Beware of the social network trap: how weak men can falter

“By the time I spent half my time looking up in jealousy of those who had a lot, and the other half looking down in guilt of those who had little, I had forgotten on the way to remember who should be the biggest concern in my life.  There simply comes a time in a person’s life when the most important priority has to their own existence.

                 

Typical scenario from a night out:

Pretty, immature, attention-seeking young woman arrives home from another insignificant, depressing and underwhelming Saturday night out.  She logs onto her social network profile, a little belligerent in her thoughts, and she posts on her status:

“What was that guy doing making out with that ugly woman?  Where have all the great guys out there got to?  Oh well, it must be just me!!!???”

She’s usually the kind of woman who rates herself a little higher than reality, or more importantly, how others would objectively rate her.  The “hot” guy would have been the bad boy or high value man who didn’t respond to her withdrawn acknowledgement, or he may well have not been interested in the first place.  The ugly female she was referring to was probably not unattractive, and in fact on a similar physical attractive scale as her.  So she logs off, turns out the lights and hopes for a better adventure next weekend.  Waking up with a sore head, and not looking the pretty girl she thinks she is, she logs on some hours later to find about a dozen responses on her public wall page.  They are from the typical beta male friends you would expect them to be:

Nice guy one: “Don’t be silly, you’re gorgeous….you just need the right guy to come along…like me!”  (written in a way of irony, but with an air of desperation all over it).

Nice guy two -   “Where did you go?  What was it like?  Did you see Kayleigh?  When are you out next?  We should meet up.”  (How many questions does this guy need to write?).

She now feels much better about herself after reading these inundated messages.  Popularity and attention is her immediate feed, and she will respond to them knowing they will return with more sycophant comments.  Look at her, what with all these messages from these lovely guys.  One problem here though: the messages are all from beta males - none that she is interested in, and all they serve to do is massage her ego and quench the attention-seeking thirst.  Poor guys, people may think.  Do they even realize what they are doing?

Facebook and Twitter - the two most popular social network sites - are fantastic technological inventions.  There is no doubt to this.  I’m on Facebook, although I rarely use the site.  It is now predominately to store photos from significant places in the world I have visited.  But I’m not going to be a total hypocrite here, and I’ll confess to being someone who, like many naïve people, used to visit the site on a daily occurrence when it first came out to the public.  I never go on Twitter, and unless I’m missing something, it is just a stratosphere egoism version of Facebook but with less interesting things to view.

The first thing I would say about social network sites like these are that if they do genuinely make someone’s life better then I’m all for it.  My issue is that I think they can cause more harm than good in someone’s mind, especially if that person possesses a weak, naïve and insular orientated mind.  Young and physically attractive women mainly fall into this category, as they are predominately the ones chasing the most attention.  From my experience, as a woman gets older she isn’t so much chasing attention, but she actually becomes more inquisitive – this being the kindest word I can substitute for nosy.  A good example would be the woman who has a kid or is married - she naturally isn’t going out as much, but she still craves to find out what is going on in other people’s lives.

The younger and more physically attractive women offer the most interesting analysis when it comes to all this.  Basically, they are all fighting and competing for the most popularity on their public wall page.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s from a male or female (they do prefer male posts as she will perceive this as bigger points scored), or the most irrelevant and insignificant message ever.  Of course, drama is great, as she will believe people have to let her in on this.  This is what it is all about, as her biggest satisfaction in life is attention, or her belief that people are paying attention to her.  She has to feel her life is one that others would desire to hold.  However, no matter how pretty she is, and no matter how many beta male friends she collates, there will always be that period where her message quantity decreases or it is less than her other attractive female peers.  So how does she counteract this apparent dwindling of popularity?  Well, although a girl like this knows next to nothing about core human psychology, in a strange way, totally unaware in her mind, she actually uses a reason that involves reverse psychology in this dynamic.  What she does is to take the whole wall page off her site, claiming that it is because she is worried about people knowing what is happening in her life. 

