You can't sperg on this

To misquote the Beastie Boys, you really have to learn not to sperg on it. Tom Arrow is flirting with doing so:

The question is whether these behaviors actually are as distinctive as the system makes them out to be. If you say they are crude waypoints, I am willing to say "cool, that's not bad!". If you say that these categories actually exist in reality exactly like that and with no abberations, then I must conclude you are unrealistic. After all, if those categories were that fixed, transition between them would be impossible, which indicates, to me, a fluid shade of greys.

Also, a particular person may exhibit behaviors of various categories at the same time, depending on their individual psychological set up.

Also, you have to consider confirmation bias. When you go out with this categorization in mind and look at people, your mind will automatically categorize them and look for the described traits. This observation will seem to confirm your theory while blending out everything that is more faceted or doesn't quite fit or defies categorization.

But yeah, I guess it's a cool thing to have as crude pointers. Cause it's fun to be thinking about that.

It's always easy to spot the spergs and gammas whenever the topic of the socio-sexual hierarchy comes up. They inevitably try to take a practical system that is dynamic, relative, and fractal, and turn it into something immutable and inflexible that they can understand.

But you can't do that. Circumstances change. People change. Any one individual can be a member of a dozen different hierarchies at the same time. My role is very different as Supreme Dark Lord with 525 VFM and tens of thousands of readers than it is as the old guy nobody knows who is an extra practice body for a 5th division soccer team, and both are different than my role as the Lead Editor of Castalia House.

The way that women are going to perceive me, and the way they are going to behave around me will entirely differ depending upon whether they encounter me as a) spectators at a soccer game at which I'm sitting on the bench until the last 15 minutes, b) attendees at a public event at which I am the featured speaker, or c) wannabe writers at the London Book Fair. My status, and my perceived attractiveness, will vary greatly, depending on the situation. And yet, I am precisely the same individual.

The socio-sexual ranks are not "crude waypoints". They are descriptors and conceptual models that are usefully predictive of human behavior, both male and female.

The label is not the behavior

I've noticed that a number of people who are skeptical of the socio-sexual theory keep making the same mistake. They focus on the labels, rather than on the observed behavior to which the labels are applied.

There is no doubt that Alphas exist. There is no doubt that Gammas exist. We know this because we see them exhibiting the differentiating behavior in action on a daily basis. It doesn't matter what they are called; although the terms have become descriptors and predictive behavioral models, they are derived from actual behavior observed and recorded by others.

So, don't get caught up in the descriptors, their status implications notwithstanding. They are only there to label the various behaviors being observed.

Jesus and the socio-sexual hiearchy

AF has an interesting take on how Jesus Christ's life can be related to each of the various ranks and suggests how the ideal Christian version of that rank might be exhibited. Please note that I did not write this, nor do I agree with all of it, but I think it provides an enlightened vision of how the Game-aware Christian can better understand both his place in the world's hierarchy and his Christian duty to be in, but not of, the world.

The Redeemed Societal Ranks of Men

The societal or sociosexual ranks of men, namely alpha, beta, delta, gamma, sigma, and omega, are in themselves nonmoral aspects of men. Although we place societal value on each, since a man does not fully choose his rank but is subject to it by nature, he cannot be morally judged on account of it. Like the sexes, each one has its own peculiar strengths and weaknesses that must actively be cultivated or suppressed.

Naturally, every man falls and is dragged into sin, and normally into the sins of his rank. But in Christ a man is redeemed, and redeemed according to the godly aspects of his own nature. The question posed is what redemption looks like in each rank, what a man in Christ ought to strive for in the knowledge of his placement in the Body. A sinful gamma will not be a redeemed alpha male in the church, but will be a redeemed gamma who will fulfill his role and his own manliness as it is reflected in Jesus Christ.

As we believe Jesus is fully God and fully Man, I also believe him to have fully exhibited the redeemed traits of every rank of men. In the Teacher we each see our own place in his Kingdom and our own wavelength of light to the world, forming together as his Body now on earth the same pure light that shone through his flesh many years ago.

α: Christ was the alpha male when he overturned the tables in the Temple and drove out his enemies with a whip. He as the alpha male when he rebuked the Pharisees to their face in public, demolishing their power and credibility in the most humiliating way possible.

The glory of the alpha male, redeemed, is the power he exerts over immoral and weak leaders. When he asserts his dominance over the corrupt he brings justice to the world as no other can, and he provides upright leadership and inspiration that other men and women thirst for without even realizing it. The alpha has the power and energy to inspire in his followers the best of themselves for his cause.

β: Christ was a beta when he claimed two witnesses to validate his judgments, including himself. “If I do judge, my decisions are right, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father.” His fanatical loyalty to the Alpha God, and his supreme confidence in their solidarity, left crowds breathless as he walked through them untouched, though they were full of enemies. He was beta when he planted his feet before heaven and irrevocably declared, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” He possessed the absurd confidence of the wingman of the Almighty, and when it was time, he followed his Alpha to the death. The bond between Jesus and the Father was beyond unbreakable; it was even beyond comprehension. He did exactly what the Father desired him to do, and the Father glorified him above every creature and every power in heaven and on earth.

