Coffee Daygame

Site Map

Read the book

Substack | Twitter

Category: Principles

  • Filtering and Screening: The Basis of Seduction Theory

    Filtering and Screening: The Basis of Seduction Theory

    Two concepts that should be easy enough to understand, screening and filtering, have sadly led to such wrong conclusions that, where they aimed to provide clarity, have actually produced more confusion. The concepts themselves, on one hand, have to do with awareness of your own actions and what they entail, while on the other hand, they have to do with the randomness of cold approaching.

    In this article, I aim to define things properly and trace them to their natural conclusion.

    The Basic Theory of Seduction

    Well, young buck, I will have you sit at a bench in a crowded area, and I want you to count me how many of the young ladies you would ideally want to have sex with. All chances, if she is a 6 and above, you would happily plug her, given the opportunity was there. Of course, preference would be for the hotter ones, but the bar for just sex would be low.

    Now, lets us consider the dual side of this argument. From among the population of girls that you would like to bone, how many of them would be willing to be boned by you. Chances are, no matter who you are (model, superstar, president), you are open to many more girls than girls are open to you. This is called female choosiness; it has an evolutionary role (pregnancy is costly), and it is a fact of life. Practically, this gap is so large that I wouldn’t be surprised if the ratios are 1000:1 (i.e., for every 1000 girls a male wants to bang, only 1 would be open to them).

    Disclaimer: this is over the entire population.

    Disclaimer 2: Although looks are important, the reality of this ratio shows that beyond a certain level, the futility of looksmaxxing. So what.. you expend all this effort to improve your looks, and the ratio goes up to 950:1? And this practically achieves what, a small ego boost?

    Hence, we arrive at the first roadblock. To have a chance with a girl, you need to find a girl to give you a chance.

    And even then… it spirals further. Some of them would be willing to bang you only if you have X and Y characteristics, which you might not have after you met them. Some others might be willing to bang you after 5 dates, which you might not have the patience for it. Some others might be willing to bang you, but might not be available now (work, boyfriend, logistics). Some others might only be willing to bang you when they are at the correct time of the monthly cycle.

    The bottom line is, even with calibration, the majority of the girls you will open will be No girls. And that makes the need for a discriminatory tool.

    Filtering and Screening: the Toolkit to Reduce Search Costs

    We are ready now to define our two terms precisely. They both have to do with how and when we decide that a girl is either a No girl, or has a low chance to be converted into a lay.

    Filtering: a preplanned behavioural trait that makes uninterested girls unwilling to engage further.

    Screening: An active choice to stop exerting effort for a girl who is possibly unwilling to engage further.

    The core essence of the concepts sounds the same, but different disciplines of Game engage with them differently. For example, in direct Daygame, the street stop and the compliment are the filters themselves. Only the girls who accept the bold initial interest would be willing to stay in the interaction further. On the other hand, a social circle player who organises a big party, inevitably is going to invite No girls, after meeting and interacting with them, he will have to actively screen them out.

    Both of the versions of the discriminatory tool are carrying inaccuracy risks:

    • A filter might be too wide. Maybe some Yes and Maybe girls are going to disengage. Hence, the risk is false negative. [Albeit, the more a girl leans towards Yes, the less likely she is to be filtered out].
    • A screening decision might be inaccurate. In that case, the player might be lured to invest time and effort into a girl who has no real sexual interest in him. Hence, the risk is false positive. [Harder to make a screening decision, the more social value the girl sees in associating with you].

    Theory vs practice

    In practice, you will get to use both tools. It is not an either/or decision, nor can all of the discriminating decisions be implemented into a model; you will have to actively implement infield and adjust in real time.

    In their idolised versions, filters should be on the looser side: filtering out the majority of the No girls and letting the majority of the Yes and Maybe’s in.

    Screening decisions should ideally come from your own inner core: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”. Now, being able to answer this properly without drifting into celibacy is a delicate act. Hence, I will give you a heuristic: out of your current or potential options, is she the best one? If so, keep engaging with her. That means, only screen a girl out when you realistically can do better infield. As you develop your character more, you can tighten this up.

    Congruency and Incongruency

    I am highlighting this sections specifically, because we are arriving at the main strategic point of the article. A point that is so misunderstood and wrongly used, that is making experienced Players pull their hair when they see it.

    The point I am referring to is this: “Use the information that you are getting via filters“.

    When you apply a filter or a screening question, her response speaks volumes. Don’t pretend you didn’t notice or you don’t think it is enough. Let’s explain this with an example. You just met a girl in a bar, and after greetings, you tease her and she laughs. Then you tease her again and she laughs more. Then you light kino her upper arm with a rapport statement, and she becomes engaged and interested.

    How the hell did you know to pivot into kino + rapport? Well, your teasing was filter in itself. Why in the world would she be laughing if she is not interested/finds you interesting. She passed the filter once, she passed it twice, then you introduce kino and rapport as the next filter. That is how you know to introduce it in the first place. Can you imagine the stupidity if the Players mind were to go “she is laughing to what I say… but this doesn’t mean anything!“.

    Same is true for proactive screening. The date has been going bluntly or boringly, so you decide it is the moment to figure out where you stand, or cut your losses and call it a day. Hence, you decide for a strong, bold escalation statement, for example, you say “let’s sit next to each other”, and then you go for the hug. If she rejects, she rejects; if not, you are on the money. Sounds different, but it is the same idea as before, used proactively. If she passes the test, then you and she are the couple who is already hugging, don’t go backwards on your speaking manner and frame push, she already passed the test!


    Probabilities and statistics

    There is always a risk of things backfiring. Especially when screening, it is more than likely that the girl is aware what’s up. They rarely will give false answers when you are checking her interest level. And if they intentionally do, it is a big red flag on her inner personality.

    The flip side of this risk is that it can backfire. If she fails to pass the filter/screening question, both you and she know she didn’t pass, and hence, a behavioural change to your attitude against her has to happen. You need to punish bad behaviour with aloofness and coldness. Then later you can try to rebuild the bridge, but at least temporarily, you have to react to it.

    Therefore, a test like that is a probabilistic tool. Some times it will work in your favour, sometimes it will not. But this raises a question: why play your chances when you can take the path of least risk?

    And now we arrive at the strategic function of risk. The fact that it is symmetrical. Once both adversaries agree on a coinflip, the probabilities are fixed on that flip and not on other flips. Let’s give an example: you and me want to settle a dispute. We can fight it out, where I have 60% chance to win, and you have 40% chance to win. A friend comes along, and proposes instead to settle it in a game of coinflips (each player has 50% of winning), whoever wins gives 50$ to the loser, and the dispute is over.

    Either the fight or the coinflip represents risk; however, from your perspective, the coinflip is better because you have a higher chance to win. From my viewpoint, maybe the coinflip is also better, because it avoids the risk of long-term harm, hence I might be willing to forfeit the 10% advantage I have over a fistfight. Therefore, we might agree to settle the dispute like that.

    The abstract version of this example goes like this: when you are considering a filter or a screening action, you have a probability of success X. If you do nothing, your long-term probability is Y. The only thing that matters is whether X or Y is higher. Once you make a decision, be consistent with your decision and stick to it.

    The whole point is that risk is always symmetric and it equalizes other advantages. If you have agency of choice to take the 50/50 coinflip over the 40/60 fistfight, then I will be locked into your decision. In Seduction, we as men have the benefit of agency, hence we get to decide which risks to take. The point is to be aware of our decisions and choose the beneficial ones.

    Thesaurus of Seduction BS

    Let’s now take a moment and address some of the BS thrown around in the seduction community. We have both the vocabulary and the theory to back up our conclusions.

    In Indirect Game, Players have higher closing ratios

    Nope. You are making a word play between filtering and screening. In direct Game we apply a filter by giving the statement of intent early. In indirect Game, the filter is only social (will she exchange words with you), then the Player engages sexually with girls only after screening them.

    Hence, you are masking the rejection over a weaker filter and a stronger screening process. It is a wordplay, not efficiency. The only advantage indirect Game has over direct is the timeframe to implement tools like pre-section and social proof. But this comes at a setup and time cost.

    In direct Daygame, you are giving your value away by complimenting her

    Again, nope. Don’t confuse filter with value calculations. Maybe the act itself is slightly pedestalizing, but thinking like this is missing the point.

    Among the girls who are available to you to lay via Daygame, losing some of your value in the compliment is irrelevant (I would argue you don’t even lose value if done right). The opener is the first big filter, and among the girls who pass this filter, you have value to spare either way. From among the girls who don’t pass the filter, we don’t care! They will likely never bang you to begin with!

