Music and mastery

I'm mostly posting this because I love what Leo Moracchioli does, and this video is one of my particular favorites. But can you estimate the two men's ranks in the socio-sexual hierarchy?

Leo tends to strike me as a Beta. Betas have the most fun, tend to be highly competent, and have a playful side that trumps any need to be The Man or look cool. His friend, on the other hand, engages in classic Sigma behavior, sending false signals and laying low before "unexpectedly" ripping off an impressive display of complete mastery. Now, it's almost impossible to reliably judge a man by a single observation, but it's the combination of faux gamma silliness with the brief "yeah, that's right, bitches" gesture at the end that tends to spell Sigma.

Note too the lack of need for any billing or tokens of "respect". But I could be wrong. Perhaps he's just a talented Delta who is confident in his one true talent. Anyhow, it's a great remake.

Alpha Mail: sociosexuality in action

An observant reader sent this in:

Gamma vs Would-Be Alpha

I was front row center to an interesting exchange between a drunk gamma and a beta-who-thinks-he's-alpha. Up until this point, the two had been close friends, as near as I could tell.


The Characters:

Gamma: a Bernie-loving hipster, complete with problem glasses. Every girl I've met who knows him has commented on how unattractive and off-putting he is: classic Gamma indicators.

Beta: a narcissist who confuses being abrasive with being Alpha.    


The Exchange

The Gamma comes in fresh from the bar. He sees the beta sitting with an average woman, solid 5.5.
   
G: "Some of these people are regulars, you know."

This sets up the assaults that are to come. All of the people that will be referenced are people that come in regularly, with whom I've had exchanges. The implied insult is that Gamma might be able to blacklist Beta from the venue, despite absolute lack of any such power. The Beta knows where this is going and hopes to head it off at the pass.

B: "Dude, you know me. I don't give a fuck. Whatever."
G: "(Lesbian) hates you. You've been totally impolite to her and that's not cool. There are other people, you know, and you have to treat them with respect."
B: "I never did anything like that."

The white knighting begins. It's true that the lesbian in question absolutely hates Beta's guts. From my perspective, it seems more a hypergamous gut reaction than anything based on merit. Therefore, it's not necessary for him to have done anything in particular, she just hates him because of who he is.

G: "Yes, you did. Just last week you were very rude to her."
B: "I didn't say anything to her."
G: "Okay, well, she hates you. And it's not just her. You call <someone> Brain Damaged <someone's name>. You think that's funny? You think calling someone brain damaged is funny?"
B: "That's just a nickname. He thinks it's funny. I've known him way longer than you have, dude!"
G: "He has never said that it's funny."
B: "We talked about this before I even started calling him that!"
G: "Well, he doesn't think it's funny."

Here we start to see the more extreme Gamma aspects of our Gamma friend. Before we could write him off as a loser white-knighting for milady, but now he's defending the honor of all mentally handicapped people everywhere. Notice how he shifts the accusation from "he never said it was funny" to "he doesn't think it's funny." My gut tells me that being called Brain Damaged doesn't make the guy particularly happy, and Beta probably overuses the insult, but I doubt it's anywhere near the problem that Gamma is making it out to be.

G: "You're mean to everyone. You said I was stupid and worthless and needed to die."
B: "I NEVER SAID ANY OF THAT."
G: "You did. Two nights ago, you called me uninformed, you called me jobless, you said I didn't know anything because I'm not in the job market right now..."
B: "I DID NOT. I PROBABLY SAID SOMETHING LIKE THAT ABOUT OBAMA."
G: "You did, too. You said that I was stupid and worthless."
B: "I DID NOT!"
G: "Well, that's what I heard."

I saw these two hanging out yesterday, mind you. The Gamma must have let his rage build up for some time, playing the friend until alcohol made him stupid. Note the direction this is taking. Gamma accuses Beta of insults that he imagined or read into the conversation, not the ones Beta actually used. This is the real heart of the exchange: Gamma was offended by Beta in some way. However, Gamma didn't have the stones to stand up for himself, so he used surrogates in order to vent his own frustrations.

B: "FUCK OFF. JUST FUCK OFF. GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE."
G: "You did say all of that. Yes you did."
B: "FUCK OFF. SERIOUSLY, DUDE. JUST FUCK OFF SOMEWHERE ELSE."
G: "I'm just saying..."
B: "NO. SHUT UP AND FUCK OFF."

