Comments by "Gareth Hart" (@tgheretford) on "Lotuseaters Dot Com" channel.

The problem with "cold approach" - i.e. asking people out repeatedly until you succeed - is that if you kept doing it in the past, you'd get a reputation, stigma and eventually end up being gossiped about. Now, you could be arrested for harassment and stalking.
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One thing to note relevant to this interview, from Alex's majority of women to middle age want to be approached findings he presented back in July, while that percentage of women may want to be approached more, you have to ask them, if that is dependant on the attractiveness of the men approaching you. Because if you asked them if they wanted unattractive men to approach them, that percentage would drop dramatically. As the rules go - be attractive, don't be unattractive.
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@James_36 Depends on how "the victim feels". To quote Nottinghamshire Police.
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Tinder and PoF before it, have successfully managed to redefine hook-ups as dating and relationships. It's also apparent that the financial structure of dating apps is incompatible with the concept of people finding long term partners. It's also worth nothing that while women have a biology and fertility clock, men have an experience and pre-selection clock. Everyone knows of the former, in terms of the latter, if you do not have the relevant experience in dating and relationships and proof of pre-selection by your thirties, it is taken as a show-stopper and is not something you can fix at the gym or university. It's why men who tell teenagers and young men to not date until they are thirty annoy me, they are setting up men to fail. You need to be learning, starting a career, be independent, fit AND have experience in dating and relationships if you find yourself single in your thirties onwards. It is just as bad advice for men as telling women to focus on career and waiting until their thirties and beyond to start a family. It's also why divorced men have better outcomes in finding a partner than their similar middle aged and older counterparts who are long term single.
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We tend to focus on the female performers in these videos and the danger of children being exposed to such content. What gets ignored is the male performers and most of all, the consumers of such content. Because they are likely turning to said content to fill a need, a release for their natural urges. If all the outlets are closed through legislation - pornography, bots, dolls and devices, paid services, OnlyFans, even solo acts performed in the privacy of someone's home, and we herald a dawn of enforced celibacy and puritanism, then we have a group of predominately single men with no outlets to fulfil their needs, desires and release legally. This will not end well for society.
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@James_36 The signs in London recently that went viral telling men not to engage in a wide variety of behaviours says otherwise. Even Alex's own research stated that 20% of women would report a man who made an unwanted approach to an authority figure such as HR or the police. Women do NOT want men approaching them unless it is wanted attention and want the law to deal with men who break this boundary.
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If there is no alternative other than either succeeding in dating or enforced state celibacy for the unattractive males in society who women on the whole do not want to date and are simply beyond realistic help (genetics, height, poverty, lifelong speech impediment, disability, etc) then the latter will not end well for society. See what happens in prisons and in staunchly devout religious settings where celibacy is enforced and now extrapolate that to society.
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It's still problematic because of the status of the males who are paying to gaze.
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I distinctly remember the Honey Badgers coming to Nottinghamshire when it was the first county to implement the misogyny hate crime category. Since then other police forces have also implemented it. One force has placed police officers in nightclubs to deal with unwanted attention from men. While we have existing harassment, assault, stalking and public order laws to deal with unwanted attention and offence as a result, we also have the newly enacted Online Safety Act for online communication and behaviour to protect women's safety online and soon the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill and the Workers Protection Bill which will strengthen existing laws to protect women's safety offline.
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Ironically, in our part of Nottinghamshire, they have just launched a service where the buses ARE run like taxis. No timetables and running between 7am and 7pm.
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As long as those goals are attainable and realistic. I see so many self-help gurus and commentators who tell men to reach a peak that for virtually all of them, they can never attain. Sadly now, a good number of them are exploiting men's failure to reach that peak for profit with programmes that are designed to fail and allow the up-selling of more expensive programmes in a vicious circle of failure.
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@James_36 All the things on those signs are covered by existing harassment, stalking and public order laws. As is unwanted attention. That's why a 19 year old was convicted of sexual assault and now has a criminal record and is on the sex offenders register for merely following advice on how to make a friend. If you think approaching women in a public place is a risk free concept then with all due respect, you haven't been paying attention.
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Men are being told that they are the problem. The problem is, the solution being sold to them are generic populist sound-bytes that don't solve the underwhelming personal issues such as "just gym bro" and "just real life bro" and the examples being set for men to aim at are so high status and attractive, men who follow this advice will simply fail to achieve because the bar is far too high. It's like asking a 65 year old man to become a young male professional top tier footballer and then scalding them when they fail with not trying hard enough. Realistic expectations are missing from what is preached by the gurus and commentators of today.
