Somewhere as the fires died in the late 1990’s there seemed to crop up out of nowhere some people with “good intentions” that were giving men advice on how to date women, convince women to get horizontal with them, and to be that all around ‘life of the party’ guy that all people wanted to be around. You would be viewed with envy by fellow men; and women would just find you so desirable you could form your very own personal harem. Of course, when you decided to “settle down” you would have the best choice of the top women to make a family with.
These methods are not new. Throughout history there have been writings and musings about “what works” when trying to date, court, woo, wallow and win the love or the endearment of women. Myths, legends, stories and practical advice to men have been throughout the ages and cultures for men trying to navigate this dilemma of “what do women want in a man?”
The question is eternal as recorded history, and by no means never has been an easy one to answer. What works for one man, may not work for another. What one woman says and purports, another woman may have a very different outlook of what she expects in a man.
Even in the distant past, the then new “Playboy” magazine in the 1950’s was giving excellent style, music and advice to men about women. Though we all know that no one read the articles, everyone claimed they did. It did become a funny joke of sorts over the ensuring decades about this magazine. Kind of the same thing highbrow liberals and conservatives purported in the 1970’s “Oh, no. I don’t ever watch TV…..except for PBS, MASH, and 60 Minutes.”
Popular culture in the USA during the early Cold-War-era from television, and movies always gave us the story about a couple that was “meant to be” and somehow had to get the advice of the fool, a biddy old grandmother, a buffoon character who could never get love himself but somehow just had the right insight for the hero of the show in order for him to change, be attractive and win the heroines affections. Some stories were just plain entertaining. Some were sad, but all had a sense of “believability” in them. We, the viewing public in general knew how to separate fact from fiction and enjoy these mediums for what they were.
I won’t go into a detailed history of who started this, or who deserves the “credit” for what is now called “game”, nor will I go into what “game” is because if you are reading this, you have some general ideas of what it is or isn’t. Anything I say it is, will be met with howls of protest from advocates and detractors alike. I will state why I won’t play, and purport that women like you or they don’t. If women don’t, there really is nothing you can do in this modern world. If women do, game I suppose can help you become more of a douche-bag that you probably already are.
With that said, even these cretins who promote, live and drink this nonsense called “game” today can’t even agree with each other of what it is, or what it should be or what it isn’t. It has become a cult, like christianity and their never-ending sectarian debates over what jesus said and what he really meant, or what certain words mean and don’t mean. Game is like Amway sales and other pyramid schemes as well. The fervent believers will twist their boxer-shorts into a bundle about the foolproof merits of game, trying to keep growing that base of the pyramid, just like progressive liberals “if you could only just see plainly how it works, and just give it a chance….you eyes will be opened……” They seem to be more concerned of having you accept it, rather than debate if it works. Like christianity, they claim they are making disciples, and equipping and helping men, but for the most part they are just claiming how “right” they think they are.
They throw this boatload and minstrel show called “game” and its proven, foolproof results on men and then belittle the same men when it does not meet expectations or promises. They use shaming language, sneers and jeers. They heap insults and sarcastic slaps upon these men. Now, when they were trying to convince you of its merits, they were your “best buddy” and friend. It mirrors any cult today. If you dare question any of its supposed foolproof methods, they become a very hateful insulting angry group of bullies. There is something very evil in groupthink in these kinds of matters. Like Communism, company culture at Apple or other cults. A supposed band of brotherhood, welcoming and foolproof solutions to a very imperfect world full of fools. You try to leave? You don’t like? You disagree on any holy doctrine they may have?
You’re the dirtiest of traitors to men, you’re worse than Hitler…..or some other insult….and in “game” they pull their best insult “you’re actually a woman” and there was “no hope for you anyway”
Now, many will say “Well Jason / Lastmod…I disagree, you see I was a simp, and a chump but I watched some podcasts, read a book or two and now I am ladies man / banging nines and tens all nite / all day. It works.”
My reply is, well….that’s great, so what did you have to begin with? You see to make “game” on this superficial level work you had to have something to begin with. Were you just a tad shy, but you had exceptional verbal and communication skills? Were you always attractive but just a tad awkward? Were you always above average in looks, but just needed a new hairstyle, or some better fashion sense for your personality? Did you have actual interests aside from the “Star Trek” TV shows? Did you need to hit the gym a little and firm up?
