You Had One Job

Jared Rutledge and Jacob Owens.

“Our relationship was not based around sex. We went on legitimate dates. I met his friends. We confided in one another. He showed genuine feelings and was vulnerable.”
— “April”

“I vouched for him, for his character, for his business. I was so upset I had friends on that list.”
— “Candyce”

“I am angry that he saw me as a conquest. I am angry that he was dishonest. I am angry that he humiliated myself and the 50 other women on that list. I am angry that for a second I let him make me feel shame.”
— “Cara”

“Don’t s–t where you eat.”

A guy named Steve shared that bit of timeless wisdom with me in 1977. Steve was a Kappa Alpha at Jacksonville (Ala.) State University and had a steady girlfriend. He was giving me a ride home to Atlanta and we started talking (predictably) about women. Steve explained that, while he had no intention of cheating on his girlfriend Judy, with whom he had been going steady since high school, were he ever to do so, it wouldn’t be with anyone at JSU or in his hometown. “Don’t s–t where you eat,” because girls always talk. If you’re going to screw around, never do so within socio-geographic proximity of your main relationship.

Of course, monogamous fidelity is the wisest romantic strategy of all, but testosterone-crazed young bachelors determined to exploit women’s “sexual empowerment” (as promiscuity is viewed in liberal “pro-sex” feminist discourse) get hooked on the thrill of the hunt and, alas, must learn their lessons the hard way.

“Don’t s–t where you eat” also means that sexual adventures should never be conducted in such a way as to jeopardize your employment. Beware of any temptation to screw around with women at work, because if such an affair goes wrong, the ramifications could ruin your career (unless you’re Bill Clinton, in which case the liberal media will do everything possible to protect you). Young fools always insist on learning such lessons the hard way, which brings us to the interesting saga of idiotic douchebags Jared Rutledge and Jacob Owens:

Two coffee shop owners in North Carolina have come under fire after it was revealed that they were the men behind a demeaning blog and podcast that mocked their supposed sexual conquests — as women speak out against the men they thought they knew.
Jared Rutledge, 31, and Jacob Owens, 27, who are the owners of Waking Life Espresso in Asheville, graphically discussed their alleged liaisons with more than 50 women on their Holistic Game blog, podcast series and Twitter account, before they were outed by the blog Jared And Jacob Said in August and later by Asheville Blog. The men, who confirmed they were behind the site, apologized for their actions, however, three of the women who found themselves listed on their blog said they doubt their sincerity. . . .
In one of Jared’s most controversial posts, titled A Breakdown of All My Lays, he explicitly chronicled his exploits with 50 women he said he slept with since 2012.

Dude.

The layers of stupidity involved here are phenomenal, as I am certain Jared and Jacob now realize in hindsight — alas, too late!

Let us begin, gentlemen, with the recognition that the entirety of “pickup artist” (PUA) blogging is a gigantic error, ultimately harmful to the interests of heteronormative patriarchy. Insofar as PUAs encourage men to imitate successful strategies, they degrade the value of these strategies, because if every guy on the planet is running the same set of tactical maneuvers, eventually these moves become the equivalent of a bad poker player’s “tell.” Women are not as stupid as some PUAs seem to think they are, and the public sharing of strategic knowledge makes it possible for women to counter-strategize. This escalates the difficulties encountered by heteronormative patriarchy and may, in fact, be a factor in the notable resurgence of radical lesbian feminism that I have been tracking for the past year or so.

The Internet braggadocio of the “PUA community” is foolish in several ways, including the fact that it provides feminists fodder: “See? This is what misogynist swine men really are.”

YOU HAD ONE JOB!

Never do anything that harms you own interests. And if any man thinks that bragging about his sexual exploits is advantageous to himself, he should contact Jared Rutledge and Jacob Owens, who have proved the truth of Ben Franklin’s sage of advice: “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”

You had one job! Never do anything that will give feminists a chance to say to women, “See? We told you so. All men are pigs.”

The psychological essence of PUA “game” theory is dehumanization, learning to view women the way a hungry lion views a wildebeest herd gathered around a watering hole on the Katanga Plateau.

Feminists call this attitude “misogyny” or “sexism” as if, by interpreting it through the warped lens of political ideology, they were actually explaining its causes. Construing PUAs as epiphenomenal to patriarchal oppression, however, conveniently exempts feminism from blame. It was feminists like Shulamith Firestone, Andrea Dworkin and Mary Daly who told women that the institutions and values of traditional morality — faith, chastity and modesty, marriage, motherhood and family — were tantamount to slavery. Feminists insisted that traditional morality was antithetical to liberation and equality.

