Chaps, great discussion in here. Enough to make me pop in again to contribute to the conversation myself. For me personally, and where I'm at at the moment, this is honestly the best thread on the forum rn.
1. On Bodi and his book
A while back I read Bodi's book—normally recommendations or hype don't affect me much, but given Skank_Hunt's effusive praise, and how much wisdom Skank_Hunt has dropped, I made a (very rare) exception, and bought it.
It's one of the few works (book or otherwise) where the 'sequel' (i.e. the second part) is actually better than the first. Taking both parts together, it's
extremely good.
But once the scene is set, and the context is given by the first part,
the second part is—and I say this kind of thing rarely, and never lightly—a work of genius.
It's hard to directly compare such a unique and niche book to others, but I can't think of a book I've read that's better than part two of
Death By A Thousand Sluts (DBATS). Possibly others that are as good, but none that are obviously better. Both generally, and on the specific fronts of insightfulness, incisiveness, and hilarity.
It's not genius by virtue of usefulness as a game instructional (one may or may not find value on that front; as I'll discuss later, I could see it hurting most people's game).
It's genius as a work of social and character observation, and for its reflection, self-awareness, and philosophy.
After coming across it commended several times recently in quick succession (e.g. while reading
Slaughterhouse Five (though Vonnegut is very overrated), and seeing Einstein and Tolstoy's high regard for it), I started reading
The Brothers Karamazov, but have only made it a quarter of the way through before starting to find it highly overrated and wondering if it will pick up to the level of brilliance people claim. Maybe it's been
Seinfeld Effect'd for me, and maybe (like Bodi's book) it gets better in its second and final part, but
I found even more acute observations, and far deeper social and philosophical insight, in Bodi's book, than in The Brothers Karamazov.
As a work of practical/applied social philosophy, and as a tortured quest of
Willing One Thing in a bewildering world (or indeed city), the best comparison I know for Bodi's book would be the genius Kierkegaard...an applied, quite literally street smart version of Kierkegaard. Of course far less angelic and saintly (to use Wittgenstein's wording) than Kierkegaard, but something of the same fervour and
Purity.
I don't think that's a coincidence. Look at Kierkegaard's life, e.g. his persecution for his attempts at truth-seeking by dominant social narratives/orthodoxy and forces in nineteenth century Copenhagen, and his Spergy sigma nature ruining his early oneitis romance and forever fracturing his spirit. Many of us are, like Bodi and Kierkegaard, tortured souls trying to reconcile the alleged social script. In the latter's case, the hypocritical Christian institutions that he challenged. In the case of Bodi and ourselves, the blue pill 'school, university, wife, kids, (maybe) retire, die' life path yanked from beneath our feet, with the reality before us.
At the same time, the avenue presented to us for the reconciliation and reconstitution of our tortured spirits—namely game and the player lifestyle, as a reaction to the society, dating market, and broader life we face—at times seems to be doing more to further horcrux our souls than mend them.
There's definitely a similar current in Kierkegaard's life and works to what Bodi (and many of us) have experienced running around other cities. Especially London, as—like Copenhagen—a cold, often windy and harrowing (both literally and directly, and figuratively) Germanic city with both traditional and old quarter-y, as well as libertine, strands running through it. Even the outlandish dress/peacocking/R SAHLEKSHUN YOOONIFOORM of the respective soul-searching, out-casted ambulants...
I'd also point out Kierkegaard's status as a (the?) proto-existentialist—what is the state of the (day)game mindset nowadays (and Bodi's book) if not existential, and more about the journey and self-discovery, than the actual bangs? Similarly the very kind of life lead by many daygamers—a solitary roaming in which one's wits are pitted against a city/the universe itself. Even the recent book of George (Massey, from Street Attraction)...it's title is quite literally
Game: a cure for loneliness. (The Street Attraction guys are cool IMO. George is by far the closest of them in spirit to those of us commiserating in here.)
If Kierkegaard were alive today, what could he be, if not a daygamer? Surely not a seminarian?; not in this world?! Maybe not—maybe he'd be a blue pill incel. Maybe he'd be on SlutHate. Maybe he'd have killed himself in his twenties (or earlier). Maybe we melancholy and thoughtful outcasts
are him,
the black jeaned version of his
Romeo.
Even just in terms of hilarity, there really are some unsurpassed moments (in part II especially) of Bodi's book. Moments I compulsively re-read over and over. The infamous gnome-vomit-shitting incident; ALL the Bottom World (another of Bodi's genius coinages) moments; Steve Jabba's gender-agnostic Content Marketing Game and disappearance to (and then from) fuckin' Chiswick, of all places; stalking David Gandy from Oxford Street into the toilet (only in London...); Krauser's boa constriction of the LITTUL AMERICUN SQUIRREL. In fact all of the Krauser moments and diatribes, particularly when he gets repeatedly rekt for being a pale, basement-dwelling foetus. And many more moments besides.
