The false mystique of the “top guy,” and what revealed preferences show women really want

Madd Monk suggests men “Become a Top Guy or Die Trying,” something I’m not opposed to (who doesn’t want to be top?), but it’s something that conceals as much as it reveals, because a lot of guys have problems with value delivery as much as or more than value building… Madd Monk says “If you want to live a certain lifestyle, and you want women that complement your lifestyle, it’s top guy or bust” and that “game is the delivery mechanism to display your value.” I don’t love the word “display” and would prefer another word, like “convey,” but I understand what he’s saying.

It’s a good post, read it, especially the section about his former mother-in-law pulling him aside for some hard-core realpolitik on his wedding day… but I notice that Madd Monk doesn’t define the “top guy.” Does “top” mean… money? Social respect? Skill in some domain? Something else? “Top” can be a lot of things, and no one is “top” in all things. A lot of guys think being the “top” guy concerns money, but, once we get to an income level where we can pay our bills and lead a normal life, chicks don’t care much about money. We’ve all likely met rich simps guys with no game and outcomes with women consistent with no game. We’ve all met guys in debt who do extraordinarily well with women. I don’t code as wealthy to women and have done well, and I think smart women realize that many of the richest guys blend in, rather than standing out.

Essentially, many men think, often subconsciously, that the function “getlaid(men) = value + value delivery mechanism,” but many men get confused with the top guy rhetoric and think the function “getlaid = value.” Game is the value delivery mechanism, and game is harder, for many guys, than income, or than other kinds of value, and consequently many men avoid the hard work of learning game, and hope that as they increase value, there’s a linear increase in the output of the gelaid function… but there isn’t. That’s not the algorithm, and this is a huge misunderstanding of how the function works. Also, value is contextual: as women acquire more wealth, value is less monetary, and instead value is value to her life (a topic I discuss in What do we spend our excess money on? Sex). A lot of modern value is sexual value, which is why I offer those posts describing sex & BDSM skills. Women today love sexual dominance. A lot is leadership. And so on. It’s different for different women, too, at different times in their life, at different venues, at different times of the month.

Many men confuse “value” with “value to society,” but a lot of women, maybe most, don’t care about value to society; they care about their own pleasures and interests. Value only means value to her in the function “getlaid,” which is why a lot of “top guys”, are only top by metrics that society of MEN care about. Most of us have seen highly paid engineers and managers who do poorly with women, despite their high incomes, or despite the admiration of their work peers. The ones who do well often tell women “banker by day, DJ by night,” that kinda shit. Today, anyone with a couple of decks is a “DJ,” come back and we’ll smoke a bowl, listen to some tracks I’m working on, baby, it’ll be fun.

For most guys, improving their nutrition, lifting, improving their fashion, improving their social skills: those are the things that “top” guys have and do in the eyes of most chicks. The man-world status hierarchy of money and companies doesn’t matter to most attractive women, and men become frustrated by attractive women who don’t care about their man-world accomplishments.

For attractive women, men with money and money only are common… it’s similar to VC, where it’s hard to get into the best deals if all you’re offering is money. Money is a commodity when there’s so much of it. The harder stuff like help with hiring, helping you with strategy, marketing, getting acquired. That’s what differentiates the top firms and makes the entrepreneur take their money. Money is good, don’t shirk it, I’m not a communist who thinks you shouldn’t make money, but guys mistakenly think it matters more than it does. It doesn’t. People want to have great experiences, not collect marks in their bank accounts. She won’t remember what you bought her, she’ll only remember how you make her feel, and she wants to feel she’s earned whatever she’s given. Game is the art of making her feel.

You can see guys trying to “buy” their way into women in the nightlife world. In New York, “top guy” used to be finance bros and models, going to clubs and shit in the Meatpacking District, but I think that world’s been losing status for years, and I’m not the only one (xbtusd has noticed the same). I’ve also seen status realignment over the last 10 years… burning man and psychedelic and sex party non-mono values and aesthetics seem to have exploded in the last five years. The status hierarchies are changing. For many years, I’ve incorporated bits into dates in which I ask chicks about the best, peak experiences in their lives. Most can’t or won’t answer, not at first, so I have to have some answers ready to go, which is another way of saying “stories ready to tell…” chicks are awful at discussing almost anything that doesn’t include reality TV, it’s remarkable, but they don’t need to: if they’re hot, especially, some guy will come along to offer to make things happen. Notice how poorly many of them deal with trade offs or the idea that maximizing one space in a domain often means minimizing another. Who are the most ardent advocates of socialism? The young, women, the dumb, people who have never taken econ classes.

The player learns a key rule: Make her feel something. Modern life has wrung out our ability to connect and feel anything, and game is the art of facilitating connection and feeling (which psychedelics can aid). So we need to look at all the things that have been commoditized and ask, “Where has value moved?” Scarcity has moved to the ability to make women feel. It’s similar to when you look at an industry and ask, “Okay, which layers of the value chain have been commoditized?” When I buy a phone, the hardware is nearly 100% commoditized; the phone has to be vertically integrated. Chips have to be made specifically optimized for power consumption of the software that runs the phone, but it’s the hardware and OS and userland software that makes chicks wet when they use the phone. I’ve never met a hot chick who uses an Android phone: it’s the blue text box we really pay for. Can’t be that green loser. Be like Apple, don’t be like Google.

Chicks perceive top guys as being conversationally clever, and “I’m a millionaire” isn’t conversationally clever. She’ll figure that out on her own, if or when she needs to. Guys drop lines like hooks. Experienced guys learn to expect what chicks are going to ask (chicks are predictable) like “What do you do?” The best answer may not be the straightforward one (notice how few straightforward, informational conversations chicks have, and how few of them are scientists, engineers, etc.). Lines are hooks, and coming up with good stuff is like not letting the beat drop in a song. People are dying for a resolution. Building tension is knowing when to resolve and when to be intriguing. Regarding “What do you do?”, it’s often a good idea to play with the conventional notion we’re defined by our work. The real high-status thing to do is violate norms in the right way. Two dudes wear hoodies, loser and billionaires. (Maybe three, artists.) If you can signal you’re more like the billionaire than the loser, you’re signaling right. She needs to get it. And you never know if it’s the right violation of social norms and expectations until you try. It’s like getting a chick to have an affair with you. Until you pull the trigger, you never really know whether she’s mostly bored and wants attention.

Don’t get confused about what “top” man means. Modern women make their own money. There are many hierarchies, and what guys think will “work” often doesn’t. Women want peak experiences, peak feelings, strong emotions, guys who “get” them… things that guys who truly learn game, know, and can deliver, and guys who “valuemaxx” often don’t.