March 11, 2009

Game

As it has been explained to me, the point of "Game" is for smart, nerdy "beta males" to use their brainpower to study and master techniques for persuading attractive girls in bars that they are "alpha males" at work. Of course, the young lady eventually figures out that you are actually a beta male at work and dumps you.

Here's my question: If you are really that good at self-improvement, why not instead study and master techniques for persuading men at work that you are an alpha male? After all, if men see you as a leader of men, then you will become a leader of men, with the concomitant rewards in income, power, and the long-term attention of attractive women.

Moreover, wouldn't it be good for society as a whole if more smart, hard-working guys became leaders, rather than the current set of nimrods?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

126 comments:

Anonymous said...

Steve, Do you think Roissy is really a nerdy Woody Allen type in real life? That's what my wife thinks.

Anonymous said...

That's actually a good point Steve. You should stop by Roissy's site and ask him that same question.

-Vanilla Thunder

Anonymous said...

Because the only point of becoming an alpha male is to have more sexual partners. "Benefiting society" has nothing to do with it.

ziel said...

Moreover, wouldn't it be good for society as a whole if more smart, hard-working guys became leaders rather than the current set of nimrods?

Perhaps. My guess is there's a fine balance there. Alpha males don't necessarily do anything of value themselves, but they're good at extracting value out of talented betas. Too many alphas, nothing of value gets done - there's just a lot of pointless competition. Too few and the talented betas are aimless.

My guess is that the financial implosion we've just witnessed is more likely a symptom of too much alphaness (or faux alphaness). The stagflation/miasma of the 70's seems more symptomatic of an alpha shortage.

Anonymous said...

Back to an earlier thread, which everyone is problem now ignoring, on T99's claim that Obama throws wild parties all the time.

Or does this just mean that Surber = T99? Has Surber ever been laid?

Anonymous said...

My guess is that Roissy really is a born alpha. In other words, he has a higher than average testosterone level for a white guy. He just doesn't give off a fake vibe, though of course I could be wrong on that.

I don't think he's rich at all. He obviously spends all his time chasing women. That wouldn't leave much time for a career.

Low testosterone guys have to try hard at work to be attractive to women. High testosterone guys (born alphas) can get women even if they're poor.

This whole "game theory" leaves me unconvinced. It all works on an intuitive level. Attempts to boil it down to rules that someone can consciously learn seem like idiocy.

AJ said...

Because money, power and success as men define it are not the same as success with women (whatever your criteria for that are). Ask an investment banker who's idea of getting the girl is spending $500 on bottle service at a nightclub, showing off his watch and name-dropping. What's his success rate?

Contrariwise, there are lots of guys out there who are quite average (or below average) in most respects and get all the women that they could ever want, of the quality they want. Ask a bartender. What's his success rate?

Money, status and power are in many ways orthogonal to success with women in a free society where all economic needs are taken care of. Ceteris paribus, of two guys with equal game the one with more MSP will do better. But it is rarely ceteris paribus, as time spent working overtime in the office building that bank account can often atrophy social skills and imposes opportunity costs.

The world we live in is not the same as Jane Austin's. It doesn't involve women making the rational calculation of pros (good family, good job, likely good father) and cons (no job, broken family, criminal record) that they might under different circumstances.

Anonymous said...

there is a lot of point missing about this issue. macho leader alpha male types aren't the only kind of men who get laid a lot. men who are extroverted and capable of interacting with women on their level(ie more emotional/people oriented and less analytical/object oriented) can be very successful with women despite not being very masculine. having a good job and leading other men alone will not get you laid. "game" is just as much about teaching introverts how to be social as it is about teaching wimps to be macho. most of the guys who need help with women are doing okay at their careers. that's not the problem.

Anonymous said...

High atop lonely, windswept Olympus, Sailer furrows his mighty brow and directs his well-deep gaze to that phenomenon that is so lately the rage of his minions: Game.

I expect this post to be heavily disputed, but to my observation, Game consists largely of status displays for 20-something men who are still being judged on pure physical presence, because females in their demographic really have no idea of or appreciation for actual wealth. That's the sort of thing only codgers like their parents concern themselves with.

Of course, once these playas hit their 30's, the bar will be raised, and the ones still schlepping away as cold-call salesmen will find that all the tone-on-tone shirts in the world won't make up for a lack of liquidity. Or a lack of youth, as the 20-something girls they used to target now consider them trolls.

Now, I enjoy many of the insights and revealing behaviors displayed at roissy's site, but I also agree with whiskey/t99 that the upshot of all that's going on is the US will end up with a lot of bitter, disappointed beta males with closets full of tone-on-tone shirts.

--Senor Doug

Anonymous said...

As it has been explained to me, the point of "Game" is for smart, nerdy "beta males" to use their brainpower to study and master techniques for persuading attractive girls in bars that they are "alpha males" at work.

No, not at all. Just to act in a certain confident, dominant, entertaining way that is intrinsically attractive to women. Technically you could admit to being poor or unemployed and still act attractive.

Women are attractive to men more because of how they look, and men are attractive to women more because of how they act.

Also a lot of Game has nothing to do with "manly" behavior. A lot of it is actually pretty gay. Seduction involves a lot of feminine skill sets that would not impress men at work. Acting like Mick Jagger might be hot if you pull it off in the right context, but acting like that at work will get you laughed at.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNFjQcO9fYg

Here's my question: If you are really that good at self-improvement, why not instead study and master techniques for persuading men at work that you are an alpha male? After all, if men see you as a leader of men, then you will become a leader of men, with the concomitant rewards in income, power, and the long-term attention of attractive women.


A lot of men do use many of these lessons for work. But the modern work environment doesn't reward so-called "Alpha male" behavior in every job. In a lot of jobs it would get you fired.

A lot of men looking into game have no financial troubles, and that's the problem. They've already figured out how to build their social status, but haven't yet figured out how to translate that into getting casual sex or a steady girlfriend. Jobs like engineer or computer programmer pay well, but don't exactly require the job skills you see in Glengarry Glen Ross.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TROhlThs9qY

Anonymous said...

I asked something similar to what you are asking on Roissy's blog.

Why don't you work hard and get a high status job? Then you will be able to attract the sort of girl you want.

Then Thursday, who studied law but is a teacher and whose blog I like very much, said something to the effect of "people like i-bankers and surgeons don't have the time to chase women and nor do they have the time to develop the social skills to chase women."

I found this answer odd. Who is more likely to have a pretty wife: a surgeon/i-banker or a schoolteacher? Whose wife is more likely to be chubby after having 2 children?

Perhaps it was a self serving answer?

I should add though that Thursday is a definite cut over the typical high school teacher as he is a published writer, which should count for something.

But that proves my point, right? You have to be accomplished in something in order to win a heart of a pretty girl.

AJ said...

> This whole "game theory" leaves me unconvinced. It all works on an intuitive level. Attempts to boil it down to rules that someone can consciously learn seem like idiocy.

As someone who was a member of a couple lairs for a time, and went through the process of beta -> alpha, I find your disbelief charming in it's naivete.

Try some of the stuff, rather than just thinking about it. As a second-best option, meet the people who have consistently tried it and been successful. As a third-best option, read "The Game" by Neil Strauss. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Anonymous said...

That's not the point of game. The point of game is to mimic the mannerisms that come from an unconscious self-image of genuine high status, i.e. the belief that women are attracted to you, that you are interesting, that you have nothing to prove. This behavior triggers women's instinctual attraction triggers in exactly the same way that a nice ass and rack turn men on. Women evolved not to notice if a man is rich, but if he has the mannerisms that we all have evolved to have only if we are of high status. Beta males act meek because of their instincts, not because they would genuinely get beaten up for hitting on women today. In a hunter gatherer society though, a beta male who acted dominant over the women may well be killed. Game allows weak males to take advantage of the protection of law and order to hit on women as if they were Alphas.

Anonymous said...

Well I think the crucial thing is that there is a fixed amount of status in the world. There can only be so many alpha males.

So "game" is all about mimicry, as in nature where you have harmless species adopt behaviors, traits that conveys to predators that they are more dangerous than they really are.

As long as you can successfully mimic alpha male traits for that short time window you have in speaking with the girl, you can seal the deal so to speak.

Anonymous said...

Picture of Roissy:

http://bigheaddc.com/2007/12/20/is-roissy-in-dc-a-stud-or-a-dud

If this really is his picture, he's good looking.

So maybe it's not just game that allows him to bed lots of women? Maybe "game" only works for "beta males" who are pretty good looking to begin with?

Do you think Roissy is really a nerdy Woody Allen type in real life? That's what my wife thinks.

There's simply no way a man as unattractive as Woody Allen could bed lots of women unless of course he were as successful as Woody Allen.

Anonymous said...

Artsy/creative type guys - or those who can act that way - are said to be more successful with women than are most i-bankers or BIGLAW partners or other stereotypically Alpha types.

Peter

Anonymous said...

There is no clear alpha/beta male distinction in humans. None.

In humans it would be more apt to say there are alpha, beta, zeta, theta, eta, iota, gamma, kappa and omega type males. Add Myers-Briggs personality dimensions to these, then IQ, and you have some idea of human social biodiversity, which is bastardized under the alpha/beta rubric into a mere dichotomy.

If one is talking about using social exercises to become more socially adept, I'm all in favor.

Anonymous said...

Steve, if I tried to describe what I've been through over the last year and a half as a young, (now formerly) married guy most men would recoil in horror.

This game thing is simply an adaptation to the modern reality for young men. Most of us can't win the old-fashioned way financially or romantically, so new ideas about how to find some satisfaction in life are coming out in an effort to deal with the hand we've been dealt.

Not saying I personally go in for the whole shebang, but there are some very old concepts inherent in the idea of "game" that are making a resurgence. I don't practice it, but I won't write it off, either.

In my opinion, a debate on the subject of "gender roles" is sorely needed, and this new trend is something that might bring that about.

There's really no sense in being an "alpha" around men if your wife can emasculate you on a whim, and many of today's girls do just that.

The theory behind "game" is that you could be rich or poor, successful or not, or in between, but if you don't have it the woman will grow to despise you and ultimately punish you severely. It really does happen -- all the time.

Anonymous said...

Maybe sober men at work are harder to fool than drunken women at bars?

Thras said...

Because the best way to impress guys that you're an alpha male at work is to drink beer and take steroids.

Anonymous said...

From having glanced at the first few comments in this thread, may I assume that it goes without saying that the kinds of "women" we are talking about here are nothing but rank whores?

Because no one seems to be [explicitly] acknowledging that ugly little stepchild of a factoid.

Anonymous said...

Woody Allen did seem to do all right. David Spade as well. Is it all about their humor? Is it their financial success? Thirsty brothers want to know.

AJ said...

> From having glanced at the first few comments in this thread, may I assume that it goes without saying that the kinds of "women" we are talking about here are nothing but rank whores?

LOL. Dude, I'm marrying a loving paediatrician in a few months. She's quite accomplished in other areas as well, not to mention pretty nice to look at.

m said...

I read some of Roissy's site and was embarassed not so much for him but definitely for his readers.... it won't help them with normal, funnny, likeable girls....it just won't ....they see through those embarassing negs or whatever he calls them...either you have it or you don't....Roissy may have it but I doubt it- his readers- no chance... One of his hints was if you're in a group of girls and need to use the bathroom- just leave abruptly - that makes them want you....errrr no it doesn't it makes you seem like even more of a weirdo....like Steve says- if you want to be an alpha male- learn how to fight and go beat someone's ass in a bar... works for me except for those many times it didn't

Anonymous said...

Maybe not rank whores, but foolish, definitely.

Women don't have as much insight into how we are worked by game as men do into how you are worked by visual stimulation. Most women really don't know. I know and I'll protect my daughter. Game got me good in my youth.

Eric said...

Artsy/creative type guys - or those who can act that way - are said to be more successful with women than are most i-bankers or BIGLAW partners or other stereotypically Alpha types.

I think this is true. I used to know a couple of painters who worked the bars in SF. They were both in their 50s, comfortable but not wealthy, not obese but not what I would term "good shape". And they were both outrageously successful with twenty-something women.

Anonymous said...

Steve, you are showing your age.

Women are not men. Nor do leaders of men hold any special appeal to women.

Alpha males to men who exhibit leadership, patronage, and power can be quite unattractive to women, while more "socially dominant" men who don't do much in the male-oriented areas can clean up with women.

