Introduction:
High school sucks for everyone. That’s just the way it is. It wasn’t great for Tucker and Geoff either. But there are things you can do to make high school better. Tucker and Geoff tell you what you need to do to get the most out of those four years, including what type of jobs you should get and how to meet girls from outside of your high school. They also share their fantastic stories about how they “discovered” masturbation.
Podcast:
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Video:
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Key takeaways:
In general, women develop physically, mentally and emotionally much more quickly than men do, which means that women the same age as you will be out of your league a lot of the time. This is why guys tend to date younger women. This is not a bad thing. It’s totally normal.
Masturbating is normal and natural, and everyone does it. Don’t be ashamed by it and do it as much as you think is reasonable. Just make sure not to masturbate so much that you lose any ambition or drive to do other things.
High school is awkward and horrible for the vast majority of people. That’s just how it is. So if it sucks for you, don’t worry about it. That’s normal.
Generally the popular kids in high school end up with shitty lives because the things that made them popular in high school don’t work in the real world.
Work on developing skills in areas that you like. If you’re really good at something, that gives you status.
Get a service job, like a waiter, or a sales job, something that means you have to interact with people a lot. This will teach you how to deal with people, how to talk to people, how to be conscientious etc. Don’t get caught up on the fact that these jobs are low-paying – the skills you’ll learn are very valuable.
If you’re not popular in high school, join clubs or groups outside of your school. The girls in those groups don’t care what your status is at your school if they don’t know you from that environment.
Joining clubs in your high school, like French club or debate club, gives you status as well. There will be girls in those clubs and if you can become friends with them through the club, that confers status on you.
The most important thing is to not be at the bottom of the hierarchy. It’s not hard to do that – you just need to be good at something.
Everyone is terrified in high school. Joining clubs and making friends puts you in a better position.
There are three valences of attraction that women look at: social status, partnership ability, and fathering ability. The problem with high school is that girls only ever judge you on social status and not the other two. This is not the case with older women later in life, so it gets better over time.
Being friends with girls in a non-sexual way is great as well – not only does having female friends give you status, but it also gives you an insight into female psychology, and you can learn a lot about how women think. Getting friend-zoned isn’t a bad thing.
Even the guys who get loads of girls in high school, like football players, don’t know a lot about women – they just happen to get girls because of their high status. In fact, that’s actually a handicap in the long-term because you don’t learn about women and dating.
Your mate value changes a lot over time – and if you’re a 17 year old guy, then by your mid-twenties you can be great with women. Even Tucker and Geoff weren’t amazing with women in high school.
Links from this episode
Kyle Maynard’s website
The Atlantic’s article on porn addiction
This paper, titled “Porn Up, Rape Down”, shows that the incidence of rape in the US is down 85% since 1980.
How Rhode Island Accidentally Legalized Prostitution, from Business Insider
College Humor: The real reason you’re circumcised
What happens to the ‘cool’ kids after high school? They’re socially stunted and often have problems with substance abuse. You can read the whole paper here.
Also see What’s Wrong With Being Cool? on Psychology Today.
Friday Night Lights will give you an idea of how big high school football is in Texas.
Podcast Audio Transcription:
Tucker:
Alright. On today’s episode of The Mating Grounds, we’re gonna talk about life stages of mating. Basically, this is gonna break down to the “It gets better” episode for young guys. So, here’s the thing, guys. For the most part, American society is bifurcated by age. From the time you’re very young until you get much older, you are grouped together in almost all social events or activities by age. So, 10-year-olds with 10-year-olds, 15-year-olds with 15-year-olds, right? Which seems to make sense, except in a mating sense, it’s a total and complete disaster for guys. Let me tell you why. For the most part, women develop much quicker than guys, so for all of your youth, guys, you’re around women who are in very different mating stages, right? Let’s talk about that from a scientific perspective before we start breaking down each specific age range. How do men and women develop differently?
Geoff:
Basically, evolution shapes each sex to develop in the way that’s optimal for it, given its opportunities and its threats and how long you’re expected to live, and also, kind of how much investment in your body and your skills and your behavior it takes before you’re really competitive. Male vs. male competition is intense, it’s high-risk, it’s dynamic, it’s active, and basically, guys don’t really mature sexually and become attractive to women until, typically, late teen years or even early twenties, basically because you don’t want to give off the cues that, “Hey, I’m in the mating market. I’m competing,” to a bunch of other adult males until you have some hope of standing up to them. This is why the growth spurt that guys have in terms of height and upper body muscles comes way later than the growth spurt that girls have. This is why you go to an eighth grade and the girls are all four inches taller than the guys.
Tucker:
Right. And they all have breasts and the guys are gawky, awkward, and lurching.
Geoff:
Yeah. And the guys are, like, almost conspicuously signaling, “I’m not in the mating market because I’m so self-conscious.” So, school is doing you no favors in terms of stratifying you by…it stratifies by chronological age, but not really by biological maturity.
Tucker:
Right. Here’s the reality, guys. If you take nothing else away from this podcast, take this. Women develop physically, emotionally, intellectually, much faster than men do. It doesn’t mean that they’re smarter or better, although they are better at some things. It just means they develop quicker. So, given all things being equal, a woman your age is really not gonna be, a lot of times, in your league. She’ll be a little bit out of your league. And I don’t mean that as an insult. Here I am, I’m a 38-year-old, very successful man. I’m happily dating a 29-year-old woman who is pretty much my intellectual, emotional equal, in almost all ways. And I’m nine years older than her. It’s not a bad thing. It doesn’t make me retarded or…I’m not a late developer. I mean, I might be a late developer, but that fact alone does not make me a late developer. There’s a reason, in almost all societies, pre- or post-agricultural or industrial, you see older men with younger women. And I don’t mean 50-year-olds with 16-year-olds. That’s fucking creepy. I mean, like, what I’m doing. 38 with 29, or 28-year-old guy with a 24-year-old woman or something like that. That makes a lot of biological sense. It makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways. It’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s totally normal. Totally normal. Right? Alright, so let’s start breaking this down by age. First off, when do most guys hit puberty?