“This is the essence of so-called romance, which is rape embellished with meaningful looks.”
— Andrea Dworkin, “The Night and Danger,” 1979, in Letters From a War Zone (1993)

“For me, both personally and politically, sexual fidelity was anathema: Monogamy equaled ownership, which reeked of patriarchal capitalism.”
— Karla Jay, Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation (1999)

“There are politics in sexual relationships because they occur in the context of a society that assigns power based on gender and other systems of inequality and privilege. . . . [T]he interconnections of systems are reflected in the concept of heteropatriarchy, the dominance associated with a gender binary system that presumes heterosexuality as a social norm. . . .
“As many feminists have pointed out, heterosexuality is organized in such a way that the power men have in society gets carried into relationships and can encourage women’s subservience, sexually and emotionally.”
— Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions (fifth edition, 2012)

If monogamy was just a bourgeois prejudice, as feminists insisted, and if liberation meant eschewing sexual fidelity as “ownership,” then what logical consequences could men deduce? Feminist theory condemns husbands and fathers as the equivalent of slave owners. Feminism mocks the very idea of romantic love — “rape embellished with meaningful looks” — as an illusion, while declaring heterosexuality inherently oppressive to women. If these are the premises of the feminist syllogism, what is the conclusion of their argument?

‘Heartfelt, Vulnerable and Utterly Clueless’

Jared Rutledge majored in philosophy at UNC-Asheville, and the name of his coffee shop, Waking Life, was derived from a quote by philosopher George Santayana: “Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.” We must therefore presume that Rutledge embarked upon his PUA career with his eyes wide open, fully cognizant of the existential meaning of his choices. He had weighed his options and rejected alternatives to the lion-on-the-Katanga-Plateau perspective.

What led him to this fateful decision? Rutledge was raised a Christian and, until late 2012, was in a serious relationship with only the third woman he had ever had sex with. He shared a romantic letter he wrote her in 2011, after they’d been dating a year, prefacing it with an introduction that includes this:

“My words are heartfelt, vulnerable, and utterly clueless. It didn’t change a damn thing in our relationship. She swore she wanted this vulnerability and then, when it was presented, she despised me for the weakness she rightfully saw.”

See? Women say they want guys who are emotionally sensitive, but the minute a guy actually expresses any such sentiment, she perceives this as weakness, which inspires contempt for him. A lot of what feminists condemn as “misogyny” stems from the observable reality that (a) all women despise weak men, (b) many women cannot distinguish between kindness and weakness, and (c) some women have a sadistic tendency toward emotional cruelty.

Could I share some personal anecdotes to illustrate this? Yes.

Could I explain ways for guys to deal with this problem? Yes.

However, publicly discussing strategy is foolish, as I say, and irrelevant to my point, which is that what feminists call “misogyny” or “sexism” quite often is the product of men’s realistic interpretation of their own experience with women who are dishonest, selfish and cruel. A worldview may be both realistic and irrational; men’s hurt feelings lead them to react in ways that are harmful to others and, ultimately, contrary to their self-interest. Yet if a guy has been used, cheated, backstabbed and humiliated by women, and if he decides that the rules of the game are rigged against him, who can say that his bitterness is unrealistic?

In 2009, Jared Rutledge launched his dream business, a gourmet coffee shop in his hometown, and he had a girlfriend he hoped was The One with whom he could share that dream, “the one I thought I’d marry.” Somehow, that didn’t work out — he “dumped” her, he says — and so, in 2012, he embarked on a remorseless career of sexual conquest. Based on his account and judged by PUA standards, he was remarkably successful. In 2013, he hooked up with 15 different women, and in 2014, he achieved 22 “scores” (a new woman every 16 days, on average). Of the 47 women he listed, he met 23 via Tinder and 6 via OKCupid, so that 62% of his hookups were arranged through dating apps, which should be a huge clue to why online dating is such a disastrously bad idea.

Jared rated each woman on the list by face/body/personality, so that #4 (“frisky little redhead”) was rated 5/5/4, while #12 (“Sexy little mid-twenties brunette with a thigh gap . . . dumb as a f–king brick”) was 7/8/4, and #37 (Mid-twenties blonde with a killer body . . . personality was a little too vanilla for my taste”) was also rated 7/8/4. Compiling this data, we find that he rated his average conquest with a 6.19 face, 6.62 body, and 5.89 personality. Of the three highest rated women (#20, #24 and #33) two rated 8/8/9 and the third rated 8/8/8. Two of those (#24 and #33) subsequently found serious boyfriends, while #24, a blonde model, “moved to the Pacific Northwest a week later.”

Distortions of the Pornified Culture

Compiling and analyzing the data Jared provides, one gathers an impression that his judgment was both superficial and excessively harsh. Is it true, for example, that none of these women had a body that would rate as high as 9 on a scale of 10? Did he really hook up with 14 women whose bodies rated at 6 or below? Or was it the case, as I suspect, that Jared was rating these women in comparison to an “ideal” so rare that he would not have awarded a 10 rating to Grace Kelly in her prime?