And there it is. The Beta has rejected the Gamma's assault, but the damage is done: his self-esteem is shaken and he's violently angry. It took Gamma a minute to realize that he'd gone a bit too far, as Beta was getting out of his chair and ready to start an actual fight, which Gamma could never hope to win.
   
The Aftermath

Gamma walked away with that smug "I'm right, I won, whatever" attitude that they tend to develop whenever they get a rise.

Miss 5.5 didn't like the anger in Beta. She said something along the lines of "I'm gonna move. I don't like confrontation", then proceeded to go and talk to the Gamma.

Beta protests angrily, telling her to sit down, but all for naught, and is left seething in his seat until he storms off.
   
The Takeaway

The first thing I noticed is how the girl sided with the Gamma when the Beta got aggressive. Because the Beta rose to anger at the frankly vapid assault from the Gamma, he unwittingly ceded the power in their exchange entirely to the Gamma, whose sole purpose was to trigger the angry response from him.

Second, notice how the Gamma framed the exchange as an assault primarily from non-present individuals. This is the same tactic the likes of Scalzi and Sarkeesian will employ - "Of course it's silly, but other people could have really been hurt by [fill-in-the-blank]. It sounds much less petty to stand up for others than to admit that you're the one butthurt.

Third, note how close Beta is to an actual Alpha stance. He's aggressive and wants to control the exchange, but he lacks all skills required to do so.

Finally, think about how easily this could have been blown off, were Beta an actual Alpha: "You're drunk, Gamma. We'll talk about this tomorrow."

Welcome to America

 

Now that's a good deed for the day. And, of course, a sad testimony to the reality of Game.

Alpha Mail: hamstrung by scars

MC is having a tough time recovering from a hard rejection:

I wanted to take you back to your post on April 4th of this year, "Breaking the Scars."  In particular;

"It wasn't pride that kept Chris from hooking up with girls who wouldn't give him the time of day one year before, it was fear that they were going to reject him at some point and thereby invalidate all the positive changes that had taken place in his life."

I going through a period of improvement in my life when I met a beautiful young co-worker.  When I met her I was making 16 dollars and hour and didn't really feel too good about myself.  In the time we worked together, I more than doubled my income and lost 50 pounds (for a total of 102).  We had gotten close and (long story short) she rejected me.  During the initial rejection she surprised me with the fact that she was dating a guy in another state.  I remember texting her the day she was flying out to see him and she only mentioned she was heading to New York.  I still had the conversation and was amused when I saw the conversation.  I was about to ask who she was going to see and she ended the conversation.  I didn't accept her rejection and forced her to make it brutal.  She pretty much said I had no value as a man.  Being Game aware and from talking to mutual friends, I gather she was basically waiting till I had lost a little more weight before I was "Good enough" to be with her.  I also found out the mystery boyfriend was deploying overseas so she would have looked horrible breaking up with him right before he deployed to be with me.

That started a series of some pretty bad experiences.  For example, I joined a few social groups in order to make friends.  I had a lot of trouble with the guys there who seemed to take a pretty hostile towards me.  Again, being Game aware and months after the fact when I see it all on Facebook, I realized I was getting AMOGed by them because they were after the girls that were there. 

The next job I took put me in a new city in a small town where I was considered one of the rich folks.  It took me no effort at all to get that position and I was pretty free with that fact.  I hadn't realized it at the time, but I was rubbing my success in the face of the locals.  Where I worked was basically the only way to make it big in that area.  For example, the last two entry level positions had 400 applicants.  As you might imagine, with me being so nonchalant about getting the job I was pretty quickly ostracized by the locals and spent my weekends alone (my co-workers were typically 20+ years older than me and married).  It probably also didn't help that several married women were DTF, some of whom were pretty clear about that fact in front of their husbands.

That original rejection happened about 2 and 1/2 years ago.  It wasn't until I read your post that I realized I had internalized the idea that all of my improvements had actually made my life worse.  I've gained back 40 pounds of the 102 and can't get to a place intellectually to fight to lose weight or really go to the gym (I also got injured for awhile which didn't help).  Although I'm crushing it professionally, I've gone from feeling like a high Beta to feeling like an Omega.  I now rarely approach no matter how blatant the IOIs are.  I basically spend my time in my apartment alone in one of the richest areas of town playing video games. 