That’s not “game” that’s just basic upkeep of being a well-rounded person. You can and have been able to get all this information from mens magazines dating back to the 1940’s in the USA…..and probably before then. Brushing your teeth is not “game” its basic hygiene. Women like a guy who has nice teeth, and fresh breath. If a young man doesn’t know that by the time he is a teenager, he has worse problems than finding a girlfriend. These webpages in “game” even talk about taking a shower and brushing your teeth. “Oh, you can’t get a girlfriend? You just need to shower bro!”
Even a hardcore “game” advocate wants to be with a woman who has some interests, and has some depth to them. These men don’t want a woodchuck girlfriend who only cares about her hair color or nail color. The actual deep concepts of “game” basically purport that all women think, act and behave exactly alike. No variance. From the virginal church girl, to the skankiest hooker down on lower Fulton Street in Fresno, California all behave the same:
Attraction isn’t a choice for them. They are just attracted to male dominance, leadership and confidence, it’s what they want and any guy can get this, and have this.
The problem lies in the fact. FACT. That we are not peg boards. Women and men can and do make good and bad decisions. Women, just as much as men are attracted to “good looking” people. I recall that stupid, but funny scene in that teen movie “The Breakfast Club” (1985) when the “rebel / alpha” guy (Judd Nelson) asks “teen dream” (Molly Ringwald) about if she would “date a guy who elephantitus of the balls……but he had a great personality, a cool car, lots of confidence….” And, of course the “teen dream” couldn’t do this.
Yet “game” tells us, that women just want confidence. Ask one- hundred women on the street what the word “confidence” means, you’ll get a hundred answers…..sure some similar, but all a shade different unique to that girl in question. Also add that “game” assumes a woman can never change. She is what she is. What she liked in a man at eighteen is what she will like at forty-five.
This open ended word called “confidence” now gets muscled up and twisted in “game” blogs, web-pages, and podcasts to mean nothing or everything. It’s being a boss. It’s being a leader with never clearly defining what being a leader means, and the responsibility being one entails. I am just about fifty years old. I have met very few actual leaders at work in any job over the decades. None in church and have not really been inspired to strive to be like most men who claim how much of a leader they are. Even on that silly PUA show with Mystery a decade or so back……the only men who did get dates and improve? They were better looking or came into that show “above average” looking anyway.
I won’t play this “game” and the rules are made by women. They set the field, men perform, strut and show what they have. Ironic isn’t it? This “game” claiming to make men into “men” has them behaving like women during a runway show or pageant.
Shhhh….but don’t tell anyone, especially the “game” advocates, they get really angry when you laugh at their folly. They are like the classic schoolyard bully….the can dish out the insults, the threats, the toughness…..but throw it back on them? They can’t take it.
Game over
Because I don’t want to be a total ingrate, I’ll confess that “game” allowed me to rapidly achieve a much higher level of social fluency than would have otherwise been possible.
I’ll also note that I was able to learn “game” without spending tons of money, and I never swore allegiance to any leader or “guru”. People who are interested can find all the methods freely available.
Well said. We’ve heard that one before.
Everybody behaves in predictable patterns, especially if the paradigm of human behavior does not account for the possibility of supernatural involvement.
Some people really are only just smart enough to screw themselves over in the long run.
And…..those predictable patterns are????? By what right? Or whose standard? Even with god, the human experience has countless variables of actions and reactions. They don’t and cannot fit into a neat package. game teaches everyone there is no choice, only follow or you’re an idiot.
I lol at this…mostly because that’s true. I mean if you are the type of guy who wants to attract women who go for douche-bags then you’ll need game.
How many different flavors of MGTOW are there? If there’s more than one, then treating ‘game’ as a monolithic philosophy is just as intellectually dishonest and lazy.
How different does a song need to be before it is truly a unique creation?
How many songs can be performed on a single piano?
Does the quantity of songs that can be performed on a single piano change how many keys the piano has?
Not capable of being digested and understood in a single sitting.
