Do I have to hide my intellect to be accepted by the cool crowd?

[Regal Tiger]

Thanks for the reply, it was great! Can you tell me more about this "real you" thing, please?

For sure.

Chase had a great article on it that I'll link and then I'll give my general thoughts as well. https://www.girlschase.com/content/stop-being-so-judgmental-its-all-actor-observer-bias

Basically, you act different when you're around different people. I can only give myself as specific examples but here goes to give you the general idea:

1) When in groups I'm either the silent guy or the witty guy making jokes. Sometimes I can be the entertaining guy but not usually.

2) Around my family, whom I was the black sheep I mostly am just quiet. Rarely speaking unless absolutely necessary.

3) Around people I want to bring into my life (not just women) I shift gears into much more of a leader. Guiding the conversation where I want it to go, mostly approaching people with a desire to understand them. Chase's "smooth style" is a good way to put it and more or less where I try to be:
https://www.girlschase.com/content/3-flavors-sexy-brooding-smooth-and-talkative-vibes

4) While I'm at work (because there aren't any women whom I want to sleep with) I allow my extremely childlike part of myself to take over. Think, high energy and looking at everything from a perspective of how to make this fun.

5) If I'm doing ballroom/swing dancing then I'll lean on being a silent authority figure (mixed in with the same smooth aspect from above). If there's a woman I want I'll mostly stick to this and really drill down hard on having her carry the conversation

6) Then there's the extremely nerdy side of me, some of which I show here because I love this stuff

Which is the 'real' me? If someone from group 4 saw me in group 5, or even group 2 then they'd think I was schizophrenic or something. But they're all me. Just different aspects of me. And the same is true of you.

_____

But those are just some examples of different scenarios I can think of. Here's another example:

If you're feeling happy then you act differently than when you're sad. Which one can you say is the real you? The same can be said when you're interacting with someone you see as both above you as well as beneath you.

For me, if I see someone as beneath me then I don't want to interact with them at all. I dismiss most of what they say and only half listen when I'm not literally turning my back on them mid conversation. But, if there's a woman I want to get to know better then I'm not going to do any of that. It would be horrible for getting to know someone!


______


You also mentioned spirituality and philosophy; for sure if you can bring something back to someone's life then you'll get much better feedback from people.

As an example, I tend to be long-winded, over explain everything and go off on somewhat related tangents because there's a lot rattling in my head. This is a bit of a challenge for me sometimes on these forums where it's not face-to-face. But, this last paragraph you're not nearly as interested in because it's about me instead of you and your question lol

 

[Beck Bass]

It only served to bring me massive amounts of pain when as an adult (around age 24) I began seriously desiring a woman and kept running into very frustrating brick walls when I interacted with them. I felt like I was drowning in a world that I didn't understand.

But I’m not going to give up.

What do you guys think about associating with the early 20s crowd as a guy who's in his late 20s? Is it a no-no?

Well, I think you already answered that lol
Seriously though, 24 years is a long time to be lonely. I think @Chase was a bit like that but you got some work to do.
On the bright side, your intellect will help overcoming this faster, if you have the right attitude (not falling into depression and bad/unproductive thoughts).

I think most guys here are interested in younger women, be it slightly younger (like me being 25 trying to bang 20 years old girls and gringing hard at some tiktok stuff and lingo they use) or quite some more (like some guys that are in their 40s but have sucess on dating girls in that age range), so I think it's almost expected that men that are longing for attractive girls will be "associating" with younger people. Of course, what associating means varies; you don't need to necessarily become BFFs with those girls to bang them or even have a relationship (of course similarity is a big factor, but it's "similarity", not equality).

If you could talk endlessly with some younger people, or really any people, you would be surprised to know how much you have in common (we are all human beings living at the same time, after all, people often overstimate how unique and different to other people they really are), but of course, this isn't really an option, at least not with a single person. So what you can, and should, do, if you really wanna get with attractive 20yo girls, is talk with a lot of them, and see if there's something you can find in common with them, some topic you can tap into, not only just to make convo, but to establish that you get them in some level, and if you pair that with being attractive (which still is, of course, the most important part), you should have success.

In your case, if you really don't socialize that much at all and don't have many (or any?) friends, you shouldn't just stick with your "target audience", though. Try and be social with everybody, make friends with people all ages, get your social skills up, so when it's time to talk with the younger hotties, with whom, no doubt, you will be a bit more nervous, you will have to pay attention only about the details in interacting with younger girls, not the details in interacting with ANY people.

