Reviews for Rules of the game

The average rating for Rules of the game based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-06-01 00:00:00 Jerel Fanuncio There's a class of self-help books for men, books with bold titles like "ROAR OF THE MAN-WARRIOR" and "THE SEX GOD WITHIN" that promise explosive increases in sex/money/power/general satisfaction of desire for any man with stones enough to take the plunge. This book is one of them. It was literally thrown at me by my helpful roommate one dark day when my romantic despair was so intense it was almost bending the light around my head. I'd heard tell of the book before, of PickUp Artist-ry and its profound potential to transform you into a Randian Titan of pure will with respect to the female connections you want in your life. I'd also heard that PickUp makes you into a horrible misogynist asshole, framing women as sexual-gatekeepers to be manipulated and even tricked into giving up the warmth between their legs if that's you really want them to do. I did my sincere best to bracket that noise and come at it fresh and open to new ideas and experience, figuring I could just take the good and laugh at the bad(1). See, humans and human connections and humanity in general are deeply important to me both concretely and conceptually, kind of replacing capital-G God in my little cosmology(2). But they/you (humans) are complicated and hard. Human interaction more often than not leaves me feeling fried and drained and in desperate need of several hours of solid solitude. Being on stage isn't too bad - the audience blurs together into a nameless homogenous mass and I get really plugged-in to whatever it is that I'm talking about and my self-consciousness slips away and it's somehow both exhilarating and peaceful at the same time. But one-on-one the task of weaving my emotions into the immediate experience that I share with another concrete human being is a different beast altogether. So that's the ladder I wanted to climb when I opened this book. I wanted more tools for human interaction, more confidence(3) in my ability to interact with humans in ways that don't include transparently interrogating them or steering the conversation to a technical topic I like so I can show off the stuff I've been thinking about lately. With rare exceptions girls(4) don't respond to discursive seductions with much positivity, that kind of human interaction taking as its medium the language of looks and smiles(5) rather that the intricate grunts and marks that make up my textual relationships. But enough about me(6). This particular book opens(7) by jarring you to get your attention, the first page having a big READ ME title and the rest of the intro spent mostly mocking you for being so weak as to mindlessly follow orders. This is gimmicky and dumb. There's one sentence where the author takes it back, but it doesn't really matter - what does matter is that from the very outset this guy has established presence and power, which is basically what he claims he can give to you if you buckle down and do exactly what he says. The rest of the book follows this tone, with terse imperative sentences describing your 'missions', giving you your 'daily briefings', lauding the brand of the Stylelife(8) Challenge and the in-group of the 'Challengers' that now includes you in their epic community of men who have lifted the wool from their eyes and have unlocked the badass secrets of masculinity and attraction and power. The military con- and de-notations are definitely intentional. My most sympathetic interpretation would be that most people need this kind of hardass discipline if they're going to seriously step outside of their comfort zone, and the fuck-you attitude of the writing style can serve as a source thereof if the feeble reader can't conjure the man-juice from within(9). The book's divvied up into 30 days worth of the prenominate missions and briefings, and the reader is advised (or, rather, ordered) to read the book one day at a time and do every single thing as-instructed. No reading ahead, no skipping out on assignments. There are a few fields for you to fill out answers to questions, some good (what are your strengths and goals in life) and some bad (explain with detail exactly how you will suffer if you fail to change your broken ways). The calendar is supposed to take you from the zero at which you start to getting a date, defined as any agreement to meet with a woman after first meeting her as a stranger. The author goes over Opening, Demonstrating Value, Disqualifying(i.e. making her work for it), etc. I didn't encounter the notorious 'Negging' wherein you insult and generally try to hurt a girl to get an emotional reaction from her(10), which was nice. There was indeed some positive and good advice to be found, such as making human interaction about enriching other people rather than satisfying some desperate need of yours for sex and affirmation(11). Also worth attention is the idea of just having fun wherever you go, bringing value and positive-vibes into your own life and into the lives of others no matter what the ups and downs of what happens to you over the course of