Metagame
The term metagame, popularized by competitive video games and similar e-sport-esque activities refers to the set of viable strategies one can employ when playing the game at a particular point in time. Metagames can shift because of a self-correcting rock/paper/scissors nature of the game itself, where one strategy can only dominate for so long until it gets “hated out” by specific-counter strategies. Alternatively, the metagame shift is caused by deliberate action on the part of game developers which adjust certain aspects of the game, buffing (increasing the effectiveness) one set of strategies and nerfing (decreasing the effectiveness) another. As a concrete example, MOBAs such as League and Dota have a metagame that tends to shift with every patch cycle, where developers make specific champions and other elements stronger or weaker.
This is all to restate that a metagame is generally the set of close-to-optimal strategies one can employ when participating in a game. Going up a layer of abstraction into game theory, we learn about the concept of Nash equilibria - decision points where each player’s optimal play has been determined and no value is gained by changing one’s decision. The metagame of a particular game is therefore determined by the Nash equilibria of possible strategies employed by the various players. In the famous prisoner’s dilemma, the metagame is defection; because the game reaches equilibrium at defect/defect. In an iterated prisoner’s dilemma, the metagame is tit for tat because equilibrium is reached at mutual tit for tat.
The macro-scale dating (Meta)game
This is not at all a gaming blog, but can be construed as at least partly an applied game theory blog, which is why we will now apply the above concepts to the sexual market, as the PUAs would say.
As far as I know, the conceptualization of male/female dynamics in game theoretic terms was pioneered by Jim. Civilization is built upon the maintenance of coop/coop equilibria among social entities (individuals, small groups such as families, large groups such as clans; organizations/institutions tasked with managing separate aspects of society). One of the most important pairs of social entities for any civilizations is husband/wife, or more generally man/woman. This means that one of the fundamental relationships where coop/coop equilibrium must be established is the relationship between men and women.
In layman’s terms, coop/coop means that both entities compromise in order to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome, whereas defect/defect means that both entities pursue a selfish strategy of maximizing personal utility which often results in a mutually harmful outcome. Human nature dictates that we will respond to incentives, meaning that absent external constraints we will employ a selfish strategy, leading to negative outcomes when happening at a massive scale. For this reason we must constrain the decision process in such a way that the incentives shift to universally favor the prosocial decision of compromise - in game theoretic terms, to establish a coop/coop equilibrium.
Luckily, coop/coop is an emergent property of human civilization when viewed from a perspective of inter-group competition. Since rampant defection prevents effective long-term stable cooperation (which harms group cohesion), groups that don’t evolve a coop/coop equilibrium (don’t evolve social technologies that enable safe cooperation by harshly punishing defectors) will be outcompeted by rival groups that successfully cooperate. This means that over a large timeframe, coop/coop will always emerge. Therefore, cooperation is the metagame of the game of interaction between social entities within a civilization, at least most of the time.
However, a civilization is affected by shifts in its natural and social environment, which can alter the social interaction metagame at a certain point in time, meaning that defect/defect equilibrium may emerge for a certain timeframe. At that point, the civilization either successfully shifts back to coop/coop or gets outcompeted by a rival society. In this sense, there is no truly consistent metagame for interaction between social entities on a micro scale and in a specific society, at least in the absence of explicit constraints forcing coop/coop.
Returning back to the topic of the interaction between men and women within a society, coop/coop equilibrium is achieved by forcing both sexes to interact in a way that satisfies both of their imperatives to a good enough degree. The female imperative of hypergamy and the male imperative of polygyny can both be maximized by a social order that institutionalizes harems of women for a minority of alpha males. However, this is not a pro-civilizational order because it leads to the accumulation of frustrated, sexless men who are apt to rebel against their social order. In order words, it may achieve coop/coop between women as a whole and a minority of men; but it does not achieve coop/coop between men as a whole. Additionally, it should be noted that absent constraints on female sexuality, the male/female dynamic (the sexual macro-metagame) always trends to hypergamous polygyny; because of the difference between male and female desire and sexual instincts stemming from the preciousness of fertile women and the interchangeable nature of young men. From this fact stems Briffault’s law: The female, not the male, determines all the conditions of the animal family. Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place.
In layman’s terms, this means that women won’t choose to fuck the average man unless they are “forced” into it by social constraints. This is why true coop/coop equilibrium between men and women as well as men as a whole is achieved through enforced monogamy, more strongly enforced on the female side, as per Briffault’s law, the sexual equilibrium is determined by the woman’s choice. If women defect (unrestrained hypergamy meaning no sexual fidelity), leads to defect/defect in the form of players and bitches (per Jim); if women cooperate (meaning submission to her first and only sexual partner), leads to coop/coop in the form of lifelong marriage.
