Summary: Revolutions begin in the shadows, emerging only when they grow too large for society to ignore. So it is with “game”, the science of seduction. Today let’s look at a revolution in the war between the sexes. It’s one of our weekend posts about American culture, keeping you informed about things not yet in the mainstream news.
“During this whole century the progress of artillery has been a duel between the maker of cannons and the maker of armor plates to keep the cannon balls out. You build a ship proof against the best gun known: somebody makes a better gun and sinks your ship. You build a heavier ship, proof against that gun: somebody makes a heavier gun and sinks you again. And so on. Well, the duel of sex is just like that.”
— A pick-up artist explaining life to a feminist in George Bernard Shaw’s play “You Never Can Tell” (1895). See the follow-up to this in the comments.
About “Game”
During the past century science has forced breaks with the past. Traditional State-to-State war became suicidal with the development of nuclear weapons, driving the shifts described in “Unrestricted Warfare” (e.g., to 4GW, cyberwar, economic war). Similarly, technology created a break in history by allowing them to control their fertility — changes expressed ideologically as feminism, still in motion with ends as yet unseen.
Every force produces an opposite reaction, and the reaction to feminism has begun. It began in the shadows, like all revolutions and counter-revolutions, as the ancient methods of pick-up artists became systematized after WWII.
Decades of slow evolution brought “game” to maturity in the mid-1990s. It is the science of seduction, a crude applied psychology derived by men on the streets. Like alchemy, it is a mixture of insight and superstition used by people working without theory. It began, like most revolutions, with an insight: men realized that they could act as bad boys — against their own natures — and so increase their odds of success with women.
As with other innovations in interpersonal relations — new forms of dancing (e.g., the waltz), divorce, abortion, the pill, rock music, postal boxes on the street — moralists condemn it as a step on the road to iniquity. Feminists have gained the high ground in control of society’s institutions, and watch with outrage as men act in defiance of the new social norms.
Dark truths from Science
Massive changes have reshaped American society. Hollywood, rock music, and schools reduced the family’s ability to indoctrinate girls and control young women. Women’s increased financial independence diminished their need to “settle” when marrying (for more about this see these controversial articles in The Atlantic: Feb 2008, March 2008, April 2010).
These changes had powerful effects, foreseen neither by scientists nor social reformers. First, women’s hypergamy was released — their drive to seek men of higher status (e.g., the combination of wealth, income, status, height, appearance, charisma). Second, restraints were lifted on their love of men with the Dark Triad of behavioral traits. Psychologists and sociologists have just begun to understand the results.
Hypergamy is obvious and easy to understand. The appeal of Dark Triad behaviors is not. Psychology Today describes them:
“Defined as a set of traits that include the tendency (to seek admiration and special treatment (narcissism), to be callous and insensitive (psychopathy)), and to manipulate others (Machiavellianism), the Dark Triad is rapidly becoming a new focus of personality psychology.
“…The technical definition of the Dark Triad, as stated in Jonason and Webster’s article, is rather daunting: “the Dark Triad as a whole can be thought of as a short-term, agentic, exploitative social strategy…” This means, in simpler terms, that people who show these qualities are trying to get away with acting out against others in order to achieve their own ends. Each of the individual qualities alone can make life difficult for those who know people like this. Combined, the Dark Triad traits in another person close to you can be detrimental to your mental health.”
Studies show that a large fraction of women love these traits. (As with hypergamy, it’s not just women. Corporate directors, mostly men, tend to select as CEOs tall men with dark triad personalities.) Men can take this test to see their Dark Triad traits.
The Dark Triad goes public
“The Heart wants what it wants – or else it does not care.”
— From a letter by Emily Dickenson to her sister, Mrs. Samuel Bowles, 1862.
Often a catalyst brings slow social evolution to mass recognition. The film 9 1/2 Weeks
The 100 million copies sold of Fifty Shades of Grey
Game works
None of this was news to street scientists working on the front lines of the gender wars. Hundreds of books, videos, and courses teach men — imperfectly, crudely, often amorally — how to adapt and successfully deal with 21st century American women.
In brief, women seek men with the behaviors of “alpha” men (high social rank, a term loosely derived from ethology). These traits can be learned — or at least imitated. Much of game consists of learning to pass the tests women use to identify alphas. The results are not pretty. These are not the threads from which romantic comedies are woven (but then rom-coms are dying off, a genre too alien for modern boys and girls).
What about the rest of us? Successful men living by the social codes of the past are “betas” (e.g., white knights, nice family men, good boys). Men unable to deal with modern women are “omegas” (substituting porn, sports, and computer games for women). Such are the brutally honest classifications of street life.
The future
Slowly this knowledge spreads. No barrage of condemnation from authorities can stop insights that produce more success with women. Feminism and game are the next steps in the evolution away from the nuclear family that began after WWII (accelerated when Governor Ronald Reagan signed the Family Law Act of 1969 abolishing — retroactively — the core of the marriage contract).
The standard first response to news about revolutionary changes in society (e.g., atomic weapons, women’s liberation, AI) is adopting Zeno’s paradox as truth: change is impossible. It is a comforting but daft response.
We have begun the second stage response: recognition. Articles mocking and condemning game appear in major publications, in films and on TV (e.g., “Till Death do Us Part
Ahead lie the stages of acceptance (as people wonder what all the fuss was about) and reaction.
Are these developments good or bad? Consult a priest or philosopher, for you will not find the answers here. The FM website attempts to help its readers more clearly see and understand the world, and decide how to act.
What lies ahead? That’s the subject for another post. I recommend reading the comments, which will range from “it’s nothing new” to outright denial.
Science demonstrates the truths of “game”
As with alchemy, science follows the amateurs in the field. This is a tiny sample of the vast body of research validating many of the precepts of game.
“Dating preferences of university women: An analysis of the nice guy stereotype“, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 1999. “Do “bad boys” really get the girls? Delinquency as a cause and consequence of dating behavior among adolescents“, Justice Quarterly, 2004. “Niceness and Dating Success: A Further Test of the Nice Guy Stereotype“, Sex Roles, August 2006. “Courtship compliance: The effect of touch on women’s behavior“, Social Influence, 2007. “From dating to mating and relating: Predictors of initial and long-term outcomes of speed-dating in a community sample“, European Journal of Personality, January/February 2011. “Mate-selection and the Dark Triad: Facilitating a short-term mating strategy and creating a volatile environment“, Personality and Individual Differences, October 2011. “Quantifying the strength and form of sexual selection on men’s traits“, Evolution and Human Behavior, 2013. “Can an Insult Make You Fall in Love? Does nagging (or negging) make someone seem more attractive?“, Jeremy Nicholson (PhD, psychology), Psychology Today, 31 August 2013 — Cites several studies. “Dominance and the traits associated with it predict men’s mating success, but attractiveness does not, Evolution and Human Behavior, September 2013. “Choosy But Not Chaste: Multiple Mating in Human Females“, Brooke A. Scelza, Evolutionary Anthropology, September/October 2013. Superior reproductive success of criminal men, Evolution and Human Behavior, November 2014 — More women, more kids.
For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about women and gender issues, especially these…
- “Castle” shows us a dark vision of Romance in America
- Beckett shows our future. She chooses wisely & marries Castle, but dreams at night of her alpha ex-boyfriend.
- The feminist revolutionaries have won. Insurgents have arisen to challenge the new order. As always, they’re outlaws.
- Love in the new world, after the gender wars.
- Taylor Swift shows us love in the 21st century.
- “Castle” shows a future of strong women & weak men. As for marriage…
Follow-up to the excerpt from the opening of this post
From George Bernard Shaw’s play “You Never Can Tell” (1895). Conversation between a pick-up artist (Valentine) and the mother of his current prey (Mrs. Clandon, a 1st wave feminist).
