FORUM UPGRADE ETA: New Forum Premieres Later in May

Chase

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It's not going to be an incel hotbed Oh Pry. No need to worry about that.

I don't think anyone who's one of the angry political incel types wants anything to do with a website called "Skilled Seducer", unless it is just to troll.

If he is just here to troll, he is going to get a swift ban hammer.

One of the things we'll be adding shortly after the launch is a way to report members as trolls or a few other things.

On the old mASF forum there was a way to flag posts as a few undesirable things, such as:

  • Newbtard: someone posting wet-behind-the-ears newbie stuff, like "I bet if someone asked enough girls if they wanted to have sex, he'd get a yes" (it's kinda correct, but also something that's been discussed to death already, and clearly a newbie thought)
  • Flame war: if the thread is just a couple of guys trading barbs, it'll get the Flame War tag
  • KJ: if it's a keyboard jockey post (some guy coming up with hypothetical tactics that aren't based on any actual field experience), KJ label
  • Troll: if it's obvious the guy is just trying to troll, he'll get the troll tag

I think the "newbtard" label is a little mean-spirited, but we can probably do something similar to that, albeit a little gentler.

The others though -- flame war, KJ, troll -- they're all great, and I want those tags.

What happened on mASF was when a thread got flagged like that, the thread name would be crossed out, the line would be greyed out, and you could still click it but it was obvious the community thought it wasn't a worthwhile post.

We'll get a system like this set up that makes it easy for guys to squash threads and label posts that need it.

We also intend to have a reputation system that'll make it easy for us to identify members who are getting voted to hell, to take a closer look at them and see if we think they're spammers, trolls, overly negative, or otherwise need to get a warning or a boot. (there's a way to flag posts now, but only a fraction of the ones that need flagging get flagged, probably because it isn't obvious. I regularly run across a spam post on here that's 6 months or a year or two years old that we missed)

I mean, if it ever got to the point where Franco and I hadn't been on the forum much in a while, and no one had pinged us to tell us there was a problem, and a bunch of trolls or incels or what have you got on here and did a hostile takeover, as soon as I found out I'd be back on here with the banhammer of fury chasing all those guys out of here.

==

As for the market, yeah. It's smaller now, for a number of reasons. Part of it is a lot of guys have soured on women. It's much worse now than it was when I got in. You had incels then, though not by that name, but they were a small percentage of guys. There's a lot of them now. A lot of incels, a lot of MGTOWs, a lot of guys who have just totally given up trying to get laid, blame women for their lack of pussy, and are very, very bitter about it. These guys want nothing to do with anything that purports to teach them "how to get" women, because it feels like being asked to suck it up and put in still more work for women, and they've already reached their limit and thrown the towel in.

Another part is The Game is a distant memory, no one reads it anymore, and as that's retreated from consciousness, and no other blockbuster books or movies have come out that have made regular guys say "Wow, I can totally do this myself, too!" it's started seeming like something that's either really hard to do, or just pure snake oil, to average guys. Which was exactly what it seemed like to average guys pre-The Game. So this is more a return to normalcy than anything. (I've actually been mulling over writing my own Game-esque book, that would be my own story, sucking with women, studying with different guys, learning various techniques, hitting various milestones, dealing with a bunch of drama, just so we can have something to give to new guys that makes them say "Wow, this IS possible!"... only thing stopping me is how personal a book like that is, and means airing a bunch of dirty laundry from when I was younger and making a lot of mistakes with women who really cared about me, and I'm on the fence about whether I actually want to do that or not. Still debating)

And yeah, all the clownishness that came out after The Game. Mystery was sort of the original clown. He was GOOD, but he was a clown. And then you had a bunch of guys who came after him who were NOT good, but were clowns. The media portrayal also constantly forced PUAs into one of three camps... every PUA shown in the media was either a.) an evil manipulator, b.) a clownish inept, or c.) a reformed and/or mainstream-friendly novelty. Cs were boring and soon forgotten, As were icky, Bs were just off-putting. Nobody wants anything to do with any of those, so you get this besmirched image, to the point where "pick up artistry" is this gauche fad no one wants to have anything to do with anymore. We've always tried to mostly steer clear of that name here, even though it is probably the best term to describe what guys are doing. But nobody wants to consider himself "a pick up artist" because it's such a ruined label.