The glory of the beta is the unshakable confidence that comes from his loyalty to God and to a godly alpha. His self assurance makes his team seem impenetrable from the outside, and he is a credit to the faith he espouses. He is the right man to have around when someone is spouting insolence toward God or toward a fellow Christian. He is a defender and an encourager, a Barnabas, who perpetuates the divine spark among men and fuels the Spirit’s fire. He draws out of men the best that is in themselves, and in so doing exhibits the best in himself.

δ: Christ was a delta when he turned away the stones from the adulteress, when he comforted as a daughter the woman who touched his cloak, when he lifted Mary from her wretched state into his blessed ministry, and when through her he unveiled the secret hidden through all ages, his resurrection from the dead, to the world.

The glory of the delta, the White Knight, is to find in a humble woman the beauty she can become, and through his vision of her lead her through a transformation. She, no matter what wretched state or rank of women she inhabits in the world, becomes in his eyes a daughter of the King, and the true potential that lies in her can be realized in Christ.

γ: Christ was a gamma when he declared his Kingdom not of this world, the one true Secret King. He knew what power lay in himself, while the world only saw his ordinary flesh from a mundane family of some small town. He hinted at his origins and his authority, but shunned the crown and the worship, and would not even stand to be called “good.” Ten thousand legions of angels at his command, he died without unleashing his power, and in his restraint he revealed a power even greater than was ever imagined, the power of humility to redeem the world.

The glory of the gamma is to embrace the humility of his low status in the flesh, even knowing the power of God that inhabits him through Christ. He is content to be recognized by God and hated by the world, thus storing up treasure in heaven. He rises to the challenge among men only when the occasion absolutely demands it, and then returns to his humble state. It is his restraint that allows other men receive their glory and teaches them the humility to temper it.

σ: Christ was a sigma when he ditched the crowds and his own apostles, and appeared later like a ghost on the stormy sea, walking on the water without a care in the world. He was pure sigma when his brothers dared him to appear in Jerusalem to challenge the Pharisees and he declined, humiliating them in their cozy unbelief, then showing up anyways to change the world when he invited all who are thirsty to come to him and drink. Jesus was a sigma when he prayed alone in Gethsemane, and spat at his disciples for falling asleep in the midst of battle. Sigma was his most consistent role; he was a complete mystery to all around him, a wild card who played by his own rules and beat the world at its own game, even in death.

The glory of the sigma, the loner, the wild card, when truly redeemed, is to leave the world alone in order to pray. When he seeks God alone he attains wisdom and strength that other men do not understand. He is a visionary unbound by the limits of culture and societal status, thus his words have an unexpected depth that command attention. His strength does not come from his social standing but emanates from his experiences with God. In this way he fulfills a priestly role.

ω: Christ was an omega when he died on the cross. Denied by God the cup to pass from him, he endured the show trial, the humiliating slap, the utter torture of the flail tearing his flesh apart piece by piece. He wore the purple robe, felt the pricks on his brow from the crown of thorns, heard his enemies worship him with mockery dripping from their tongues. He carried his own cross. The entire world turned its back on him, even those closest to him; they denied his name like it was a plague. The crowd embraced a rioter and a murderer over him. Uplifted on the cross to the lowest state attainable by a man, marred beyond the appearance of a man, he looked down on the world with mercy, and forgave it.

The glory of the omega is to receive his lot in life, the lowest of the low, and then extend to the world the hands of forgiveness. In this way he carries the heaviest burden, and also receives from God the most handsome reward. He also is rewarded in the church, the realm where the low are exalted, the weak are indispensable, and the unpresentable are treated with special modesty. The omega is honored by his low status in the world, and the community learns from him as from no other the power and blessing unleashed by washing his dirty feet, and the unexpected strength God can reveal in those the world has overlooked.

Gamma is real and material

I've been noticing more and more gammas since Trump. "Everybody is stupid and I'm a genius. Why won't anybody listen to my genius?"
 - Bullit315

Love the unfalsifiable system you got going here. Everyone you don't like is or will become "gamma", by the time your rationalization is over. 
- Tarrou

Contrast these two contradictory ideas. One is that gamma behavior is defined, identifiable, widespread, and recognizable. The other is that gamma behavior is unfalsifiable and is solely defined by my personal dislikes. Both statements cannot be true; the irony, of course, is that  in his passive-aggressive language, Tarrou shows signs of the very behavior that he implicitly claims is impossible to recognize.

But the fact is that gammas are real, their behavior is both identifiable and predictable, and their existence has nothing to do with my likes and dislikes. In fact, in my personal life, I tend to have the most problems with Alphas, who erroneously view my Sigma self-confidence as a challenge to their place at the top of the social hierarchy and often react badly to me. I have very little real-world contact with Gammas, as I don't like them and their social rank is too low for them to be often present in my social circles.

