Reading Time – 9 minutes

I came from the pick-up artist world of the late 2000s and early 2010s. Under the name Blackdragon, I was in the second generation of pick-up artists right after the first generation of guys like Neil Strauss, Mystery, Owen Cook, and a few others who rose to prominence in the mid-2000s.

The pick-up artist community, as it was called back then, was a net positive. It taught normal, everyday beta males how to get with laid multiple women and/or more attractive women. This was the first time in my lifetime, and perhaps ever, that men had access to these kinds of skills. Having grown up in the 1980s, I lived in a world for decades where men did not have this ability. Before the pick-up artist movement, the only men who could get laid with multiple attractive women were A) celebrities, B) rich old men, and C) men we used to call “naturals,” that small percentage of men who were just naturally good with women from day one, having been lucky enough to have been born with personalities full of confidence, courage, social skills, and a lot EQ.

But that was a very small percentage of men. The vast majority of men were not celebrities or naturals and were just everyday dudes trying to figure out how to get laid. The pick-up artist community helped these men. I know because I was one of them.

Those pick-up artist days were good times. It was before the negative stuff that came shortly after, like the right-wing angst of the manosphere and red pill, the anger of movements like MGTOW and black pill, the feminists and left-wingers who started screaming about how it was unfair to women, and when men grew terrified about things like false rape accusations, pandemics, Me Too, or what people said about you on social media.

As time went on, the pick-up artist community faded away and became transformed into one or more of those above groups. Most of you already know this.

What I found interesting, however, was how all of my fellow pick-up artists ended up. Of the 150 or so pick-up artists from that era who were online teaching their audiences, only two of them (that I know of) remain today still regularly and actively talking about women topics: myself and Chase (of girlschase.com). Two out of about 150 (again, that I’m aware of). That’s crazy! Chase and I really are in rarified air.

Pretty much all the rest went away.

But… where did they go?

What did they do with their lives after leaving pick-up artistry behind?

I’ll tell you exactly what they did. The vast majority of these men, and I’m not going to mention any names but many of you know who a lot of these men are, went on to embrace monogamy or something close to it, then proceeded to experience mass chaos in their personal lives for years on end. Drama. Terrible breakups. Horrible divorces. Cheating. Lying. Custody battles. Crimes. In some cases, violence. In other cases, completely imploding publicly, alienating or even insulting their own audiences. In other cases, suddenly snapping, taking the God pill, and suddenly becoming hardcore, and I mean hardcore Christians or Muslims, denouncing everything they had ever done for decades prior.

I am now seeing the same pattern for many men who are coming out of the manosphere and red pill worlds. It’s going to be interesting to watch over the next few years what these men do in their personal lives, as most of them will replicate the madness in their personal lives the former pick-up artists experienced.

Why did this happen?

And why didn’t I go through any of this?

It’s not because these men were stupid. These were some of the smartest men I’ve ever met. It’s also not because they didn’t understand women. Clearly they did, at least most of them. It’s not even that these guys had rose-colored glasses of unreasonable expectations; a hell of a lot of these guys fully understood that the way they were configuring these post-pick-up-artist relationships was probably not long-term stable. (I was a big part of many of their educations on that particular point. “You’re getting monogamous with your girlfriend/wife? That’s cool man, but shit, don’t tell Blackdragon. He’ll be all over you.”)

So why did this happen with so many of these guys?

The answer is simple: pick-up artist is a temporary lifestyle model.

Here’s what I mean. Pick-up artist was and still is a valid set of techniques that really work, at least for the most part (every industry has bullshit and scammers and pick-up artist was no different). You can use them to have sex with lots of cute girls if you have the balls and the motivation to take the time and effort to practice them and persevere through the initial stages when you’re going to do things wrong and look stupid. This is exactly what did between 2007 and 2009. I put in the work, failed, kept at it, and soon it worked great for me, and the rest is history.

