Game
Years ago I used to read a blog by an obscure linguist (he's still around, but the old archives disappeared), and remember him saying once: Language is everywhere, I don't understand why people can not be fascinated about it. I feel the same way, and the strange quirks of everyday language bug me to no end. A fascinating issue is meaning. People seem to accept that words have different meaning without giving much thought to the issue, but how does that work? Originally all words had one meaning and one only, for obvious efficiency purposes. Then time passes and thins get messy, but a word doesn't get new meanings just like that, there must be some logical connection that makes people brains accept a new usage for the word. See for example the word "game". A game is a rule based competition done for amusement. Take the article away, and it's a set of principle useful to have sex with women. Add 'theory' to it, and it's a science that studies the strategy of conflict.
I don't write much about Game, nor preoccupy myself with feminism or other issues. That's not because I'm not interested or think it doesn't work. I discovered Roissy 5 years ago and it changed my life forever. I just don't see the benefit in spreading Game to the wider society. While Game has helped me attract more women, have sex with them, and more generally just to deal with women more effectively, that's all there is to it. My knowing game hasn't benefited the girls I've dumped, it hasn't benefited the men without game who have to deal with those women after having tasted good game. Women before Game were annoying enough, wide adoption of Game is just going to raise the hurdle to attract women, unleashing a Game arms race of ever more effective tactics to short-circuit women's "slut-defense" long enough to take your pants off and insert your penis into her vagina. Is that a good thing? It looks like the introduction of marketing insights into sex relations. Marketing is also about short-circuiting the better part of your brain who is in charge of long term financial planning and making you spend money because of some instant impulse you didn't know existed. We are all now magicians in charge of screwing with the precarious, recently evolved parts of the brain that makes us civilized.
I'm actually not very good at the finest manipulation techniques that fool girls into your bed or old women into buying insurance. I'm a bad manipulator, and while I could say it's just because I'm holier than thou and refuse to do evil, I'll just admit that I just suck at it. What I do quite well is understand what makes Game a game. Game is about competition, and in any competition, you need to understand your own position and that of your opponent. A good understanding of why men and women behave like they do is probably the best contribution that the PUA crowd have left for human wisdom. Centuries from now people will think that Game Theory was invented by Roissy.
It's a dark science though, and I'm also not very sure if its wider adoption is or not a good thing. To put it in concrete terms: I was talking with a friend of mine a while ago. He's a player, a very, very horny man who just can't help himself from spending half of every day chasing tail. You could call him a natural, he has his own method devised through trial and error, but he hasn't read any Game literature nor has any scientific understanding of why it works. Now every once in a while the guy gets burned because some girl is playing tough to get, or he fucked her but she's a cold bitch, or he just gets plainly rejected. Of course, he has an official girlfriend of his age (late 20s) who he loves very much, and feels mildly guilty about (episodes of guilt curiously always coincide with intervals of burnout).
He was bragging on how nice his girlfriend is, and how he's gonna marry her. Some day he promised her to take her to some place early in the morning, but went out the night before, so he was half dead when she got there to meet him. Instead of shouting and nagging the shit out of him for breaking his promise, she let him sleep, washed his clothes, cleaned his apartment, cooked some food for him, and woke him up at noon to eat lunch. She's an angel! She's perfect? You see?
A normal person would say, OMG she's so nice you gotta marry her and you'll be happy forever. But the dark knowledge has corrupted my soul, and I couldn't make myself feel happy for the guy. I promptly reminded him of the power unbalance of their relationship. He is a man on his prime, getting all the tail he wants, which she surely suspects if only slightly. He's freelancing and could flee and have the same lifestyle anyway he wanted. She has a soul crushing corporate job that she hates. She likes the guy very much, and she's in her late 20s, and trust me she's not likely to find the same kind of man if he were to look for a new one. She's a smart girl and she knows that she has a horrible hand, and he has a fucking royal flush. She of course wants to marry. Been saying it for a while.
Well she better be nice then. She better wash, clean, cook, and not nag you even if she catches you screwing her best friend. Of course my friend wasn't amused at my comment. "Can't you just fucking say she's nice?" All I can say is that she's smart enough to know what hand she has been dealt with. Many women don't.