Geoff:
Thirteen. The age of…you can basically track male puberty by when do guys start masturbating. Because 99% of guys masturbate when they hit puberty.
Tucker:
Do you know who’s in the 1%? I swear to god, on my life, I am. I swear to god.
Geoff:
You started at five?
Tucker:
No, dude! Late! I started late! I’m fucking such a weird dude. I’m one of those weird dudes who started masturbating after he had sex. What kind of a fucking weirdo am I?
Geoff:
Like, “Oh, so this is what the penis is for?”
Tucker:
Dude. Okay. Let me run you down how I learned how to masturbate. This is fucking nuts. I was seventeen. I’d already had sex with, I don’t know, at least two, maybe three or four girls at that point. I grew up…All over, sort of. My mom was a flight attendant, we were all over, but basically from eight until seventeen, I lived in Kentucky. I guess I was sixteen when I started masturbating. Sixteen or seventeen. I can’t remember. My bulk of my young years were in Lexington, Kentucky, and just the way I had grown up…I wasn’t Catholic, so I wasn’t, like, shamed about my sexuality, but no one had ever talked about it. My understanding of masturbation was, like – and remember, this was pre-Internet porn. This is, you know, the early, early nineties. So, my understanding of masturbation was, like, it was dirty and…not dirty, but it was really kind of scummy. Like, awful people did it. Everyone talks about it in such a bad way. I thought, well, of course no one does it, ‘because it must be bad if everyone says bad things about it. I lost my virginity…I think it was on my sixteenth birthday. It might have been my seventeenth birthday. I feel like it had to have been my sixteenth birthday. It wasn’t my fifteenth birthday, definitely.
So, my 16-year-old year, I think I slept with at least two, maybe three girls, and then one of them came over one time, one of the girls I was sleeping with. Not fucking multiple girls at once in high school. I was not that cool yet. What was her name? Angel or something. She was on her period, so she didn’t want to have sex, and she didn’t like giving blowjobs, ‘cause high school girls, right? You know, sex is so weird in high school. And so she gave me a hand job. She wasn’t very good at it, but it was like, “Oh, okay.” And then I came. And then she left, and I remember thinking to myself, “You know, I could do that! She wasn’t even very good. I bet I’m better at this than she is!” It’s so fucking true. It’s so bad. And so, I remember I was sitting downstairs in my basement watching TV. I’m like, “Alright, fuck it. I’ll try it.” And this is maybe, like, a day later, and jacked off and shot a load. I almost got it on my face ‘because I didn’t really know what I was doing. I remember I shot a huge load. I was like, “Wow, this is fucking great! This is fantastic!” I had no idea that, like, I could do this myself and that it was awesome and I was like, “Why does everyone talk shit about masturbation? The fuck is wrong with these people?” And so, two hilarious things happened right in a row. She called me, like, that night or the next night, and she was like, “Hey. I want to come over. Let’s watch…whatever, Sixteen Candles.” I was like, “Oh, are you off your period?” She was like, “No, another day or two, but whatever.” I’m like, “Alright, well, I’ll see you then.” She’s like, “What? What do you mean? We can do other stuff!” And I’m like, “Right, and I can do that better than you can. So, why would I hang out with you?” Which, of course, is an awful thing to say but also hilariously true. That was maybe, like, a Friday night or something, and then I went to school Monday and I remember going into a class, and it was three or four of my friends, and I was like, “Guys. I don’t know if you realize this, but masturbation is awesome!” And they looked at me, and it was like one of those fucking…you could’ve heard a mouse fart in that classroom. Everyone looked at me like I was the biggest retard, and the girls got beet red, the guys were, like, mortified that I brought this up. I’m like, “What are you guys ashamed of? Have you tried it? It’s great!” Everyone’s like, “Shut up, dude. What’s wrong with you?” So, most young guys, I don’t think have that problem anymore. There’s enough porn out there, enough knowledge about masturbation. But, if you don’t know that, guys, masturbation’s great and you should do it as soon as you hit puberty. You should not wait three years like I did, or whatever. That’s a huge waste of time, and don’t be ashamed about it. What do the stats say? 97% of guys? 98% of guys?
Geoff:
I mean, to a first approximation, like, 99% and the 1% are lying, right?
Tucker:
Right. And there’s the guys who, like, don’t have arms. You know?
Geoff:
Yeah. So, there’s some weird conditions…
Tucker:
Right. Some people are born without arms, like Kyle Maynard, who we’re gonna have on the podcast at some point. And I definitely want to ask him about this, and I hope he’s cool with answering the question. I don’t know how the dude masturbates. I mean, he has a super hot wife or girlfriend, so whatever. There are needs that can be met other ways, etc., but that’s one of those questions where it’s like, that’s the first thing I think of when I see someone without arms or, like, a midget who’s arms can’t reach their crotch. How do you masturbate? That’s the first immediate thing I think about, which has nothing to do with life stages.
Geoff:
It probably motivates them to get their…
Tucker:
Get their shit together!
Geoff:
Get their shit together, like, a lot faster. I remember when I discovered it, my parents were having a Christmas party downstairs with about thirty neighbors.
Tucker:
And you walked out just jerking off?
Geoff:
I discovered it, and I was like…I was a little scientist, and I was like, I knew nothing about it. I didn’t know anybody else…I thought, honestly, I thought I discovered something new. My first reaction was, “I’m gonna get the Nobel Prize for this discovery.”
Tucker:
That’s the end of your academic career. Right now, you’ve ended it already. Geoff Miller wins a Nobel Prize for discovering masturbation.
Geoff:
I was so tempted to, like, run downstairs to the party and go, “Hey, listen, guys! I discovered something really cool! I bet you adults don’t know about this. Let me explain it.” And I was, like, gonna save their lives and bring joy and light to the world. Thankfully, I didn’t. So. The point being, you can kind of track when guys hit puberty by when they start masturbating, which is typically about thirteen.