What you don't get Steve is how things have changed. It's not dating then sex, but rather the reverse. First, sex with the guy who is "hottest" in the bar. THEN a relationship. That's the result of Sex and the City world-views, enabled by:

*Cheap/easy contraception.
*Vastly improved female earning.
*Anonymous urban living.

[The assertion btw comes from Ace of Spades, they have the link on Obama's parties. It's a matter of record how many celebs have been in the WH each night.]

AJ says it best. Women have their own money. They are looking first for great sex, then a guy to hang out with. Many times they'll have guys in the friend-zone, hoping to be a good guy that women will like (stupidity squared).

Lucious -- you are thinking about 1955. It's not fifty plus years ago. Most women now have many, many partners. This is reality. The dating population is what it is.

Anonymous said...

This is a classic blog entry, Steve. The logic is solid.

The nihilistic "pickup artist industry" is yet one more sign of impending doom for this civilization. It's a symptom of the deep termite rot of our social fabric. This industry is feeding on the erosion of marriage as an institution and the supply of insecure males and females from broken homes.

Because the only point of becoming an alpha male is to have more sexual partners. "Benefiting society" has nothing to do with it.

The most revolting aspect of the pickup industry is its barbarian cultural origins. The psychology is straight out of stone age society or worse straight from the Animal Kingdom. It is barbaric deevolution and the inevitable backlash against these trends can take the form of religious revival (as has happened in America a few times) or violent conflagration or a mix of the two.

You can't sustain a civilization on a culture of casual sex and delayed disposable or otherwise open marriage. See ridiculous Africa. The behavior is pure nihilism and a seeking of the animal Low instead of the spiritual High.

As sure as night follows day we are approaching another "man on a white horse" period in history where sociopath leaders will mount massive cleansing operations against any and all perceived termites in response to social breakdown. Those leaders will be empowered to do so by desperate peoples. And so the cycle goes. The Bible describes these backlashes but we can be sure the chaos-control cycle has been playing out since long before that.

Anonymous said...

"From having glanced at the first few comments in this thread, may I assume that it goes without saying that the kinds of "women" we are talking about here are nothing but rank whores?

Because no one seems to be [explicitly] acknowledging that ugly little stepchild of a factoid."

Exactly!

I've been wondering when Steve would speak to this. Lawrence Auster has already been exposed to this, was appalled and severely rebuked his reader who had recommended the insights of Roissy (it's kind of funny that someone though Auster would appreciate a cad).

I think it is good to understand women and how to behave as to be more attractive; I feel the same way about "The Rules" for women. That it is coming from a predatory cad is extremely disappointing.

As an aside, I find it bizarre at times the attitude towards promiscuous sex amongst many here. So, many of the young guys here aren't very religious, I get that. But this is the human biodiversity sphere where a good knowledge of biology is expected... have you ever heard of Paul Ewald and Gregory Cochran?! According to Ewald in "Plague Time", and I believe this wholeheartedly, we will discover in the near future that STDs have been profoundly affecting us and will be implicated in causing or strongly contributing to "common" ailments.

I feel sorry for Roissy and the men who take him seriously. They will have an extremely hard time finding a good quality girl to marry. Guys, emulate conservative alphas with good families.

Black Sea said...

" . . . why not instead study and master techniques for persuading men at work that you are an alpha male?"

Because, on this point, men are a lot harder to fool than are women.

"Game," like a lot of other things, probably works to some degree, but not as much as many "betas" would hope for, and undoubtedly it works better for those with good looks, as well as some other status markers.

A lot of it (Game Theory) seems to consist of deprogramming and reprogramming young men who've been trained to believe that woman are sexually attracted to sensitive, supportive, emotionally-sympathetic men. Don't get me wrong, women like having those kind of men around, they're just not particularly interested in screwing them.

The degree to which "Game" works isn't nearly so interesting to me as what its prevalence indicates about mating patterns in the 21st century. As the commenter Bill said, and as roissy has repeatedly indicated, "Game" is a male response ot the changing landscape of "courtship" if you want to call it that, and sexual politics. One of the more interesting aspects of roissy's blog is that he makes it pretty clear that "Game" is really a sort of "End-Game" strategy, in that it has nothing to do with raising a next generation. Those "players" who leave progeny behind do so by accident, or with relative indifference to the fate of their offspring.

I wrote a post a couple of years ago on the eventual obsolescence of marriage. It dealt more specifically with the topic of gay marriage, but I think it's relevant here:

Marriage used to expand the possibility of stability and permanence, because people, particularly children, needed this, and stability and permanence have always been in short supply. This may have entailed patience and sacrifice, but evidently it enriched, or simply made more feasible, people's lives in some now increasingly unfamiliar way. Perhaps this was because, as I have tried to argue, it created the necessary space in which to raise the next generation.

Apart from that function, marriage really doesn't mean much other than a symbolic recognition of the temporary intersection of two lives, and while that may matter to those two people, it doesn't matter that much to the world. So, homosexual marriage or hetero-sexual "unions," polygamous triangles or quadrilateral couplings, in-vitro conceptions, sperm-bank fathers and surrogate wives plucked from the pages of a catalogue, let the new millenium begin in earnest.

Anonymous said...

What's sad is that so many women can't distinguish alpha males from sociopathic thugs. I personally knew one very tragic case: a shy, well-bred but somewhat dim young woman who married a biker, an obvious lout, thinking she'd got herself a strong alpha husband. What she got was constant verbal abuse, menacing behavior, and, many unhappy years later (after a very messy separation), relentlessly stalked, and finally beaten unconscious in front of her children, kidnapped, and shot through the head by her estranged hubby. (Hubby then blew his own brains out.)

Anonymous said...

Steve,

"Game" is a sophisticated, well-psychologically calibrated mood-scam that EFFECTIVELY pushes the attraction buttons of women. It works. (More on this in a sec*)

"Roissy" is a real guy, and Ive seen four or five photos of him on some other sites besides the one that is available via google. He is a masculine, nice looking man of about 30-to-33 years of age by my guess, obviously well-read and educated. He is probably about your height. Im guessing he has some inherited money to go along with whatever day job he holds. He lives in D.C. but travels. He is a quite gifted writer and is Tom-Wolfe-sque in some ways. He could write a very good novel based on Game that I can guarantee you would be quite entertaining (and infuriating to many).


*Game works*
We have some young bucks where I work, and Ive asked the questions, and have gotten the anwers. Ive even read a book about it. Game's best attribute is that it brings old fashioned flirting back into the fold socially at clubs and bars. A man "negs" a woman by playfully teasing her. The neg makes her slightly self-conscious, but its not an insult. One example is, "thats so cute, the way your nose wiggles when you talk", or "hey, (when she is talking to you), you just spit on me.......ewwww". The female gets a bit self conscious, which is an unusual thing for a pretty young gal to be around regular guys. The man talks to OTHER women in her group. She wonders why he isn't hitting on HER like all the other guys. This is simply the start of the attraction-building process, and is advantageous to the man because he can demonstrate "higher value" to her, but not in the context of obviously bragging to her or hitting on her directly, but not merely as a "platonic" friend either. Game also uses "qualifying" which the man makes the woman feel like she is having to struggle to impress HIM, which is hugely effective with pretty women, who are not used to having to try to impress any man at all. Its like holding a string of yarn playfully in front of a cat instead of throwing him the ball of yarn. One can get the cat very agitated with the string, where the same animal will lose interest in the ball of yarn if its just given to it. This psychology works on humans also and people will bend over backwards to impress someone or show that they are "good enough". Many other psychological techniques are built-in to this process and the various phases of attraction are literally spelled out in a system of nomenclature like IOI's (indicators of interest---which shows you the umpteen little things gals do when they are interested like pupil dialation, playing with their hair, scratching the back of their hands, etc), to building comfort, A1 and A2, LMR (Last minute resistance), ASD (Anti-slut-defense----which is to help you help HER avoid feeling slutty for hopping into bed with a guy she's only known for a few days or even hours, etc). Game has been thought out a great deal by its practitioners, and they compare notes and even have "debriefing" sessions to break down exactly where one seduction went right and another went wrong. I strongly suspect some male psychologists have contributed to "game", but for obvious professional reasons, have kept their names out of it. It works too well to not have had at least some of their input.

Men are much more focused than women when they become honed in on a problem, so the fine-tuning-of these techniques has gotten very good very quickly over what men of my generation did when they were young and out there looking. Im not even going to go into some of the psychological tricks that Ive read about and have been told about by the young bucks, but I was quite impressed by them. Many of these tricks are simply personal sales techniques that effective salesmen have been using for years to build rapport with suckers........oops, I mean potential clients, like the old standard staring into the space between someone's eyes that makes them think that you are paying such close attention to them, or slightly tilting your head when listening to them (especially female) to again, make them feel "listened to". Some of the tricks are dirtier and more effective and probably to many, ethically wrong, like anchoring and mirroring.


I liken the usage of "game" and its study to other hobbies that men indulged in during previous decades like hunting, fishing, Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, and all the rest. They read about it, cop the techniques that have worked for others, and practice to get better. Some men literally have 2 dozen negs memorized by number, and have a few status-building stories calibrated to not be to obvious literally memorized like a comedian memorizes jokes to DHV (demonstrate higher value and show humanity, but still alpha male traits, etc).

I dont know if Game will alter the social landscape of the young like the pill or condoms did, but its going to have an effect.......even if its a hard-to-measure one.






If "game" can increase the birthrate of the thinking, Im all for it. If its merely used to create a lot of Don Juans, it will not have been advantageous to our society in my opinion.


Miles

Anonymous said...

Lord knows I've blogged on this subject as well as many others.

"Nice" girls with professional occupations are no more the kind of girls Steve or many other older guys knew than well, Mary Poppins.

It is by no means unusual, but often fairly common, for women in their thirties to have racked up substantial numbers of sex partners. A woman averaging 4 partners per year, from age 17 to age 32, can have SIXTY partners total. In fact, you can search the NYT quite often and find this behavior reported by "nice" girls.

Here is one example. Durex had a survey, sorry too lazy to look it up, which had median number of partners in urban areas at 9, more than the national average for all women at 4. Bear in mind that covers women in their 80's from a far, far different time period. I think the median number of partners for women in NYC was 15. While this will be skewed somewhat by Latino/Black numbers, it will also be skewed by lots of older people still living in NYC. Women act far differently. When one woman "stops counting at 56" well that's a different set of behaviors.

There is no penalty in an anonymous urban area. There is in fact a whole genre of tell-all sex books aimed at women by women. There was the one about a woman who worked for the UN Development Bank in Africa, who picked up locals and had sex with them (to the shock and horror of the local community) and the ballerina detailing her various exploits. "Wonkette" and the "Washingtonienne" did the same, chronicling their exploits sexually to fame and money. As did some gal who chronicled her exploits at Yale.

This is a huge shift, unthinkable to this degree (and lucrative payoff -- the readership is women) even thirty years ago.

It is not a "moral" decay rather the inevitable state of affairs when no check exists whatsoever on both female sexuality and male Alpha sexuality. No institutions, family pressures, social censure, limitations on partners, worries about STDs, or much of anything else. When Valtrex and Condoms are sold routinely on TV along with viagra and female equivalents, we've entered a huge cultural shift, pushed largely by demographic and technological change.

No "evil persons" caused this, rather the inevitable result of too much wealth, anonymity, technology, and mobile urban living.

Religious girls as well as secular ones do the same thing, so looking for a girl in church (if you can find one, church attendance among younger women 18-35 is dropping like a stone) won't do you any good. Indeed Half Sigma has a post on declining religious attendance on his blog.

"Game" is not just required to have lots of partners, it's required for most non-Alpha (in the female-sense) men to have ANY partner. Since "meet cute" only happens in the movies, and women look for sex partners in bars and discos. They then winnow the sex partners out to suitable boyfriends.

Consider Israel, a formerly very socially conservative society that had a lot of restrictions on female sexuality. One of their big TV hits, tried out here (and failed miserably) was "the Ex List." About a woman in her early thirties convinced by a fortune teller that she'll either marry an ex-boyfriend or won't marry at all.

The show ran for about 100 episodes or so, IIRC, each one where the lead connects with the ex-boyfriend, sleeps with him, and finds out he's not the one she'll marry. Think about that. From Golda Meir to the Ex-List. What a huge cultural shift.

