Game Imbalance Hypothesis

Xeno-

So long as you're holding true to your own principles, you will not go too far.

If you become obsessed with achieving an end, however, it's easy to veer off course somewhere along the line, sacrificing other things you hold dear in order to achieve the fixated-upon end. That's when the deal with the devil happens; when someone becomes so singularly focused upon something that he loses all perspective and sets even highly important other items to him aside - or even offers them up in sacrifice to the gods of success.

If you're looking at the upper echelons of success in anything, you'll notice these often contain a lot of less "normal" people: empathy-devoid sociopaths and autistic people; obsessive-compulsive perfectionists; self-aggrandizing narcissists; borderline personality people with rapacious needs for attention and validation. These people won't usually "regret" having "gone so far", and many of the people you DO see coming back with a "I went too far and I now regret it" storyline are often just more of these individuals playing the role; they've decided that playing the role of repentant is their best ticket to whatever it is they're trying to get, and are taking that angle now, more than they have achieved any true realization.

Sometimes though you will have someone who becomes obsessed with achieving something, and does take it to the extent that he genuinely hurts people or does other things he would never in a million years have wanted to do had he not been so singularly purposed. So for that reason, I would recommend that while you strive for mastery in a thing, you routinely take breaks from your striving to reassess where you are at.

I'd also recommend keeping a diverse social circle, because that'll avoid you from falling prey to "group values"... e.g., if you hang out with a bunch of investment bankers, and those are the ONLY people you hang out with, you'll start thinking life is all about accumulating money, and little else. Yet if you also have a few ascetics who practice meditation and minimalism in your life, this will serve as a stopgap that prevents you from ever going fully over into the investment banker world to the extent that you worship the almighty dollar and mentally marginalize all else.

Keep your circle diverse and your perspective broad, and you can avoid these devil's bargains the great lot of the time.

Chase

AA-

You have a valid point on the Middle East; I overgeneralized here. That was my mistake. When I referred to the Middle East, I was thinking of the predominant cultures (as I understand them from my reading, study, and speaking with friends from them) of places like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, much of Egypt, etc., where strict segregation is kept between single members of the opposite sexes and harsh punishments can be meted out for those violating those guidelines. Wealthier members of these societies and members living in more urban environments or in/around Western enclaves tend to have somewhat different experiences, but these are not representative of the overall populations.

However, there are plenty of other places that are still "Middle East" but are not like this - Lebanon, Turkey, etc. I've seen some Turkish guys with very good game, and Istanbul is a big party capital. I don't usually think "Middle East" when I think of Turkey, for instance (as a matter of fact, didn't it apply to join the EU?). But they are indeed Middle East, so the I needed to be clearer with this one. I'm in a place with really slow / timing out Internet right now and don't to edit the article here since there's a risk of losing some of the text if the connection times out when saving, but I'll come back and throw some caveats / clarifications about WHAT environments I'm talking about specifically in there.

I suspect most of your comment is more of a kneejerk reaction to the lack of cultural sensitivity here, which hopefully the above two paragraphs cover, but I'll try to address other points:

1. Respectfully, this article is more along the lines of hypothesis or mental masturbation than most of your other articles striving for truth.
   
   Hypothesis - yes, absolutely! That's why it was titled as such. I only have anecdotal evidence so this, so it's highly refutable. Mental masturbation is sort of a broad and sweeping term; usually just means something that's completely useless to think about. I suppose that'd depend on whether this article (and the others in the series) are useful to you in changing your perspective on dating in different markets or not. If not, like anything else on the site you won't use, they'll probably just be "mental masturbation" for you.
   

2. nearly the entire article is about race
   
   The point of the article was to start with race and take it somewhere else (environment). Complete the article, and you may feel differently about it.
   

