Posted on by Matt Thomas

On the Pre-Game (aka A Response to Neil Strauss’ The Game)

Note: This piece overlaps my three essays on my week with Isobel series (I–III), though it approaches that week from a different direction. Where those pieces follow the arc, this one lingers on the moment before it resolves—the pre-game, as I’ve come to understand it. It is also a direct response to the book The Game, by Neil Strauss. In what follows I don’t intend to rebut Strauss so much as correct what I see as a fundamental weakness in the subculture he dissects. The reader will judge whether I succeed.

Epigraph

“No one else could play that tune, you know it was up to me.”

— Bob Dylan, Up to Me

Part I: Ippei

I’m at Zaza, the club on Kiyamachi. It’s around 11 PM and just getting going. Zaza is a late night place. It doesn’t peak until well past midnight, and at this hour it’s still stretching, still finding its rhythm.

I’m there by myself, drinking a White Russian.

A Japanese guy comes up to me. He’s about fifty-five. No preamble, no easing into it. He introduces himself—let’s call him Ippei—and within seconds he’s in.

“See those two ladies over by the window,” he says. “Want to help me pick them up?”

I’m intrigued. Not because I’m especially interested in the outcome, but because I’m a curious guy. I want to see what he’s doing.

“Ok,” I say. “What’s the play?”

He doesn’t hesitate.

“You’re my old friend from California. I haven’t seen you in twenty years. I just ran into you here. Take it from there.”

That’s it. That’s the entire setup. Handed to me fully formed.

I ask him, just to check, “Is this going to work?”

He smiles, completely unbothered.

“Yeah,” he says. “I do this every night. Had a threesome last night.”

Alright then.

We walk over. He starts talking immediately, in Japanese, smooth, fast, confident. “This is Matt, my best friend from California. Would you believe I just found him here?”

I met him five minutes ago.

It doesn’t matter.

In no time the two women are completely engaged. Smiling, leaning in, laughing. The story has landed. The reality has been accepted. They’re not being approached. They’ve been included.

And I’m there, but I’m not really there. I’m not trying to win anything. I’m not trying to escalate. I’m watching. Taking it in. The nightlife anthropologist, just observing the field.

After a while I step out to the balcony to smoke.

Twenty minutes pass.

When I come back down, he’s still there. Still going strong. Still inside the same story.

That’s when it clicks.

He didn’t need me.

He needed the role I filled.

He needed a premise.

Part II: Neil Strauss

REVISED STRAUSS ENTRY (replace your current Strauss opening)

That night at Zaza stayed with me, not because of what happened, but because of what it revealed.

There is a whole body of writing—call it a subculture, call it a system—that attempts to explain and formalize moments like that. The most famous version of it is The Game, by Neil Strauss, which I’ve read twice.

I want to be clear about something before I go any further.

I’m not anti–Neil Strauss. In fact, I respect him. He’s an elite investigator of subcultures, and I love subcultures. He embedded himself in a world, learned its language, mapped its hierarchies, and reported it out with real precision. That’s not easy to do. It’s a serious piece of work.

What follows is not a dismissal of Strauss.

It’s a response to what the game represents.

Because once you move from observing a system to adopting it, something changes.

At its core, the game assumes that attraction can be engineered. That with the right language, the right sequence, the right calibrated signals, you can break down resistance and produce an outcome.

It’s a kind of linguistic technology. NLP at its worst. A system designed to move someone from one state to another.

And for me, that’s where I part ways.

I’m not anti–Neil Strauss. In fact, I respect him. I’ve read The Game twice. He’s an elite investigator of subcultures, and I love subcultures too.

But I don’t like what the game represents.

At its core, the game assumes that attraction can be engineered. That with the right language, the right sequence, the right calibrated signals, you can break down resistance and produce an outcome.

It’s a kind of linguistic technology. NLP at its worst. A system designed to move someone from one state to another.

And for me, that’s a massive turnoff.

Because it flattens everything.

It scripts what should be alive. It reduces seduction to a manual. It turns something unpredictable into something repeatable. And in doing so, it drains it of the very thing that makes it worth pursuing in the first place.

There’s no space for real connection.

No space for the unexpected.

No space for the moment where something happens that neither person could have predicted.

No space for the kind of encounter that might actually change your life.

And beyond that, it produces a life that I don’t want.