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@Mightylcanis I remember a time when men could approach women and the worst thing that could happen is some social embarrassment, maybe even a slap if you got it really wrong. Can we go back to those common sense times and advise the police to deal with more important issues?
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The danger is, the social credit score is being pushed as the solution for what the state deems harmful to both yourself and your wider circle and how to ensure everyone adheres to the same strict moral framework they believe. The concept around it is the belief that people need to be protected from themselves and prevent corruption and harm into the wider community and the country via what the state considers a "vice". Also, we know from history where prohibition leads to.
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@JeffCaplan313 That's normally how regimes deal with excess numbers of men. And considering the state of the world at the moment, that's probably where we are heading.
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@ulaznar I would argue it is dating apps and self-help gurus who are capitalising on men's loneliness too, not just OnlyFans.
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Banning pornography will also require the banning of VPN's, proxies and other technologies to evade the roadblocks as well. You will need to effectively ban the Internet and impose a national Intranet a la North Korea. Now what happens to all the men who are not succeeding in dating? You are not going to force women to date men who are deemed unsuitable - we're not going to have and should not have arranged marriages or state sanctioned girlfriends - and we do not want to unleash the consequence of sexually frustrated men with no outlets for release or hope and enforced into celibacy by the state.
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@Locke350 They also don't want to be approached by other men they don't know. Particularly if that man is below her looks and status.
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Being a single male who is unsuccessful at dating and mating is stigmatised as we apply male worth to those aspects of life. Incel refers to anyone who fails at that and is now being used as a loaded insult even to those who are in long term relationships, including Dr Jordan B. Peterson. Male insults tend to be focused on the inability to attain a partner. The problem with self-improvement gurus now is that they engage in survivorship bias - focusing on the top tier men that most men could not reach. Inevitably when they fail, they get sold programmes to further improve themselves, which inevitably fail and the man gets blamed for not trying hard enough. Then he gets upsold an higher priced programme which also fails. And so you have a vicious circle. Because gurus and commentators fail to acknowledge the fact that everyone has a different ceiling they can aim for. But that doesn't gain clicks, views and revenue like generalising, easy sound-bytes and lucrative programmes do. Dating apps are now the dating market. Real life is now either too risky or has gone since 2020 and won't be coming back as bars and nightclubs close down due to the cost of living crisis. If you're not photogenic, physically attractive and able to show your status in your photographs (liars get found out) and if you are older, lack of experience, you're in big trouble. Problem with things like love, affection, intelligence and humour, you can't really demonstrate those in a photograph like you can with facial features, physical intelligence and socio-economic status. We're creating a moral panic around incels for an agenda whilst ignoring the fact that they are human beings too.
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A good number of the companies mentioned have now done an about turn on their decision because they've just suddenly realised that the people complaining do not purchase their products and services, as opposed to the people who watch GB News.
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The "white pill" being pedalled about could easily be described as a blue pill with a white sugar coating. You could also uncharitably describe it as optimism minus reality - otherwise known as delusion. Because optimism gets views, paying customers and profit and reality doesn't.
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@Madonnalitta1 We never had a situation in the past where someone reported someone else who they found unattractive to an authority figure. This is a relatively novel thing. Women do not like men beneath their status and attractiveness level approaching them. It creates unease, gives the "ick", harms their self-esteem and is seen as offensive as they now question their own worth and status if someone lower in those approaches them with romantic intentions. It is a major social faux-pas that the man is expected to know prior to the approach. In the past this was dealt with by social shaming, calling out or simply "I have a boyfriend" if the man is less egregious. Now, women are being encouraged by law enforcement and HR to report such faux-pas because women by and large have had enough of being hit on and don't want men approaching them. Decent men respect that wish. Narcissists won't care.
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News reporting trends toward negativity because it attracts views, fear and loyalty. Which is also why we're seeing a backlash against the mainstream media and their news reporting.
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You're right that it is deemed a social faux-pas to approach strangers. Not just in public transport but any public place, including social gatherings and gyms nowadays as people tend to prefer to keep within their own closed social circles. This is also happening online which is why most people who meet online do so via social media with people they follow and instant messaging rather than dating apps. There have been arrests and convictions in Scotland of PUA's who advocated that very thing to other men.
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The future under a Labour Government - "excuse me Sir, can you provide evidence that you have a female partner or provide an exemption of a male partner, please? No? Can I see your Tinder app, sir? If you don't show it to me now, you will be arrested under the Incel Eradication Act." What next Labour? State sanctioned girlfriends for all single men?
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