It's not a no-no, but it can be a bit annoying at first, the cultural shock can be big and interacting with them might not be enjoyable all the time, but with enough persistence and empathy/knowing how to listen/deep dive, you will (hopefully) find something you can connect with on those younger broads.

 

[PalmaSailor]

How can you be a great player as you mentioned in the chat, but wonder something so basic? There is nothing wrong with being intelligent but you must not try to be tryhard.. I know more than one guy tries to come with super "impressive" intellectual talk but it just alienates people, because it's presented in a tryhard unrelatable way.. You don't have to pretend to be Jersey Shore meathead lol, but you have to be calibrated towards your crowd. Intellectual woo woo is not always that intelligent.




I have an IQ of 837293, just saying.

I’m not wondering about anything. If you think I am you’ve mis read what I’ve said.

discussion about intelligence and “intellectual conversation” has no role in seduction which is about DHVing and IOI’s.

primary drivers of attraction in women are alpha characteristics, and that is not necessarily intelligence.

spouting on / trying to demonstrate intelligence to a woman is a sure fire way to turn her of as is aligns more with the BB side of her mating strategy.

 

[Chase]

Does having a higher IQ get in the way with socializing? To some extent, yes.

Does it need to totally inhibit you? No not really.

@lenny 26, I didn't really get going socially until my early 20s either. However, one thing I will say is that before I did I very consciously forced myself to give up any hint of misanthropy. I had a lot of things that disgusted me about people to a certain age. Then one day waiting in line behind a fat girl at the pizza shop, I looked at her meaty arms, covered in bumpy flesh, and recoiled in revulsion. And then I realized... this girl doesn't know how I feel. She's totally oblivious to it. She's probably drooling over the eight jumbo-sized slices of pizza she's about to devour. But here I am, feeling absolutely awful, thinking about how grossed out I am about this chick's beefy arms.

I realized that, just for myself, I needed to purge those sorts of thoughts.

There's a difference between being discriminating (i.e., choosy) vs. feeling a bunch of negative thoughts about stuff. You can still be one without having the other.

I'm not going around picking up fat girls. They're not my taste. But I don't feel revulsion for them now either. They are just people I talk to. I can have very nice conversations with them... say while waiting for their hot friend to get back. Because of the nice conversations, where they can tell I genuinely like them as people, they will even help me get together with their hot friends.

This is an underrated thing, learning to like people as people. Lots of people can't do it. It's very powerful with people most people don't like. Unlikable, unattractive people are used to people not liking them. If you treat them like regular people and they can tell you have warmth toward them, treating them as just fellow humans, they will do everything in their power to help you win.

This is where I'd suggest you start.

There's a process for doing that in this article:

How to Overcome Depression

Was discussing this on a forum with a guy; I used to talk about it a fair amount, some time back, but it's sort of faded from my life in significance. It just isn't on my mind much these days anymore, but I do remember how big a deal it was for me once, and hopefully my story and process can...

www.girlschase.com

Beyond that... you should be trying to befriend everyone you can.

I knew a guy of a 135 IQ who was always complaining to me about how stupid most people are. Total misanthrope. And my IQ's a good bit higher than that (I don't want to say how much, because... it's bragging? Also makes you pretty unrelatable. I just want to make the point that this guy had a significantly lower IQ than me, and turned me off with his "oh my high IQ" misanthropy). But it was such a huge turn off to me listening to this thing about how other people are such idiots compared to him.

I learned to socialize by throwing myself with every group of people I could. Ghetto blacks with 80 IQs, hillbilly rednecks with 90 IQs, Mexican illegals with 85 IQs, trust fund babies with 130 IQs, masters degree holders with 140+ IQs, tech entrepreneurs with 160+ IQs. Not to mention people from countries all over the Earth. I have had African friends, Middle Eastern friends, Asian friends, European friends, South American friends. I've had girlfriends from all over too. For a while you feel like you REALLY don't belong. You have no idea what to talk about with these people. You are out of your element.

But after a while you start to figure it out.

Then a while after that, you start to belong. These people become your people.

If you're socializing with various types of people you never really get 'stuck' with anyone type of person.

Instead you become kind of a chameleon.

I think it's good to go through a period like this.

