Source: XKCD. Click for larger image.
While I’m a little reluctant to post back-to-back XKCD comics I can’t help that Randall Munroe would post one of my own heartfelt dreams right after I stumbled upon an excellent relationship-related one from a couple of years ago.
I might have passed anyway (XKCD is said to now be the most popular web comic in the world so sooner or later you’d probably see this one) but… but…
Dang it, the impulses to operate on relationships as if they were abstract transactions appear to be as bottomless as the impulse to roundly mock such antics.
The problem, I think, is that you really can adapt modeling from statistical sciences to discuss aggregate, abstract behavior. After all, for instance, X number of weddings are performed every year at Y average cost, and those numbers do vary over time. And the number of flowers and chocolates purchased really does spike around Valentine’s Day.
Things get trickier when one individual tries to uses such information with another individual. (For instance modeling doesn’t reveal how many partners pretend to be pleased to receive a dozen roses that their partner pretended to want to give because each believes it’s expected of them.)
Tyler Cowan of Marginal Revolution provides another good example of what’s probably macro-level wisdom that can only result in micro-level folly for individuals who try to do anything with it.
Let’s assume that game advocates are correct that, at current margins, “game” can yield the individual gamer higher returns without having to pay an offsetting price in terms of greater expense, less pleasant conquests, etc. and thus game is a net gain for the individual practitioner. Maybe not, but let’s say.
...
If there is no price mechanism to choke off the returns from game, the implied result is the crowding of men around each group of game-ready women. Over time, the average returns of game are competed down to…by the typical equalization assumption…the returns of non-game.
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If gamers are disillusioned romantics, the women who are courted by sensitive romantics also lose when there is a shift of male effort into game. Those women now find there are fewer bids of truly romantic interest. Consistently romantic men, who do not grow disillusioned and shift into game, will gain through superior selection and more favorable terms of trade.
The big issue, one I’m pretty sure Cowen is already on board with, is that the whole notion of “game,” and it’s corresponding notion of “the rules” is that it tends to operate precisely at the margin where those individuals who are unable to form authentic relationships begin to strategize ways to generate inauthentic ones.
Once you get that you realize it really would be good if adherents of “the game” and “the rules” could find a way to pair up. Because with or without their respective strategies they mostly really would be happier in relationships with each other and not just because, as the XKCD character says, the rest of us could be left alone forever.
First of all, you make the
Submitted by Eurosabra (not verified) on Fri, 2010-10-01 11:58.First of all, you make the dubious claims of "inauthenticity" that all critics of Game do, and then you claim it is marginal. It is NOT marginal, it is a map to pushing the erotic buttons of about 10-30% of women 18-25 years old in English-speaking cultures, who can be identified as thrill-seeking risk-takers by their dress, mannerisms, choice of entertainment venues, and patterns of social interaction. One of the most interesting aspects I have found as a practitioner of "Deep Inner Game" (one of the scuola opposed to Mystery, etc) is how amazingly EASY it is for a "nightclub promoter"—really a leaflet distributor—to "run" Mystery's scripts and thumb-war touching "on" a college-age tourist in a mall, and "pull" her to his nearby apartment. This tends to lead to blazing contempt for women, among other things. The other item is that learning script-and-routine based Game takes time and effort, and is probably beyond the intellectual reach of a certain percentage of men, and a larger percentage will never adequately overcome their fear of approaching women. Cowen is right that it mimes a status-boost, what he is wrong about is the marginal utility of that status boost, when in fact what is changing is the woman's FEELINGS.
I don't feel that my being attractive to 1 in 50 women is a horrible moral sin compared to my 1 in 300 experience with my unaltered "nerd" identity and behaviors, but I've noticed that you and Hugo Schwyzer like men to suffer "authentic" sexual scarcity. Of course "Game" itself is a concession to feral female sexuality, real male sexual agency is the province of practiced PUAs and high-status alpha males alone. (Even with my skills, I don't really think I have agency. Short of the few times I have possessed hypnotic levels of charisma, it was always standard male sexuality, which is hoping to be chosen.)
Perhaps your "1 in 300
Submitted by Mark Z. (not verified) on Fri, 2010-10-01 16:44.Perhaps your "1 in 300 experience" comes from wanting something incompatible with what most of the human race is looking for. You're not really looking for love, or pleasure, or companionship; you're looking to prove that you have "real male sexual agency", and you can't be happy with a partner unless you know that you chose her, which in your mind is mutually exclusive with her choosing you.
This is an incredibly fucked-up mode of thinking, and I shouldn't have to explain why.
It is NOT marginal, it is a
Submitted by SnowdropExplodes (not verified) on Sun, 2010-10-03 17:20.It is NOT marginal, it is a map to pushing the erotic buttons of about 10-30% of women 18-25 years old in English-speaking cultures, who can be identified as thrill-seeking risk-takers by their dress, mannerisms, choice of entertainment venues, and patterns of social interaction.
That's an interesting claim, but it doesn't actually change the logic of Tyler Cowan's argument. One simply substitutes this definition in the clause "game-ready women" in the original argument (e.g. in the statement, "If there is no price mechanism to choke off the returns from game, the implied result is the crowding of men around each group of game-ready women.") Eventually the logic still follows, replacing in later clauses "romance/romantics" with "thrill-providing/providers".