Online is a different story, as it is Gammas who tend to make up the vast majority of persistent problem commenters on this and every other blog on the Internet. I can provide a new example almost every single day; here is one from just this morning courtesy of a previously banned Gamma commenter at Vox Popoli.

But first, some context. Aaron had been banned from VP for more than a few weeks, possibly even a few months now. I don't recall why, but his behavior was egregious enough to land him on the programmed autovanish list. He waited until he perceived I had made a mistake, then leaped to take advantage of it, leaving no less than 7 comments despite all of them being autovanished.

Once he belatedly realized that no one was seeing them, he left these two additional comments on two different posts, one of which had nothing to do with the subject he had nominally been addressing.

You can dish it out but u can't take it, eh Vox? Classic :) I know your type very well....drone on and on about being Alpha but are cowards in the end....always the same
- Aaron

I was waiting for u to ban me....I'm a little bit too effective for you eh Vox? I dont blame u, u are a weak man after power, and I undermine your power... Well, this will be our little secret. Your dumb as fuck followers won't know a thing.
- Aaron

Now, the significant thing about these two comments is that they are, almost word for word, very much the same as every other Gamma who has been banned or spammed on either VP or AG over the years. We're talking about dozens of individuals who are totally unrelated except for their similar behaviors. The accusations of cowardice, the obsession with power, the assertion that he knew it was coming, the contempt for everyone else who didn't rise up and join his one-man revolution against me, the posturing about being too strong, too smart, too effective, too something to be permitted to remain active in the community, all of these things are standard Gamma responses. Even the weird spelling and capitalization is par for the course.

The only thing that is missing from Aaron's reaction is the feigning of enjoyment, the "LOL", and the various claims of how the Gamma finds it "hilarious" or "so funny" to be kicked out.

Now, I didn't create this pattern of behavior. I didn't define it. I merely recognized it and labeled it. And once you recognize it, you can't unsee it, but will see it everywhere you go. That's because Gamma is real, it is a normal category of male sociosexuality. It's not merely an insult or an invented name to call someone in order to get a rise out of them.

Gamma is not even intrinsically bad, it simply is, and wishing it away or pretending it doesn't exist will not change anything. In fact, the very worst thing for a Gamma male is for him to pretend that it does not exist, because until he accepts the fact of its existence, accepts that the psychological profile fits him, and accepts that his behavior conforms to certain recognizable patterns, it is very difficult for him to even begin to do anything to surmount it and raise his social status.

Game is the entry point to the #AltRight

A commenter at Rod Dreher's site observes the process of intellectual development:

The connection between the Alt-Right and the various masculinity movements deserves some elaboration. As many have mentioned, the demographics of the Alt-Right are young and male, and the role of young male frustration (sexual or otherwise) cannot be overstated.

As Dreher adequately documents, the hegemonic narrative regarding gender is clearly insane. And while the level of insanity has climbed exponentially in the past decade, virtually everyone under-30 (my generation) has been marinated in relentless gender-equivalence propaganda since kindergarden. But, as the male cohort grows older, the distance between the experienced reality of of the dating market and the official dogma becomes unsustainable. The cognitive dissonance is simply too great, and boys are driven to seek answers elsewhere. And those answers come, with varying degrees of accuracy and crudity, from the PUA/Game/MRA/RedPill blogs.

Whatever their faults, they all have one redeeming quality – they are manifestly not insane. This comes as a great shock and relief to boys. A shock because they realize the magnitude of the deception they have experienced, and a relief because they realize they are not the crazy ones.

Hence the tagline to this blog: saving Western civilization. Game is only the starting point.

Hunter or hunted?

Now, I am convinced that one of the best places to study human socio-sexuality is the arts, music in particular. You can learn a lot from the various ways men think about their approach to women as it is unintentionally revealed in their art. Are they reverential, are they contemptuous, are they masterful, or are they fearful?

Consider the case of Joe Jonas. A Disney child star, handsome, but not particularly masculine, he is rich and famous, but has been regarded as somewhat of a joke musically. But he doesn't exactly lack confidence.



Hugely catchy song, obviously. After Prince's death, I talked to one of the members of Psykosonik and we both commented on how it was recognizable as an instahit even before it got to the big chorus. As for Jonas, he's obviously accustomed to attention and unlike a Robert Smith (Gamma) or Ricky Martin (Lambda), he's neither uncomfortable nor distracted when surrounded by pretty women in bikinis. (Watch a Ricky Martin video sometime, given his Latin background, it's remarkable that women ever thought he was on the market, so to speak.)

Now consider the lyrics.

See you walking 'round like it's a funeral
Not so serious, girl; why those feet cold?
We just getting started; don't you tip toe, tip toe

He's not waiting for the girl to notice him, he's approaching her, challenging her, and negging her.

