Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The Game 2.0: Antigame


I was at the Looking Glass recently and was chatting at the bar with the couple sitting next to me. We got to talking at some point about this whole "Game" business which seems to fascinate the single world. I am single, enjoy meeting new people, and certainly know enough about it from reading random blogs and talking to people. Generally speaking, I find the notion of an organized, documented system that uses psychology to manipulate girls into liking you pretty silly, but there seems to be no question that it works on some people.

I have always felt that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see through this crap from the other end. Therefore if you want to meet someone who's got more emotional maturity than a typical teenager, perhaps this might not be the best method of dealing with women. But I digress.

So the guy said at some point that the Game was dead. The new game, he announced, was the anti-game -- brutal honesty. He explained. Rather than going through all these machinations of push, pull, manipulate, being mysterious, just lay it out. What is it you want? You just want to have some cheap sex? Tell her that. You want to find your future wife? Tell them that straight up. If you're into bestiality, drop that bomb in the first five minutes.

I said, ya know, that sounds likely to freak a lot of people out. What do you do when they say, umm, that's altogether too much information? His response: I tell them hey, well you know what? I'm not your therapist. I know what I want. Either you don't know what you want, or you don't want the same thing as I do. I probably just saved us from 14 months of dating followed by an ugly breakup. You should thank me!

Well, not sure I agree exactly on the implementation, but he's kinda got a point... if you know what you want, why beat around the bush? Anyone who can't handle that at the other end probably isn't in the same place you are. Chances are, you'd be wasting your time.

Honesty: The new Game. Or maybe it's the one that always worked on people who have their shit together and know what they want.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Rather than calling it "brutal honesty", why not just call it "fewer social skills than someone afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome"? It'd be honest, too. I totally agree on the Rules of the Game thing. You're younger, so it probably isn't as obvious, but there are guys in their forties trying this stuff and it's just sad. Very sad.

Oh, and I've been zipping through your blog again today, you'll probably get cited in DC Blogs "Blogs of Note" for my tomorrow morning post for something or other. Hope you don't mind. If you do, email me as foilwoman on gmail. Thanks.