The guys in The Game end up living together in this kind of shared house—Mystery, Strauss, Courtney Love—surrounded by other guys, talking about women, thinking about women, analyzing women. It’s a sausage fest. And it’s not cool.

The Gamers think they’re players. I prefer to think of them as incel-adjacent. They’ve optimized the system, but they’ve lost the thing itself. They’ve mastered the game and stepped outside of life.

Part III: On Action

I’ve had a handful of sexual partners that I’ve gone all the way with. The precise number is under an NDA. I’ve made out with more. But I haven’t been especially active, at least not in the way the game would define it.

What I have done is flirt with, connect with, and develop crushes on dozens of women.

And the truth is, I enjoy it.

I actively enjoy the pre-game.

I enjoy getting close. The moment before something becomes something else. The tension. The ambiguity. The recognition that something might be there, and neither of you has named it yet.

The thrill of newness and the possibility of a spark.

If it burns, great.

If it flickers, that’s also good.

For most men, the pre-game is a means to an end.

For me, it’s the end.

That’s the difference.

This doesn’t mean I’m not interested in action.

I am. Very much so.

In fact, I’m something of an action junkie.

But I’m a highly specific kind of action junkie.

Like Wittgenstein, who was said to have manufactured his own oxygen, I manufacture my own action.

I don’t chase it blindly. I don’t optimize for it. I don’t try to force it into existence through systems or scripts.

I generate it.

Selectively. Intentionally. In moments where it actually means something.

Part III: Luna

I’m at Umineko with a friend—call him Mr. Editor. It’s early, maybe six in the evening. We’re mid-bar, having a beer, when I notice a woman sitting off to the side.

She’s stunning.

And I have to go talk to her.

Not because I expect anything to happen. Not because I’ve calculated the odds. But because the moment demands it.

I tell Mr. Editor what I’m about to do. He nods. “Go for it,” he says. “I’ll watch.”

I walk over and ask her name.

She smiles. “Call me Luna.”

We speak in Japanese. The conversation flows. I bring everything I have to the moment—attention, presence, curiosity—and it lands. There’s a spark. Not forced. Not engineered. Just there.

We talk for a while. Long enough for the room to shift slightly around us.

Eventually I ask for her Instagram. She gives it to me.

I walk back to the bar and sit down next to Mr. Editor.

I’m on Cloud 9.

The next day, in the late afternoon, carefully timed, I send her a message.

She doesn’t reply.

Failure?

Not for the pre-gamer.

Because the pre-gamer already got what he came for.

The moment. The spark. The approach. The brief, electric possibility that something might happen.

That was the action.

That was the point.

For the Strauss guys, the night ends when the text goes unanswered.

For me, the night ended at the bar.

Up to this point, the pre-game is contained. Safe, even. A space where things can happen or not happen without consequence.

But sometimes it doesn’t stay that way.

Isobel Revisited:

I have written about my week with Isobel extensively elsewhere, however part of that story is pertinent to what we are discussing here. I met her at the Faculty of Astrological Studies, held at Exter College, Oxford, in late August 2018. We spent the week together and I fell in love. But I didn’t sleep with her. My choice. What follows is a light re-write from my essay “On My Week with Isobel: Part II”:

Wednesday.

I wake up and we have breakfast in the dining hall. By this point, people are noticing us. Comments here and there, sideways smiles.

Morning and lunch blur into one long conversation—the garden, the bench, a little grass, nothing hidden. We’re finishing each other’s thoughts. I’m in deeper than I’ve ever been.

We don’t attend much of anything.

In the afternoon break she goes to change. I go back to my room and put on The Mendoza Line with the full weight of obsession.

She comes back later and tells me, without shame, that she had pleasured herself during the break.

Just states it.

This is a complication.

That night she changes again. A red dress. Short, but not careless. Stunning.

We sit at dinner whispering, touching lightly, laughing against each other. Everyone knows by now.

After dinner there’s wine again, talking with the tutors, the long courtyard. I meet Darby Costello in person for the first time. She’s fully alive, drinking wine, holding the room effortlessly. I’m so happy she’s my astrologer.

But I’m elsewhere.

We stay late. Clear the courtyard.

Around two in the morning we part. Cheeks touched. No bedroom. No act.

Back in my room, lights low, Mendoza Line still in my ears, I lie on the narrow bed and I know exactly where I am standing.

I will keep going. I will see where this leads.

But I will not sleep with her.

I can’t.

It’s not that I don’t want to. I do. Completely. And more.