    Time is on your side, you can always take it slow

    No, she controls the speed of seduction as well. She does so via how she passes your screening and filtering questions. If she showcases excessive interest in those, you need to match her.

    If you don’t, it will introduce incongruency based on the discussion we had before. Many a time, going faster is better than slow. And many a time, you are on an invisible timer.

  • Sexual and Social Hook Points: Understanding Interest in Daygame

    Sexual and Social Hook Points: Understanding Interest in Daygame

    The concept of different hook points, is not new. Tom Torero had once mentioned it, and it is “scientifically” showcased in the documentary bellow.

    Observe how this speedating experiment goes for a little bit. First, they ask participants to just stare at each other and rate them; that is the sexual hook point. Then, they give them the normal 3-minute opportunity to chat. This measures the effect of verbals.

    Excuse the chinese subs. It is not easy to find old documentaries

    The experiment itself goes for 10-15 minutes in the documentary, but the take-aways are the following:

    • Girls’ initial score (appearance + non-verbals) would barely rise, but it could go down with verbals.
    • Despite this, some girls were still chatty in the interaction and engaged (this is social hook point)
    • This difference between original attraction (first score) and openness to engagement (chattiness), is the difference of the two hook points.

    Therefore, we arrive at the blackpill conclusion, that looks is all, and what we do in set doesn’t matter. Meh… I personally disagree with this conclusion, but there is certainly an element of truth in it. Let’s put this under the microscope.

    The process of Seduction

    Mystery was an underrated genius, and his book, Mystery Method, should still be a mandatory reading for all aspiring PUAs. Not in the sense of advocating routines or Negs (albeit a misunderstood concept), but on his codification of Seduction. The sequence of Attraction → Comfort → Seduction remains the golden sequence in every model that respects itself.

    Therefore, when we do Game, what exactly do we do? Where is our agency, and what is our effect on girls? Well, it roughly goes like this:

    1. Initial engagement: As observed in the documentary, the unconscious, or the reptilian brain, needs to give you the initial pass. Only, and only then, she will stick and chat with you. Otherwise, it is a blowout.
    2. Attraction phase: It aims to elevate the position from point 1 (i.e., confirm and elevate expectations).
    3. Comfort phase: It aims to solidify and ground the advantages of 1 and 2 (i.e., this is real).
    4. Seduction phase: This is where sexual escalation takes place.

    Now, I can formalize my disagreement with the BBC experiment and explain why the blackpill viewpoint is false.

    In the experiment, scientists correctly measured point 1; however, points 2-4 were measured from inadequate men, without the barest hint of skill and finesse.

    There is no denying that the initial impression is hard to overcome in Daygame; Krauser had called it the acidity test in Mastery. But because the initial impression is out of our control, it doesn’t mean there is no work to be done later on. In practice, in Daygame, we reach sexual hook point only after we have reached social hook point. The true process is:

    Stop → Stack (social hook point) → Vibing (sexual hookpoint)

    How do we know this? Because we can initiate Kino only after there is some sexual attraction. The girl won’t allow it otherwise; it is that simple. The Daygame model contradicts the assumption of the scientists on first impressions, because we back up our claims with actual escalation. The initial attraction is only a stepping stone, because (most of the time), we cannot just walk up to a girl and escalate her.

    Aside: Daygame vs rest of Seduction

    Here is where the pretentiousness of some other forms of Seduction is revealed. Status-based strategies, for example, Nightgame or Social circle game, often reach social hook points much more easily. This is either through the nature of the environment (i.e., there is no socially acceptable opportunity for point 1 filtering), or via social capital (i.e., it is beneficial for the girl to associate with you, without even wanting to fuck you).

    The said Player thus gains access to a myriad of sets, but only engages and pursues the ones that also reach sexual hook point. Therefore, technically, he never gets rejected, and his closure rate is astronomical, maybe 30% or even 50%.

    As you can already see, this is a farce. Said Player had countless interactions that he doesn’t count as sets because he never hit on them. He never hit on them precisely because they would had been blowouts. Even among the highly warm sets, he had 70%-50% fail rate. This is just masking rejection, not necessarily using a better strategy.

    Formalization of concepts

    With all this vague discussion of observations and loose definitions, let us now put everything together into concise and workable definitions

    Social Hook point

    It is when the girl becomes socially interested in the interaction. In a sense, she won’t leave. She will stick around to listen to you.

    Sexual Hook point

    When the girl is sexually engaged in the interaction. When her subcoms indicate sexual interest and lust.

    Disclaimer: Just because you reached sexual hookpoint, doesn’t mean that the girl is ready to be taken to bed. It just means that the gradual path to escalation is now open.

    There you have it, as a heuristic, social hook point is reached when she asks a question. As a second heuristic, sexual hook point is reached when she starts accepting your touch. Usually social hook point is reached within 1-2 minutes of the interaction, and sexual hook point is reached within 2-5 minutes of the interaction.

    Not all hook points are equal

    The idea of advanced seduction is as follows: social hook point is merely a stepping stone, sexual hook point is where the magic happens. If you have sexual hook point, nothing else matters; that is why lays have happened even when the girl speaks little English, that is why I personally had a lay even when the girl had verbalized to me “you are boring as fuck, we don’t match”.

    On the other side of things, social hook point is not enough. This is the path that leads to let’s just be friends, or other forms of timewasters. It is your task as the player to clarify where you are standing, mainly via escalation or a direct statement of intent.

    Calibrated escalation is the best tool for this. A few attempts at light touching will showcase the girl’s intent on how seriously she sees you. If she keeps avoiding or disengaging, take the hint that the set is going nowhere and eject. If things are harder to gauge, then a direct statement of your intent:

    • I am hitting/flirting with you
    • This is a date, I am considering you man to woman
    • I like you, I want to kiss you

    Or similar, depending on where you are with the set, should clarify to the girl that she needs to reveal her hand. The downside is, of course, that overt verbal escalation rarely goes well. Everything that can be overt, it is done better covertly in Seduction. Regardless, it is better to have a concrete idea on the direction of the set than wandering aimlessly. Take the risk if need be; setting the frame is more important here, despite the risks.

    How to fish for sexual hook point

    As per definition, sexual hook point means the path to escalation becomes open. This is why early kino is important in set, because it gauges whether you have reached said hook point. The best moments are along with an attraction spike, when she gives strong eye contact, or when you can close the distance with her. You need to indicate that this is man to woman and she needs to accept it.

    It is risk-taking at the end of the day, albeit it can be a calculated risk. This is why escalation is in itself attractive, a concept from “sixty years of challenge”, an old PUA. Think of it from the girl’s point of view, she is talking to you and starts thinking you are sexually attractive. On that very moment, you lightly stroke the upper part of her arm or hold her hand. Yes, her head is about to explode. This is not normal behaviour, this is true Game.

    Furthermore, this is the basis of why advanced Game is so fast and smooth. Escalation is not only an end in itself. It is an experience-enhancing mechanism. When you are moving the girl as you are making your point, or when you are holding her hand is being calculated into her experience of your words. Remember, girls are feelings first, logic second. Touch itself is setting the mood along with your words. It is a high-level mood setter! This is also why Sixty combined escalation and attraction into one!

    In short, the initial attraction battle is about reaching sexual hook point. From then on, escalation, attraction and comfort can blend together into a self-propagating engine. This engine is the mechanism of fast lays!

  • Frame Control: Cheating and Relationship Freedom

    Frame Control: Cheating and Relationship Freedom

    One of the things that Manosphere has really missed the mark on, is girls’ cheating behaviour during a relationship. The running assumption is that the moment you turn your back around, she will jump the first squared-jaw guy she will see.

    While cheating certainly does exist out there, modern Game theory has evolved beyond that. Whether or not she will cheat on you is within your hand to either influence or see it coming. The mechanism behind all this is frame control.

    But let us get everything in line.

    The Origins of the Cheating Myth

    It is long known, and a fundamental point of Rollo Tomassi, that men hate the idea of being cuckolded. Evolutionary speaking, being cuckolded is the ultimate loss for the male. He wastes his entire genetic potential to raise another man’s children.

    The reasons for the cheating female are very simple. She is optimizing hypergamy, with the real father providing genetic quality and the fake father providing resources. A point we will come back to later is that this model completely ignores the internal madness that it causes to the female (staying with the beta father).

    Empirically, this model is accurate enough to describe what is happening to large parts of society. Players discovered it, because they were advertising themselves as the Alpha guy, with the girl jumping them being the wife of the Beta.

    With both theory and empirical evidence established, we have the total distortions of the original concepts. Mainstream attention has come to this, with “street reporters” interviewing girls who supposedly fuck 10 guys at the same time and cheat on a dime.

    The cracks to the popular narrative

    This is a topic that has truth and fiction mixed in, so we have a lot of ground to cover.