Tucker:
We might have to move this podcast up in the release schedule, because both of those two stories…Geoff Miller wins a Nobel Prize for discovering masturbation. You would win! By the way, you would deserve it. If you had discovered masturbation…
Geoff:
If I’d been first, yes.
Tucker:
You would definitely deserve it. Alright, so puberty. Twelve to fourteen, generally, right? Start masturbating. It helps a lot. Relieves frustration. Makes you feel good. No problem with it. Super healthy. Are there any issues with masturbation guys should think about? Anything to avoid? Like, maybe don’t jack off so much you rub the skin off your dick or something like that? But are there any other things?
Geoff:
I think it’s actually functional. I think human boys are designed to masturbate, partly to kind of train up their own sexual preference system, right? It’s a way of kind of figuring out which girls to be attracted to and what traits are exciting and I think it helps train up your kind of emotional and romance system. It helps activate your mating effort. Typically, if you’re in high school, you’re fantasizing about girls you know. Sometimes, it’s celebrities or whatever, musicians, but often it’s girls in classes that you know, and it kind of motivates interest in them. The one downside is if you do it so often that it kind of leaves you drained of all mating ambition.
Tucker:
That’s tough when you’re young, though.
Geoff:
Yeah. I mean, by too much, I mean more than twice a day when you’re a teenager.
Tucker:
Oh, my goodness. Really? Like, from about seventeen, eighteen, until, maybe, twenty-eight, twice a day was a slow day for me. This is actually a good discussion. Different sex drives happen in different guys and they’re all okay. There’s not a problem. Like, I probably jacked off, legitimately, like…my average for ten years was probably three times a day, and that’s if I wasn’t sleeping with a girl. If I was, it’d be even still once a day, unless I was fucking her three times, then I wouldn’t jack off at all. But I have a pretty high sex drive, and just…pretty high…that candle burns bright for me, but there are plenty of guys who are more than happy jacking off, like, three times a week or whatever. One is not right and one is not wrong. It’s just that some people like pizza, some people like burgers. Neither one is right. Neither one is wrong. The problem is if you don’t like jacking off at the super extremes. If you don’t like it at all, that might be some sort of hormonal issue or some…that’s usually a sign that something’s off a little bit. Or, if you’re compulsive…a lot of people might define three times a day as compulsive. I always thought a compulsive was, like, you do it so much you don’t do other stuff. And I had no problems doing other stuff, too. It did not trade off with women for me. Women always mostly came first, unless they were a huge pain in the ass.
Geoff:
For me, I paid a lot of attention to how much energy and mojo and ambition I had, and I found if I did it too often, it kind of undermined how active I was in high school and how hard I worked and was I on the ball if I was, like, running a high school club or was I kind of lazy and kind of lackadaisical?
Tucker:
Right. ‘Cause you were too busy jacking off.
Geoff:
And I like to keep a little bit of an edge, so if you masturbate more often, you tend to kind of lose that edge a little bit, but if you don’t do it enough, you’re not really…Well, a) you’re not enjoying your life and b) you’re not training up your mating and fantasy systems. The two things I will say are a lot of young guys, now that you’ve got unlimited free online porno, if you overuse porno, it can get you kind of habituated and kind of…you know, you keep seeking more and more stimulation, more extreme forms and genres of porno, and that means when you actually are with a woman, there can be this kind of disconnect where, like, maybe she’s only had sex twice and you’ve had kind of fantasy sex with, like, kinky bondage and domination…cats, whatever, I don’t know. If you come in expecting her to be kind of be into the kind of porno stuff that you’ve escalated to enjoying, that can be a problem.
Tucker:
Dude, I’ll tell you, I think that’s sort of a myth. Not that that doesn’t happen at all, but…I don’t know. I don’t know many guys…I’ve very, very, very rarely heard any guys who have that actual problem. Like, I remember The Atlantic did an article about this, some guys, “Oh, I’m addicted to porn,” whatever, and I was like, this seems like a bullshit issue, ‘cause I have never heard a guy be like, “Man, I’m really upset this girl’s not a porn star.” It’s like…I’ve never heard that. Guys don’t say that. Ever. They don’t even think that. Like, that’s just not…it’s sort of like the idea that video games cause violence is just empirically incorrect.
Geoff:
True.
Tucker:
But it’s one of those things that you think might be true or should be true, depending on your political orientation or whatever. So, I think the same thing is true with porn, that you get a lot of people who have ideological or political issues with porn who use that as an argument against it. Here’s the reality. FBI has amazing stats about this. Starting in about the early nineties, ’91 to ’95, there was a massive drop. It’s still ongoing in stranger rape, date rape, sexual assault. All these crimes went way down. It did coincide with a crime drop in America, right? But it was actually much steeper and took a little bit of a different curve, and no one’s ever been able to really explain why. First off, that’s good news, which you never hear about on the news, ever, which is a very different discussion. We’d have a long discussion about that, and there are good reasons for that. I don’t want to get into them ‘cause they’re very political and they’re sort of off-topic. You don’t ever hear about it. One of the explanations offered, I think, and I think it’s true – I don’t have a ton of evidence to back this up, but this is my estimation – is that I think the ubiquity of online porn helped reduce sexual crime.
Geoff:
I think that’s true, and I think that could also be true internationally. I think there are a lot of countries with huge rape problems, like India…
Tucker:
Oh, god, that’s a horrible place!
Geoff:
If those guys had better access to online porn and they were more comfortable with masturbation, I think the women there would be so much safer and happier.
Tucker:
By the way, if you’re listening to this right now and you think we’re fucking crazy, go online right now and Google “Rhode Island accidental legal prostitution.” Google that. It just happened. Basically, in Rhode Island, for a few months because of a judge’s ruling, prostitution was made legal. It basically was reversed, like, six months later. In that time period, street crime, STD rates, and rape dropped precipitously. I’m gonna name a percentage, I’m sure I’m wrong, but it dropped something like 70%. These are just facts. I don’t want to read too much into them, because there’s a ton of implications that you could make and a lot of them would probably be wrong. I think here’s your takeaway, dude, if you’re listening to this, especially if you’re a young guy. Don’t be ashamed to masturbate. Masturbate as much as you think is reasonable. Don’t go crazy one way or the other, simply because it will detract from your life. There are definitely times when you can sit at home and be like, “I don’t want to go out anymore. I just want to jack off.” Okay, fine. If you do that once a month, it’s not a big deal. If you prefer masturbation over human interaction, that might be a problem. I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but I’m just gonna tell you you’re not gonna be happy if all you do is jack off. Maybe in the short term, but not in the long term.