“It’s similar to alchemy — a mixture of sense and superstition used by people working without theory.”
Very much so, often it is the case of the half-blind (or the outright scam-artist) leading the blind. That said as far as I can tell it only really works for a modest fraction of those who try it, it is not a skill that can be easily taught or learned. For example can something with a probable genetic basis like psychopathy be replicated by somebody who is not wired for it? You get the idea.
Marcello,
“That said as far as I can tell it only really works for a modest fraction of those who try it”
Your basis for this evaluation?
“Your basis for this evaluation?”
I have dabbled in it and I have been told so by at least one of the people who teach this profesionally, I will try to see if I can find that note if you are interested. I doubt that anybody is able to put it in hard, scientifically proven numbers and we are talking about a self selecting population anyway but it is definitively not quite like learning to drive or some such skill.
Marcello,
Well, perhaps all these guys are wrong and you are right. I doubt it.
More likely this is what I describe in the post, the first in the standard stages of social change. First people deny and mock it. As it gains acceptance, it becomes aggressively condemned. Then follows acceptance, followed by the reaction.
NOKAT Comedy shows us life on the front lines
Taylor Swift shows us one woman’s view of the modern dating game:
“More likely this is what I describe in the post, the first in the standard stages of social change.”
As somebody who was following (and practicing, though only at a basic levels) this stuff even before “The Game” came out I will say “Beware of marketing”. Yes people who make a living teaching this stuff will claim this and that, but that is only natural, they have a product to sell as everybody else. Real life is a lot more hit & miss, with emphasis on miss. A few do get better, a lot burn out with little to show for it and there are even cases where people actually do worse than they did before. Knowledge may well spread further but I am skeptic as to the actual impact it will make.
Marcello,
Time will tell. You think all these people are fools, lacking your wisdom. I find that the wisdom of crowds — street smarts — beats the consensus wisdom almost always. And even more often when it comes to morality.
BTW — your belief is classic second stage in the recognition process. Stage one was to deny that women typically display hypergamy and love the Dark Triad traits. Scores of studies have proven otherwise. As have, in a different way, the success of “50 Shades” and the bodice-ripper novels.
This is an old script: See eg: Alcibiades, Cesare Borgia, Richard III. All made a big splash – before events overwhelmed them.
Duncan,
Yes, the success of Dark Triad men in nothing new. But that is not the point here.
The changes are that women are liberated to pursue these men with fewer restraints — and that more men realize that they can imitate these traits. The combination is a revolution.
Recommended reading: Aristophanes
Duncan,
Please explain. I don’t see any obvious relevance to this post. Do you believe all 11 of his surviving plays are relevant here?
Aristophanes was a comprehensive social critic who lambasted triad type tendencies in Athens. While his plays are filled with nuggets: eg: he takes a swipe at Alcibiades in The Frogs, the three directly concerning sexual mores are: Assemblywomen, Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae.
Duncan,
I believe you don’t understand the post, on several levels.
(1) The dark triad are not traits of men. They are traits of people — especially a small minority of men — unlike the more common characteristics of men (e.g., aggressiveness) that Aristophanes features in these plays. Also, women can have any or all of the Dark Triad traits (as they can all of the personality characteristics stereotypically considered male). It’s just the frequency that differs between the sexes.
(2) None of these 3 plays focuses on dark triad traits, as the Wikipedia summaries clearly show. They are about democracy/communism, war, & the role of women respectively (among other things). Individual men show up with these traits, as do people with many other common personality characteristics.
(3) This post discusses two things:
“BTW — your belief is classic second stage in the recognition process.”
It is not clear to me what makes you think I believed women were something out of a Disney fantasy.
“and that more men realize that they can imitate these traits.”
They can try. Whether they can succeed is a different matter, women have no use for bad imitations. And honestly how many people can actually muster the nerves to actually stop a couple of random girls in the street and exchange a few words with them? And that is just the basics, mind you.
You seem to assume this stuff it is easy. For some yes, but for many not so much. It takes time, effort and results may or may not happen.
Marcello,
I have no idea what you are attempting to say, because your comment makes no sense at all.
“you think I believed women were something out of a Disney fantasy.”
That statement has no visible relationship to the sentence of mine you quote.
“Whether they can succeed is a different matter, women have no use for bad imitations.”
Yes, you believe the men doing this are fools. Stating your beliefs in different ways at some point just becomes making stuff up.
“And honestly how many people can actually muster the nerves to actually stop a couple of random girls in the street and exchange a few words with them?”
It’s a extreme demonstration of what guys do every night in bars and elsewhere. Did I really have to explain that to you?
“You seem to assume this stuff it is easy. For some yes, but for many not so much. It takes time, effort and results may or may not happen.”
Yes, like tennis and bridge and everything else in life. I don’t see that you’re saying anything here.
OK, let’s put this way. I did this stuff quite actively for two-three years (more intermittently ever since): as in going out 5-6 evening a week plus daytime too. Bought books, discussed online with people practicing and teaching it, tried stuff. For all that I could make only very limited progress, as I said basic, and results were pretty limited to say the least. Over the years I have found out that I am not a special rare exception, many burn out even faster, others can’t even get themselves to get seriously started. It is definitively a lot more emotionally taxing and time consuming than learning to play card games to have some fun (not talking pro poker players).
I don’t regret it, something good came out of it though mostly indirectly, and I still try my hand at it every now and then. But let’s face it, there are quite a lot of men who do poorly with women and some make money selling them a solution which works for some, for many not so much. That’s what I experienced and observed in the scene. I can’t make it more clear than this.
Marcello,
Thank you for sharing your experience. First person testimony is always interesting. It is, however, one person’s experience and so a poor basis for generalization.
Many training courses have similar results — from sales to stop smoking — yet have in aggregate proven effectiveness. That’s why the “wisdom of crowds” works as a crude statistical measure more effective than asking individuals.
There is always people like Marcello, who dont like the truth after taking the red pill, and go begging for the steak, even though they now know it is not real. The “shaman’s maneuvre at an impossible angle” that is being organized and conducted in response to the female sexual liberation and feminism, is similar to letting the enemy deep inside your territory, then cutting its logistic line,…
Men will pretend to not care about women liberation, while they are in their 20’s and being passed around like a basketball, previous bounce on the ground, their liberation exploited to the maximum, then, when they are 30-35, the logistic lines will be closed, and them debased and ignored.
Im guessing the US will need to start building a psychiatric ward capacity of 5-10 million, just for the women.
Because, if anyone thinks that women are crazy now, you aint seen nothing yet.
Thanks for the article.
Note for readers about the quote Javier gives:
It’s from “Waiting For the Revolution” by Hakem Bey. The paragraph reads:
About the author, from his Wikipedia entry: “Peter Lamborn Wilson (pseudonym Hakim Bey; born 1945) is an American anarchist author, primarily known for advocating the concept of Temporary Autonomous Zones.”
Junkthink phony pseudoscience by FM. One of his weakest posts. A farrago of anecdotes and “just-so” stories, buttressed by so-called “evidence” from non-science journals without serious scientific peer review — rags like Justice Quarterly (lawyers yakking at other lawyers). Not to mention popular magazines like Psychology Today. Why not Maxim and QQ magazine?
Instead of tabulated numbers from objective double-blind tests showing how many people in a test pool of men using “game” got women to sleep with them, we get…a YouTube video showing some mook in a Lamborghini! Another YouTube video showing a silly 1986 movie that crushed Mickey Rourke’s career because it was so unwatchably bad.