    It is true, hypergamy doesn’t care, and girls will cheat the average Beta no-hoper. But we need to introduce nuance to the emotional mechanisms for her to do so. Unless we are talking about a total psychopath, which exist but are rare, the girl has to emotionally rationalize her behaviour to herself.

    This becomes doubly more important when we want to investigate who has a relationship with her. Because the tenet of the PUA theory is to be the Player, to be the Alpha archetype, not the Beta. Even if the relationship is casual and non-monogamous from your end, for you, who practice Game, the rules we outlined earlier don’t apply.

    As the Alpha, Sigma, or simply put high-value guy, you enjoy privileges in regards to her sexual behaviour towards you. For the Beta guy, she has no respect, and cheating is easy to ensue. For the Alpha guy, she has respect: she can’t cheat if she somehow doesn’t degrade you in her mind.

    That last line is on the money. It is why frame control matters, and it is why, as (high-value) men, we have significantly more agency than you would otherwise think.

    The roadmap to cheating: Betatization

    Before we delve into frame control in depth, let us first see how the girl gets “freed” from a high-value man. How she instinctually aims to degrade you, so she can jump another guy.

    There is no morality for this. From the female perspective, it is to her advantage to maximize genetic variability for her children. Four children from 4 different fathers, evolutionary speaking, are a better bet than 4 children from one father. For further discussion on this, I refer to the Biology section of this article.

    Therefore, the female has incentive to eventually dump you. In humans, this happens through the well-observed Betatization process, which has been described in the book Practical Female Psychology [by Clare, and South]. It is a five-step process summarised below:

    1. Shit tests. Goal: test boundaries
    2. Seek communication. Goal: befuddle, and obtain footholds after boundaries have softened.
    3. Put him to work. Goal: control and resources obtainment. Capitalize on step 2.
    4. Evolutionary selfishness. Goal: realization of the male’s diminished value, destroy attraction for him.
    5. Self-determination. Goal: free herself from the relationship (or cheat), “I am my own woman”.

    As the authors put it, this is a psychological death for the human male. Cruel, but at least not as cruel as the Mantis or Black Widow sex behaviour where they eat the male as they mate.

    The realization is the following: if she has sex with you, at some point, you had value in her eyes. How fast you will go with the Betatization process is on you (and your life in general, not only your Game). She will cheat on steps 4 or 5, this is when she becomes emotionally free to do whatever she wants. If pieces fall into place, this process might never complete.

    Therefore, we now have a model to explain frame control.

    Frame Control

    I encourage the readers to remind themselves of the true definition of Frame, as this is a term that has been distorted in the Manosphere lately.

    A quick summary follows: Frame is the mental concept of reality in the eyes of the individual. As reality is subjective, Frame is subjective and thus open to being influenced by other agents. For women, with a strong innate preference for emotional communication, controlling the frame is a skill of connecting your worldview with emotional feelings appropriate for her.

    Therefore, your long term goal in the relationship is to not be Betatized. On a practical level, you have to resist the process outlined earlier. Your progress on that process is measured by her emotional reactions to you, on the axis of Male dominance – Female submission. In plain English, how keen and interested she is towards you. The real point both of these concepts measure is power, which indicates the relative Value imbalance (behavioural, built, and innate) between you and her.

    Everything together

    In the relationship, the female’s attacks ultimately manifest in attacks on the male’s self-esteem. They are attacks on respect. Her respect is measured by (positive signals):

    • How much agreeable and,
    • Keen she is to you

    And the opposite of how little (negative signals):

    • Commanding,
    • Nagging and,
    • Disagreeable she is to you.

    The point here is that both aspects will happen at the same time. From your end, you need to be ultra-sensitive to the negative signals and turn them into positive signals. Remember that frame ultimately lies in soft power, so there is a correct and a not correct way to turn things around. Eventually, negative signals reduce to generalized shit tests, so take inspiration from the collective PUA theory.

    I repeat, that it is not a question of not having negative signals; by the laws of female sexuality, these will come. The longer you are dating, the more those will intensify. This is nature telling her she needs to switch partners. However, every situation should be manageable from a strategic viewpoint of agency. The only question is how much you want to invest in the interaction.

    That is why spacing out meetings is so valuable. Simply put, boundaries (phase 1) cannot be tested if you are not next to each other. That is why familiarity breeds content at the deepest level. That is also why dread game is sometimes advocated. The space between meetings will fill those with dopamine (expected reward chemical) and leave less time for the Betatizing process to start. The sweet spot is around 2 times a week, with 3 on special occasions.

    The fruits of frame control

    We now do a full circle. The girl won’t cheat on you unless you have been Betatized. No matter how nagging she is, she won’t cheat as long as you handle the situation properly.

    The corollary also holds that when she is about to cheat, the negative signals will intensify. If you are sensitive to those, you should be able to tell when it is about to happen. It is not magic, it is observation.

    Finally, the nail in the coffin is access to sex. Under normal relationship rules, she shouldn’t be denying you sex, unless there is an obvious and objective reason. You should be able to tell that reason exactly because it is obvious, for example, heavy period.

    [But ultimately, you will be able to tell how credible that reason is vs to how the current situation is (that she denied you sex) relative to the bigger meta-frame of the relation.]

    Because if she ever denies you sex, except under the most extreme situations, the relationship is over. You are Betatized, and you won’t be able to turn it around. Better end it sooner, before the whole thing explodes in your face and hurts you emotionally more. Remember, Betatization is a process of psychological death. The end of the road is you feeling like garbage.

    Supreme frame control

    Contrary to everything we have described, there is the reality of masterful frame control.

    Some people confuse masterful frame control with value discrepancy, but the real interaction is that frame control is easier if you have greater value than her (soft power is easier to impose).

    This is the world where the male does whatever he wants. There have been multiple cases where I have openly told girls I date others, and after a few days of them being indecisive, they decided they don’t care. In one extreme case, I was dating a girl and her best friend at the same time. I was subtle, but both girls were in full knowledge; they just… didn’t care.

    Do everything correctly and the limits of female sexuality are truly unimaginable.

    Standard Manosphere advice aims to target the first stages of a relationship where the Betatization process is yet to take place. I agree with that advice overall; it is easier to swap girls than commit to an increasingly nagging or inquisitive one. However, the latter is also possible, as showcased in this article. Go on, friend, the world is your oyster.

  • Ego, Id and You | Daygame Psychology Primer

    Ego, Id and You | Daygame Psychology Primer

    It is a common observation, a beginner starts with Daygame, sticks with it for a while, and then eventually gives up. The psychological strain is too big for him to handle. The whole thing is not worth the trouble and is speculative for the most part.

    Or so he thinks…

    Because what happened, really? The above story sounds plausible, but that is a massive misdirection. The beginner gave up on Daygame, but his life will stay static for the most part. He just traded short-term pain for long-term anxiety. The deal is against him. However, as you read the first paragraph with ease and no friction, so in the beginner’s mind, the story made sense. Let us build a model to understand what happens.

    A model of the Soul

    There is much interplay happening in our brains. We have our goals, but we also have the millions of excuses that come up against those goals. Hence, improvement isn’t a linear path of setting a target and advancing towards there. Instead, what happens is your brain tries to subvert you every step of the way. For a brain that is evolved for survival in the savannah, maintaining coherence and the status quo is much more important.

    These are the roots of the so-called Ego-traps. Game is full of those because it deals with one of the two fundamental aspects of life. The purpose of all organisms, evolutionary speaking, is Survival and Replication. Game is the Replication aspect itself. To be able to address the issue of Ego traps, we need to first verbalise the issue. For much of the Daygame community, myself included, a mix of concepts from Jung and Freud has helped. 

    The Self

    Call this the id, the true self, or the inner core. It is the very deepest part of your Soul. It can see the world objectively. In terms of winning and losing. In terms of advantages and disadvantages. Dopamine, Serotonin, Oxytocin, and Endorphin: the mechanics are neurochemical.

    You might reframe your life situation all you want, but your Self knows. It knows your true part in the world, your true value, and all your self-deceptions. Essentially, this is the unconscious. We can infer its existence because even for people living under the spell of constructed realities, the following welfare aphorism tells another story:

    If external narratives can fully rewrite the Self, then a man indoctrinated into a false worldview would feel fulfilled.

    But he doesn’t — which means something inside him contradicts the narrative. That contradiction proves something deeper and more fundamental exists: an objective psychological core.

    The Consciousness

    In short, You. I mean, You with a capital Y. The entity reading and parsing this. Your inner monologue. The observable part of your brain. All the thoughts and ambitions that you can verbalise. 