And that nation is not alone. There was a map here of number of sex partners, another I can't find anymore with bubbles for partners and age of first sex partner (which was more revealing).

We are in a global shift in sex patterns and how women select men. Which as AJ noted not Jane Austen territory. A man must be first be perceived as a "hot sex partner" before anything else by women. THEN he gets tested further.

I do agree that Game is unlikely to result in much gains for most men. How many men pursue martial arts or musicianship to proficiency? Not many, and it takes quite an effort to be good at picking up women just like any other task. Moreover, it's telling that most Pick up artists like Neil Strauss cannot maintain a relationship, mostly because once the performance is gone I think, they lose the interest and affection of their girlfriends.

Game is also IMHO as negative as non-success with women, particularly for those who lacked it before. Since paradoxically, for those few who really apply it, it does indeed WORK. Which is the most disheartening reality of them all.

FAR more depressing than the truth about various minorities is the truth about women, particularly smart, intelligent, "nice" and pretty women.

Unknown said...

I'd like to know how many of the commentators who think "Game" is nonsense are, honestly, in their 20s.

testing99 touched on a lot of it. There's a soft polygamy that rules my generation's courtship (especially in urban centers).

Women are now delaying marriage, dating isn't supervised by their parents or the church, support themselves, have the benefit of contraception and abortions, etc.

Sex comes before a relationship nowadays, not the other way around.

The idea that only "rank whores" are attracted to "Game" will seem sound to the type of guy who yells at people to get off his lawn, so long as he thinks the vast majority of women born since 1980 are "rank whores".

Given the choice between trying to single-handedly reestablish the most beneficial gender roles for society and having more success with women, which do you think a man in his 20s is going to choose?

Anonymous said...

Testing 99 wrote:

"......it's telling that most Pick up artists like Neil Strauss cannot maintain a relationship, mostly because once the performance is gone I think, they lose the interest and affection of their girlfriends."


This is something that I think Ive made mention of. If a guy who is physically a 5 can have "tight" game, he is still (in my opinion) making a mistake by going after 8's and 9's out there. They will inevetiably, after several months or a year or two, notice that they are better looking than him and can have better-looking men. I would hope men smart enough to master game techniques would be intelligent enough to realize this and the male 5's shoot for 6's and 7's instead of reaching too high, only to get themselves dissapointed later.

Strauss had a very good looking guitarist girlfriend for a while. Neil Strauss is a quite average looking man, and she eventually left him for British Pop-Star Robbie Williams.

Gamers speak of having "deep inner game", but what they mean by this is acting "like you are a 9 when you are a 5" at all times, and trying to convince her she is a 5 when she is a 9. With most women who are emotionally intelligent, that will wear off after a while, no matter how much you endlessly qualify her.....its not going to destroy her self esteem as other men constantly staring at her is going to just build it right back up. One might be pushing her attraction buttons, but that doesn't mean she is going to go blind or anything.

There are mark-points to game in my opinion. The neg itself, is a place where a woman-in-the-know can spot it. The comfort-building routines that allow for some early kino escalation like the "strawberry test", "marry-shag-kill", and "the cube" while seemingly great for lowering her guard and building attraction, will inevitably become "known" amongst the girls at some point, so when a guy uses them, many women will know exactly what is going on. Some wont mind, but some will resent it as being 'scammed', etc. "Game" will then have to evolve and innovate, but I think that it will because too many men actually spend time thinking about it and writing about it online.



Testing99 is right about how young people have changed. There are --many-- "sluts" out there now, who aren't ashamed at all at sleeping with 10 new men a year and talk about men with their own damned moms. Single moms raise these kinds of girls, especially if there was no church in their young lives.


If someone asked me what could REALLY rescue our birthrate............they wouldn't like my truest answer: A real depression, the collapse of child-support and welfare payments, the destruction of as many office-girl jobs as possible, and the ending of child support laws. If women couldn't live on their own in cities and play out their "Sex-in-the-City" fantasies, they'd get married to get out of the house like they did in decades past. None of that is going to happen though. We are going to have a veritable cougar infestation in ten more years at the bars. Many women will have waited too long by then.



People have no idea how innovative some of the men who use game are. I have read, via an online forum that google got me to but I'd have to pay to re-read, of men discussing NLP techniques that can be used DURING SEX to make a woman subconciously fear that each time she has sex with you, that it may be the last time she ever gets to be with you. These weren't to be used but a couple of times to "hook" the loss/heartbreak fantasy in her mind. I was amazed that people had actually put pen to paper and really thought the psychological pillars of all this out and rationalized it, considered how it would play on her subconscious, and field tested it and tried it. It was amazing. I dont know if it would actually work, but I do know that it was mentally cruel.............but the whole theme around it was to try and make a woman who could do better than you, think you were Mt. Everest, etc. I suppose in the age of alimony and child support, men have so much to lose when they "lose" their wives......that they will resort to much to keep that from happening.

m

Anonymous said...

As it has been explained to me, the point of "Game" is for smart, nerdy "beta males" to use their brainpower to study and master techniques for persuading attractive girls in bars that they are "alpha males" at work.

game is not just the province of nerddom. i know a few alpha males (i.e. "naturals") who use the teachings of game to amass incredible notch counts, and to obtain the highest quality women.
a very smart former beta male like Mystery (Erik von Markovic. you should really read his "mystery method" game manual. it's the unholy bible of modern manhood.) may have designed the system with the nerd's eye for exhaustive detail and flow charted insight, but the product is wholly applicable in any situation, effective on any type of woman, and useful to any kind of man. it's not the "bar and skank" subculture the resentful and ignorant imagine it is. game is attractive to nearly all women like a pretty face and an hourglass figure is attractive to nearly all men.
also, game has nothing to do with persuading women that you are an alpha male at work. a man running tight game will hardly discuss his high status job at all. he won't need to. in fact, talking about work is often a buzzkill in seduction. women aren't interested in your work, they are drawn to your power, and game is essentially a way for a man to project psychosocial dominance, which is at the crux of what makes a man sexually attractive to women.

Of course, the young lady eventually figures out that you are actually a beta male at work and dumps you.

realistically speaking, how likely is this? unless the hapless beta guy works with the girl he's dating, she is not going to have ringside seats to his office lackey betatude. in my life, i've known quite a few underemployed bums who cleaned up with women because they possessed the right attitude that women can't help but find alluring. i'd counsel any man having marital troubles to learn game before i'd tell him to bust his rump getting a job promotion and a raise. game is just that powerful at triggering a woman's attraction mechanism.

Here's my question: If you are really that good at self-improvement, why not instead study and master techniques for persuading men at work that you are an alpha male?

many of the men who are the most ardent game students and proponents are quite well-off. you'd have to be to afford those $7,000 bootcamp weekends. anyhow, a lot of men in the pickup community do exactly what you advise, steve. some of the core principles of game are surprisingly adaptable to winning over a group of men. platonically, of course.
body language improvements, for instance, are fairly gender neutral in their positive impact.
but it should be noted that what turns a woman on is not usually what inspires admiration in other men. case in point: the neg. women love it when you tease them and slightly undercut their self-confidence with a backhanded compliment (the neg) because it subconsciously tells them that you are a high quality man with plenty of options who can afford to behave this way toward women. throwing a neg at a man would not work in the same way. he's likely to feel disrespected, not inspired to storm the castle gates with you.

After all, if men see you as a leader of men, then you will become a leader of men, with the concomitant rewards in income, power, and the long-term attention of attractive women.

there is a self-reinforcing feedback loop. as a man learns game and becomes more successful with women, his confidence in other endeavors grows in proportion. any guy who has experienced it knows that if you're getting laid on the regular, especially with a variety of women, you walk with your head higher all the time. bosses notice this when employee evaluation rolls around.
re: long term relationships, game is as effective at scoring one night stands as it is at strengthening the bond of a deeper relationship. to what ends you use game is up to you.

Moreover, wouldn't it be good for society as a whole if more smart, hard-working guys became leaders, rather than the current set of nimrods?

from an individual's perspective, what's good for society died with god and the ascendence of the darwinian overlord. the only logical answer to the new paradigm is hedonism.
or: doesn't make sense not to live for fun.
anyhow, the times have changed. the pill, widespread condom availability, female economic empowerment, handy dandy abortion in a pinch, and anonymous relatively consequence-free city life have sundered the human sexual landscape (and is still sundering it) with a seismic blowout that no one predicted back when equalist free love was the ideology du jour.

They will have an extremely hard time finding a good quality girl to marry.

quality women often love a proper seduction more than the lower class sluts because they are so woefully unaccustomed to receiving it from the milquetoasts and company men in their lives.

Anonymous said...

Game is merely a means to shake up the alpha/beta male hierarchy.

To benefit from Game, if a man wants women's chastity levels to remain somewhat constant (men don't want to date/marry whores) someone has to lose. Those men who don't have qualities that women find attractive (money, power, Game) will be left by the wayside.

In this sense, to me, Game is merely the best, most easy tool men have available to create more options for themselves.

It's easier, and more fun to read some books on the subject and go out with your buddies on the weekends trying to pick up women than it is to work your way up through the boardroom.

RF touched on the point sort of; women don't *need* a man who is financially successful. The re-ordering of the male/female workplace dynamic with more women making relatively higher salaries than in the past added to the fact that the Government is a proxy for male provision, creates a situation where men *have* to find non-financial means to get women.

I read Roissy. I enjoy his posts and points-of-view, but I can't help but think that Game is sort of a Ponzi scheme or zero-sum Game. It will work for some men, but it's not a case of "rising water lifts all boats."

Anonymous said...

as said: Picture of Roissy:

http://bigheaddc.com/2007/12/20/is-roissy-in-dc-a-stud-or-a-dud

If this really is his picture, he's good looking.


Speaking as a woman, if that is Roissy he is:

1) absolutely NOT good-looking -- he's average or ok at best; and 2) definitely NOT a true Alpha-male (if he were, he wouldn't go on and on all the time about how he is one, would he?).

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said: ...the only point of becoming an alpha male is to have more sexual partners....

No. The only point of being an Alpha male (I doubt that most non-Alphas could become real Alphas) is to leave behind the greatest number of progeny as possible.

If the Game followers don't do this, then they're gonna loose the real game (you know, of Life).

Anonymous said...

ziel,
Your’s is a theory right? I'm a beta with all the credentials to prove it (high IQ, reservedness, discipline, creativity, shyness and all the crap which chases away the BABES). I have yet to find an alpha that made use of even 20% of my skills and energy. Alphas are such egomaniacal and intellectually challenged bastards. It’s a shame they run the world because an enormous pool of talent is being suppressed and wasted by misallocation. It’s also a pity on chicks because the stereotype babe is nowadays some blond bimbo with large tits, long legs and a pea brain. All the classical beauties are not wanted by alphas.

In fact the main problem with alphas is that they fear the superior IQ and work ethic of betas. I reckon that if betas had more freedom, the world would be a far more interesting place. We would not even be bothered with cancer and energy dependence anymore because it would have been solved already. Now all we have are workplace malaise, economic bubbles and endless Hollywood type sleaze.

Anonymous said...

Game is of extraordinary social importance and I think that Steve hasn't really thought deeply about it. Steve, you should ask your kids. Any kid getting a 5 on the AP Bio in 7th grade is going to be in DESPERATE need of Game in a few years. As others have pointed out here, it is an imperfect adaptation to the consequences of feminist indoctrination.

That said, since the people here pride themselves on being forward thinking, let me tell you what I think is the NEXT big thing. The kinds of guys who are into Game are educated men with good amounts of disposable income -- a very similar demographic to blog readers, albeit skewing younger and perhaps even more technical.

Something I have noticed among these guys is a boomlet in visits to CraigsList erotic services and (for the more sophisticated) to sites like sfredbook and eros-guide.

It is not a particularly huge leap of logic to conclude that it's much more efficient and cost effective to get a guaranteed 8 or 9 for $200 an hour than to waste time and money in bars with stupid flakey women. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, "what they are has been determined -- we are only haggling about the price".

Think about it. You can advance professionally (working on Friday, Saturday, *and* Sunday nights) and whenever the need strikes you, whether it be 8 in the morning or 1am at night, boom, you've got your pick -- and can leave afterwards without looking over your shoulder.

No black book can possibly compare in terms of efficiency and *guaranteed* ROI.

