Jun 30 2008
BY THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / June 12, 2008
A very frank and often hilarious conversation with Neil Strauss on his experiences following the publication of The Game, courtesy of AJ and Jordan from Pickup Podcast. Click below to listen:
Part 1 of the Neil Strauss Interview
Part 2 of the Neil Strauss Interview
-The Boston Bachelor
Apr 21 2008
By THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / April 21, 2008
Alright folks, first I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you.
The bad news: The Babe and The Bachelor will be no more as of Tuesday, 4/29, which will be our last show.
The good news: My good friend V will be filling in as a special guest host for tonight’s show and next week’s finale.
Now onto the details for tonight’s show:
Click here to tune in tonight beginning at 8 pm EDT…
-The Boston Bachelor
Apr 17 2008
By THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / April 17, 2008
For most guys, online dating is a fucking waste of time. Actually, according to Jupiter Research, online dating is a really big fucking waste of time, as 97% of guys cancel their online dating membership within 3 months due to dissatisfaction. The number one reason cited in this survey?
Lack of response.
In fact, the NY Times bestselling book Freakonomics states that 57% of men who sign up for online dating go through their membership without getting a single response from a gal. Instead, in today’s online dating world, most guys experience the following:
1. Guy puts up typical online dating profile and shells out $60 for a 3 month membership.
2. Guy browses for profiles.
3. Guy emails 100 girls over the next few months.
4. Guy gets 5 responses back from the 100 initial emails he sent. 3 of them read “Sorry, but I don’t think we’re compatible. Good luck!” The remaining 2 seem promising, so he emails them asking for their phone numbers. One offers her screen name instead, and he never hears back from the other.
5. Guy chats on-and-off with the girl over AOL IM or MSN or GTalk. He tries to get a face-to-face meeting with her, but it never materializes. Guy increases porn-viewing habits.
6. Guy cancels online dating membership, and puts a picture of Dr. Phil’s face on his dartboard.
Sadly the above scenario is really not much of an exaggeration. So why is online dating so fucked? Well, for starters…
• It’s a huge numbers game. If you’re a guy and you don’t believe me, do what I did and set up a personals profile as a slightly attractive woman on CraigsList. I guarantee that you’ll get at least 50 email responses within the first few hours. By the second day you’ll have at least 100-150 replies.
• You’re probably writing the same shit as all the other guys write, or copying and pasting from a template (yes, she’ll be able to tell; no, I don’t blame you for doing it). Again, set up a fake profile as a girl and you’ll see what I mean.
• Writing individually tailored emails takes up a lot of time, time that could be better spent on more productive activities (like shaving the back of your neck).
• There’s a lot of crazy people out there. PS: If a woman has the acronym TV in “her” tagline, that doesn’t mean that “she” likes to watch television.
• Pictures lie.
• Many of these online dating sites have no qualms about making their employees pose as lonely, nubile 19 year-olds to keep you on the site.
• You’ll get more rebounds than Dwight Howard in a charity basketball game. Seriously, at least half the women on the site just got out of a long term relationship.
• They drop like flies. If they’ve been on the site for more than a week, chances are they’ve already received more emails than they can check.
Yeah, you get the point.
But 2 weeks ago, I received an email from the folks over at Yahoo! Personals, offering me a free 3 month trial membership. So I thought to myself, why not take them up on their offer and make a little experiment out of it: Is it really possible for the average guy to just put up a profile, sit back, and have women (who aren’t actually guys in Bombay selling penis pills) emailing him constantly?
So here’s the challenge:
1. For the next 10 weeks, I’m going to rotate a new profile and profile tagline. For starters, I’m just going to use a plain-vanilla profile and tagline, one you’d typically see in the average guy’s profile.
2. I’m going to count both the number of views and the number of responses I get (positive, neutral, negative).
3. This is where I need your help. 8 of the 10 profiles and taglines will be coming from the readers here. The profiles can say anything, provided that they’re approved by the dating site and they don’t contain any kind of hate language or personal threats. Otherwise, use your imagination and come up with something creative. Email me your original profile and tagline at bb@thebostonbachelor.com. Do not post it in the comments section here, for obvious reasons.
4. At the end of the trial period, the results and responses will be tallied. The person who wrote the profile that received the most number of positive and neutral email responses from women will get a surprise gift. Of course, if you don’t want the gift, I’ll just keep it for myself.
I’ll be back in a few weeks with an update. Have fun; I know I will.
-The Boston Bachelor
Apr 01 2008
By THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / April 1, 2008
Tune in to The Babe and The Bachelor This Tuesday at 9 pm EDT as we discuss:
1. Does age really matter? Why do some people only go for those who are much older or younger than themselves?
2. What are the fatal flaws, ie the dealbreakers, when it comes to the opposite sex?
Call in during the show with any questions at (646) 595-3961.
See you tonight.
-The Boston Bachelor
Mar 31 2008
By THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / March 31, 2008
Ever wonder how singles in the United States are distributed population wise? Well the wise folks over at National Geographic created a unique map to answer this question. The results may surprise you…
-The Boston Bachelor
Feb 12 2008
By THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / February 12, 2008
UPDATE: SHOW IS RESCHEDULED FOR TUESDAY, MARCH 11 AT 9:00 PM EST.