(Shortly before reading
DBATS, I met Krauser, and he negged me masterfully, with elite-level plausible deniability, in front of a whole bunch of people and pulled some other tricks to avoid sharing the social limelight with me, and to keep it fully on himself. Not entirely unlike the gamma-gamma interactions and competition for status or attention that Bodi describes early on when he meets Krauser in the RSG crew. Despite getting rekt myself, I like the guy and do see a lot of myself in him. (Krauser gay game recognised?) I can say that Bodi's writing about Krauser is an unsurpassed—to use that word again—character analysis, although as I think bojangles said upthread, there's definitely an element in these guys' writing of in-jokes, ribbing, and exaggeration that you have to read carefully (and in some cases have the context from outside the book) to see for what they are.
I think a lot of the tone of these guys' mutual rekking, and in particular their regard of/for Bodi—and indeed even their uncertainty thereof—can be understood from the tooltip for the link to Bodi's blog on Jimmy Jambone's blog, pride of place at the top of his 'entourage'—"Lol, fucking Bodi, brilliant". (Incidentally, on Krauser: "Potato shaped philosophy".))
That's not to even get into the harrowing scenes--which are sometimes the very same scenes as the aforementioned hilarious ones. The junk food binges; the complete blow-outs and mental breakdowns in some of the very London alleyways we've marched; Bodi's dad's deterioration, etc.
A key piece of theory, and a theme throughout the book: I was aware of the idea of 'gammas' before reading the book, but
after reading it, I barely ever think about alpha vs. beta anymore, and see that far more important for many guys is Killing The Gamma. I've started noticing gamma behaviour (in myself and others) everywhere.
There's just so many topics, broad and specific, where Bodi completely nails it. His own psyche. Others' motivations. Personal incentives. Disenchantment with work. Even extremely niche observations where it'd be easy to miss his perceptiveness, such as his writing about the gamma antics of junior Python programmers, or his portraiture of the London swing dancing scene.
The guy's a fucking genius.
I have/had been in a holding pattern in London for a while, and coming to hate the place. This hasn't been helped by shit with family and friends ('friends'), which aspects had been one of the few things propping up London for me. On one level, Bodi's book paints a grim picture of the place—cutthroat, unforgiving, sprawling (as Skank_Hunt put it so well), alienating, bewildering. The rejections get to the point where on some days the city itself starts to feel like some malevolent character—possibly a hip, attractive, but arrogant and brutal young woman—best described as
trenchant, and perhaps best pictured as
the girl from CunninLynguists'
Fire in Her Eyes, but with the 'fashion', aloofness, and solipsism of a Camden Girl.
On another level, reading the book,
and then doing a spurt of daygame made me fall in love with the place, or at least approach it with a sense of awe. Despite living 'in London' almost all of my life, I'd never really explored extensively or felt like I grokked the hotspots, but reading Bodi's itineraries (with a couple of Google Maps tabs open as I read) and then treading the same spots, often having read about the historical connections of the places and eateries he hit up was, on some level, surprisingly romantic, spiritual, cosmic, and humbling. I have no plans to be in a holy city such as Copenhagen (Kierkegaard) or Cambridge (Wittgenstein, and many others) again anytime soon, but after reading
DBATS, I could tread the same spots as someone who had deeply affected me, 'right on my doorstep'. It really made me understand the concept of pilgrimage, and the particular interpretation and heavy emphasis it receives in Islam, as
Hajj.
DBATS is just so brutally, refreshingly honest. Bodi is unflinchingly honest about himself, to himself, and up in his own head and analytical—to the extent that he cockblocks himself and precludes the possibility of becoming the successful player he wants (or at least thinks/claims he wants) to be. Much, I suspect, like some of us in this thread...
That all said.
ksbms has been avoiding the book, and I can't say he's wrong to do so. This book is red pill about the red pill. Many (probably correctly) intuit that for them, a book like this (or a post like mine) is a threat to their frame or state. This is what ksbms is picking up on when he's noping out based on the exrcepts posted earlier in the thread. Self-delusion and glossing over the drawbacks and risks is often helpful when trying to forge forward, and a self-questioning, premise-questioning book like this is not going to help on that front.
