hey man,

I liked your reply - your articulation was good. If this were a discussion it would be an interesting one!

Ah the romantic! But are you overly sentimental sir, like the vast majority of the hapless and unawakened masses?

I guess what you're saying is that I'm missing the point, being too pragmatic about it (eg, did he 'close her' properly etc), and missing the main point (the beauty etc of the interaction, the romance, and the moment).

Really what I'm saying is that:

For me, the interactions didn't seem realistic - I put this down to the difficulty of acting this stuff out, and the fact that my recent plethora of experiences and intuition in this (much more than the average member of the public, and indeed the film review community, and—being brutally honest—most of the PU guys I’ve met) gives me an indication of what is a realistic interaction between people who have just met of the opposite sex.

Had I watched this pre-game, I might have thought it realistic. But now, with a continual layer of experience, I do not think so. I think it misses so many of the subtleties of the beauty and delicacy of a romantic interaction. The film and acting just didn't click with me, or my experiences. Yes, men are not expected to be perfect (I’m aware of that!), and we talked about that recently in person! And yes, I’ve had similar experiences (and of course they are incredible), so my reaction here is not due to being a robotosized PUA!

On another point, I consider myself to be a pragmatic romantic (with experience of incredibly romantic and consequently painful relationships).

Surely you would also agree with my that the stuff we have learned through all of this has given us control – control that we can make this stuff happen in our lives, and control that we can ‘hold ourselves back’ from too much sentimentality (if I fell for every girl I met I’d be an emotional wreck). This kind of film (and often peoples’ reaction to it) seems to me to fit into the mould that ‘things just happen’, and you ‘can’t control this kind of stuff’. This annoys me! A female friend the other day was telling me about her interpretation of the film - she absolutely loved it, and subscribed to the ‘chance’ view of things.


For example, due to logistical events a girl I’ve been dating is now living with me for 1 week before flying off forever into Asia. With my experience, I now know I should control my emotions. I have been through too much of this kind of thing before to suffer it again! But equally, I know that us meeting was not pure chance alone – I saw her, thought she was cute, then spoke to her etc…

With a developed set of skills like ours you see the tragedy and unnecessity of missed opportunity – now when I see it in people’s lives it pisses me off. I saw this in this film so much. For me, it was only testament to the artificiality of the film that it continued. I now know, if I meet an incredible girl, I will be damn sure to actually make it happen in future (get contact details rather than agreeing to meet in a number of months, when, almost 100% likely and understandably, with will have met other people and forgot about it a bit).

I also know that if I don’t lead the interaction, it is likely to fuck up. In this films case, the fact that the girl was leading so much seemed so unrealistic to me. So I saw that as a bad example – such was the level of unrealism to me that it seemed likely to continue this in other people’s lives.

I have a sneaking suspicious that if you watched it more recently (perhaps after getting into this scene, and the associated experience etc.), with an open mind, you might see it differently. In any case differences of opinion are fine. But you damn well will hear my opinion on a number of artistic mediums (your opinion of anal foreplay/sex does little to undermine your tastes in other ‘art’ etc!; or your use of the word 'bitch' etc... ). Go and see Bicycle Thieves, and Dead Man’s Shoes, for example! You are a philosopher, so your natural inclination is to debate and defend, especially in this public context, with so much material behind you already!

Lets see if we can steer this away from arguing about opinion (people have different ones, and such arguments are the stuff of futility and other forums!), and onto more broader topics!

Hopefully this isn’t too unstructured to make no sense!

Anthony