Geoff:
Another point it…natural doesn’t mean right, ‘cause lots of animals do all kinds of shit that’s ethically wrong, but masturbation’s not just a human thing. Almost every male primate masturbates. Even iguanas masturbate. So, it’s very common. It’s not a crime, but it’s certainly at least a victimless crime if it was a crime.
Tucker:
How could it be – it’s not a crime!
Geoff:
Right. But, for thousands of years, religions considered it a crime.
Tucker:
Because religions control people by controlling their sex. Same with certain other political movements right now.
Geoff:
For example, circumcision in America has been maintained for the last 120 years, principally as an anti-masturbation device.
Tucker:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. College Humor actually has an amazing video about this. It’s true. The fucking dude who invented Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, he’s a crazy person! He’s a crazy, religious fundamentalist and essentially spent all of his money from making cereals…Which, by the way, are terrible. Sugar. Wheat. Breakfast. Terrible for you. Poison. He spent all the money he made from that to convince people to circumcise their kids.
Geoff:
Yeah. Dr. Kellogg.
Tucker:
Yes. The only people worldwide who circumcise their children, for the most part, are Jews. That’s it. Which is fine. That’s a cultural thing, whatever. It’s not good for you. I’m circumcised…
Geoff:
Yeah. Kellogg was like, “If you circumcise boys, they’ll masturbate less ‘cause it feels less good. If you feed them corn flakes, they’ll masturbate less because it’ll cut their sex drive.”
Tucker:
Right. This was a thing in the early twentieth century. That’s how fucked up our great-grandparents were. For real. Like, that’s fucked up and it’s fucking true. You can look this up. It’s one of those things you learn and you’re like, no way. And you’re like, oh, my god. This is real. This is amazing. When I learned that – I forget where I learned it, a few years ago – I was like, ”Oh, my god. I will not let any of my sons be circumcised. Never.” Never, never, never. Even though their penises will look different than mine, I am confident enough as a man to be able to fucking handle that and I’m not gonna pass that fucking bullshit on. That’s so ridiculous. It pisses me off. When I learned that, I got really angry, actually. Whatever. That’s a different thing. Alright, so young guys. This is twelve to fourteen we’re talking about. Masturbate. Learn your body. Anyone who tells you it’s wrong, don’t listen to them. Fuck those people. Maybe don’t do it in front of other people. That’s what’s wrong. Keep it to yourself, ‘cause who wants to watch that? That’s gross. But it’s totally fine. It can help you.
Alright, now fourteen to eighteen. Let’s talk about high school. For most guys, high school is extremely awkward. It’s extremely socially painful and threatening and difficult and you don’t understand girls and shit is fucking terrible. I would say that’s the experience for at least 70% of guys in high school. At least. Maybe more. So, if that’s your experience, understand, dude, that’s cool. That’s normal. It happens to most of us. The high school experience is not designed to make it pleasant or rewarding or educational for young people. It’s fucked up. It really is, and that’s just the fucking reality of it, alright?
So, let me kind of run through what my high school experience was like, and I think you should probably do the same. So, I wasn’t, like, the 98-pound weakling. I played sports. I was decent enough at sports. So, if you’re good at sports, that’s sort of like a minimum level of popularity you’re gonna have. Like, you can’t be the school bitch if you fucking play football and baseball and basketball. Because sports are very high social status in high school. It was weird, because I was one of the only athletes and definitely the only male athlete, for the most part, in both of the high schools I went to, that was in all advanced classes. Like, the AP advanced classes. Like, it was basically me and then a lot of the female athletes, actually, were in my classes, but almost none of the males. So, I was the smart jock. I wasn’t really a jock. I didn’t really like most of the other guys who played sports. Remember we’re in Kentucky, right? I mean, they were nice guys, but they were fucking idiots, most of them, and they were just fucking bumpkins and it was like, okay, these are not my people. You know? Like, I moved to Kentucky when I was eight. I was already relatively intelligent and experienced. I’d lived in London, Brazil, whatever with my mom, ‘cause she was a flight attendant. So, I got there and it was, like, one of those things where I realized, “This is a period in my life I have to go through, and it fucking sucks. I’ll just make the best of it.”
It was tough for me in a lot of ways because…it was weird, man. Every year, people wanted to like me in high school, but a lot of them I didn’t like, so it was like I was kind of distanced from most of the people ‘cause I just didn’t like them. I didn’t like who I went to high school with, and it was nothing against them. They weren’t bad people. I just didn’t like them. I didn’t like either groups. I didn’t like…’cause the people I was in the advanced classes in, for the most part, were anti-social nerds. Or, they were social retards, not anti-social. They wanted to be social, but they were so pathetic about being social that it was like, “I’m not gonna associate with you people. You’re so weird. You’re fun to talk to. We can talk about whatever books or whatever, but when that conversation is over, you have nothing else to say.” Then, I’d go hang out with the jocks I was on sports teams with, and I’m like, “You’re a mouth-breathing moron. You can’t think of anything besides engine shit or whatever.”
So, it was like, there was no one for me to talk to. I don’t know. Guys. If you’re social experience is like that in high school, it’s fine. I only hooked up…I’d have to sit down and think about it. It’s been twenty years since high school. I think I slept with, like, three girls in the public high school I went to and then I think two or three in Blair, so maybe six before I left high school. Something like that? And I think most guys, it’s pretty common to not have lost your virginity by the time you left high school, so if you have not lost your virginity, if you’re very socially awkward, it’s okay, dude. What was your high school experience like?