Waste time with a masterpiece, don't waste time with a masterpiece (huh!)
You should be rolling with me, you should be rolling with me (ah)
You're a real life fantasy, you're a real life fantasy (huh!)
But you're moving so carefully; let's start living dangerously

He's still challenging her, and while he's complimentary, he's pushing her and daring her to go beyond her boundaries. Women love to be pushed and hate to be considered sticks-in-the-mud, so the juxstaposition of carefully with dangerously is masterful.

Talk to me, baby
I'm going blind from this sweet, sweet craving, whoa
Let's lose our minds and go fucking crazy
Ah ya ya ya ya I keep on hoping we'll eat cake by the ocean

Here he's giving her the excuse to cut loose and abandon her anti-slut defenses. Notice that he doesn't hide his attaction to her or play it cool. This is a straight-up frontal assault.

Walk for me, baby
I'll be Diddy, you'll be Naomi, whoa
Let's lose our minds and go fucking crazy
Ah ya ya ya ya I keep on hoping we'll eat cake by the ocean

Walk for, not walk with. He then presents an analogy in which he is in charge and she is submissive to him. 

God damn
See you licking frosting from your own hands
Want another taste, I'm begging, "Yes, ma'am."
I'm tired of all this candy on the dry land, dry land

More compliments, but they're crass and implicitly sexual. He claims to be begging, but really, he's demanding and implying that she's offering it to him, and contrasting her to all the women he's had before, so many that he's tired of them. Furthermore, the dry land contrast suggests that she is more than a little bit eager to pursue "cake by the ocean", which of course means sex on the beach.

This song is so successfully psychosexually provocative that it should be no surprise that two women were involved in writing and recording it. And as a thought experiment, now compare it to the way in which men engage with women in the average science fiction novel, in which a man furiously respects a woman until, appropos of nothing, she abruptly decides to force her way past his respect and announce her true love for him.

The etymology of witch

JS has a theory:

The origin of the term "witch"...

1st peasant: "Hey, these bitches won't shut up!"

2nd peasant: "Let's set one on fire, the others will take the hint"

3rd peasant: "But which one?"

4th peasant: "Hmmm... Witch one... witch indeed?"

And then, after much discussion; they settled on the ugliest one. And a tradition was born...

Can confirm.

When higher status makes it worse

ESR adds his contribution to the theory of Game:

A man courting a woman is implicitly making a status claim: I am good enough for you – in Red Pill terminology, my SMV (sexual market value) meets or exceeds yours. Because other women use male attention to measure SMV and status, such a claim can be threatening to its target because, from a low-status male, it threatens to lower her status, especially if she accepts it.

A woman can deal with this by not merely rejecting a man she evaluates as not being worthy, but publicly insulting him for trying. “How dare you think you’re good enough for me?” is different from a simple “Not interested” because it’s a status defense.

Thus, hot chicks are systematically cruel to beta nerds. It’s a way of socially protecting the proposition that their SMV is high enough to capture a real alpha, and their status among peers.

But – and here’s my insight – it’s even worse than that.

Consider two cases. Bob is slightly lower status than Alice. Ted is much lower status than Alice. Both of them court Alice. She doesn’t think either has SMV to match hers, so her response is to reject both. But: Which one is the bigger status threat?

No, it’s not Ted. The status difference between him and Alice is quite visible to her peers; he can be easily dismissed as just nuts for pitching out of his league. Bob, on the other hand, may look plausible – and the closer to good enough he looks, the more likely it is that the status claim he makes by courting Alice will adjust her status downwards among her peers.

So it’s Bob who will get the cruel, status-defensive rejection, not Ted.

On the plus side, if a woman who is close to your league is being particularly nasty, that means you have a real shot if you up your Game. So, while it might not be fun to experience initially, it's very useful information.

Alpha Mail: dynamic sociosexuality

TB had two questions:

1)  In your opinion/to your best guess, is changing sociosexual tendencies (omega/gamma to delta, delta to beta) something akin to homosexuality where it'll be something a person will struggle with their whole life, trying not to fall back into their old rank yet being very tempted to?  Or is it something closer to 'if you're still tempted to do old rank stuff, you haven't quite left it'?

2)  You are of a very different temperament than I.  Regardless, it may be very instructive for me to ask, in your experience how does one deal with a fear of the unknown

Because we are shaped by our experiences, and because those experiences do not disappear simply because we have new experiences, there is always the danger of reverting to previous patterns of behavior. Sociosexuality is dynamic, situational, and relative, so sociosexual rank is neither a life sentence nor carved in stone.

As far as dealing with a fear of the unknown goes, in my experience, the only way to successfully eradicate fear is to face it. When I was young, I quite reasonably shied away from contact on the soccer field. I was half the size of the defenders guarding me and I wore glasses to boot.

It took several years of heavy contact martial arts to shake that instinctive fear of contact, but directly confronting it worked very well. It worked so well that now I'm moderately notorious in our veteran's league for physically punishing defenders; it is a rare game that I don't leave two or three defenders on the ground as a result of challenging me for the ball.