Here’s a YouTube video showing “evidence” that all the world’s rulers are secretly reptilians from outer space:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT5-txAuzrY
Wow! Must be true!
FM’s posts have always veered between brilliant insights and absurd nonsense, and in this one FM has gone down the rabbit hole and made a fool of himself. He will of course retort (as usual) that anyone who disagrees is “daft,” that any objections “make no sense,” and the old standby that “I stopped reading at [ill in the blank].”
I stopped reading FM’s silly post at the point where he claims “None of this was news to street scientists working on the front lines of the gender wars” and “Slowly this knowledge spreads.”
In which peer-reviewed journals do these “street scientists” publish their findings? What sort of “work” do these so-called street “scientists” do — in which institutes of advanced study are they employed? Are we talking about “scientists” or guys in polyester suits with gold chains on their necks and a badda-bing line of patter leavened with cheap breath mints and cheesy tasseled loafers?
Does FM mean us to believe that whenever some “knowledge spreads” this means it must be valid? The “knowledge” of vaccine denialism has spread widely throughout America, to the point where California declared a whooping cough epidemic because of it — should we therefore judge vaccine denialism true because the “knowledge spreads”?
FM needs to read some of the scientific criticism of evolutionary psychology, a science all too prone to inventing clever-sounding stories to explain contingent social behavior. Once upon a time, scientists in the American south diagnosed a peculiar disease suffered by slaves: drapetomania, a form of organic brain damage that cause them to desire freedom. Today we recognize drapetomania as a made-up fantasy confected by deluded white supremists. Will FM recognize the tall tales of the self-serving pickup artists he describes as the quick-buck stories they actually are, ginned up in order to separate gullible male rubes from their free cash?
Nary a chance. If FM continues to post drivel like this, he can rename his blog TIGER BEAT ON THE POTOMAC. As a corrective, peruse:
FM presents the “dark triad” as though it’s settled science — but psychologists can’t even decide whether it’s the “dark triad” or the “dark tetrad.” Like so much psychological “science,” the DSMV IV manual has an eerie tendency to whisk previous “scientific facts” out of existence in response to changes in society, replacing them with others. Previous editions of the Diagnostic an Statistical Manual (DSMV) listed homosexuality as a mental illness. The current edition does not, of course. 50 years ago it was a “scientific act” that being gay was a form of mental illness, today it is no longer a “scientific act.” And so it goes…
Thomas,
I grow increasing convinced you read with blinders, carefully screening out anything you don’t believe and bizarrely misinterpreting the rest.
The references were from a wide range of sources. We can see your degree of fact-checking by your insult to Justice Quarterly:
Many of the others citations are peer-reviewed. Some are for a general audience, since few people find professional journals easy reading.
You interpretation of the YouTube videos was even weirder. They’re entertaining illustrations of the techniques used.
I could go on, but your comment is too willful a misreading to treat seriously.
Let’s see the validity of Thomas’ rebuttal citing Jezebel and The Atlantic as evidence. Here are the impact factors for some of the other professional journals I cite:
Impact factors are crude measures of impact or quality, but easy to track. Ranges 1-2 are mid-range in most fields, esp for narrow sub-fields (with small audiences). Overall among all journals an IF of 2+ puts a journal roughly in the top third of the distribution, 3+ in the top 20%, 4+ in the top 20%.
Citing Jezebel as rebuttal to journals, or to anything? Silly.
I find that most of the Game is about how to trick yourself that woman wants YOU. The trick is to keep consistently believing that she wants you just as you want her. The Game is what tricks you into doing that. No matter what she signals keep going selfconfidently and say what you mean, and we mean business. So just talking about sex openly is what will make her accept that. Sooner you start talking about sex the easier positive answer will be given. And easier and more relaxing the man is when talking and messaging about sex the message will be received and accepted, if not right away do not give up. This comes from that we are more open to strangers and refuse to insult strangers.
I find that the game is about what Jezebel publishes, but not only that, I find it has an extremely close relation with the lenght of the secondary key to the lower lock to the window to the right of the main door in your house. I also find the game to have a direct correlation with the size the pieces of filet mignon you prefer and if you put bacon around them or not.
Here is a text that will help understand where the game comes from it {The Manipulated Man} is from 1971 and it is written by a woman, Esther Vilar, and we all know that nobody has the ability to be more ruthless with women
than a woman. Enjoy.
Copy here. {<a href="The Manipulated Man
” title=”Amazon” target=”_blank”>available from Amazon.}
——————————
THE SLAVE’S HAPPINESS
The lemon-colored MG skids across the road and the woman driver brings it to a somewhat uncertain halt. She gets out and finds her left front tire flat. Without wasting a moment she prepares to fix it: she looks towards the passing cars as if expecting someone. Recognizing this standard international sign of woman in distress (‘weak female let down by male technology’), a station wagon draws up. The driver sees what is wrong at a glance and says comfortingly, `Don’t worry. We’ll fix that in a jiffy’ To prove his determination, he asks for her jack. He does not ask if she is capable of changing the tire herself because he knows – she is about thirty, smartly dressed and made-up – that she is not. Since she cannot find a jack, he fetches his own, together with his other tools.
Five minutes later the job is done and the punctured tire properly stowed. His hands are covered with grease. She offers him an embroidered handkerchief, which he politely refuses. He has a rag for such occasions in his tool box. The woman thanks him profusely, apologizing for her `typically feminine’ helplessness. She might have been there till dusk, she says, had he not stopped. He makes no reply and, as she gets back into the car, gallantly shuts the door for her. Through the wound-down window he advises her to have her tire patched at once and she promises to get her garage man to see to it that very evening. Then she drives off.
As the man collects his tools and goes back to his own car, he wishes he could wash his hands. His shoes – he has been standing in the mud while changing the tire – are not as clean as they should be (he is a salesman). What is more, he will have to hurry to keep his next appointment. As he starts the engine he thinks, `Women! One’s more stupid than the next’. He wonders what she would have done if he had not been there to help. He puts his foot on the accelerator and drives off – faster than usual. There is the delay to make up. After a while he starts to hum to himself. In a way, he is happy.
Almost any man would have behaved in the same manner – and so would most women. Without thinking, simply because men are men and women so different from them, a woman will make use of a man whenever there is an opportunity. What else could the woman have done when her car broke down? She has been taught to get a man to help. Thanks to his knowledge he was able to change the tire quickly – and at no cost to herself. True, he ruined his clothes, put his business in jeopardy, and endangered his own life by driving too fast afterwards. Had he found something else wrong with her car, however, he would have repaired that, too. That is what his knowledge of cars is for. Why should a woman learn to change a flat when the opposite sex (half the world’s population) is able and willing to do it for her? Women let men work for them, think for them and take on their responsibilities – in fact, they exploit them. Yet, since men are strong, intelligent and imaginative, while women are weak, unimaginative, and stupid, why isn’t it men who exploit women?
Could it be that strength, intelligence, and imagination are not prerequisites for power but merely qualifications for slavery? Could it be that the world is not being ruled by experts but by beings who are not fit for anything else – by women? And if this is so, how do women manage it so that their victims do not feel themselves cheated and humiliated, but rather believe to be themselves what they are least of all – masters ofthe universe? How do women manage to instil in men this sense of pride and superiority that inspires them to ever greater achievements?
Why are women never unmasked?
Javier,
Thank you for posting this. To avoid copyright violations, I edited it to just the first 800 words (OK as fair use), and added a link for people who wish to purchase here book.
You’re welcome FM Ed, my pleasure to contribute.
Great videos. Too many links but will click a few as the subject is fascinating.
