And he’s still a dipshit. When last we saw our hero, he was comparing confident women who are hard to control to “dirty snow.” On the subject of rejecting strangers who want your number in bars, he says this:
The best way for a girl to avoid that awkward first date is to not give her number out in the first place. As a guy, I know the ins and outs of the phone number game. If a cute girl is giving me any sign of hope, I’m going to try for those digits. I never assume she’s just having fun meeting people — I always think she’s out to find a date like I am.
The common move among guys (I’m guilty of this one too), after getting a girl’s number, is calling her phone to confirm that that it’s real and that his number is now registered in her phone. Most guys will watch the girl’s phone as they call it to make sure there’s no funny business going on.
“Hi, it’s me, the guy from the bar, just checking to see if you’re a big lying liarpants who is rejecting me while we’re both here so I can go back to pressuring you!” I’m trying to think of how I would react to having someone call me immediately to check if the number I gave them is a real one. I’m thinking: Not well. “Hey, thanks for instantly making me regret giving you my phone number. Now kindly fuck off and go fuck yourself, in whatever order is most convenient to you.”
Now, to be fair, Rich does eventually get around to saying “Or, you could just tell them no, you don’t want to give out your number,” which risks hurting their fee-fees, but ultimately earns their respect. But not before these self-serving gems about giving the cold shoulder treatment and avoiding dark corners:
If you don’t ask questions, avoid eye contact, and maintain the general appearance of someone who is trying to escape, even the most confident guy will probably give up hope.…Getting trapped anywhere private with the dude you’re trying to avoid will encourage him to try to get your number. He’ll read it as you wanting to be alone with him,even though it’s accidental.
While most dudes want proof that your phone number is real, they probably won’t need proof that a boyfriend is real. They may try to make you feel stupid by saying they wanted your number “as a friend,” but they’ll back off.
Translation: While most dudes will not take no for an answer about getting your phone number, and will immediately act like controlling assholes by checking to make sure it’s a real number, they will (sort of) accept that your pussy might already be owned by other some man and (sort of) back off. Your feelings and opinions are not important, but the thought that they might accidentally be approaching some other man’s property? Faux pas!
Well played, if self-serving sexist bullshit is your thing.
CaptainAwkward.com 
See, this is another example of how completely counterproductive sexist seduction can be. I would suppose that for 99%, if not 100%, of women, getting crowded in a dark corner and pressured to give up her phone number makes her far less likely to want to fuck you. Therefore, while you may gain your goal at the time (a phone number) you are less likely to achieve your final goal (Teh Sex). Therefore, stop doing that, dudes.
Also, confident =/= asshole.
Not that I’m smooth, or whatever, but isn’t it way more smooth to just hand someone your card and say “I’ve really enjoyed talking with you, email me if you’d like to go out sometime?”
Then you put the onus on the other person to get in touch if they like you (Bonus: If they get in touch, they like you!) without getting all up in their business.
But no, Sexist Dating Scenario says the guy has to show that he’s a fierce hunter, or whatever, and make all the moves or else how will you ever know that you are a valuable beauty object, silly woman? Or, so says Marie Claire.
“Therefore, while you may gain your goal at the time (a phone number) you are less likely to achieve your final goal (Teh Sex).”
This assumes that pressuring and manipulating women is a means to an end. For at least some subset of the PUA population, the pressuring and manipulation is the goal, not the means. If said pressuring and manipulation comes with sex attached, all the better. But it’s not the main goal.
You can see this in the hierarchical structure of PUA’s and their minions in comment threads on their blogs. The PUA’s portray themselves as super-successful and fulfilled, and they are! Not because they are getting a lot of good sex but because they are achieving their goal of subjugating women.
Meanwhile their commenters, who are made up mostly of awkward, frustrated guys geniunely trying to learn how to relate to women, are very gung-ho on the methods (after all, they didn’t used to get anywhere at all with women!) but generally report frustration at not being able to “close.”
It’s sort of like a cooking show where you learn to make lacquered bread. Great pastime unless you actually have an appetite for the real thing.