I hate feeling this way and I know it's stupid to have this fear.  I'm successful and my weight-loss has inspired others.  Feeling this way about myself, like she was right and I am a man with no value is stupid.  I was flirting with my version of an 8 a few weeks ago and she was responding pretty well.  So the guy that I was clearly does still exist.  I'm just too riddled with self-doubt and fear to find him again. 

So my question is, what do I do now? 

Move the fuck on. Ignore the fear, take the risks, and if you get shot down, get back up and go out there again. There is NOTHING to fear from getting shot down; getting shot down FASTER should be your goal.

There is nothing wrong with MC except the voice in his head. All he needs to do to live a better life is to ignore it. This sort of thing can happen to anyone, and the answer is to simply view it as a bad bounce, pick yourself up, and MOVE THE FUCK ON.

But the main thing is to IGNORE THE FEAR. Fear is the prison. Fear is the cage. And the worst thing is, it's a cage that you can literally walk out of any time you choose.

Trust your instincts

This email Rollo shared from a soldier describes the experience of many a beta or delta concerning female disloyalty:

One girl, leading into Christmas break, said she was going to a techno show in a city about an hour away from our school. I was planning on studying for a final, so I didn’t bother trying to go. As the date neared I realized I felt comfortable about the final and I wanted to go out that night. I asked to go with her—she said no. And this is where I could see the hamster frantically spinning its wheel.

All her reasons were obvious bullshit. I know when a girl is seeing another guy, because I’ve been the other guy. I know what the stories are like. I ended it. I was heartbroken. I wondered constantly whether I had made the right call. I missed her desperately, and I constantly questioned whether my radar had been off. My male friends (now thoroughly blue-pill, as I was attending a liberal civilian grad school) told me I was overreacting and being paranoid and jealous and not respecting her space, blah blah blah… A whole year later a girl I was friends with let slip that my ex actually was meeting another guy in the city, and fucked him the day after I dumped her.

No surprise—but I was quite upset that a few other girls I was “friends” with had known and never told me. They could have saved me a lot of grief. But then again, they were women—I don’t quite get it, but it’s like all the girls were sticking up for each other and covering for each other, even though they weren’t really close friends. It’s almost as if they felt they needed to cover up the tactics that women use, and keep the men from knowing about them—as though there was a driving need they had to keep men in the dark as to the true nature of women.

In fact, I have never been steered in the right direction in relationships by any woman. And this will bring me around to my next point—the feminine dominated civilian environment—especially academia.

The second grad school relationship followed a path that was remarkably similar to my first—in fact, looking back, I have had three major relationships, with girls who wanted to be exclusive, and they have ended because the girls were becoming involved with other men.

There is one way, and only one way, to ensure loyalty and that is a ruthless willingness to walk away from a woman. Indeed, that is arguably the most reliable ALPHA tell from the woman's perspective; a man who is attractive and is not even remotely afraid to do without her.

I was not involved in a lot of exclusive relationships; I tended to avoid "the talk" like the plague. But exclusive or not, I ended them the moment I had any sense that the woman was even flirting with other men after having expressed some form of claim on me. I didn't usually bother "breaking up" with them, I simply stopped calling them, didn't take their calls, and directed my attention elsewhere.

Taking a call from another guy when I was there late at night or simply going for an evening run with an orbiter was sufficient reason to move on. It was rather amusing, later, to observe that my instincts were always correct; usually within a matter of months, the nexted girl would have at least gone on a date or three with the guy in question.

Trust your instincts and don't ever attempt to "keep" or "guard" a woman. If she wants to be with someone else, you don't want her. There too many girls on the girl tree to concern yourself with a disloyal one.

N and the odds of marital satisfaction

If your wife has had more than two previous partners, the odds of her being satisfied in your marriage are quite literally against you:

Women who have several sexual partners before getting married have less happy marriages - but men do no harm by playing the field,a study has found. According to  new research by the National Marriage Project, more than half of married women (53 per cent) who had only ever slept with their future husband felt highly satisfied in their marriage.

But that percentage dropped to 42 per cent once the woman had had pre-marital sex with at least two partners. It dropped to 22 per cent for those with ten or more partners. But, for men, the number of partners a man they appeared to have no bearing on how satisfied they felt within a marriage.

