(Note: This article was originally published to JamieMcSloy.co.uk on February 22nd, 2019. I’m going through an old backup of the site, which has hundreds of posts that aren’t currently uploaded. As I’m working hard on updating the site – and releasing The Vault, letting these old posts be the daily posts for a while. We’re getting very close now, so bear with me. Soon I’ll resume regular posting and then just upload these archives in one go. This one will definitely get a Part Two, btw.)
Stories Cost Nothing But Make Everything
Yesterday, I drifted into a Twitter thread started by project pal Kyle Trouble.
He said that, should you be a scoundrel looking to impress girls with a car, there was functionally no difference between buying a nice car from 2005 and a car that was built in 2018, with the exception being the price.
Spend $5000 on a car to impress a girl, or $35000 on a car to impress a girl and get the same results.
Naturally, I jumped in with my wisdom on cars and girls.
That in-and-of itself, somewhat hilarious.
Here’s the crazy thing.
You Can Get All The Benefits Of Impressing Girls With Cars…
With A Cheap Car, A Terrible Car or a Weird Car
Now, I’ve zero intention of turning this blog into a dating blog.
Don’t get me wrong, it’d be the best dating blog on the internet within a couple of posts, because I am the only person to have mastered the secrets of Direct Response Dating™, but of the guys that I’ve known who’ve been in the dating niche, it’s nothing but trouble.
But for fun, I brainstormed half a dozen “cars that’d impress girls” ideas, and the most expensive idea was less than ten thousand.
You could probably do all of them for less than five thousand.
And there’s no leasing there… you would own the vehicles outright.
And to be honest, one of them would allow you to pass as having a legitimate supercar that would wow girls, guys, big business reptiles… and me.
Now, I’m going to admit something now; the above is a tease.
I’m not going to tell you what those ideas are, because the reason I’m writing this isn’t about cars and getting girls. (Remember; no intention of sharing the Direct Response Dating Secrets™.)
Here’s the wider point though and some of you will be able to put some dots together.
Stories Cost Nothing, But Gain You Everything
Let me tell you something about girls and cars.
Most girls care about what a car looks like and this mostly extends to the colour of it and how clean it is.
That sums up the level of discourse when compared to the guys in Kyle’s Twitter thread arguing over whether a BMW 3 Series was impressive enough.
But here’s what you need to know.
Every time I’ve heard a girl actually talk about a car in excited terms, it’s never been about a nice car.
I have never heard a girl brag about a Lamborghini. Nor have I ever heard a woman talk about how powerful a G-Wagon is.
And the women I’ve known whose husband owns a real life supercar actually talk with a bit of embarrassment about it. Guys toys, and all of that.
Now I have heard girls rave about vehicles before.
And it’s always about the story, the wider picture, and the memory that forms in their minds.
And there are a number of cars that as a guy you’d laugh at… but girls love them.
This brings me to the point of this article: If you want to hack life, girls, dating, whatever… you concentrate on the story.
Think about it; if you could create an Instagram perfect image that you could stick a girl in and have her talk about it to everyone for years afterwards, what would be in it?
And if there were a vehicle… what would it be? Where would it be?
Final Thoughts
The Story And The Hack
The above is how you pull it around to what this blog is all about.
Winning against asymmetric odds.
(And to think some of you thought I was going to talk about girls and cars as opposed to irredeemable nerd shit.)
There are “hacks” that’ll allow you to get a vehicle that’s cheap but seems expensive (or denotes some other virtue.)
Take for instance… James Bond.
You get the brand new Aston Martin. It’s £200,000.
Or you can go to an Aston Martin used certified dealer and get one for £25,000. (I just looked.)
You can get a personalised number plate and nobody will know it’s from 2005.
Total cost: £25,500.
And you can drive it to Prague, get your mate to take an iPhone snap of it in front of a hotel you can’t afford to stay at, and then bring it home before you scratch it.
That’s irredeemably lame, but it’s a “hack.”
(Mine are better and cheaper.)
The second part is the story. It’s the adventurer, or the manly man, or the Italian-romantic-rakish thing.
And when you put together the hack and the story, you have a superpower.