RSD Blueprint Decoded: Review & Notes

Blueprint Decoded is a mix of self-help and dating course for men, and the flagship product from Real Social Dynamics.
It consists of a set of talks delivered by Owen Cook, who is the main author.
“The Blueprint Decoded” takes a holistic approach to dating. It helps men improve their lives first and foremost and, as a reflection, their dating life as well.

Bullet Summary

• You’re behaving low-value because you don’t have true core confidence: Your brain stops you from feeling and acting low value in two ways:
  • It scans for environmnetal cues, and if they don’t all say “you’re high value”, then you behave low value
  • Your own internal rules for what it means to be successful often tell you that “you’re not successful yet”, and thus you don’t allow yourself to be high value
• To develop true core confidence, you must control your states and change your own self-assessment: Changing that means acting high-value at all times. And changing your internal rules and your self-talk in a way that is more
• That will take time. In the meanwhile, focus on not being indifferent to what others think of you: you can learn not to care about what people think of you. That way, people cannot make you feel low-value. If you can go out and have a good time no matter what, you’re doing great already

Owen Cook / RSD Tyler Review

The author of “Blueprint Decoded” is Owen Cook, who is also known as “Tyler”, from Tyler Durden’s character in the movie “The Fight Club”.

That was his nickname in the beginning of the Pick-Up Artist movement, of which he was one of the earliest and most prominent figures.
Those who have read “The Game” by Neil Strauss will not come out with the best image of Owen Cook.

The early PUA movement was about finding out what worked with women. It had somewhat of a geeky, “cracking the code” approach to it.
It was a lot about memorizing what to say –“routines”-, using different techniques that would allegedly enthrall women -from NLP to hypnosis-, and codifying systems of steps that would supposedly lead from meeting a woman to bedding that woman -see “The Mystery Method”-.

Owen Cook embodied that movement very well. Affected by Asperger, Tyler had to learn social skills without any natural ability to understanding them.
Whether that makes him suited to now teach social skills and social dynamics, I will leave it up to you to answer.

I can see how memorizing routines and steps attracted Owen Cook in those early days: they provided a way to interact with people and women without having to actually understand people, women, and social interactions. It was a bit like programming applied to social interaction: start by saying X; if they say Y, reply, Z. And so on (today things have changed, and you can find many dating coaches who either had natural skills, or who truly learned psychology and made plenty of personal experience).

Whatever you think of Owen Cook, and however badly he might have come across in “The Game”, he can still smile at how things eventually turned out.
As the pick-up community gathered steam and attracted more and more men, he founded with 2 other guys “Real Social Dynamics”, a company aimed at providing courses and training on how to better socialize and meet women.
Once “The Game” hit the bookshelves -and Neil Strass toured the States to promote it-, Owen and Real Social Dynamics were in the best position to ride that wave -and cash it in-.
Albeit rarely in mainstream TVs and publications, Owen Cook has been for many years the public face of pick-up, and the most famous teacher in that space. And for many years, RSD has been the main name and brand when it came to seduction.

Things changed though.
As seduction grew, new and more socially skilled coaches started entering the field.
As the community evolved and moved away from routines, RSD image suffered a bit. Owen Cook also evolved his style and game, but probably not enough to remain a leading figure in the new, evolving environment (“Blueprint Decoded” we review here was aimed at moving past the routines).

But thanks to smart business choices, RSD still remained at the forefront of the industry.
RSD grew new coaches from within, and allowed them enough freedom to keep building their name and brand within the RSD ecosystem.
See for example RSDJulian, author of Transformation Mastery, and former RSDTodd, author of Day Game and The System (Todd later acrimoniously divorced from RSD).

Albeit not anymore the dominant force it was, RSD is still one of the biggest names in the male dating and self-development industry.
Talking about self-development, RSD today is slightly moving away from pure pick-up and focusing a bit more on general socialization, self-development, and, as he calls it, “personal transformation”.

We will see how that goes.
Surely Owen Cook’s story is a fascinating one.

And he shows no signs of slowing down.

Blueprint Decoded SUMMARY

Tyler wrote the Blueprint material over a span of four years.
These are my notes from Blueprint Decoded:

1. Men & Women are Valued on Different Criteria, And That Empowers Men

Women’s value is mostly based around looks.
Within a few seconds, a man can say whether or not he is attracted to a woman, simply based on her physical attributes.

Men instead provide value to a woman in different ways besides his looks and physics.

For more read:

• Sexual market place: a primer 

2. Core Confidence Trumps Situational Confidence

This is one of the “core” concepts of “The Blueprint Decoded and one of my favorites.

