It’s been very interesting over the past few weeks to see the beginnings of mainstream culture picking up on Game. Unsurprisingly, the first response tends to be a reaction to some of the more cartoonish elements of the Game community. And let’s be honest, there are some pretty cartoonish elements – beginning with the guy in the funny hat who in a sense is the godfather of our community. Beyond that, the most prominent Game bloggers have deliberately adopted personas that are a caricature of themselves in order to attract attention.
But if you break it down and distill it into its most basic principles, it’s very hard for any educated person to argue with Game. Most of the corniness that’s associated with it comes from cartoonish way in which some of the principles are adopted or discussed. But there’s nothing cartoony at all about the fundamentals, which have nothing to do with bars, douchebags, or funny hats.
At the core, Game is the logical application of the following principles.
Animal Attraction is Subconscious
Long term relationships are about a lot more than animal attraction, there’s no question. But raw animal attraction is a basic part of it – a part without which you’ll usually never progress to anything else. And that raw animal attraction is subconscious. Oh, we can have some influence on it – but really only at the margins. By and large, we’re attracted to what we’re attracted to, like it or not.
Men and Women are Attracted to Fundamentally Different Things
Forget any PC inclinations you have. The reality is that men and women are just not attracted to the same things. Men are primarily attracted to beauty and youth. Everything else is, at best, a distant third. For women, on the other hand, appearance matters – but nowhere near as much as other issues.
Most Women are Attracted to the Same Things
Yes, there are some differences amongst individuals. But there’s more commonality than difference, just as there is with men. There is a high degree of agreement between men over which women are attractive and which aren’t. Likewise, there’s a high overlap among women over which male traits are attractive. It appears to be more variable than it actually is, but we’ll come back to this appearance later on.
Women Are Attracted to High Status Men
The technical term here is hypergamy. Women are attracted to high status men. Nothing else comes close to the importance of this factor. The evo-psych crowd will tell you that this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. The cost of reproduction is very low for men. As a reproductive strategy, fathering as many children as you can with as many women as you can is pretty solid. Women, on the other hand, pay a very high price for reproduction: 9 months of serious bodily changes and then those pesky maternal instincts that make them want to take care of their spawn. It makes far more sense as a mating strategy for a woman to be very selective about whom they mate with.
Whether the evo-psych explanation is valid or not, it doesn’t really change the fact that as a general rule this is very true. Women are most attracted to the highest status men.
Note That We Said Status, Not Wealth
Women are attracted to wealthy men because wealth is usually an indicator of status. High status men often are wealthy, as it’s much easier to get that way if you’re high status. The high overlap makes it easy to come to the wrong conclusion here. But really, it’s the status not the wealth that’s driving the attraction.
Status is in the Eye of the Beholder
This principle is the one that is probably responsible for the most confusion both inside and outside the Game community. Inside the community, it trips up a lot of people (especially beginners). Outside the community it’s probably the biggest source of condescension toward the Game crowd.
Not all women view the same things as being high status.
Let’s give an extreme example to illustrate the point. Let’s take two girls. Girl A is a hippie, super leftist, save the whales girl. The long haired, pot smoking, vegan, Whole Foods shopping, Prius driving musician is going to be high status to this girl. Girl B is a conservative church going girl. She might be more attracted to the clean cut, BMW driving, wealthy, church going businessman. Outwardly, it appears that they’re attracted to entirely different things. But the reality is that they’re both attracted to high status men – they just have different ideas of what constitutes high status.
Status is Relative
If you want a particular woman to be attracted to you, you don’t necessarily have to be the highest status man on the planet. You just have to equal or exceed her expectations of what status she deserves. For the PUA community, that just means you have to be the highest status man in the bar (or possibly higher status than her boyfriend). For the LTR game community, that means being high enough status that she thinks you’re worth keeping the relationship for.
The Appearance of Status is As Good As or Better Than Actual Status
We’re not talking about engaging women’s rational minds here. We’re talking about triggering raw, animal attraction. The appearance of status is just as good as real status for this. It’s really no different than when magazines airbrush models for their covers. Sure, the women don’t really look that good. But the appearance is more important. They look good for that picture, and it’s enough. It’s why women wear makeup – it gives them the appearance of being more attractive than they really are. Game posits that it is possible for men to give the appearance of being higher status than they actually are, and hence make women more attracted to them than they otherwise would be.
Higher Status is Surprisingly Easy to Fake – To a Point
Faking higher status is about as easy for a man, once he learns how, as putting on makeup is for a woman. But it has about the same effect. A woman who rates as a 1 isn’t going to magically become a 10 when she puts on makeup. A man at level 1 on the status ring isn’t going to become a 10 by faking it. But just as with makeup, a decent job of it can easily bump you a point or so – and if you’re really good, you can probably get a 2-3 point bump.
The inverse is also true. Makeup sometimes is used to help cover the imperfections: blemishes, sores, acne, moles, etc. It covers those things that could take an otherwise, say, 7 and drop her down to, say, a 5. First we hide the imperfections which brings her back to her natural 7, then we add the enhancements which pumps her up to an 8 or 9 (let’s say it’s really good makeup, plus good clothing and new hair and it bumps her to a 9). It seems like we’ve transformed a 5 into a 9, but in reality we’ve just “fixed” a few things and then done some basic enhancement. The 7, and maybe even the 8 was there all along. We just brought it out.
Likewise with Game. Most of the time we’re just adding some enhancement to bump a point or two. But sometimes there are blemishes we have to fix that are dragging a man down, and once we get those taken care of he automatically jumps a point or two again. Then we add the enhancements on top of that, and poof – a man’s life is transformed. It’s worth noting that in the modern world, we have to fix a lot of blemishes with men because we’ve lived our whole lives being told utter bullshit about what women really want and it’s led us to (well intentioned) behavior that actually drives them away. This is why you hear so many stories of Game completely transforming men’s lives – and why it won’t work miracles for everybody, and might even be more or less unnecessary for some.
Over Time, Faking High Status Actually Makes You Higher Status
There are a lot of reasons for this. The high effect of preselection among women is a big contributor. The high correlation of confidence as a high status trait combines with the fact that success breeds confidence to account for much of it. With practice bad habits go away and good ones are made. The net effect is that, like anything else, practicing Game long enough makes it second nature. When it just comes naturally, you’re no longer faking it.
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Each of these propositions will find its detractors. Somebody will find cause to argue with each and every one of them. But I’ve come to believe very firmly based on the evidence of my own experience, the reports of dozens or hundreds of men who have tried it for themselves, and the accumulated body of psychological research that each of these propositions is basically true. Game itself, then, is merely the application of these principles – and the cartoonishness comes merely from the neophytes and those who deliberately caricature themselves to reach an audience and make a point.