The side effect of course is that after you've racked up enough such notches, you really *do* have the deep inner game, because you *know* that any particular woman doesn't matter any more -- you can get one of several dozen ridiculously hot woman with a single phone call. You know that in your bones because it's true, and you're also alpha from work, and the combination makes you unstoppable.

Just some $.02 from my perch here...

Anonymous said...

Actually, the more I've read about "game", the more it seems right to me. As far as I can tell, being no player or PUA myself, confidence and congruence are indeed very important to women.

If men who lack that are able to learn, they seem to work with the system/human nature, instead of against it. Most of these PUAs used to be very average-looking shy-guys who would wait for the woman of their dreams, now they are dating women they meet on their terms. I'm as anti-Dr.Phil-relationship-BS as any man, but that doesn't mean that some of this isn't true. I must admit that the Roissy's of this world are on to something.

And to answer your question: yes, I believe that smart beta-males can rise to alpha positions in business, if they learn to be more confident. Just hard work won't be enough.

PS Neil Strauss is a good example. He showed a picture of himself as some skinny writer-guy before he transformed into his much cooler alter-ego. It sure worked for him, whatever he did.

Anonymous said...

There is no clear alpha/beta male distinction in humans. None.

In humans it would be more apt to say there are alpha, beta, zeta, theta, eta, iota, gamma, kappa and omega type males. Add Myers-Briggs personality dimensions to these, then IQ, and you have some idea of human social biodiversity, which is bastardized under the alpha/beta rubric into a mere dichotomy.

If one is talking about using social exercises to become more socially adept, I'm all in favor.



Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.


It is not a "moral" decay rather the inevitable state of affairs when no check exists whatsoever on both female sexuality and male Alpha sexuality. No institutions, family pressures, social censure, limitations on partners, worries about STDs, or much of anything else. When Valtrex and Condoms are sold routinely on TV along with viagra and female equivalents, we've entered a huge cultural shift, pushed largely by demographic and technological change.


Describing reality is one thing, Testy. What sticks in my craw is resentful little twerps (not naming names) promoting (even if simply by cheerleading "Whoah, that Roissy what a god") the forces that lead to such decadence and, eventually, dystopia.

Hot chicks who think they're living it up or something can have fun while they're young, but they'll be in for quite the rude awakening as their looks fade. Those whose star burns so brightly they look good well into their 50s do women in general a great disservice with their literary justifications of their lives of sluthood -- less than hotties don't stand a chance of replicating that sort of "success" no matter how many books they read or seminars they take that promise to "unleash their inner goddess." (Not much different to guys who dedicate themselves to "game" really.)

Anonymous said...

Speaking as a woman, if that is Roissy he is:

1) absolutely NOT good-looking -- he's average or ok at best 2) definitely NOT a true Alpha-male (if he were, he wouldn't go on and on all the time about how he is one, would he?).


Been dumped by him or something have we?

Black Sea said...

zeil says: "My guess is that the financial implosion we've just witnessed is more likely a symptom of too much alphaness (or faux alphaness). The stagflation/miasma of the 70's seems more symptomatic of an alpha shortage."

1970s: Jimmy Carter (acute alpha shortage)

200s: G. W. Bush (too much alphaness, or faux alphaness)

"All great men are scrupulously true to their time."
--I don't remember who said it.

Black Sea said...

"Those whose star burns so brightly they look good well into their 50s do women in general a great disservice . . . "

In the real world (outside of Hollywood) it's the very rare woman who maintains her sexual allure up to the age of 40, much less 50. Madonna is on a six hour a day exercise regime, is curled into various yoga positions every evening, is eating God only knows what (seaweed, eucalyptus leaves, and soy sprouts), has access to the best plastic surgey money can buy, and still can't even begin to compete with her own 25 year old self. Even her recent husband, Guy Ritchie, told her she looked like a "granny."

The only women who don't suffer from this falling away are the ones who were never attractive to begin with, and they may ultimately be the luckier ones.

Oh, and by the way, in the real world, having kids, and raising them, plays hell with a woman's figure. Most mothers have neither the time, nor the energy, nor the interest to spend hours at the gym.

Our societial priorities have obviously shifted away from the considerable burdens (and satisfactions) of child rearing, and everything else is just bucks, yucks, and fucks.

"Apres moi, le deluge."

I hope I spelled that right.

Anonymous said...

My vague theory is that game is the prelude to a sort of ascetic ideal. I think it was a characteristic of the Roman Empire before Christianity began to take hold. Several emperors made it a point to try to encourage marriage, because men were rejecting marriage as a fearsome burden.

Game is just a natural stage of society before another era comes along. Birth control, abortion and easy divorce were known long, long ago. This is one of the reasons the Hippocratic Oath (revised in the 1960s) forbade abortion by doctors. There is no doubt that game was a characteristic of ancient societies as well.

I am glad that Roissy has responded, but Darwinism will eventually be modified, and not just by social mores -- in fact science will have to take epigenetic factors into account as well. Lamarckism may yet stage something of a comeback.

Anonymous said...

As a European I dunno what Game is. The bottom line with wimmenz is that they are meant for marriage, not playing games in bed. All these people playing around in the courtyard of marriage are eventually going to be very disappointed. The joy lies inside the house. And it is not terribly important to get the best imaginable partner. In fact aiming too high is probably a recipe for disaster. A good-enough one will also make you happy since it also depends on you. Duh?

All of this shit seems like teenagers who make-believe but never have the guts to follow through. From the perspective of the Middle Ages all these teenaged oldies would seem like fools.

Anonymous said...

Silver said:
Hot chicks who think they're living it up or something can have fun while they're young, but they'll be in for quite the rude awakening as their looks fade. Those whose star burns so brightly they look good well into their 50s do women in general a great disservice with their literary justifications of their lives of sluthood.

Silver has it right. The perversion of modernity is the attempt to extend the mating game indefinitely. Surely mating is fun, but not following through is akin to the Romans who gorged themselves and then vomited in order to repeat, chasing that fleeting gourmet heaven.
Since the 68/feminist institutional victories in the late 70’s/80’s we are witnessing this type of bizarre behaviour reserved for the aristocracy and artistic fringe in earlier times (see Taki).

The mass fallout of this devious behaviour has been masked by the media, but cracks are appearing. Many older women going for late births which are medically risky, older women with deformations from Botox/plastic surgery treatments, many lonely hearts. Young babes who start out with breast enlargement, nose and lip jobs and other even more risky surgical procedures are looking at a future of physical pain and torment, even if they discount that now. The only way to clear up this mess is a large revival of Christendom. But that would also turn the current political establishment on its ear.

Anonymous said...

Funny how so many people here who have their heads more or less screwed on straight when it comes to things like race and IQ harbor the most naive and idiotic ideas about sexual attraction.

You'd *think* that people interested in human biodiversity would eat up the wealth of insights into human nature generated by the seduction community (if only out of theoretical interest), but I guess the jealousy and resentment among those here is just too overpowering.

Anonymous said...

Well, some people (Testy, I'm looking at you) certainly have put a lot of thought and effort into explaining why women refuse to sleep with them.

Anonymous said...

"And that nation is not alone. There was a map here of number of sex partners, another I can't find anymore with bubbles for partners and age of first sex partner (which was more revealing). "

Turkey is number 1? Bull.

You'll still find the old fashioned way in the Middle East (Arabs, don't know about Turks but no way they're as slutty as that magazine suggests). Social status is determined by having a "good" husband rather than being alpha.

One idea I've been working on is that whether women prefer dads or cads is triggered by culture. Perhaps womens genes tell them something like this

"In times of chaos, a free market for sex and annonymous living go with the alpha who has the best genes for this enviornment. When under strict social controls you don't want to be stoned to death and need societal acceptance so go for stability."

Alot of guys that would be considered "alpha" in the West (criminal records, tatoos) would be universally acknowledged as revolting losers by members of both genders among Arabs that I know.

Or maybe it's just HBD at work and Semites and Europeans are simply different and it would explain why Turks can be prone to sluttiness even if converted to Islam. Probably a combination of the two.

James Kabala said...

Biology is not my specialty, but it's my understanding that the whole alpha/beta distinction does not even genuinely reflect the realities of animal life. The "beta" among animals is not someone at the bottom of the pack, but the one who will eventually challenge the "alpha" for supremacy, and sometimes will win. The alpha/beta distinction among humans may have some value, but it's only very loosely based on biology.

Anonymous said...

For NIMROD was a mighty hunter before the Lord.
I think the word you were looking for was dipshits not Nimrods.
http://bible.cc/genesis/10-9.htm

Anonymous said...

In practice, all of the explanations of what is effective "game" seem too much like ad hoc, after the fact justifications. I'm not convinced attractiveness can be learned.

Anonymous said...

T99 said "...you are thinking about 1955. It's not fifty plus years ago. Most women now have many, many partners. This is reality."

Reality is also that there's still a concept known as "damaged goods." Simply put, even young (and supposedly enlightened) guys will not consider a gal who's more experienced than they are to be relationship material. As a pump and dump or as a "friend with benefits" on a sometime basis, no problem. But LTR, you're kidding me, right?

Like it or not, we are still in many ways very primitve, and deep down most guys will not trust a woman who's had sex with 30 or 40 or 50 guys.

Anonymous said...

Bill:
"Game is just a natural stage of society before another era comes along."

The barbarian invasions and the fall of the empire? Seems highly likely.

Re number of sexual partners, I notice the numbers used are averages, not medians. This gives a very distorted view of typical societal behaviour. Eg Hong Kong, the society with the lowest number in the Durex survey T99 linked to - average # partners over 3, median # partners 1. Countries with an average # 10 probably have a median # around 2-4.

The Sex & the City lifestyle phenomenon certainly exists, but I'm not sure how widespread it really is. I don't get the impression that is how most women in most Western countries are behaving in their 20s & 30s.

Anonymous said...

This post certainly brought the gamers out of the woodwork, yah?

I have a buddy about 5 years younger than me, on the cusp of middle age. He boasts of being a "male slut" and says "breaking women's hearts gets easier with every passing year."

He is alone of course.

Anonymous said...

Ok...Steve I'll be blunt. Your a nerd and uber nerd. Most people who read this site are beta's. Most have had difficult times with women and would like to feel that it is NOT their fault that women don't find them attractive.

Sorry...But I have been called the "perfect asshole" by friends but I have always had attractive women as dates/girlfriends/wife.

Why would men want to marry and settle down when they can get screwed by divorce?

Anonymous said...

Obviously people just don't get the whole empowerment movement led by people like Roissy.

Why struggle to work hard when companies just don't give a damn about you? WHy struggle to work hard when affirmative action is in place now in almost ALL major corporations? Sorry the best and brightest do not get to the top anymore...assuming they ever did.

What Roissy is espousing is simple, enjoy life and think of yourself first and foremost. Forget societies ideas becuase they do not care about you.

Forget societies "norms" because they were put in place by women and weak men to placate women.

Do what makes you happy and if society is hurt by this, so what!

Look at outsourcing/offshoring/confiscatory taxes/more and more regulations/family court biased against men. Why work hard?

I work at a Fortune 100 company in middle management. In the last 4 months we have let 25,000 + people go. These were hard working people...look where it got them.

Anonymous said...

Man, who's going to invent the game equivalent to save my race?

Anonymous said...

I would never respect enough to marry any woman I got through Game... I first met my wife in the university library on a Saturday. Being there was her version of Game.

Isn't Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons about Game?

The earlier Roissy posts have some very insightful commentary about men and society, very impressive thinking.

Appreciate the fascinating comments.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to know how many of the commentators who think "Game" is nonsense are, honestly, in their 20s.

I'm 26, married, and I'll agree that most of the women being pursued here are, as was said earlier, essentially rank whores.

I got damned lucky in being a part of a Christian subculture where it's actually possible to find marriageable women that don't have 50 notches on their bedposts.

Anonymous said...

testing99 - Given what I've seen of the state of modern womankind, I have no desire to argue contrary to the proposition that most of them are simply worthless.

Good grief - more than half of all American women voted for 0Bambi - so that right there takes a huge slice out of your pie of potential life-mates.

But at the end of the day, this demoralizing preponderance doesn't change the fact that the "women" we are talking about are nothing but rank whores.

T99 - there are better women out there waiting for guys like you [and me] - at least that's what I tell myself.

If I believed otherwise - that there are no good women left - then it would be time to catch that last train for the coast.

Anonymous said...