Chase
 

Space

Tool-Bearing Hominid
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Oh Pry said:
The audience is still there for pickup without a doubt but I think what a lot of forums suffered from is that you had guys who with extremist beliefs, often incels, that felt the need to turn them depressing so they turned into all out wars.
The major forums (or past forums) I'm aware of are/were Roosh's, nextASF, the Seduction subreddit, and RSD Nation. None of them I remember were turned into incel hotbeds so I'm not sure which forum you refer to. Not mentioning all the various, smaller Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram groups. I'm not that familiar with all of these forums though. You can argue Roosh's forum is in the process of turning into something entirely different for sure but was it ever an incel hotbed? That's a definite no.
 

Space

Tool-Bearing Hominid
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Chase said:
Another part is The Game is a distant memory, no one reads it anymore, and as that's retreated from consciousness, and no other blockbuster books or movies have come out that have made regular guys say "Wow, I can totally do this myself, too!" it's started seeming like something that's either really hard to do, or just pure snake oil, to average guys. Which was exactly what it seemed like to average guys pre-The Game. So this is more a return to normalcy than anything. (I've actually been mulling over writing my own Game-esque book, that would be my own story, sucking with women, studying with different guys, learning various techniques, hitting various milestones, dealing with a bunch of drama, just so we can have something to give to new guys that makes them say "Wow, this IS possible!"... only thing stopping me is how personal a book like that is, and means airing a bunch of dirty laundry from when I was younger and making a lot of mistakes with women who really cared about me, and I'm on the fence about whether I actually want to do that or not. Still debating)
There are plenty of such books available on amazon including from Girls Chase writer Tony. Not that they have the popularity of The Game (which I haven't read either btw.) even possibly combining them altogether, but I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing.

Which reminds me of our general disagreement about popular culture, but it's totally fine.
Space said:
Chase said:
You might be the sort of guy who says "XYZ unnamed cola brand/musician is better, because you can only find it through word-of-mouth and you'll never see it pay for advertising", but that doesn't stop Coca-Cola or U2 from doing way, way better in everything from reach, to audience size, to revenues, to (perhaps most important of all -- looking at you, Mystery Method, Charisma Arts, Love Systems, and most recently Return of Kings -- all those guys worked all the free/MSM media channels plenty) longevity. How many XYZ unnamed cola brands and musicians will still be in the game 20 years from now? U2 may have aged out but I bet they will still have a large fan base and make plenty of sales... and Coca-Cola ain't going anywhere.
Are we discussing Coca-Cola from the perspective of a Colombian or an Indian? Or just someone who cares a bit? U2 became U2 before the Internet age when labels selected a few artists to became superstars. Now it's the age of the Internet, the age of the long tail. We have relatively less famous artists than before the Internet, but in bigger quantities. Sure, now you can find something you like in every sub-genre imaginable.
That said, the fact that Neil Strauss is a terrific writer whatever the topic is might as well have contributed the The Game's success.
 

trashKENNUT

Cro-Magnon Man
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Chase,

Chase said:
As for the market, yeah. It's smaller now, for a number of reasons. Part of it is a lot of guys have soured on women. It's much worse now than it was when I got in. You had incels then, though not by that name, but they were a small percentage of guys. There's a lot of them now. A lot of incels, a lot of MGTOWs, a lot of guys who have just totally given up trying to get laid, blame women for their lack of pussy, and are very, very bitter about it. These guys want nothing to do with anything that purports to teach them "how to get" women, because it feels like being asked to suck it up and put in still more work for women, and they've already reached their limit and thrown the towel in.

i know you can help this people. :) Maybe not now when it doesn't serve the business yet - Zac
 

Rain

Tool-Bearing Hominid
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Hey Chase,

Will ther new forum fix the sql error when putting emoji? I can't put a message or save a draft, if it has an emoji. Not a huge deal but might save time in future posts if copy and pasteing messages so don't have to edit them out and replace with words eg *thinking face emoji*.
Or would that use too much data because they're mini images?
 