An open letter to all the women out there:
We men all share a secret. The secret? When it comes to women, we look at more than just physical beauty. Much more.
Of course, we still have to find you sexually attractive, but to any guy worth his salt, looks is only the 1st of many steps in the screening process. There’s a distinct reason why your similar-looking girl friend is constantly meeting her “McDreamy” (yeah, I just felt sick as I typed that word for the first and last time in my life) while you’re being treated like second hand news. And it comes down to… Well, you’re going to have to tune in to The Babe and The Bachelor Tonight at 9 pm EDT to find out.
Also, we study the underrated art of storytelling, or how to make any ol’ personal anecdote interesting to everyone. Even if it doesn’t involve having to “borrow” a ladder from the fire station to rescue your keys from a second-story roof at 2 in the morning.
Call in during the show with any questions at (646) 595-3961.
See you tonight.
-The Boston Bachelor
Jan 28 2008
By THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / January 28, 2008
Legendary pickup artist and dating guru Carlos Xuma will be joining us for a special edition of The Babe and The Bachelor this Tuesday, January 29th at 9 pm EDT.
Carlos is the author of The Dating Black Book, The Secrets of the Alpha Man, and The Alpha Rules, and has previously collaborated with David DeAngelo, Lance Mason of Pickup101, and Neil Strauss and The StyleLife Academy.
Call in during the show at (646) 595-3961.
See you tomorrow night.
-The Boston Bachelor
Jan 08 2008
By THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / January 8, 2008
Just a reminder–tonight at 9 pm EDT The Babe and The Bachelor returns from the holiday break to reveal all about the secret society of pickup artists. We’ll see you then.
-The Boston Bachelor
Dec 24 2007
By THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / December 24, 2007
In tribute to Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Spanakopita Day, or whatever holiday you celebrate, here’s some brilliant words of wisdom from Owen Cook’s The Blueprint. Enjoy.
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A poor guy has an identity crisis. Maybe the problem starts when he gets a feeling that a girl might like him. He imagines a connection with her and all sorts of shared experiences that don’t exist yet.
He thinks that there’s all this unspoken sexual tension going on beneath the surface. He even pictures his girl when he listens to all the romantic songs on the radio. But inevitably, he figures out that his projection doesn’t exist in any shared reality that includes the girl. To realize that it’s all in his head – that the girl doesn’t actually reciprocate the way that he feels… or think about him while he’s thinking about her… It’s a hard pill to swallow.
Let’s imagine instead that our poor guy already has a girlfriend. The problems start for him when he finds out that she’s been cheating. He’d idealized the relationship. It felt good. In order to stay infatuated with his girl, he had screened out any sketchiness and focused on her best attributes and the most fun times that they’d had. Together, he and his girl had come up with all sorts of shared idealizations that had made their relationship strong.
There were many things that they’d expressed to one another as a way of reinforcing their love. They remembered the first place that they’d met, gone out, and had sex. They had a special reason for why they’d met and were still together, that other couples didn’t have. Their “thing.” It wasn’t something that they could get from anyone else, so they could feel totally secure to feel their love without fear of loss. It was not replaceable.
And to make it even stronger, they had continually re-articulated to one another that it would last… “FOREVER.”
What’s funny is that when it ends, all of these special feelings might still be there. It’s just that there are now all of these new, bad feelings that go along with them. He wants to feel like he did before. His reality comes crashing down around him. He reaches out for his girl to validate their old shared reality, but she is gone from him. The girl that existed for him no longer exists. She was a figment of his imagination. The face that he saw was one of many faces that she had.
He doesn’t realize it, but he has many such faces himself. We all have different faces for people who have a different value to us. Are you the same person when you talk to a pushy vagrant asking for spare change as you are when you talk to your mother? How would a person’s experience of you differ, depending on their value to you? What he saw in her was the face that a person shows to someone who has value to them. It is such an easy face to look at. Like looking into the mirror, and seeing the most beautiful face in the entire world.
“Wait… She’s not seeing things clearly. What about our ‘thing?’ Doesn’t she realize that she can’t get it from him? Nobody can love her like I can. Hang on. She fucked this new guy the first time they hung out? OK, that just doesn’t make sense because she said that she always waited three months with a guy to make it special. What?! She fucked him on the couch where we had our first time together?! No. That was the special couch. Doesn’t this bitch remember that that was the SPECIAL COUCH?!?!”
He rationalizes that she’s just confused. He won’t give up on love. He resolves to “win her back.” But he has gone from being her boyfriend to being more like all those other guys from her fan club. He is everything that her new guy is not.
And she feels a little bad for him, for sure. But as she walks out the door from the “one last meeting” that he begged her for, her face of pity turns into a beaming smile for her new guy waiting outside to pick her up.