No "evil persons" caused this, rather the inevitable result ....

More squid-ink from T99/EN.

Anonymous said...

Man, there's a lot of money to be made in writing a "how to spot when you're being Gamed" book for women who would rather not have their subconscious buttons pushed by sociopathic losers who seem to think they're entitled to be with women who are more attractive than they are. One could easily become the Sylvester McMonkey McBean of the Game movement, selling techniques and countermeasures to both the star-bellied sneetches and the starless ones.

Thursday said...

Steve:

I think you have seriously misunderstood game.

"As it has been explained to me, the point of "Game" is for smart, nerdy "beta males" to use their brainpower to study and master techniques for persuading attractive girls in bars that they are "alpha males" at work."

I think there is a huge misconception that women are interested in money. Money and success with women tend to correlate, but there is very little causation there. Rather, financial success and success with women come out of the same source: interpersonal skills. At least in the environment where humans have evolved, someone with the ability to build alliances and make themselves liked would make a much better mate than someone who merely happens to have an accumulation of wealth at that point. Potential is better than achievement and therefore achievement mostly works as a signal of potential. Social dominance demonstrated in real time is much more important than objective career status.

Only a minimum level of financial success is required to get women, and having a high prestige career is not going to get you women. Basically, you just have to prove you are not a loser. Trust me on this, I went to law school because I thought it would attract women. It did not. Especially now that women can provide for themselves, either through their own career or through welfare, money is a very minor consideration.

"Of course, the young lady eventually figures out that you are actually a beta male at work and dumps you."

This doesn't happen very much, that I can see. In fact, it's more likely that the lady will dump the Big Law guy for some exciting nobody. You should pay more attention to literature. Think Guinevere leaving Arthur for Lancelot. Most people seriously underestimate how important gut level sexual excitement is to women and that is determined by your personal qualities as demonstrated in your interactions with her, not much by your objective status. By being exciting, you can literally get her addicted to you. A big part of game is pumping up her emotional state. The most important thing is how she feels about you. This is why being fun (especially in a way that is appealing to females) is such an important part of game. The main reason men with game tend to get dumped is that the woman realizes she is not going to get him to committ to her, not that she realizes he isn't going to make law partner.

"After all, if men see you as a leader of men, then you will become a leader of men, with the concomitant rewards in income, power, and the long-term attention of attractive women."

This actually doesn't seem to work all that well. Again I think you are mixing up correlation and causation. Women are attracted to the interpersonal qualities that often lead to career success as well. It is not necessary to actually use those interpersonal skills to get career success, it is enough that you can demonstrate them directly in your interactions with women.



A few last points:

Game has the ability to dramatically improve long term relationships. I suggest you look through Roissy's comments section for the comments of Dave from Hawaii. Even though nothing in his work life has changed, his marriage dramatically improved after he started running game on his wife. He was on the verge of divorce and now has a solid marriage. Commenter PA also has much to say on the application of game to long term relationships.

I would also like to dispel the notion of some of your commenters that game only works on sluts. I've run this stuff on really conservative girls at church. It works just as well on them, for much the same reasons that church guys are more attracted by a girl's resemblance to a Victoria's Secret model than they are to how much Bible reading she does.

I would agree that actually being a leader of men is more beneficial to society as a whole than the ability to bed a lot of women. But there is not a one to one relationship.

Working hard and succeeding at your career can actually seriously retard your success with women by giving you less time to socialize and improve those all important social skills, particularly the specific social skills necessary to attract women.

Game tends to work best with guys who already have good social skills overall, but are just seriously underperforming in this one specific area. The farther along on the austism spectrum you are the less likely game is going to help you.

A lot of game is unlearning bad advice about being superrespectful and supernice to women. Such bad advice is endemic in both feminist and socially conservative circles, one of the few things they have in common. For someone who spans traditional religious and SWPL circles, I was hit with this nonsense from both sides.

Anonymous said...

Silver, Black Sea, and Anonymous European make some well-thought-out points.

However, consider Testing99's paragraph:

"No "evil persons" caused this, rather the inevitable result of too much wealth, anonymity, technology, and mobile urban living."


............because is spot-on. Women dont HAVE to have a high-earning man anymore, because they work themselves. When we started looking for mates IN BARS instead of church gatherings, family gatherings, professional associations, and the like......"game" became inevitable. Its simply a system that allows a man to exhibit (in the words of Roissy), psychosocial dominance, which women are subconciously attracted to whether they want to be or not. Attraction is not a choice. Just as YOU are attracted to Angelina Jolie despite what a narcicsstic beast she assuredly really is, women are attracted to men who exhibit the following (even if they dont like them very much personally):

1)A leader of men, and has a social group that he is in quite good standing with
2)A willingness to emote (tender with a baby, etc.)
3)Will protect the one's he loves
4)Non-needy, has plenty of options

If a young woman senses the four of these things, they are practically hardwired to find the guy attractive, even if she doesn't like his looks very much, and thinks he is a little too cocky. This little kabuki theater is designed to be played out in bars mostly, but has been adapted to "day game" by where men approach women in malls, bookstores, on the street, etc.


One of the biggest psychological advantages to game is that it teaches the young man to view women as "sets", and not to ever take any rejections personally. In the past, when men met women in bars, the men would immediately try and qualify himself by telling her where he worked, how much education he had, where he recieved his education, where he lives, how long he had been in his house (hinting at his financial status), how highbrow his tastes and hobbies were, etc. So if he got "turned down", he'd be a little emotionally "hurt". "Well, if I'd have gotten into a better school" or "if I'd have not decided to go into architecture and was a doctor instead like so-and-so told me to", etc. A man practiced in "game" will see her as a set that he is "running" and invest no emotional capital in the interaction not only for the seduction "phase", but not until he has been dating (sleeping with her) more than a few times. Until then he is "running game" to build comfort, attraction, making her feel like she is having to qualify to attract HIM, etc. Yes, its a psychological "scam" of sorts.

As Ive said...............if we were meeting in church and professional socials as in the past, this kind of thing probably would not have happened, but how do young college women meet men these days? In bars. I didn't say I liked that, but that is just the way it is.


A real, true, BIG recession might put a dent in game if it lasts long enough and women are truly broke and dont have the money to go bar-hopping, etc. So much of this is, as Testing99 as indicated, a result of women not financially "needing" men anymore. Our divorce and child support industries ensure that a women can get wealth pretty quickly whenever she wants. In fact, the child support and divorce laws, coupled with the welfare state, are the single biggest guarantours of bar-life and game in my opinion, even more than women working and endless "office-girl" jobs for them to be employed in when they move to the cities.



BTW-----for the commenters: Just because you say something "works" doesn't mean you "like it" or think its a positive social phenomenon. "Clubbing" and "Bar-hopping", although good for young single men seeking sex, is actually bad for society and we all know it. Young women who have slept with 30 men before 30 isn't something that is beneficial for humanity, but there are plenty of them and some of them work in your office and wear tasteful clothes and make-up and ostensibly have manners and all that jazz. They dont broadcast it, and they all dont have visible tattoos and peircings screaming it out for all to see. Quite a few look like "that girl" from "The Office", Jenna Fischer. Theodore Dalrymple's "Life at the Bottom" describes the nurses who chose tattoed, marginally employed louts who drank heavily and beat the hell out of them as live-ins time and again, and eschewed the "nice men" in their lives who were genuinely interested in them for the cads over and over again. I didn't say I liked it, but that is just the way it is. Modern urban women dont have the incentives to have a good, faithful, loving husband financially as much as THEY SHOULD anymore. A few legal changes and less "office girl" work could probably right that though.

michael farris said...

Random thoughts.

I'm also disinclined to believe that many of the young women in the bar scene have many illusions about actually 'catching' one of these pick up guys. They remain attractive as fantasy figures and short term flings but the reality is that alphas are awful partners (with an all-me-all-the-time attitude that quickly wears thin and an inclination to stray) when they foolishly do try to settle down they make even worse fathers usually abandoning their families altogether at the first sign of trouble and if they do stick around they alternate long periods of neglect with short periods of intense, smothering over-attention. Hard to say which is worse.

Also it's pretty clear that traditional models of marriage are no bargain for women or men (in different ways).

What I think is really is the guys here grumping about how awful it is that women can actually exert some control over their lives. It seems that given choices hardly any woman will volunteer for a life of domestic drudgery with a resentful guy who despises her as stupid and will make no effort to ever make her happy.

If descriptions of the current urban US dating scene is correct and if I were a woman I can imagine letting some guys think he's 'seduced' me once in a while when I'm in the mood and eventually settling down with a kid but not necessarily a husband since men are polarising into manipulative cold-blooded bastards who can't stop playing games and passive aggressive overly possessive schlubs. What sane woman wants either for the long haul?

Anonymous said...

Well,look at neil Strauss,author of the bible of the game,uhm,The Game. He was gifted with a high IQ and skilled enough to get hired by the NYT,as well as being "cool" enough for Rolling Stone. he is short,bald,wimpy and very homely. But also smart,and disciplined and hard working.Thru Game,he became a legendary ladies man who had sexual escapades he otherwise could only dream of. So for him,game worked exactly as advertised. Of course,the 1st couple of guys who went in with Bernie Madoff did very well,I hear...

Anonymous said...

The Decline of Western Civilization has often been analogized as the Titanic, where the captain and crew are all blissfully unaware of impending doom. Liberals and Neocons are the passengers who trust the captain. Paleocons are the passengers who can see the danger, and some are sounding the alarm, pointing out to the other passnegers that the captains have no idea where they are headed, and some Paleocons have given up and are just organizing their own lifeboats.

Roissey represents a third kind of passenger. As the ship is going down, he's figured out a way to raid the liquor cabinet. He sees the danger, and roissey specifically is wise enough to offer invaluable insight as to what's wrong with the ship and why.With the couple drinks he's provided me I may be able to muster up the courage to man a more effective lifeboat (i.e. keep my wife attracted to me, and have more social credibility to persuade others the ship is sinking). On the whole, his actions are counterproductive for the long term, and he knows it, but this mess was like this when he got here.

James Kabala said...

""Wonkette" and the "Washingtonienne" did the same, chronicling their exploits sexually to fame and money."

I am no fan of Wonkette, surely one of the most annoying sites out there, but Ana Marie Cox is married (and I believe) has been since before the site was founded. She had an off-color sense of humor but did not, as far as I can remember, discuss her own sexual exploits. In fact, she was the one who exposed Jessica Cutler as the Washingtonienne. Our present moral situation is bad, testing, but often you exaggerate.

Thursday said...

A further thought.

Steve, you are thinking of how women become attracted purely in terms of natural selection, i.e. getting a man who can aquire resources, usually by being able to lead and organize other men.

But there is the sexual selection side of things, i.e. you have to do the kinds of things that attract women. The skills related to this are similar, but not identical with what it takes to lead men. Without the ability to be seductive, you will get far fewer mating opportunities, sometimes none at all, no matter your ability to lead men. Think all those Big Law/Big Finance guys who aren't actually getting any. T. from www.therawness.com has a lot to say on this.

Truth said...

"Thru Game,he became a legendary ladies man who had sexual escapades he otherwise could only dream of."

What makes you assume all of these stories are true?

Anonymous said...

I find this game stuff is all rather fascinating.

I am a middle aged married Englishman, but back in the early eighties I used to go clubbing at least once a week for several years on the trot. The almost sole objective of which was to chat up young women.

Mostly it didn't lead to anything, I wasn't doing it for sex but just for the fun of it. I nearly always had a steady girlfriend. I just thought of it as a challenge - a game.

I haven't read any of the books but little bits and pieces I've picked up here and there sound familiar. I think I was using some of these techniques subconsciously. For example, my wife always used to give me stick about how I could never give a compliment that wasn't back handed. When she said that, I had to think about it. It was true, but it was just the way I gave compliments to women. It didn't occur to me I was using a technique designed to make her want me more.

At the same time though, I used to be a hopeless romantic and I find these reports of the promiscuity of modern women deeply depressing. As some other poster has suggested - why bother, pay a prostitute, its the same thing just less aggro.

Sometimes I wonder if people like the Taliban I have got it right and we have got it hopelessly wrong.

Anonymous said...

'Game' is the planning and execution of being attractive to a population of women instead of one specific woman. There are lots of commonalities between women, so one can gradually develop routines and conceptual models for drawing and keeping women in by testing and adjusting one's behaviour. It's essentially marketing with an emphasis on customer relationship management.