Geoff:
I actually had a good time in high school, so I’m…It’s kind of a weird situation. I had the good fortune to go to a public high school that was, like, the best high school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Because it was selective, most of the other kids were pretty bright.
Tucker:
What high school?
Geoff:
Walnut Hills High School. It’s, like, one of the top 50 high schools in America. So, we were tracked into, like, the honors program, and that meant I got to hang around with a lot of smart girls, and they were…a lot of them were really, really attractive.
Tucker:
Then just as awkward as you, ‘cause you’re all a bunch of nerds.
Geoff:
And they were kind of awkward, and so one of my girlfriends I actually met on the math team. She was hot, but we were like, “We will work the shit out of this calculus.”
Tucker:
And that was real erotic to you two. “Oh, you solved for Y. So hot.” “I did solve for Y, didn’t I?” Can you imagine?
Geoff:
And I was kind of lucky, ‘cause I reached my current height, six feet, kind of by ninth grade, so I was kind of taller than most of the guys. I wasn’t super athletic, but I was in reasonably good shape.
Tucker:
You weren’t a fatty lumpkin.
Geoff:
Like, I did swim team in the summers…but I still had plenty of frustration and lots of failures and lots of unrequited crushes. I was fascinated by girls. This is another thing about the American education system, is I kind of think you shouldn’t even try to school boys between ages eleven and seventeen, ‘cause their hearts aren’t in it.
Tucker:
We’re basically monsters.
Geoff:
We’re just pubescent mating monsters, and we’re interested in girls.
Tucker:
We should be learning specific things we like.
Geoff:
And we should be sent off to, like, an island or Sparta or boot camp or something.
Tucker:
Come back as men, yeah.
Geoff:
The idea that we should sit in little rows and be pacified and in chairs and learn Geometry is crazy. If you feel like it’s frustrating and weird and artificial, you’re right.
Tucker:
It is.
Geoff:
‘Cause that’s not what the last 10,000 generations of your male ancestors were doing at that time.
Tucker:
Hundreds, millions of years. No. If you hate school, I get it. I’m with you. Look, at this table, how many, five, six advanced degrees between us? Seven advanced degrees. Whatever, right? I fucking hated school. I love learning. I love doing things. I love being smart. I love understanding stuff. School doesn’t teach you any of that shit, and I went to the best fucking schools in the country and so did you. Between the two of us, no…I’ll go degree-for-degree with anybody. I’ll go teacher-for-teacher with anybody. Most of them sucked, and that’s the fucking reality. Most of what I learned, I learned outside of school, either through my own reading or my own experiences or seeking people out or having a good teacher and engaging them a lot. That’s how I learned. So, guys, if you fucking hate high school, if it’s frustrating, if it’s intolerant, if it made you feel less of a person, that’s normal. I mean, I’m sitting here, a millionaire, a fucking star, whatever…Tucker Max. And I felt all the same shit in high school. That’s the way it generally works. If you don’t, that’s awesome. That’s really good for you.
Let’s actually talk for a second about the super popular kids in high school, because there was a great study that came out that proved what I already knew anecdotally. Generally speaking, the people who are – and every high school has that small clique at the top, the baboons who sit at the top of the hierarchy, right? The three or four or ten guys and the three or four or ten girls, whatever, who are like…Mean Girls is a great movie that kind of exemplifies that, right? So, the Mean Girls in real life, those girls are all disasters at life right now. At best, they have some awful administrative job at some crappy company and a husband who’s fat and out of shape they can’t stand, and two kids and they’re, like, shades of who they used to be, right?
Geoff:
I have a theory that they all become real estate agents.
Tucker:
Yeah. That’s good. No, it is, actually. A lot of them do. And the guys become…they have some awful blue-collar job or something. Actually, even worse than a blue-collar job is a shitty white-collar middle manager job. I’d much rather have an honest blue-collar job, like, plumber, electrician, whatever. Those guys do shit. They actually help the world, whereas if you’re a paper pusher at Verizon, you might as well put a bullet in your brain. No one cares, right? Here’s the thing. If you peaked early and had the social skills to be super popular in high school, generally speaking, those skills do not translate to the real world. It doesn’t mean if you’re popular in high school that you’re gonna fail in the real world. There are some people who just have that great emotional intelligence, they have it from a young age and they’re popular everywhere they go ‘cause they’re nice to everyone. If you’re popular ‘cause you’re nice to everyone, you’re gonna do really well in life. If you’re popular ‘cause you navigated the social hierarchy well and put a lot of people down and were shitty to people and elevated yourself that way, chances are you’re gonna do really bad in real life, because those people – the skills that they learned don’t translate. There was a huge study about this that showed this empirically. The other thing that happens with those people is they stop learning. We talked about this in a previous podcast. Like, wherever it is, for guys especially, that they peak, they stop at that point. So, guys especially who peak in high school do really poorly after high school.
Geoff:
They get lazy.
Tucker:
Yes. They stop learning. They stop changing. They stop adapting. If you don’t learn and adapt after high school, you are not gonna do well in life. You really, truly are not. Because what ultimately matters in life are what do you do that creates value for the world and how do you relate to other people? Neither of those things are super indicative of popularity in high school. Okay? So, if you suck in high school, it doesn’t mean you’re gonna be successful in life. You might just be a fucking shit bird, right? And if you don’t learn and improve, it’s not gonna get better. But, don’t feel bad if you suck in high school.
Geoff:
And people biologically mature at different rates. Some guys are kind of programmed to peak early, both physically and mentally. And other guys kind of are programmed to peak later. It really helps to remember that and to keep challenging yourself. Like, I was pretty hot shit in high school. Like, I was near the top in terms of academic performance. It was a great high school. It was selective. But then you go to Columbia University in New York, and suddenly everybody around you was that person in high school, and you’re surrounded by professional guys in their twenties in New York, making literal million dollar bonuses. You think, “Oh, I’m hot shit now ‘cause I’m Ivy League.” No. You’re just some 19-year-old.
Tucker:
Every dude at Columbia is in the Ivy League!