3. I am consistently bested by nearly all my Middle Eastern counterparts in charming women, even those who chose not to sleep with women pre-maritally
   
   Hard to tell exactly what's happening here, and exactly how typical your Western and Middle Eastern friend groups are. It may be the case that you simply have Middle Eastern friends who are atypically "good with girls" and they would be good with girls anywhere; and you have Western friends who are more "typical with girls." If you take guys who are mediocre with women in a competitive environment and put them in a less competitive environment, they will do better than they do at home, but they still won't do AMAZING unless it's a super low competition environment. Or it could be the case that everyone in your Middle Eastern town is as good at getting laid as your buddies are, or that no one in your Western town is nearly as good at getting laid as your Western buddies are. There's a lot of different variables here. Also for consideration is the word "charming" and the inclusion of men who apparently aren't sleeping with women; hard to get a read on what this means (this article's focused on getting to sex, since that's the only real objective metric; when you start talking about liking or capturing the interest of or charming, it gets a lot more vague and open to opinion... vs. penis in vagina, which is infinitely more cut and dry).
   

4. Also, Middle Eastern culture is FAR more social than Western (not vice versa) and although Middle Eastern immigrants do have assimilation problems when they move to the West, once overcome, they thrive beyond any measure to their white/black counterparts

   This may just be a case of us talking past each other about different parts of Middle Eastern culture. Sounds like you're Iranian? I haven't met a great deal of Iranians, but the ones I have have been some of the more silver-tongued individuals I've met - they definitely assimilate easily. Lots of Iranian salesmen talking Americans out of their hard-earned dollars, etc. And Persian women are wonderful. In that case, that's my mistake for casting a too-broad net with "Middle East" when I should've wrote "religiously restrictive regions of the Middle East."
   

5. Long story short, they both got laid that night. And my Iranian friend was taking his girl back to her place after sex at his apartment at the same time my white friend finally got his girl back to his place for a romp: 6AM. I don't know about you, but I believe hare beats tortoise here.

   Could be that Iranian men have better game than Serbian men. Hard to say. I haven't seen many of either in action and don't have a frame of reference to compare them. Could be this one Iranian guy has really good game for his culture and this one Serbian guy has really bad game for his culture, or maybe they're from the same levels of their cultures, or who knows. And when we're looking at a single instance, it's almost impossible to be able to tell. I can tell you myself, I've had times I've gone out with guys with terrible game and the guy got laid and I did not. And other times I've gone out with guys with tighter game than me and I picked up a stunner and my buddy got nothing. The problem with looking at small sample sizes is that asymmetric returns kicks in in a big way to make the data basically unintelligible.
   

6. This weekend I myself went out with two black friends of mine. One abandoned me in set as my wingman while the other mentioned earlier in the night: "I don't approach girls." Both were very good-looking, taller than me, and in an ironic twist, one of my black friends actually had blonde hair and beard with green eyes.

   Not surprising. Cold approach is a rare skill and few men engage in it. You're more likely to encounter it in travellers, since these are individuals who take more risks and strike out more often into the unknown, but even among them, it's rare. Just as I'm sure if you went out with a couple of random Iranian guys in NYC, the likelihood that either of them is skilled as a wingman or a cold approacher is entirely dependent on how much you screen for pickup skills in your friend selection.

7. How is it that the Middle East is ranked harder than Europe/Africa in your assessment, yet Arab Americans are on par with Indian/East Asian counterparts?

   In this case, again, the focus was on the parts of the Middle East (60%? 70%? I realize it wasn't always like this though - e.g., Afghanistan pre-Taliban vs. Afghanistan today) where the sexes are stringently separated. In that case, it's like comparing a weed growing in a temperate environment with lots of resources and lots of competitors (good, high competition environment), vs. a weed growing in a temperate enviornment with lots of resources and few competitors (good, low competiton environment), vs. a weed growing in a temperate environment with few resources and restricted competition (no competition environment, like what you see in a sexually restrcited market). The first will evolve to exploit large amounts of resources rapidly and systematically, while outcompeting its competition. The second will evolve to move a bit more slowly generally (it's not in a hurry) and is much less competitive (it traditionally has had no reason to be). The third will be great at hanging on and digging its heels in (exploit low amounts of resources), but typically won't be adapted to exploit plentiful resources, and while it will hang onto what it does have, it usually won't be especially good at muscling out competitors and taking over their resources (not accustomed to competition).

8. What of Latin American men who are unmentioned in your article but have a reputation for being more seductive than whites and blacks?