People have two contradictory beliefs about behavior. In one hand, we are all a blank slate, and through education we can an all be made to do skillfully whatever is required from us. On the other hand, what people do depends on their character, which is fixed. Nice people are always nice, and nasty people are always nasty. Well to some extent that's true, nice people are nice, but incentives matter. And before making a big decision like, say, marriage, you'd better be very sure that whatever behavior from your partner is part of her character and not just responding to incentives.
But of course most people aren't unconditionally nice or honest. Most women get fat and unloving after marriage, most men fuck around if they have the option. And there's nothing we individually can do about it. Having this kind of knowledge helps when you're the only one who does, and can be two steps ahead of everyone else. But what if everyone knew? What if everybody could see each others hand? What kind of game would that be?
30 comments
Bravo!
Roissy likes to take this question and flip it (though, perhaps assuming a bit more cynical self-awareness than is realistic). For example, all women know that men respond to their looks and so that's why they wear alluring outfits and jewelry and use makeup no matter how desperately their hamster hive-mind buzzes with attempts to deny it. All women also know that what is visually attractive to men about a woman, while there is some variation in taste, still falls in a fairly narrow ideal range heavily dependent on their age and body proportions. A lot of what women do with makeup, etc. is their version of "game" And the men also know what makes them horny. And they know they girls know, and that that's why the girls doll themselves up (or encourage a guy to beer-goggle up), and that it's all a bit of socially-approved deception, because, she's not going to look that way all the time, and certainly not as she ages. The lust will always run out eventually, so the Jane Austen conventional wisdom in the past was to hold out and use your wiles and temporary beauty to snatch 'em up while their brains are intoxicated with hormones. This strategy relies heavily on getting all the other girls to also not put out immediately as both an easy alternative for your guy and a way for him to relieve himself of brain-poison sexual frustration and think clearly about spending his life with you. The point is, everybody knows everything about the female side of the game and it's normal and it "works" and they all do it all the time and no one bats an eye. That's because they're women. Everybody knowing about and doing the male side of the game all the time probably won't make much difference in terms of who's getting laid with whom at what ages. It'll just make all the guys have to work harder vs. now. If everyone works harder - it's a classic zero-sum wasteful rat-race / arms-race. But not everyone will work harder - so there will be disparate impact according to motivation, talent, and drive. And the involuntarily celibate losers of this ubiquitous-game will go on occasional atrocity rampages.
My fears exactly. It's gonna suck quite badly.
I imagine an extremely primitive setting where the first wise-clever girl saw the first vain-clever girl put on some sea shell as an adornment and said, "Well, now we're all going to need sea shells and ... oh snap - I can just see where this is all headed eventually ... this is gonna suck quite badly." She was correct of course.
Lol. I can only imagine the African wise-clever girl seeing the first vain-clever girl putting a lip plate on.
Or the wise-clever guy thinking, "FML - now I'm going to have to be able to be perceived as being able to provide a reliable supply of lip-plates to get laid." Maybe after it got annoying the guys got together and thought "perhaps if we increased the size of the lip plates, it would be so awful that the girls would give this nonsense up." When that didn't work they either lived with it or it reached a ruckus-effect crisis mode leading to theological-singularity hard reset - "NO GIRL IS TO BE SEEN WEARING ANYTHING!" Maybe Islam, Calvinism, Hasidic Judaism, etc. Anyway, bet you can't do better than [this](http://www.ezakwantu.com/Lip Plugs.jpg) It just says so much about our world, my brain can't handle it - anti-hell-vision psychological-defense mechanisms in overdrive - one is not meant to stare so directly into the abyss - the horror, the horror; it burns, it burns ...
LOL, that pic reminds me of Hellraiser for some reason. I wonder how pre-islamic women adorned themselves. Egyptians did seem quite classy. For some reason agriculture does seem to put some limits to the make-up singularity, at least compared with Nilotic tribes or Papuans. I enjoyed the Julian Jaynes theory that the Rise of Consciousness made people aware of their dicks and started the always-horny culture of the Ancients, so Islam-ish women hiding rose out as a backslash against general debauchery.
Game is a second layer of cultural poison placed on top of the feminist layer. If they had any sense women would go back to the pre-feminist position of using not having sex as a way of testing which of her potential suitors is liable to stick around and then "game" would become obsolete.
If everyone knows about game, then everyone knows that "being a man" -matters-. I think this is a huge positive, all in.
" that “being a man” -matters-" Much as i hate "game" because of my teenage daughter i have to agree with this aspect for my teenage son.