This underlines the importance of a low-N wife, particularly for men lower on the socio-sexual hierarchy. Each additional past partner increases the chance that your wife is an Alpha Widow who is settling for you, and who will find you measuring up unsatisfactorily to her previous partners.

It's also something women should keep in mind. The cost of premarital sex to a woman is a 21 percent reduction in the chance she will be highly satisfied in her marriage. And the cost of premarital promiscuity is a 58 percent reduction in the likelihood of marital satisfaction.

This doesn't mean a man must automatically eliminate all N=10+ women from consideration. After all, there is still a one-in-five chance she might be satisfied, but that's not a chance that any man below Beta status should risk taking.

Socio-Sexual Hierarchy: the collective terms

A Pride of Alphas
An Enigma of Sigmas
A Wing of Betas
A Force of Deltas
A Creep of Gammas
A Stalking of Omegas
A Mince of Lambdas

Of course, the list above refers to the Socio-Sexual Hierarchy.  We still need terms to distinguish Roissy's binary sexual hierarchy. 

A Conceit of ALPHAS (Alphas and Sigmas)
An Orbit of BETAS (Betas, Deltas, Gammas, Omegas)

Alpha Mail: to fight or not to fight

Z requests a situational post-mortem:

I have a question about a fundamental aspect of game. Once, I was having some fun with a 7-8ish woman on the dance floor. Turns out she had a boyfriend (of course this wasn't stopping her from grinding on me). Needless to say the boyfriend punched me in the face without warning. It was a badly aimed, weak punch that caught me in the forehead and did no physical damage. He stopped after the first punch and we just stared at each other. I wasn't afraid of him in the least bit, but I also didn't feel like getting kicked out of my favorite club. I decided peace was the proper course. I offered him my hand and said honestly "I didn't know she was taken." After a moment he shook my hand, nodded, and walked off with the girl.

It bugged me a bit after the fact, however. I started to question if my decision to pursue peace was the right one. Was that an act of submission? Was that showing weakness? Should I have fought it out even though, in my estimation, not getting kicked out of or banned from the club outweighed the mediocre attractiveness of the woman?

In other words, in fundamental game theory, was that a Beta move, or worse.. a Gamma/Delta move?

It was a Beta move and it was also almost surely the right move in today's society. The Alpha move would have been to confront, because Alphas will risk almost anything rather than accept such a blow to their ego without immediately retaliating.  Remember, as hard as it is for men to understand it, women are instinctively attracted to violence and mindless thuggery. An Alpha will almost always choose to fight if challenged, let alone if actually struck.

The reason it was a Beta move is because Z didn't really back down. Extending a hand and making peace in that situation is not backing down, it is an offer to a mutually agreed-upon cessation of hostilities. He was entirely ready to fight, but was also willing to walk away if sufficient respect was proffered.  As is often the case, the Beta way is the one that leads to the easiest and most reasonable outcome.

This used to happen to my brother all the time. He was a very good-looking Beta, so a girl would smile at him, he would smile back, they would start getting cozy, and the next thing he knew, an angry boyfriend would punch him in the face. He never got into a fight because he had the combat instincts of a newborn lamb and it took him about thirty seconds to find an equally interested girl after walking away. And he never seemed to learn that he could save himself a lot of trouble if he simply opened with the question "are you here with your boyfriend?"

Walking away in a self-respecting manner isn't weak. A fellow Dragon was once accosted in a nightclub; he dropped into a fighting stance that indicated a recognizable familiarity with the martial arts, as did the other guy. They stared at each other for a moment, until my friend asked the other guy: "So, do you want to match styles?"  The other guy laughed and said "No, not really."  As with Z in the case of the forehead-puncher, they both recognized that the costs of fighting were simply too high. In a fight between two reasonably trained martial artists, even the winner runs the risk of being hurt pretty badly.

In Z's case, the risk of being arrested, kicked out of the club, or even shot rendered physical conflict undesirable. It's not the Alpha act, but then, Alpha is not synonymous with wise or optimal.

But neither is the act of walking away Delta or Gamma.  The Delta thing would be to chest up to the guy, shout at him, and basically make a scene until safely held back by others. Then the Delta would spend the next two hours growling how he would totally have kicked the other guy's ass if only he hadn't been prevented from doing so.  It's remarkable how many guys have "almost" been in a fight and yet somehow never seem to quite cross that fine line demarcating violence from mere confrontation.