I'm not saying any of that to slag off ksbms—he seems like an unusually kindred spirit and if I'd been around to see his recent thread we should have had a couple of pints in London. It's just amusing because avoiding negative, gamma, Spergy shit like Bodi's book, in order to protect one's frame/state/outlook...is exactly something Bodi brilliantly points out in the book.
2. The Promise, and: A perfect storm
'Black pill'. Or perhaps: meta-red pill—red pill about the red pill. As I've
alluded to before, I sense a growing chasm of empathy and ability to relate experiences between (usually 'unsuccessful') Spergy guys like Bodi, myself, and possibly some of you in this thread, and some of the more normie, successful guys. Even Roosh, who is not unsuccessful, but has a lower energy, and a more introspective, contemplative bent, is moving in a black pill direction.
Bodi talks about how to an extent pickup coaching is a feeding trap—coaches vacuum up AFC's and vibe and value tap them to bolster their own success, attracting more AFC's, etc. Late last year, around the time of my hiatus from the forum, I ended up sarging with some guys in London, including some guys from the forum, but I couldn't help but feel that in most cases the dynamics were wrong—too much status jockeying, bullshit group dynamics, zero- or negative-sum behaviour, set-stealing, and other normie bullshit that Bodi so brilliantly deconstructs. (Before Bodi's book, I didn't even have the language (e.g. 'vibe tapping', 'value tapping', etc.) for what my gut was saying was off about some of these situations.) A few guys seemed to get it though—I need to hit them up!
Is daygame only a sensible proposition for the handful, at any given time, of coaches, with everyone else basically being conned and exploited by them in a giant pyramid scheme?
I can't even read the
Player's Log Lounge or
Plus-Notch Thread anymore—it's just too far disconnected from, and dissonant with, my reality. The only thing that comes of reading those threads, for me, at the place (figuratively, and possibly literally) I'm at, is feelings of negativity, envy, resentment, and inadequacy for not enjoying comparable success or lifestyle. It eats at my sanity. Many of the guys in those threads are good guys, and have helped many, and do not deserve resentment or envy. But for a noob like me, in whatever circumstances I'm in, I just can't get any traction with the place they're at. I've been reading this forum on-and-off for years, since I was seventeen or eighteen. But I have to avoid some of that stuff now.
That's what I mean when I say that for me, right now, this thread is the best on the forum. There's a certain segment of gamesmen that really resonate with this thread, and Bodi's stuff. And that portion is growing:
It's easy to forget that—as a whole, and in terms of particular types and approaches—
game as we know it is a recent phenomenon, and was only ever effective due to a perfect storm of social and economic factors.
- Philosophical/sociological factors like feminism.
- Relatedly, the economic-philosophical strands of cultural Marxism following on from the late 19th century and from the 20th century. The 'ideal' of universal education, including for girls.
- Medical/technological factors like the pill, pagers, phones, smartphones, and the move towards sitting indoors at computers and service-based/tertiary industries.
- Medico-environmental/dystopic/techno-chemical-biological factors like declining testosterone levels and sperm quality, plastic usage, and pollution/contamination (see again: the pill).
- Economic state, e.g. the (debatable) legacy of the Boomers.
- Societal fabric, e.g. anonymity (especially cities), the breakdown of marriage and community, the erosion of social trust, burning of the commons, and increasing defection in societal Prisoner's Dilemmas.
And on and on. Truly, a perfect storm.
Many of us were attracted to game by the Promise (because let's be honest, that's how it was explicitly or implicitly put—as a Promise) that by investing some time up front learning timeless, widely-applicable skills and charisma, we could sidestep the usual routes to getting girls—money, fame, jock/athlete status, being an 'art type', soul-crushing career or desk job, commitment to a relationship, ongoing time investment, social circle bullshit, etc.
When nightclubs (previously dance clubs, dancehalls, juke joints, bars, speakeasies, coffee shops, masquerades, &c. &c.) were the best way for strangers to anonymously and discreetly (or indeed obviously and under a charade of plausible deniability, inebriation, or shame) meet and have casual sex, 'modern' game as we know it developed around that. From that, it was adapted and ported to the streets (daygame).
(None of this is to say that there wasn't something that could be called 'game', 'nightgame', or 'daygame', before. I'm making a point about the specific forms of these we're talking about, as specific examples of the general observation that each form of game, throughout history, and indeed throughout prehistory and before humans existed, has only arisen and been successful due to very delicate balances of factors.)
Is this still the case?—or
do the circumstances and premises that made game (as we know it) relevant, no longer obtain?
'Originally' (in the
EEA, or for much of the times/places in history), community was strong, and girls did not often (if ever) change tribe or community. All guys were vetted by virtue of everybody knowing everybody. The family,
SES, pedigree, etc. of every guy was known to every girl. Insomuch as it is emulating a high-value man, game was irrelevant, because faking was impossible—either you were high value, and everybody knew it, or you were not.