She goes on and enjoys her life without a thought. He sits around thinking about her, pining for a girl who doesn’t share his reality anymore. And though he will never admit it to himself, deep down he sees the worst of himself in her. Because under different circumstances, he knows that he might have done the same thing. Maybe if their relationship had staled. Or if he had met a certain other girl. So he mopes around for a while, until the feelings of emptiness start to subside. Then, once he’s ready, he begins the process of re-establishing himself.
He shifts his focus from his loss to superficial areas in which he can improve himself. He focuses on his status conveying intermediaries such as his credentials, career, property, vehicle, clothing, jewelry, and so on. He’s a together guy. He’ll get it under control. Time passes. His life improves to an extent. But he is still alone.
Through our social conditioning, we come to understand “love” in a way that’s often more focused towards idealism than it is towards accurately defining the phenomenon. Writers and philosophers have long debated the meaning of the term, without ever coming to any consensus. In some cultures, there are even multiple words used to define “love.”
Many people conceive of love as having supernatural properties. They might believe that every person has only one perfect soulmate. Or that true love will always last forever. Or that people can fall in love only a certain number of times. They might even believe that fate will cause love to “just happen” when the time is right. With faith that there are such powerful forces at work, it isn’t surprising that people will often intensify their feelings with the belief that they are following their hearts.
Think back to the last time that you felt that you were in love. How did you know? Was it a feeling of attraction? Was it a feeling of connection? Was it a feeling of lust? Was it feeling of physical attachment? Was it a feeling of underlying one-ness? Was it feeling of anxious emotional co-dependence? Was it a combination of those things? Is love an old couple sitting on their porch, comfortable in their long established routines? Is it two teenagers locked in passion in the back seat or their car, scrambling for a condom? Is it a pair of newlyweds, gazing into each other’s eyes as they take their matrimonial vows?
It’s often said that love is self-hypnosis; a beautiful psychosis that takes hold and prompts us to act in ways that we would otherwise not even consider. Love is not something that is caused by another person. We cause it in ourselves. As we loop our thoughts over and over around our concept of a particular person, our mind shifts the way that we perceive them and finds ways to make sense of it. Suddenly, everything seems so simple. It’s love. And as it takes hold, our physical body follows suit, spinning and intensifying our emotional chemistry until we are fully enraptured.
For some people, love can be an opportunity to have a partner on their journey. It can be a chance for them to fully experience and understand another person, and to have that person do the same for them in return. A loving relationship between two people can be healthy and cultivate spiritual and physical growth. It can be one of the most pleasurable and important experiences that a person has over the course of his or her entire life.
But that depends on whether or not the person is ready for it. Because the idea of love can also be destructive. For some people, it can be a self-deception that they can focus on as a way to avoid facing their shortcomings. People will often rationalize that any strong emotional reaction that they feel towards another person is a sign that they are “in love.”
They might have worked themselves into an infatuation with someone who doesn’t reciprocate their interest, and rationalized that it’s something that would make them feel complete. They might desperately crave a person’s attention, and rationalize the anxious feeling of need for their approval as being love-butterflies fluttering around in their stomach. In a relationship, they might leave their partner, because they rationalize that their loss of novel infatuation is a sign that they have fallen out of love. And later, they might have trouble finding someone new, and rationalize that they lost the love of their life.
There are people who will fall in love with anyone who will have them. They are eager, and in love with the idea of being in love. There are other people who fear falling in love. They are jaded, and create emotional barriers to prevent themselves from being hurt in the future. Ultimately, people process their experiences through a fog of emotions, and create and intensify these occurrences in their own minds.
As we said, a person can feel an increase in their sense of acceptance by being in a specific situation. And in the same way, a person can feel an increase in their value by being with a specific person.
When a person’s sense of acceptance and identity is tied up in another person, they are dependent on that person to feel good about themselves. And because of that, they become reactive in their relationship. They focus their thoughts more towards the pain of possibly losing the other person than on the pleasure of being themselves. Once that happens, their behaviour becomes less attractive to their partner, and their partner’s feeling of love towards them begins to subside. Perhaps then, it is only the person who doesn’t need social acceptance to feel good, who can really appreciate being in love. Is it possible, that it is only when you don’t need love that you will find it?
* * * * *
-The Boston Bachelor
Dec 18 2007
By THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / December 18, 2007
Tune in Tuesday, January 8th at 9 pm EDT on The Babe and The Bachelor for this extra-special show:
1. Pickup Artists. In the mid-90s, a group of men from all over the world converged over the Internet to master the one part of their lives that forever eluded them–women. Years later, mostly due to Neil Strauss’ 2005 bestselling memoir The Game, the “pickup artist” phenomenon is alive more than ever–from books to DVDs to seminars to reality TV shows such as VH-1’s The Pick Up Artist. Who are these pickup artists that go under the pseudonyms of Mystery, Style, David DeAngelo, Carlos Xuma, Tyler Durden, and Zan? What do they really teach, and do their methods work? Tune in to learnan in insider’s perspective on the facts and the myths about this fascinating underground society.
2. Getting physical on the first date.
3. 10 fun, (almost) free places to take a date.
4. Questions from our callers… (please, no closeted admirers this time.)
AND MORE…
Call in during the show at (646) 595-3961.
See you tonight.
-The Boston Bachelor