The justification for game goes like this:

1. Women are still biologically attracted to the qualities that constituted 'success' 10 000 years ago rather than what constitutes success today.

2. Until recently in historic times, women were restricted from public life. Therefore, they were forced to choose practical mates over mates for whom they felt natural attraction.

3. Now that those restrictions have disappeared, women are free to indulge in their biological desires and choose their mates accordingly.

4. Boys are still being taught (by their mothers, fathers and Hollywood) to attract girls using obselete methods - get a well paying job and buy the girl diamonds.

5. Those boys eventually grow up and see what girls are actually attracted to (dominance and caveman-like non-chalance).

6. However, their unattractive personality traits are basically ingrained by this point and can only be unlearned by systematic training.

In short, game is about communicating value in a language that the target audience can understand, even if that language is obselete in today's society. Actually having value can help a little, but biology always trumps society.

Anonymous said...

Thursday,

it's more likely that the lady will dump the Big Law guy for some exciting nobody. You should pay more attention to literature. Think Guinevere leaving Arthur for Lancelot.

Uh, I wouldn't call Lancelot a "nobody." Higher IQ urban women in their 30's are into exotic travel and affluent lifestyles. A senior associate at Big Law can provide that; a guy still working on his acting career while he serves coffee at Starbucks cannot. That's why the peacock displays of men in their 20's must eventually be backed by the real deal: tangible assets and positive cash flow. And you only get that from 1) owning your own business or 2) convincing stone-cold sober equity partners who haven't read Neil Strauss that you can make them money.

Again, I'm not knocking a lot of the premises; there's good advice for all men tucked away in there. But in the end Game is, well, a young man's game.

IOW, Arthur Blank, Francois-Henri Pinault, Jack Nicholson et al. don't spend their time fretting over whether their feet are turned out at the right angle and where they're holding their drinks.

--Senor Doug

Anonymous said...

I think the word you were looking for was dipshits not Nimrods.

No, "nimrods" will work fine. From urbandictionary.com:

"Dictionary.com attests definition 2 ["A slow-witted person"] to have derived from a Looney Toons episode, wherein Bugs Bunny mocks his adversary, the hunter Elmer Fudd, calling him a "poor little Nimrod." Warner Brothers' Looney Toons cartoons were not written for children, but for literate adults, and often contained literary references children would not understand. Younger generations, mostly illiterate, and having little or no Bible knowledge not gleaned from their moronic parents and half-wit talk radio hosts, probably misunderstood the comment as being a general insult describing the slow-witted Fudd."

Anonymous said...

I can see the value of Roissy's methods. Nerds who think that working hard and being nice to women are the keys to success are unlikely to replicate their genes. Those who do succeed in having 2+ children have to endure a high likelihood that one day they will find themselves on the sidewalk with nothing but the clothes on their back and a legal requirement to make exorbitant child support payments or get thrown in jail.

As many other commenters have pointed out, Roissy's methods are not a long-term solution. Is there really much advantage to getting laid by some "rank whore" you met in a bar compared to staying home and trolling the internet for "one-handed typing" material? At least the second option doesn't include venereal diseases, shakedowns, etc.

The only true long-term solution is the one that Steve has often pointed out here: join a sub-culture, preferably one where women are required to fulfill the traditional Biblical role of obedience, submission and child-bearing. Anything else is pretty much guaranteed to fail.

I live in such a sub-culture, and believe me, the thought of participating in mainstream sexual relationships makes me physically ill. I literally would rather die than be forced to leave my world and deal with the androgynous, man-eating, fat, ugly, opinionated, tasteless, classless bitches who today comprise 50% of our population.

I have a high IQ and no social skills with women, but I also have 12 children and am on my way to my goal of 100 grandchildren.

Anonymous said...

roissy said...

from an individual's perspective, what's good for society died with god and the ascendence of the darwinian overlord. the only logical answer to the new paradigm is hedonism.
or: doesn't make sense not to live for fun.


I find Cormac McCarthy's vision of a future where an Ãœbermensch like Anton Chigurh goes around thinning the herd with a cattle gun a bit more likely. But, hey, maybe life after God will be a never-ending spring break.

Anonymous said...

I wish there was game for women - not for sex, for dominance. I want to go lady game boot camp weekends and learn how to be a stone cold dominating ice queen. Uh, I mean, I want to attend a weekend retreat to improve my social skills.

"My lige lady, generally," quod he,
"Wommen desiren to have sovereynetee
"As wel over hir housbond as hir love,
"And for to been in maistrie hym above.
"This is youre mooste desir, thogh ye me kille.
"Dooth as yow list; I am heer at youre wille."

Truth said...

"I literally would rather die than be forced to leave my world and deal with the androgynous, man-eating, fat, ugly, opinionated, tasteless, classless bitches who today comprise 50% of our population...I have a high IQ and no social skills with women, but I also have 12 children and am on my way to my goal of 100 grandchildren"

Yeah, I can see where being with 11 year old twins who wear Laura Ingles dresses and grow their haid to their ankles would have it's advantages.

Anonymous said...

Darwin says: produce viable offspring or you are biologically unfit. Period. Having "game," being "alpha," getting "laid" (with a condom), is all just tantamount to a virtual reality ego-pastime.

If any of these "pickup" males had any biological worth, their female partners would be playing the "game" of breaking condoms before sex with a needle to get their sperm.

Seems the females know they are dealing with damaged goods just like themselves. How many of these young promiscuous women "don't want children?" In Darwin's terms, that is a vote of no confidence. No way around it.

Anonymous said...

While the definition of "game" is somewhat accurate, the question assumes way too many things. All "Gamers" are using brainpower to compensate for what doesn't always come naturally. However, Steve Sailor assumes gamers fail at everything else. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most people here probably apply the same dedication and thought to most of their goals. Besides, anyone with any experience with women knows that a whole different set of craziness applies. I know many successful people and leaders who have a tough time with women and vice versa. Gamers are simply bettering their odds in one of the few ways available.

Anonymous said...

"After all, if men see you as a leader of men, then you will become a leader of men, with the concomitant rewards in income, power, and the long-term attention of attractive women"

Just to follow-up my earlier comment that a lot of the guys interested in Game already have high social status, it's worth looking at the demographics of roissy's readers with a tool called Quantcast.

35% of roissy's readers makes 100k or more. More than any other income category.

http://www.quantcast.com/roissy.wordpress.com


Comparatively, only 9% of Steve's readers make 100k and over, despite the fact that they are older, which usually correlates with higher incomes.

http://www.quantcast.com/isteve.blogspot.com

So that's a fourfold difference.

A lot of guys interested in racking up as many hot sex partners as possible are probably the same Ameritrader personalities that were watching Boiler Room for spiritual inspiration in Steve's previous post. It's all about the thrill of winning and extreme male-male competition for the all the resources that can be had.

Anonymous said...

I think some people are confusing "guys who don't give a s***" with "alpha males". All the alpha males died in Flanders 1914-1916. We are left now with men who don't care about anything but physical pleasure, which means they don't care about
-leading other men
-the future
-having their lame advances rejected by women.

Alpha males (back when there were any) cared about all those things. The guys who still care nowadays are not "beta males" so much as "genetic accidents" or "Asians". Let on that you give a good goddamn about anything and the hot chic in the bar will drop you like a hot potato.

B322 said...

Reasons women seem stupid to men when they mainly know each other through casual conversation: lack of interest in ideas, avoiding or laughing off abstractions, preference for sequence-of-events and personality topics. Intelligent males react by hunting for wives at Mensa meetings.

Reasons men seem stupid to women when they mainly know each other through casual conversation: trying to seem cool by looking independent, but coming off as self-centered instead. (The men who pull off looking independent can be as self-centered as they want and no one will notice.) Intelligent females react by giving up the hunt for husbands.

Just a thought. I hope it's not true very often, or say bye-bye to the Flynn Effect.

Anonymous said...

I would never respect enough to marry any woman I got through Game... I first met my wife in the university library on a Saturday. Being there was her version of Game.

Chicks at Haverford and Swarthmore must have a *lot* of game.

Anonymous said...

Maximilian - I also have 12 children and am on my way to my goal of 100 grandchildren.

Fuckin A!

Anonymous said...

The reason some women are having some much no relationship sex is ... Most men don't have a clue what to do. Therefore, some women want to test the goods before they invest in a relationship.

Harsh but true. I bet that some of the men commenting have had opportunities with women, just not the 10's they desire. If you can only pll a 5, take the 5 as long as she if the bill in other areas guys.

Anonymous said...

I think you guys need to stop hanging around in bars. It seems to be souring you on life.

Anonymous said...

I think there is a huge misconception that women are interested in money. Money and success with women tend to correlate, but there is very little causation there. Rather, financial success and success with women come out of the same source: interpersonal skills.

Among many on this thread, there is a huge misconception that all women are attracted to the same thing. The old saying "she's not my type" expresses a very important truth about sexual selection and HBD.

It's a simple model, and a good example is the peacock's tailfeathers. The standard viewpoint is that the peacock must be extremely healthy, or else it couldn't afford the seemingly wasteful expenditure of resources on the tailfeathers. However, what if an equally healthy peacock forwent the expense of the tailfeathers?

A peahen that could discern his quality would receive a bonanza: a prime-quality peacock plus the resources that would have been wasted on the tail. Perhaps her and her offspring's status would be relatively low, but not among those pursuing a similar strategy.

To some extent, women all have the same evolutionary wiring, but culture and conscious choice make a difference.

Anonymous said...

Something I have noticed among these guys is a boomlet in visits to CraigsList erotic services and (for the more sophisticated) to sites like sfredbook and eros-guide.

So I took a look at the "casual encounters" listings on Craigslist (Toronto) this afternoon. A mere sixteen of the first 200 listings were w4m (woman looking for a man), two of them looking to lose their "V-cards," and another couple looking for sugar daddies.

Not much to support a "boomlet," there. Unless you're looking for "m4m." (Best line: "I am an all out trek fan with an insatiable sex drive that is a cha[lle]nge for myself as well as any to satisfy.")

If one can't afford the escorts at eros-guide.com, they also link to Eros Match. (Best line, from one of the 28 "matches" they just emailed me: "I am just here to see if my ass of a husband is on here." Omigod, it's my wife!)

By contrast, many of the profiles (and the "contacts" initiated by them) at both hookup.com and fling.com are fake, designed simply to get you to fork over your credit card, to be able to read and/or reply to them.

On the bright side, though, apparently HornyMatches.com is legitimate.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous: Let on that you give a good goddamn about anything and the hot chic in the bar will drop you like a hot potato.

True, but then again, she's just a rank whore.

Try to look at it from the glass-is-half-full point of view: You've just described an excellent test for filtering out legions upon legions of rank whores NONE of whom you want to be the mother of your children.

Anonymous said...

Silver, Black Sea, and Anonymous European make some well-thought-out points.

However, consider Testing99's paragraph:

"No "evil persons" caused this, rather the inevitable result of too much wealth, anonymity, technology, and mobile urban living."


............because is spot-on.


I didn't take Testy (or anyone else) to task for describing how society or the mating game or anything else works (at present). I take issue with their promotion of it.

Similarly, I don't have a problem with women enjoying sex (really, really enjoying it -- loving to take it in the face, DP whatever). I have a problem with women (and men) promoting this lifestyle as something to strive for all women. It's a question of what will bring them short-term vs long-term fulfillment. Sluts can try to hide it, they can downplay it, or they can blame men or "society" for it, but men look down on sluts and when they find out sluts are not happy about it at all.

Personally, I don't have a problem being courteous, respectful and gentlemanly to a slut. But in the back of my mind, she's still nothing but a dirty whore and however much I might like her as a person it's just impossible me to think as highly of as her as a more chaste or at least a more discreet woman.

So I think it's highly questionable just how much lives of sluthood do for women.

That's one thing.

The other thing is there's no freaking way in hell "women" as a group are reaping the benefits of sexual liberation; it's only hot women. Some of those in the middle of the pack score regularly enough and are told they're "hot" regularly enough (disingenuously but believably) that they think there's something in it for them. The rest suffer. They go through life with their inadequacies and shortcomings shoved down their throats by every segment of society -- a world in which "everyone else" is fucking away and having a (ahem) gay old time except you is tough going. Of course, the point is everyone else isn't, but that's the impression current mores encourage and enforce.