The problem with pick-up artist is it’s a lifestyle that is only valid for a few years, not your whole life. There are two times when a man should live the pick-up artist lifestyle of having sex with lots of new women all the time:

1. When he is young, as in under the age of 35.
2. When he is of any age but has just gotten out of a big monogamous relationship or marriage and never had time to sow his wild oats like a man. Men in that particular scenario should go out and get laid with a mountain of young babes… for only for about 1-4 years, not for the rest of his life. He won’t want to do that for the rest of his life, and that’s the entire problem.

Here’s the question. Do you want to spend your life hitting up girls at clubs, bars, or on the street while swiping through Tinder and Bumble and constantly going out on tons of first and second dates when you’re 57?

The answer for the vast majority of men, including Alpha Males, is no. (Again, unless you just got divorced from a 30-year sexless marriage, then maybe you do that for a year or two before getting back to normal again.)

And that is the problem with pick-up artist. Not that it doesn’t work. It does! The problem is that pick-up artist is only valid for a temporary time in your life. After that time is over, you won’t want to do it anymore and will want to do something else.

The problem is compounded because back in the 2000s, pick-up artists didn’t know this. These pick-up artist gurus, 95% of whom were well under the age of 35, just went out, practiced their skills, banged hundreds of women, and gave no thought whatsoever to what they would want later in life when they were 39 or 46 or 57.

So then they hit a brick wall when they turned 35 or so. I’ve discussed age 35 for men many times in my blogs, how age 35 is the male equivalent of age 33 for women, who suddenly wake up one morning and want completely different things in their personal lives. Once these men didn’t want to bang hundreds of new girls anymore, they had no battle plan for how to live. All they knew was how to have sex with new girls. They had no idea how to manage these girls into long-term, happy, ongoing relationships.

So they defaulted back to what all humans default to, false Societal Programming. When you’re done dating around, false SP tells you to settle down, move in with a girl you like, get as monogamous as possible, possibly legally marry her, and crank out a few kids. So these guys did that… and nuclear explosions resulted. Cheating, lying, drama, violence, breakups, divorces, custody battles, lawsuits, mental breakdowns; many of you know the stories.

As I’ve also analyzed on my blogs many times, once a man has sex with lots of hot women, he is permanently incapable of monogamy. If he’s stupid, desperate, lacks self-awareness, or catches oneitis, he’ll get monogamous anyway, and then he’ll proceed to cheat, get caught, and have all kinds of problems.

I see the same problem today with things like red pill, tradcon, black pill, and Andrew Tateism. These lifestyle models may work or they may not, but all of them only apply to a certain time in your life, after which you won’t want to keep doing them.

Should a 60-year-old red pill guy be going out on seven first dates a week with young girls within a red pill framework? Probably not; he’s not going to be happy doing that and neither would you if you were 60.

Should a 24-year-old guy convert to hardcore Christianity or Islam, immediately get legally married to some 22-year-old girl, start going to church/mosque, and start having babies? Probably not; in the modern era he’ll be divorced within four years and be saddled with alimony and child support that he probably can’t afford. Then he’ll go to jail if he can’t pay it.

Should a 43-year-old guy start loudly lecturing his modern-day Western girlfriend or wife about how she needs to shut the fuck up and respect his authority like Andrew Tate? Probably not; she’ll just scream back a bunch of “Excuse me??? You can’t tell me what do!!!” girlboss shit and a huge argument will ensue. A breakup is likely if he keeps pushing it.

Should a beta male who got rejected by some girl go black pill and stay that way for 40 years straight? Probably not; he’ll be so depressed after not having sex that long before 40 years he’ll probably kill himself either on purpose or by accident with things like drugs or alcohol.

I think you see my point. Even the systems that work only work for a temporary period in a man’s life before he’ll want something different.

And THAT is where Alpha Male 2.0 comes in.

Unlike any other masculine lifestyle model you can find, Alpha Male 2.0 works both right now AND for the rest of your life.

