Tag Archives: SMV

Gendernomics: Game as a Value Multiplier

A multiplier is a very simple concept, it’s an added variable that either serves to increase or decrease a given value. When you benchmark between industries it’s not uncommon to establish revenue multipliers for mergers and acquisitions, for instance the purchase value in one industry may be x4 of revenue, and in another x12 of revenue. This is normally done by analyzing previous deals in the same industry, establishing a “normal” multiplier and then applying that to the present deal, with or without modifications. If there is a large discrepancy in market capitalization for the two, or growth estimates are vastly different, then adjustments may be made, if the companies are very similar, they may not.

Perhaps the multiplier that most will be familiar with is marketing. Now marketing in and of itself does not create tangible product value, for instance an Iphone does not get objectively better because it comes in a nice box. However, the nice box helps it appear higher value and quality due to playing with our perception. The bottle- and logo design of Coca Cola does not make the drink more refreshing, more healthy, or a host of other concrete product variables, however it does make it stand out on the shelf.

In a recent tweet, I wrote:

Game is a value multiplier, not a value creator, treat accordingly.

The reasoning behind this is quite simple, and comes from my analysis of the early seduction community argument that “only game matters”, summarized as, “one need not concern oneself with becoming interesting, dressing better, developing the right mindset, going to the gym or a myriad of other avenues of self-improvement, just buy whatever product I’m selling and you will become successful with women”. Perhaps the most obvious example of the flaws in this methodology was the program “The Pick-Up Artist” that aired on VH-1 some years ago, where it rapidly became clear that even personal coaching and training from Mystery in his methods, failed to improve those men who had the lowest value, much if at all. Those who did indeed become successful, were those men who were the male “She’s all that” versions, guys who were average or above average value, but who failed to display that value in some regard. Continue reading →

Red Pill Logic: Embracing the Dark Side

In Jung’s writing the dichotomy of ego and shadow is perhaps the most interesting one, as this is the split between those behaviors that a man uses as part of his identity and those behaviors he rejects. I briefly covered Jung’s preference for figurative dichotomies in an earlier essay, and perhaps more important than the feminine/masculine is the Dark side and the Light side. Take one of the “Good Boys” for instance, he has adopted those behaviors which society has overly communicated as desirable in a “good man”, and rejected those that he has perceived society and deeming unfit in a civilized world.

However, as I outlined those behaviors, while carrying some benefits also have detrimental aspects to them, as they are a trade-off, where the good boy gets social validation, because his behavior benefits society more than it does himself. Thus, these behaviors are venerated by society in theory, but in practice those that engage in them sacrifice their own best interest for the best interests of the community in which they live. This has been popularized in the meme “You vs. The Guy She Tells You Not To Worry About“, and is very symptomatic of the super-ego completely dominating his psyche.

Perhaps the most famous example in literature is “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson, however a more interesting exemplification comes in the Star Wars series. In this series “turning to the dark side” meant giving in to those emotions that are deemed negative by the Jedi, such as fear, anger, passion and strength, but more importantly determining your own path, rather than the one determined for you by the force. This is an interesting allegory to the ego and the shadow, where the ego are those conscious behaviors that make up much of our identity, such as being dutiful, polite, nice, rule-abiding and various pro-social behaviors that a man has adopted due to social conditioning, and the shadow represents those behaviors that a man has rejected from his personality.

Adopting the Red Pill requires to some extent the negotiation between the shadow and the ego, for the former’s inclusion into conscious identity. A man is incomplete without those shadow behaviors in his arsenal. Yet “The Good Boys” have had those aspects of their personality hidden by defense mechanisms all their life. Continue reading →

Gendernomics: The Elevator Pitch

Recently I had a quick twitter exchange that had to do with how to be interesting, to which I replied:

Trouble is, a lot of men have no idea which things that happened to them were interesting, and which are not. @Blacklabellogic

This is one of those things that are quite obvious on the surface, so obvious in fact that I never really thought about it until I saw the tweet that prompted the response. It is no surprise really as women are the sex that has an inherent grasp of marketing, framing and rhetoric, where most male conversations tend to go down one of two paths.

The first path of male conversation is simply an information exchange following the problem – analysis – solution model, and I suspect this is the default male form of communication. This draws on deductive problem solving, requires clear, minimalist language in order to ensure maximum mutual understanding, and an honest presentation of the situation at hand.