You need to really hold your tongue and just listen. When I was living in California, I'd be picking up girls with my tall white blond buddy who'd joke about wanting to kick all the foreigners out, then the next night I'd be at an illegal immigrant block party hitting on Mexican chicks. Then the night after that my misanthropic 135 IQ Asian banker friend would be in town visiting and we'd go hit the club and hit on girls together.

Every single one of these people would be saying things where I'd think, "Hmm... not sure I agree with that!" but I'd just keep my thoughts to myself unless asked. Because I wasn't doing it for FUN (though it did often turn into that); I was doing it for an education.

Eventually you reach a point where you can stride between all these totally different kinds of people and quickly feel right at home.

These days my circles are a lot smaller, but I still have a pretty eclectic group of friends. My friends are mostly all smarter folks these days, and I will talk more openly with them about various things, have lengthy debates, etc. But they're still eclectic. I have friends across the political divide, some pretty extremely so, spread out across a bunch of continents. Many of my friends could not be friends with each other. But they can be friends with me.

Article on getting reference points:

Reference Points and Changing Worldviews

I'm being driven nuts right now about a discussion I'm having with my girlfriend about something we've already discussed and I thought was settled. It has to do with a difference in belief systems; I show her solid evidence and research from the West proving my position, she returns to hearsay...

www.girlschase.com

Also, on being a conversationalist, which is what you need to be:

The Conversationalist

Conversation and the conversationalist: probably one of the most under-discussed topics in the social arts. What a pity. Conversation is part of the backbone upon which everything related to socializing is built upon, but in the 21st century that’s almost forgotten. You might go so far as to say...

www.girlschase.com

Finally, I will add: this misanthropy thing does seem to be a lot more common in higher IQ people.

Part of it is the "people don't understand what I'm saying" thing. That is a skill set in and of itself, learning to communicate in clear, simple ways that people don't need to be geniuses to understand. It even helps when talking to geniuses! Nobody likes having to expend heavy brainpower to decipher what you're saying.

(on the humor note, for @PalmaSailor: you can learn "everyman humor" too. I did. I can sit there and belt out the wise cracks that will have whatever group I'm with splitting their sides. But it takes a little focused effort to develop this, and is a bit of a chore of a skill set. You focus hard on humor for a few years and you realize why comedians go paint their rooms black and slip into depression spirals... it's super reaction-focused, learning comedy. I don't miss the learning curve days for that skill set)

I still regularly talk to people who misinterpret things I'm saying. It's annoying, but whenever it happens I take it as a lesson that my communication is not clear or simple enough, and I revise. A skill communicator can speak at a 4th grade level on pretty much any subject (i.e., a very easy-to-understand level).

Another part of "high IQ misanthropy" seems to be related to being divorced from pop culture, which seems increasingly inane to you as you get smarter.

One of the best things I did for my ability to relate to average-IQ men I think was to immerse myself in sports for a year or two, both playing and watching them. I got really into it. Then I slowly quit it. Now I don't watch sports anymore, and rarely play any sports. But I can TOTALLY relate to anyone who enjoys them, and no longer feel like I am so superior for not being into sports when people talk about it around me (which was how I felt until about age 17).

It's good to watch pop culture movies or shows to be able to relate to people on these too. Even if they're not your fare, well, usually they're still enjoyable. You don't have to watch everything, but you should watch a few of them. I've never seen Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones but I've watched most of the Marvel movies... and hey, they're fun! (I also read the comics as a teen, so I mean, I was already inclined)

There's a theme here, and the theme is "Try to be normal."

If you're smarter than normal, you will never be 'normal'... not really.

But you want to be able to relate to normal people on normal things.

You are always going to be around normal people. With a 120+ IQ, you're in a small minority of the population, IQ-wise.

There's that old saying... "Anyone with an IQ 10 points below you is an idiot. Anyone with an IQ 15 points above you is insane."

Well, if you're a socially adroit guy, you'll come across in such a way that people won't even think about IQ with you.

They'll just think, "Hey -- he's like me."

There's another benefit to learning how to be around and talk to normal people and be accepted as a normal person, too:

You stop feeling so excluded by the rest of the world, and that in and of itself makes much of your "smart person misanthropy" melt away.

Chase

 

[Fuck This]

A truly smart man does not make people around him feel dumb. He knows how to make other people feel smart and then they say "That guy is reallty smart"