Space

Tool-Bearing Hominid
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Chase said:
The media portrayal also constantly forced PUAs into one of three camps... every PUA shown in the media was either a.) an evil manipulator, b.) a clownish inept, or c.) a reformed and/or mainstream-friendly novelty. Cs were boring and soon forgotten, As were icky, Bs were just off-putting. Nobody wants anything to do with any of those, so you get this besmirched image, to the point where "pick up artistry" is this gauche fad no one wants to have anything to do with anymore.
And there's David Wygant. Darling of the Huffington Post.
 

Indian Race Troll (IRT)

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Glad that you will be taken the action you do Chase but one thing that I would be keeping an eye on and I suggest you do as well are guys coming over from other places who are more entitled. I have occasionally peeked at some of the places you mentioned and while certain men are well-meaning, you do get a number of them who are on a bit of a high horse and could be confrontational personalities just looking for a fight or disregarding the wisdom of more senior members here.

I think it is important to distinguish that certain guys like Hector, Franco, and Grand Pooba for example have earned their stripes for a good reason and all new members that come over should recognize that. When I say new, I mean guys who might have been the hotshot on some other forum or more senior on some other place, it is important for them to know right off the bat that they are still newbies unless the quality of content says otherwise. This means they should be weary of immediately challenging Franco and more senior members with a hostile tone.

This also means not trying to spread rumors about a certain forum member or make false accusations towards them as a power move. I want the forum to remain in civil debate, not petty personal grudges which seem to consume so many other forums out there.

While I have peeked on other boards, there is a reason I joined this one. You and Franco created an atmosphere of understanding which led to me having the success I have had and I don’t think many boards seem to have that. I think it is important to keep the keyboard jockey and pompous personalities that may come over in check. Let them know that they are new here and unless they provide quality content and prove quality results, they better listen to the law.

I am excited for what is to come, this place this lead to me getting into triple digits.

While it may be far fetched for now, I do see myself using GC more as the winter in NYC makes going out at times unrealistic haha. If you do need a moderator or someone to lay down the law, I am more than happy to throw my hat in the ring. Happy to be below Franco and you though, you guys are the generals, I am glad to be lieutenant to squash minor things.
 

Chase

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@ZacAdam,

ZacAdam said:
Chase,

i know you can help this people. :) Maybe not now when it doesn't serve the business yet - Zac

Yeah, you know, my attitude for these guys has always for the most part been "We'll be here for you when you're ready."

Guys at a certain point where they're bitter enough and angry enough and feel sufficiently victimized are not ready to start self-improving with women. They're at a place where the priority for them needs to be realizing that what they're engaged in has them caught in quicksand of never having the things they want in life, and deciding they want to get out of that. Once they get out, they start to look around, and look for folks who can help them out. Before that, they view anyone trying to throw them a lifeline as delusional, unrealistic, a scammer, etc.

Cynical guys are just a very, very tough crowd. They bring negativity to communities, buy little or nothing, complain constantly, and really just are buckets of misery. You can't cater too much to them -- they're not ready to be community members or customers, usually. Focus always needs to be on folks who are ready, and want what you're doing, first. Throw a few lifelines out for the guys in a bad place who want to grab onto them and pull themselves up, but the rest of your energy needs to be on the guys who are actively striving and trying to get there, rather than the guys sitting in a corner grousing about how it's impossible, you can't get there, and you're a sucker for trying.

