Could Jaakkeli’s advice pasted below give us the correct way of acting when wearing status increasing pheromones (A314 and AndrosteRone in general)?
Is showing ‘loserish’ behaviour and vices essential so that people don’t feel too inferior to the A314/AndrosteRone wearer?
As he says, ‘nobody likes a saint, except from a distance’…
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jaakkeli (September 13, 2007):
"…Human Flesh: YEAH! I feel like I’m back in school listening to the nerds wondering why the guy who drinks, is in trouble with the authorities and gets bad grades is so much cooler than the nice guy with a perfect grade in behaviour. A rock star has already proven that he’s no loser, so every bit of “loserish” behaviour like drug use is actually just adding his attractiveness - he doesn’t have to care, because he’s such a winner.
Also, there’s the coolness factor that has nothing to do with sex or gender: nobody likes a saint, except at a distance (it’s best if they’re dead). Everybody has vices and everybody feels guilty of them. A person who has (or displays) fewer vices makes the other feel inferior and nobody likes feeling inferior. You’re more comfortable around people when you’re the one in position to judge. A rock star with no serious vices would be DEAD socially, because he’d usually make people feel completely inferior in his company. A rock star with a wild, unstable life represents the ultimate coolness, because he’s displaying the most valued talent of all (among young people) and he’s still giving the opportunity for anyone to feel superior to him. This works especially well with women, because they’re more judgemental and more afraid of being judged than men and for the obvious evolutionary reasons they wish to believe that they’re the ones bringing responsibility to the relationship (they’ll walk away the second they feel a guy is more conscientious than they are)…"
jaakkeli (September 13, 2007):
"…Remember, the point is to have something that gives you status (like rockstardom); THEN loserish behaviour becomes just “peacocking”. There are also real, actual losers, those who do the stuff without the status.
Those grades are a good example. If you know someone, you already have a pretty good idea of how smart they are, so you can predict the kind of grades they should be getting with a given amount of studying, sucking up to the teachers, attendance and so on. Thus, the main thing those grades actually tell you is how much time someone invests on studying (and not being social, having fun or doing something actually useful), how approval-seeking they are, how confident and daring they are (school is terminally boring to everyone, but not everyone has the guts to skip class or have fun in class and face bad grades) and so on. Or, alternatively, how conscientious someone is, but the trouble with conscientiousness is that even those people who consider it good will feel inadequate if they’re forced to “play” with someone more conscientious while the company of a not very conscientious person will make them feel good about themselves. Conscientiousness is just lethal to coolness.
(This of course fails at the extremes, ie. for those people who are too dumb to get anything except the worst grades and for those who automatically get the best grades even if they don’t study.)"
jaakkeli (September 17, 2007):
“…You’re, BTW, providing a fine example of why conscientiousness isn’t cool with that supreme sense of superiority of yours. The only thing worse for coolness than having a trait that makes others feel bad about themselves (eg. superior conscientiousness) is feeling superior because of it. If you wish to be cool & conscientious, you have to display some other vices (which conscientious people rarely do, because conscientiousness tends to go hand in hand with the bizarre belief that people will like you less for having vices) or carefully avoid giving the impression that you feel superior to others (one reason why school is traumatic for conscientious people is that it shows so obviously).”
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