https://youtu.be/Z1Foz-DgJMA
There is Game, a science practiced by the pimps, the macks, and the hustler. I touch on that, but I’m no expert. Better check for Rosebudd or Pimpin Ken if you want Game with a capital letter G.
Then there was the pick up era of the late 90’s to early/mid 00’s. For the most part it was geeks that used the scientific method and freaks that would obsess about practical applications of applied psychology.
The “golden age” of the “community” was about thinking of new techniques, going out and testing them, and then reporting back results. Things that people remember from that era were “peer reviewed”. Negs and peacocking come to mind, but to me the most important thing was that the masterminds were 1) A standup comedian and 2) A magician. Having a pile of jokes or a stack of tricks – things that you memorized the words and the delivery – that ALWAYS got emotional reactions from people. The one currently disputed thing that those guys tested was that looks don’t matter, behavior does.
After getting exposed, the community went through a few iterations
– No more canned routines, everything was improvised
– A focus on charging up a girl’s emotional state, by you being charged up (the law of emotional transference)
– The Red Pill 2.0 – Looks matter, money matters, “Do you even lift Bro?”, and feminism is evil. (and once you indict feminism, well everything else around it becomes fair game)
So what does Contemporary Game look like?
What can we learn from the various eras?
Modern game
– Lift and eat right. In the West where fat people vastly outnumber people with a healthy BMI – you’re killing the competition.
– Run a big score business (sales, crypto, investing – where you put in a decent amount of work and get paid in bundles, not by the hour) or a passive income business (physical products, e-products, services – laptop stuff). This makes you time rich, future proof, and resilient to online witch hunts.
– Develop your personal look/brand style. Maybe you want to look like a 1% motorcycle club member, or uptown baller, or a musician – go all the way.
– Always adapt to modern technology
– Social media game – carefully curated online existence that is for pleasure and for work. You want to draw people in that know you in real life, that barely know you, and that don’t know you at all.
– Day game is a part of your daily life. Socializing is a part of your daily life. Where guys would focus on night game, the move is to now actually go out and trawl for women during the day.
– Dating site game – dating sites are manageable, provided you use the right ones, the right way. And this means photo composition, photo quality, correct sequences of in-app messages, get her phone #, and more messages to finally get her out.
– Night game – in your hometown is not pure cold approach anymore but cold approach where you get the bang and the follower, or just the follower. Waste nothing.
– One on one game, or group game, you have both an endless bag of ice breakers and party tricks, but you also are deeply centered. Not detached, but experienced, and seeing through the games that people play. Experience in field, but also from family, friends, relationships, meditation, religion, hobbies that improve you.
– Notch counts, special missions, are fun, but they will bore you. A real and rich social life, where sex is one of many pleasures available.
I still think it goes back to night game and pulling chicks in real life, and that face to face skills are the key – but they’re no longer the only key.
Archie, this is a very perceptive analysis of the evolution of game.
I’ve been silently reading your blog for a few weeks, starting after I hanged out with CMQ in Mykonos this June.
Greece is a country where the concept of game is totally foreign. Have you ever been to Greece?
The social dynamics would probably fascinate you. Nobody is cold approaching, each set is on its own, and the weirdest thing of all is this. When you enter a club\bar you are assigned a spot\table.
This is where you lay your drinks and other stuff on. Non paid tables. You may or may not get a bottle. No dance floor. Very different than all Americna clubs ive been to in Miami and Las Vegas.
If you move to approach, you lose your spot. Besides that, venues are so packed you can hardly move, unless yougo there early.
Basically, you can only open adjacent sets with ease which is really limiting.
Anyway, I am glad to have found experienced players like you and CMQ from whom I can learn and cut the learning curve.
Keep up the great writing!
– Damian
McQueen is my dude. Love that cat.
That sounds like a challenging scenario. Overall the reports from more “family-centric” countries – where huge groups go out and all sit together/stay seated – you can’t actually approach the cute girls.
But it’s still a seated set – so the old school way to do this was to get the group’s attention, charm the group, and then get into the conversation with the group. It’s often helpful to have some topic, and then ask individual members what they think – and point out differences between group member A and group member B. Mixed sets are perfect, because you can position the guys vs the girls.
That’s in English though. Doing it in Greek or other foreign language as a gringo? I dunno.
I might have to research that one. It’s a good question to ask the guys that go to Latin America, Italy, Eastern Europe….
Who was a stand up comic?
