A lot of men are very insecure about themselves, which manifests itself in constant status jockeying. Boys, and men, are pretty good at inventing arbitrary status hierarchies. Among high school kids, status is often conferred by how expensive your clothes are, which is a ludicrous metric as it is primarily dependent on how much money one’s parents make and thus has little to do with the summary of the life achievements of Joe Douche Jr. In college, there are subgroups in which drinking is all the rage and people boast about how many quantities of X they can consume without passing out. Obviously, in the working life, people status jockey with their job titles, salary, or number of direct reports.
There is another metric, which you could call the Blue-Pill Conformance Index (BPCI). To score high on this metric, you need to have the following: a house, a wife and, ideally, more than one kid. The house could be heavily mortgaged, but that is irrelevant for the BPCI. Neither does it matter if the wife is hot or if the children are cute, in the case of daughters, or smart, in the case of sons. Blue-Pillers are just supposed to have them.
I was not really aware that this kind of lame one-upmanship even exists, but it does. I first encountered this when I had to work with some guy who had nominally a lot more years of experience than me, but in terms of actual skill was pretty much a perennial beginner. Completely arbitrarily, he dropped that he has a wife and a few kids at home, and that he can’t fully focus on work because of his family. (As if “putting in the effort” was the issue. The guy just wasn’t smart enough for his job.)
Sometimes I even end up in comical situations, which are due to me looking pretty young for my age. People still think I’m in my late 20s and sometimes people even ask me if I’m a student. Anyway, the key aspect is that I sometimes bump into people who believe that they are much older than I am, even though we are at approximately the same age. One dude pulled out the committed-father-and-provider” card and I was tempted to point out that I’m married, too. I kept mum, though, because I don’t think he would have taken it well had I revealed that my wife could, age-wise, be his wife’s daughter.
As a teenager and adolescent I had a few friends and acquaintances who were apparently eager to one-up me. Back then I didn’t care about women. Yet, those losers firmly believed that having any woman was better than having no woman at all. That someone could deliberately not engage with women was beyond their level of comprehension. I recall one of those guys calling me up one day — back then people still called on the phone — and asking me how I was doing. He quickly got to the point and wanted to know if I had a girlfriend. I told him that I’m not looking. I could almost hear his chest swelling as he said, “But I have a girlfriend now!” Those guys weren’t Chads and didn’t have much going for them. They didn’t have much success with women at all, and some got the occasional fatty. Yet, they had now a higher score on the BPCI than me, and thus felt superior.
As pathetic as this kind of status-jockeying may be, it is also quite transparent. Of course, the best move is to not play. My recommendation is to just pretend to be impressed. Tell them it’s great that they’re married and have kids, and ignore that their wife is ugly and their kids will have a rough life ahead of themselves. Just tell them that you’re happy for them. Normally, you don’t need to reveal anything about yourself. Let them walk away feeling superior. Above all, learn to just not give a damn because if your self-worth depends on the approval of others you won’t ever be truly content.
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Reminds me of a saying I read somewhere
“People spend money they don’t have, to buy things they don’t need, in order to impress people who don’t care”
Its a known phenomenon that lottery winners often bankrupt themselves. What is less appreciated is that they tend to bankrupt their neighbors too, because those will try to keep up with the elevated status of the newly rich.
Refusing to play a worthless status game is the best option. Choose your battles wisely.
Its from fight club, that quote.
On a similar subject I just read about a study that looked at what cars decamillionsirres bought. Apparently they buy 50k cars.
There must be a massive selection bias with those broke lottery winners that the media reports on.
We only read about the broke ones. We never read about the quiet types who just enjoy their wealth and don’t screw up.
Same with drug dealers. They caught El Chapo and plenty others, but last time I checked there’s still cocaine flowing from Latin America to the US. Must be coming from somewhere.
Well it’s not just who the media focuses on. I believe the percentage of lottery winners who go bankrupt is pretty high (from the sample size of all lottery winners, not just chereypicked ones for a news story)
Yeah ’cause you gotta think about the kind of people who play the lotto to begin with…
I’ve been in those comical situation you describe. One guy who had just turned 30 was telling me how much the pressure to get married increases once you hit 30, “you’ll see, you’re quite young still,” he said. I didn’t bother telling him I’m 37 and for me marriage such a ludicrous idea that it’s impossible for me to feel the pressure to get married.
