A study has been making the social media rounds recently, and it coincidentally indicates the perfect way to judge your own game.
So it turns out that most people using online dating tend to message people approximately 25% more attractive than they are. People are calling this a way to illustrate how there are “leagues” and most people 1. Know their general league and 2. Try to strike slightly above it. Sounds pretty sensible.
Often you hear game deniers say stuff like:
-In the end it’s just all about looks
-If you’re not her type then you won’t get with her
-Go for someone “on your level”
-She’s “out of your league”
This is the case for a variety of reasons, but in general people tend to desire an excuse to justify their own lack of results which protects their own lack of effort in that area. You see this in everything from health (anti-fat shaming movements, people claiming that fat people are equally healthy, et cetera) to finance (people who rationalize why they’re constantly broke), fitness, travel (I *wish* I could do what you do), and of course women.
In other words, many people get sucked into buying into a “fixed mindset” (things are the way they are and we have little change over them) as opposed to a growth mindset (we are largely the product of our choices and have a lot of direct control over our own level and improvement in many areas). People with a fixed mindset are full of excuses and reasons to rationalize why they are the way they are and point to things they can’t change, such as height, looks, and race, or things which they could potentially change but seem like they would take massive effort, such as finance or Japanese level.
The most dangerous myth of all is that there is no such thing as “game” and that as long as you just “be yourself” you will end up with the perfect partner for you. A bewitching narrative, no doubt, marred further by the fact that “be yourself” is actually not terrible advice, it’s simply inactionable.
Interestingly, online dating is one of the best ways to prove the existence of game and the folly of the “looks are all that matters” people precisely because it removes everything besides the visual and verbal leaving out:
Smell
Vibe
Voice tone
Confidence
Aura
Eye contact
Boldness
Actual verbal flow in real time
Empathy/social intelligence/EQ
Etc
You can “approach” (aka swipe) 50 girls on the toilet without taking a shower or leaving your house and while presenting a semi artificial or at least extremely favorable presentation of yourself which is at best a small slice of the full picture.
So here’s how you know someone has got game:
They consistently are able to hook up with women who they would never get even minimal interest from on a dating app.
And how you know someone’s got bad game:
They fail many of these internet dates and get interest from on average significantly less attractive people in real life.
In other words, game is the gap between what “your level” or “league” should be based purely on visual looks and what level you can actually get in real life.
FYI, I do absolutely horrendously on Tinder (especially in Japan) and get close to ZERO matches. In real life? I slept with 7 women last week from cold approach. Also, when I meet girls from tinder (generally in non Japanese countries) they insist I don’t look like my pictures and I’m much better in real life (I definitely do look like my pictures, there’s no filters or anything on them and they are all recent and nice pictures). What they mean is that there is a je ne sais quoi that makes my IRL “league” significantly higher than my online / appearance only “league”
And this is game