Neil Strauss
As always, I read your posts and mull them over more than I have comments right off the bat Archie.
I guess I am wondering if things are really that fundamentally different from 2000? Did society and women “change” that much?
The old PUA guys knew that looks/fitness, money, status and social skills all mattered, and they didn’t have some of those things. There was definitely a search for that “one weird trick”, but it seemed like some of them found things that worked to jump them ahead in the cue of SMV.
It’s easy to sit on the internet and blame “hypergamy” and an international conspiracy of marxist feminists for all the things I haven’t tried, rather than look in the mirror and acknowledge that I’m older, flabbier, and focused on things that didn’t bring me wealth and status than when I was pulling more regularly. I’m less blue pilled, and socially retarded too but certain things always carry more weight.
It’s a seductive philosophy to blame “female nature” and social collapse for personal circumstances, but how would I know he old PUA stuff doesn’t work nowadays when I never tried it?
Anyway, those are the thoughts that this post kicked off.
I do think social media/online dating, and the cultural zeigeist play a role in current pick up, but how much of a role really, and have things changed that much?
“how much of a role really, and have things changed that much?”
A lot and a little.
If you see a hot chick, you got your shit together, the social situation is conducive to socializing, and she’s not distracted y her electronic validation device – game is MUCH MUCH EASIER than it used to be.
But that damn electronic validation device does a few things
– in the moment – she’s distracted
– because it’s the intermittent reward device – she’s expecting immediate pleasure
– because the net has basically degraded human communication but at the same time made life easier – this chick is swiping lefts on 8’s while she is sitting on toilet with the runs from that Rose and Brunch shit that she goes to.
In my view – it’s harder to learn game now, but game is more potent because a real live person can be a lot more stimulus than her negotiated/intermittent/bright shiny slab of glass.
I see a combination of Julien Shock/Tyler Manic/Luke Social Media strategy as being the new basic paradigm.
But if you can be as personally captivating as a Mystery (the man can really tell a story), have the tactical mindset of the old Tyler/current Todd Valentine + the lifestyle game/alpha attitude from the “manosphere” – you can really do some damage.
Right now the current pick up pros are
– Todd – academic dude, solid game, I just find him boring.
– Luke – fat boy using social media and social circle to fuck Vegas bitches
– Jeffy – a calibrated old school Julien
– Old School Julien – shock bitches into submission
– New School Julien – I don’t even know if he does pick up anymore
– Old School Tyler – autistic puzzle solver, tech master
– New School Tyler – manic adhd manlet that is captivating and button pushing in a way that’s hard to describe unless you pay a lot of attention to him.
A lot of the Europe guys and day game guys – so tedious to watch, and often repeat the same blue pill/socially approved strategies that basically do more to screen girls of a certain type, rather than convert girls of any type. It is very telling that they mostly pull tourists and foreigners.
I was watching some random guy that Dat Karisma King/Nicholas Deenton recommended. Redhead/Blondie guy, kinda short, from one of them Northern European countries. I think he’s in Turkey or whatever. And the infield footage is him macking on some chick that’s not Turkish and not from his area. So it’s tourist on tourist game. Stranger in a Strange Land.
Guys w/o an eye for game don’t immediately grasp the social situation – and they can attribute any positive shit out of it as the guy’s skill. Here’s one from yesterday – https://www.reddit.com/r/seduction/comments/99sbhj/indirectly_opening_a_girl_at_the_park_and_getting/
You can watch the video @ 2x speed, but my comment basically breaks down his game. What I didn’t say was that as a local, he had a huge social advantage against the tourist. His game is ideal for the situation, but a lot of her willingness to answer rapid fire questions is premised on the not so obvious social status. He has a structural advantage.
I can digress on my own blog, but lemme get back to what I was saying.
The guy that I most relate to among the pick up stars is Madison, because his game is just solid – talk to a chick, stay in the set, solve the problems, take her home. Madison can’t go viral with his style.
That’s the thing that’s going on now with the prime market of 18-23.
Hit em like a Hurricane and then document the destruction on instagram.
That’s been the big change. Girls are so over-stimulated now, that you have to knife through a lot of her bullshit to get her hooked on you. Old School Pick Up taught that. Canned Routines, physical stuff like caveman carries and hand shake spins – really act on a chick’s limbic system, changing her mood, thus making her open.
