Musings on the Third Wave of Game

TL;DR: The seduction community first arose as a reaction to feminism/sexual liberation and the power imbalance it created. And while it has made strides on addressing that, it is soon becoming time for the seduction community to target its real enemy (just as feminism successfully targeted its), the false dichotomy of Nice Guy/Asshole.

I've been following the seduction community for a number of years now. I will confess to being a bit of a keyboard jockey, but I certainly have experience to back it up. And I've noticed a series of trends within the seduction community....

My belief is that the seduction community was an inevitable reaction to the rise of feminism and sexual liberation. Before feminism, the power in the sexual marketplace was squarely on the men's side. If a woman wasn't married or on the road to being, she was either a spinster-to-be or a slut...why? Because you couldn't have sex or have a viable social life as a woman without a committed man, because sex = children back then. The rise of non-physical labor and oral contraceptives changed all that. Now women could be both financially and sexually independent. Now women didn't have to define their sex life in terms of their man and/or their potential/future children. For women, sex became an end in itself, rather than a means to an end.

That revolution shifted the sexual marketplace back to women. It enabled women to either sleep around, be status hungry, engage in serial monogamy or all of the above. Please note though, those things are not necessarily bad, they're just freedoms that can be abused, the same way men can abuse the privileges that high sexual market value gives them. Speaking of which, notice how the Madonna/Whore complex of our grandparent's day has been replaced with the equally polarized and destructive Nice Guy/Asshole dichotomy that has taken root in men?

Thanks to the shift in sexual power, men are being scooped up in the social currents today and being unconsciously sifted into camps of Lover and Provider. Again, notice the similarity between that and Madonna/Whore. The Asshole (Lover) by the nature of his "role" is uninterested in marriage (just as the Madonna is supposedly uninterested in sex), and the Nice Guy (Provider) like his female counterpart, the "Whore", takes what is doled out to them by the opposite gender.

And from that, we have the Seduction Community, which ideally, seeks to break the Nice Guy/Asshole dichotomy by making them one and the same, so men are on a more equal footing with women, and not typecast. But it didn't start out that way.

The First Wave was guys like Ross Jeffries, Mystery, Neil Strauss, Tyler Durden, and is carried on today by larger companies like RSD, Love Systems, Stylelife, (whatever outfit Mystery is running these days, Venusian Arts?). What these guys specialized in was the development of tactics that would make any guy appear high status. Their style of game was indirect, which forces the girl to make the first move towards vulnerability, rather than the man. Indirect game works like wildfire on women who want a high status man, and feel, on a subconscious level that they have to make the man interested first (and therefore, a man that is interested first and goes direct, is likely low-status).

However, indirect game, as a standalone toolbox, has several serious drawbacks.

1. At the end of the day, its just an act, and the women eventually get wise to it. The hope is, after you've slept with them. Either way, it hampers the formation of long term relationships, because if the act drops suddenly, you're right back to square one, except now the woman feels duped, not a nice feeling.

2. If the woman in question isn't status hungry, she'll value honesty and openness over appearances and be very quickly turned off by status games.

3. Indirect, or tactical game does little to nothing to address strategic issues like belief systems, past traumas, lifestyle etc.

These drawbacks led to the rise of direct game, as exemplified by guys like Mark Manson and Vin Dicarlo and others. These guys recognized that a man is further ahead by becoming a natural rather than emulating one. Inner game comes first with these guys, with things like developing solid confidence, addressing insecurities, tamping down on neediness and embracing vulnerability, all very good things, and also much harder. The beauty of it though is, that done properly, direct game will yield more solid results and develop a man, as a lover of women, better over the long term. However, direct game has a few drawbacks as well:

1. It leaves you completely at the mercy of compatibility and whatever crazy beliefs are in a woman's head. This is great if you're looking for longer-term things, as it weeds out women who aren't dating material, but if you're looking to get laid, it can get very frustrating unless you've got your lifestyle and mindset absolutely nailed.

2. With the exception of stuff like say the DiCarlo Escalation Ladder, direct game tends to be very short on the actual nuts and bolts of seducing. This is inevitable when you focus more on strategy, as by design, you're aiming for better results over the long term.

So now we have two competing schools of seduction thought. One that focuses on tactical issues, night game, and getting laid. And the other, which focuses on strategy, inner game, and finding women that will make you happy, rather than well-laid.

With this in mind, I see an opening for a more comprehensive and versatile game. One that combines the tactical prowess of the indirect gamers with the strategic good sense of the direct gamers. Strategy may beat tactics, but that doesn't mean that tactics should be ignored either.

What I anticipate is a new kind of game that focuses in detail on a topic of game that is widely talked about, but not very well understood: calibration. So that a guy isn't necessarily all things to all women, but so that he has the most options. Game that can work on the status hungry club beauty, the tough-nut-to-crack coworker, and the girl-next-door you meet in a coffee shop. So that you can start indirect and transition seamlessly to direct game, and vice versa.

The real challenge with women, is that, just like men, we want the person that pushes all our buttons. But we have a tough time finding that, hence the false dichotomies of Madonna/Whore and Nice Guy/Asshole. I think it's soon becoming time for the seduction community to transition into its perfect form. Perhaps I'll have more to say on the subject later on, but life calls, good hunting!