Geoff:
But that’s good, ‘cause then you have to raise your game. So, if you can put yourself in situations where you have to keep changing and learning and maturing, that’s a big plus. If you’re the guy who peaked at sixteen, and then you stay in your hometown…
Tucker:
Bad news. Marry that girl quick, ‘cause she’s gonna move on. She’s gonna realize her mate value is higher than you.
Geoff:
We need to talk about mate value at some point.
Tucker:
Well, we’re gonna have a whole podcast about mate value. That’s, I think, two or three episodes from now. Let’s give some high school guys some takeaways. So, if you’re fourteen to eighteen, you’re in high school. High school sucks. What are some things, very specific things you can do to make high school better? I can think of a couple. Work on developing skills, whatever it is you like. Don’t listen to your fucking counselors. They don’t fucking know. Do you want to start a company? Go work in sales as a high school kid. If you can work in a business where you have to learn how to deal with people and you have to learn how to persuade people, that’s a skill you can use the rest of your life in every job you ever have. So, that means working as a waiter somewhere, you can’t bartend you’re too young. You know what I did in high school and it was amazing? I worked at…Not Mrs. Fields, but their competitor, Great American Cookie Company? The cookie shop at the mall, I worked at. So, basically, I had to learn to deal with people. I had to learn to talk to people. And every hot girls likes cookies, so every hot girl in the mall that came by, I would give them free cookies and they thought I was that cool guy who gave them cookies. I actually probably hooked up with…half the girls I slept with in high school, I met at the mall at the cookie store. Which is like, you think, “Oh, you worked at a cookie store.” When you’re sixteen, it’s fine. When you’re fifteen, it’s totally fine to have low-status service jobs. In fact, you should have them ‘cause they will teach you how to be an adult, what really matters in life, how to deal with people, how to be conscientious. It’ll teach you a lot of skills that can really benefit you later on, especially service industry jobs. I would highly recommend you have one of those jobs.
If you’re good at sports, play the fucking sport. Play the fuck out of the sport. I don’t care what it is. Here’s the thing. Being an average basketball player is less high-status than being an amazing ping pong player. I know it sounds weird, but there’s the thing. If you’re great at something, anything that has value, that’s far more attractive, especially later. Definitely on your college applications, if you choose to go to college, but also later on. Like, “Oh, yeah, I was a nationally-ranked ping pong player,” sounds way cooler than, “Oh, I played high school basketball.” It’s like, okay, like everybody else, asshole. For being six feet and being white and having small hands, I was an amazing basketball player. That doesn’t mean shit. Whereas I have a buddy of mine who was…a guy I went to law school with was a world-ranked chess player. He was a grand master for juniors. And when you’re going out meeting girls in law school and you’re talking about yourself, “Oh, I played high school basketball. I was real good.” And they kind of looked at you like, “Oh, you played high school basketball. That’s great. Did you play college?” “Well, I made the team, but I didn’t play ‘cause it was Division 3.” Any explanation sounds lame, right? Even chess, which is the nerdiest shit on earth. You’re a fucking grand master, that’s a big deal. It comes up and it’s, like, one of those things that’s, like, a hook you can talk about. Like, a marketing hook where the girl’s like, “Oh, that’s cool.” Especially if you don’t brag about it, like, “Oh, this conversation is like a chess game.” If you’re not a weirdo about it, then it’s something that’s really cool. So, develop your skills.
I would also…Whatever group of friends that you have, make good friends with them. Learn how to make friends. Learn how to deal with people. Even if there’s a lot of situations where you’re gonna feel uncomfortable, find the people you’re comfortable with. It doesn’t mean you have to become friends with them at your high school. Like there are tons of people who are like…I only slept with one or two girls I went to high school with. Every girl I hooked up with, I either met from my job at the mall or I met through other groups. Like, I was in various church youth groups, but they were, like, Episcopal Church, so it wasn’t really religious. It was sort of like an excuse to hang out with people. I met girls from other high schools. So, whatever groups in your area you like joining, join those. If you’re not popular in high school, if you don’t like it, do things outside of your high school. That’s a great way to meet people and a great way to find accepting social groups where you aren’t gonna feel like you’re a piece of shit. There is no place more socially mobile than high school. Here’s the thing. If, somehow, your reputation is your high school’s low-status, that’s not gonna change in your high school, but you can go to another group outside of your school and you’re immediately high-status. Your social status in your high school is probably, in a lot of ways, random. Don’t feel bad. Not your fault. Go find other groups. ‘Cause probably, people in your high school are pieces of shit.
Geoff:
So, the crucial thing there is when you think about jobs in high school, a lot of guys get really hung up on, “Oh, it’s a low-status job. It doesn’t pay well.” If you think of the job as just another opportunity to meet women, to learn skills, to improve your social intelligence, that’s what’s important. It’s not whatever shitty seven bucks an hour you’re making. It’s putting yourself out there socially. I didn’t have the brains to do this much in high school. I didn’t have, like…I didn’t get shitty jobs till college. And then I had some truly shitty ones. Yeah, just getting out there. Also, joining clubs. You know, every high school has lots of clubs. Join clubs that have girls in them.
Tucker:
Yes. Especially thing you like that also have girls. So, like, yearbook or something.
Geoff:
Like, I became president of French Club. Why? Because I love French culture? No, because 80% of the people in French Club were girls. And if you’re the president of that club and it’s 80% girls, they kind of pay attention to you.
Tucker:
That’s high-status in high school. It is. You’re absolutely right. Absolutely fucking right. In fact, I totally forgot about this. Thank you for this. So, I joined debate team in high school because…like, when I was a freshman, there was a junior cheerleader on the debate team who I was in love with. I mean, this girl was so, so beautiful. I don’t want to say her name, but she was stunning. Stunning. I still…How crazy is it? I’ve fucked, I don’t know, a thousand women, whatever. Some crazy number. I still think about Nicole, like, at times. Because when you’re young, certain beautiful women will imprint on your young mind. That’s just normal. Everyone does it. I still think about this girl. In fact, I actually Goggled her a few years ago, and she’s doing fine, but she doesn’t look like I remember. Like, I actually looked at yearbook pictures and I’m like, yeah, she’s pretty, but I’ve fucked 100 girls better than her this year. It doesn’t matter. The girls that imprint on your mind when you’re young, they hold a special place in your heart. Of course, she didn’t give a fuck about me. She was a very nice girl, always very nice to me, but it was like, “Oh, you’re so cute. Run along.” You know? Like, that sort of shit. And I don’t blame her because why would a high school junior want to talk to a high school freshman? No way, right?
