Right, but walk in customers aren’t being treated badly. They are being treated quite fairly. They walk in, place their order, and get their spot in the food preparation queue. When they walk out, they saved time relative to how quickly they would have gotten their food if they waited in the drive thru line. Like, if McD’s closed their drive thru and had everyone go inside, you would have to wait longer for your food, because you wouldn’t be able to cut in front of the tail end of the drive thru.

Like, we’re on fuckcars, so “cars bad”. And as a subscriber here, I approve that message. I’m not a huge fan of McDonalds, either. But as I see it, your complaint seems to be that McDonalds isnt serving you well because you have to wait in line, even though you can’t see the physical line in front of you. Like, yeah, there aren’t other people physically standing in front of you in line in the restaurant, but they placed their orders ahead of you, so they will probably get their orders before you. I feel like this is pretty straightforward.

I think you do kind of need to get over resistance to engaging with some PUA material. The reality is, male sexuality is demonized in mainstream society, and so any frank discussion of how to improve your dating life as a man gets pushed underground. It’s like buying drugs - there are lots of people in the drug world who are honest and reasonable, and just want to help others have a good time and make some money. But because their product is illegal, they are always going to be mixed in with seedy crooks. So try to think of “PUA” stuff as more of an ecosystem than a monolith. There are some people giving really terrible advice. Some people who have some good tips mixed in with their toxic bullshit. And a few people, often hidden, who have a lot of really good, solid advice that can help you.

Manson was a PUA. He blogged for several years about men’s dating advice, refining his ideas until he published Models. The latest edition is the most polished, and gives an excellent and fairly obvious framework for becoming a more datable person. If you read the forward to this edition, it is fairly obvious that his ideas evolved somewhat between the first edition and the second. The impression I get is that he wanted to rewrite several parts to emphasize the idea that becoming more dateable is about becoming more emotionally open and becoming a better person. But also the impression I get is that he simply removed some of his more controversial statements and coded others, because he was trying to sanitize his past for his move into mainstream writing for the upcoming publication of his next book. If you are hesitant to engage with his content because of his PUA history, I recommend reading a book called “Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser”, which was written by a female feminist, kink-friendly, rationalist-adjacent blogger. Her blog and the comments on it were also a very good read on the intersection between kink, feminism, and pickup - but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to exist anymore, and it looks like it was taken down from the wayback machine.

Anyway - you should read Models. Manson is a smart guy, and the title is a clever joke. It is meant to draw in the typical guy who would normally take PUA advice - the kind of guy who wants to fuck models - but then the book quickly explains what the title actually means. It is about creating mental models of what it means to be an appealing and dateable man. The book is, in large part, a response to the toxic pickup culture that Manson was a part of, and his attempt to create an alternative that is less toxic.

Tinder can be frustrating because you put in all your effort up front. Being successful on Tinder is all about having good pictures, and it can be a lot of time and effort to get good pictures. Like I said, my success on Tinder was a few months of direct effort, but 15 years of indirect effort. The indirect effort was all about cultivating a good lifestyle where I was physically healthy, had overcome some of my social insecurities, and was doing cool things I actually cared about. The direct effort was getting a haircut, putting on some nicer clothes, and shooting photos where I looked like a cool, confident dude who would be a good fuck. I can send you the guide I followed. Again, the author had a history in the PUA/red pill space, but has since renounced most of that.

So, there are 4 major arenas of dating that we talk about in men’s dating advice. Daygame/cold approach, night game, online, and social circle.

In my opinion, the PUA advice emphasizes CA and NG too much, when most guys have the most success in OLD and SC. I think this is because CA and NG are harder, and so guys like to talk about how successful they are at them to prove what hot stuff they are. If you don’t have much experience, you should make things as easy as possible so you can get experience.

In OLD, you know that every girl you message or swipe on is looking to date - that’s why they are there - so you are absolved of any feeling that asking a girl out or flirting would be inappropriate. If you get a rejection - even a harsh rejection - it is usually just through text so it stings less. And if you have a good profile, it is easy to set up multiple dates each week, so you can get a ton of experience really quickly.

Social circle is where you meet girls via mutual friends or in clubs or hobbies. In social circle, you benefit a lot from already being a known entity - a girl you meet already knows other people trust you, so she is more likely to trust you, and therefore be open to your advances. Plus, you tend to be more confident around your friends, or while you are doing something you enjoy and are good at - and confidence is sexy.

DG/CA and NG have their place, imo. First, they are good if you just want to make a hobby of chasing girls. If you just find you really enjoy walking up to strangers and introducing yourself, then go ahead and do it. Also, if you really want to date/have sex with the hottest, coolest women, then you will need to do pursue these avenues. First of all, because these women already have tons of suitors online and very booked out social lives, so if you don’t introduce yourself when you randomly see them you will never get the chance otherwise. And second, because walking up to a stranger and straight up asking if they are interested in you takes some balls, ie, confidence. And, again, confidence is attractive. Getting good at these avenues can also be good because then you are open to opportunities which arise even if you don’t specifically spend time pursuing them. For example, if you are spending time in a nightclub or a coffee shop just as part of your day to day life, and then you see a cute girl you are interested in, having DG/NG skills lets you confidently make a move on her rather than nervously glancing at her until you or she leaves and you think of what could have been. But finally, really the most important reason for most guys to do CA/NG is simply to overcome social anxiety and gain confidence - but this is for guys who are somewhat experienced already, who want to take their dating to the next level.