The second path of male conversation takes the form of banter, of which locker room talk is a sub-category. This path tends to follow a tit-for-tat model where one-upping one another with better roasts, jokes, or stories is central, and functions somewhat to determine the status of each male, but also to hone an ability to be witty, humorous, and think on one’s feet. It also serves to keep a man grounded, and to bond the group together, through having fun at each other’s expense. An ability to be productive, honorable, funny, and so on contributes to either a rise or a fall within the male dominance hierarchy.

A man that seeks to improve his position in the sexual market place must do some initial analysis. Having an idea of how he needs to position himself in the market, the competitive pressures within the market and other market factors will be central in determining how to apply his efforts during product engineering. Luckily, much of this information is available in the manosphere on a general level.

Once he has this information, combined with his experience within the market, he is likely to have an understanding of the major factors that impact his value, the next step is then to establish where he deviates from those factors and with this understanding he can engage in targeted product engineering to adapt the product he is offering to the market to which he wants to appeal. Once these factors are engineered into the product (himself), he can start to consider the marketing aspect of the product.

The marketing aspect deals with the correct communication in regards to the product offering. In short, how does he present the value he represents in the best possible light. This is where game plays a major role. For instance, the opener represents a way to open an avenue of communication with a potential customer, and could be likened to everything from cold calling to banner ads. Once the customer has been “opened”, the next step is to get the customer invested in the communication. Once the customer is invested in the communication, one can move on to techniques that serve to best highlight the product, engage in influence techniques and various other means that seek to position the product in the mind of the customer. Finally the close represents the time when the customer has to make the first choice with tangible consequences.

There are two key areas in such a scenario, what information to present and how to present that information. Continue reading →

Red Pill Logic: The Walls of Jericho

A barrier in Porter’s model represents either hindrance from engaging in willful and informed action towards an objective or a defense from encroachment on your objective once the wheels are in motion. A barrier to entry for instance represents both a defense for existing market participants, but also a hindrance for potential new market entrants.

During my last appearance on the Mark Baxter Podcast, along with  Rollo Tomassi [1], Mark referenced an article of Rollo’s entitled “Buffers”[2] that deals with the many buffers that men utilize in order to reduce the risk of rejection. Thus they are inherently rationalizations of behavior used to avoid taking risks.

Barriers serve a similar function within the male psyche, and most sentences involving them tend to be related to “enough yet“. When I first started reading the manosphere back in the early 2000s, it was quite obvious that there was a deeper set of behaviors below the surface. The scripts themselves were fine, but as game went on, the idea that “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it” started to take hold. This coincided with the idea of “natural game”, which sought to take game from following scripts in a flow-chart to being the default state of behavior.

I’ve covered various aspects of the blue pill and red pill perspectives, various alpha behaviors and so on previously, however I’ve scarcely addressed the barriers to the underlying state required in order to manifest such behaviors. This is a simple case of cause and effect, when one engages in “fake it until you make it” one is acting out the effect without the prerequisite cause.

To exemplify the concept, if one never feels fear, one can never be brave, because bravery means acting in spite of fear. Thus, a prerequisite state to bravery is fear. The “Enough Yet” problem comes when a man procrastinates or fails to do something because of his own inner game hangups. This is not purely a red pill/game related problem, it could be the guy who wants to start his own business but doesn’t think he’s competent “enough yet”, the guy who wants to gain some muscle but doesn’t think he’s ready “enough yet” to get into the gym.

These emotions forms the barrier to entry for his venture, and there are only two possible solutions to this problem:

A) Do it now, do your best and accept the consequences, the chips will fall as they may.

B) Do not do it and spend more time in preparation until he feels ready.

The people who select option A generally tend to come out better than those who select option B, because those who only want that little extra piece of preparation never quite get that final piece. I’ve helped many a person with their thesis, their research proposals, business cases and such over the years, and those who fall into category B, never get truly good results. The depressing aspect of that is that they are often the most competent people.  This could be viewed as the Dunning-Kruger effect in practice, as people who are highly competent will often be the most competent at finding flaws in their own work and as they become more competent as they prepare, they find new perspectives and information, which causes them to postpone action. However, when you combine this with a tendency towards perfectionism, wanting to be in control of every eventuality and every variable, it creates an unwinnable scenario.

There are only two possible outcomes, number one is that they fail and use this as evidence to prove that they should have spent more time preparing, number two is that they succeed and obsess over what they could have done better. Continue reading →

Red Pill Logic: Internal Messaging

In recent weeks I’ve written posts on hypo- and hypermasculinity and the role of the anima and animus, what these have in common is that they both deal with reactions to environmental stimuli, often in early childhood that continue to influence behavior well into adulthood.