   I stayed away from Latin America because it's such a heterogenous population - whites, blacks, folks of Native American descent, all mixed in together and calling themselves "Latins." But generally, from what I understand, Latins of predominantly white backgrounds tend to be the most competitive, generally because they're coming from city backgrounds where they have wealth and freedom and Westernized cultures, and I agree they are often even more competitive than North American / European whites or blacks. I haven't spent enough time in Latin America that I'd be confident trying to put a finger on what it is about Latin American sexual markets that churns out such competitive seducers. I suspect it's similar to the Mediterranean, where cold approach is more common among the men and the increased competition forces better fundamentals/game. I have found the reports of how hard European and American men find it getting laid in Buenos Aires rather amusing (these half make me want to go just to see how I fare; and half make me have no interest in the place at all!). Latin blacks can come from upper or lower tiers of society, and this seems to determine to large extent how competitive they are. Those of predominantly Native descent seem to largely inhabit the lower tiers in most countries, which means more pastoral environments, restrictive sexual mores, and less opportunity to interact with large numbers of the opposite sex, so they generally are not as competitive.
   

Anyway, I appreciate the additional data points. I'd actually love to visit Iran; Persian people are really charismatic and enjoyable company whenever I've had the good fortune to meet them, and the women are beautiful. It's probably not a good time for me to head there politically, however... maybe in another 15 or 20 years :/

Chase

TR-

Glad you enjoyed the article.

South America's a highly variable place from everything I understand about it (I've only done Peru myself, and no picking up as I was there on the dime of a Peruvian girlfriend with family high up in the Peruvian government whom you probably wouldn't want to piss off by picking up when there on their niece's or daughter's ticket). While I haven't gone, I did spend a LOT of time collecting anecdotes from a number of guys I know who are good with girls and have spent a lot of time there.

So, based on all of that... it's a pretty heterogenous place. Differs greatly from one locale to the next. The easiest country to get laid in South America supposedly is Columbia, though it is also the least-English speaking. The hardest to get laid in supposedly is Argentina, which has the most English-speaking. Buenos Aires, is, from everything I hear, tough as nails to get laid in and one of the harder places to pick up in the world. So, if you're looking to train your skills with women up to an elite level, you're probably in the right place. If you were looking to coast and enjoy some low-hanging fruit, you might want to plan some visits to lower tier Argentinian towns for an easier time of it (or maybe make a trek to elsewhere in SA).

Ricardus tells me the top tier cities in Brazil aren't nearly as easy as they used to be and have lost much of their novelty factor for foreigners; according to him, if you head there don't bother with Rio, Sao Paulo, and the third biggest city (the name evades me at the moment). If you head to the second tier cities apparently it is still quite easy.

Peru's supposedly easy, but difficult to find really hot women in. Seems like there are more attractive Peruvian women in the U.S. than there are in Lima just about. Chile I hear good things about. Venezuela is so bad right now that even the locals are afraid of being kidnapped and robbed... guess they have Chavez to thank for that, since it wasn't that way a decade ago. I'm sure that probably makes it easy for foreigners since none go there, but the risk of having some Venezuelan cartel member cutting your pinkie finger off and mailing it to family back home to convince them to send ransom likely isn't worth it.

Chase

Anon-

I'd consider the ability to hold a basic level of conversation more or less fundamental.

More advanced conversation is a plus, and I recommend it; however, it serves as more of a downside-protector than upside-maximizer in my eyes.

Essentially, the majority of the women you'll sleep with or date are women who are into you from your first approach, because you had your fundamentals in order and they clicked with you. So long as you can avoid making any real ball-dropping mistakes while talking to them, it mostly comes down to, "Can you keep pushing things forward until you reach intimacy?"

Anything other than basic conversation really just helps speed things along a bit, up the vibe, or push women who are on the fence on you off the fence. I've known lots of guys who cleaned up with girls whose full conversational repertoires consisted of joking with and teasing women and offering them drinks and after parties in run down apartments.

It also depends on what demographics you're going for. If you're going for older / more educated women, or doing day game, conversation moves more to the fore. When you're going for younger, less educated women, or women in parties and clubs, conversation's more negotiable.

Chase

Anon-

Your aim should be finding objective metrics you can aim for to help you get more of a bead on where you're trying to get there and when you've succeeded in doing so.