Men, who out of the two sexes are made to lead, do neither themselves nor present society nor future generations any favors at all by promoting hedonism. I'm old enough and mature enough (barely!) to have started considering the general good. But I'm still young enough, the juices are still flowing, and I've retained enough of my boyish looks to still attract the attentions of late teens. It's obvious as the sun to me that countless numbers of them are dooming themselves to misery later in life by the values they have embraced and which they promote among each other. No man, certainly no leader, who cares about the world around him can responsibly seek to exploit that -- and certainly he cannot flaunt his doing so. Those who do are not men, they are pathetic worms.

As for "game," sure it "works" -- just not quite as advertised. Applying its insights will enable a guy to maximize his potential. But that might only mean finally being able to score with a girl -- one single, solitary girl. Others will enjoy greater success. But guys dreaming that they're going to be pulling 9s and 10s constantly are doing just that -- dreaming.

I've watched a few episodes of some "keys to the VIP" show. To me, most of the guys on it are dweebs, but some have clearly internalized their "canned" material and reproduce it so naturally that they succeed in charming plenty of ladies. 95% of it is just show, glitz, superficial "personality," however. I'm highly suspicious of how long they can stay in character. Those who keep it up for long years might one day look back and in disgust realize they'd led the lives of impostors. (And good luck to one of those scrawny nerds with the shaggy hair-dos trying to "AMOG" me if I'm with a girl. Lol.)

Anonymous said...

This "game" phenomenon is very interesting. From this and that blog I had gathered that high-IQ young men in our society are now taking a serious interest in pickup-artistry.

We are now, depending on how you count, about 150 years into our experiment of living as if there is no God. When we finally get bored with sex it will start to get really scary.

Anonymous said...

Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
when you're perfect in every way.
I can't wait to look in the mirror

'cos I get better looking each day
to know me is to love me

I must be a hell of a man.
O Lord it's hard to be humble
but I'm doing the best that I can.

I used to have a girlfriend
but I guess she just could'n't complete
with all of these lovestarved women
who keep clamouring at my feet.
Well I probably find me another
but I guess they're all in awe of me

who cares I never get lonesome
cause I treasure my own company.

Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
when you're perfect in every way.
I can't wait to look in the mirror

'cos I get better looking each day
to know me is to love me

I must be a hell of a man.
O Lord it's hard to be humble
but I'm doing the best that I can.

I guess you can say I'm a loner

a cowboy outlaw tough and proud
Well
I could have lots of friends if I wanted
but then I wouldn't stand out from the drowd

some folks say that I'm "egotistical
well I don't even know what that means
I guess it has something to do with the
way that I fill out my skintight blue jeans.

Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
when you're perfect in every way.
I can't wait to look in the mirror

'cos I get better looking each day
to know me is to love me

I must be a hell of a man.
O Lord it's hard to be humble
we are doing the best that we can.


Mac Davis had his tongue in cheek when he wrote those lyrics, but apparently many don't get the joke and try to be the guy in the song. I'm very happy to be a religious guy with a wife and five kids and no nasty diseases. I wouldn't change a thing about how I lived my life. In the old days, that would have made me a respectable man; in the modern world I'm sure about half the population considers me a loser, including about half the posters here, who somehow consider themselves conservative.

Joe H.

Anonymous said...

Lucius Vorenus said...

From having glanced at the first few comments in this thread, may I assume that it goes without saying that the kinds of "women" we are talking about here are nothing but rank whores?

Because no one seems to be [explicitly] acknowledging that ugly little stepchild of a factoid.

--------------------------------

Most women today are whores by the standards of previous generations. Men are just adapting to it. You can pretty much give up on the idea a finding a non-promiscuous 20-something woman in a major metropolitan area these days.

Anonymous said...

Uh, I wouldn't call Lancelot a "nobody." Higher IQ urban women in their 30's are into exotic travel and affluent lifestyles.

-----------------------------

Don't you get it? Today's women, by the time they are in their 30's, have had sex with dozens and dozens of men. If you want to get women IN THEIR PRIME, this is how you have to act now.

Anonymous said...

Sex threads even outperform anything to do with the Lobby.

(OK, I only wrote this to get the count over 100)

Anonymous said...

I have to agree with the more negative assessments of modern womanhood by posters such as t99 and Lucius. However may I remind that men who demand sexual purity from women need to live up to that standard themselves, otherwise they make themselves guilty of hypocrisy, as is the case with Islam where sexual promiscuity amongst men is rampant.

As a Christian man I follow the guidelines on sexuality set forth in the New Testament. They seem harsh but actually make sense in terms of health and life-energy management. Acquaintances who are involved in sexual adventures spend an awful amount of energy on them, and in the end have nothing but sorrow and bitterness to show for it. The payoff seems meagre. Those friends who have stable marriages may be frustrated now and then, and probably do a fair amount of window shopping, but overall have more productive and fulfilling lives. In spite of the emotional strain which traditional sexual morality places on the individual, and by extension society, there is no effective alternative, as a quick glance into the decadent modern world, or say Islam suggests. I subsume classical Judaic sexual morality under Christian morality in the sense that the early Christians were Jews who took the biblical standards seriously. Modern Jews who do not live by the biblical standards can only claim that title in an ethnic sense, not a religious one, just like most Westerners cannot be considered Christians in any way.

Anonymous said...

'If you want to get women IN THEIR PRIME, this is how you have to act now.'

A mere hundred years ago, woman in her twenties was already past her prime in many societies.
Today we suffer media brainwashing campaign telling us old boilers like SJP and her wilted sidekicks are hot, sexy, and eminently desirable. Welcome to the New Prime.

Anonymous said...

"You can pretty much give up on the idea a finding a non-promiscuous 20"

You can call it "no slut left behind", but the standards of slutiness have evolved. Any girl who is below the median in number of partners is not a slut, even though by 1950's standards she is probably a whore

Anonymous said...

Men, who out of the two sexes are made to lead, do neither themselves nor present society nor future generations any favors at all by promoting hedonism. ... No man, certainly no leader, who cares about the world around him can responsibly seek to exploit that -- and certainly he cannot flaunt his doing so. Those who do are not men, they are pathetic worms.

Beautifully put, Silver. The core of the problem is not individual young women or young men, or even young people collectively. The problem is that our society has given itself over completely to empty and superficial values in this matter.

Although popular culture still treats sluttiness per se as a bad thing, all the behaviors that encourage sluttiness (and encourage men to take maximum advantage of it as long as they can) are flogged relentlessly in the media.

I don't think this is anybody's fault. As another post says, it's the inevitable result of the confluence of wealth and the total personal freedom that comes from anonymity and the absence of any religious, moral or social restraint on sexual behavior.

Can the genie be put back in the bottle? Probably not. Then again, PC in all its forms has had a resounding success in shaping public attitudes and behavior. If the same forces were marshalled to encourage female sexual restraint*, maybe it could be done. That will never happen, of course.

*Not a return to Victorian chastity, but a return to the sexual mores of, say, 1960, when a "nice girl" did not have sex with a man until the relationship had progressed to a certain level of commitment. That's enough to break the current destructive cycle.

Anonymous said...

"Today's women, by the time they are in their 30's, have had sex with dozens and dozens of men. If you want to get women IN THEIR PRIME, this is how you have to act now."

Even worse, because liberalism and feminism have taken away any sense of shame and conservative values of respectability, this is the way you have to act now just to keep your wife from falling out of love with you and divorcing you or cuckholding you for not "meeting her emotional needs".

And divorce, these days, means indentured servitude.

Anonymous said...

Michel Houellebecq writer better on this subject than anyone:

Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation. Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It’s what’s known as ‘the law of the market’. In an economic system where unfair dismissal is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find their place. In a sexual system where adultery is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find their bed mate. In a totally liberal economic system, certain people accumulate considerable fortunes; others stagnate in unemployment in misery. In a totally liberal sexual system, certain people have a varied and exciting erotic life; others are reduced to masturbation and solitude. Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.

In the last couple of days, a kid in Germany shot and killed 15 people, apparently targeting females, and a man in Alabama killed 11 people of both sexes, but since he killed his mother and grandmother, I think we can asssume his anger was directed primarily at women. Needless to say, neither guy had a girlfriend. Look for these kind of rampages to continue.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I can see where being with 11 year old twins who wear Laura Ingles dresses and grow their haid to their ankles would have it's advantages.

Anyone who didn't think those FLDS women in Texas were hot doesn't have the right instincts for replicating their genes. And did you notice that numerous adult women, one as old as 37, were mistaken for minors and taken into custody? That demonstrates another advantage of traditional sub-cultures -- the women don't become prematurely hardened and haggard, looking like they were "rode hard and put away wet," as the old saying goes.

Truth said...

Hey sport;consider me a
eunuch

The caption on the second picture said something about them going out of their way to look "unsexy" and "unattractive"; I don't think they had to work too hard.

Anonymous said...

Sheesh, don't much know or care about "game", having been reasonably self-assured and capable of meeting/picking up women since I can remember.

But Roissy, other than some funny lines on his blog, surely shouldn't be respected or emulated.

DC? Really? DC?!?! Easiest town in the world to pick up women. It's the city where Middle America goes. Fat chicks in flip flops. Short litle guys, office badges (I work for somebody who works for a Senator!) dangling from their necks at bars at 11PM. Foreign broads on daddy's VISA, getting to live a little differently, a little on the edge. A transient place, ideal for starfing strays out of a pack for a few weeks of "fun".

A well-cut suit, a litle humor, some travel, and I don't know, not being a complete effing pussy, and you'll see more ass than a rental car seat, "game" or no game. No great talent required.

Didn't even have to work at it. It was here, have some booty. Somehow in an age of multiple emails, crackberries, etc. women were still gullible enough to believe someone couldn't be reached, and that I could juggle 3-4 at a time.

Heartily glad I moved on from that place (geographically and mentally) to real life.

Anonymous said...

You guys are all missing the point about "game", and it's driving me nuts.

Game is all about understanding women's biological instincts, and how to best cope with them. As roissy commenter Dave put it : "the insight you can glean from the PUA on the principles dealing with females biological imperatives and their base motivations is quite instructive on learning to maintain a steady, monogamous relationship as well."

Another commenter on Roissy's blog, though, had another truism as well : "Success with women is more disillusioning than failure."

Anonymous said...

"As another post says, it's the inevitable result of the confluence of wealth and the total personal freedom that comes from anonymity and the absence of any religious, moral or social restraint on sexual behavior. Can the genie be put back in the bottle?"

Yes, well, no. Sort of. Lots of sex + no babies = fewer inheritors of the decadent culture. Give it a few generations and voila. Europe is full of brunet polygamists who throw acid in the face for cheating. When you read a history book everything sounds like it happened overnight, but it looks different on the ground. Cultural replacement is happening right now.

Smart people don't really have any excuse for being so stupid and self destructive. Or maybe too much of what we call "intelligence" is just elaborate social plumage without real adaptive value. Dodo, prepare to meet the High IQ Secular Western Atheist.

Anonymous said...

Truth,

They're not my type, but one thing that struck me is that every woman shown is maintaining a healthy body weight. So they'll live longer and be healthier in old age, thereby ensuring their availability for the grandkids. These are also women with several pregnancies each, and they had those pregnancies in their prime childbearing years when they still had time and energy to recover their figures. That's more than you can say for the typical middle-aged American woman: overweight, borderline diabetic, hypertensive, and reduced to wearing velour stretch pants because "they're comfortable."

--Senor Doug

Anonymous said...

(I'm married and the author of the "hot potato" comment that Lucius V. replied to with such razor-sharp accuracy.) I recommend lonely agnostic/nonreligious men move to small towns and find a church where you feel comfortable. It's just that I feel bad that the religious men get all the non-rank-whore women, and/or that the non-rank-whore women are lonely. Perhaps church services can be an acquired taste ... especially for conservatives who value culture for its own sake, and who believe in a separation of civic life and state.

If someone asks if you believe, remember that "god" has many definitions. Tell them "god is why we love our fellow man" ... who could argue? My (eccentrically) religious wife was by far the simplest woman to court I've known - I didn't have to break any rules or tread that @$#@!! fine line between creepy and sissy.

Anonymous said...

The caption on the second picture said something about them going out of their way to look "unsexy" and "unattractive"; I don't think they had to work too hard.

