Back in the good old days of Empire, explorers from Europe would sail the high seas and discover savage tribes. Whether it was Columbus headed West or Captain Cook headed East, it was a surprise to both the civilised and uncivilised when the European ships showed up. Sometimes Pocahontas and South Sea sexual hi-jinks ensued. Other times, the poor explorer was chased down by headhunters and found himself in the cooking pot.

Happy days.

When civilisation reached the Melanesian islands off the North East coast of Australia, the local savages were rather impressed by the cargo of the white colonialists. Every few weeks a white voodoo man would put a metal piece to his ears and fiddle with dials on his special shaman-board that hissed, fuzzed, and through which he talked to the gods. Hours later a giant metal bird appeared in the sky with a low droning mating call. It would then glide onto the long flat stretch of land the natives had heard whites call an “air strip”. From the belly of this metal bird, the whites would cart off big wooden crates of cargo, a gift from the wind god. Breaking open these crates, the whites would have loads of cool shit to adorn their habitations.

“That’s cool juju” said one savage to another. “Methink me, um, want some cargo.”

So the savages huddled around and tried to figure out how to appease the gods and perhaps nudge them into sending some cargo their way.

“We could sacrifice white man, cut off his head, and offer the skull to the wind god,” suggested one hardy warrior.

“No no, that’s bad juju,” chastised the witch-doctor. “The white man is in favour with the gods, so we must not anger them. We can instead build our own shaman board and call down the cargo.”

So the tribe busied itself creating a replica short-wave radio from bamboo, palm leaves, and rabbit shit. They had a grand ceremony around the camp fire, cut the throat of a goat, and poured it’s blood on the bamboo “radio”. [1] The witch-doctor approached the radio and the whole tribe went silent, in tense anticipation. He grasped the dial, put a bamboo replica of the white-man’s headset to his ear and called on the gods.

“Unga bunga! unga bunga munga!” he cried over an over.

An hour passed and no metal bird appeared in the sky. Then a day, then a week. Still no metal bird bearing cargo from the gods. The tribe held another council. This time they determined to clear a landing strip. That didn’t work. So they built a bamboo “aeroplane” on it. Still nothing.

The cargo never came, but by now a strange religion had grown up around the practice. This was a cargo cult and every weekend they cried “unga bunga” into the bamboo radio, arranged candles in the bamboo aeroplane model, and sat waiting at their “airstrip”. The cargo never came, but the religion was self-propelling now [2]

There are certain witch-doctor daygame coaches on YouTube whose videos look a lot like grunting “unga bunga” at girls and then waiting for the cargo to arrive in the form of numbers, dates and notches. The fact it never does seems not to dent their optimism. I call it Cargo Cult Daygame.

So, why this analogy?

The island savages made a reasoning error. The white man receiving his cargo from the sky was the result of a process based on science, engineering, and social organisation. The importance of the radio was that it transmitted messages by radio waves, and it worked because it was powered by electricity. The planes flew because of aerodynamics. The cargo was aboard because of a system of economic exchange using money, including abstract constructs such as credit and bank accounts. The goods were cool because they were made in factories.

All of this was unknown to the headhunters. All they saw was a radio operator who they took to be the white shaman, speaking a strange code into a mouthpiece that sounded a bit like “unga bunga.” So, the savages reasoned, the causal mechanism to get cool shit was to screech “unga bunga” into a box-shaped object.

They completely misunderstood the process, and thus completely missed the point.

Few daygamers have read Mystery Method. It never fails to astonish me. Mystery Method is the foundational book of Game. It explains what Attraction, Comfort and Seduction are and why they matter. Mystery gives example operationalisations of each, and though his examples are specific to a lunatic narcissist picking up broken women in ratty LA bars, the principles hold true everywhere in the world under every circumstance of pick-up. What we call the London Daygame Model is entirely consistent with Mystery Method, it’s simply tailored for a different social situation and different type of girl [3].

Yet how many daygamers actually understand that? Sure, the competent guys do but the legions of incompetent clowns don’t.

Game is an art form that rests upon the shoulders of science. Just like boxing, swimming, or many other competitive sports. There is a theory to it, from which you deduce principles, and then best-practice that you can drill. Yet in so many daygame infields I don’t see any game being done.

I see a man standing in front of a woman, talking. But there’s no game going on. He’s not doing Attraction, nor Comfort, nor Seduction. He’s just chanting “unga bunga” and hoping for cargo to drop out of the sky.

It’s like watching a man jump into deep water, thrash his arms around uncontrollably, and then shout “I’m swimming” before he drowns. Or a man step into a boxing ring wearing gloves and trunks, put his head down and windmill his arms. Sure, he might claim to be “boxing” but a real boxer drilled in the actual art and science of boxing will just spark him out quickly, like this:

No, that’s not a Natural Lifestyles infield but it might as well be.

Just because you’re standing in front of a girl chatting, it does not mean you’re doing game. Even if you somehow get the girl, why would you think it was “game” which got her? People get laid every day without having a trace of game because, ultimately, men and women are designed to mate so if they bounce around randomly in the world long enough something is going to happen.

Game is about achieving results above the stupid, the shy, the incompetent, or the deluded. It’s about outperforming what nature intended for you by the skilled application of the art form. Just as boxing lets you knock out men better than your natural level, and swimming lets you move through the water better than natural, so it is with game.

If you want to get good at Game you must learn the Game. That means studying the books and video instructional material created by people who actually know what they are talking about [4]. Otherwise you’re just running around shouting “unga bunga” and hoping for the best.

If you’d like to move away from Cargo Cult daygame and towards proper skills, start with The Mystery Method and then move on to my products listed here.

[1] Yes, I’m rather embellishing the details here.
[2] Unlike the metal plane.
[3] Though you could easily adapt it to better catch broken women if that’s your thing.
[4] Sadly, that discounts at least 90% of blogs and YouTube channels