    The advantages of Consciousness is that it can see far into the future via the interplay of df-PFC (logical) and vm-PFC (emotional) centers. This is why your consciousness is your biggest ally in your journey. It can provide long-term guardrails while the other parts of the brain will be reacting to chemicals.

    However, and this is important, Consciousness can only see what the Self and the Ego allow it to see. You cannot rule your brain with Dictatorial Logic Power; you need to allow yourself to be human (for lack of a better term). Even something as simple as vision, it is actually largely regulated via the unconcious as seen in the schemantic below:

    Consciousness is labelled as PFC in the front of the head

    The Ego

    The bridge between the Self and You. If you observe your thoughts, sometimes you will see that they have gone astray. You didn’t skip gym because it was raining, you skipped because your Self doesn’t like gym. It will whisper in your ear ambitions and the plans of the Self. Sometimes it will work for you, sometimes against you. It is the voice that tells you to stand up and fight for yourself; it is also the voice that tells you to go hide and give up. 

    Your Ego is usually described as your inner self-image. The beliefs you have about your own being. This is accurate enough, because remember, you cannot observe stuff your Self doesn’t allow you to.

    The only realistic way to bypass your own Ego is by objective outcomes. Something impersonal, so you don’t mix the emotional mechanism of your brain. This is not perfect, because it is essentially judging by outcome, not by process, but at least it decouples a lot of inner frustration.

    The interplay

    Here is the psychic interplay that happens during your rebirth as a Player. You start with an Ego, that is, your inner image of yourself. That image is both affected by your Consciousness and your Self. As you put environmental pressure (infield time) on your self-image, your Ego will have to die and be reborn. It will have to reinvent itself in a new image. However, none of these steps is easy, so let us see what is going on.

    Beginner stage

    Every time you practice Daygame and face rejection, your Self registers this as a survival threat. It is a punch in all three relevant neurochemicals: Dopamine (expected reward), Oxytocin (belonging), and Serotonin (status). Your Self won’t just stand there and take it. It will fight back.

    In practical terms, this interplay makes your Self class with your Consciousness. This is why your Ego reacts by subverting your thoughts. It gets contradictory signals. This is where all the excuses stem from, and this is where all the criticism against Game is targeted. It aims to dominate a person already facing mental strain into an external Ego rebirth (usually of the society/feminist-approved variety).

    Intermidiate stage

    This will be the state of things until you get results competence. Then your Self will start being on your side.  This sounds good in theory, but it is exactly what causes Daygame addiction. Essentially, Daygame becomes the mechanism of all the happy feelings in your life, so you obsessively return to it. I repeat, the switch of the Self leads to addiction, not happiness.

    This is where you risk forfeiting other aspects of your life to the pursuit of Game. It is a hedonistic trap with all its pitfalls. The Self can only tunnel vision to the source of happy chemicals and chase it like a drug addict chases the next shot of heroin. Let this go for long enough, and your (objective) Value will diminish back to the Beginner stage. But now you will have intermediate expectations. You built a hell and called it home.

    Advanced stage

    The last battle is training your Ego itself. So far, the Ego was a tool used by the Self and Consciousness. Not once was the Ego used for its true purpose: stabilizing the relationship between the two. This can only happen when your Consciousness has discovered your true individual biases, likes, and dislikes. Then, through lived experience, it has convinced the Self to cooperate with it to construct the sovereign Ego.

    Only then can the Ego engage at critical moments to self-correct course. Life is not about winning everything (impulse); it is either about not living emotionally at all (cognition). It is about sovereign selective focus. Achieve this, and you can balance impulses (Self) with cognition (Consciousness), this is the true path to happiness.

    Psychology in action

    Therefore, the mental Game of Seduction is about training our inner mechanisms of the soul to work for us. Their behaviour is fixed conceptually, and that makes their behaviour and their impact on our thoughts predictable.

    This concept is also freeing, because it lets us focus on understanding what is important for us specifically. All the guru advice works up to the intermediate stage; afterwards, it is up to us to carve our own path. No Guru can help discover the innate needs of your Self.

  • Feedback in Daygame: Coaching and Advice under Microscope

    Feedback in Daygame: Coaching and Advice under Microscope

    Seduction is an emotionally loaded topic with Ego traps being ten-a-penny. Sadly, as much as lonely a road as it is, in some way or another, we need to learn from someone. That is the required process of “learning” and “getting feedback”.

    Seduction advice inadvertently has to cut deep. This is the case because being a Player is a combination of ID, habits, and skills in all areas of life. Hence, much of the advice out there has the practitioner either remaking their entire life or engaging in highly counter-intuitive behaviour. This is normal, and it is part of the process. However, this leaves the student at a vulnerable spot. He needs to trust people he has never met, on the barest hint of authority.

    Take the wrong advice to heart, and your life might end up much worse than it started. In this post, we will try to decouple this part: try to demystify how people should process learning and feedback on this topic.

    Who comes into Seduction, why maliciousness exists

    Internet Alphas aside, it is a fact of life that, for most people, making it as a Player requires conscious effort and deep introspection. Well… most people cannot even begin to do this. It is theory of mind at the deepest lever, and nature just didn’t produce people who can reflect like this en masse.

    The path to being a Player is only open to a minority of men who can put in the work, are intelligent enough, and have the capacity for self-reflection. Similarly, the path to becoming a billionaire out of nothing is not open to everyone; it is a combination of luck, genetics, and society. All the hard work comes after this bedrock.

    The point is that where there is value, there are scammers. So both categories, seduction and getting rich quick, attract scammers or people who have tried and failed miserably. There are people who want the status without the work, and there are people who will confuse that status as “success” instead of their original goal.

    We are ready now to produce our first psychographic profile. Take a moment and look at the world around you, with your own eyes and your own perception. Has it been easy for you to knock out a girl or make her attracted to you? Maybe you had flukes and lucky moments, but do you have a repeatable strategy?

    Unless you were born a Natural or life made you an Alpha, the answer should be an astounding NO.

    Therefore, screen out all the people who claim Seduction is easy or resort to oversimplifications. Seduction is not easy; you wouldn’t need to learn it if it were easy. It is not simple either, because you would be able to make the theory yourself. Seduction is complicated, nuanced, and hard to master. The only people who will engage with that are people really desperate with no other options in their life.

    Some of them might succeed after all the adversity. These are the true coaches, and this is who you should strive to follow and learn from. These are the people who have made changes to their lives in equal measure with what you need to do. Calibrate your learning with people that had to walk the same path.

    Want to learn from someone who finds Seduction easy? Are you in the same situation as him for his advice to be applicable to you? (assuming he is not a scammer)

    To find such people, it is not enough to read an origin story. You can tell their journey from their writing. Their writing cuts deeper, is more precise, and honest. There is a line in nature to higher complexity. Engagement with something should be the opposite of entropy (regression into chaos); otherwise, it is wasted effort. Read Roissy, Krauser, Rollo, or Mystery, and their journey is engraved into their material. This is what you should be looking for.

    Eastern Mysticism and Seduction

    I was recently reading “Eye of Shiva” by Amaury de Riencourt. It is an interesting book in itself (at least parts of it), but there was a line that struck me.

    In the West, Objectivism and Materialism have shaped the mind to believe in objective knowledge. For example, take mathematics: you learn addition to learn… addition. The point is to take 2 and 5 together and produce the result, 7. What matters is the outcome of the addition, the answer. Therefore, knowledge is independent of the student, and knowledge is the goal itself.

    In short, what we are taught in the West is that the process can be boxed, standardized, and repeated by everyone. This is how school works, this is why everyone knows the same addition.

    Now, take Eastern Mysticism, knowledge and endgoal outcomes are fairly simple. However, this is half the picture, because how Mystics arrive at the conclusion is the point itself. For this goal, to guide the student into his own form of realization, it is a long tradition that teaching is adjusted to the needs of the student by a master. Teaching is personal, calibrated and evolving in real time.

    Seduction is similar to that; there might be some principles of confident or attractive behaviour, but the way it applies to each participant is different. To contrast the earlier example, Eastern Mysticism would say: for you specifically, the way you arrive at the result that 2+5=7 is the whole discipline itself. What matters is not the result, the 7, what matters is how you understood and felt the 5+2 part.

    Therefore, when it comes to emotional learning and realization that are required for Seduction, the process has to be highly personalized; the process is not independent from the student, it is intermingled! Seduction is closer to Eastern philosophy than to Western mind!

    There are qualitative differences in how material is written and interpreted for the students, because for each student, the way to learn and understand it is different. Even if the end result is the same.

    Coaching and mentoring

    We can put coaching into perspective now. What is the coach’s true task? Take the known material and pop out a full-blown discipline that is applicable and calibrated to the student. Because adjusting the material to the student is a new discipline by itself.