Micro-scale dating metagame(s)
The above section talked about the dating metagame - the metagame of intersexual interaction - on a macro scale, in abstract terms: what type of action a man is forced to take depending on the level of constraint on female sexuality. If unconstrained as in modern times, men must opt for low-investment strategies to get laid while avoiding the possibility of being cucked. If constrained and risk of infidelity is low, men can revert to traditional high-investment strategies where marriage is a contract between husband and father that husband will support and protect his wife in exchange for reproductive access.
However, and perhaps more interestingly, we can also conceptualize the dating metagame on a smaller scale - in more concrete terms. In this sense, the dating metagame can be defined as the sum of sexual and courting behaviors and status symbols a man must exhibit in order to get laid successfully. In broad terms, I use sexual behaviors to mean actions within direct social interaction, whereas status symbols are actions outside of direct social interaction that convey high status. In this sense, accumulating status by excelling in culturally significant activities such as sports or by purchasing status symbols such as expensive cars is exhibiting status symbols, whereas approaching a girl at the club is a sexual behavior. Already we see that status symbols and sexual behaviors are highly contingent on cultural factors, meaning the same holds true for the micro-level sexual metagame(s) as a system or set of these symbols and behaviors. Different cultures have different status symbols and different behavioral norms, meaning the optimal sexual strategy (while broadly the same) will differ depending on the cultural environment the participant is embedded into.
But, cultures are not monoliths, they fragment into sets of subcultures and countercultures that establish alternative status economies, creating niches for alternative sexual archetypes. In broad terms, a subculture is a smaller cultural entity within the macro-culture that creates a derivative status economy by preserving the macro-culture’s core moral framework while rearranging certain non-core values (example given in the tweet: speedrunning as a subculture of gaming, gaming is still the core value but instead of striving for status by being “the best”, you strive for status by being “the fastest”). A counterculture, on the other hand is a smaller (always smaller, but the difference in size can be lesser than between macro-culture and subculture) cultural entity within the macro-culture that creates an inverted status economy by establishing an moral framework based on an inversion of one or more of the macro-culture’s core values (example: nerds vs jocks, the criminal underground vs polite society, alphabetoids vs normal people). One becomes a “true” member of a sub/counterculture when one prioritizes sub/counterculture status over mainstream culture status. In the case of subcultures, status translates to a certain degree to mainstream culture status, in the case of countercultures, status has an inverse relationship to macro-culture status. A counterculture becomes mainstream when the majority of people decides to prioritize status within the countercultural status economy, derived from the inverted moral framework. Because the moral framework and therefore the status economy of the masses is downstream from the moral framework of the priesthood (the intellectual class shaping public opinion), this is a top-down process, and generally only happens when a counter-priesthood establishes supremacy over the mainstream priesthood, or when the mainstream priesthood adopts the inverted moral framework.
The present situation is such that our intellectual institutions are occupied by a hostile priesthood subject to a leftward spiral (the Cathedral), meaning that the moral framework moves ever leftward and the status economy moves ever further toward gynocentrism. As gynocentrism is characterized by hypergamy, more gynocentrism means more hypergamy, means men are more and more judged solely by their (perceived) sexual prowess - which is generally a function of physical attractiveness, social dominance and female preselection. I call this trio of characteristics the pre-civilizational trifecta, because it reflects the status economy of human societies before civilization was established via enforced monogamy.
In general, a feminized and gynocentric mainstream culture affects both the sexual macro-metagame and the sexual micro-metagame. As the macro metagame moves towards players and bitches due to increasingly loose constraints on female behavior coupled with increasingly tight constraints on male behavior, so does the set of sexual micro-metagames “enabled”/sponsored by the overarching culture shrink. The commonly accepted way to get a sexual partner in modern times is meeting one during your educational process, via online dating, or by frequenting “party culture”.
The sexual marketplace can be understood as a subculture of the mainstream culture, because it is just an aspect of culture, it is not the whole culture. Additionally, courting and other mating dances generally occur in very specific environments, have very specific rules and follow very specific established patterns; all of which are specific to each culture. Admittedly, courting can occur in various environments, but in general, a small number of them is primary. In our modern heavily gynocentric society, these primary environments are dating apps such as tinder and nightclubs and similar party venues. Both of these environments lend themselves to a particular form of approach, a particular form of sexual behavior: lekking. As Zero put it:
In classical lek mating, the males of the species all gather together and make visually and auditorily striking displays to compete for the attention of females.
We know about lekking from the mating patterns of many birds. In Africa, where environmental pressures are weaker on humans than sexual pressures, the males are highly sexually selected.
They swagger around, they spit “game,” they dance, they adorn themselves in loud and colorful clothing, and they pick pointless fights with each other in which neither party is particularly injured, as a show of dominance and fitness.