You have to recognize good genes when you see them.

My brother was once in Salt Lake City standing outside the temple where they have a wedding every few minutes because so many Mormons want to get married there, and he said that he was shocked to see so many stunningly beautiful young women come out one after the other, it almost made him want to convert right there.

James Kabala said...

"Needless to say, neither guy had a girlfriend. Expect for these kind of rampages to continue."

It reminds me of a question Steve once asked: does steroids make you a jerk or do jerks take steroids? It's possible that being rejected by women makes you a monster, but it's at least as (and probably more) likely that women detected their incipient monstrousness and knew to stay the heck away.

I don't know, Maximillian, if polygamist cults can be really be called "traditional" if tradition means anything in the last 2000+ years of the Western mainstream. And it does result in the same thing the Walrus fears - frustrated bachelor men - just from a different direction.

Truth said...

"They're not my type, but one thing that struck me is that every woman shown is maintaining a healthy body weight."

This appears true. There's something to be said about milling your own flour and churning your own butter. Physically healthy, mentally probably insane.

Anonymous said...

"The reason some women are having some much no relationship sex is ... Most men don't have a clue what to do. Therefore, some women want to test the goods before they invest in a relationship."

Wow. Maybe I'm way too naive and rustic here, but have these gals ever heard of the self-help or Love & Sex section of Barnes and Noble? Maybe they could teach (or learn together!) a few new tricks with a guy instead of writing him off forever after one bad lay?

Dr. Phil is a blowhard but he said one thing I agree with:
*paraphrasing*
"If your child wanted to get married, who would you advise them to marry? The person who loves them and would take care of them? Or the one they have good sex with?"

Sex is a pillar of a romantic relationship, but it's just one pillar.

"That demonstrates another advantage of traditional sub-cultures -- the women don't become prematurely hardened and haggard, looking like they were "rode hard and put away wet," as the old saying goes."

"My brother was once in Salt Lake City standing outside the temple where they have a wedding every few minutes because so many Mormons want to get married there, and he said that he was shocked to see so many stunningly beautiful young women come out one after the other, it almost made him want to convert right there."

Guess I'll have to take a vacation in Utah.

Here in my region of Illinois we have a few members of the Apostolic Christians. Not sure how to describe 'em.....slightly less conservative then Mennonites maybe. The women wear long skirts, often cover their hair, no cleavage etc. Most aren't real thin but most I've seen aren't all that overweight, at least while they're young. One tended my Mom when she was hospitalized a couple years ago and she was very pretty.

I'd like to echo the "rode hard and put away wet" observation. Apostolic Christian women are seldom "hot" due to their modest dress and hairstyles, but most I've seen are pretty in an understated way.

-Vanilla Thunder

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

Higher IQ urban women in their 30's are into exotic travel and affluent lifestyles. A senior associate at Big Law can provide that; a guy still working on his acting career while he serves coffee at Starbucks cannot.


These are exactly the kind of women that give men that involuntary shudder like the cold dry wind. Why the hell would a guy want a calculating older woman with high expectations and no commitment to anyone beside herself? Hooking up with that kind of woman is like asking for a knife in the back.

A Big Law fellow would take a starry-eyed 25-year-old over a critical, 35-year-old career woman any day of the week. The Starbucks coffee jerk is more likely to be stuck with the older woman, since he needs the money more. On the other hand, with game, the coffee jerk can have serial relationships with supple young women until he's in his early 40s or so. That's better than your typical marriage.

For full disclosure, I'm totally estranged from the opposite sex for the moment -- I need a break after getting raped by the family law system (which is totally ruled by females from top to bottom here), so I don't even want a woman in my house (besides my daughter, of course).

Anonymous said...

There are lots of opinionated posters on this blog who think they know everything about the Game and are qualified to pass judgement but in reality they are just burning straw men.

I have traveled in this subculture and spent many weekends in the 'field' approaching 'sets' using the '3 second rule' with the aim of getting 'numbers', 'kiss closes' 'Day 2's' and 'F-Closes'.

I did it because I was single and having left the wide social circle of college I had returned to my home town where I had a tiny social circle and no prospects of meeting any potential girlfriends through convential methods, my introversion worked against me at work and my social circle was small with all the girls in it already taken.

I was drawn to the pickup community through the same marketing ploys that repelled the more socially conservative posters i.e. the promise of promiscuous sex with lots of gorgeous women leading to the perfect girlfriend. I brought their products and learnt all the rules of seduction but never implemented much of it as I was worried of coming off as a creepy weirdo - I freely concede that it does work if you have the guts for it and have seen it work spectacularly on the prettiest girls in the Bar or club.

What the Game or more importantly the community surrounding it did for me was give me a circle of friends and aquantinces on exactly the same wavelength as myself who were committed to meeting women.

So through them I overcame my fears of approaching women and met many women, with a few turning into romantic interests - whereas if I had followed convential theory and concentrated on my career I'd have had no dates and no girlfriends.

I realised early on that one didn't have to have to spin out pickup lines and routines to attract the opposite sex (though they helped) but that
one simply had to be persistent at approaching women in bars and clubs. So long as one was persistent in approaching women the laws of probability worked in ones favour.

I left the community due to work commitments and burning out due to not being able to keep up with the emotional, financial and time demands of the lifestyle. During this time however I had more success in the six months I traveled in this subculture than in the previous 6 years. I also fully intend to return to it.

As for the people who do 'game' typically they are in their twenties, having recently graduated from University. A number are professionals. Most are not nerds or losers and many vanish from the community once they have secured a long-term girlfriend, which if the relationship doesn't break up ultimately leads to marriage and babies (which I presume the people on Vdare think is a good thing - so long as its whites making the babies)

I do not think that the ideas behind the Game is evidence of the decline of western civilisation. Yes it is taking longer for men to settle down and raise families but this has little to do with the game which in my opinion speeds things up and more to do with the deteriorating socio-economic factors (much influenced by politics) which effectively prolong the adolescent teenage years into the mid-twenties. (i.e. longer education, stangnant real wages and a rising cost of living all work against the boy growing up into men).

Anonymous said...

"So I think it's highly questionable just how much lives of sluthood do for women."

No amount of PC, feminism, liberalism, etc will change how most men view women who have numerous casual sex-partners, especially when they start looking for the mother of their future children.

I remember one blog-poster - forget just where - commenting on his college hook-up scene. He met a girl that he really thought he could eventually marry. The relationship flourished but as the time when he might be making the big decision of getting engaged approached, he said he and his lady walked into a local hangout where many of his friends went and he looked around the room. He realized that she had slept with most of the guys there. He backed off because, as he said, he couldn't face years of knowing that his wife had slept with most of his social circle in college, many of whom he planned to stay in touch with.

I also have to wonder how much of the difficulty conceiving that many women in their 30's have can be placed on the STDs that they picked up in their 20's and may not have even realized that they had.

Unknown said...

Black Sea wrote:

A lot of it (Game Theory) seems to consist of deprogramming and reprogramming young men who've been trained to believe that woman are sexually attracted to sensitive, supportive, emotionally-sympathetic men. Don't get me wrong, women like having those kind of men around, they're just not particularly interested in screwing them.

Based on what I've learned so far, this is largely accurate, but with one major correction: we weren't trained to believe that women were sexually attracted to such men, just that they would like us as people and as a result would be willing to have sex with us (in the context of marriage) in exchange for what we offered. Women's sexual attraction was not on our radar screen. Sex was not something women wanted; it was something women allowed men to do to them. Women were innocent, pure, noble creatures who would never do anything so vulgar as become sexually aroused; that was what men did. Women innately desired the good life: marriage and family, and for this they required a kind, faithful man with a desire to have a family and the means to support one. We were told that if we would be sweet, sensitive, "nice guys" and openly proclaim our desire for marriage and family, women would like us. They would be drawn to us not out of sexual attraction, but because they found us sweet and kind and we could offer them the way of life they wanted.

Sure, as a result we would get to have sex with one of them, and this fact was often at the forefront of our minds, but it was really just a byproduct of this women-wanting-marriage-and-family, men-being-kind-and-sensitive-providers dance.

Of course, you can only experience so many years of seeing even the "good" girls at church ignore your sensitive, supportive, emotionally-sympathetic self as they get married off one by one to the more commanding and socially dominant guys who rode motorcycles to church, before you begin to suspect that what your mother always told you (i.e., the girls were going to love you when you grew up because you're such a good little boy) was something other than the truth. Then you accidentally stumble upon the seduction community online, and although you're initially repulsed by the decadent, hedonistic intentions of many of the men involved in it, you're just intrigued enough by their claim to have cracked the universal code of female psychology to stick around and see that yes, this does explain a lot.

The disappearance of traditional gender roles is a big part of the problem. A lot of us gen-Xers weren't taught how to be men by our fathers, because they no longer believed in that old ideal, and our malleable brains were at the mercy of our mothers, who raised us to be more like what they thought they wanted our fathers to be like rather than what's actually attractive to women. As a commenter on Roissy's blog put it once, a lot of what we're calling "game" used to be called "acting like a man."

Anonymous said...

Women either want or don't want children. It's not even really up to men to make that decision, but life begins, or does not begin, or begins and is aborted, inside a woman's body.

Men will to a large extent go with the flow an meet female expectations to get laid. If women want children and marriage, the men will adapt. If women don't want to put up with a man's filth, cook for him, clean for him, bear children and care for children, then men will adapt to that too.

Smart people who let "ideas" get in the way of basic instincts are stupid. There is no way around that. Western society has constructed so many barriers to childbearing and easy ways out of marriage (no fault divorce, government money for single mothers, etc etc), but ultimately this is up to the individual woman. To listen to what her body tells her, or listen to her "girlfriends" or Sex and the City or whatever.

Western women are using what would be their best childbearing years (which biologically start in teens, whether Western smart people socially accept that or not) for education, self betterment, financial independence, etc. What is wrong with these women?

Who are the ones who pathologize male mating behaviors? Jealousy is taboo among the high IQ set. Courtship is now "stalking." Having children before age 30 is considered shockingly early, god forbid before age 20. Women have ordained all of these new rules, maybe because they prefer government handouts or single motherhood to dealing with men.

The money is running out very quickly, and this soft matriarchy will end as soon as the low hanging economic fruit disappear. Only then will these women remember to appreciate men and cherish men and do what it takes to attract a man and keep a man.

Anonymous said...

It all goes back to birth control.

And the men like the freedom of not being tied down by kids even more than the women do.

Not having children, or not have many of them, alters a society radically.

The boys stay boys for longer, and the women have no hope that making them fathers will turn them into men.

Till this sick batch extinguishes its flame in somber and lonely old age, we'll hear more of the same absurd "gender war."

Anonymous said...

If there is any meaning to the term "alpha male" it is the maximization of offspring, not the maximization of sex partners.

Your family man with five kids is the alpha male whose descendants will last a long time. You urban jigolo who beds a hundred women that abort all the offspring or at best produce depressive alcoholic bastards will not survive the next generation.

Your local nerd is probably an alpha male since he is probably a family man who will leave more offspring that your jerk faux "alpha" with his feminine penchant for drama with several women.

Welcome to the real world for those who pursue some adolescent "alpha" bull crap bitch drama.

It is not the drama, it is the results: offspring.

Unknown said...

Anonymous,

Your local nerd is probably an alpha male since he is probably a family man who will leave more offspring that your jerk faux "alpha" with his feminine penchant for drama with several women.

That was true until maybe 20 years ago. The problem is that these days, your local nerd is NOT a family man with five kids, since he can't find a wife, since women aren't attracted to him, since he doesn't have GAME. And unless he gets some, he's not leaving any offspring.

In the old days, when traditional morality and traditional gender roles reigned, women got married off young to the good providers and had real reasons to appreciate and love them. Now, women are following not their fathers and their need to be financially supported, but their hormones, and their hormones are telling them to hop into bed with the most fun, exciting, socially dominant guy they can find, not the one who's the best provider and family man.

I'm living proof of this. I'm 32 years old, am reasonably good-looking, and family-and-committment oriented, have been looking for a wife since graduating from college, and, despite even going to medical school, making me the supreme stereotype of the prime catch (by old-fashioned standards), haven't been able to get non-hideous girls to give me the time of day. I've found it necessary to learn what I can from the seduction community, not to become a cad bedding 100 different women, but just to attract a wife.

Benjamin said...

roiss is not bad wookie at all.