For a brief period, game was relevant, because anonymity, geographic mobility, breakdown of community, outgrowth of
Dunbar's number, etc. meant that a guy could meet a girl who didn't know him, and use game to project high status, SMV, or RMV. The only reason girls didn't vet in this context is because they couldn't, and these non-vetted guys were their best source of casual sex or alpha fucks—if they'd had access to magic VR glasses that gave them the lowdown on these suitors, you can bet your ass they'd have used them. But they didn't, so game was an equalizer for men who didn't have general 'value', or who were bad at making their value known, but were willing and able to learn game.
Now girls are more and more going back to vetting, simply because they can. Once enough guys give in and adopt social media, then there are enough vettable guys offering casual sex, that girls can just go with those guys, rather than the unvettable guys. The small region of spacetime where girls weren't in a position of power by being able to vet, and where anonymous, game-driven sex was the hack
du jour, has been lost to guys collectively failing the Social Media Shit Test at the societal level, much like the Feminism Shit Test before it, and likely for the same reasons. (Also: the Silicon Valley cabal using their high IQ and expertise with recent technology to exploit human vulnerability to
superstimuli and force a dystopic ubiquity of, and dependence on, smartphones and social media on the broader population like a frog boiling in water.)
So then the game shifts from faking (or actually having) high value to girls in person, to faking (or actually having) high value to them on social media.
I want to go back to my earlier mention of the (debatable) legacy of the Boomers.
There's a lot of parallels there with 'classical modern game' vs. 'modern modern game'.
As I say,
it's an open debate, but to put across the extreme version of one side for the sake of analogy: The Boomers used up economic and planetary resources at a precipitous rate, had a perfect storm of factors off the back of preceding generations to give them easy and prosperous lives, set the stage to exploit their children and later generations to further prop themselves up, then sit around telling their kids that the only reason they're less prosperous and living hand-to-mouth, is that they're lazy, entitled, and making excuses, and conning the kids by telling them to work for the Boomers as wage slaves if they want the same prosperity. They burned the commons for their own gain. The kids, for their part, can't help but love their parents, but have a growing sense that the parents are out of touch with the reality of the situation, and world, they're faced with.
To similarly present an overly one-sided hypothesis, to consider for analogy: Early/classical modern gamesmen (from around the early 2000's to the mid/late 2000's), or early daygamers, had a perfect storm of circumstances that made game viable. They burned up the game-catalysing resources of social trust, naïveté, and ignorance of pickup/daygame. In some cases they burned not only the commons, but entire cities, by spam approaching. They vaccum up younger or less experienced AFC's to vibe/value tap. They con money out of those who come after, and sit around telling AFC's that they too could have racked up 1000+ notches if only they stopped complaining about smartphones and did more approaches.
As with the Boomer situation, this is probably overly one-sided, and it's probably a mixture of both sides. Millennials (even if only because they're young people, or because their hormonal/endocrine systems are fucked up by plastics and pollution) probably do whine and play victim more than they should, but Boomers probably were fortunate and probably have, and do, screw over their kids to some extent. Similarly, AFC's probably spend too long whining about the Decline and 'evil bitches', and feeling entitled to the success that earlier gamesmen had to carve out from the abyss without even knowing it existed. But older gamesmen probably really did have it easier (at least in terms of applying classical, 'pure' game), and probably are too unsympathetic to the particulars of the present-day dating scene for many guys, especially younger ones.
As I consider in
that aforementioned earlier post, it still seems entirely plausible to me (though it could be false) that classical game's (e.g. not social media game, not social circle game, etc.) current applicability is vastly overstated by those who were sarging in the golden era of classical game, and moveover that game is only useful up to a basic point of not fucking up, after which strongly age-correlated factors (social circle, money, wealth, power, career, self-esteem/self-contentment/self-understanding, sexually dimorphic physical characteristics, facial attractiveness, etc.) are what are actually doing the heavy lifting.
Maybe back before girls could demand to vet you, you really could be in your early twenties, living with your parents, with no job, no money, and no friends, but go run some nightgame and pull.
On the other hand—
was this ever the case, even in the golden era of game? Or was it more like: Guys would discover game sometime in or after their mid-twenties, then stop fucking up, then simply by virtue of (by this point) being a late twenties or older guy, with the attendant high-status correlates mentioned above, start getting laid?
Was it not fucking up + high-status age-correlated factors all along, but guys misattributed it to game?
If so, then merely learning game is not enough for young guys, or other guys who don't have those age-correlated factors going for them. (Bodi, for example.)