I remember a dude on RVF talking about using MMA submission holds during sex – and that jogged my memory of a chick that wanted me to lie on top of her as we lay. She wanted that sort pressure to feel safe? But I’m 180 lbs, she’s a 100 soaking wet. Sometimes you can’t give the chick what she really wants/needs.
So internet has fucked up her sense of delayed gratification, but that’s in conflict with her nature.
I should make a post on this, but I think I have said a lot of this already.
I think you can learn from pretty much all of the established guys, and a lot of up and comers on Youtube/In the Scene. But to get anything good from say Maze or Ev or JMulliver or Good Looking Loofah – you already need a mind for the game.
@Chuck Steak
“how would I know he old PUA stuff doesn’t work nowadays when I never tried it?”
What I really like about Archie’s work is that he seeks to understand the WHY behind the HOW. So when the socio-technological landscape changes, he can articulate what remains constant (hint: evo-bio-psych) and what may require a different angle.
“certain things always carry more weight”
To add to what Archie wrote in response to you – my old comment from Rollo’s blog (see the last paragraph):
——————————————————-
The ‘looks’ thing… Why argue? Lol…
TL;DR looks matter only if there’s nothing else that spikes her RAS stronger… Don’t make them matter.
It’s exactly like verbals and all sort of subcomms… Like everything coming to the brain from the environment… Some of it won’t register, some will spike/excite a well localized tangible thought or emotion, and some will induce a hardly noticeable background state that shifts the mood ever so slightly… Positive, negative or neutral association… or just ‘nothing’ below a threshold… Lasting only a fraction of a second or decaying slowly… Ahhh women… The stimulus/trigger is just a detail… be it a word, a gesture, a reaction of/to the environment, a prop different than anything around… or appearance… Shake that emotional soup…
Looks are an obvious, very first ‘straight in the face’ cue that contributes to the overall perception of who you might be and how you may meet girl’s social, emotional and physical needs (based on her preconceptions)… Not only are we genetically ‘molded’ to notice looks, but also socially conditioned to pay attention to them. Therefore, good looks ping off as something ‘positive’, average as ‘neutral’ and bad looks, or even worse “ugly and ungroomed, unhealthy”, as ‘negative’. Here +, 0 and – are just simplified concepts of how a stimulus triggers/sets the trajectory of emotional associations that follow… How your mind’s complex strings resonate after this or that touch…
So of course your ‘looks’ can make your approach warm… or ‘Ice Queen’ cold…
It’s like asking whether your bad breath matters… lol… duh…
Actually… Bad breath trumps looks! Boom! Looks don’t matter! Lol… but I’m not joking.
The thing is… looks are just one of many stimuli that her brain is bombarded with. Above some very low threshold, looks don’t register that strongly as other factors that could induce plenty of more intensive thoughts and emotions and basically take over the overall perception… That’s why YaReally was talking about ‘Predator vision’ and not perceiving details, just an emotional ‘blob’ of how you make her feel in the interaction (good or bad… doesn’t matter)… Nb. we’re getting close to the magical ‘laminal space’ where so many things just don’t register beyond the actual ‘bubble’… lol
And this is also why the conclusion should be… looks don’t matter… at the same time. They just determine (to a relatively small degree compared to other stuff) how ‘cold’ or ‘warm’ her reception of you is from the get go (but also where your mindset starts at in the ‘looks’ scale compared to her). If you always start from +1 degree higher than other guys… you may get used to relying on the head start… but get stuck when this little detail is missing (no grooming, no gym for a few weeks, green spots and unicorns on your dick… whoops I should get it checked… lol). A mental feedback loop to the value of ‘looks’ can either fuck you up (when no ‘good looks’) or… fuck you up (when ‘good looks’ temporarily missing/not enough compared to another reference). An HB9/HB10’s RAS can easily notice the little difference, ‘hair thin’ imbalance in your Frame.
I’d say it’s all about leveling the field and topping it up with things resulting in positive reinforcements for her attraction. No need to tickle her RAS with negative triggers. Yes, do take care of your looks, your social proof, your money. But know you can overdo it (too expensive grooming, clothes etc. and you’re risking ending up in the provider territory). My rule of thumb is just get some of it to a neutral level (so no negative pings) and focus on improving your game and things that can build your long term overall happiness. Social circle game, money or good looks could actually make access to poosy too easy… and then we’re back to “are you actually running game”?
Sometimes it’s good to remove some of it and see if you can step your game up.
Archie
Lost my comment or stuck in mod?
Stuck in mod