Of Popularizers and Parasites

Distinguishing between those who add to, and those who subtract from, a concept

As we’ve seen with the concept of the Sigma Male, any new concept that becomes significant enough, or popular enough, eventually attracts both popularizers and parasites. But while popularizers are necessary to play the role of a go-between and translator in order to communicate the concepts introduced by the original thinkers to the masses and make them broadly popular - Richard Dawkins played the same role for E.O. Wilson that the Apostle Paul played for Jesus Christ - parasites tend to muddy, subvert, and even invert the core concepts.

One reason that the SSH has not yet truly taken off despite the virality of the term “Sigma” is that it lacks a popularizer capable of both a) correctly grasping the concepts I’ve introduced and b) communicating them in a manner that the public finds palatable. Instead, we’ve seen nothing but parasites attempting to take the concepts and utilize them for their own self-serving purposes.

“There must be a way I can make this pyramid about me somehow!”

This is nothing new. Consider the way “Tyler Durden” - even his chosen appellation was unoriginal - forced his way into the world of the original pick-up artists and attempted to build himself up at their expense.

Tyler Durden Joins Project Hollywood

Without approval from the rest of the housemates, Papa invited Tyler Durden to move into the home of Neil Strauss: Project Hollywood. Style had a gut instinct that Tyler couldn’t be trusted—and he soon found out he was right:

• Tyler told Style that he sometimes pretended to be Style (more accurately, Neil Strauss, a Rolling Stones writer) in order to impress women.

• Tyler had created a new technique, in which he undercut fellow PUAs. For example, while talking to a group of women, Tyler would point out Mystery from across the club and say that Mystery loved attention and often made rude comments. This made it impossible for Mystery to approach that group with his own routines and negs (backhanded compliments).

• Tyler had invented a technique called Stylemogging, in which he imitated Style’s phrases, mannerisms, and habits. Since Style was a top PUA, Tyler studied him incessantly in order to understand what made Style so successful. Tyler then broke down everything Style did into a formula and taught it to workshop students.

Style saw Stylemogging as a symptom of a larger problem within the community: Men were becoming robotic pickup clones who were obsessed with the game. They developed no real interests or hobbies outside the community, and, as a result, they had no real substance beneath the rote pickup lines and routines.

The irony was that the purpose of the techniques were to make men appear interesting, but their obsession with the game prevented them from being interesting, which was the most effective way of attracting women.

It’s a little ironic that the original pick-up artists, whose work obviously served as part of the foundation for the Socio-Sexual Hierarchy, remained ignorant of it at the very time when their budding empire needed it most. Tyler was obviously a Gamma, and needless to say, his attempts to “improve” Game went about as well as the many attempts of various Gammas to “explain” and “clarify” the SSH have observably gone.