I agree with the sentiment, if not the specifics:
The “game” stuff pretty much is for douchebags, or at least the otherwise hopeless. It involves taking the sophisticated approach that someone with actual interpersonal skills might employ, and boiling it down to a set of simplified rules that produce a sort of cartoon version — much as you might boil down social interactions into rules for an autistic person; the result is better than nothing, but not the real thing. But although it’s a cartoon — and focused largely on picking up women in bars, a fairly limited and artificial environment to begin with — the simplification process does reveal things that might otherwise be obscured or ignored. And it’s interesting to see some of these insights going mainstream. (The other thing you learn from perusing some of these sites is just how much some men need the help. And I’m not sorry to see them get it.)
Glenn has it exactly right. As I describe it, it is the articulation and emulation of successful natural behavior for the benefit of those who do not possess it. So, there’s no reason that it should be limited to male-female relations, much less douchebags seeking to score with club sluts. And he’s right, most men badly need it today because they have no idea how the rules have changed since 1950.
Consider the following female strategy for obtaining free drinks:
6. Befriend an older man at the bar. Um, hello… old fashioned manners. He’ll have to offer. And you will graciously accept.
Notice that the entire strategy is designed around the female assumption that an older man will not view her as a predator out to use him for his financial resources. The mere articulation of this thought process demonstrates the need most men have for Game today. As it happens, I never offered to buy a woman a drink at a bar in any situation that I would not have done so for a man. Certainly not as an icebreaker, still less in response to a request from a stranger. And somehow, that didn’t prevent me from meeting Spacebunny. Given that many women are overt cheapskates attempting to cadge free alcohol from suckers and that not offering free drinks is no handicap to meeting beautiful women, I think it is safe to say that one should not ever buy drinks for women in the hopes of ingratiating oneself to them.
Keep in mind that as a general rule, female gratitude takes its philosophical cue from Charles de Gaulle.