Taylor’s is full of generalities and insights and stuff in a few minutes. How did things work out for Kim and Mickey, in general….in Life, too, I mean. Love the two at the Bar….did she really have a new red dress? They don’t really use Mace or Grizzly spray, just sorta. And who made the comment: “you ain’t seen nothin yet…” ? Oh yeah…….
A friend of mine married a woman the age of his grown adult children; she stuck around for say, nine years, then took the trophy 55 footer sailboat and now the Attorneys are using up a few hundred thousand and she’ll get a million or two. He asked me….my reply was you need game to identify women.😳 Dumbo.
Breton
Breton,
“Too many links”
No. Without citing sources people dismiss insights that break their personal worldview. That’s been a problem with science for centuries, just as strong today as 400 years ago for Galileo. So I give a blizzard.
As the comment by Thomas shows, closed minds create false stories so they can reject uncomfortable information. But with ample documentation, at least they have to display their bias to do so in the comments.
Breton,
“A friend of mine married a woman the age of his grown adult children”
That’s an ancient story. Probably an old story 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. It’s not the point of this post, which is the current revolution in the “war” between the sexes.
Oh yes an “old” story. I left out by design, the parts about the Shades of Grey-likeness, in this one. The relevance of your Post is that the old Story has been gamed by today’s subset of women.
……..
You’re married, FM. There are a lot of nuances to this revolutionary phenom that make it revolutionary. Women are so bloody confused today (men are doing passive and worse) that we can miss the clear dangers up ahead.
…….
Oh the Links are fine and your point is accurate. I just have only so much time to read. And the Powers that Be are busy trying to crush the dreaded Russkies. And Varoufakis is busy with the ongoing burial of Greece…..I’m busy!
Great Post with lotsa neat stuff. I wonder how 9 1/2 Weeks would fare today? Blockbuster?
Breton
This “invisibility” of women over 30-35 that I mentioned, the withdrawal of attention intended to debase women once they hit the wall, will become a main complain, you will begin to see articles like the following a lot, but written by 35-40 women after a few years of being ignored. Nothing turns a woman insane like men not paying attention to her, specially if she had experienced being the focus of it in the past. PS. Pay attention to the response her “friend” Jack gives her.
—————————————————————————–
“Why are older men looking at women half their age? It’s disheartening that men in their 50s seem so focused on looks.“, The Guardian, 21 February 2015.
It’s been a week of gloomy thoughts about what one applicant called “the packaging”. In fact, he wasn’t an applicant. He wrote specifically to tell me he wasn’t. “It’s a shame I don’t fancy you,” he said, “because otherwise you tick all the boxes.” Another said I sounded nice, but added: “Though unfortunately I have stringent physical criteria.”
There seems to be a gender imbalance, vis-a-vis the packaging thing. All the women I know are tolerant of middle age showing itself in a chap. We quite like a late flowering, in fact: the silvering, the smile lines, the coming of bodily sturdiness. We read these as signs that life has been lived and enjoyed. We read them as indicators of substance, of being substantial. In general, men don’t seem to grant us the same courtesy, at least not the men I meet online. They are highly focused on the packaging. It’s disheartening.
“I bet you were gorgeous when you were young,” I was told recently, via message, like that was supposed to be a compliment. Yes, I was gorgeous, ish, for a while, and self-absorbed, and shallow, and inexperienced, and over-sensitive and dull. You’re right, mate, you’d have much preferred me then. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. What does it mean to us, as women, to be told that we’re worth less than we used to be? No man I know has ever been told that his powers, his allure, his charm have faded, and that he has to face up to that redundancy. Many women I know in their 50s talk about their invisibility in public places. I’m sure a case could be made for invisibility as a liberating force in a woman’s life, but I am not the woman to make it, not this week at least, when I’ve been dissed or else flatly ignored by all the men I’ve said hello to.
It’s making me a bit rebellious, I admit. It’s making me want to look 50, and talk about 50, and stand firm with a whole movement of women, rejecting the pressure to try to look 35 for ever, throwing away our foundation garments and hair dye. I get these impulses and then I buy another stupid snake-oil anti-ageing cream. It’s true that men don’t see me any more. It’s sobering to walk down the street observing how the 50-year-old men behave, paying attention to what they’re looking at as they stroll along. They are not looking in shop windows. They are not looking at me. They are looking at women half their age.
I spoke to my friend Jack about this. “Men online are the same,” I told him. “They say they’re after true love but really what they’re after is the 25-year-olds.”
“Maybe they think they can have both,” Jack said.
“You’re not like that, though, are you? Given a choice, you’d pick the older, more interesting woman, the passionate, well-read, intrepid, low-maintenance woman.”
“Nice of you to think so,” Jack said. “But I’d go for the firm arse and tits, always, without question.”
I expressed mild disgust. “You just have to face facts,” he said. “Men are extremely visual creatures; we respond visually and we can’t help it. Well, we could probably help it, but we don’t want to. Online dating is giving these idiots the impression that they can snag a honey. Most of them have no chance, of course. Don’t you look at the 25-year-old men in the street?”
‘I don’t. Honestly. They have mothers of my age, so it’d be like randily pursuing the children of your friends. There’s something inherently unsexy about that whole set-up.”
“Sexy as hell.”
“It’s the 55-year-old, slightly rumpled silver foxes that I stare at, the tall well-travelled well-used ones. But they don’t see me.”
“Perhaps you should wear brighter colours.”
I looked down at myself. “I like navy blue. What’s wrong with navy blue?”
“These are just facts. Men like youth. They like long hair. They like colour. They like slender, as well. Sorry. You’re going to have to lose weight and grow your hair and wear red if you want the silver foxes to see you.”
The question is, should I be prepared to change?
Javier,
I saw that. It’s sad that this women is unaware of biology. The whole sex thing, and the vast array of hard-wired machinery in our heads (of both men and women), is directed to reproduction. Matching men with young fertile women. She might as well object to the 24-hour day.
Interesting analysis. Two comments:
1. Your arguments seems to be that the early adopters are headed down this path and so will we all eventually. You’ve made a compelling point that there are early adopters here, but I don’t see it producing benefits to the tune that this is necessarily a trend that won’t die out or get replaced. Cassettes are better than records in a lot of ways but we don’t still use them when better methods and products exist. Game is “weak” in a lot of ways. It is resource and time intensive in a way that bars people from using it long term. Not only that, but game is a socially destructive pursuit. It is the relationship equivalent of payday loans.
I think that a far more likely scenario than game sweeping the country, you’ll have game being popular amongst a certain crowd of men while religious communities remain roughly the way they have been and most men muddling about in the middle trying to do whatever works with minimal effort.
2. While you are correct that women now have greater opportunities to pursue their fantasies than ever before and pop culture certainly caters to a lot of those fantasies, I don’t think you’ve demonstrated that all or even a majority of people pursue their fantasies all or even most of the time. A lot of people fantasize about winning the lottery or getting something for nothing in general but do not purchase a ticket or invest in such opportunities. To me this sounds like a “since the lottery is legal, everyone will buy tickets!” sort of argument that doesn’t really hold water. People are too varied. Sure there are some who will get wrapped up in it and some hucksters will string them along, but that doesn’t seem revolutionary. That seems highly consistent with human behavior over the long haul.
PF Khans,
I would prefer that people provide criticism to direct quotes. Other websites have established that as best practice. I do so. It creates better discussion.
(1) “and so will we all eventually.”
I said nothing remotely like that. If I said there was a new craze for tennis, would you assume that meant that everybody would be playing it?
(2) “I don’t see it producing benefits to the tune that this is necessarily a trend that won’t die out or get replaced.”
What’s you basis for such a statement? All we know is that increasing numbers of men are using game, as shown by the growth of books, videos, and websites about it — and that it’s grown so common that the general media are debunking it. As in the new film “Kingsman”, where the unscrupulous of the agent trainees uses a “neg” as an opener when ordered to pick up a girl.