Here’s a good start from a secular perspective, and in no particular order:
“Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini
“The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics” by Anonymous Conservative
“When I Say No, I Feel Guilty” by Manuel Smith
“The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics” by by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith
“How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use” by Randy J. Paterson
And here’s a fun video that I absolutely love:
Says who? Is that assertion based entirely on the limitations of what you can comprehend?
‘Game’ was a reaction to the environment, and some men figured out how to adapt better to the environment than others. Inevitably, the environment changes, and those adaptations are no longer calibrated correctly, and new adaptations may be required. Maybe they’re something that has occurred before, maybe they’re not.
Pruning changes the manifestation of growth, not what is growing or why it grows a particular way every singe time.
Flipping a coin will get you only one of three outcomes, but that doesn’t tell you what the next coin flip will be. The future coin flip is still nondeterministic, even if there are a finite number of possibilities available.
Put differently, the limitation of possibility does not force a predetermination of outcome.
MGTOW and game are different. It is intellectually dishonest to take a lifestyle choice like MGTOW and then compare it to game which has very complex rules, books, morays, taboos, manuals, persona worship (mystery, roosh, roissy), situational rules, hadrwired things that cannot change, but suddenly can…..a thousand variations to something that is supposed to be simple and easy……and assumes all men have equal looks, equal intelligence, equal opportunity, equal genetics, equal educations, and equal upbringings. Hence, every time game got cornered on a situation…..voila…out came a new form….that was the same, but wasn’t but was….but wasn’t…..(day game, night game, ltr game, married game……and a thousand others)
MGTOW. Don’t get married. Don’t cohabitate. Other than that, people give takes on it………their perceptions, how its working for them…..how its not. Some are okay. Most are not. Wanna be a player? Fine. Wanna be a monk. Fine. Want to help others? Fine. Want to sit around all day? Fine. Your choice, and hence your situation that YOU will have to deal with. MGTOW can empower by ending the blame game of women, the court system, hypergamy, chicks dig jerks…..because well, you have turned you back on this. Focus and fix you. Up to you now what you do with it.
MGTOW won’t save the world. MGTOW will not fix the national debt. MGTOW won’t “bring women to the table”
MGTOW does understand time is moving on, and there is little to waste now. Up to you.
game wastes more time of men telling other men how “beta” they are, how much of a loser they are, and locker room talk about who had the “hotter” girl, and how he gamed her in so many seconds, or minutes……..
I don’t follow philosophy and most men cannot. That old joke from college days…the philosophy 101 class professor puts a chair on the desk and says “your final test question is for this class, prove this chair exists” and one dude writes “what chair?” on the paper, hands it in…and gets an A+
Most game folks don’t sit and talk philosphy in the forums either, and use big complex words or charts or graphs. The ones who do, do this to snub how intelligent they suppose they are….and their whole being is for getting a woman to do what you say, or spread her legs. Waste of time, cloaked as manhood.
And that is why you, and most men, suffer in the way that you do.
Lacking understanding means being stuck repeating the same cycle over and over, and the root of the problem isn’t what ‘holds you back’, but an arrogant resistance to refine that which is imperfect and overcome.
Do you wish to change the nature of your suffering, or do you find comfort in the familiarity?
Okay….let me put it this way. A guy like me with an average IQ isn’t going to comprehend Kant, Jung, or Plato. We will understand a man like William James, who could at least speak to the layman concerning psychology in many of his writings.
A man like Jordon Peterson is having an impact, not because of his psychological abstracts published in journals that even you don’t read…..but for the fact he knows how to speak to people regular in these concepts. Carl Sagan was excellent at this in explaining the dimensions of the universe in his series “Cosmos” back in the early 1980’s. Did it make every man now an “expert” in these matters? No. But it did give a grasp on some of the larger concepts of science, physics, and matter that they didn’t have before.
Most men, even “alphas” did not spend hours upon hours reading complex studies about female psychological-soci0biology. Neither did most men fifty years ago. Most would not be able to comprehend it, and the references, and fighting in the footnotes of these works. Most men are not men with 120 IQ’s lording it off as 150.
To men like myself, a philosopher is someone who uses big words to confuse, and make that person look, feel, and believe they are indeed stupid. Hence it’s zero appeal.
