Hacker News Reader

Comment by qeek | Hacker News Reader

Any tips on becoming a bad guy? :)

You just need to get rejected a bunch of times because you're a nice guy, resulting in plummeting self-esteem, which naturally leads to multiple substance abuse problems and a penchant for bar fights. Then you'll have to resort to petty crime to support your habits, which leads to you getting caught, eventually enough times to go to prison - and, bingo, when you get out you can get the women who rejected you before :-)

lol. Taking your joke literally, I think one would simply fuck his life up in the process, without the upside of getting women at the end.

From what I've seen, guys with high time preference (short-term oriented) win out at the beginning, and guys with low time preference (long-term oriented) win out in the end. Pretty tautological stuff. Guys who spend high school working out, worrying about clothes and social standing, and prioritizing their sex lives get sex early on. But then you have Wall Street bankers from elite colleges, and they get a lot of women too. They were often nerds in high school.

Now, you could argue bankers are "bad" in the moral sense, but like the quasi-criminal guys at clubs, they have status and (in many cases) the attending arrogance. I think the "bad" question is more of a question of status than morality, but the two get mixed up because people with status aren't always super nice.

But I'm just basing it on baboon studies like this one: http://hanson.gmu.edu/showcare.pdf

Reminds me of Benjamin Graham (the "Dean of Wall Street" and Warren Buffett's mentor), who basically ignored girls altogether until he was well into his 20s, and then became one of Wall Street's most notable womanizers in his 50s and 60s. It probably helped that by then he was filthy rich and quite famous in his field.

I suppose Scarface popularized this as well.

Tony Montana: In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.

You know that part of your brain that acts as your "tact" filter?

Yeah, just stop using that.

I disagree (but not enough to vote you down). I think you're on the right track, but it's not the tact filter that you should ignore. It's the "I can't possibly talk to that girl because she'll reject me," filter that you need to ignore.

I'll agree the fear of rejection is bad, but if one focuses on not being shy, one will find out why one was shy in the first place. One needs to know protocol first.

(Ackward + shy) - shy = Dumbass.

I'll buy that, but ignoring tact will certainly not help with awkwardness.

Heh, I didn't think my comment was going to generate this much discussion. Anyways, my point was that shy people have this weird thing where they tend to only say really nice, sugary things. It comes off a little odd (or so I've heard). So a good place to start is by biting your tongue less. Or something like that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com