If you're not getting dates, and you're following the number close laid out in the article on this (here), and the texting process in the articles on this (like this one), the issue is probably your initial approach (or if you're not doing these, focus on getting these straightened out pronto - they may be the cause, and are easily fixed).

What I'd change in that case might be looking for ways to get women investing in you more before trading numbers. Read up on compliance; there are a few articles on this here and here and here to start you out. Get as much compliance as you can before you go for a number; it'll help you screen out disinterested women and cement the interest of the interested ones.

Once you start going for more investment, you'll probably start picking up on other flaws in your approach you can fix. Compliance highlights where you're failing pretty reliably, as women who aren't into you will get uncomfortable and try to avoid complying, while women who are will happily and giddily oblige, and everyone else falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Useful for gauging where you're at and troubleshooting accordingly.

Chase

M-

Probably never! I'm too entrenched in my own school of thought to put myself before the academic bench at this point (additionally, a man's net contributions drop for each level of institutional education he receives beyond "some college" - I'm already behind the guys who drop out midway through by possessing a bachelor degree!).

Re: my own personal opinion on average Indian women's looks... well there's a powder keg of a question! In general, anyone can make him or herself look more attractive by improving his/her fundamentals, sure. I think for most men, a less attractive woman working to better her looks is going to become more attractive to him. As for me personally, I'm a little unusual in that I've spent years working to make myself less swayed by the things that fool most men into giddiness and sexual fervor: hair, clothes, walk, sexiness, etc. See this article if you haven't yet. So usually I would say if I don't like her face, I just don't like her face.

Then again, I remember I used to think Ashanti (the R&B singer) was pretty darn cute, yet when I saw her "before" pictures I was horrified. So this may just be a case of "I'd need to see her before and after pictures to give you an opinion!"

Chase

Geronimo-

Glad you like approach - I didn't end up discussing Central / South America in later articles, but several other commenters asked about them above, and there are a couple of replies from me there with my thoughts on them if you scroll up a bit from here.

Re: sales... yeah, I know, sales sucks. I pray every day to wake up a billionaire and no longer need to care about making money and then GC can just be a pure "for fun" project, I can make everything free, take down the ads, and just do it for the pure joy of it with absolutely no need to make it make sense financially, too. Still hasn't happened yet - Jiminey Cricket and I have some chatting to do the next time I'm in his neighborhood - but you can't stop a man from dreaming. Until then, we do need to monetize the site to keep it running, and believe it or not that ad with me on it gets 4x the people on the sales page, using Mastery, getting laid, even getting married, and helping this business to grow and succeed.

Sorry to hear my mug popping up on the screen with a sales message embarrassed you in front of your friend. The problem with guys is that being good with girls is usually an ego thing, so guy's'll get awkward if they feel like they need (or someone thinks they need) help in that department. Sort of like a guy needing viagra or help managing his budget. In the event you share the site with another friend (though I will understand if my visage scarred you for life and this never ever happens again), and he gets weird upon finding himself looking me square in the eyes with an offer to open the flood gates, just tell him, "Yeah, I know, it's cheesy... that's just part of how they get more guys aware of Mastery and using the product and monetize the site. Just a part of being in business I guess."

(one thing that is worth noting on that one is that the cookie is broken and resets daily, so the thing pops up every new day even if you close it on the first day, unlike every 7 days as with the email signup popup. It's on our list of things for our developer to fix once he's finished with the new sales funnel and upgrades this site's backend and we can straighten out some of the other bugs around the site)

But yeah, that's business. I try to have us keep things as unobtrusive as possible, but sometimes you've just got to get in guys' faces and say "BLAM!" I don't understand why humans can't be seek things out on their own calmly and rationally instead of needing these excitement / novelty / autopilot-disrupting-type things, but just one of the great tragedies of our species I suppose.

Chase

Jason-

Obviously the article struck a chord!

You're misinterpreting "excess of breeding women" to mean "Wow! European and African men sure had it easy compared to Asian men, who didn't have nearly as many women to have sex with." That's the opposite of what it means. An "excess of breeding women" means an excess of women who successfully bred, and a shortage of men who did.