Brian Billick gave the best advice anyone has ever given on confronting fear.

"When you go in the lion's den, you don't tippy-toe in. You carry a spear, you go in screaming like a banshee, you kick whatever doors in, and say, 'Where's the son of a bitch!' If you go in any other way you're gonna lose."

Rollo's second book

Preventive Medicine is now available:

Preventive Medicine is intended to be a complement to The Rational Male core works – an important supplement, not an extension. I’ve decided that future Rational Male series books will center on that core work for reference to more specific topics. I think you’ll find the organization and direction of Preventive Medicine much more singularly focused than the first book. This is intentional. There was no feasible way to present the first book’s material without familiarizing readers with a lot of varied Red Pill topics. The Rational Male will always be the starting point for any new work.

Once again, my hope is that readers will share this book with the men they feel would need it the most. I hope you’ll “accidentally” leave a copy on a table at Starbucks or a school library. I hope you give it to your teenage nephew and your middle-age best friend going through a rough divorce. If you buy the digital copy, thank you, but do consider getting the physical copy to share with someone who wouldn’t otherwise consider exploring the Red Pill or the manosphere online.

I am often asked if I am going to write a Game-related book. And while I've dashed off the occasional page here and there, the fact is that I am simply too busy with my game development, editing, and writing 850-page epic fantasy novels to do so. And that's why it is good that there are men like Rollo filling in the gap and I would readily recommend his books to anyone who is floundering, or knows someone else who is doing so, in the uncertain seas of intersexual relations.

Game and economic theory

Hawaiian Libertarian points out a connection that, in retrospect, seems obvious:

Given that Vox is both an ascribed creationist Christian and an avowed proponent of the School of Austrian Economics, I find it completely fitting that he is also a proponent of game while completely dismissing the relevancy of evolutionary biology and psychology that are the so-called sciences cited by many game proponents and PUA. In the comment thread of Vox's response to GBFM, he writes:

"Evolutionary biology is nothing but ex post facto fairy tales and psychology is bullshit. Game doesn't require grounding in anything but observation of human behavior and the construction of predictive models from it. The "why" is irrelevant."

In other words, Game as we've come to know it here on these fringes of teh Interwebz, is a Praxeology...i.e. Game is the deductive study of human sexuality and inter-relational behavior based on the action axiom - "If a condition holds, then the following should be done."

Here is but one example that I can think of off the top of my head, that is a game-based action axiom:

*** Women often "fitness test" or "shit test" men. Men interested in mating with a woman need to learn how to recognize when she does this. When he ascertains that in fact she is attempting to fitness test him, there are several known responses that other men have employed with varying degrees of success, such as "agree and amplify."***

Looking at game as an exercise in Praxeology should help those who struggle with the morality of accepting these ideas of game description and proscription, versus the vehement distaste for the immorality of promiscuity many (but not all) game proponents advocate and celebrate.

While I am not trying to speak for anyone else here, I do believe the defining line between those of us in the MAndrosphere who are nominally Christian and advocate Christian Marriage (Vox, Dalrock et al), and see no conflict between Game and Christian morality, versus all the other Christians who are up in arms about it and repeatedly denounce it, is that those of us in favor, simply view game as a Praxeology; it is not a hard science, nor is it a moral code to live by. Rather, it is simply using deductive reasoning to come up with action axiom's to describe the hows and whys of human intersexual attraction and mating behaviors.

These action axioms are useful tools for men to recognize and reverse engineer the myriad of deliberately inculcated dysfunctional behaviors and characteristics that pervades societies institutions, mass media programming and subversion of our churches with the idolatry of Goddess worship. As more and more men embrace the axioms of the Game Praxeology, more and more discover anecdotally that they are based on observable truths regardless of the morality of the men doing the "testing in the field."

I tend to shy away from Austrian economics lingo, mostly because it was coined by erudite German-speaking Jews, and is thus virtual gibberish to the average reader. But Keoni is essentially correct and my outlook on Game is praxeological, which is to say that it is a straightforward matter of viewing human action as a series of probabilistic if-then relationships. The model is not a moral one because it does not consist of any "thou shalts" or "shoulds", but merely "iss" and "if-thens".

To put the action axiom in more complete terms: "If a condition holds, then the following should be done." would be more accurately stated thus: "If condition X holds, then Y should be done, given objective Z."

With regards to objective Z, as Mises wrote in Human Action, only the acting man can identify the reasons for his actions. So, to claim that Game is immoral, or anti-Christian, is to make a fundamental category error. One might as reasonably claim that a shovel is sinful or learning mathematical equations is anti-Hindu. One can criticize the objectives that Heartiste, or Dalrock, or I seek, and indeed, many feminists and equalitarians and white knights do. But there is nothing even remotely objectionable from any coherent moral standard about the mere knowledge of Game and its mechanisms.

