So at this point you presumably all know about James Franco’s less-than-successful attempt to text his way into the pants of a 17-year old fan — which, if it wasn’t just a publicity stunt for his latest movie, which happens to be about a creepy teacher preying on a student, was pretty creepy for real.
You might have been struck by the, er, bluntness his approach, which could be summarized as the “I’m James Franco, are you technically of legal age in New York State, can I get you alone in a room with me right now, no I’m really James Franco, really” technique.
But what you haven’t seen yet is an analysis of Mr. Franco’s TEXT GAME by a recognized expert in the field. And by expert I mean our new friend Christian McQueen, the Alpha Playboy with the Obviously Fake Name.
Mr. McQueen asks the timeless question: Was Mr. Franco’s TEXT GAME desperate or just direct?
To some it may seem like he’s being ‘thirsty’, but is he really? Or his text game actually the type of game that high value men use?
After going line for line through Mr. Franco’s conversational gambits with the wary teenager — which, you may recall, not only failed to convince her to come to his room but also created a bit of an embarrassing scandal for him — McQueen concludes that Franco’s game was …. “solid.”
No, really.
You see, when you’re James Franco, you can just go ahead and behave like some dude straight out of the CreepyPM subreddit, because you have “so many options, that [you] can go Ultra-Direct in [your] text game and many players who are on a great level utilize this.”
Don’t bother with small talk. Don’t bother with charm. All you need to do is state your famous name, determine if she is of legal age in the state you are in (and she was, in New York), and then proceed to work out the logisitics. And BAM, you’re in like Flynn. (Though one imagines that the real Erroll Flynn actually tried to work some personal charm into his approach with women.)
McQueen sums it up for us mere mortals:
[H]is ’game’ was not ‘thirsty’, but simply Direct. While not great, it was solid.
He is a celebrity, so it’s less about him using Game and more about him asking questions as though they are completing a transaction. She gets to fuck a celebrity and he gets her pussy. Simple.
Yeah. Except that none of that happened and now a guy who could have slept with any one of literally millions of enthusiastic volunteers over the age of 18 is now the poster boy for celebrity creepiness.
He could have been smoother and possibly gotten the bang, but he probably does not care.
Yeah. Unless this is all a publicity stunt, I’m thinking that he probably does care just a little bit now.
This is classic I Don’t Give A Fuck Game.
When your value is high and your time is precious, you don’t give a fuck if she rejects you. This is Next Level.
Well, if by “Next Level” you mean “an approach so crude and creepy that it not only squicked out the 17 year old fan that it was directed at but also millions of female fans who’ve now seen the texts online.”
He put out minimal effort to prove it was him, which was understandable considering she doubted it was him, and when she balked, he ejected quickly.
I guess he’s got a point here. It would have been even worse if Franco had stuck around and tried to pressure the fan to see him.
Remember gents, when your Game is tight and you have High Value, you can go Direct. Men of High Value don’t have time to be wasted. You may get rejected immediately, but you also won’t waste time with girls just seeking attention and validation.
You may, on the other hand, be exposed on the internet as a creepy predator. But I guess Men of High Value don’t care about that, which is why Franco didn’t go on Live With Kelly and Michael shortly after this broke to apologize for it all. Oh wait. He did.
Huh. That doesn’t sound High Value at all.
Is he on Reddit? Or into gaming/anime/sci fi? I’ve seen that idea crop up a lot in those spaces. I think Scalzi may have written something about it, actually.
This is actually the real issue with the MRM, not that their various stupid political actions will get anywhere, but that they’ll be able to insert deeply misogynistic ideas into the general cultural soup that young men swim in.
Reddit no, but the other things yes. (Me too. We have fun.)
We’re talking about it now. He just called the movement bullshit, so I think we’re good for the moment. (He’s very focused on things that can be proven, so maybe I was worrying for nothing.) I just have a tendency to end up with guys who prove to be…not good?
I’m sorry for sort of hijacking the comments with my worrying.
Creep is gendered at least some of the time, but that doesn’t mean it’s inaccurate or unfair to use it.
Hey David, check out this blog that was made for you (no, not by me)
http://david-futrelle-is-a-misogynist.blogspot.com
Lawlzzzzz
Oh FSM, it’s Scarecrow. LOL.
JJ – I remember a song by Nikki Minaj called “The Creep,” or something like that. Although most of the creeps in the video were men, at the end, Nikki plays one too.
And here it is.
Normally not a fan of Nikki Minaj, but this one was pretty funny.
@Ellie
“It isn’t me, it’s a friend of mine” doesn’t work when you go pick up a condom, and doesn’t work here.
I’m amazed that anyone really thinks PUA stuff is anything but snake-oil.
Where’s that famous cynicism and mistrust the modern world is supposed to be drowning in?
Off topic. I suppose this comment about/to the Halifax police chief by Paul Elam is just ‘satire’:
Vaiyt, can you please explain why that comment was directed at Ellie? Are you saying Ellie is the author of that blog she linked?
Aunti Alias – “darker types,” urgh. Because no white cop has ever been a criminal, of course not.
Something tells me Elam would have been salivating (among other things) when he wrote the bit about “rounding up the women”.
Actual police officers round up people who haven’t committed crimes just because they’re women/POC. If you don’t do this, you’re no longer a real cop.