    A coaching session, in action

    As you can see, this is a process that requires commitment and time far beyond what people from either side (mainly from the coach’s though) are willing to invest. Even if the coach charges you 2,000$ for his course, is he giving you a personalized path to walk upon, or is he giving you a packaged process like “addition” that we discussed before?

    This reveals the limits of coaching. Simply put, it is my hard belief that it cannot really help people past the intermediate stage. Because it goes contrary to the true process of learning Seduction. It gets even worse when the student wants to transition to advanced stages and has to walk his own path. Getting caged into a packaged version of things, usually from the coach’s personal experiences, leads only to ruin and inhibition.

    Disclaimer: There probably is value in coaching for the beginner stages, because there the student gets some initial (but usually short-lived) confidence and can set some good habits straight.

    On advice and fighting other people’s Ego

    The earlier sections focused on learning. This section will focus on advice in general. The problem with getting advice is that it is always an Ego fight. The majority of advice out there is shit, either in forums or in video form (for example, infields). Because, similar to female competition, advice is not meant as advice; it is meant as a status game.

    Advice is aimed at proving the person giving advice is in a higher position (and validating his worldview), while putting the person asking the advice in a lower position (and invalidating his viewpoint). Simply put, this is why so much advice is being given without justification. Providing justification would equate the two participants on equal status level, it would make them a band together against an impersonal problem… but you see, doing this (being equal) is not the point!

    Even worse, advice many times is not only aimed at as a status game. To solidify the status discrepancy the advice aims at domination. That is why advice is counter-productive, by making the person engage in self-harming behaviour; it is essentially domination without doing the dirty work. It is quite plausible that some unconscious part of the person taking the advice, his Self (Jung), knows what’s up, and therefore engaging in that behaviour is an unconscious act of submission. The next time you question why 99% of relationship advice out there edges people to “break up” instead of actually solving the problem… now you know why.

    The root cause of all this is the Ego. The process is mainly unconscious and not deliberate, however still usually harmful to the person receiving it. The Ego as a structure aims to preserve the person’s worldview, to protect the individual from the chaos of an unstructured world and social relationships. In the latter perspective, most of the ideas and objects become survival threats that require immediate or extreme action or reassessment. In short, people aim to protect themselves before they give advice to others. Just accept it for what it is, and it will resolve much confusion. Explore my essay on the history of thought, and much of this will make sense.

    On valuable advice

    Regardless, it is a fact of life that advice is required a decent amount of time, and also not all advice is shit. We now aim to investigate this part.

    The first saving grace is the realization we had earlier on emotional learning. Much alike to earlier discussion, advice is not decoupled from the person giving the advice. Therefore, the advice is as good as the person giving it, and also as good as the person’s goals align with yours. There will be people who are willing to band with you and face a problem together; these people are your friends.

    The second saving grace is that for advice to be effective, it doesn’t need to be correct. Think about it, why do we ask for advice? To learn something we cannot think of ourselves. Hence, the value of advice is on the different viewpoint. The new information. How this advice is processed and practiced is your responsibility as the recipient. It is like individual puzzle pieces that you have to filter out and connect at the end. Take true ownership of your own actions, and the process for this will become both evident and actionable.

    However, be highly critical of when people’s goals are not aligning with yours. The more people are engaged in the status game, the less good the advice will be, sometimes fatally so. This is even worse when coupled with the halo effect, the fact that we perceive people of status as competent. Like all evolutionary traps, the halo effect aims to maintain the status hierarchy and promote group cohesion, i.e., keep you in place. Advice should always be justified and ideally, falsifiable.

  • Deconstructing Shit Tests: The Game of Boundaries and Power

    Deconstructing Shit Tests: The Game of Boundaries and Power

    A relic of the early PUA theory is the term AMOG. Directly abbreviates “Alpha Male Of the Group,” but practically, it means the following:

    • The PUA goes into a set.
    • Some power in the set (usually the highest status member) diminishes him.
    • The PUA loses all status, and the set is over.

    We are not interested in this particular dynamic, but we are interested in a derivative dynamic. The part, “some power diminishes the player out of the set”. This power can be the girl herself, an intruder, the friend group, her parents, or what have you. That derivative dynamic is very common and should be studied.

    Let us start the analysis with a basic division of outcomes. We can fully partition such scenarios as follows:

    • That power is “legit”; the Player had no possible actions.
    • That power was bluffing; somebody got more out of the situation at the expense of the Player.

    That is it, no other explanations are possible at this macro level. Under this light, clearly, the first proposition was an error in the decision-making process before we even reach the point where we get blown out. The second is more nuanced; it is way more common than people give it credit. 

    It is what we call a shit test. We will go beyond tactics and isolated scenarios. We will analyze it from first principles and power dynamics. We will analyze the generalised form of a shit test.

    Definition of power, expectations and confidence

    Notice the differentiating factor between the partitions above. We divided based on the legitimacy of power. Power is what determines social interactions, norms, and etiquette. 

    Let’s proceed with a working definition of “power”. This term is mythologised in the Manosphere; there are multiple definitions that all work depending on the way we want to use them. We will go for such an approach. We aim to get an acceptable definition for our purpose:

    Power is measured by how much Party A has to adopt or change his behaviour in the presence of Party B.

    There we go, for example: you walk into a store, and you want to get a water bottle for free. Walking away without paying, of course, is theft, and it is theft because society exerts power over its citizens in the form of the Law of the land. If you are the store owner, where your local power overrides the State’s in your shop, you can step away with the water bottle without paying.

    Perceptions of power

    Now we will make a claim. People operate on incomplete information. There is information asymmetry in every social setting. Hence, all power relations can only be approximated, never fully known. 

    Since people have a relative idea of power in any social setting, the rules that govern the social setting are approximate and not rigid. There is a collective consensus of behaviors for each participant. Essentially, each person is assigned an acceptable range of behaviors. The cumulation of this knowledge is what we call “manners” and “politeness”. For brevity, let us call this acceptable behaviour.

    Boundary pushing

    Acceptable behaviour is not rigid and hierarchical. There is wiggle room, gradations, and it is in flux relative to context. There are strong social expectations that everyone needs to conform to this shared understanding. However, people are pushing the boundaries all the time; this is what can be dubbed a generalised frame test.

    There is a qualitative difference in how a person’s boundary pushing (or misunderstanding) is dubbed. If a person asks for more than the shared narrative, he is dubbed a social violator. People straight up won’t take him seriously and will alienate him quickly. In contrast, a person who is asking for less than what he is supposed to, quickly drops to the level of his asking, which we call “his value significantly diminishes”.

    To clarify: what we mean by “asking” for more or for less, is a combination of both verbal behaviour and his physical behaviour, i.e., his body language. Is he giving more space than he should? Is he averting his gaze more than he should, etc?

    That is why an overly agreeable person quickly loses value. That is why being excessively polite and generous loses value. You are operating below your acceptable behaviour. People need to both rise up to meet it and be careful not to overshoot.

    Confidence, calibration, and social intelligence

    We are now ready to define “socially acceptable confidence”:

    Confidence is precisely the smart limit testing of the acceptable behaviour. Not asking too much, but asking slightly more than what everybody expects you to.

    Did you catch it? Confidence is not objective; it is relative to the social setting and your standing in it. There is no universal confidence; there is only relative confidence.

    Think about it! Even in the Daygame context. A cold approach is not forbidden. It is highly unusual, so it attracts intrigue. It manifests as the following thought in the girl’s mind: Who is this guy talking to me? She lets you continue your pitch, partly so she can understand where you stand within the acceptable behaviour.

    But here is the derivative insight, confidence is not a standalone even as concept. When we are pushing boundaries, there are two other variables at play: how much we push them and how much we can justify this. These translate word-for-word to the concepts of calibration and social intelligence. Let us formally define them:

    Calibration is measured by precisely how much you ask based on your current standing in acceptable behaviour. Essentially, do you know how much to ask?

    Social intelligence is how much you can back up your ask.

    Let us give some examples:

    • Assume you are in a coffee shop.
    • You can order coffee, but you cannot go behind the counter and make a coffee for yourself. The second is for the boss only → that is Power.
    • You can wink at the waitress if she is staring at you and giving you the non-verbal ok. Otherwise, it is creepy → The wink is Confidence, the reasoning was Calibration.
    • You can ask for her number covertly; she might give it to you on a napkin. You know that asking overtly is not socially acceptable. You back up your behavior by understanding the setting → that is Social intelligence.

    Let us give another, Daygame, example. The stop presupposes understanding of the setting (“is it ok to stop her here?”)  and you passing her attraction threshold (“value”). This is a check of your Confidence and Calibration based on acceptable behavior (“Does your value and the setting warrant the stop?”). The compliment and the witty stack back up the reason that you stopped her. This is Social intelligence. 