(3) “you’ll have game being popular amongst a certain crowd of men while religious communities remain roughly the way they have been”
That’s an absurd strawman reply. Who on this planet expects men in “religious communities” to adopt game?
(4) “I don’t think you’ve demonstrated that all or even a majority of people pursue their fantasies all or even most of the time.”
I said no such thing, and so don’t need to “demonstrate” it. People’s fantasies are window to see people’s values, dreams, and goals. That’s all.
(5) “since the lottery is legal, everyone will buy tickets!” sort of argument that doesn’t really hold water.”
This is the classic “make stuff up and give rebuttal to it.” You have given a convincing rebuttal to yourself.
(6) “People are too varied.”
Duh.
(7) “and some hucksters will string them along, but that doesn’t seem revolutionary.”
It looks like you are the one stating beliefs without giving the slightest evidence. Also, your confidence is impressive that you’re much smarter than all the people learning about and using game.
Editor,
My apologies for not following the rules. You run a fine website and I have no intention of wasting your time.
“(1) “and so will we all eventually.”
I said nothing remotely like that. If I said there was a new craze for tennis, would you assume that meant that everybody would be playing it?”
You also started off saying: “Revolutions begin in the shadows, emerging only when they grow too large for society to ignore.”
This is not an ambiguous statement. As it is your summary, your purpose in this article appears to me to be about how Game represents a revolutionary new approach to the interactions between men and women. You then go on to show a playwright’s interpretation of the “war between the sexes” that discusses this as an age old phenomenon of incremental escalation to be matched by one on the other side. This is the opposite of revolutionary, it appears to me that its part of the way the world works.
And I think that a number of our disagreements stem from this. If it’s a revolution, no one will be spared involvement in this. It will change the way 90+% of us live. I can’t see game doing this, but perhaps you have a different criteria for your essay. If it’s a revolutionary change of dynamic, why wouldn’t it effect men from religious communities? If it’s a force that will come to be accepted by society at large, why won’t it have an impact on varied peoples? Ultimately, you wrote an essay that I assumed to be about a revolution that was in the works and forth coming. I see activities that are different than the past, I don’t see a revolution.
“(2) “I don’t see it producing benefits to the tune that this is necessarily a trend that won’t die out or get replaced.”
What’s you basis for such a statement? All we know is that increasing numbers of men are using game, as shown by the growth of books, videos, and websites about it — and that it’s grown so common that the general media are debunking it. As in the new film “Kingsman”, where the unscrupulous of the agent trainees uses a “neg” as an opener when ordered to pick up a girl.”
I think I could make the same statement 3 years ago about how 3D TVs were going to be the future; it was all over the place in media and widely discussed and promoted…and now no one cares because it wasn’t that great a methodology.
You’ve convinced me that this is certainly a reaction to the way the relationship of the sexes has played out in the past 40-50 years, and you’ve convinced me that this movement has its promoters. I’m not convinced that this isn’t just all flash in a pan. And movies are movies. To me a movie scene is less than an anecdote because it is staged; you seem to have a higher opinion of them than anecdote. Why is that?
“(4) “I don’t think you’ve demonstrated that all or even a majority of people pursue their fantasies all or even most of the time.”
I said no such thing, and so don’t need to “demonstrate” it. People’s fantasies are window to see people’s values, dreams, and goals. That’s all.”
You also wrote:
“First, women’s hypergamy was let loose, their drive to seek men of higher status (e.g., the combination of wealth, income, status, height, appearance, charisma). Second, restraints were lifted on their love of men with the Dark Triad of behavioral traits.”
And finally you used Fifty Shades of Grey to showcase what women want through the lens of highly successful media.
All of things speak to your view as to what women want/desire. These are pretty normal statements about the desires of women from a popular culture standpoint. They have validity as such. Do you have evidence that women’s hypergamy was let loose more than before? Are there now more women who marry up than before? Are there more relationships where poor women pair out of poverty? And the restraints being lifted off of pursuing the “bad boy” similarly requires a demonstration that that occurred. I don’t need to be convinced that the majority of women have some sort of fantasy about one or the other or both, but you do need to demonstrate that this is more than just a fantasy AND that it is actually a fantasy that is causing such a change in mating behavior that it makes Game a good strategy.
PF Khans
RF Khan,
I don’t have time to go into this in detail, so here’s just a few brief replies. None of this is complex or difficult to understand.
(1) Game is not the counter-revolution. Game is one aspect of the counter-revolution to feminism, perhaps the first wave. I’ve added text to explicitly state that, although it seems quite obvious (game isn’t that big a thing).
(2) “the same statement 3 years ago about how 3D TVs were going to be the future”
Were millions of people using 3D TVs 3 years ago? No. That’s a category error.
(3) These behaviors by women — hypergamy and pursuit of men with dark triad characteristics — are not “pursuing their fantasies”. Rather their fantasies are expressions in extreme form of these behaviors, both being culturally conditioned. “50 shades of grey” indicates what women want in the same sense as men looking at strippers and porn stars. They’re exaggerations. Few men pursue strippers and porn actresses; few women pursue rich sadists or pirates. Again, this seems obvious.
(4) These behaviors by women are fairly well-documented by research. It’s hardly something I “fail to demonstrate.” That’s why I went to the considerable difficulty of providing all those links at the end. What more do you want me to do for you?
If you disagree I suggest that instead of just saying everybody is wrong (the guys using game, the scientists investigating these matters), I suggest that you provide recent peer-reviewed research refuting these studies (they’re probably is some).
(5) “You then go on to show a playwright’s interpretation of the “war between the sexes” that discusses this as an age old phenomenon of incremental escalation to be matched by one on the other side. This is the opposite of revolutionary”
No. It’s the cyclical process of revolution and counterrevolution. As Hegel expressed it, the eternal process of thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Each step is a revolution to the people of that time and place.
The idea of using Fouth Generation Warfare, or even better, Open Sorce Insurgency to annihilate feminism is picking up speed: “Gamers Are Now Engaged In 4th-Generation Warfare.“. Opening:
——————————
“Then, gentlemen,” said Napoleon, “let us wait a little; when your enemy is executing a false movement, never interrupt him.”
—Attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, 1805
I am not normally in the habit of making predictions. Yet based on what I have seen and heard and learned over the past year, I will make a prediction for the record which readers at this site and elsewhere can, and should, hold me to account. I predict that when cultural historians look back at #Gamergate, they will judge it to be one of the defining fronts of the newest phase of the various wars that have been fought to save traditional Western culture. And, if things continue to move the way I expect them to, they will find that unlike previous battles in the culture wars, we will have won this one.
We will win because our tactics are so fundamentally different from what our enemies expect—they emphasise speed, flexibility, surprise, and individual initiative, while our enemies remain tied to moribund doctrines that emphasise overwhelming application of massive force to individual targets. We will win, above all, because we will have captured the moral high-ground in this conflict. And once we align the mental and physical levels of this war with the moral level—as we are already beginning to do—we will become unstoppable.
When historians look back at this movement, decades or even centuries from now, they will see a powerful example of the applications of what was once a radical and bizarre new theory of conflict called Fourth-Generation Warfare. And what we have achieved, and what we will achieve, will be used as a case study to show the destabilising power of such warfare against entrenched interests that seek to subvert values that the rest of us hold dear.
