So I have been reading "The Red Queen" by Matt Ridley as I had heard that many of the principles from the Mystery Method were taken from Ridley's conclusions on Nature and Sex. I came upon the passage below and thought that it was very applicable to bar/ club game, and more-so why the "player" archetype and Pre-Selection are successful. Ridley wrote:

“Peacocks are among the few birds that run a kind of market in seduction techniques, called a “lek,” after the Swedish word for play. Some grouse, several birds of paradise and manakins, plus a number of antelope, deer, bats, fish, moths, butterflies, and other insects also indulge in lekking. A lek is a place where males gather in the breeding season, mark out little territories that are clustered together, and parade their wares for visiting females. The characteristic of the lek is that one or a few males, usually those that display near its center, achieve most of the matings. But the central position of a successful male is not the cause of his success so much as the consequence: Other males gather around him.

The sage grouse of the American West has been the best studied of lekking birds. It is an extraordinary experience to drive out to the middle of Wyoming before dawn, stop the car on a featureless plain that looks like every other one, and see it come alive with dancing grouse. Each knows his place; each runs through his routine of inflating the air sacs in his breast and strutting forward, bouncing the fleshy world like a dancer at the Folies Bergère. The females wander through this market, and after several days of contemplating the goods on offer, they mate with one of the males. That they are choosing, not being forced to choose, seems obvious: The male does not mount the female until she squats in front of him. Minutes later his job is done, and her long and lonely parenthood is beginning. She has received only one thing from her mate—genes—and it looks as if she has tried hard to get the best there were to be had. Yet the problem of greatest choosiness in the species where choice least matters reappears. *A single sage grouse cock may perform half of all the matings at one lek; it is not unknown for this top male to mate thirty or more times in a morning.*”

Lekking makes a case for the player. If one woman chooses to be with a man, then other women are more likely to want to be with this man as he has already been pre-selected. This is a unique example that shows why the player's social proof expands as his abundance increases. Now comparing birds to human sexuality is somewhat of a reach and Ridley then compares Lekking to humans, he writes:

“Men succeed with women for much more varied and subtle reasons: They are kind or clever or witty or rich or good-looking or just available. Humans are simply not a lekking species. Men do not gather in groups to display for passing women. Most men do not abandon women immediately after copulation. Men are not equipped with gorgeous ornaments or stereotyped courtship rituals, however it may look in the average discotheque. When a woman chooses a man to mate with, she is less concerned with whether he can father sexy sons or disease-resistant daughters than whether he would make a good husband. A man choosing a wife uses equally mundane considerations, though he is perhaps more of a sucker for beauty. Both genders use criteria that bear on parental abilities. They are more like terns, who choose mates that can fish well, than sage grouse hens, who copy one another’s choice of a fast-displaying male.”

I dont agree with Ridley here as he has left out a very valuable piece of information. The introduction of birth control has created a never before seen gap between sex for family and sex for pleasure. Now that we have the ability to have sex with limited to no repercussions we are more like a Lekking species than ever before in our history. Women go to a bar looking for the most qualified individual (the desired male) to fulfill her short-term desires. The player who has many women is going to be the most experienced and has the greatest potential to fulfill her desires.

There is also a competitive aspect to this as women want to know that they are as desired as other women are. Thus they will fight for your attention if you have been pre-selected. This is where we differ from Lekking because the peacocks do not fight for monogamy, but rather they share the alpha male to ensure that each woman has the best offspring. Regardless, Lekking still utilizes the Pre-selection principle since they are more convinced to mate with a bird that has already been mated with 20 odd times.

While the importance of pre-selection and the success of the player archetype are fairly common knowledge, I found it interesting to find the parallels of Lekking to human sexuality. Don't hide the fact that you are a player. In the right context it is a really attractive trait.

Excerpt From: Ridley, Matt. “The Red Queen.” HarperCollins, 1993. iBooks.