any given evening. But. The good advice is vague and can be found from other more-robust sources. What makes this book less-robust is the lengthy digressions on NeuroLinguistic Programming, Astrology, Psychic readings, and Evolutionary Psychology. By EvoPsych I mean the "listen, girls just want to fuck your money" type of pop-crap that justifies a nasty STEM-brand of gender-essentialism which makes much of the Internet the misogynistic hellscape that it is. So that's where the book lost me. The Missions involved a lot of this, explicitly telling you to go out and engage girls about, say, how the rings on their fingers predict the planets they were born under and the personality implications thereof, etc. I can't do that. Really. Once I checked out I slammed through the rest of the book, chuckling over the author's little admonitions against not doing the homework, and now we're here. What did I learn? Some things! It is generally good to be happy and fun and playful when you're out and about, and I'm a bit better at conjuring and expressing that kind of social feeling now. So that's good. Also well and fine is the attention to nonverbal detail the book helped illuminate - as mentioned somewhere in here I feel way more conscious and aware of words and abstract stuff(see (6)) and that's generally how I interface with humans (i.e. perceiving much of identity through word-choice and -style) and that's definitely not going to help anyone do anything on a crowded dance floor. But that's like 28% of the book right there. The rest kind of sucks and it's delivered like the text is biblical. It kind of inspired that kind of reaction(i.e. holy) from its fans when I mentioned I was reading the thing, the eyes widening and the head tilting back and a serious smile breaking out as they remember and behold the book's total glory once again. Not me. I don't plan on instantiating a system when I interact with you, regardless of how I feel about you. Not here, not anywhere, not ever. You're worth sincerity and spontaneity and actual candor, including the kind that I can only really find in writing. For better or for worse I think rawness and openness and serious-togetherness are all we can really hope for - some beautiful people live this lovely life effortlessly, and the rest of us can only try . ADDENDA (1) I think it's a fine and important exercise to read books that are morally questionable and/or endorsed by people you hate. I tend to come away with a better understanding of my ideas, of the ideas of my enemies, and with a deeper appreciation for how someone like me might conceivably believe something horrible like that. (2) This cosmological 'foundation' used to be capital-S Science as a way of communing with the capital-U Universe, captured in the Saganite aphorism "we are a way for the Universe to understand itself". I've long since shed the idea that reality has a preferred description of itself, that we have epistemic duties towards any kind non-human power. I think atheism has conceptual consequences that my old New Atheist movement glosses over and ignores (basically keeping God but stripping it of its personality), but it (the movement) remains a step (rather than a leap) in a good atheistic direction. (3) I think the deepest reason that people read books like these and consider them to be a success is because like 85% of inter-human success comes from having the self-assurance to take any action at all. (4) Here I mean 'girls' in the sense of casually referring to younger females the same way 'guys' casually refers to younger males. I know there's a bunch of problems with the word with its diminutive connotations, but 'Females' seems sterile and 'Women' to me implies (following Louis C.K.(4.1)) childbearing and much more life-experience than had by the my-age people I generally find myself attracted to. Gender-reference is a real head-clutcher and as a creature of almost-maximal privilege(4.2) I really do my sincere best to not accidentally oppress anybody, and I'm sorry if I fail. (4.1) Contrary to the hopes and dreams of immature people everywhere Louis C.K. emphatically did NOT make the word 'faggot' somehow okay to use. Hearing that word used makes me want to gather a crowd and publically push my thumbs into the offending vocal chords. (4.2) Sub-maximal since little-ol'-me is neither super-rich nor Christian. (5) Tolstoy's words, but man do I wish they were my own. (6) Just kidding. As half-alluded to somewhere around the main text(6.1) textuality is where I'm at my most relaxed and spontaneous and present, inhering in here with every word, so even when I'm not explicitly referenced every inch of this piece is soaked and saturated with my identity. At least until you read it, then you're in here with me too. Hi. (6.1) I'd really like to index the main-text to more effectively link back and forth between the footnotes and main-text words/sentences/paragraphs, but I feel like hyper-indexicality's the kind of PoMo metafuckery that'd be better left for another day. But man will it be fun. (7) In this book 'open' is treated as a half-technical term, basically referring to the action of starting a conversation with someone you're interested in. This, to me, is the single hardest part of being in public. (8) Seriously. (9) This is almost too silly but I'm leaving it in anyway. (10) From what I've heard from the girls that I've talked to about dating a lot of guys seriously will do this. For all the male bitching and moaning about having to deal with huge amounts of rejection from women it seems also and even more-so true that the acts of selection and rejection take their own heavy emotional toll, especially when some guys will do literally anything to provoke a response from you. (11) It's really easy to run these two together, unfortunately.