In order to understand just why that is such a radical statement, you have to understand exactly how unusual it is for traditionalists of any stripe in any of the past three generations to win these kinds of conflicts. …
We Lost the Culture Wars
Our modern cultural wasteland is the result of a painful and difficult truth to hear from a lot of readers, especially those of a more politically and philosophically conservative stripe (like me): We have spent the last forty years LOSING the war to preserve our culture. We have seen the most important and fundamental values of our society torn down and destroyed by vandals who used the tactics of cultural Marxism to subvert our society. We have seen abominations like gay “marriage”, no-fault divorce (read: his-fault), government-subsidised abortion and freely available birth control, and universal suffrage become “acceptable”—as if these cultural freak shows could ever possibly be considered “normal”. We have seen our most fundamental rights of conscience, association, freedom of thought, free exercise of religious belief, and freedom of action circumscribed, shrunk, and destroyed before our eyes. And we let it happen.
The self-aware man who looks at how this happened will come away with a certain cold appreciation for the tactics of those who imposed this ashen, burning Hell upon us. …
Javier,
Again, copyright issues! I cut this down to the first 600 words (fair use).
As for his forecast, I wish he was taking bets. I’ll bet his grandfather said the same about first wave feminism (women in the office, and voting), and his father about second wave feminism. Also, his idea of “rights” seems to involve much control over other people’s behavior — backed by the police power of the State.
FM Ed,
Fair use was 800 words yesterday, and ROK has never made any issues of people spreading the message.
His grandfather and father never though of applying state of the art warfare theory to the gender war.
Javier,
I don’t have a lot of time for this. I just cut at what seemed to be a logical point. I don’t know ROK, and certainly don’t have the time to research material in comments for possible copyright violations.
Javier,
“His grandfather and father never though of applying state of the art warfare theory to the gender war.”
I don’t have examples to show otherwise, but I suspect that’s not correct. Analogies between “war” and the “war between the sexes” are ancient, as shown by the Shaw quote I opened with. Guessing, I suspect that people have drawn inspiration from one to apply to the other.
Fair enough, FM Ed, meet ROK http://www.returnofkings.com
aka Kings Media.
FM Ed,
“I don’t have examples to show otherwise, but I suspect that’s not correct. Analogies between “war” and the “war between the sexes” are ancient, as shown by the Shaw quote I opened with. Guessing, I suspect that people have drawn inspiration from one to apply to the other.”
I suspect that is correct too, but 4GW, warfare with an understanding of its moral and psychological dimensions, did not even exist in the time of his granpa,
and was just coming up in the time of his dad.
2GW and 3GW were not really useful theory to extrapolate.
The Lowell Lectures On The Ascent Of Man (1894) (No Copyright Issues)
https://archive.org/details/lowelllectures00drumiala
CHAPTER IX. THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER
IN last chapter we watched the beautiful experiment of Nature making Mothers. We saw how the young produced at one birth were gradually reduced in numbers until it was possible for affection to concentrate upon a single object; how that object was delayed in birth till it was a likeable and presentable thing; how it was tied to its mother’s side by physical bonds, and hindered there for years to give time for the Mother’s care to ripen into love. We saw, what was still more instructive, that Nature, when she had laid the train for perfecting these arrangements, gave up making any more animals; and that there were physiological reasonswhy this well−mothered class should survive beyond all others, and, by sheer physiological fitness,henceforth dominate the world. But there was still a crowning task to accomplish. The world was now beginning to fill with Mothers, but there were no Fathers. During all this long process the Father has not even been named. Nothing that has been done has touched or concerned him almost in the least degree. He has gone his own way, lived outside all these changes; and while Nature has succeeded in moulding a human Mother and a human child, he still wanders in the forest a savage and unblessed soul.
This time for him, nevertheless, is not lost. In his own way he is also at school, and learning lessons which will one day be equally needed by humanity. The acquisitions of the manly life are as necessary to human character as the virtues which gather their sweetness by the cradle; and these robuster elementsstrength, courage, manliness, endurance, self−reliancecould only have been secured away from domestic cares. Apart from that, it was not necessary to put the Father through the same mill as the Mother. Whatever the Mother gained would be handed on to her boys as well as to her girls, and with the law of heredity to square accounts, it was unnecessary for each of the two great sides of humanity to make the same investments. By one acquiring one set of virtues and the other another, the blend in the end would be the richer; and, without obliterating the eternal individualities of each, the measure of completeness would be gained more quickly for the race. Before heredity, however, could do its work upon the Father a certain basis had to be laid. With his original habits he would squander the hereditary gains as fast as he received them, and unless some change was brought about in his mode of life the old wild blood in his veins would counteract the gentler influence, and leave all the Mother’s work in vain. Hence Nature had to set about another long and difficult process to make the savage Father a reformed character.
The Evolution of a Father is not so beautiful a process as the Evolution of a Mother, but it was almost as formidable a problem to attack. As much depended on it, as we shall see, as the training of the mother; and though it began later, it required the bringing about of one or two changes in Nature as novel as any that preceded it. When the work was begun, the Father was in a much worse plight, so far as training for family life was concerned, than the Mother. If Maternity was at a feeble level in the lower reaches of Nature, Paternity was non−existent. Among a few Invertebrates the male parent took a passing share in the care of the egg, but it is not until we are all but at the top that fatherly interest finds any real expression. Among the
Birds, the parents unite together in most cases to build the nest, the Father doing the rough work of bringing in moss and twigs, while the more trusty Mother does the actual work. When the eggs are laid, the male parent also takes his turn at incubation; supplies food and protection; and lingers round the place of birth to defend the fledglings to the last. When we leave the Birds, however, and pass on to the Mammals, the Fathers are nearly all backsliders. Many are not only indifferent to their young, but hostile: and among the Carnivora the Mothers have frequently to hide their little ones in case the father eats them.
We have another and a more serious count against early Fatherhood. If the Love of Father for child was in this backward state, infinitely more grave was the condition of things between him and the Mother. Probably we have all taken it for granted that husbands and wives have always loved one another. Evolution takes nothing for granted. The affection between husband and wife is, of all the immeasurable forms of Love, the most beautiful, the most lasting, and the most divine: yet up to this time we have not been able even to record its existence. The finished results of Evolution appear so natural to us, looking back from this late day, that we continually ignore the difficulties it had to meet, and forget how every single step in progress from the lowest to the highest had to be carried at the bayonet’s point. The most informed naturalist probably has never given Nature credit for a thousandth part of the work she has done, or has succeeded in presenting to his mind more than a surface outline of the gigantic series of problems she had to solve. In lower Nature, as a simple fact, male and female do not love one another; and in the lower reaches of Human−Nature, husband and wife do not love one another. Among exceptional nations, for the last few hours of the world’s history, husbands and wives have truly loved; but for the vast mass of Mankind, during the long ages which preceded historic times, conjugal love was probably all but unknown. ….
Definitely will read this book.
I wonder if conjugal love is an expression of evolution? I think children from loving families are more fit, especially regarding them being less self destructive. I don’t know in other aspects
John,
In this, as in so many things, we’re doing an experiment with few precedents — on a national or even global scale: raising children in unstable environments, with multiple adults and children in the house, often a single adult, without much support from clan or community. In another 20 or 40 years we’ll have an answer for you. Perhaps sooner, since bad results sometimes manifest themselves early in an experiment.
Is The Manosphere Having An Effect Upon Modern Society? By Ray Wolfson
There is a lot of media buzz going on in regards to the manosphere. This is in part due to the Elliot Rodger shootings and in general because word has slowly spread, such that mainstream news outlets including The Washington Post and Daily Mail have started mentioning redpill, PUA, game, and the manosphere in general, as well as specifically mentioning Return Of Kings and Roosh.