In general, I would recommend not talking about your dating life at work, at least until you are more experienced. It can be dangerous for your employment status, as you already know. Keep your conversations about dating to close friends who you can trust.

if you are in person, you get service first. You took the time to enter the restaurant and can see the service being performed - so you should get priority.

Again, fast food restaurants are the physical manifestation of platonic capitalist greed. Please explain your theory on how this change would improve profitability, and why such a change would be worth the risk it imposses when the existing system has been working for decades.

That’s because there are 3 or 4 cars in the line between the order kiosk and the window who have already ordered before you walked in the door. When you walk in, you jump the line of cars before the order kiosk. But there aren’t separate queues for counter and drive thru in the kitchen. They just see a list of orders in the order in which they were received, and process orders more or less FIFO.

If there are cars behind the order kiosk, you are almost certainly getting your order faster than if you had joined at the end of the line.

I can almost guarantee that they make orders in the order they are received, more or less. So door dash gets their orders first, because they ordered online before they showed up. Then the drive thru orders get made before yours because there are 4 cars in line between the order kiosk and the window - they already ordered, and are waiting for their order to be filled before you walked in the door. For some reason, there is always someone in the drive thru line who is ordering for their whole office or a Mormon family or something.

The drive thru has 2 bottlenecks. Ordering and payment/delivery. Thus, the drive thru will have a much more consistent pace - there is always someone waiting to order, and always someone waiting to have their food handed to them. Since this is the case, there is always someone assigned specifically to this task, sitting in the drive thru window with a mic on. The cash registers, on the other hand, are far more efficient. Ordering and payment happen in the same step, and food is delivered simply by putting it on the counter. Multiple registers mean multiple orders can be taken at once. This means the line inside can be cleared quickly, which means it is less consistent, which means the staff often forgets to check it - especially since staff taking orders will quickly reallocate to making orders once the line is cleared. Add to this, taking orders inside is when a staff member must interact face-to-face with a customer - well known as the least enticing part of any customer service job. So it is easy for a staff member to see customers at the till and procrastinate on taking their orders, since there is more enjoyable work to be done.

There isn’t some kind of conspiracy to make walk-in customers’ experience as bad as possible. Fast food restaurants are evil capitalist money making machines, and their incentive is to make you as happy as possible per net dollar earned. If you really want to get your order fast, just order online before you show up. Then walk in the door and grab your order off the counter like a door dasher. If you insist on getting your order from the counter, realize that you are still getting your order faster than you would in the drive thru - you are just suffering from the illusion that they are prioritizing the drive thru since you aren’t counting the cars in line that ordered before you.

Otherwise I agree with you except I don’t get to even talk to a human, I am directed to a kiosk.

Honestly I’m a big fan of this. If I’m eating at a fast food restaurant, I’m having a bad day. And if you are working at a fast food restaurant, I feel odds are that you are having a bad day, too. Why should we inflict our bad days on each other?

And they flash a tip option. A tip for what?

I’m confused as to why people are consistently so upset by this. What happens is obvious. A restaurant buys some POS software to plug into their checkout system. Since the software is used in many different restaurants with many different needs, it has an option for tipping. The person installing the software sees the option and says “hey, if someone wants to give us more money, why not give them the option?”, checks a box on a config screen they will never open again, and then goes to lunch. Just select “No Tip” and move on with your life.

I commonly see these drive thru lines and walk inside. No line.

This would be a believable theory if I didn’t see huge lines of cars outside fast food restaurants every day before and after COVID.

Well, I gotta say, that was a wild ride.

Personally, I grew up emotionally disconnected, unsupported, socially isolated, and bullied. Like, kids at school making fun of me for wearing clothes that hadn’t been washed, because my parents either didn’t notice or didn’t care. I ended up depressed, socially anxious, and socially stunted as a result. For years as a kid, I prayed for the day that I would have the courage to pick the lock on my dad’s gun and blow my own brains out.

Luckily, I moved out of my folks house at 18 to go to college, and have barely been back since. I avoid spending time with my parents as much as possible, since I seem to have pavlovian conditioning such that being around them triggers my depression, and leads to excessive alcohol consumption.

After agonizing about it for years, I finally lost my virginity at 23. After that, I failed to sleep with another girl for years. At 29, I panicked, said FUCK THIS!! and decided to do whatever it took. So I found a paint-by-numbers guide to getting laid on Tinder on the internet, followed it to the T, and managed to actually start sleeping with women.