Women crave boundaries

This is an interesting experiment which demonstrated one aspect of Game, namely, the foolishness of thinking that being agreeable will make women more pleasant:

As part of an unusual experiment, the husband was instructed to “agree with his wife’s every opinion and request without complaint,” and to continue doing so “even if he believed the female participant was wrong,” according to a report on the research that was published Tuesday by the British Medical Journal.

The husband and wife were helping a trio of doctors test their theory that pride and stubbornness get in the way of good mental health. In their own medical practices in New Zealand, they had observed patients leading “unnecessarily stressful lives by wanting to be right rather than happy.” If these patients could just let go of the need to prove to others that they were right, would greater happiness be the result?

Enter the intrepid husband. Based on the assumption that men would rather be happy than be right, he was told to agree with his wife in all cases. However, based on the assumption that women would rather be right than be happy, the doctors decided not to tell the wife why her husband was suddenly so agreeable.

Both spouses were asked to rate their quality of life on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the happiest) at the start of the experiment and again on Day 6. It’s not clear how long the experiment was intended to last, but it came to an abrupt halt on Day 12.

“By then the male participant found the female participant to be increasingly critical of everything he did,” the researchers reported. The husband couldn’t take it anymore, so he made his wife a cup of tea and told her what had been going on.

That led the researchers to terminate the study.

Over the 12 days of the experiment, the husband’s quality of life plummeted from a baseline score of 7 all the way down to 3. The wife started out at 8 and rose to 8.5 by Day 6. She had no desire to share her quality of life with the researchers on Day 12, according to the report.

My bet is that the wife's quality of life plummeted as well. That's why she was getting increasingly critical. In most male-female relationships, the woman will push until she is metaphorically slapped down. Whether they actually need them in the way children do or not, the observable fact is that women crave boundaries. Men who don't provide those boundaries, consciously or unconsciously, will tend to incite contempt and infuriate them.

Congratulations, Rollo

Rollo Tomassi announces his first book, The Rational Male:

What you’ll read are a refinement of the core ideas and concepts I’ve formalized on The Rational Male. I began The Rational Male at the request of my readers on various men’s forums and comments on blogs in the ‘manosphere’ in 2011. After the popularity of the blog exploded inside a year it became apparent that a book form of the basic principles was needed for new readers as I moved past them, and built upon the prior concepts.

For the most part I’ve rewritten and edited for publishing the blog posts of the first year at Rational Male. I’ve left in most of the jingoisms and acronyms that are characteristic of the blog and are commonly used in the manosphere, however I’ve made every attempt to define them as I go along.

Furthermore, many of the concepts I explore in this book came from a question by one of my readers. As with most commenters, their anonymity is assumed in the form their online ‘handle’. The important thing to remember is the concept being discussed and not so much the importance of who is proposing or contradicting a concept.

The primary reason I decided to codify the Rational Male into a book came from a reader by the name of Jaquie. Jaquie was an older, married woman, who genuinely took to what I proposed about inter-gender dynamics on Rational Male. Jaquie wasn’t exactly a typical reader for me, but she asked me to help her understand some concepts better so she could help her son who was about to marry a woman whom she knew would be detrimental to his life. Jaquie said,

“I wish you had a book out with all of this stuff in it so I could give it to him. He’s very Beta and whipped, but if I had a book to put in his hands he would read it.”

So it is for the sons of Jaquie’s that I decided to put this book out.

Step by step, the masculine rebellion picks up speed and reclaims ground that was lost to the feminist orcs over the last three generations.

The antifragility of Game

I've been reading Nassim Taleb's book Antifragile and I would find it difficult to recommend it more highly. His definition of the antifragility concept provides a general intellectual foundation for many ideas that I, and others, have been advocating for some time, and more than that, it provides a strong rational explanation for why those ideas reliably work.  In this respect, antifragility is rather like Game, in that it simply articulates something that many individuals already know and are already utilizing in their daily lives.

But antifragility not only resembles Game, it describes Game, and to a certain extent, it even explains why Game is so effective.  Taleb describes an antifragile strategy as one that maximizes optionality and accepts a low level of maximal risk for a high level of potential upside.  What is that if not spinning plates combined with the pickup imperative and an abundance mentality?

And the intrinsic fragility of the BETA courtship strategy should be obvious, as it involves a high level of commitment in both time and resources, eliminates optionality, and accepts a high level of maximal risk given the probability that all of the BETA's oneitis and pedestalization will go for naught as the target of his homage instead responds to the minimal investment of a more sexually desirable ALPHA.

I haven't finished the book yet, so I won't say too much more about it other than anyone who is interested in Game will almost certainly be interested in Antifragile as well, and indeed, will better understand what Game is and why it works as a result of reading it.

Librarian Game

This may be a bit over the top, being a comedy sketch, but it is nevertheless a very good illustration of the principles upon which the concept of "the neg" is based. Tearing down a woman's excessively inflated self-esteem can be an effective way of preemptively neutralizing her instinctive response to disqualify you.