Situational confidence is based on the environment, the situation, or the relevance or specific traits.
If you are in the office, for example, and you are an MD, then you will probably be confident, because you have a lot of power in that environment.

Now imagine a guy who looks bad and is overall insecure.
But he is a manager at McDonald’s.

If you looked at this guy, you would think he doesn’t get laid and doesn’t have any social status.

Instead, he probably has a lot of social status when he’s working at that McDonald’s. And he could probably hook up with the waitresses working for him.

That’s how situational confidence can turn a below-average Joe into a successful guy.

But if that guy doesn’t also have core confidence, the moment he steps outside of work, he’s a nobody.

Core confidence comes from within.
When you are generally confident about yourself, you are confident no matter where you are, and no matter what you have.

3. Your Brain Scans for Social Cues & Stops You from Having Core Confidence & High-Value States

Most likely, you know how to act like a high-value man.

But your brain is stopping you.
How is it stopping you?

Your brain naturally picks on the social signal and social dynamics around you. And if it perceives that you are not a high-value guy, then it makes you act like a low-value guy.
Such as, the environmental cues block your mental access to high-value states. And you feel low-value.
This is psychological self-cocklocking.

If someone treats you like a chump, then your brain tells you to act more like a chump.
We can speculate with some evolutionary psychology that men developed those behaviors to keep safe within the group and avoiding challenging more powerful men.

However, that has today become maladaptive.
There is nobody who is going to attack you for hitting on a hot girl on a club or at the mall. And nobody is going to attack you for acting high-value no matter what situation you’re in.

Today, acting high-value no matter what will always pay off.

4. Your Self-Evaluation Controls Your Access to High-Value States & Core Confidence

There are two elements which determine your access to high-value states

1. Social cues (we just discussed)
2. Your internal rules and standards

Your own self-evaluations sometimes stop you from feeling -and acting- like a high-value man.

For example, you rule might say: “When I launch my company and it starts making 5 figures a month, then I will be a high-value guy and then I can feel great about myself”.

But until you get there, you are precluding yourself from enjoying that high-value states and behavior. And those are exactly what makes it more likely for you to get there in the first place.

My Note: This one took a leaf from Tony Robbins
Owen Cook here took a leaf from Tony Robbins’ work. Tony Robbins was the first one I heard to teach internal rules. Also see: Personal Power II.

What type of self-talk do you have?
Does your self-talk tell you that you’re a good-for-nothing guy who will only deserve some scraps of respect once he achieves X, Y, or Z?

If that’s the case, maybe you should change that.

And maybe you should change your own judging criteria and rules to something that allows you to feel good no matter what.

5. Once You Manage Your Internal Rules to Always Feel High-Value, Offer Value Without Asking Anything Back

Once you manage to feel high value and content with your life, two things happen:

1. You always feel good, perennially in a high-value state.
2. You can start giving value

Being properly “in state” for Tyler means that you talk to people, women, and groups, from a place of enjoying life and want to have a good time.

When you generally happy and content with your life, you communicate a lot of great things about yourself.
People think you must have a great life, and that you are probably also getting laid (pre-selection).

My Note: That’s true… With a caveat
I agree with Tyler, too many people fail to recognize the importance of being content with one’s life (also see “What Women Want” by Tucker Max and Geoffrey Miller).
However, there can be such a thing as acting “too happy”, which feels off. And sometimes I feel that Tyler’s infields are too much on the entertainer-side.

When you are in state, you offer value and make people feel good without asking anything in return.

When you give instead of taking, people want more of you, and that makes you high value not just to yourself, but to everyone around as well.

6. To Begin With, Focus on Not Letting Other People’s Opinion Get to You

The road to core confidence is a long one.

Before you get there, you want to focus on insulating yourself from the social cues that tell you that “you’re not good enough”.

How do you do it?
By developing indifference.

You want to become indifferent to all reactions you get from people. Especially the negative ones. If you can go out and enjoy yourself even when all women reject you, then you’re well on your road to mastery.

CONS

• Too Long

The marketing for “The Blueprint Decoded” says: “over 20 hours of life-changing knowledge”.

20 hours… You gotta wonder if that is a bonus point, or a drawback. In my opinion, it’s a failure to present and package information.

However, it would still be OK if the material was still on point. The problem is that there is too much fluff:

• Fluffy

Owen Cook loves to talk.

And that’s all good and dandy. Especially if you’re with friends and shooting the breeze.
But when you’re talking to train and deliver information, you should probably be less verbose and more informative.

