{"id":8195,"date":"2011-03-09T12:59:28","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T17:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=8195"},"modified":"2018-09-18T10:38:38","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T14:38:38","slug":"esr-considers-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/03\/09\/esr-considers-game\/","title":{"rendered":"ESR considers “game”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been a fan of Eric S. Raymond for years: he writes very well about things that interest him and we have some large overlap of interests. In this post<\/a>, he talks about the “game” used by the Pick-Up Artist:<\/p>\n

\n

Slang dictionaries never fail to interest me. A few days ago I ran across one serving the PUA (pick-up artist) subculture, a network of men (and a few women) who have attempted to systematize and explain tactics for picking up women. Chasing links from it, I found a network of blogs and sites describing what they call \u201cgame\u201d, which has evolved beyond mere tactics into a generative theory of why the tactics work; indeed in some hands (such as the ferociously intelligent PUA blogger Roissy<\/a>) it seems to be aspiring to the condition of philosophy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve found reading about this stuff fascinating, if not quite for the usual reasons. I\u2019m what PUAs call a \u201cnatural\u201d, a man who figured out much of game on his own and consequently cuts a wide sexual swathe when he cares to. Not quite the same game they\u2019re playing, however. For one thing, I\u2019ve never tried to pick up a woman in a bar in my entire life. College parties when I was a student, yes; SF conventions, neopagan festivals, SCA events, yes; bars, no.<\/p>\n

Also, and partly as consequence of where I hang out, it has been quite unusual for me to hit on women with IQs below about 120 — and it may well be the case that I\u2019ve never<\/em> tried to interest a woman with below-average intelligence. (Er, which is not to say they don\u2019t notice me<\/em>; even in middle age I get lots of IOI<\/a>s from waitresses and other female service personnel. Any PUA would tell you this is a predictable and unremarkable consequence of being an alpha male.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been a fan of Eric S. Raymond for years: he writes very well about things that interest him and we have some large overlap of interests. In this post, he talks about the “game” used by the Pick-Up Artist: Slang dictionaries never fail to interest me. A few days ago I ran across one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[1235,255,43],"class_list":["post-8195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-randomness","tag-esr","tag-sexuality","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-28b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8195"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44980,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8195\/revisions\/44980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}