Remember, attempted disqualification is the default response of a woman to every man she meets. And while there are a broad spectrum of ways in which a man can qualify himself to a woman, as the example of woman still upset about a serial killer's preference for her prettier childhood friend shows, the most powerful is to negate the significance of her opinion on the matter.

Men on Strike and the SSH

A video review of Helen Smith's forthcoming Men on Strike, which I'm told contains some discussion of the socio-sexual hierarchy which Dr. Helen references in her book.

Roissy revels in the hate

The Chateau observes an increase in critical hostility:

We here at CH have noticed an uptick lately in game and sexual market denialist hate. The shrillness of the hater crowd has reached fever pitch, and that’s a strong tell that they know their carefully cultivated worldview is coming under attack. Good. There’s nothing like the smell of desperation in the morning.

Here’s a suggestion for the perspiring haters who find themselves scampering into this happy hating ground: First, know that you are up against an enemy the likes of which you have never encountered before. Second, learn to distinguish between is and ought. The Chateau revels in the fun of laying bare the clanking gears of reality and observing the result as the crisis of a thousand consciences unfolds, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we like the world this way, or would want the world, if we had our druthers, to be this way. CH simply gives you the Word; what you do with the Word is your prerogative.

I, too, have noticed a small, but increasing amount of hostility in the comments here, although less from feminists who have largely learned to give the superintelligence a wide berth on the Internet than from white knights, blue pillers, and dubious deltas and gammas.  I suspect this indicates that awareness of Game is on the verge of reaching a new plateau, as the insanity of the extremes to which the Female Imperative is driving institutions and individuals alike is becoming more and more apparent to even the most determinedly myopic men.

It's also worth noting that Roissy et al clearly understand what so many inept critics don't.  Pick-up artistry is merely the tip on the iceberg of Game. The same elements that the pick-up artists utilize are, necessarily, present in all other inter-sexual relations. So not only does it make perfect sense for Game to be of utility in other applications, it is entirely illogical to claim that it is even theoretically possible for Game to be limited to the art of picking up women.

Roissy is underlining something I have repeatedly attempted, with varying degrees of success, to explain to the skeptical: "what you do with the Word is your prerogative".  Game is like gravity, and gravity doesn't care if you use it to launch satellites or smash skulls. It simply exists, and one denies its existence at one's peril.

The Book of Deti

And The Philosopher did labor under the sun, until at last he brought forth a Book, in which the various Tribes of Game and their histories were chronicled, and lo, the Genius looked upon it and saw that it was, if not, strictly-speaking, accurate in all of its details, it was more than a little amusing:

In the beginning was Game. And the game was with the natural alpha, and the Game was alpha. And the natural alphas created the world of pickup, and they saw that it was good.

And they said, “Let us make men in our own image.” And took they some words and swagger and attitude and nuking shit tests, and formed they men; and breathed into their nostrils the breath of cocky-funny, and they created men.

And alpha placed men into the world and told them to dress and keep it; and they did.

And alpha looked upon the men, and said “It is not good for the Men to be alone. I will make him a companion and a helper.” And alpha caused the man to become drunk with wine, and caused him to fall into a deep slumber, and while he was out cold, alpha created women of all shapes and sizes, colors and hair styles. And alpha presented the females to the men, and they said “Whoa, man!” And so this is how women were named, and it is so to this very day.

And the men and the women were together. And alpha looked upon them and said, be fruitful, bang, and multiply. And they did, with great gusto and enthusiasm.

And one day the women were walking in the garden, and a serpent with the face of Betty Friedan slithered up to them, and said; “Did alpha really say to you never to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Feminine Mystique? For he knows that in the day you eat of it, you will become like alpha and men, knowing men and women.”

And the women did eat, and they found that it was pleasant to the taste. And then they offered some to their men; and the men said “but alpha told us never to eat from the Tree. What is this you have done?” And the women said “The Friedanosaurus offered the fruit to me, and I ate, and it was good.” And the men ate.

And then alpha saw the men and said “where are you? what have you done?” And the men answered “We were hiding, because you said not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Feminine Mystique, But the women, whom you gave to us, they tasted the fruit, and gave it to us, and we also ate.”

And alpha said to the men: “Because of this thing you have done, cursed is the ground you will walk on. You will no longer be able to pass shit tests. You will become beta pussyboys. No longer will you be permitted to tend the world; for the women whom I gave you have taken it from you. Your women will become unhaaaaaaappy and will divorce you or marry you nevermore.”

And to the women alpha said: “From this day on you will be miserably unhappy, for there are none to lead you and tell you no. You will do what is right in your own eyes, and satisfaction you shall never know all the days of your lives.”

This may appear to be a vaguely blasphemous parody, but as Rollo very well knows, there is considerably more truth in it than many readers will likely understand.  While in the scientific sense, Game is the development and testing of hypotheses produced by observing the social and intersexual behavior of men and women, in the spiritual sense, Game is merely the application of Genesis 3:16 and The Curse of Eve.

