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Its an odd clash between our primal lizard/ape brain and our more economizing higher mammal brain that we seem to be well aware that "sex" is cheap in the abstract, you can find it with just a little effort and risk, and if you have some cash can acquire it, in varying degrees of quality.
Got specific names for it and everything. High end "sugar babies," low end "lot lizards."
So its not like some hard-to-acquire thing that has intrinsic value due to its rarity.
But... acquiring it from decent-looking women without having to pay out for it (up front, especially) usually means you're an absolute high-value stud who will literally be the envy of other men.
Status-seeking interacts with sexual politics in some odd ways here. If I have, I dunno, about 4-5k, I could spend the night with some of the most gorgeous women on the planet (so my research suggests). But I don't think that would, by itself, afford me any extra status points, and would in many contexts lower my status.
So its a commodity, but also something way, way more important.
I don't know, in the 4-5k example the circumstance that it would presumably be a financial strain for you does a lot of work here. It's one thing if you can eat rice and beans for two months to afford a quickie, and another when this is "easy solution if/when the urge arises" pocket change. (Compare owning a Ferrari to spending a similar amount for a 1h test drive for your birthday.) Similarly, we don't have particular reason to assume that any of Genghis Khan's baby mommas entered the arrangement particularly enthusiastically (as opposed to being bought, either directly or in units of the liquid asset that were the lives of his hordes), but when people speak of the fraction of modern-day people who descend from him, it still rings with some sort of grudging admiration.
On the flip side, the male advantage in acquiring resources has also eroded (especially anywhere near the median, rather than around various outliers; the overwhelming maleness of Bill Gates's economic bracket is irrelevant to the life of most women), and yet the ancestral patterns persist.
I guess I'm just saying, I could pay money to a hooker and then say "I banged an absolute 10/10 last night!" and be completely honest, pull out a photo showing her on my arm, and this might gain me some status points with the boys until it comes out that she is in fact a high-class hooker. Then all that bravado dissipates.
Buttttt, if I pull that same hooker with my own wiles and charm I can say "hey guys lol I banged a 10/10 escort last night without paying" then that might get me even more status because I just demonstrated value above and beyond being wealthy that can overcome even a working girl's cynicism.
Or so I'd expect. Thus its not the sex-having itself that is the flex, its the "girls find me attractive/interesting enough to give it up for free" part. Absolute social proof.
(for me, I'm genuinely at the point where sex doesn't mean much at all unless its with someone I have a true intimacy with, and so guys flexing their conquests leaves me mildly envious but not particularly threatened).
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In OLD and social media, "sugar babies" will refrain from disclosing as such until you get their number and take the conversation to other channels, lest they get banned from the platform. While rarer, they often appear indistinguishable from normal girls too, just the usual attractive young woman's assortment of bikini pics, thirst traps, nights out with their girlfriends, pics of them in a cocktail dress at a two-person table in an expensive restaurant (who's taking the photo?).
If you have no interest in "sugar babies" like me, this represents time having been wasted talking to such a girl. Sometimes in the past when I've been traveling abroad or preparing to travel abroad (and thus chatting with girls in their local language) is to make lemonade out of lemons and amuse myself.
I say abroad because this doesn't work in English-speaking countries since I can't play dumb in terms of language familiarity the same way. Basically they'd say they're a [positive euphemism for a sex worker] and I'd "innocently" inquire if that means [less positive euphemism for a sex worker]. The equivalent in English would be something like, once we've been text messaging or WhatsApping or whatever for awhile:
Her: btw... im a sb and looking for something mutual
Me: what's an sb
Her: sugar baby
Me: what does that mean
*beat*
Me: ohhh is that like a prostitute?
Her: no not like that!!
And hoe maddening ensues. Even female sex workers are quite defensive and sensitive about their Wonderfulness.
Nowadays, I'm all-too-tiresome'd out to entertain myself like the above and will just leave it at that after the initial reveal.