I didn’t need psychoanalysis to get sober or to find a career. Suddenly though I need it to find / vett / a wife and to get naked with a woman, and have an abstract battery full of tools and techniques for “biology” and conducting a sex-act. It’s men like you who have with the entitled women help build this fence only a few can have access to through game and all its trappings………no man in the sphere goes home after a hard day at work and read studies on “Freud” and dogears Rollo’s book to figure out “what his wife really meant when she asked how your day was”
I don’t need you to tell me how I “suffer” the way I do. I get more suffering from men like yourself than I do from the evening news.
Since no one is an expert at everything, IQ is a partial red-herring. Rather, this illustrates the applicability of expertise/authority. It applies to more than just philosophy, but to any area of expertise.in science, religion, philosophy, law, etc. We all trust experts in many ways. At the same time, experts are not perfect and thus can be wrong. You don’t have to be an expert to know truth that experts do not know. The ‘argument from authority’ fallacy stems from this.
If you are not an expert on sometime important and you don’t have access to the input/help/advice of an expert, you are like a ship tossed on the wind. So chronoblip is correct: you suffer from lack of expertise. At the same time, Jason is rightly frustrated at the not-very-good experts: you suffer from bad expertise. So, if you can’t trust yourself and you can’t trust the experts, who are you going to trust?
I suggest that in past societies the experts (e.g. clergy; elders) were good enough that society could operate with a certain amount of cultural unity. Among other things, the printing press, mass education, and the internet have helped shed both expertise and cultural unity. We still have both experts and followers, but now there are many more followers who think they are experts and experts who instead follow.
I suffer from many things……and expertise in these matters always falls very complex tables, charts, truths (that suddenly change when advantageous to their point, their hero (Rollo, Freud, Roosh, Myserty, Ross Jefferies, Fozzie Bear….), or to always game it to their advantage. You don’t agree? “You like being miserable……look at this chart with all its complexities…can’t you see how clear it is??? It’s truth!”
One of the reasons why christianity HAD mass appeal was because even Pilate scoffed “what is truth?”
jesus and even paul made it pretty easy…and then…you know……today.
Thanks for the post. I remember a few years ago, when I first encountered Roissy, Roosh, Rollo, Dalrock, and others, how impressive this supposedly singular concept of “game” really might be for acquiring masculinity. I had been interested in masculinity since I was a teen growing up in N. American suburbia with a father who commuted into the city. I thought: Wow! This “game” stuff must be pretty cool, and it could help me to understand why I didn’t get anywhere with women in my late teens to early twenties. So I kept up with them, and branched out and found other sites throughout the Manosphere, and read and read and read some more.
And I found that lots of different guys liked to write about and talk about “game”. And I started to wonder: How much of this chatter is just men with their individual lifestyles with their individual ups and downs who just want to name their successes “game”, and attribute their lifestyles to some system of “good game”? How much of this is not false per se, but is just highly individual and subjective?
When too many guys talk about “game” all the time, I just start to consider a lot of it – not all of it, but a lot of it – as just confirmation bias. I don’t mind a lot of it, just because I know that I can logoff the Internet at any time, and I do think that some of the books could help guys, but at this point after 15+ years of blogging by dozens of men, “game” has suffered from so much mission creep that the term in itself is almost meaningless.
I’ve only had sex with one woman, and that didn’t happen till my mid twenties.
I am a whole generation younger than you, and I didn’t use ‘game’ to get where I am in life.
What kind of man do you believe that I am?
Do you believe that you act more like the man or the woman in this video?
That’s misleading though, because he does trust himself. I live with someone who frequently claims they don’t trust themselves, and yet they will inevitably develop an understanding based on what they perceive, and then proceed to aggressively defend their conclusions, refusing to accept any new data that might require them to change their mind.
The error in what people claim about themselves is betrayed by their actions. People who don’t actually trust themselves will not defend their own conclusions, but will instead defer to the strongest personality in their social circle, for better or worse.
The problem isn’t that what Jason needs is beyond his intelligence, not at all. He talks as if he can’t grasp philosophy, but a “lifestyle choice” is a philosophical concept. Claiming that ‘game’ is not a lifestyle choice is a prompt for philosophical discussion. Talking about circumstances and assigning qualities such as “good” or “bad” is the heart of philosophy.
