Atomic Game

There are three levels on which game exists: Outer Game, Inner Game and Atomic Game.

Outer Game is how you convey your value to other people. Lines, routines, etc fall into this category. Also included is calibration, controlling your body language, reading other people's body language, and escalation. You get the idea.

Inner Game is believing in your own value. I think "core confidence" sums the idea up pretty well.

Atomic Game is...can you guess it? It's actually having value, a concept that gets far too little attention in the Community.

One of the problems that routine junkies find is that they eventually run out of material, the razzle-dazzle wears off, and girls realize that the guys are phonies. Outer Game without Inner Game is just an attempt to trick girls into believing your have value when you don't really believe it yourself. Eventually the jig is up and the girls are gone.

Inner Game without Atomic Game is just an attempt to trick yourself into having value. It's easier to convince a girl that you have value when you believe it yourself. But, eventually you'll realize it's all a sham, and once that happens your Outer Game will collapse. The solution? Atomic Game, actually having value.

When you have real value it's very easy to believe you have value, and when you believe you have value it's very easy to communicate that you have value to others. So how do you get value?

...So actually quite a while has passed since I wrote the all that, and I've been trying to figure out an answer to that question, "How do you get value?" It's basically a "What is the meaning of life?" question, and I'm pretty far from qualified to answer it. Luckily, in the time I've been thinking about this, I've come up with a non-answer which might actually be pretty useful.

How you get value will depend largely on whether value is objective or subjective. For those of you wondering just what I mean (and any time people use airy language like I am now, you should ask what exactly they mean), I'll explain. Objective value means there's some right answer to the question "What is value?" Subjective value means there's no one right answer and that what matters is what you think the right answer is. Uh...pretty thin explanation, it's a little more complicated than that, but this will suffice. As an example, maybe there is some objective standard of beauty; percent body fat, facial proportions, skin tone, etc. Or, it may be subjective; beauty is whatever people think is beautiful.

The good news for you is that it might not matter if value is objective or subjective. Actually, it's good news for me. If it did matter, I'd be fucked and would never come up with a useful conclusion to this entry. Good news for all of us.

Why it doesn't amtter if value is objective or subjective is because of how the outer game/inner game/atomic game structure works. I said before inner game works better when you actually have value (atomic game). That might be wrong. For instance, imagine that value was objective and you possessed tons of it. Your inner could still be fucked...if your beliefs about value were wrong! You'd have value but not realize it, meaning your inner game would eventually collapse, even though you had value. What a world!

Atomic game should really be understood not as having value, but as having what you believe is value. This starts to sound a lot like I'm just explaining inner game with different words. Not quite, but close. Inner game is more about telling yourself you have value. Tim from Real Social Dynamics talks frequently about having a delusional belief in the amazing level of your skills. This helps distinguish inner game from atomic game. Inner game is when you try to get yourself to believe something that you really, deep down, believe is false. Inner game is deluding yourself into thinking you've overcome your faults. Atomic game is overcoming what you think your faults are.


So now back to subjective/objective stuff. Assume for a moment that value is objective. What if you're wrong about your faults? What if you end up emphasizing your weaknesses and hiding your strengths. Whoops!

Luckily there's more good news. Even if there is objective value, there's no reason to think that girls know what is objectively valuable. All they have, just like you, is what they think is valuable. They could be right, they could be wrong, or value could be subjective and no one is right or wrong. What's important is that when you're talking to a girl, her attraction is based on what she thinks gives value. If she's wrong, she's wrong; the universe isn't going to step in and tell her hormones to shut down and vagina to dry up; she's still going to be attracted. Yippee!

And now for the sad conclusion. All this basically seems to boil down to the idea that you should try to make yourself into the type of man girls think is valuable. That would suck. Not only is it super reactive and about as supplicatory as you can get, but it'd be damned hard. You can't ask girls what they think is valuable; people tend to not be honest with themselves about what turns them on. They're even less honest with other people.

But, if you could know just what gets certain girls' blood going, you'd be faced with that issue: would you change yourself just to get girls? I can't tell you what's right for you and what's not. Maybe men of extraordinary integrity just go through life not getting laid that much. At some point you have to look at life, realize you can't have everything, and start prioritizing. Maybe you'd like to think you stay true to your nature, or maybe you'd like to have a lot of anonymous bathroom sex. I won't choose for you. I just hope all this has helped make the issues a little easier to get your head around.