I suspect that if you’ve been given a fake number, PERHAPS you should have noted the signals before that that suggested they are not interested.
When you’ve pushed someone into giving you a number, you’ve really only got yourself to blame if it’s a fake one.
Once I had a guy give me his number, ask me for mine, and then promise not to call it, apparently to save face after realizing I was irritated. I’m pretty sure I gave him a fake (though I honestly can’t remember). I kinda wish now that I’d just said, “Hey, you’re not gonna call me, so how about if I just write down 10 random digits and we call it good?”
Making fun of Rich Santos’ perplexing and misogynistic world view is beginning to be my new favorite hobby.
He’s like the perfect intersection of “crushing insecurity” and “a giant sense of entitlement.” If you read his stuff regularly, 50% of it is “I’m a shy and clueless bunny about dating and I’m afraid of girls!” But then the other 50% is “Hey ladies, this is just how guys ARE, so you best adapt.” Stick with your wheelhouse, Rich (the part where you don’t know how to talk to women) – maybe you’ll learn something.
Seriously, this guy is kind of a mess, and I vacillate between two German-language emotions when I read any of his stuff: schadenfreude and fremdschämen (it means being embarrassed and ashamed for someone else!)
I think the idea of his blog is to say, “see ladies! Men are ridiculously irrational and insecure, just like you!” But seriously, so many of his posts are just indicative of ACTUAL DYSFUNCTION. It’s got to mean something that a magazine for women is employing such an odd person to teach women about dealing with men. I’m not sure what it means, but it’s possibly rather damning to the women’s magazine industry?
I love the way this guy sees women’s friends as an obstacle, but his own use of a ‘wingman’ is perfectly legit, yo. I’ve been cornered by a guy just once (don’t go to bars much), but the LAST thing I would have done is give him any contact details after he’d purposefully backed me into a corner. I didn’t even give him my real name!
Have you seen an earlier one, about advice from married men? One of them was ‘don’t give logical advice or you will sound condescending’. Trouble was, the examples were things like asking a woman who was complaining about her shoes hurting ‘If they hurt, why did you buy them?’ or a friend who’d got off at the wrong stop, ‘Why didn’t you ask me for the stop if you didn’t know the way?’
Reading it, I couldn’t help thinking that unless he’s got a time machine she can borrow, pointing out mistakes after the fact when the problem is perfectly clear to all concerned isn’t logical advice, it’s USELESS advice. Arguably, not even advice.
I don’t see what is really so hard about getting a phone number anyway… I can’t remember a time when I’ve had a decent conversation with a guy when I’m out who has then asked for it where I’ve said no…
But then that would involve Rich acting like an actual real person, so hey.
Wow, that’s just…I can see where bar interactions can be kind of a grey area as far as body language goes, but this whole article just reeks of an attitude where women’s personalities are obstacles to their vaginae. And the use of “trapped” in that context incredibly creepy, something he seems completely unaware of (which I guess makes sense, as there isn’t much consideration for women reflected here). Rich, if a man and/or his friend get me anywhere I feel “trapped,” it’s not going to get him my number. It’s probably going to end in me ultimately reaching a level of discomfort high enough where I eventually tell him to back the fuck off.
But on a more amusing note, this reminds me of the time I got a 2 a.m. text message from some guy on the opposite side of town wanting to hook up. It took about ten minutes of back and forth before I realized somebody must have given him a wrong number and another ten for him to believe it.
What gets me about this guy is that his attitude isn’t just misogynistic, it also assumes that all men are idiotic, insenstive lunks as well. Sorry Rick Santos, but I’ve encountered many men who are capable of noticing when I seem uninterested and backing the fuck off. Some of them even realize that “being somewhere private” doesn’t mean I’m up for anything! What a douche.
Jesus, thank you.
And can I just say how much I hate this idea that women who get themselves into “compromising” situations are giving consent? Especially when PUAs straight-up admit that they push women into accepting unwanted closeness, contact, and interaction? If I want sex from you, I can fucking well ask you for sex. In conclusion, leave me alone.