What Jason needs is instead beyond what his pride will allow him to accept. It isn’t that he can’t learn anything, or isn’t smart enough, but that he can’t let go of something he believes is correct when new information comes along which might say otherwise. When something comes along which does not appear to agree with what he already understands, he doesn’t re-evaluate his existing understanding in light of the new information and make changes if necessary.
Further, having a higher intelligence doesn’t enable that process, or even make it easier, and in many ways can directly interfere with it, due to apophenia:
Higher intelligence means seeing more dots to connect, and more advanced ways of connecting them, making this struggle even worse than before, especially when the individual is not good at understanding themselves.
An example of this phenomenon can be demonstrated through a joke:
I did not screw up the blockquote like a moron on purpose. ..
“Probably terrible up there, and nobody coming back down the stairs ever has anything good to say anyway”
Unless he lives up there, and has to use the ramp, or elevator, or be carried…..or better yet, move to a place where he lives on the ground floor and wouldn’t have to worry about that. Problem solved.
“Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved”
That’s the official definition in am sure, what is the reality? (lol)
“Let us confuse, muddle, and mumble into our beards. We will find and make and create problems with values, reason, mind, and existence…..and all the trappings and in the end tell you “it is what it is” while telling you how wrong you are to any conclusion you may come up with. Math equations, and big words are encouraged just make it that much more daunting.”
It is my own personal opinion that philosophy has caused more problems, more bloodshed, more anger, more human strife than “solving” these inborn things or questioning them. Communism in the 20th century is a prime example. The sorrow inflected by the massive loss of live by this philosophy in China, Soviet Russia, the Eastern Block, and Cambodia is just one example of why most reasonable people don’t take stock in it. Psychology is so complex to the individual person, it’s like the ‘olde’ saying after the French Revolution “Eight million Frenchmen, Eight million French political parties”
I don’t care about your personal life, or what his name is. I don’t walk around with a nail in my head either. No one does. You would be dead if you did.
Ah yes! A “confirmation bias” that was a word I was looking for, but you know……
Ever sit in at a “game” bootcamp? I have. Since I experienced this, so you don’t have to…let me tell you that you just have not lived until you do so! Step right up. A sucker born every minute as PT Barnum used to say.
First and foremost. Why is it that every “dating coach” and their minions in such camps look on a physical level that they never needed this nonsesne to begin with? Oh yes, we were told the “great favors” they were doing us. They could be out getting hot dates right now….but they were taking the time to help us! It was my observation not only of myself, but of all the other men who were with me. It was a “bootcamp” filled mostly with ethnic Indian guys who actually had pretty interesting lives and situations. I learned more about my fellow men than I ever did from this bootcamp.
As the week wore on, I was getting visions akin to probably what the The Beatles went through with the Maharishi in the long ago February of 1968. Rishekesh, India.
Breaks out guitar and Sings:
“Let me tell you something……about PUA / game bootcamp! In Chica-go! in the fall of 1999!! There were one or two handsome guys there but there were like executives or something……and the whole bootcamp spent their time talking about hot women in bathing suits at the hotel pool. And they were supposed to be approach-ing!!!”
So the leader and his blackshirted aryan minions all came out every morning after breakfast and gave us plebians a lesson. Which always amounted to “We’re amazing ladies men. You’re not. Here’s why.” We were also told how “simple” and easy this all is. Lots of charts. Lots of diagrams about very detailed meanings of female communication.
When were told on the second day that our looks did’t matter all 25 of us bust out laughing so hard. We watched the master approach one “hot woman” while we were out for drinks at a nightclub, pretty high end that wasn’t covered in our cost, and we had to pay for the master and his man-harem of devotees.
Yeah, he did get the woman to engage with him. True. You could tell she was just being polite to him. No phone number, but the next day he told she came to his hotel room later. No one said anything, but we all knew he was full of it.
All the books, handouts and materials were just general information any man could get anywhere. The best part about the whole thing? I got to see the Egyptian exhibit at the University of Chicago on a “free time” afternoon, and have a real Chicago stuft pizza.