We know that human beings are not born as blank slates, we are born with a number of genetic predispositions that affect our personality, our performance and various other parts of our lives on a day to day basis. Our genetics influence many aspects of our behavior and perhaps one of the more well-known are “The Warrior Genes” [1], known to influence antisocial behavior and predispositions towards violence.

From the day we are born, we are also socialized by our parents, our peer groups, relatives, family friends and various other sources of patterns that we internalize. Before we can think in abstract, before we can reason, before we can even speak, we are internalizing and implementing patterns of behavior and thought. The manifestations of such behaviors can subtract or add to our genetics, a famous example is researcher James Fallon who despite possessing both the neurological and genetic correlates of psychopathy, does not engage in many of the negative behaviors associated with the genetic or neurological makeup [2]. He largely credits this to his positive upbringing, and the positive patterns that he learned as part of his socialization. Such patters are among the oldest we have in our life, they are the deepest ingrained in our mind and burnt into our brain, having been repeated throughout most of our lives. Continue reading →

Red Pill Logic: Deranged Women and Their Targets

Recently I happened to see a conversation between a few gentlemen in my Twitter feed, around the issue of how the women described in my article series on Cluster B women pick their targets. I had not thought about this much, as the majority of the series has been focused on how to identify the woman who has one or more of these disorders, not on the men she targets. This is an interesting subject, but one that is inherently double-edged, as by identifying what makes a person a target helps them fix those issues, however it may also contribute to hubris in the person. This is similar to how some men who are new to the red pill, and not yet calibrated imagine themselves changed men just from having read a few articles.

One must always keep in mind that women with these disorders are highly camouflaged predators, often with years of experience manipulating and otherwise influencing other people, often adopting such behaviors in childhood. If one takes a step back from the particular to the general, and conducts an analysis of what these women actually do, their predatory nature becomes quite obvious as their central preoccupation in life. A predator that is poor at selecting its prey, will for obvious reasons be a rather poor one, for instance the lion who targets the most healthy gazelle over the injured one.

Likewise, if one observes the hunting techniques utilized by various predators, they are adapted to leverage the abilities of the predator to the maximum possible degree, while at the same time limiting those abilities of the prey that would protect them. For instance, the cheetah, the fastest land animal, can be outrun by a gazelle over long distances, and thus attempts to get as close as possible to the target while remaining concealed, to utilize their higher acceleration and top speed. Crocodiles lay in hiding right beneath the surface, and attack their prey from a concealed position. Continue reading →

Gendernomics: Means, Ends and Hypergamy

The concept of hypergamy is what one finds at the bottom of the rabbit hole, the reason why female behavior is how it is observed. Myself and many others have taken swings at explaining hypergamy, what is it, what does “peak hypergamy entail” and many other views have been explored.

Yet there appears to be many misunderstandings out there regarding the various manifestations of hypergamy, furthermore, to how it manifests in each female. It would be no catastrophic admission that it varies from woman to woman, with some manifesting stronger variants others less severe variants. That what is optimal hypergamy for one woman is perhaps not optimal hypergamy for another, based on a range of variables. If hypergamy manifested in an identical degree and manner in every woman regardless of other factors, then one would expect to observe identical mating behavior by every female.

The implication of hypergamy operating in such a manner is that to females, males would have an objective value, a male 10 would be a male 10 to every woman, and a male 1 would be a male 1 to every woman. This would also mean that one could easily break down the variables that constituted male sexual market value, and create male 10s en masse, without much effort. However, this completely disregards the subjective aspects of female mate choice, that are influenced by various individual and contextual factors. It is the influence of these factors that create the variable aspect of female mating judgments.

This should come to no surprise to those that have read the section regarding value theory and the rational actor in “Gendernomics” where I write:

The former category, subjective value theory is much more applicable to the Sexual Market Place. This is because rather than being based on the intrinsic value of an object, good or service, the value is determined based on the value placed on the object by a rational actor for the achievement of his own ends

A man who is thirsting is will value a glass of water much higher than the man who has an unlimited source of clean water. If everyone agreed that objects held the same value, based on underlying factors such as the cost of production or rarity, then it leaves very little room for individual preference. Even in the largest markets in the world, such as various stock markets, the price of an asset reflects not only underlying value, but the judgments of many buyers and sellers regarding the underlying value. Generally these values are within a range, and it’s rare to see large spreads on the value of an asset, unless an exceptional case is presenting itself.

As the sexual market place appears to be governed through many of the same factors any other market, it follows that individual choice, and the value placed on a man or woman by a rational actor for their own ends, is a significant influencing factor. Continue reading →