Instead, I find “The Blueprint Decoded” to be an endless string of words, sometimes without a clear direction or goal.

• Sometimes superficial analysis

Owen analyzes the roles of lovers and providers.

I suppose for a beginner, that might be helpful.
But otherwise, it’s a rather superficial analysis based on stereotypes. It paints a positive stereotype for the lover, who gets the girl without investment, and uses a negative stereotype for the provider, who pays and gets cuckolded.

Sometimes it is like that, of course.
But reality is more complex.
Sometimes the lover is an idiot, and some other times a provider can be a high-quality provider.

To learn more, read:

• Lovers VS provider (VS friends): analyzing the dating roles in relation to their quality
• Lover or provider: picking your best strategy

• Some feel good crap

Owen calls the idea that men need to look good to pick-up girls “social conditioning”.

I suppose that helps the men who are more likely to buy his products to feel good about themselves -and about Tyler-.

And in a way, it’s true.
You don’t need to look good.
But it helps.

What Tyler is not providing, is a good, evidence-based analysis, together with practical steps that people can take.
For example: how to maximize their looks, or what other traits to develop -just telling them to develop “charisma” does not qualify-.

The same goes for “don’t put women on a pedestal, in truth men and women are on the same level”.
Again, not true.
On average, average women have more value than average men.
But at the very top, the relation inverts (also see: (add links here).

• A bit too much on the “entertainer” side

I personally find Tyler to be too much on the “high-energy” side.

And he advises people to be more like him.
For example, he recommends listeners to “get in state” by reproducing animals’ sounds, gathering in circles, and jumping and shouting.
Then, go cold-approaching girls in that state.

I disagree with that type of advice.
Or at least, I disagree if it’s aimed at making you act like you’re an ADHD bouncing off the walls.

Tyler’s own teachings seem to stem from this “high-energy” ideal.
Even when he says that looks and money don’t matter, he asks: “is the most popular guy at the party always the best looking”?
Tyler seems to equate “popular” with “the guy who’s getting the most attention, by being the loudest”.

RSD Review

Both RSD and RSD Tyler tend to be on the “high-energy” end of the spectrum.
And hyper-social.
He comes across a bit ADHD, to be honest.

He laughs a lot and loudly, shouts, moves quickly, and darts around.

There are many ways of seducing.
One can seduce one-on-one, or attract everyone’s attention with over-the-top behavior and hope some girl will be attracted and bite. Obviously, Tyler’s style is more suited for the latter.

For a while, the “high-energy” style was very popular in seduction communities. As a matter of fact, it was the only one being taught.
Even today, some coaches are still teaching this method.
Charlie from “Charisma University”, for example, teaches this method.

Personally, I don’t think “high-energy” and “hyper-social” is the best to build deeper connection -or to seduce, for that matter-.

I remember there was an “infield video” of Tyler on YouTube gaming a so-called “alpha female girl”. Unluckily it’s gone, but to me, it felt like all smoke and no meat.

However, that is not to say that high-energy does not work.
It can also work very well, depending on the situation. One can attract lots of attention and then go home with the star-struck girl -or the equally high-energy girl-.

But if you are not high energy yourself, I don’t recommend you copy this style.
It will come across weird, and there is no point in trying to be someone you’re not -or some you don’t enjoy becoming-.

RSD Pivot Into Self-Help

Recently, RSD has been moving away from pure pick-up and seduction and embracing more general self-help.

However, to me, it feels a lot like woo-woo self-help, and it’s rather undifferentiated from all the self-help based on the law of attraction.
I don’t personally consume that type of content and neither would I advise my audience to.

Blueprint Decoded Review

There are some great ideas in “The Blueprint Decoded”.

The main messages that I teased above can be life-changing indeed.

Unluckily, they are to be found and rescued in a sea of verbosity.
People who don’t have the patience, or who get distracted, might even miss them.

I think that’s a big con: the course should have been structured around those key, core ideas, and then provided examples and exercises around those key ideas.
Then it would have been a great course.

As it is presented and packaged now, I can’t give it a very high rating.

Finally, when it comes to mating intelligence and a few core concepts of mating intelligence, it’s lacking.
The analysis of the lover-provider is just skin-deep, and the analysis of which traits confer power and leverage in the mating marketplace is more about feel-good than about what actually works.

Overall: 5/5 for the wisdom on situational and core confidence.
But 2/5 as a 20-DVDs product to share that wisdom.

Check out the best dating books for guys.