    If all three go in your favor, you have hit the bingo trifecta. She will accept your frame push and stay to flirt with you. In particular, because girls value all three of those, her attraction and admiration for you will be boosted; we are on the money! These are exactly the mechanics behind the Daygame stop.

    In short, isn’t that about backing some unusual behaviour (the Daygame stop) with an understanding of the context? You understand what is happening better than most, and you can therefore excuse a bigger range of actions (literally the definition of power) than someone would blindly expect from acceptable behaviour.

    Confidence + Calibration + Social intelligence = Power.

    Shit tests and AMOG’ing

    We have come full circle now. Here are the two scenarios we theorised at the beginning of this post:

    1. That power is “legit”; the player had no possible actions.
    2. That power was bluffing; somebody got more out of the situation at the expense of the player.

    When we are in scenario 1, the player is the social violator. At some point, he missed the guidelines of acceptable behaviour and asked for something he shouldn’t have. This led him to that situation.

    When we are in scenario 2, someone else is the social violator. The player again misunderstood the social structure and acceptable behaviour. His Power dropped because he failed to rise up to his relative standing in acceptable behaviour. He allowed this treatment at his expense without reacting. 

    The insight

    If we have perfect knowledge and understanding of the social situation, then we can never end up in either situation 1 or 2. We literally brought this to ourselves.

    Social violators (at all levels) are common because of information asymmetry in power relations. Simply, people misunderstand the setting. Our frame, or more formally, our understanding of the acceptable behaviour, is under attack frequently. But understand this, shit tests are inherently risky. They rely on some party’s misunderstanding of the social situation. 

    When women shit test you, or better put, frame test you, they test exactly the concepts of acceptable behaviour, calibration, and social intelligence we defined above. They are measuring your power, that is why they do it!

  • Empathy: Charting Course in Daygame

    Empathy: Charting Course in Daygame

    “Empathy is good for Game” sounds a lot like a truism, correct? It sounds good, so it must be true. We can spit out more statements like this:

    • Having big biceps is good for Game.
    • Having a six-figure job is good for Game.

    Well, at some point, we need to switch our viewpoint from expansive (i.e., more is good) to a restricted viewpoint (i.e., the minimum requirements). At some point, there must be a meaningful distinction. Players have gotten lays without big biceps and without big wallets, but the same can’t be claimed about Empathy.

    Don’t take this lightly. This is the top-down perspective on our biases. What we are discussing is exactly how to audit ideas and advice. This is rarely discussed in the manosphere, and that is why there is so much debate over what Game is. Different angles of analysis lead to different conclusions, even with the same inputs. For example, an expansive viewpoint leads to the run-of-the-mill “raise your value” guy. Do gym, work on your own business, do approaches on schedule, etc. But are people who follow such a schedule with Spartan discipline truly happy? I think not. 

    The key here is the direction of our analysis: it becomes diluted when we switch the question from “what do I need to get laid?” (at minimum) to the question “will this help me get laid?”. The first question has only a few answers, while the latter can be as open as “owning a goat” being a legit answer.

    The plan to get laid

    Falsifiability, the cornerstone of Science

    The keyword here is falsifiability. Can your statement be wrong? For example, can a goat help you get laid? … Well, it depends on how you use it:

    • If you are a farmer in the 1500s, a goat might be the equivalent of a status symbol as a Lambo.
    • In the 2000s, you might use it for swag points at your villa parties.
    • Most likely, owning a goat will not help your Game.

    There are arguments for both sides and this ambiguity is confusing. As is, we cannot falsify any of the correlations between goats and Game. The original question has to be reformulated. Here is the falsifiable version, try answering: Do I need to own a goat to get laid?

    This concept of reformulating questions to obtain better answers is not new. In fact, it is the cornerstone of Science. And what I mean here is true Science, true Science with capital S, not 21st century Academia.

    The reason why falsifiability is so important is that it allows you to make a hypothesis. The hypothesis can then be tested experimentally and empirically. Take the following statement, for example: Does Bigfoot exist? From a Scientific viewpoint, this is not a question. Bigfoot does not exist, period. Well, why?

    Assume now you hold the prior worldview that Bigfoot exists. Well, how do we test it? We can search in the forest, behind a tree, and under the table, and not find him. But this is not enough evidence to falsify the statement. For all we know, based on our prior assumption, Bigfoot might still exist somewhere else. Unless we search the entire Earth, we could never falsify the statement.

    Where?

    Assume instead, you hold the opinion that Bigfoot does not exist. This is a falsifiable statement. The moment you find him, maybe behind in the closet or under the bed, we can revise our opinion and correct it. This is the essence of deduction. A statement is as useful as its deductive value. But if it cannot be falsified, then we cannot get any deductive value from it.

    Game as Epistemology

    This thought process is crucial for your development in Game. As Krauser pointed out, we Players, know much more than scientists. Simply because we have access to infield data. We can make a hypothesis and then go test it infield to get real-world feedback. Sociologists and Psychologists cannot do that. That first part, however, the making a hypothesis part, is as crucial as the second part, the infield testing. If we cannot order our thoughts, then our infield experiences won’t help us resolve our questions. They might even lead you to wrong conclusions, turning a well-meaning process into pure quackery.

    Don’t take this lightly. Like poker, Game is subject to high amounts of luck and variance. Distinguishing rules from noise is all the more difficult. Sadly, unlike poker, we also don’t have a fixed statistical population (the deck of cards) to build theories upon. That is why debate still rages over principles and concepts, even if Game has already existed for 20 years. Distinguishing value from garbage is all the more important. Falsifiability and a restricted worldview are the foundational concepts of Seduction Theory.

    Empathy

    One of the concepts that is indeed foundational for Game is Empathy. Empathy is the basis of calibration. Let’s unpack it, a common definition is as follows:

    Empathy is often defined as the capacity to recognize how someone else sees a situation, to grasp and emotionally resonate with their experience, and to respond to it in a meaningful way.

    Therefore, Empathy is understanding. Understanding the thought patterns and feelings of the other person. It is the baseline of strategy. When Otto von Bismarck outplayed the fuck out of Europe to create a strong German empire, he had Empathy. When a chess Grandmaster can essentially read your mind and outplay you, this is Empathy.

    Empathy is about strategy and war. It is an entirely male concept. However, as with most male concepts, Empathy has been hijacked by Modernity. The concept has been diluted, even turned into a female concept. The average person cannot understand Empathy because they confuse it with Sympathy. Sympathy is copying the feelings of another being. It is entirely a female concept. Again, here is a definition:

    Sympathy refers to noticing and comprehending another being’s hardship or need, and feeling moved to respond to that situation.

    When we devise a trap to catch an antelope, we do this by thinking as the antelope does. We study its behavior patterns and we hijack them at the crucial moment. This is Empathy; it is male in nature. In contrast, when you see the struggling antelope in its last moments, and we start crying for its misfortune, totally forgetting your empty belly, this is Sympathy. You feel what it feels; it is female in nature. If males had evolved for sympathy, the entire village would be starving. Empathy doesn’t need sympathy. Bismarck had Empathy, but he didn’t give a fuck about the feelings of his enemies. He could differentiate strategy from everything else. Strategy demands understanding in the abstract. 

    Game and Empathy

    Empathy is the basis of calibration. When we are calibrated,  we acknowledge all the unwritten social rules and the cues from the girl. In particular, we don’t passively acknowledge them. We act on them, we bend them to our will. For example, imposing the Seduction frame or covertly escalating: this is correct leadership in the eyes of the girl. You are on an adventure, but to everyone else, nothing appears out of the ordinary. Specifically, that adventure is tailored to her. To her feelings and her character. Multilevel Empathy in action.

    Now, in one of the most blatant crimes of modern psychology and therapy: convincing men they need Sympathy. Seduction doesn’t work like that. With sympathy as baseline, we have the following scenario: We mentally acknowledge the girl’s hesitation/excitement, mixed feelings at the first date… then, decide to just stand there and emote with her. No, no, no, we take action and lead. The whole purpose of calibration is so we can lead efficiently and effectively.

    History and Empathy

    One of the heavyweight contenders as teachers of Empathy is studying history. For the simple reason that most behavior is affected by culture. Most of the culture itself is an outcome of history. The adversity that society has lived through the ages has been imprinted on its Soul. Studying critical history reveals this.