Dear Richy Rich,
You are a creep. I hope the fact that you are published in Marie Clair alerts women everywhere to this fact, and that you never get an opportunity to harrass-erhm i mean DATE women ever again.
Cheers!
i don’t understand the “calling to make sure it’s a real number” thing.
first, we’re assuming this is in a bar or similar LOUD place. i don’t know about Rich, but everyone *I* know either turns their phones off, or to “silent/vibrate” – and on top of THAT, their phone in is a pocket or purse – not out in the open!
second – when i’m exchanging numbers with people, this is what i do [especially if a guy asks for my number. i like *proof* of things.] i take their number and TEXT THEM mine. FROM mine.
because if i WANT a person to have my number, that is THE best way to do it.
ok, so i’m both female and weird, in my phone habits [the texting my number thing]
for people i don’t want to give my number to, but to whom i am willing to extend SOME means of contact so that i can found if i DO want to give them my number, i exchange email address [everyone wants my facebook. i HATE facebook. they get an email, and if they won’t give ME an email, they DON’T get an email. i’m a fossil, it’s true]
as for everything else – i have NEVER [knowingly] gone on a date with an “alpha” guy [i’ve twice gone on dates with guys who pretended to NOT be that. it went badly both times] not that i’m hyper-dominate or something, but if you don’t respect me, you’re not getting ANYWHERE. i don’t just mean sex – i walked out on one of those dates half-way thru and took a taxi home. the few times i’ve given into pressure, i’ve hated it and the person [and myself!] for the whole thing.
you various PUAs and similar, let me tell you the truth – you are MUCH more likely to get laid if you treat us like PEOPLE, give us the respect we deserve, and stop focusing on “scoring” and start focusing on building some sort of CONNECTION. not some fake “connection” based on random psychpbabble tricks [offer a back-handed compliment then touch her arm!] but a TRUE connection.
or as Holly Pervocracy once said “if you want to get laid, stop treating sluts as if they are BAD. they aren’t bad, they want to do what you want to do, and you’re MUCH more likely to get what you want if you stop slut-shaming and started slut-appreciating!”
[that was paraphrased; she said it better]
There’s just so much bad faith there that I don’t even know where to start.
I hardly have to mention street harassment or pressure to talk to some stranger when the women I’m talking to are interrupting and talking over each other to bring up their examples. The guy who followed her home. The guy who called out the car window and then drove around the block to call out again. The guy who took her purse, reached in for her phone, and called himself. The guy who, when she said she was in a couple already, said he knew he was better than the other guy, or wanted the other guy’s name and number to call and confront him, or who said he was married too but he thought they could hook up anyway. The guy who set the arm of her dress ON FIRE when she wouldn’t talk to him (this was in one of those epic Shapely Prose threads). The guy who PULLED OUT A GUN when she said she didn’t want to give him her number (this was one of my students). The guy who told me, when I said I had a girlfriend, that he was sure I just needed some cock (in fact, the whole bunch of men who have made corrective-rapey comments, because this is apparently supposed to be irresistible).
I’m with ApeMan1976. The only way to make any sense of most of this is to believe that it has nothing to do with actual dating and everything to do with Putting Another One in Her Place.
Of course, that does not explain why the guys in question go on whining about not getting laid.
I would love to see the scenario play out if Rich was given a girl’s home phone, tried the phone test, and was promptly given the beat down when trying to confront her about supposedly lying. It would be just a beautiful scenario of someone digging their own grave.
Two females I met this summer by chance (on a historical tour, in the train station), whom I chatted with for an extended period of time in a generally pleasant way, nothing non-platonic about it, when they’ve said that they enjoyed talking to me and it would be nice to get together for a coffee sometime and could they have my number, after I gave it to them and confirmed with my own eyeballs that they had typed it into their phone’s contact list correctly, then have insisted on calling my phone immediately to confirm the number (it was NOT to allow my phone to record their number easily so I could put their details into its contact list) because they wanted to see if my phone would ring. Why so distrusting, and happy to be open about it? It makes a bad impression.