Why is there a shortage of breeding men? Is it because those men were never born, or they all died at alarming rates or... were those men actually THERE, but unable to mate their sperm to any woman's eggs?

Well, we know that the global rate of male births to female births is 1.05 males for every 1.00 females. So we know that males outnumber men at birth, across all continents in all sorts of economic and social conditions, and this is likely an inbuilt genetic tendency to produce slightly more males than females. We also know that men are more likely to die of accidental death, warfare, and the like. But not nearly enough to consistently wipe out anywhere near the percentages of reproductive zeroes European and African populations produced compared to Asian populations, where the number of men who successfully bred nearly equalled the number of women who successfully bred.

So what happened? Well, two ideas: 1.) the missing men simply vanished into a black hole or were abducted by aliens, thereby removing their contributions from the gene pool; 2.) the missing men did not reproduce because the men who did completely shut them out of the mating market by knocking up all the women themselves (or maybe there were millions of MGTOWs back in prehistoric Africa and Europe... but even then, the modern MGTOW movement is the result of men effectively throwing in the towel in highly competitive sexual markets).

This is additionally borne out by both penis and cervical lengths; the leading theories on these are that they lengthen in response to increased sperm competition, and shorten in response to lessened sperm competition. The average Asian male penis is 5.3 inches; the average white male penis is 5.8 inches; and the average black male penis is 6.8 inches. I don't know the average length on cervixes, but I can tell you from somewhat extensive personal experience that an Asian girl's pussy is on average shorter and tighter than a black girl's, even if the two are of the same height / weight.

Sperm competition basically means if more men are ejaculating inside the same fertile female, who wins? Additionally, the design of the glans - the penis head - seems to be uniquely well-designed for scooping out competitor sperm, with something like 93% or 97% efficiency; the exact number eludes me at the moment. Anyway, the implication here is that each European woman is taking more partners on than her Asian women counterparts, necessitating a longer European male penis capable of implanting sperm deeper in the cervix and better scooping out a competitor's sperm; and this is taken to an even greater extreme in Africa.

Onto online dating:

Mentioning that women prefer men of a certain race in online dating is a good thing to talk about, but it doesn't get to the root. WHY do women prefer the men of the races they do?

I'll tell you what I've seen: again and again, when a white girl meets a legitimately cool, attractive Asian man, she is SHOCKED, and instantly very attracted. I can't compete with that. Fortunately for me, there are few guys out there like this, because most Asian men don't consider game / fundamentals to be important domains for them to improve on. But what's happening here in the online dating world? Well, the girl has a certain image of Asian men in her head. But where'd it come from? Plucked out of thin air?

Hardly. It's informed by a mix of stereotypical images - which are ultimately informed by the members of the race / nationality / demographic in question - and real world personal experiences.

If white women consistently met cool, sexy, attractive Asian guys, Hollywood films and television shows featuring nerdy Asian guys would have to change to portraying Asian men in a different light, because no one would watch them (they'd require too much willful suspension of disbelief by too large of a segment of the viewing public). And in fact, as I do see more and more cool, attractive Asian guys in Western culture, I'm also seeing more of this in the movies and on TV as well - more attractive Asian guys getting with white girls. In a number of parts of the U.S. West Coast, the "cool Asian guy" is actually becoming a trendy thing for a lot of apple pie American girls to date, in fact (I talked about this on the discussion boards before; believe it was this thread, but my Internet is wonky here so not sure; it's in "Off Topic").

Anyway, what you're seeing in online dating is not pulled out of thin air; it's a result of the root cause of the difference, that on the whole, Asian men are less competitive than their white or black counterparts in Western culture (it's rapidly changing, as more second and third generation Asian guys are born fully integrated into Western culture, but the change is still underway and there's always a lag between media portrayals and what's happening in real life), due to less competitive sexual markets in the mother culture.

Were Asian men more competitive than their white and black counterparts (and did not have a stigma attached to them, as black men do in the West; more on that in Charlie's comment below), you'd likely see the same reception online that my cool, attractive Asian friends do in real life: great attraction for the cool, attractive Asian male than is present for the cool, attractive white male. As it stands though, everyone in online dating must necessarily judge you by racial stereotypes and other superficial qualities, since personality is all but impossible to convey in the impersonal realm of web dating (my coolest Asian pal used to lay girls off of online regularly, but that was back in the days of MySpace, when you could set up a profile showing you with lots of hot white girls doing bad, bad, naughty things and the girls could immediately say, "Ooh, he's not like the other Asian guys" - much harder to do with a traditional online dating profile, where those sorts of pictures violate the "culture" of the medium).