    The difficulty here is finding good historians. Let us use Carroll Quigley as a case study. In my opinion, the most fascinating historian of the last century. In his books, history is not expressed through stories alone. History is expressed through long-term strategies of nations, people, or civilizations. How these manifested and clashed over centuries. Here are some insights derived from his work [Tragedy and Hope]:

    The West benefited from the Dark Ages by separating the concepts of “society” from “state”. During the Dark Ages, states clearly didn’t exist, but society did survive. This led to the conclusion that the state has to serve society. Religion and the judiciary are separated from the government. The government itself became a tool of society and not society as a servant to the state. 

    Obvious as it may sound, Greek philosophy and statesmanship that dominated the worldview were up for a totalitarian (albeit not necessarily authoritarian) state. Read Plato’s Utopia for example. This distinction singlehandedly explains the difference in mentalities between Eastern Europe (with no Dark Ages) and the West. It is expressed most clearly in the American Constitution.

    The UK was effectively a plutocracy. Simply by eliminating the salaries of government officials. These officials needed an independent income. Running for office was reserved only for the rich. Essentially, turning the country into a plutocracy.

    Three major civilizations collapsed during the 20th century, and the chaos that ensued in the aftermath. Pre communist China, Imperialist Japan, and the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Their modern versions are a Westernized, dysfunctional caricature. This has created much confusion in cultural mixing and interpretation.

    The seven revolutions that made the West free and democratic, just because they were imported by other civilizations in a different order, they made those civilizations authoritarian and undemocratic. Massively so. Essentially, countries decided to sacrifice their own population for access to Western goods and technologies. As can be evidently seen in the USSR’s 5-year plans and China’s Great Leap Forward. The aftermaths are still visible to this day. Enjoy:

  • Daygame Fashion: an In-Depth Guide

    Daygame Fashion: an In-Depth Guide

    Fashion in Daygame is rarely discussed. Compare our literature to Nightgame, where resources are abundant. The old relics we had about “R-selected fashion” were both short-lived and limiting. For example, a leather jacket is not needed, and being bald… I wouldn’t recommend it.

    This is by design. Daygame is too broad, casual enough, and practiced over 4 seasons. All of these make Daygame fashion just too hard to define. Let us see these topics one by one:

    • Broad: Daygame is practised in every longitude and latitude, across cultures.
    • Casual: lacks the pre-established norms and conventions that formal clothing has.
    • 4 seasons: Daygame is practised outdoors, hence at the mercy of the weather. A winter attire cannot possibly be worn in the summer.

    In short, we have real and structural limitations when discussing Daygame fashion. This is why this essay will focus on principles, i.e., the building blocks of decision-making. Any specific recommendations will always be too context-dependent to generalize.

    As general guidelines, Daygame wants to present a battle-tested, worn-out appearance. We want our appearance to communicate adventure. As archetypes, think Han Solo or Indiana Jones. Just by looking at them, we can sense they mean independence, freedom, and non-conformity to the masses. This is artistic communication through clothing. Having said that, we need to tone down our appearance to social norms. Indiana’s apparel is practical for jungle adventuring, but totally out of place in an urban environment. Copying it one-to-one is overdoing it. That is why we get the idea principles from there and adjust them for our purposes.

    I highly recommend the book: Dressing the Man – Allan Flusser. A lot of the ideas discussed originate from there, appropriately adjusted for the purposes of Daygame.

    Buying philosophy: quantity over quality

    High fashion is expensive for a reason. It is just better. A fast fashion piece can never substitute a well-thought-out piece that is artfully designed. This doesn’t mean that all expensive stuff is good. But it does mean some expensive stuff certainly is better than cheap ones, by quite a margin.

    The strategy I suggest is a minimalist one. Spend purposefully on a few pieces. If we need only 5 T-shirts, we can afford to spend 70$ on each. For some categories, for example, leather products, this is doubly important. Their cheap synthetic variations are trash in the full sense of the word. They won’t last and won’t function as they are meant to be. I will point out those categories specifically. My recommendation to the reader is to think in binary: engage or don’t engage with that product. If you decide to engage, spend on it; otherwise, find a totally different substitute.

    Pants

    Limiting factor!  I stand by this: Daygame can only support jeans. It’s the landmark of casual. Go lower – cargos, sweatpants – and you forfeit any sense of fashion. Go upper – probably chinos – and good luck getting a SDL.

    I repeat the last point. In Daygame, we aim to seduce girls based on charisma, character, and looks. High fashion is a no-no because it projects status signals. If you wanna play off of status, by all means, go ahead. But expect slower lays with a different type of girls. 

    For the purposes of LDM specifically, high fashion is incongruent. Behaviorally, we don’t display matching traits. Hence, we already introduced incongruence before even uttering our first word in set. We, therefore, are building our fashion from this – jeans. This is the centerpiece, and all other choices will revolve around this. The natural direction of building around jeans is Vintage Americana, and we will certainly get ideas from there.

    How to choose Jeans

    The best jeans you can get are Japanese raw denim: Momotaro, Pure Blue Japan, Freewheelers, Studio d’Artisan. Japan inherited and mastered jean production like no other place. It is the clear winner in quality and value for money. The best weight is 14oz-16oz for an all-year rounder. Maybe 12-14oz if you live in the tropics. At this weight, each pair will set you back roughly 200-250$. That is a steep price, but remind yourself that jeans don’t need to be washed. We can get away with only two pairs for years. Let’s break it down:

    Advantages:

    • No need to wash them. Indigo is anti-bacterial, so you can get away with washing every 2-3 months.
    • Legendary fading (but slow).
    • Garments shrink and stretch to body type – perfect fit.
    • You are wearing a piece of clothing history.
    • It is a type of cloth that grows with you. Your fades tell the story of your life.

    Disadvantages:

    • Price.
    • Indigo leakage is real, especially at the start.
    • Tricky to size as many come in raw condition and will shrink anywhere between 5-15% depending on your washing.

    I stress the following: out of the self, a 20$ pair from H&M is better (but wash them every 2-3 wears). Raw denim needs time and energy. Readers should both do appropriate research and work with store staff to find good sizing.

    Boots

    Casual boots are a natural match with jeans. They are probably the best footwear candidate. Brown is the color to go with, as it contrasts with the indigo of the jeans.

    I have this exact pair

    Multiple brands work here, but the best ones are probably in the US. For example, both Red Wings and Thursday fit our purposes. I encourage the reader to find local brands as well. The price is usually way lower. RM Williams in Australia, for example, is nearly half price.

    Finally, this is a category where dollars get you far. As of 2025, all respectable boots start at 250$ and above. Cheaper ones risk being synthetics and/or poorly made.

    Tops

    We are building from jeans, therefore, t-shirts and henleys work great. I am certainly not an expert on shirts, but I would stick to linen. Cotton just carries a different connotation.

    The best quality t-shirts are loopwheeled ones. The loopwheel makes round stretches of the garment, and this makes the tension work better. The brands discussed for the jeans are also peak in t-shirt construction.

    Fit and cuts

    For fit, look for slim fit – tapers down from chest to waist. Even better for a tailored fit, shrinks from chest to belly, and stretches out to the waist again.  It is a plus if the garment is not pre-shrunk, as it will stretch to the body type after washing (but make sure to size appropriately). You want a tight, snug fit, but big enough to move comfortably around.

    For the collar, it depends on the head shape. The collar frames the face, so it should function exactly as a frame to a piece of high-end art – complementary to your face. If you have a long and narrow face, wider collars and henleys with a few buttons undone work best. For a square and/or bigger face, a smaller, tighter collar works.

    Length-wise, the t-shirt should be 1 or 2cm below the belt; any more and consider tucking it in. Even at the correct length, consider tucking it. Not the nerdy full tuck, experiment with half-tuck, front tuck, French tuck, or the little-bit-in-the-buckle tuck. It gives an aesthetic of adventure, and I highly recommend it.

    Color theory

    Colors are important. They are the second most impart category after fit. The reason for this is that the body is not a blank canvas: your undertone, your skin tone, and your hair already paint half of the picture.

    Your undertone is the first thing to look for; it’s either warm or cold. Flip your arm and check the vein color. They will be blue, green, or you won’t be able to tell. Veins, in reality, are all the same color. What makes them different from person to person is the undertone of the skin. We can even call it the tonality of the skin. Green veins mean warm colors look good on you; blue veins mean a colder palette. If you can’t tell the color, you hit the jackpot; you can wear both.

    The second core concept is the hair-face contrast. In male fashion, we want to attract attention to the face. The face is the most animated and expressive part of the body. The eye is guided by contrast, and it works as follows: if the hair-face contrast matches the jacket-top contrast, the eye focuses on the face. Otherwise, it focuses on the chest. See how your eyes go to this guys chest:

    But how your eyes can’t be drawn away from Clooney’s face (for real it’s like a force lifting your eyes upwards):

    Therefore, gray hair (or hats) would require a similar tone between the top and jacket. On the other end of the spectrum, a pale white skin color with deep, dark hair would require high contrast between the jacket and the top.