Again you can see that this pattern repeats both in sub-Saharan Africa as well as in any nightclub.
If you as a white man feel that the modality of the nightclub is alienating and uncomfortable to you, it’s because whites are not a lekking species.
This speaks to a heavily feminized dating metagame, both on the micro and macro scales, so the first step to success as a man is to defeminize/degynocentrize the sexual metagame by masculinizing it's status economy (prioritize seeking status on male terms and enforcing your own status economy, rather than prioritizing female assigned status). The second step is to pick the status economy that best suits your caste.
Caste-specific dating metagames
Evola spoke of the four ages, each corresponding to a particular caste of man:
The golden age, where society is ruled by divine warrior-priests who embody transcendence
The silver age, where society is feminized through rule by priests, who fail to embody transcendence, only worship it
The bronze age, where the feminized society gives way to rule by warriors, who are then usurped by merchants, giving way to worship of wealth over spirituality
This eventually results in losing all ties to the transcendent, giving way to the dark age (Kali Yuga) of the commoner (prole), where materialism/consumerism reigns supreme
As society degenerates from the higher ages to the lower ages, so can we expect the dating metagames to move toward universalization, undifferentiation. In the Kali Yuga, instead of being split by castes, the mainstream dating metagame becomes the undifferentiated, universal sexual metagame of lekking, taking place within nightclubs and on dating apps. Predictably, such a metagame favors the less-conscious, more instinctive lower form of man. While avenues for success are open to all three other castes (the modern equivalent of warriors, celebrities bypass lekking through the abnormally high status granted to them; priestly inclined men reverse engineer lekking through studying PUA, merchants establish ownership of a venue by dumping large amounts of money into it), this sort of metagame doesn’t perfectly suit any of them.
Each caste of man has a seduction process that best suits him, according to the faculty from which he derives status. The warrior seduces through performative excellence, which can be derived purely from the physical body (professional sport players) or from an extension of it (musicians). Thus his ideal venue is one where he can demonstrate his performative excellence in some way, or one where his performative excellence is common knowledge - which is everywhere for highly successful ones such as modern popular musicians and sport celebrities. The merchant seduces through material excess, which is demonstrated by frivolous spending and the donning of expensive status symbols. Thus he excels in any venue where he can demonstrate his excess. The commoner seduces directly through the body, by getting directly physical with girls and would-be sexual rivals. The priest seduces through intellectual excellence, demonstrated via conversation, debate or artistic expression. It’s not hard to see that the modern metagame is uniquely ill-suited to priestly-inclined men, for whom the only solution is to study lekking and play the part of a character that is suited to lekking in order to compete in the mainstream sexual metagame.
The priest’s dating metagame
In order to consummate a sexual relationship, bodily contact is obviously mandatory. However, the role of the body must not be neglected even in the beginning parts of the courting process, regardless of caste. While only the prole seduces directly through the body, the body is always the conduit for each caste’s method of seduction. Performative excellence is conveyed through the body, material excess is demonstrated by adorning the body in symbols of status and while intellectual excellence can be conveyed via external conduits, such as various forms of text and works of art, unless a priest is already high status, these must still be propagated via the body. This means that in order for a priest to successfully employ his mind as an instrument of seduction, he must first be fully comfortable in his body, in order to establish the important initial dynamic of I-am-higher-status-than you. This is, coincidentally, why lifting is so important for intellectually inclined men. But more importantly, it means that unless you want to learn lekking, a priest is better suited to sexual environments where conversation and debate (engaging the mind) is the norm, as opposed to dancing to loud music (engaging the body). That is because, again, each caste of man is most comfortable in an environment where the status economy prioritizes his main faculty. In such an environment, expressing high status behavior is the default state.
The problem is that in today’s world, official/mainstream environments where the above is the case don’t really exist, except perhaps Church groups. But as a general rule, you will not simply have a massively popular venue that you can visit every weekend in order to employ “deep” conversation-game and easily score a girl.
No, for the modern priestly-inclined man, it is essential that he and his group of friends creates an alternative status economy, by establishing a subculture around a priestly activity that meets in an environment of his choosing on his schedule. However, and here lies the issue: subcultures attract girls only when they have prestige.
Prestige is generally a function of two things: status and value. A subculture built around a high status activity will be prestigious right off the bat, but proficiency at a high status activity would result in ease of access to women (which is the problem our priestly-inclined man is trying to solve), so this avenue is closed to us. Luckily, being a counterculture can be prestigious in and of itself, if you frame the rejection of mainstream values in the right way, apply the right amount of exclusivity. In order to draw prestige from the schism, your counterculture must be defined as something more than the mainstream - more violence, prowess, excellence for a warrior focused culture; more holiness, intellect for a priestly culture and a mixture of these sentiments (such as more honor) for a culture that incorporates priestly and warlike aspects. Unsuccessful are those that base their schism on being “less” than the mainstream culture, usually as a result of an inability to reach the mainstream culture’s levels of holiness/violence.