For those guys, "we're here when you tire of that and are ready to make some strides."


@Rain,

Rain said:
Will ther new forum fix the sql error when putting emoji? I can't put a message or save a draft, if it has an emoji. Not a huge deal but might save time in future posts if copy and pasteing messages so don't have to edit them out and replace with words eg *thinking face emoji*.
Or would that use too much data because they're mini images?

Yes, that's fixed on the new forum.

Emojis aplenty there :)


@Oh Pry,

Oh Pry said:
Glad that you will be taken the action you do Chase but one thing that I would be keeping an eye on and I suggest you do as well are guys coming over from other places who are more entitled. I have occasionally peeked at some of the places you mentioned and while certain men are well-meaning, you do get a number of them who are on a bit of a high horse and could be confrontational personalities just looking for a fight or disregarding the wisdom of more senior members here.

I think it is important to distinguish that certain guys like Hector, Franco, and Grand Pooba for example have earned their stripes for a good reason and all new members that come over should recognize that. When I say new, I mean guys who might have been the hotshot on some other forum or more senior on some other place, it is important for them to know right off the bat that they are still newbies unless the quality of content says otherwise. This means they should be weary of immediately challenging Franco and more senior members with a hostile tone.

Oh yeah, I am very wary of that.

We should have a lot of activity from senior members on here who hadn't been as active lately. Guys who've confirmed they're hopping back on to be fully on-board with the party so far include Hector, Tony D, Grand Pooba (Varoon), Cody Lyans, and I'll be on here of course. I believe Alek's on board as well. I'm sure Franco will jump on to mix it up with us also, and I've asked other guys too. We're all aiming for posting targets, of both original post contributions and replies to forum members' threads.

With that many senior members, it's going to be difficult for new members to stir up much trouble.

When we get new guys joining, I suspect it'll also be piecemeal -- you don't typically get entire floods of refugees all at once. More like one guy joins, tells his friends, and a few of them join, and tell others, over the course of weeks or months.

Then there's an acculturation process... we went through it with Drexel, he had a bumpy transition, and told me at one point he felt like it took him 6-8 months to fully acclimate to the culture we have here. So I fully expect with new members we're going to have a similar transition process.

We'll have more of them, but the culture's strong enough and we have enough advanced guys I think we'll ride it out and get most guys acclimated, and anyone who's really just not a good culture fit at all will have a rough enough time of it he'll eventually show himself out (assuming he doesn't do anything egregious enough to get booted outright).

Oh Pry said:
While I have peeked on other boards, there is a reason I joined this one. You and Franco created an atmosphere of understanding which led to me having the success I have had and I don’t think many boards seem to have that. I think it is important to keep the keyboard jockey and pompous personalities that may come over in check. Let them know that they are new here and unless they provide quality content and prove quality results, they better listen to the law.

I have zero patience or tolerance for that.

I think Franco's maybe a little more accepting of pomposity than I am, but he's not a huge fan of it either.

I am very open to any older members on here who feel put off by some guy feeling pompous PM'ing a mod or opening a report about it and we will check it out further. I'll warn guys over that and boot them if they're too obnoxious. And we'll get the labels set up so if someone's just being an ass and the forum dislikes his behavior people can voice that by voting him as such.

Oh Pry said:
I am excited for what is to come, this place this lead to me getting into triple digits.

While it may be far fetched for now, I do see myself using GC more as the winter in NYC makes going out at times unrealistic haha. If you do need a moderator or someone to lay down the law, I am more than happy to throw my hat in the ring. Happy to be below Franco and you though, you guys are the generals, I am glad to be lieutenant to squash minor things.

Awesome, Oh Pry. Appreciate your support, man!

Chase
 

Chase

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Aaaaand we're live.

Big thanks to Haseeb (who worked 11 hours on the migration today) and Denis (who was online the whole time providing sysadmin support).