I will take it upon myself to write some sort of clarification. I will avoid engaging in a negative intellectual blow-by-blow debate, since that is not in the spirit of ‘red pill’. The best battle is one that is never fought, and thus I will instead provide a general direction to our philosophy, before it gets swamped with media outrage and ridiculous distortions.
Manosphere
The general emphasis is a positive one in which men exchange information, largely based on personal experiences. They encourage one another to focus on self-improvement. Of course from time to time there may be articles with a more critical or negative tone, but the most appreciated content encourages men to own their ‘shit’. …
Game
With women’s sexual liberation and birth control, the dating market has changed. There is little respect for the chivalrous man who wants to fall in love or settle down for the simple reason that women, especially those in their 20s and early 30s, are not thinking ‘long term’. They have been repeatedly told since the 1960s that they should sleep around, that careers are more important than kids, and that divorce is as easy and common as a Starbucks run. When the paper cup is empty, don’t refill it—ditch it and pick up a fresh one.
To the heart-felt young gentleman who simply wants to engage a girl with a view to his future sex-life, meeting and dating women can now be an incredibly frustrating process (see Elliot Rodger). Everything young men have been told in regards to wooing a potential mate is patently wrong. There is no need to impress a girl with your status and wealth if she is not interested in marriage in the first place and simply wants a fun night out (and a damn good fuck afterwards).
The “Pick-up Artist”
Enter the pickup artist. He simply employs fun, focused, empowering and male orientated leadership techniques to wow the girls (and get them into bed). Welcome to the 21st century. Unfortunately you cannot tell women to have their sexual freedom and get their jollies on, then expect men to ponce about like Victorian gentlemen going down on bended knee with a diamond ring. Someone had the bright idea to tell girls to forget about kids and family, go out and get laid, behave more like men and hammer into higher education and careers. The real men have responded accordingly, understanding that there are clear differences, mentally, physically, emotionally and sexually (doh!) between males and females, regardless of their financial status or occupation. Apples and oranges are not equal (but they can still taste good together in a smoothie).
Fifty years ago, ladies and gentlemen would court each other for some extended period of time before the man pronouncing his undying love would offer her a sparkly fragment of polished compressed carbon as confirmation of this fact. He’d then wait another few months to get laid to get married. Today you buy her a mojito and then invite yourself back to her place, doing your damnedest to ditch her chubby friend, or failing that, simply angle for a threesome.
Whether you bother to exchange phone numbers or even first names is entirely optional. After sharing bodily juices, while realizing her mattress is not as comfortable as your own, you make a quick escape before dawn. Seeing each other again is unlikely and she’s just as grateful for avoiding your parrot cage and hungover breath as you are not to see her without makeup. For that single night you will forever be Brad and Angelina.
Some people call this progress—I just call it the modern ‘hook-up’ culture. Red pill and most specifically PUA doesn’t necessarily make judgments about what is right or wrong. Rather, it embraces the situation and puts it to the best advantage. If a man cannot find himself a sexual partner with a diamond ring, he can most certainly find one with pickup techniques. Babies are no longer in the picture so it’s only about having some fucking pleasure, both literally and metaphorically.
Whores And Players
Many men lament the fact that true love is dead. They wonder how on earth they might be able to have children, much less hold down a proper wife and household, but they take the attitude that while the music is playing, keep on dancing. I don’t known what you call a woman that fucks around simply for free drinks or the head rush of a minor social validation, but in the past she was called a whore. These days it’s most certainly nigh impossible to find a true lady who wants to court for months on end with a view to wed a gentleman. No sir, she’d rather have a cocktail and quick fuck. She needs to get some sleep as she has a business meeting in the morning.
I don’t know what you call a man who’s slept with hundreds of women. I most certainly do know that any man who says he wouldn’t envy doing that is a liar. Most females are willing and able to ride the cock carousel, so today any man can become a player. If whores would like to find a more flattering term for themselves they are most certainly welcome to try. However, since women always angle for benefits in return for sex, unless they are true ladies looking to wed, they are whores to some extent. It’s just the cold hard reality of sexual liberation. If the manosphere isn’t the next underground movement to hit the stadium circuit tour, swinger parties might well be. At orgies, men and women are more or less sexually equal, albeit corrupted in a mating frenzy more suited to insects or rodents.
What is probably most misunderstood in the mass media is that players love women. They respect their choices to sleep around, pay their own rent and follow a professional career path. Yes sir. No one wants to get married and have kids, that’s far too much hard work. Our selfish divorcee, baby boomer parents educated us well in that department. …(Continues)
Taylor Swift explains how women date betas but love alphas
She lets betas buy her dinner and movies, then goes home for her second date with an alpha. She contracts their characteristics with brutal honesty, and confesses which she truly loves. Of course she “loved” the alpha (past tense), because that’s the way it is.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/oAvkyzMLcOo]
Now, it is interesting to explore the adjacent possible next developments in the next 10 years. Game can be said to be on part of a pincer maneuver, the second part is the Marriage Strike, the combination of game, attention being withdrawed at 30-35 and the inability to marry at any age after say 25 is what is what shuts of the logistical lines of validation and physical supplies.
Throw into the mix two imminent technologies: Sexbots/VR and Male contraceptives. The the expansion of the manosphere popularity will likely have the following effects:
(Continues…)
Javier,
You are going where we date to, these days. I’ve wanted to write about these things, which might reshape the world as people now in their teens grow into maturity. The male contraceptive pill might depress fertility levels — already at or below replacement in the developed nations, to far below replacement. Both men and women might have a lower propensity to marry. Women already initiate most of the divorces; it’s not clear that the institution as reformed works well for men with children (the wife can leave at will, remarry, while he gets to pay for the next decade or so).
The future is always “the unknown country”. No matter how regularly each generation discovers that, they’re always quite confident they see the outlines of the future. My guess is that the rate of change will accelerate, perhaps back to those of the incredible 1870-1920 period.
– Even in these circumstances women will continue to want to have children, between 30 and 45. If they cannot get a male to get them pregnant by 30 they will freeze their eggs and go to sperm banks.
This will likely make it so that 75-80% of children are born to single mom households by 2025. The government will be put between a rock and a hard place, in one hand they will need to incentivize single moms, being their only source of new taxpayers, on the other even them and their political base will come to understand that this is not gonna end well.
-The Manosphere will shift to an Open Source Warfare model of conflict
OPEN SOURCE INSURGENCY >> How to start (With Author Authorization)
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/03/starting-an-ope.html
By John Robb
Superempowerment — an increase in the ability of individuals and small groups to accomplish tasks/work through the combination of rapid improvements in technological tools and access to global networks — has enabled small groups to radically increase their productivity in conflict. For example, if a small group disrupts a system or a network by attacking systempunkts, it can amplify the results of its attacks to achieve as much as a 1,400,000 percent return on investment.
Open source warfare is an organizational method by which a large collection of small, violent, superempowered groups can work together to take on much larger foes (usually hierarchies). It is also a method of organization that can be applied to non-violent struggles. It enables:
-High rates of innovation.
-Increased survivability among the participant groups.
-More frequent attacks and an ability to swarm targets.
Here are some suggestions (this is but one of many methods based on recent history, I’m sure that over time a better method will emerge) for building an open source insurgency:
A)The plausible promise. The idea that holds the open source insurgency together. The plausible promise is composed of:
-An enemy. The enemy serves as the target of attacks. This enemy can either be either received or manufactured (any group or organization that can be depicted as a threat). The enemy can be any group that currently holds and exerts power: invader, the government, a company, an ethnic group, or a private organization.
-A goal. This objective animates the group. Because of the diversity of the groups and individuals that join together in an open source insurgency, the only goal that works is simple and extremely high level. More complex goal setting is impossible, since it will fracture/fork the insurgency.