Not really endorsing your post, but there is a REAL problem with women refusing to advertise their 'true' status in any way that might give up the game before a guy invests attention in her. Even being on a dating app isn't proof positive that she's available and serious.
Girls will have dozens of photos on Insta of just herself in various states of dress and undress, and you'll only find out she has a boyfriend after you've been texting sporadically back and forth for a month (happened to me recently).
Of course the wannabe SBs and the OF purveyors want to hide that until they think they've got you invested enough to slide down the sales funnel.
Yet even 'honest' girls will elide their current relationship status insofar as they'll neglect to mention their ongoing FWB situations or that they're still pining over a guy back home and they'd drop everything to move back there with him (also happened to me). Why not, you know, include him in some photos or at least acknowledge that he's there?
A guy might not know exactly what sort of woman he pulled until 3-6 months into the interaction. Its maddening.
When I learned that the Germans used to have a traditional method for women to advertise their availability I got kinda mad that we don't use similar systems any more.
As a result, it is utterly rational for a guy to assume there's a hidden caveat when a girl 'presents' as single but isn't really open about what that means to her. And that means withholding investment until he is reassured she's actually available and isn't about to spring the "please pay my rent this month" trap.
From her perspective, even if she's fairly confident (tentatively, at least) she'd like to stay faithful to her current relationship or situationship, why prematurely cutoff a vector for attention, a potential orbiter, or another "break-glass-in-case-of-emergency" backup in the event she does decide to cheat or monkey branch away from her current dick-provider?
Sometimes you might even bang a girl only to find out weeks, months, or years later that she had a boyfriend at the time, was engaged, or was/is married.
Another reason why not to get too attached to any one prospect; why to aim to get the bang with any particular prospect as soon as possible.
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Certainly is. Women who's entire profile is '@instabae' or 'I'm hardly ever on here, come find me on monetised-thirsttrap.com/teehee'.
Back in the day, the pump and dump was weaponised against women like this (gold-diggers etc) with a very very large amount of collateral damage.
It sure feels like whenever you enter a digital conversation with (what appears to be) an attractive woman, there's like 50-50 odds that there'll be a reveal that this is just the top of her sales funnel once you've actually engaged.
No, I will not follow your insta, snap, telegram, join your discord, or subscribe to your Patreon or Substack.
And even the ones that don't... tend to not care that the general goal of such convos used to be meeting up in person. I've heard the term "rain check" too many times in the past few months.
I strongly encourage people to take breaks from OLD (or even dating in general) when they feel burnout. You won't be at your best when burnt out and frankly it feels horrible to keep engaging when you've had a bad run.
Yeah, but its even happening with women I have I know from other places too. Drawn out text convos then withdrawal/avoidance when I try to get to the brass tacks.
And I'll go ahead and up the stakes to say "do not use Online Dating, its simply not worth the psychic damage."
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I like this comment because it sets up and interesting model.
Want a thing and don't care about status games? Buy it. Get rich, get what you want.
Want status but don't care about money? Get famous through any means necessary.
Want a thing and also care about status? Play whatever status game you want, and get to the level of wealth you need to acquire the thing.
But, of course, we see the hacks all over the place.
If you have lots of money - like, lots and lots of it - you acquire at least some status. If you have a lot of status (fame) you can pretty easily acquire money, perhaps even lots and lots of it.
It's that "both" model that is tricky. You want both status and money but you have to balance out one with the other lest you lose one or the other.
I don't know. This was off the top of my head, but it's interesting to play with.
I like what you're laying down.
Minmaxing seems to be in vogue now.
Nobody really wants to do the slow, steady, 'reliable' path. And, granted, I think there are fewer of those nowadays, given the pace of change.
You're 'losing' if you only bought index funds rather than YOLOing on NVDA.
One can also compare and contrast how, for example, Billionaires like Soros, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos have spent their fortunes.