This shows how the Pornification of Culture distorts perception. If you make the sexualized/glamorized imagery purveyed by media the basis on which you judge beauty, this makes genuinely extraordinary features seem more common than they actually are, while making genuinely attractive people seem ordinary. Jared Rutledge’s list includes several women praised for their looks, but not a single one of them had a face or a body he would rate a 9? Ridiculous. Clearly, his ideas weren’t based on a realistic standard, where the top 10% (i.e., 91% or above) rated a “10,” the next 11%-20% rated 9, and so forth downward until a rating of 1 represented the bottom 10%. Instead, he thought of some very small single-digit percentage (the top 2% or 3%) as being 10, and then altered his judgment according to that distorted scale.

Rare and exceptional beauty is rare and exceptional, but because Hollywood, advertising and other media constantly feed us images of beautiful people, this distorts perceptions to such a degree that many people don’t seem to realize how rare beauty actually is.

Go find your old high school yearbook and go through the portraits of the senior class, assigning the girls to an ordered ranking based strictly by looks, from the most attractive to the least attractive. Suppose that there were exactly 100 girls in your senior class. This means that the 10 prettiest girls would rate a 10, the next 10 prettiest would rate 9, and so forth. If you actually were to do this, I think you’d realize that #37 on Jared Rutledge’s list (“blonde with a killer body”) would almost certainly rate a 10, but at least a 9. Instead, he rated her an 8, as if at least 20% of women were better-looking than her.

Guys sit around watching a pro football game and, when the camera briefly shows the cheerleaders, guys talk about which one of them is really hot. Dude, they are all NFL cheerleaders. How many NFL cheerleaders are not “hot”? Zero. Or guys watching the Miss America pageant will disparage the less attractive contestants: “Miss Rhode Island? What a dog! Yuck!” Of course, never in his life has this guy dated anyone remotely as attractive as Miss Rhode Island and yet, when she appears in competition against other exceptionally good-looking women — Miss Oklahoma, Miss Ohio, Miss Alabama — the slightly less fortunate Miss Rhode Island is a “dog.” (I use Rhode Island as an example, because the New England states have produced only one Miss America winner — Miss Connecticut, Marian Bergeron, 1933 — whereas Oklahoma has produced six winners.) It is wrong for feminists to blame “male supremacy” for the way in which exposure to media distorts men’s perceptions, but it is up to men themselves to recognize and resist the media’s influence, which brings us to the subject of pornography.

More than anything, Jared Rutledge’s blogging at Holistic Game represents how the pornographic worldview warps sexuality. In pornography, women are presented as eager to perform (and indeed, to enjoy) “kinky” acts that are obviously degrading or painful. Now, let’s look at Jared’s list and see how he raves that #5 and #50 are “kinky as hell,” #20 is “ridiculously kinky” and #37 is “secretly kinky.”

Where do you suppose Jared Rutledge developed this enthusiasm for kinky women? Or what about #22 on his list?

Radical feminist on the outside, radical submissive in the bedroom. Loved being abused and dominated. Smart but very guarded. We never discussed it but I got hints of serious abuse in her childhood. She swore that she was polyamorous but couldn’t emotionally handle finding another girl’s hair in my bed. Freaked out and we never hung out again. Dated a guy with a heroin addiction and is now f–king randoms. Damaged goods.

Really? She has masochistic tendencies, which you seem to find exciting, yet you also decide that this makes her “damaged goods”? Or what about #33? “I f–ked her a– for the first time, and she promptly got weird on me and withheld sex the next time we saw each other.”

Uh, who “got weird” on whom, Jared?

Sodomy is deviant, abnormal, perverse — words for which “kinky” is a synonym — and does any woman actually enjoy it or, more to the point, does any woman enjoy it more than normal sex? However common this practice may now be, interest in anal sex among heterosexuals is basically a creation of the porn industry. Indeed, we can name the producer (John “Buttman” Stagliano) responsible for popularizing this practice in the 1990s. (Ladies: If you meet a guy who is “into” this, be aware that you are dealing with a guy who’s got a porn problem.)

Does a PUA Ever ‘Hit the Wall’?

Between porn culture and the PUA mentality, is anyone surprised that guys like Jared Rutledge can’t sustain a relationship? Is it any wonder that, if a woman finds herself unmarried past age 25, most of the single guys she meets will have basically the same attitude? Is it unfair to say that guys like Jared are themselves “damaged goods”?

You had one job, Jared — find a good woman and close the deal. Do you mean to tell me that none of the 47 women on this list were wife material? Ridiculous. Whatever your problems with the ex-girlfriend you dumped before you started stalking the wildebeest herd on the Katanga Plateau, by now you must realize that your real problem was you, not her. And here’s some shocking news, pal: You’re already past your prime.