Chase

Charlie-

So to sum up the comment, it's, "Black men face stiffer sexual selection pressures than white men," correct?

This comment seems to be agreement with the premise in the guise of some form of dissension.

It depends on what country we're talking about of course - last I heard, black men in Sweden were treated like KINGS by the women, while white men mostly stood around holding their dicks and feeling sorry for themselves. But I imagine you're talking the U.S.?

My black American friends who were good with girls have generally had the tightest, smoothest game of any of the guys I've known. I attribute that to - as you - a more competitive market with tougher selection pressures. It's harder for a black man to find a mate, and as such the market grooms him to be better than men from other races.

At the same time, I don't want us to get into a "who's the bigger victim" competition, because that doesn't do anyone any good (and I can easily go on and on about how I had to watch girls flirt with me only to go on to sleep with my black friends back in school - so we can do, "Sure, black guys have it hard - but not NEARLY as hard as pale white guys with red hair...!" or whatever... anyway, I already covered the who's the bigger victim competition in this article: “I Can’t Get Girls Because Girls Only Want [BLANK]”; the argument is a red herring from dealing with a man's real issues, which are always fundamentals- and game-related).

I agree with you that there is a stigma against dating black men. That frightens many women off of them; it intrigues many more. The primary thing I would keep in mind about this is that it is a male driven stigma, not a female one. If you get women talking candidly, even conservative ones, they will admit that they are very curious about sleeping with a black man. The people who are making the racist comments on YouTube are nearly all men, and they're doing it out of fear. Black men have reputations as strong, sexual, and sexually competitive; for the same reason that Asian men in Asia do not want to date Asian women who have been with white men (because they know they will forever be compared against said white man), white men generally do not want to date white women who have been with black men (because, again, they know they will forever be compared against said black man).

It's largely an attainability issue on men's parts. Every man wants to be the strongest, sexiest, most potent man his woman has ever been with.

In the past, this was achieved by men insisting on marrying only virgins.

Today, it's maintained by men looking for less experienced women, or abstracting away their women's partner counts in the event of themselves dating more experienced women, and frequently willfully deluding themselves (with the woman's help) into thinking that of course they are the most sexually powerful man she has ever dated. She'd never want anyone else.

When the man knows the woman has without a doubt been with a man who's likely more honed than he is, due to emanating from a more competitive sexual market, he is unable to delude himself, and enters auto-rejection.

This is where all the racial talk of "tainting" and the woman's "purity" and whatnot comes from - what these men fear is that once she's gone black, she never really comes back. And that means she never really becomes theirs... so they use disgust to protect themselves (disgust / revulsion is an auto-protect mechanism used to keep one away from things that are potentially harmful - e.g., vomit, feces, but also people who might suck you in and harm you in some key way if you don't auto-protect yourself out of their grasp - including women who will never truly be your women and as such may be a threat to the very survival of your genes).

Chase

TIG-

Thanks for the input here.

I've noticed this a lot as well; it's part of the game / fundamentals problem... the guy's from a sexual market where he doesn't really need these to compete, and he just assumes he doesn't need them elsewhere either. And when he hears guys telling him to get them fixed up if he wants to compete, he just writes them off as irrelevant bits of data because they're so far outside of his experiences.

And then he goes around lamenting that women don't want him and it doesn't make sense and he's doing everything he should be doing.

I think it just takes a mental paradigm shift for a guy to realize, "Wait - I'm doing what I *should* do to succeed in MY home culture... but what I *should* do to succeed in THIS culture is something other than this," and then to seek to understand what these other things are, be open to listening to the people who try to show him what they are, and be serious about implementing those suggestions and not just blow them off because he doesn't need them back home.

Tough to do, and a lot of guys don't do it. The guys that do end up seeing what you've seen... when you up your competitiveness, you up your results.

Chase