So, anyway, I joined debate team because of her, ‘cause she was on the debate team, and she was terrible. I got amazing at it, by the way, like policy debate, and it was great because it made me really smart. You have to be really smart to be good at policy debate. And it was really fun and the girls that were into it were super into it and because I was super good at it, I met a ton of pretty girls. That’s actually probably how I hooked up with the other half of girls, now that I think about it, is policy debate. That’s actually how. I met a ton of girls through debate, like debate camps in the summer, stuff like that. Those skills translate. Learning how to reason and read and make cogent arguments, super, super good. Like, French Club, those skills translate. Learning other languages, super good. All these sorts of things, find anything you like that has any sort of application…Even if it doesn’t, actually, but if it does have applications, even better. Any sort of speech club stuff, there’s a million fucking things. Those are mostly girls doing it and a lot of them are gonna be pretty. There are gonna be girls who might not have talked to you elsewhere. Like, even in your high school. “Oh, he’s a nerd. I’m not gonna talk to him.” “Oh, he’s my extemporaneous partner. He’s really good.” Or oral storytelling. Whatever, right? And then you go to meets. Model UN, another great example. You go to these little meets and stuff, and it’s basically a bunch of girls just like you from all these other high schools. And they don’t know if you’re cool or not! And if you act like a normal, cool person to them, they’re gonna treat you like one. They don’t care what other people in your high school think. Alright…We could keep going about high school for maybe an hour, I think.
Geoff:
Yeah. Easily. This has somehow become not Life Stages in general, but the masturbation and high school episode.
Tucker:
‘Cause that’s the thing! High school is so important and so formative for so many guys. You know? And so many guys get so fucked up about it. Girls, too, but I think high school’s a little bit easier for most girls. The girls at the very bottom, it’s not, definitely, it’s really hard, and those girls get fucked. Like, the ones who are overweight or the ones who somehow…the really tall ones get pegged as monsters or something and they just have the worst fucking experiences. But, most girls fall in the middle. Most guys, actually fall…even if they don’t fall in the bottom, they feel like they fall in the bottom. Like, I bet you – in fact, I know for a fact, ‘cause I’ve been to a high school reunion – most of the people I went to high school with thought I was, like, one of the cool people in high school, and I was like, I don’t remember that shit. That’s not how I remember high school. I definitely was not at the bottom, but I remember almost sitting, not outside the hierarchy, but just on my own, you know? I definitely did not feel anywhere in the popular group of kids, and there were a lot of people who felt like I was. We actually talked about this. You know why they felt like I was? Because they didn’t feel like I was as picked on and shit on as they were. It didn’t mean I was popular. It didn’t, at all. It just meant that, like, I didn’t put up with other people shitting on me.
I assume at least a good number of people listening to this podcast have read my books or have an idea of who and what I am and what I’ve written. One of the reasons I’m pretty good at fucking with people is because early on in my life, someone teased me and made fun of me, I was like, “Alright, motherfucker. I’m gonna come back at you and…” Like, it was one of those things where it was like, “You may not like me and I may not be popular, but you don’t fuck with me, ‘cause it’s coming into a briar patch.” I would go after anyone for anything. I would react to. I never went after people, because in high school, picking a fight is the stupidest shit ever. Verbal, even, but I made sure if anyone tried to make fun of me, they had a fight coming. Not even a physical fight. I mean, like, I was gonna fucking ride them like a mule, and it was never worth it for anyone to fuck with me, and I was also a huge smartass in class to teachers, so I kind of carved out that niche. I think that’s why a lot of those kids thought I was popular. I wasn’t. I just wasn’t fucked with, which is a very different thing.
Geoff:
You got those mad debate team skills that you applied to verbal self-defense.
Tucker:
Guys, here’s another thing. It’s not hard to be good at something in high school. It’s really not. And if you can be good at anything, you’re automatically gonna be not the bottom. Which is really, I think, the most important thing in high school. Don’t be at the very bottom of the hierarchy. Don’t be the poor dirty kid. Don’t be like Kenny from South Park. Don’t be that. It’s not hard to be that. Just be good at something. Make a few friends. The best way, I think, to make friends is by joining any sort of club, any sort of group, having any sort of social legions. Here’s the point of my story. Everyone is terrified in high school. Even the cool kids, they’re utterly terrified that they’re not gonna be cool tomorrow. Everyone’s terrified. So, understanding that you’re terrified and figuring out ways to create alliances with other people that automatically makes you less terrified and puts you in a better position. It’s okay to be terrified. Think about this. Think about how fucked up our educational system is. No one teaches guys or girls how to have relationships, how to navigate social situations, how to interact with each other, what any of this stuff means. It’s total fucking bullshit.
And this is not irrelevant to mating. This is super relevant to mating, because most social interactions are either negotiations for status which are indirectly negotiations for mating. Let’s actually talk about this, too. We’re just gonna make this episode high school. We’ll do college and adulthood in a separate episode, ‘cause there’s too much to do here and we got to wrap up in about ten, twenty minutes. Okay. So, one of the big mistakes that Pick-Up Artists make, one of the big mistakes they make is they assume all attraction is based off social status. Totally wrong. It’s what we’ve talked about multiple times. Adult women are attracted to three sort of valences of attraction: social status, partnership ability, and father ability. Right? Okay. Three very different things. In high school, what are young girls looking at only?
Geoff:
Basically just status.