Thanks for sharing this anecdote. It’s always great to hear that other people have had similar experiences. In my day-to-day life I feel as if I’m surrounded by dolts who are little more than unwitting participants in Clown World, but thankfully a few likeminded individuals have gathered on my blog.
Happens all the fucking time with extended family members. ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ Try to one up me with their either ugly or fat girl. One time I was so annoyed that I shoved it down one guys throat and revealed that I had more hot girls in the last year than he probably in his lifetime. I even put out my phone to show pictures of the girls on my whatsapp. The look on his face was not pleasant.
I have the feeling though that they may ask you ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’, but what they mean is ‘Are you getting laid, loser?’
If I had one of those chubby ugly girlfriends, I would hide in a corner and shut my damn mouth in embarrassment
Thanks for reminding me of my nasty aunt who tried to shame me into getting a girlfriend when I wasn’t even in my teens yet. I haven’t attended family gatherings in a while, but whenever she was around, she had to make a stand for women and tell me that I needed to get a girlfriend. Otherwise, I’ll die old, alone, and depressed (that’s how her life has turned out). That woman will probably get a page in my book on relationships, on the topic of external pressure.
Hahaha Blue Pill Conformance Index. This is a fantastic meme.
I think this one-upmanship is part of our monkey brain.
The high of outcompeting others feels great which is probably why people form all kinds of hierarchies no matter how absurd they are.
But social comparison should be used as a tool to motivate yourself in field which is actually important and useful. Only way to win a competition in petty hierarchy is, as you said, not to compete.
It is, indeed, part of our monkey brain as you call it. And its not a bad thing if it serves to motivate you towards a worthwhile goal.
The trick lies in using the rational part of our brain to weigh the costs and benefits and deciding when to compete and when to sit it out.
Problem with marriage is it’s difficult to get rid of a woman as she ages without losing a lot of men. I’m 35 and know if I marry a woman around my age I may not want to bang her in 5 or 10 years. When I was younger I hooked up with some cougars and it’s interesting how in the span of a few years some of them looked totally different.
Your first sentence seems a bit unclear. What men would you be losing if you got rid of your starter wife and traded her in for a younger one?
Nonsensical writing from “Richard.”
Alek, do you ever get tired of constantly being proven right?
Correction, I meant losing a lot of *MONEY* by trading up especially with the divorce laws.
This depends a lot on the country and on whether you have a prenup. I had a prenup and got divorced in a country with very favorable laws, so the total was less than 100 Euros in administrative fees. I got out before that woman could trap me with a baby, though, which was her plan.
I think this fake pride of the blue pilled beta male is some sort of sexual false consciousness to where they believe they are actually accomplishing something by getting a girlfriend/wife/etc. In reality, it is a trap most of the time.
I’ve definitely been through this with insecure, narcissistic men. There was a dude I used to work with who gave me shit all the time about not going up to girls in clubs etc. When that is almost every guy. He sounded like he read a lot of PUA bullshit. Just because he had a girlfriend he felt superior. She was obese, bi-polar, and mean as fuck. But I was the bigger man, and never went there.
Another was this cocky short man’s syndrome mother fucker from one of my college classes. He was talking shit to me and a few guys because we like South Park. Saying, “Its just a stupid. show.” Apparently he was too shallow and stupid to understand the social commentary. He asked each of us if we were married. We were all single. He said that proved a theory of his. That guys that like South Park just hang out with other guys and are not talking to girls. At least I owned him in class discussions about history, politics, and economics 🙂
I don’t let these guys bother me but I can’t tell them that I’m happy for them. I’m a little petty that way. Part of me even wishes I would have told the first example that his gf is an obese, crazy, bitch. Part of me wishes I told the second guy that his wife is probably ugly, and that “my theory” is that only inferior, insecure, unhappy men talk shit about other men’s ability to get women.
I’ve never met a guy who gets laid who talks about other guys’ ability to get women.
In fact, if I ever bring it up, they’re surprised. Like wait, not everyone gets laid?
They’re surprised it’s even a thing because for them getting laid is like ordering chrap pizza. You cant even imagine that someone would have a problem with it.