The Gamma would likely pretend to be more badly hurt than he was, and hold his hands to his face while shrieking "you hit me", threatening to sue, and urging others to call the police.  He'd make wild threats about imaginary people he knew, from mobsters to military men, who would wreak deadly revenge upon his assailant. At no point would the thought of simply fighting the other guy himself occur to him.

The Omega wouldn't have been in the nightclub at all. The Sigma, of course, wouldn't have gotten punched, as he would have already had sex with the girlfriend in the women's bathroom or the parking lot. There is a reason, after all, that Roissy refers to a certain kind of ALPHA as "the sneaky f-----".

Alpha: Exercises le droit du alpha by openly stealing girl or obtaining phone number in front of helpless, angry boyfriend.
Beta: Attracts girl, boyfriend confronts
Delta: Hits on girl, boyfriend confronts
Gamma: Hits on girl, girl is creeped out and asks boyfriend to confront
Omega: Levels up.
Sigma: Has sex with girl or leaves with girl, boyfriend has no idea.

The good news is that if you're forced to deal with angry boyfriends on a regular basis, you are almost surely a Beta or better.  The only men who have to put up with that sort of thing are men whom women deem worthy of actively trading up for. This is also why higher rank men tend not to behave in a very jealous manner; they know from first-hand experience how little use jealousy is once a woman's eye starts wandering. 

I lost one girl to the guitarist of the Black Crowes and another to the backup guitarist of Guns-N-Roses when both bands were at the height of their fame. I didn't protest in the slightest. Having usually been on the other side of that situation, I knew how pointless it was for the socio-sexually overmatched to attempt resistance.  And after all, there are always more girls on the girl tree.

Boys will laugh at girls when they're not funny

Ferdinand provides a surefire indicator of BETA status:

Whenever a halfway attractive woman does something, anything on the Internet, there’s always a coterie of sackless chumps ready to praise her just for being alive, in the vain hope that she’ll sleep with them. Even if the “woman” is 16 and lives in another country.

This is arguably the easiest means of identifying BETA status. How often do you offer unmerited praise for women that you would never provide a man? Unwarranted praise is supplication. If a woman is attention-whoring on Facebook or elsewhere, feeding the endless abyss is absolutely counterproductive if you are attracted to her.

It's hard for men to realize, since it is exactly opposite to the way that men think, but women tend to react much more strongly to negativity than to positivity. This is because they are other-driven rather than self-driven. I've seen this time and time again, in the office, in sports, and in the sexual marketplace. A woman will ignore 20 men praising her and focus like a laser on the one who shrugs her shoulders at her, whereas a man won't bother with the 20 women ignoring his existence, but will focus his attention on the woman who views him in a positive light.

Men and women make unnecessary inter-sexual mistakes because they wrongly assume that the sexes think alike. As a general rule, they don't. If you're a single guy, experiment with this principle. Try placing five "ooh, you so pretty" comments on the Facebook photos of five women you know, then five "Yikes! I didn't know you were part Bulgarian!" on five others. My estimate is that you won't even get a response from the first five women, but will get at least four responses from the second five.

Conversely, women should similarly experiment with building a man up rather than "putting him in his place". Do report back with results, if you give it a whirl. We're all about the science here.

Game and politics

It is a well-known fact that the taller candidate with better hair usually wins the presidential election. Based on this metric, Mitt Romney looks like a sure thing. But is it possible that those aspects of an alpha male are merely stand-ins for the candidates' socio-sexual status? If so, this personal anecdote may explain the tepid response among Republicans to Mitt Romney in 2008 as well as this election cycle:

Tagg didn't get it back then, but now at age 37 he finally understands why his father has been willing to suspend his regimented ways when it comes to his wife. ''When they were dating,'' Tagg says, ''he felt like she was way better than him, and he was really lucky to have this catch. He really genuinely still feels that way, thinks, 'I'm so lucky I've got her.' So he puts her on a pedestal.''

Mitt Romney is a tall, handsome, wealthy man with a big family. But based on this description by his son, he's also Beta at best. That incongruence between his superficial attributes and his genuine persona may explain why male and female voters alike tend to regard him with relative indifference.