For all the PUA talk about how women “hit the wall” as they approach 30, the reality is that, despite men’s more durable reproductive potential, social factors tend to decrease the quality of his marital options if he doesn’t close the deal before he’s 30. No matter what anyone tells you, the supply of good women is not infinite, and the demand always exceeds the supply. The real keepers have no trouble finding husbands by the time they’re in their mid-20s. In 2010, the median age at first marriage in the United States was 26.1 for women, 28.2 for men. Because most couples date at least a year or two before they get married, this means that about half of women are dating their future husbands by the time they’re 24. And if we take the median ages as reflecting a general preference, most women prefer to marry a guy about two years older than themselves. Therefore, in terms of his “potential future husband” status, a guy reaches his peak between ages 24 and 28. If he hasn’t met The One by the time he’s 30, he’s likely to find himself picking through the “damaged goods” selection of women rejected by other guys as “pump-and-dump” or “catch-and-release” material.

Jared Rutledge uses the phrase “riding the carousel” to describe women who engage in casual promiscuity, but this raises the question, who is the horse and who is the rider? Who is the commodity in this marketplace and who is the consumer? Who is the predator on the Katanga Plateau and who is the prey? Is any man so foolish as to think that women are incapable of manipulating the game to their own advantage? Let’s look at what Jared concluded from his experience:

Most of these girls tended towards monogamous relationships, regardless of what lip service they paid to being “casual” or “open” or “fun.” Even the damaged girls skewed towards being monogamous — they were just monogamous with abusive or f–ked-up men. Some of them overplayed their sexuality in order to seem wilder than they were. Only three girls were really riding the carousel in a blatant way . . . The rest valued stability and comfort more than they valued excitement.

Gosh, it’s almost as if women have a natural preference for monogamy, stability and comfort. Keep in mind that Jared found a majority of these women via Tinder or OKCupid — digital dating apps no sane woman would ever use — so that even most of these desperate/crazy women were really looking for love, not cheap thrills.

Alas, Jared dumped his girlfriend at 28 and spent three years riding the carousel, no doubt thinking to himself, “I’m a successful businessman. I can pick and choose. I’m winning.” But pride goeth before a fall, eh?

Asheville cafe run by misogynistic
bloggers might shut down for good
Turns out misogyny is bad for business.
The Asheville, NC cafe run by two dirtbag dudebros who were outed for running a chauvinistic blog might soon be shutting its doors for good.
Waking Life Espresso has been closed ever since owners Jared Rutledge and Jeremy Owens were exposed last week as the men behind Holistic Game, a blog and podcast where they bragged about sexual conquests and obsessively insulted women for their looks and for having emotions.
Now several local investors are interested in buying the cafe’s space and putting something else in its place, the Citizen-Times reported.
The female owners of Asheville’s Short Street Cakes and Battlecat Coffee wrote on Facebook they want to buy Waking Life’s lease and equipment and open a new cafe, where some proceeds will be donated to local nonprofits “with a focus on empowering women.” . . .
Even if the business doesn’t disappear, it definitely won’t be growing. After a local small business lender withdrew its loan to help open a second Waking Life location, the owners said the expected expansion was canceled.

No more business. No more “game.” Zero. Zilch. Nada.

All because you had to brag.

“Put that coffee down. Coffee’s for closers only.
You think I’m f–king with you? I am not f–king with you.
I’m here from downtown. I’m here from Mitch and Murray.”

PUAs employ a lot of Darwinian sociobiology talk in explaining how to “win” the game. However, the whole point of the exercise — the raison d’etre of life on the Katanga Plateau — is reproductive success. The object of the game is not to run up the score for the sake of numbers. The object of the game is to close the sale, to find The One, and if that means marrying the first girl you ever kissed, congratulations. You’re a winner. Let other guys deal with the heartbreaks and hassles of stalking the wildebeest herd. Do not envy those guys. They should envy you.

“I’m here from downtown,” see. Could I tell you stories? Yes. Yes, I definitely could, but I’m going to resist that temptation, because Mitch and Murray didn’t send me here to brag. They sent me here to tell you PUA assclowns that you’re not winning the game, you’re losing it.

How do you think all these “damaged goods” women got damaged in the first place? Don’t you see that playing “pump-and-dump” is contrary to your own interests? Every time you play a girl like that, you are inflicting damage that some other guy is going to have to deal with. There is only so much damage the system of heteronormative patriarchy can sustain before the system breaks down completely, and this catastrophe with Jared and Jacob at Waking Life is your wake-up call, gentlemen.

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!

You had one job, Jared Rutledge, and you failed.

Why are you apologizing to feminists? You actually helped their cause. And the rest of us guys can never forgive you for that.