I’ll say, the experience made me happier and changed my life for the better. It made me a better person. But at the same time, it didn’t solve all my problems. And also, the couple months of effort that I put in at 29 was really just the culmination of work I’d been putting into myself and my life since I was 13. I still have some heavy emotional problems I’m dealing with - but feeling sexually desireable isn’t one of them anymore, and I’m grateful for that.

To me, it sounds like you’ve been through the shit, and you are taking the right steps. You’re cutting out people who make you miserable - that’s excellent. You are going out to meetups and meeting people. Awesome. You are going to therapy - that is fucking amazing. Seriously, the fact that you’ve been knocked down so many times and are still getting back up is something to be proud of.

Our culture is really weird about sex and dating, so it is really hard to find good advice. I think my best advice is to focus on improving yourself to be more datable for a while (like, yeah, it’s okay to want more people to be into you!), and then to take a break and focus on other things, before coming back to it. You get better at things when you focus on them. But you also need to relax and be happy and not be one dimensional. So alternate back and forth, hopefully without burning out.

I recommend you spend as much time as possible meeting new people and cultivating friendships. Dating and improving yourself is so much easier when you have a deep and wide network of friends to lean on.

For a macro view of how to become a more datable man, I recommend the book Models by Mark Manson. It boils down to “don’t be needy”. If you want to know how to not be needy, you might have heard of the next book he wrote to answer that question - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

If you have problems moving things forward with women - anything from introducing yourself to asking them on a date to getting them into bed - the best advice I ever heard is “stop trying to be smooth.” You are autistic. This is actually a superpower in dating, because you will have a hard time sending and receiving the subconscious, unspoken cues most people give each other. Instead, you use your autism to be direct - tell girls exactly what you are thinking and exactly what you want. Ask them what they are thinking and what they want when you are uncertain. Just be autistically honest. As long as you are honest and respectful, just say anything that pops into your head. “Hey, I saw you over here and thought you were really pretty. What’s up? I’m John.” “I’m glad you agreed to go on this date with me, but I have to say, I’m kinda nervous.” “You have a beautiful smile and it makes me want to kiss you.” “I’m having a good time with you tonight. Do you wanna go back to my place?” “You seem nervous. Are you okay?”

At the same time, learning to flirt and communicate effectively is a process that doesn’t happen overnight. To learn how to flirt, I recommend a book called “The Inner Game of Tennis”. Read it, and everywhere it says “Tennis” just replaced that with “flirting”.

This isn’t about people who go out and get hammered 6 nights per week. It’s about normal people doing a very normal thing - grabbing a beer at a bar, or sharing a joint on the back porch, or hell, making out with a stranger at a rave while you are both high on molly. These are normal, run of the mill dates and encounters that normal, responsible adults have all the time.

If you don’t drink, that’s fine. If going on a first date at a bar makes you uncomfortable, that’s also fine. If someone asking you out on a date to a bar causes you to not want to interact with that person even further, once again, totally fine. But if you think it is creepy for normal, average, responsible adults to meet up and grab a beer and maybe make out, then you are bonkers.

Imo, more childish to deny people’s basic needs and desires. They aren’t that complicated.

Okay, you are seriously terminally online. “Let’s grab a drink” is a classic first date. I can go to literally dozens of bars tonight and see tons of people out on first dates over a reasonable amount of alcohol. Like, Jesus fucking Christ you’re off the deep end if you think this constitutes creepy behavior.

Sorry, I should have also added: don’t be autistic.

Yeah, have other conversations. Meet people. Have a good time at a party. And then when you see someone hot, say hi and flirt with them, and then go by vibe and see if they wanna jump in the sack with you.

You said “no alcohol or drugs”. You’re aware that a shit ton of relationships start in bars, clubs, house parties, music festivals, etc? You just explicitly excluded one of the most common scenarios where people do their mating dances.

Simple. What do young men care about? Getting laid and getting paid. Promise them that, and you’ll get their votes.

You’ll need to use coded language, of course. But using coded language is politicians’ whole job.

1. Erect such high standards of moral purity that you cannot possibly win elections.
2. Lose elections.
3. Complain about how those in power never make anything better.
4. Maintain your sense of moral superiority, since if you never have power, you can never fuck up.

Because the definition of counterculture is “against the mainstream”.

The liberal viewpoint has been the mainstream for probably 50 years now. There’s a reason there’s a song called “Nazi Punks Fuck Off”. Because there are Nazi punks. Who exist because not being racist is mainstream, and you can therefore rebel against it.

Liberal politicians do it because it’s been pushed by the left. It’s how they keep leftists voting more centrally. They take left wing ideas, then water them down enough to appeal for centrist voters. Centrists find common sense ideas appealing, while those on the left get a dog whistle.

You’re making an excellent point here. I’ll bring it up at the next Council of Men that we should stop oppressing women. Good thing we figured that out - top notch work!

Ok.

Have fun losing.

I don’t think you understand how politics works in a democracy.