A realistic understanding of human nature means fewer divorces. It also means less time and effort invested in inappropriate courtship behavior (e.g. grovelling and chasing Miss Wrong). In the long run, it's also good for women. As pop psychologist Terry Kellogg put it, "Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is to allow them to experience the natural consequences of their behavior." This is a positive-sum game.
I think it means fewer marriages.
This is an interesting statement. I wonder what the "long-run Nash Equilibrium" would be of general deep awareness of reality, but in absence of strong incentives and social norms regarding sexuality and family. I think you and Spandrell are both right - fewer marriages, but those that form will be better, stronger, and more stable. That's what "Coming Apart" shows is happening, so that's a data point of corroborating evidence - that is - if "more awareness of reality" is actually what you'd call the thing that's happening now. There's more awareness (and huge amounts of resentment) of anti-male family-court results, that's for sure. I suppose if one takes the game-theory approach, one could extend the statement to other games with "failure modes" - like geopolitics. Does the statement "A realistic understanding of human nature means fewer wars," make as much sense?
The impulse to polygyny/hypergamy is orders of magnitude stronger than the impulse to invade your neighbor. Or I at least hope so.
Dude, didn't you just right about recent Chinese Japan-Hate threatening to get out of control over some totally trivial nonsense?
"write", not "right" - wish I could edit my own blog comments when my fingers do something stupid.
Short-term most that can happen is a naval skirmish in the East China sea. Big deal. Nobody's invading anyone. Meanwhile guys are pumpin' an' dumpin' and girls are paying for college by sucking sugar daddy's dick. Right now.
Sex competition pushes everyone to their limits until we sort out a ladder of access. I don't think Game makes everyone having to work harder. Everyone had been working hard since ever, the Game is just one of the frontier technique in modern time. In the same sense that people needed to learn farming in old time and accounting in modern time, but need to work equally as hard.
So you're enjoying the pressure?
People enjoy the rewards not the works. But need to work to get rewards. People always compete to their limit and sort out a hierarchy of capability/status. There is no way you can make life harder or easier overall, that's what I'm say.
You have a way of motivating people.
It's another blemish on a decadent society and that's all. What's next? People showing off their sores no doubt. This is reality TV for Highbrows. It will work out as well for them as emulating Jersey Shore does for the lowbrows. See - Oscar Wilde. The difference in those days is they knew what ruin was..and meant. Go to Church Gentlemen. And learn what being a man really is..someplace other than PUA sites. Your not learning anything pimps haven't known for millennia. Marriage is about Children. Not sex or housework. And this is the bitter fruit of feminism and modernism. Being a PUA doth not a man make.
You do not understand Game if you think it does not apply to finding and keeping wives.
...and almost on cue: http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/relationship-game-the-day-to-day-alpha/
Once the equation is solved, its just a grind. I've realized this about myself over the years. I get really into something that takes my fancy. Then I study it like crazy and try to become an expert. This is the fun portion. Then at some point I solve the equation. I figure out how the game works and what I have to do to maximize my success given my natural talents. Once the equation is solved all the fun it gone. It simply becomes some question of effort < reward. I'm at that point with "game". I just dumped a girl what was happy to fuck me because I was bored. Equation solved. Sex not worth it anymore. Before "game" there was investing. Before investing poker. Before poker chess. Before chess StarCraft. Before StarCraft figuring out trick plays for my 4th grade touch football league. While your still figuring out the game its fun. Once the equation is solved, who cares.
Well go find a new puzzle. Are you having fun solving the Jesus equation?
But what if everyone knew? What if everybody could see each others hand? What kind of game would that be? I honestly don't think that many people in this world have the self-reflexivity required to play the Game very knowingly and purposefully.
I think that the pre 20th century knew all about game and the depths of human depravity. What happened was that people were constantly on guard against the dangers. Men were masculine, on constant alert against being AMOGed by other men, knew the supplication disgusted women, kept their women to high standards, and all the other facets of game. Women were feminine, knew about cads, on guard against their own impulses, despised male weakness, made sure their men were kept to high standards, and all the other facets of game. I think once everyone is in on game and knows the rules and risks, we end up with pre 20th century notion of ladies and gentlemen. What were ladies and gentle men other than masculine men and feminine women, who knew which paths lead to disaster? But we might have to go through a period of thugs and single moms before the toll of unleashed human nature becomes evident to all and all the old lessons are re-learned.
Game serves the purpose of seeding neo-reactionary/darwinian ideology.
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