Most important human rights movement of the 21st Century, folks.
I just realized what particularly was bothering me about McQueen’s dumbassery. It’s this part, when applied to the situation with Franco.
So, this is coming from the perspective of having worked around the music industry for years, and observed male celebrity/female fan interactions. You know what most female fans are looking for when they interact with the male celebrities that they stan? It’s not sex, it’s attention and validation. Acknowledgement, basically. Groupies are also a thing that exists, but most fans are not groupies, they’re just fans. You know what happens when male celebrities treat their female fans like groupies? It hurts the feelings of the fans. Rather than feeling validated, they feel betrayed by someone they had admired. If this kid was a fan of Franco’s, that’s what he did, and it’s a shitty thing to do. Lots of celebrities do it, but that doesn’t make it any less shitty. He deserves to be shamed for it, and maybe if more celebrities were shamed for it they’d do it less often.
I have to say that that Hollywood Life article on Franco’s “apology” is all kinds of squick. It’s pretty much all about how brave he is for going on air and apologising, with a side order of blaming the 17 year-old for publishing the texts. Rape culture in print.
The term “high value” bugs me. As used by PUAs, it means “person who has sex”. When I think of a high value person, I think of someone who is beloved, admired, needed, and capable. Someone who is irreplaceable to the people and community around them. Having sex doesn’t meet that criteria. It’s a basic biological function that even animals perform. Participating in it has the potential to make you more valuable to your partner, but only if you have emotional ties and care about their well-being. Otherwise, no1curr.
If PUAs disappeared from the world, who would miss them? Society (and sex) would continue on as usual without any hint that they ever existed.
titianblue – yeah, it’s always the girl who gets blamed for “ruining” the celebrity/politician’s spotless reputation, isn’t it? Not the crummy behavior of the celebrity/politician. People sure do love them a pedestal.
(Disclaimer: I’m not by any means advocating genocide by indulging in the “disappear from the world” thought-experiment. What I mean is that PUAs hugely overestimate their importance in the world.)
I find it baffling that, despite scores of women saying, “Umm, that’s not how it works,” and despite this high-profile IRL example, PUA’s keep touting the absurd idea that the only difference between “creepy” and “romantic” is the attractiveness of the guy involved. And then speak bitterly about women for this double-standard, which the women themselves do not live by.
One of my best relationships was with a man sporting coke-bottle glasses and a neckbeard (with for-real, diagnosed Asperger’s, no less). My two scariest, “oh crap, that could have been really bad” experiences involved young, conventionally attractive, athletic dudes. It’s almost like I actually care more about being treated like a human than I do about devilish good looks.
Also, re: the “creepy” discussion – Captain Awkward wrote a pretty great post about it. She links up some more good articles in there as well; it’s worth a read. http://captainawkward.com/2012/08/11/the-c-word/
High value, LOL. These dudes will latch onto anything to pump up their sad existences.
The irony coming off that Elam quote is making my eyes water.
Paul, have you ever had integrity? Have you ever been a decent human?
You know you’re dealing with a libertarian MRA when they start speaking about sexuality and romance in terms of reductive economic principles of laissez-faire capitalism.
@ Kootiepatra
I was going to link that very same post! It’s basically my go-to resource guide for why the word “creepy” is not a gendered slur.
@ JJ
This is slightly off topic, but it might be of interest to you. Backstory: Rory O’Neill is an Irish performer who runs a successful nightclub as his drag queen alter-ego, Panti Bliss. He went on a popular talk show (on RTE, our national broadcaster, funded by the taxpayer) to talk about being gay in Ireland. During the course of the interview, he implied that a number of prominent anti-SSM campaigners were homophobic (he went on to qualify that he thinks everyone is a bit homophobic, including himself, because we live in a homophobic society and we tend to internalize that shit.) Anyway, the prominent anti-SSM campaigners then threatened to sue both him and RTE for defamation, because being called homophobic could damage their careers etc. RTE ended up paying out a total of €80,000 of taxpayer money to the offended parties.
In response, Rory O’Neill appeared as Panti Bliss in the Abbey (our national theatre) after a sold-out evening performance to talk about the incident. The whole speech is brilliant and you should watch it, but her core point is brilliant: when you dictate what language oppressed groups can and can’t use to describe their own oppression (in this case, don’t call anyone homophobic or you’ll get sued), you are stripping them of what little power they have to articulate their own experiences and challenge dominant narratives. “Because now it turns out that gay people are not the victims of homophobia, homophobes are.”
I’m not saying the situation is completely analogous when it comes to the word creepy or creeper, but I think it’s a useful way of looking at it:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXayhUzWnl0&w=560&h=315%5D
Actually, it means “Person who should be getting all the sex according to our formula”
Actually actually, it means “MAN who should be getting all the sex according to our formula”.
People still use Blogger?
“If PUAs disappeared from the world, who would miss them? Society (and sex) would continue on as usual without any hint that they ever existed.”
This. Not only do they overestimate their worth in the world, they were too stupid to pay attention in elementary school science class that life on this planet is all about evolution/change. No person or group in the history of the planet has ever stopped things from changing, and no one is going to, let alone a bunch of loser keyboard jockeys. In the future, they will likely be remembered as the last few remaining generations of men grasping at anything they could to change the world back to when they controlled everything and women had no choices. If they’re remembered at all. lol