Nerds vs jocks, for example: when jocks are the dominant subculture (meaning the sexual metagame is “be athletic” and jockey for status through your body), nerds are always the counter culture as a group with the lowest athleticism on average. Additionally, since nerds are priestly-inclined individuals that weren’t successfully socialized into the undifferentiated sociosexual environment of the Kali Yuga, they fail to ascend the status hierarchy because they are not taught how to jockey for status through their bodies - something that comes naturally to the commoner and the athletically gifted warrior. Another example is the constant and inevitable subordination of conservatives to progressives. As Jim tends to put it, modern normiecons are more-or-less last decade’s leftists, because they operate within the exact same moral framework as modern leftists do, except they (consciously or not) draw an arbitrary line in the sand and refuse to follow the framework to its logical conclusion - today’s leftism (Cthulhu always swims left). In essence, this means that they are operating in a less mature, less radical, less extreme version of the same status economy, which is why they will always be lower status than leftists.
However, be wary of holiness spiraling and regression to barbarism: a counterculture based on a higher exemplification of priestly/warlike virtues is only justifiable if the mainstream culture is truly deficient (as is the current heavily feminized and degenerated one). In the case of a healthy mainstream culture (one with a Gnon-compliant status economy), trying to transcend it via more holiness, higher excellence, more violence leads to leftist holiness spiraling or regression to barbarism.
Since we’re looking for viable sexual metagames for a priestly-inclined man, we must create a status economy that strives to out-priest the mainstream priests, by being holier or intellectually superior than them. Additionally, we must bolster it with the creation of some sort of value - material, intellectual, spiritual, cultural providing a unique positive experience. The simplest way to go about this is to organize some psychedelic bullshit meetings where people get high on weed, shrooms and similar psychoactive substances while pretending to have deep conversations; but ultimately this is a hollow imitation of the real thing. And really, it’s just a subculture, not a counterculture. No, I believe that the true way forward is to restore the Cult of Gnon.
The Cult of Gnon - come for the bitches, stay for the restoration of Western civilization
I find it ironic that the best way to secure bitches is also the starting point for the restoration, when ideally we would restore first, secure bitches later. I realize that this may sound beta as fuck; but the simple truth of the matter is that the Woman Question is the gateway drug that redpills the vast majority of men. Give a man access to pussy and he will gladly accept your politics. There is nothing wrong in internalizing this fact and acting accordingly. Additionally, we cannot restore anything if our fellow travelers don’t get pussy. The Will of Gnon is to be fruitful and multiply! So really, I’m just being pragmatic.
The mainstream culture is intellectually bankrupt, physically enfeebled and spiritually hollow, because it’s morally degenerate. Any activity that aligns itself with the Will of Gnon in some way will be able to contrast itself to the mainstream by exhibiting intellectual excellence, physical prowess or spiritual fulfillment, is a step toward restoring the Will of Gnon. It will be rewarded accordingly with the production of value. An alternative intellectual (research) group will capture daughters of priests, because high IQ women respond well to men exhibiting intellectual excellence (thus creating intellectual value) coupled with the right amount of intellectual arrogance (and transgression against the status-quo), especially if they also possess a minimum of aesthetics (hence the importance of lifting).
Less intelligent women that are still somewhat more spiritually inclined tend to be big on pseudoreligious movements if they are not already involved in Christianity. These can be reached by joining Church groups (preferably based ones - those that are infested by Globohomo to a minimal degree) or by making a habit of taking evening retreats into nature with your friends where you take some time for spiritual practice - thus creating spiritual value and providing a unique positive experience. These kinds of activities lend themselves well to White Boy Summer aesthetics if advertised via social media.
Last, book clubs based around based stories such as old classics like Tolkien’s LotR or the fiction of the radical right’s content creators, such as Zero, Thomas777, those who participated in the passage prize, Man’s World contributors, etc. While nonfiction, Bronze Age Mindset is a must if taking the pagan route. If possible, we should produce our own fiction and art as well, thus creating cultural value.
But really, we should be doing all this stuff regardless. That it’s a good avenue towards securing bitches is really just incidental. Restoring the cult of Gnon, whether via based Christianity or based paganism, by creating an intellectual counterculture that produces based ideas and based art and a sense of belonging for our fellow travelers is what we as priestly-inclined individuals should be doing regardless. The broad radical right is doing it on the internet, but we must also do it in meatspace - in real life. There’s surely avenues I haven’t explored and thought of, but this was a spur of the moment essay. Once we’ve begun, Gnon will surely light our way forward.