Tucker:
Right! They’re not looking at ability as a father or ability as a partner, ‘cause they’re not thinking that way at all. That’s why so many Pick-Up Artists mess up, and because clubs and bars are just social status. That’s it. So, the only two areas those dudes have ever operated in their entire lives – and I’m not criticizing them, it’s just kind of sad – the only areas they have ever operated in their lives are high school, essentially, and clubs, where the only valence of attraction that women look at is social status. Okay? In high school, it’s really hard to have good social status, ‘cause all you can look at is your rank, your hierarchical rank, right? That’s it! Once you become an adult, there’s all these other things you can offer that women really respond to and really think about. That’s, I think, where a lot of guys get fucked up about attraction because they’re thinking about what girls thought about in high school, which is not the same as adult girls.
Geoff:
Yeah. They’re overgeneralizing from the vicious high school status dynamics, which are really, really influenced by this female mate choice copying thing, right? The young women don’t really know how to evaluate males themselves ‘cause they don’t have much experience, so they imitate each other’s choices. “Well, she thinks he’s hot or captain of the football team, whatever, so I’m gonna imitate her status decisions,” and then we get these runaway popularity effects. “Well, he must be great ‘cause everybody else thinks he’s great,” or whatever. In adult life, it doesn’t work like that. Once everybody gets a little more confident about their own taste, their own mating choices, then it’s like, “Okay, he’s popular among them. I don’t care. He doesn’t offer the Good Genes, the Good Partner, the Good Dad traits that I want. I care more about intelligence or sense of humor and not just extroversion.”
Tucker:
“I want a guy who makes me laugh, not the quarterback of the Buffalo Bills.”
Geoff:
The whole adult status hierarchy breaks down into many, many, many different subcultures and different forms of status and different ways of displaying your skills. It’s not just one hierarchy. And even in high school, although I was reasonably high status in most regards—
Tucker:
‘Cause you went to a nerd high school.
Geoff:
I didn’t play on that. I did go to a nerdy high school.
Tucker:
It worked good for you.
Geoff:
But, I wasn’t even interested in trying to attract women that way. Even at that age, I was like, “I could try to build my popularity, but actually it’s more fun to use my verbal courtship skills.” This was way before texting. But basically, my courtship strategy was write really funny notes on paper to girls and pass it to them in class and try to get them to laugh.
Tucker:
Which worked with that group in that school.
Geoff:
Right. That worked. It wasn’t, like, “I’m gonna strut around, pretending to be the alpha male.” You can call that a beta strategy if you want. Fine. I don’t give a shit. It worked.
Tucker:
The alpha/beta thing is so stupid. So stupid. It doesn’t track to reality in any way, shape, or form.
Geoff:
One other thing I wanted to say about high school is the importance of cultivating some non-sexual friendships with girls. In retrospect, one of the most important things I did in high school was have a completely platonic, admittedly sexually frustrated friendship with a girl called Sarah. Really smart girl. Just not into me, but I would sort of hang out at her house, maybe two nights a week, and just talk. And that was hugely helpful, ‘cause I got insight into which boys is she interested in, how does she feel about them, how do teenage girls think, what’s her worldview? And it was really, really valuable. If I hadn’t had a female friend to talk to…I didn’t have a sister, so this was almost like my first exposure to the female mind.
Tucker:
So, being friend zoned at that point actually helped you, ‘cause you learned a lot about women.
Geoff:
Yeah. And at the time, of course I thought, oh, it sucks to be friend zoned, ‘cause she’s got a great body and she’s smart and funny and interesting and cool taste in music, whatever.
Tucker:
And you also looked cool because she’s your friend. The hot girl’s your friend!
Geoff:
Yeah.
Tucker:
This is your status.
Geoff:
It was almost like taking an extra credit course in female psychology. And she told me things that no girlfriend would ever tell me.
Tucker:
‘Cause she didn’t see you as sexual, so she was free to open up in other ways.
Geoff:
Exactly. Yeah. If you have a sister, don’t be alienated. Talk to your sister. Learn stuff.
Tucker:
Although, for a lot of guys, I could see why it might be hard to have sexual conversations with your sister.
Geoff:
Not sexual, but just about life in general. Even insights into her interactions with her female friends or what they talk about. Anything you can learn about female psychology in high school, from any resource, is useful.
Tucker:
Yes. Especially this one, ‘cause we actually know what we’re talking about. I actually want to point something out that kind of ties into what you just said and what I was saying. So, I got to know a couple guys who played for UT, like University of Texas. Really nice dudes. Both of them played about a year or two in the pros and then weren’t quite good enough to stay in the pros, but were, you know, stars at UT and played in the pros. They came back and I hung out with them a couple times, and they were, like, so excited to hang out with me because I could teach them to get women. I remember, they were like, “Oh, yeah, dude, like go talk to that girl. Bring her over.” And I looked at them and I’m like, “You played football at the University of Texas, and then you played for whatever, the Jets. You need me to help you get girls? What the fuck is wrong with you?” And then the more we talked about it, the more I realized these dudes had no idea how to deal with women and here’s why. They grew up in Texas. They were stars in football in the state of Texas, which means basically, they never had to understand or interact with women. Women always came to them. They were always the top of the social ladder, ‘cause Texas…high school football in the state of Texas is huge. Huge.
Geoff:
It’s like Friday Night Lights culture.
Tucker:
Literally! That’s Odessa. It’s far away from here, but high school football in Texas is actually bigger than college or pros in a lot of ways. So, they were stars in Texas, and then, like, the big thing you can do in Texas is go to UT, which is why Johnny Manziel is such a big deal because UT turned him down, he went to Texas A&M, and now A&M’s like, this big deal. You don’t even know what I’m talking about, Geoff, but that’s fine.
Geoff:
I’m just nodding, like yeah, whatever.
Tucker:
“Oh, of course, Johnny Manziel. I’ve heard of that name on Twitter.” Yes. Anyway, so they went to UT, which is, like, the football school in America. Them and Alabama are the two football schools. Whatever they want at UT, girls line up out the door. It has nothing to do with them as people. They just occupy the top of the status hierarchy, right? And then, they get out in the real world. They met me through a friend or whatever, this girl, and they were, like, latched onto me ‘cause they were like, “Dude, teach us about women.” And I knew