-A demonstration. Viability. An attack that demonstrates that its possible to win against the enemy. It deflates any aura of invincibility that the enemy may currently enjoy. The demonstration serves as a rallying cry for the insurgency.
B)The foco. Every open source insurgency is ignited by a small founding group, a foco in guerrilla parlance. The foco sets the original goal and conducts the operation that provides the insurgency with its demonstration of viability. It’s important to understand that in order to grow an open source insurgency, the founding group or individuals must follow a simple path:
-Relinquish. Give up any control over the insurgency gained during its early phases. In practice, this means giving up control of how the goal is achieved, who may participate, how to communicate, etc. The only control that remains is the power of example and respect gained through being effective.
-Resist (temptation). Stay small. Don’t grow to a size that makes the original group easy for the enemy to target (very few new members). Further, don’t establish a formal collection of groups, a hierarchy of control, or set forth a complex agenda. This will only serve to alienate and fragment/fork the insurgency. In some cases, it will make the foco a target of the insurgency itself. It will also slow any advancement on the objective since it limits potential pathways/innovation.
-Share. Provide resources, ideas, information, knowledge, recruits, etc. with other groups and individuals that join the insurgency. Share everything possible that doesn’t directly compromise the foco’s integrity (operational security and viability). Expect sharing in return.
Javier,
This is absurd, imo. Men don’t have any of the characteristics required for an open source insurgency. I doubt the concept even makes sense in this context, unless expressed as a political movement to change the legal structure.
-The pharmaceutical/psychologists complex will support this, because they know it will double their market for the best seller drugs: anti-deppresants, and jumpstart the great business of fertility treatments.
“This is absurd, imo. Men don’t have any of the characteristics required for an open source insurgency. ”
Please see:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/opensource-warfare
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7275/full/nature08631.html
Also see: Anonymous GamerGate ISIS
“unless expressed as a political movement to change the legal structure.”
No, reform is a dead-end game, systems disruption, social engineering and open source warfare are the name of the game now. Creative destruction, so tu speak.
In other words: When the rats live in your kitchen for a century they have tunnels all through your house, they are in the walls, in the ceiling, everywhere, progressively weakening the foundations and structure. By then, it’s too hard to get them out, too late, by then your only option is to demolish your house and make your next one rat proof.
FM Ed,
If the Manosphere is not transitioning to and OSW model, why do you thing the RedPill/GamerGate Foco is reading Lind, Boyd, Van Creveld and Hammes? Just a coincidence?
Addendum: The “What Bear?” Trap… Khruschev and Kennedy go hunting for bear. They stalk it whole morning and finally catch up with it and shoot it. They agree that Khruschev stays with the bear and Kennedy fetches a truck. When Kennedy comes back, Khruschev is there but no bear.
Kennedy: “Nikita, where is the Bear?”
Khruschev: “What bear?”
Kennedy: “Don’t you remember? we were stalking the bear whole day?”
Khruschev: “Yep”
Kennedy: “And finally we caught up with it?”
Khruschev: “Yes we did.”
Kennedy: “And then we shot it dead.”
Khruschev: “Good shots, too.”
Kennedy: “And then we agreed that you stay with it and I will get the truck.”
Khruschev: “Yes, we needed a vehicle to move it.”
Kennedy: “So Nikita, where is the bear?”
Khruschev: “What bear?”
One of my plates recently asked me a very interesting question, “Why are you so afraid of marriage?”
I live in a non-western location where divorce rape laws do not exist and feminism has not yet penetrated. So when this question is asked, it’s not an attempt at shaming, it’s sincere. This girl, whom I’ve known for a while now, could not understand why I was so opposed to the idea of marriage. This is what I told her. Divorce Rape
She does not know about divorce rape laws as they exist in the US. If I marry an American girl, statistically, she can take anything at any moment – after all, half of marriages end in divorce and almost 80% of those are initiated by the wife. But worst of all this creates an imbalance in the relationship.
Men and women both should have to try to keep to a certain level of decency and satisfy their partner. In a traditional relationship, if the man was unhappy he might leave. But in the current arrangement, he doesn’t have this option. If he is married he is financially bound to her. He does not have the option to leave, without being raped financially. …
Javier,
I’ve been a good sport about this, but please. You’re carpet bombing the thread. Nobody is going to read all this, let alone comment. It’s good that you have an interest in this, and your obviously have a lot to say. But you’re talking to yourself. Threads are conversations, and you have to let others in. Serial comments just drive them away.
Also, no more multi-hundred word lifts of others’ text. It’s either improper practice unless specifically authorized, or a copyright violation. I’m going to delete any more of these. Give a summary, an excerpt, and a link. Let people decide if they want to read it.
“tl;dr if you like it you should put a ring on it” “Single Ladies”
” I’ve been a good sport about this, but please. You’re carpet bombing the thread. Nobody is going to read all this, let alone comment. It’s good that you have an interest in this, and your obviously have a lot to say. But you’re talking to yourself. Threads are conversations, and you have to let others in. Serial comments just drive them away.
Also, no more multi-hundred word lifts of others’ text. It’s either improper practice unless specifically authorized, or a copyright violation. I’m going to delete any more of these. Give a summary, an excerpt, and a link. Let people decide if they want to read it.”
Roger That, I will adapt.
One thing is true for sure about what you say, you are a good sport.
I wont deny that
“No. It’s the cyclical process of revolution and counterrevolution. As Hegel expressed it, the eternal process of thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Each step is a revolution to the people of that time and place.”
I agree with that
Emily Dickenson explains why so many women find 50 Shades of Grey fascinating…
… along with the massive literature of “bodice-ripping” romance novels.
I know that this conversation is now several years old, but as i read through the often long winded reposts in this thread, i came across this last comment. I had to insert this thought here, since it was quite apropos and you might find it interesting, and perhaps a bit humorous.
Many years ago when i lived in Virginia, I had met a woman that i became good friends with, not romantically, but just totally platonic. However she often would remark regarding her relationships with men that a true gentleman should be able to decipher when “No” means No, and when “No” means YES. To her, it was part of the courtship/seduction process. Given that now no person who is sober and sane and not a criminal would proceed after a woman said no, unless wanting to spend some time in court, and perhaps jail, I have often thought about those conversations over the years.
Great series, by the way.
Barry,
Amazing how that statement by her was considered obvious in the past but considered problematic today. The reason why? In former days days rape was physical assault. Saying no was a signal. Gentle kino after that courted a slap, not a rape accusation. Sex was presumed to be consensual if she did not physically resist — and was conscious.
Today proceeding with consensual sex after she says “no” can be considered rape if she convinces a jury that she was unable to give consent. That might mean that the guy was an authority figure (no matter how remotely), or that he applied psychic pressure, or that she had a few drinks. Or that she got pissed off days, weeks, months, or years later and says such.
This is part of the woman’s option in modern America. In any interpersonal context she can be Xena or Cinderella. If the former, the reply to any offer of help is “I can take care of myself.” In TV and films, regular women say that in response to hazardous situations that would make a Marine nervous. You have disrespected her autonomy, you pig.
If the latter, she is a frail flower who can easily be manipulated and forced — without actual use of force. She can choose which role to adopt, and switch in a heartbeat. The result sometimes seems a bit odd, as with the rape scandals among the young warriors at the Air Force Academy. Tougher than guys sometimes, sometimes needed 19th C level of protection.
From my 15 years as a leader in the Boy Scouts, I know many young men. Many find this behavior difficult to cope with. Some consider it psychotic. Sexual dynamics among young people are difficult in most societies (hence often tightly regulated), but they seem extremely so today. As seen in the number of young men dropping out of the game — for booze, drugs, sports, and games.
Interesting times ahead.