The evolution of Game

Rollo has an excellent post on the intellectual development and broadening spectrum of Game, as well as some thoughts on its continued evolution:

For all its marginal efforts to shame Game back into obscurity, the feminine imperative found that the Game movement wasn’t being cowed as easily as it might have been in the mid 1990′s. The Imperative was falling back on the reliable tropes and social conventions that had always pushed the masculine back into compliance. At the apex of fem-centrism in the 90′s these social constructs worked well on an isolated, shamed and ignorant masculine imperative, but with the evolution of the internet, by the late 2000′s Game was snowballing into a threat that required new feminine operative conventions.

Game evolved beyond the behavioral sets, and beyond the psychological and sociological mechanics that underlined women’s psyches and larger socializations. While still encompassing all that prior evolution, Game was becoming aware of the larger social meta-scale of the feminine imperative. Game began to move beyond the questions of why women are the way they are, and into piecing together how the intergender acculturations we experience today are what they are. Game asked how did we come to this?

Game branched into specific areas of interest in its scope to answer these broader questions and solve more expansive problems. While we still have all of the prior iterations of Game, we have expanded into christianized Game, married Game, divorced Game, socialized Game, high school Game, etc.

However, underpinning all of these areas of specialization was still the need to internalize and personalize Game in a Man’s life. Game was the path to male re-empowerment; an empowerment that even women today still feel men should Man-back-Up to. Game required a reinterpretation of masculinity towards something positive, beneficial and competent – something entirely apart from the negative, shameful and ridiculous archetypes 60 years of feminization had convinced women and men of. Call it Alpha, call it Positive Masculinity, but Game necessitates the reimagining of the importance of the masculine imperative. Game needs Men to change their minds about themselves.

Needless to say, even in its most positive of contexts, the male re-empowerment that Game led to was a Threat too great for the feminine imperative to allow. Controlling the intrinsic insecurities that the feminine imperative is founded upon has alway depended on men’s ignorance of their true value, and true necessity to women. Men have to remain necessitous to women in order for their insecurity to be insured against, and the feminine imperatives control to be insured of.

This is a very good post because it helps to understand where one has been if one is to figure out where one is going.  This blog is one of the many third-generation Game blogs that addresses only a small aspect of Game, but as I have said many times, we all have our part to play in its continuing development.

While his distinction between Evil Game and Good Game being based on what serves - or at least does not too openly conflict with - the Female Imperative and what does not is a potentially useful one, I do not believe it is a serious problem.  Any attempts to coopt or divert Game that are not in line with the truth will rapidly fail, and make the parts that are legitimate stand out in contrast with it. In the meantime, those efforts will continue to publicize it.

Consider Helen Smith's new book.  She's not a theoretician of Game. She's a woman. And while she specifically makes the case for men's rights per se, not merely as something beneficial to women, she openly admits that she can only be a voice speaking up for men, she is not a male voice.  And yet, Men on Strike contains a section on the socio-sexual hierarchy and will likely do more to bring attention to Alpha Game, and by extension Roissy, Rollo, Dalrock, and other blogs featured here, than anything I've ever done.

The reason there is no cause for concern about cooption is because like Biblical Prophecy, if it doesn't reliably work, it is not Game. Even the transmission of adulterated Good Game is potentially useful because Game is also like a virus.  Very small doses are all that are required to inspire even the most abused, brainwashed male mind to ask that vital question that all of us finally asked ourselves at one point or another: why is the female behavior I am observing so different than what I was told by my mother, taught at my school, and preached at my church?

Once that question is asked, it is only a matter of time before the matrix of the Female Imperative is exposed to the questioner, never again to go unseen.

Game and homo economicus

Rollo brilliantly cuts to the core of what it is to be a man in the most pragmatic sense:

I was recently reading a forum thread I got a link back from and the topic was the timeless classic, “what make a man a man?” The predictable responses were all present: Confidence, Responsibility, Integrity, and all of the other subjectively definable esoteric attributes you’d expect. I thought about this question in terms of the difference in consumer influence of both men and women. I’m not an economist, but I am an ideas guy, and it occurred to me that the nuts and bolts of being a man is to produce more than you consume.

To maintain a wife, children, even a dog, a man must produce more than his consumption. Once you’ve lost that capacity (or never developed it) you are less of a man – you are a burden. You must be provided either by charity or guile, but you’re not producing.

On a limbic level, women’s hypergamy filters for this. You see, while women have the societal option to provide for themselves, there is no onus on her to produce anything more than she herself consumes. For all the fem-centric male professions of how rewarding being a stay-at-home Dad is, what eats away at them is the hindbrain awareness that he is not producing more than he consumes. This is the same awareness etching into a woman’s psyche when she’s the one doing the provisioning.

At the very least, it is a simple and straightforward concept with the potential to considerably clarify the issue.