Another false reason to persuade people of her important external validation could be made up stories that a “weirdo” is stalking her.  This is such a weak and fake reason, untrue to the greatest extent, but as her female and male friendship network mainly see her as having a higher value than themselves, she can get away with them actually believing in this story.  At the end of the day, what has suddenly occurred in her life now to justify this action?  It’s a vain attempt to cloud over inability to accept the dwindling of her life purpose, but if she can convince herself this is the truth, then it hides the disappointment of her diminishing status.  Meanwhile, the beta males out there will now send her private messages, but she rarely responds.  Private messages are no benefit to her as the world cannot see these, and her ego isn’t inflated this way.

So how does all this affect a man seeking a woman who is this way inclined?  Firstly, refrain from going on the site in the first place.  Some of the most emotionally controlled guys I know, in terms of how they handle women, are not members of social network sites.  They are too busy living their own life to waste time over a woman’s imaginative drama and attention whoring, and this kind of man knows her for who she is.  Alpha males do not need this in their lives, because they already have a busy schedule of objective and tangible things going on.  However, if you are more beta dominated by nature, then another three options exist:       

• Never be a ‘friend’ with her on a social network site.  This way you refrain from ever finding out anything that could deter your attraction towards her.
• If she does “friend request” you then you can hardly decline.  In this case, fine yourself if you look on her profile.  For every time you click on her profile, place some money in a charity box.
• The most important one of all is to take anything you see on her wall as a pinch of salt.  Even the extreme women in terms of attention needs do not want something private going on her public page.  If you analyzed a typical girl’s public messages there wouldn’t be any of relevance.  A message from her friend saying, “What a night last night” - is not one of relevance or importance.  All that shows is the everyday kind of drama pumping process they go through.  As for any pictures she has in the arms of other guys?  Well, not dissimilar to the public wall, the majority of these guys will be ones she hardly knows. 
• Again, it is just an ego pump for her.  If it is with an ex-boyfriend (how do you know this unless she told you his full name), then so what?  Remember, beta males are naturally jealous of their current girlfriend’s past, and alphas don’t care about the past.  They are too busy thinking about the future and focusing on their own time.

In addition to the trap all those nice guys fall into on a social network in the manner of abundant sycophancy to women for no reward in return, good looking men are also at risk of misconceptions of interest from certain young women in a similar way.  On a night out, women can contrive interest in cute guys in order to have pictures taken to feed their social network photograph profiles.  The target men can misconstrue this apparent interest by not realizing the motives behind these women’s choices to have them stood alongside.  The reality of female motivations in these situations is to feed their ego and status validation for the world to see.  This minute long gathering is usually brought about for her own purpose, and whilst there may be visceral connections, a young woman will almost always act in a way that benefits her projection from outside eyes and onto her own life.  This is a motivation that goes far before and above any other mitigating factor.  In simple terms, she uses the good looking guy to make her feel better about herself.  The handsome man will hang on in hope of advanced intimacy, but it is confusing to naïve onlookers when she appears to friendly decline. 

If proof was required to these pronounced but curious happenings, a useful task would be to analyze the quantity of pictures women, who are this way inclined, have with good looking males in comparison to the number of pictures they have with their average looking current boyfriend and ex-boyfriends.  This dynamic is most prevalent with younger women.  Women above the age of twenty-three will have more photographs taken with only their female party, as they are at the age when they are more conscious of their peak physical attractiveness being a thing of the past.  A photograph with a good looking man for many older women would only further reinforce her growing concern of this sexual obsolescence.

If a man ever needed a firsthand lesson on the trials and tribulations of a woman’s hunger for attention, drama and fiction, then a social network site is as good a place as any as a grounding point.  Very little is significant, and most of the content is not worth wasting time over.  A few posts are real, but the majority is made believe fantasy.  If only one lesson could be learnt from this chapter, I would suggest showing little interest or emotion when a woman of this kind is trying to emphasize her importance or fishing for compliments.  She may feel anger at first, as her usual experience is to be around nice guys who instinctively respond in jealousy or inquisitiveness.  By acting in the total opposite manner, a man of this kind will throw her off guard.  Women like to be surprised by something different, and this will set him aside from the majority of supplicated men.  Most importantly, nothing is more important than your own life.  Always believe that you are on a higher status than her.  In fact, she should be worrying more about you.