Alpha Mail: the iron doesn't care

Marcus Marcellus somehow manages to completely miss the primary objective of Game:

The problem with you and those who self-consciously subscribe to this "game" concept are two-fold: 1) you were all obviously very bad with women before it dawned on you to so something about, which is to now over-compensate by being a soi-disant asshole. No real gentleman who is good with woman needs to be an asshole; just don't be a pushover. Typical American over-compensation and response: no subtlety; no class; no clue. Secondly, you are like someone who learned there is no Santa Claus - on your 21st birthday. By being so self-consciously "alpha" and studying "game," don't you see how your obsession makes you as pathetic as any other loser? Self-conscious nonchalance is still self-conscious.

Marcus here indicates that he understands neither Game nor women. His first point is objectively incorrect. While RM, having started as a self-identified Omega, has been consciously using Game to improve his socio-sexual rank, I was openly recognized as an ALPHA by men and women alike long before the concept of Game was articulated. Game wasn't ever a means to an end for me, it was merely the coherent articulation of inter-sexual behavioral patterns that I had already recognized and utilized.

The statement "no real gentleman who is good with woman needs to be an asshole; just don't be a pushover" is not only absurd, it is a tautology. Marcus might as reasonably have said: "No Beta needs to be an asshole, he should just be content with Beta status and be careful not to engage in Gamma behavior". That's fine and all, but it is both sub-optimal for Betas and totally useless for the Deltas, Gammas, and Omegas of the world. And it is downright laughable to the Alphas and Sigmas of the world, some of whom are assholes and some of whom are gentlemen. I further note that a "real gentleman" almost surely does need to be an asshole, or at least be able to convincingly simulate one, if he is to improve from being good with women to being great with them.

The most useful way to think of Game is through a free weight analogy. Those who are naturally strong often tend to think of weightlifting as unnecessary, even though weightlifting will make them stronger and allow them to lift more weight than they ever could naturally. And it is downright necessary for the weak, who will never increase their strength by being "real gentlemen", "just being themselves", or "not being a pushover". In further support of the analogy, the naturally strong not infrequently refer to those who have built themselves up through weightlifting as being "puffed up" and "not having real muscles".

But the only relevant metric is if the bar moves when you try to push it up. The iron doesn't care if you come by your strength naturally or through a wide variety of artificial means. It either moves or it does not move, depending solely upon the amount of strength you have to bring to bear. The lift counts the same regardless of the amount of effort involved.

Think about how remarkably silly Marcellus sounds when applying his perspective to any other aspect of self-improvement. Don't you see how your obsession with [losing weight] makes you as pathetic as any other [fatty]? Self-conscious [weight loss] is still self-conscious. This is true, but Marcus is failing to recognize that the whole point of the exercise is to lose weight! Or, in the case of Game, increase your socio-sexual rank. He is attacking a strawman of his own device here since a lack of self-consciousness is not the goal of Game. This should be obvious in that an important aspect of Game involves simulating the Dark Triad traits, including narcissism, which women find so powerfully attractive. In fact, it is the lack of other-consciousness that is one of the more central objects of Game.

Like many men who find their socio-sexual rank to be satisfactory, Marcus finds Game distasteful for three reasons. First, it challenges his sense of superiority. He doesn't like the idea that a rising Omega like RM might one day be able to score more attractive women than he himself does. Game means more competition from those who previously never had a shot. Second, it shakes his sense of reality. He believes that women respond to men being "real gentlemen" and "not being a pushover" and it is troubling to consider the possibility that he is, despite his present satisfaction with his socio-sexual rank, simply misguided and has been all along.

Third, and most important, is the simple distaste for change that is always inherent to those satisfied with the status quo. If Game is correct - and it is - then Marcus would be well-served by modifying his thinking and his behavior, which he quite naturally is loathe to do. For men of high socio-sexual rank, there is very little to be gained from Game, except perhaps reducing the speed with which time and age naturally tend to reduce their rank. Thus, their interest in Game is either nonexistent or intellectual; the Alpha could not care less about the possibility of the Omega moving up to Delta. For men of moderate but satisfactory socio-sexual rank, on the other hand, their complacency as well as their ability to compete against other men of similar rank are materially threatened by Game, which is why they react in such a hostile manner to it.

Whenever one sees a nonsensical, emotion-laden criticism of Game by a man who considers himself to be good with women, particularly one who decries the possibility that high status women could be attracted to men who don't behave like he does, you can be almost certain that he is either a Beta or a High Delta.