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-07-30 00:00:00 Nicholas Coll Some notes: One exercise: call a wrong number and get the person who answers to recommend a movie. "The point isn't just to talk with strangers. It's to learn how to change the course of an interaction without making the other person uncomfortable." - p29 "'Rejection' is another word that has been misused and misrepresented. The dictionary definition of 'reject" is 'to refuse to accept.' So if you offer someone a stick of gum, and she says 'No thanks,' you've been rejected. Do you feel an emotional sting? Probably not. / If you invite someone to a social event, and she says 'No thanks,' it shouldn't be any different. But for most people it is different, and here's why: When the gum is rejected, we think the person doesn't want the gum. But when we extend and invitation and get rejected, we think she doesn't want us. / But how could she possibly have decided she doesn't want us? She's known us only for a short while. She's practically a complete stranger. She doesn't know how great we are, the way our friends and family do. Why do we value her opinion over theirs?" - p50 "You can open by saying almost anything when you're confident, congruent, and upbeat....Next time you see someone you want to talk to, open your mouth and say the first thing that comes to mind. As long as your comment or question isn't rude or hostile, you may be surprised by how difficult it is to get solidly rejected." - p51 "Chris Rock has a routine in which he explains that anything a man says to a woman translates as 'How about some dick?'" Your goal is to start a conversation with a woman without saying 'How about some dick?'" - p56 "Make sure you pay attention to the men in a group. If they feel you're not respecting or acknowledging them, they'll try to end the interaction." - p59 Don't open by asking a question; they can say no and shut you down. Don't begin by apologizing; "starting a conversation this way makes you sound insecure at best and like a panhandler at worst." - p59 One of the best openers is to get advice on a personal story. You can get opinions, start a conversation. - p60 Good openers have a root (why you're asking) and a time constraint (to reassure that you're not going to stick around forever). - p63 "There is no such thing as rejection, only feedback." - p69 "Who do you blame when something goes wrong during an approach? If you catch yourself saying a situation was impossible, the guys were jerks, or the woman was just a 'bitch,' then you're wrong. It's your fault. It's always your fault. And that's a good thing, because it means you're in control." - p69 "To disqualify a woman, demonstrate early in an interaction that you're not interested in her. Even though you may be chasing her, disqualification turns the tables and makes her want to chase you." - p74 But don't disqualify a woman who might feel you're out of her league. - p75 Women test men. "Men normally sit there answering the questions like they're on a game show, hoping that if they accumulate enough points, she'll choose them. What they don't realize is that they're losing points simply by submitting to the test." - p75 Couple disqualification with qualification (acceptance): the push-pull. - p77 On the differences between men and women: There is "research estimating that 75% of gay men in San Francisco have had more than one hundred partners (25% have had more than one thousand), while in contrast most lesbians have had fewer than ten partners in their lifetime." - p110 "Over dinner one night, the Stylelife coaches and I were reviewing the topics women seem to enjoy discussing most. One was relationships, another was spirituality, and a third was animals." - p222 "See that guy over there? He just told me he knows kung fu. Why do you think he would say that to me out of the blue?" - p226 "Can you hold on to this for a sec? ... Thanks ... A friend of mine taught me that the best way to butt into a conversation is to give someone something to hold. And I wanted to test it out." - p227 Good bar trick: the five questions bet. - p235 Good way to ramp up physicality: the quadruple hand test, Style's kiss close. - p255, p257 "As she hit the mattress, a giggle dislodged." - p309 "I once told the story of Sleeping Beauty to a young cousin of mine. 'How can a prince fall in love with a girl who's sleeping?' she asked afterward." - p331 "Every single man needs a sexually adventurous woman to distract him from the fact that he's unloved." - p333