxiety are low -- You're naturally more fun and likeable. You roll with the punches and find it easy to keep smiling.
But, then, real life can hit hard. You've got to earn a living and find a way through life. If you've got a decent job and remain single, you can still, relatively, easily pull off being a fun guy, at least on the weekend. You might have to grind during the week, but, at the club or social event, you can let loose, especially with the help from a bit of alcohol.
Fast forward a few years. Now, you're married with kids. You own a home and cars, all with mortgage or loan payments. And, your parents are aging. Those same parents that sheltered you from reality are now adding to your burdens -- This is your karmic payback. As a middle aged guy, it is hella hard to be the "fun guy".
And, this is true even of the guys that are doing well, paying their bills AND managing to save for retirement. The problem is there is always some burden that needs your attention during this time. So, even when you're at a social event, your mind is pulled in "not fun" directions.
Eventually, this cycle moves along, though. Your kids grow. Your parents pass. You pay off the cars and the mortgage as well as any student debt. If you're lucky, you're physically, mentally and financially healthy. As your burden lightens, your "surplus capacity" returns -- perhaps more than you've ever enjoyed in your life.
And, guess what? You start to recall vague memories of having fun, maybe from high school, maybe college. You realize that you've been head down, grinding away, for decades. Life is racing past you, but you're not out of time yet. If you take action, you can be a "fun" guy again, but you have to relearn those behaviors... and adapt them to a new scene, a new time.
Now that you have this newfound "surplus capacity", what are you going to do with it? This is one of the topics the manosphere often highlights. "Do you even know what *you* want?" It has been years since you've been able to consider what you want. So, no, you probably don't. This is a key part of the process of reconnecting with your inner "fun" guy.
And, this isn't necessarily a big deal... It might mean going to more baseball games, more concerts, more hunting, more fishing, more whatever you like. Maybe it is coed social, maybe it is male bonding or maybe it is spending time alone. All of it will make you more "fun" when you're in a social group.
We often label the above "post peak burden" process as a "mid-life crisis", but I think it is something that is perfectly natural and just part of the modern male life cycle. I know this isn't particularly germane to AW's post, but it prompted me to think about this phenomenon, as I've been on a journey to reconnect with my inner "fun guy" and that seems relevant enough.
Lol more ways to pander to women. We're good.