Is Criticizing the Friend Zone or Neo-Direct Harmful to Men?

A reader claims our criticisms of neo-direct have given him approach anxiety. Were we wrong to criticize the friend zone and neo-direct?

Commenting on my article on a study about what sort of compliments women respond best to, reader “Anonymous dude” writes:

Maybe guys wouldn't be twiddling their thumbs and stopped approaching women, worried about what to say and how to open if you didn't come up with this arbitrary confusing "neo direct" concept that makes some guys too self conscious and puts them too in their head. Especially when people that you've hired from your own team open "neo direct" not going to name people.

Just saying there may be some validity in this neo direct concept since i've seen this pattern of guys opening women in very simplistic ways and getting sporadic results and eventually plateuing but it's not like you're showing how to approach effectively or what one would look like. Reading about this made me too concerned about whether i'm running ineffective game that's a waste of time that I stopped approaching almost altogether.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term neo-direct, it’s a term I coined two years ago to put a label on the “shoot your shot” philosophy so rampant in modern red pill, man guru advice you see on Youtube, in forums, and everywhere else. Alek Rolstad wrote a proper series on it, “The Trouble with Neo-Direct”, which you can read here.

This simplistic method is the 2020s analogue to the friend zone of the 1990s and 2000s – the conventional wisdom, no-skill-required tack every guy and his brother took and recommended to every other guy to take to try to get women.

What the friend zone was to guys back then, shoot your shot neo-direct is to men today.

But, is there some validity to neo-direct?

Should you ever use it?

And… have I harmed men by opposing it?