It would seem to follow that what keeps Game players' strategy successful when it is targeted on the 10-30% identified above is that so many of them waste energy and effort targeting those who are not ready (thus taking themselves out of serious contention). However, this leads to dissatisfaction all round, because the women thus targeted are not interested and just feel harassed, while for the Game player, the encounter is a "loss". This has a negative effect even for non-Game males looking for a mate.
This leads to my second point, which is that when you suggest that '[Figleaf] and Hugo Schwyzer like men to suffer "authentic" sexual scarcity.' what I notice Figleaf at least arguing (and it's an argument I make as well) is that sexual scarcity is entirely artificial. The use of presumptuous strategies such as the Game actually serve to generate the scarcity that they are supposed to overcome! I wrote recently about how the ability to be open and honest about sexual interest is how I ended up having sex with a woman who wanted to have sex with me, on a first date.
However, the pressures from the social imperatives, which are reinforced by such things as "The Game" and "The Rules", would have made that impossible. By us both being feminists, and freed a little from the constraints thanks to understanding their origins a bit, we got what we both wanted.
"Game" as such has only had a
Submitted by Eurosabra (not verified) on Mon, 2010-10-04 21:03."Game" as such has only had a well-poisoning effect in certain venues on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, where women at the Saddle Ranch Bar & Grill were mystified by constantly being asked "whether [they] had seen the women fighting outside" and "whether it is okay for one's significant other to keep a picture of an ex" as openers. They may learn to recognize script Game and avoid it, but script Game is only a tiny fraction of it, and one can argue that aggressive male heterosexuality as such is the off-putting element. Certainly I drove women away much more with unsubtle boundary-pushing touch than with Game, which tends to result in mild confusion at worst. Outside the Saddle Ranch, women don't even recognized failed game as such, so it gets muddled in with the "Men are Jerks" of every other failed approach as "that guy who droned on about how his ex-girlfriend kept a picture of her ex-boyfriend."
Just to be clear by
Submitted by figleaf on Mon, 2010-10-04 16:55.Just to be clear by “marginal” I didn’t mean “barely useful” and I definitely didn’t mean “barely lovable.” I just meant “tied up in ideas about how relationships are formed that aren’t very productive to forming actual relationships.”
Also, there’s the bit about “sexual scarcity” being a myth… one, I might add, that’s perpetuated by adherents of both The Game and The Rules. To their detriment and, as articulated by others in comments here, to everyone else’s.
fl
It depends. Most Gamers do
Submitted by Eurosabra (not verified) on Fri, 2010-10-01 18:28.It depends. Most Gamers do go through a phase where the chase is everything, and it gets old really quickly. I can tell you that seeking love and pleasure from people who cannot find you attractive because you are too X, Y, or Z (insert random factor beyond your control) is disheartening. Choosing and being chosen are not mutually exclusive, but always coming from a begging position is bad.
We are legion. You have name-calling in the comments section of a blog on your side. I am impervious to shaming tactics.
Usual Svutlana find mens who
Submitted by Svutlana (not verified) on Sat, 2010-10-02 15:22.Usual Svutlana find mens who use words "impervious" and "feral" absolute fuck irresistible, especial if can also recite Emily Dickinson and derive Fermat Last Theorem on cocktail napkin, but Mr Eurosabra sound like somebody who as child do actuarial study for see how long parent have for live. Take all joy out of live this.
Understand me complete that Mr Eurosabra simple want for improve odds of fuck, and it would be just like count cards at black jack table in casino if cards you count no be live, breathe persons.
Profuse apologize me, but find me sad this. Be Svutlana sad for one womens out of fifty Mr Eurosabra count on and sad for Mr Eurosabra who feel he must count.
Svutlana no understand
Submitted by Eurosabra (not verified) on Tue, 2010-10-05 16:37.Svutlana no understand position of someone who not only have gambling addiction, he have winning addiction, but also notice that before card counting learned, house rules for dealer include dealer getting to pick Eurosabra's cards, to maximize possibility of Eurosabra 299-day losing streak. Also, cards not people, cards are interaction, dealer is person. Beating house, not beating dealer, 1 in 50 hands is better than 1 in 300. Eurosabra think Svutlana need better extended metaphors, plus also Andrew Wiles ruin Fermat's Last Theorem for us all anyway.
I love the
Submitted by Lynn Gazis-Sax (not verified) on Sat, 2010-10-02 19:06.I love the comic.
@Eurosabra: "It is NOT marginal, it is a map to pushing the erotic buttons of about 10-30% of women 18-25 years old in English-speaking cultures, who can be identified as thrill-seeking risk-takers by their dress, mannerisms, choice of entertainment venues, and patterns of social interaction."
You know, I find this possibility (or something like it – adjusting the percentage up or down) much more plausible than the one being floated by some of the people arguing with Tyler Cowen in his comments (that game works on all women, and, yes, that apparently specifically includes all women preferring men who "knock them off their pedestals"). Similarly, I suspect that the Rules really do work on a particular defined population of men in our culture; that set just doesn't happen to be all men.
"Gamers" and "Rulers" are
Submitted by Nightfall (not verified) on Sun, 2010-10-03 03:10."Gamers" and "Rulers" are like telemarketers in the era before do-not call lists. Their tactics work, occasionally, because no one would do it otherwise. However, those tactics prey on those who have easily exploitable social weaknesses ("a fool and his money are soon parted" and such) which could be seen as a mild form of abuse from some perspectives. And it often ends up pissing off people who it's tried on that don't have those weaknesses. And currently, there's no "I do not want to be hit on by manipulative people yet again, which ruins the whole dating experience, so please keep away if you're going to try it" opt-out list.