Alpha Male 2.0 works for all men of all ages, regardless of what phase of life they’re in. Alpha Male 2.0 works for teenage boys and it works for old men who are well into their seventies (and men in both of those categories are in my audience, engage in the community, and have been at my live events).

It works for single men, men who are married, men who are divorced, men with girlfriends, men who travel a lot, and men who never go anywhere. It works for men who have kids, men who don’t have kids, men who want kids someday, and men who never want kids. It works for introverts and extroverts. It works for nerds, jocks, punks, fat guys, athletes, and drug addicts. It works for white guys, black guys, Indian guys, Asian guys, Hispanic guys, and any other race you can name. It works for left-wingers, right-wingers, libertarians, and people who don’t know anything about politics or don’t care. It works for religious men and it works for agnostics and atheists. It works for celebrities (yes, literally, though I can’t mention names) and men who want to stay 100% anonymous forever.

Alpha Male 2.0 works for any man, and unlike all other male lifestyle models, it works FOREVER. Once you adopt it as a lifestyle, it will carry you through for the rest of your life. You will never have to stop years down the road when you’re older and say, “Well, shit, now that I want this instead of that, NOW what do I do?”

If you want to stay single and have fun, play with FBs and low-end MLTRs.

If you want a girlfriend, great, get an OLTR.

If you want to settle down and have kids, get an OLTR wife.

If you want to make just a few thousand dollars a month and not work too hard, great, you can do that via your Alpha 2.0 business.

If you want to grind and make millions of dollars, great, your Alpha 2.0 business can do that too (it did for me).

If you’re a young excited guy and want to have sex with 100 girls, you can do that.

If you’re an old man and want to just have a wife or girlfriend with just one FB on the side, you can do that too.

All these things, and many more, are part of Alpha Male 2.0.

You can even integrate aspects of pick-up artist, red pill, manosphere, tradcon, and so on into your Alpha Male 2.0 life.

I purposely designed Alpha Male 2.0 to be an entire-life model. I did this because I saw the temporary nature of things like pick-up artist and red pill. I don’t you want to live an Alpha Male 2.0 life only to be confused in ten years because your priorities have changed.

I’ve been an Alpha Male 2.0 for 17 years. During that time, my priorities have changed, as they should as one gets older. And I’m still 100% Alpha 2.0 despite this.

When I was a recovering 35-year-old beta male in 2007, right after my divorce from a typical (read: shitty) monogamous marriage, I went fucking crazy and had sex with lots of new women for several years, including 18-year-olds (and this was years before sugar daddy was a thing; it was all without any money paid to anyone). But I was old enough and self-aware enough to know that I wouldn’t want to do that forever.

In 2012 I backed down from that craziness and I announced on my blog that I was then looking to eventually settle down with just one woman non-monogamously. I did exactly that in 2017 with Pink Firefly in my mid-40s.

When I left the Collapsing USA in 2021 I re-configured my woman life yet again to adjust to my new five flags international lifestyle, getting new sub-rosters of FBs in several different countries.

Throughout this entire time, I never once became monogamous (because long-term monogamy doesn’t work and I’m not stupid or delusional) but my woman configuration in my personal life would regularly change every few years based on the new things I would want based on my ever-changing age, priorities, and life circumstances.

Now, in 2024 at age 52, I’m changing things around a little bit again to prepare for the next phase of my life that I will hopefully start in 2026. (I can’t talk about exactly what I’m doing yet but I will soon.)

And I’m going to keep being Alpha Male 2.0 for the rest of my life, into my 90s and 100s if I live that long, modifying things a little bit as I get into my older years, but always staying with the proven, freedom-generating, happiness-creating Alpha Male 2.0 lifestyle model that lasts your entire life.

Alpha Male 2.0, once you get decent at it, really is a “set it and forget it” lifestyle model. That’s the kind of model I want, and I assume you probably want it also.