A simple illustration of your point is the fear of the "Gold-Digger" woman who only loves you for your wealth. So guys sometimes go to pains to conceal the extent of the wealth to see if they can land a girl without ostentatious displays.
and then... some guys go ALL IN on ostentatious displays, going into debt to give the appearance of wealth and hoping to fool women long enough to lock them down.
People can arguably choose which games to actively compete in, and their particular goals in it will inform strategy.
But if you're not implementing a minmax strat, playing for the 'meta,' you can feel like you're losing constantly in the short term.
Absolutely. So what matters more is which game you choose to play. Finite and Infinite Games does a great job of describing the two types of primary social games. This is one of my most recommended books.
Not to bring it back to Jesus, but ... to bring it back to Jesus, the entire "game" chosen there is sacrificing the fame / wealth / comfort of this world for the infinite comfort of the next. From a pure game theoretic standpoint, it's a total no-brainer. If not only the expected return but the guaranteed return to one course of action is literally infinite bliss forever, you go all in on that. For people who choose not to believe, they are still making a somewhat rational decision in their pursuit of wealth/status in this life. The tricky part is for lukewarm believers - C&E beige Catholics, whishy washy mainline protestants, cultural Jews, secular Muslims etc. who "believe" yet also hedge by pursuing wealth and status on earth. It's actually that exact non-minmax you're talking about and they'll likely get caught in the middle one way or another. And then, you know ,go to Hell forever.
I need to read that one.
Added to my library pull list.
Funny to bring up the Jesus thing. Scott Adams (Dilbert guy) is very near death, and he has claimed the intention to convert to Christianity.
Leaving aside whether that is a true conversion under Christian doctrine, its a ridiculous approach to minmaxing to live life a certain way all up until the very last moments then hit the "I want eternal bliss" button at the end, consciously trying to stave it off rather than just, you know, doing it.
Women have a particularly stark issue here, where part of their ideal strat for maximizing happiness is to have kids, which has a fairly sharp biological cutoff, so one would think they should try to satisfy that element early on. But cultural advice is to get other goals out of the way first, then play a game of baby fever chicken in your late 20's/early 30's. The tradeoff probably seems reasonable looking at it from the perspective of a 20-year-old.
I've noticed several female friends and acquaintances who developed their professional careers and now are just sliding under the fertility wire by having a kid (twins, in one case) with some guy who... I mean he's in the picture, but they are distinctly NOT married to him.
Time will tell how that turns out for them, but its also a bit unfair to the child, you ask me. One of the issues with minmaxing is you forget that other people's interests are entangled with your own.
Relevant Simpsons clip
You can't fake true, in the heart intent. If Scott Adams is doing this because he is, all of a sudden, afraid of going to hell, then 1) He's acting out of fear (sinful) and 2) Is not acting out of a true love for God (also sin). All that being said, I don't actually believe that all deathbed repentances are invalid. Sometimes, someone is called in those last few moments. While it may seem like this is the ultimate "Get out of jail free" card, the reality would probably be that the person, while truly called to Christ and therefore happy to (after a stop in purgatory) go to paradise, is also full of remorse for not having Him in their life for all of their other years. Imagine having had an entire life you thought was happy and then, moments before death, discovering the ultimate in music / art / passion. It probably wouldn't actually be that enjoyable as you'd be full of regret.
From what I understand of him, he might be hyper-autistic enough that HE won't feel like the conversion is genuine unless his condition is so bad that he has no choice but to actually take a leap of faith and call up on a higher power.
Or maybe I'm projecting my own faith experience on him.
Either way, he's written a bit of philosophy on this which suggests he's really tried to reconcile science and religion and is like, I dunno, 80% to being a believer.
This whole situation is very unique. Got a guy who hasn't rejected religion, isn't really an atheist, but clearly doesn't follow Christian rules, and is basically livestreaming his final days and stating his full intent to try to get into heaven, and is about as detached and neutral about the situation as a human can be.
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