    Ending this section, tops are a category where you don’t need to overspend. Even the cheap ones that mix plastic with natural material can work because they stretch to body type (pure cotton is inflexible, for example). It is just usually harder to find good cuts in fast fashion brands.

    Accessories

    There are four types of accessories: necklaces, leather patches, rings, and watches.

    The amount of each depends on the length of your hands and your statement. More R selection means more accessories, but coordinate this with your top. For example, printed t-shirts and multiple accessories can overload the eye.  It is not hard to find the sweet spot with some experimentation. Just make a mental note to spread the accessories between your hands.

    Finally, don’t forget the golden rule. Metals should match, and leathers should match. Therefore, silver-esque belt buckles should go with silver accessories. Brown boots should match brown accessories.

    Jacket

    A well-made jacket goes a long way. It is one category that is really worth spending on. The spending paradox becomes more evident once we consider texture. Sadly, synthetic materials look and feel cheap. This includes all nylon-based products. Compare any windbreaker jacket with a wool-made coat to understand the difference.

    For our fashion direction, duck-canvas, waxed canvas, and leather all go well with boots and Jeans. All three categories patina over time to give the rusty look more gravitas. For example, Barbour, Rogue Territory (supply jacket),  and any leather jacket company are worthwhile here. I will note, though, that canvas doesn’t breathe very well (and the waxed version breathes even less), so be mindful of this for the summer.

  • What is the Frame | Daygame

    What is the Frame | Daygame

    Frame is a word thrown around a lot in the seduction community, with the daygame community being no exception. Despite this, a comprehensive definition is hard to find.

    We start with the basics. Frame is fundamental to any human negotiation. The definition we will use is as follows:

    Frame is a mental representation of the world, including value judgments, morals and markers to direct attention.

    This is a dense definition, so let’s unpack it. The world is infinitely complex. The resolution and the variables that govern the universe are infinite: we talk about objects, about molecules and about atoms, they are all meant to explain the same reality, but all work fundamentally different. This is the task of a brain that tries to understand the world, to summarise everything into a comprehensible framework.

    However, neurologically speaking, the brain is computationally bounded, it cannot capture everything, so something has to give. Therefore, the brain simplifies and categorizes. Our perceived world is nothing like reality. For example, if you want to get nerdy about it, vision and sound are inventions of the brain to make sense of radiational or vibrational waves. Heat is radiation, no different than light, but we don’t “see” heat. 

    These are some hints that the brain plays an active role (proactively predicting the world), rather than passively interpreting the world (reacting to signals). The end result is that our preconception of the world matters for what we make out of the world. In simple terms, if your head is black, you will see the world black. 

    Hence, frame, or our prior bias to the world, will affect how we experience the world. For example, you are out to daygame on a busy shopping street. You walk the pavement, and your eyes wander from girl to girl. Maybe some will check you out, and your head will scream IOI. What you certainly don’t notice are the shops, the beggars, and the people working for the charity asking for donations. Now imagine you were a shopper or a traveller searching for a coffee shop. The people would blur out as you focus on the shops.

    Two people, two different perceptions of the same place. The difference is the frame. One is daygaming, one is shopping and everything in regards to (their) perception stems from this birthing idea: “I am daygaming/shopping, therefore…”

    Realities Clashing

    What if two people with different worldviews (frames) need to interact with each other? If communication and cooperation is to ensue, a shared narrative needs to be established. That is a frame battle: which worldview will prevail.  This is the reason why frame is central in every human negotiation, including seduction. Think about it, you walk the street, spot a target, and your thoughts are “I would like some of that”; her thoughts are probably mild indifference. Unless both frames converge into a shared narrative, communication doesn’t ensue. 

    Winning the frame battle is important, the person who sets the worldview has the capacity to set the local rules of perception. This is not as negative as it sounds, that is the essence of leadership. By definition, the leader sets the rules of the group understanding for others to follow. For example, in your group of friends, one has the reputation (frame) of the expert foodie; he suggests a restaurant, and everyone follows. Or we all agree that Venice is THE place for vacation (frame), when we organise a group vacation, everyone votes for Venice. 

    Sometimes a shared frame can be used to exclude options. We are all hungry (frame one), and McDonald’s is shit (frame two), so we will go to the Italian restaurant next to it. Some other times, for example, in seduction, we can’t win the big battle (the lay), so we win smaller battles, “we should get coffee”, “we should hold hands”, “we should kiss”, etc.

    The mechanics of a frame battle

    Let’s do a thought experiment. What is the best color? 

    Is it yellow that attracts attention but tires the eye easily, or is it a calming blue or a bright red? I say it is a deep blue, the ocean color. You say it is green, maybe a bright one, like a leaf under sunlight.  Lo and behold, a frame battle. Two different worldviews. Assume we both want to win the frame, and we do nothing more than insist on our frame (holding the frame), the conversation would go like this:

    • Blue is the best color
    • No, it is green
    • You are wrong, it is blue
    • Certainly a green

    I would give it about two or three conversational turns before a fight ensues or the communication stops. The outcomes might vary from swearing to a fist fight, but certainly, a common narrative won’t be achieved. The hint here is that ‘holding frame’ is not enough (unless there is a meta frame running, more on that later). We arrive at the first insight, that soft power controls the frame, i.e. persuasion. 

    Let’s try again:

    • Blue is the best color, because it is the color of the ocean and represents the vast unknown.
    • No, green is the best color, the color of the trees that gives life on earth.

    Regardless of the outcome, we don’t have a fight anymore, but a conversation. And a conversation that you might win. Hence win the frame battle. 

    Let us now put soft power into perspective of each gender. Logic is the language of men, whereas women would quickly become bored with such a conversation and tune out. They will cut the communication channel, ensuring no shared narrative (frame). Each gender has distinct communication patterns. It comes down to biology: men communicate with facts and data, while women communicate with feelings and relationships. 

    When we are in a Daygame set, we use vivid imagery, emotional spikes, and social situations in our stories, exactly because of this. It is the same frame battle translated into women’s language.

    The final piece to get the whole picture is the concept of the meta-frame.

    The Meta-Frame

    Imagine you are an office worker, your boss calls you into his office, hands you a mop, and tells you to clean the office.  Chances are, you are going to protest. Now, imagine you are the building’s cleaner in the same situation. You will most likely just do as you are told. Why? I don’t think either the cleaner nor the office worker is excited about the prospect of cleaning the office. But why does one oblige and the other doesn’t? 

    It is very simple, you say, this is the job of the cleaner, but not of the office worker. Very correct, my friend, we arrive now at the concept of the meta frame, a frame to determine later frames. Meta-frames arise from the need to make sense without fighting every little detail. The latter is called pettiness and it is counterproductive to group order, cohesion and efficiency. 

    A cleaner accepts the role (frame) that he cleans to get paid; it’s his job. An office worker also follows orders from the boss, but he gets paid to type away his days on a computer (the frame) for money.  When the boss calls our perpetrators and demands a clean office (frame), it is congruent with the meta frame of the cleaner (he cleans the place), but not of the office worker. Hence, the first accepts, while with the latter protests. Frames upon frames. Only the end result matters. Are you operating for your own benefit, then this is your frame; if not, you are under someone else’s.

    Let’s see some examples of meta frames: You are in the army and the sergeant comes and screams orders at your face, you wimp out and follow. Sounds routine, but to arrive at here, we had a series of meta frames that have been implicitly accepted. Namely:

    • The institution of the army exists and is important.
    • The hierarchy of the army is strict and orders are followed top down
    • You are a soldier
    • Soldiers follow the orders of the higher ups

    Once you see the bigger picture, even simple actions have a huge track record of how they come to be. Eventually, society-wide meta frames are often called culture, manners and ethics.

    The seduction perspective

    Why all this rhetoric? We know girls shit test, or, as the daygame community has adopted, frame tests. Why? 

    At the beginning of the interaction, we establish the first big meta frame, i.e., who are you?: Are you able to stand for yourself, or can she easily move you around?  If so, then maybe the things you say later on can be taken more seriously. This is the mechanism of how value is conveyed by passing shit tests. Passing shit tests is establishing meta-frames

    Observe the pattern: when do tests happen? When she gets hints of your value changing (for better or worse), and when escalation happens. But what is escalation? A frame change. From we are chatting to holding hands to kissing to hugging, etc., the dynamic of the interaction changes. Once we start hugging or kissing, we are not strangers anymore, we are the people who kiss, so we like each other, etc., i.e., a huge meta-frame change.

    Frames are a key concept in seduction and any human negotiation.