(Note that many of those age-correlated factors are things that were arguably easy to obtain for Boomers, and are far harder for their successors to obtain: wealth, power, property, career, self-esteem, stable social circle, etc.)
At this point in time, the Promise—which for many of us is what got us into game—is false.
For sigma-oriented, introverted, contemplative, philosophical, 'low friend count' guys like me, Bodi, and (I would venture to say) some of you, we didn't sign up for this shit.
Much as we signed up for the 'study hard, go to university, then you can take it easy and be rewarded with a nice job and family' script we were offered, we signed up for an up-front study in game, on the premise that we could then get by on maintenance, without having to further derail our lives on an ongoing basis.
We didn't sign up for 'text game'.
We didn't sign up for 'online game'.
We didn't sign up for ongoing time sinks fucking around with 'social media' or 'dating apps' that you can actively feel feminising you.
We didn't sign up for narcisistically always having an eye out for, and a gadget primed for, photo opportunities for our 'online presence'.
We didn't sign up for having to prostrate ourselves before the mercies of fickle social circles of normies in the hope of 'social circle pussy', in a grating dissonance with our introverted, no-nonsense natures.
We didn't sign up for becoming 'location-independent' and abandoning our homelands, families, and friends.
We didn't sign up for settling for foreign girls we have no cultural commonality with. (Then lying about their quality online to feel better about ourselves.)
We didn't sign up for becoming 'r-selection' (or in Krauser's language: ARRRR SAHLEKSHUN) stereotypes to get girls: sleeve tattoos, motorbikes, expensive 'badboy' clothes.
We didn't sign up for injecting 'test' and pissing our lives away in the gym just to stay vaguely 'competitive'.
We didn't sign up for 'Euro jaunts'.
We didn't sign up for caring about money and status, joining the rat race, and wage slaving, in order to attract girls through 'lifestyle game'.
We didn't sign up for having to keep up with all the above shit, and constantly be slaving away learning new forms of game and increasingly bad conversion rates for increasingly mediocre pussy.
The whole point was the Promise.
The whole point was basically magic—a set of skills that rested solely between your two ears, that you could use anytime, any place.
I'm not denying any of the above forms of game work. I'm not knocking those who use them, or ruling out that I have or will use them. I'm not saying that our initial expectation of a one-off investment in learning game, and then thereafter a lifetime stream of pussy, without having to adapt, was ever reasonable.
But I am saying that the above is not what we signed up for, and that the goalpost has been shifted, and some people (either due to general self-delusion, wanting to aggressively guard their vibe/frame/state, or for reasons of financial incentive) don't acknowledge that shit done changed, and shout down those who point it out.
Some guys talk as if changing focus, given the state of game in 2018, is a pussy move—giving up. And for not wanting to be a pussy, or a quitter, I've heeded those sentiments, and kept faith, and beaten myself up and been miserable. I've probably alienated, lost, or cut off some of my best pre-game friends by parroting this party line and wanting to guard this belief bubble.
But now I see another perspective: different guys simply have different lengths they're willing to go to, or directions they're willing to go in, to get pussy. Some guys are extraverted and will only want to do nightgame, and will go out multiples times a week and still kill it in 2018. Some guys are introverted snipers and will only want to gather their energy for occasional daygame sessions to harvest plates. Some guys will be shit in real life, but kill it by using dating apps and social media; and vice versa.
What this means it that at some places, at some points in time, some guys simply won't be willing to pay the price of admission for the form(s) of game that work in that specific context. It doesn't mean they have lower T, or a lower libido, or are pussy, or should feel bad. It just means that their constitution mismatches with that place and time, so that the rational choice for them, given their intrinsic personal preferences is to focus on other things, or take an indirect route to pussy, that aligns with what they
are willing to do.
(Don't forget:
even Roosh said that if he could do it all over, he'd just take up the guitar instead of the game. Though I wonder if his direct, truth-seeking approach really would have afforded this, or whether he could never have been anything other than a gamesman. Could he have been a simp 'artsy' guitar player, or a gregarious meathead guitar rockstar? Could he have ever been anything other than a thoughtful iconoclast in the medium of writing and video?)
So that would be advice from myself to myself, and to you guys, regarding daygame, and other forms of game: Watch out for the goalposts shifting; always ask yourself if the price has gone up, and—whether it has or not—if you're still willing to pay it; ask yourself if your persistence at a certain type or extent of game has more to do with someone shaming you (especially if it's internet rando's) for being behind the times or a pussy or quitter, or trying to preserve the self-identity you've built, than it actually giving you an acceptable ROI.
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