We're still tidying a few things up (like user ranks -- don't worry, we have everyone's ranks, those should all be fixed tomorrow... first time I've been a Space Monkey in a while), tags on the Field Reports board, and so on.

Most of the subforums are going away; the posts there will move up from the subforums into their parent forums, with a tag to indicate their topics.

We'll probably also tweak the design a little... I've had some folks tell me the pink color is not ideal (and that the URLs are a little hard to read).

So stay tuned.

The relaunched forum's live now, with more good stuff to come.

Chase
 

Teevster

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Good stuff is coming! New era just started :)

Thanks to the team for all the work, and thanks for all community elders, as well as GC forum member for all the inputs!

Last time I was space Monkey was like what, 2008 mASF! haha. Good times.


Gotta resize my GC avatar into forum size.... that's the hardest thing to do when signing up on a forum....

Alek
 

SexNotValidation

Space Monkey
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194
it seems there is no longer any way to send private messages with this new forum?

also, yesterday i had written a very long field report in my journal that i saved as a draft since it was not finished; it seems that draft has now disappeared after the upgrade. any way to recover this draft?
 

Chase

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Gonna be cool to see you on here more, Alek (Teevster)!

@SexNotValidation,

it seems there is no longer any way to send private messages with this new forum?

Oh yeah.. what is going on with that?

You should be able to click on the username and then click "Start a Conversation."

Seems it isn't there now.

Haseeb's already turned in for the day (it's 10 PM his time, and he was at a good 11+ hours today) but we will get this fixed tomorrow.

also, yesterday i had written a very long field report in my journal that i saved as a draft since it was not finished; it seems that draft has now disappeared after the upgrade. any way to recover this draft?

I'll ask Haseeb tomorrow when he's back on.

We still have the old forum so should be able to recover that draft for you.

Chase
 

Seppuku

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Hey Chase,

It looks good overall, but yeah, the pinkish theme color is a little difficult to read, as it doesn't offer much contrast with the white background.

Appreciated: the ability to post an image, and insert bullet points and links without having to resort to BB code.

Cheers,
Seppuku
 

DarkKnight

Cro-Magnon Man
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Oct 18, 2018
Messages
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So you're Rolstad? I never knew. Love your articles man, especially about FSC, it really struck with a great girl I lost 2 years ago and in hindsight FSC totally fits into the picture. I already had an intuitive grasp, but not as articulate. I think that was a much needed missing pickup theory.

Back on topic: I can reply to private conversations , but also see no option to start new ones. Maybe I am missing something?
 

Kvothe

Modern Human
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872
What do the points mean? What are the different ranks and what stage of development do they map to?
 

Chase

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@Teevster,

Looks like we had not set chat permissions.

Fixed. Everyone should be able to see and enter chat now.

Also, Teevster -- you're a chat moderator/admin ;)

@Kvothe,

There's a good description of the point of forum ranks here.

Ranks roughly correlate to:

  1. Rookie: just joined, under 10 posts

  2. Space Monkey: either a beginner or someone the Boards don't know much about yet

  3. Tool-Bearing Hominid: someone who's made a good case he's either a.) at least a little skilled with women, b.) working very hard and has a positive attitude about improving with women, or c.) is going to contribute a fair amount of not-terrible content

  4. Cro-Magnon Man: someone who's intermediate or better with women

  5. Modern Human: high intermediate or low advanced with women, helps other members and gives solid advice

  6. Tribal Elder: very good with girls, has a very solid/skilled approach, gets results, probably has a fair few lay reports and some good technical "how to do X thing nobody's talked about how to do before" or "how to do Y thing in a totally new and useful and cool way", has a good positive attitude and helps out the newer guys

We do user updates infrequently, so there can be some lag between a guy's advancement and when we update him.

Chase
 

Chase

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How do either of these color schemes look, gents?

CRIMSON:

forum-mockup-crimson.png

BROWN:

forum-mockup-brown.png
 
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