But I can see it. The complications. For her, for me. The chain of events that would follow. I’m old enough to see it coming.

And I know, standing there in the courtyard, with the last of the wine and a cigarette burning down, that it’s on me.

I have to be the one to say no.

That’s the shape.

That’s the decision.

=====

Up to this point, the pre-game has been something I could enter and exit at will. A space I could step into, generate action, feel the spark, and leave intact.

With Ippei, the action was scripted.

With Strauss, it was systematized.

With Luna, it was self-contained.

But there’s another version of the pre-game, and it’s the one that matters most. The one where the moment doesn’t stay light. The one where it deepens.

Where the spark doesn’t just flicker—it starts to take shape. And at that point, something shifts. Because now it’s not just about whether something will happen. It’s about whether it should.

This is where the line from Dylan starts to carry real weight. No one else could play that tune.

There’s no system here. No script. No borrowed language. No Ippei handing you a premise. There is only the moment as it actually exists, and your ability to see it clearly.

And then the second part:

It was up to me. Not to escalate. Not to optimize. But to decide.

The game ends when something happens. The pre-game ends when you decide it should.

Dedication

For pre-gamers everywhere.

May you get a little action tonight baby.

Posted on by Matt Thomas

Some Everyday Catalyzed Emergencies

Note: The examples in this piece are drawn from moments in my own life where the structure I call a catalyzed emergency appeared in miniature.

What these moments share is not their subject matter but their pattern. A system—whether emotional, institutional, or social—exists in a temporary equilibrium. Then a relatively small catalyst activates tensions that were already present beneath the surface. Once activated, the situation accelerates and decisions that previously seemed distant are suddenly made in real time.

In each case, the catalytic moment itself was small: a candid remark during a conference break, a humorous but revealing line in a professional meeting, or a single sentence spoken in a social situation. Yet in each instance the effect was immediate. The atmosphere shifted, ambiguity collapsed, and the underlying structure of the situation suddenly became visible.

The personal examples described here are therefore not offered as dramatic events in themselves. Their significance lies in the way they illustrate, at the scale of everyday life, the same structural pattern that appears in larger historical crises.

Catalyzed emergencies, it turns out, are not rare occurrences reserved for moments of world history. They happen quietly and frequently in ordinary human experience.

Once you begin thinking about catalyzed emergencies, it becomes difficult not to see them everywhere.

Most of life proceeds in a kind of provisional calm. Conversations unfold along familiar paths. Institutions conduct their meetings, relationships drift through their usual rhythms, and the tensions that exist beneath the surface remain politely contained. Decisions are postponed. Conflicts are softened by habit. The system holds together because nothing has yet forced it to reveal its deeper structure.

Then something small happens.

A sentence is spoken a little too plainly.
A truth appears unexpectedly in the middle of a casual conversation.
Someone says something in a meeting that suddenly exposes the machinery of the institution.

The catalyst itself is often tiny compared to the shift that follows. Yet once it occurs, the atmosphere changes almost immediately. Decisions that once felt distant suddenly move into the present. The underlying structure—emotional, institutional, or relational—becomes visible.

Once you start noticing these moments, you realize they are everywhere.

I remember one such moment during a conference break with the young woman I call Isobel. We were talking in that loose, slightly intimate way people sometimes do between sessions, when the formal structure of the day has momentarily dissolved. The conversation drifted into unexpectedly personal territory, and at one point she mentioned something about her private life that was startlingly candid.

The remark itself was quiet and almost offhand. Nothing in the hallway changed. People were still pouring coffee, drifting between rooms, checking their schedules. The conference continued exactly as it had a few minutes before.

Yet internally something shifted very quickly.

A boundary that had previously existed only as an assumption was suddenly visible. The emotional geometry of the situation rearranged itself in an instant. It was one of those moments when the surface calm of an interaction suddenly reveals the deeper structure beneath it.

Looking back, it was a perfect example of a small catalyzed emergency. The remark itself did not create the tension that followed. It simply activated something that had already been present but unspoken.

Institutional life produces similar moments, though usually in a different register.

Years ago I attended a meeting where Steve Keegan, then responsible for development at the International Baccalaureate, delivered one of the most unintentionally perfect lines I have ever heard in a professional setting. Attempting to strike a tone of humility, he reassured the room that the organization should not think too highly of itself.

“We are not special,” he said.

Then, after a brief pause that only improved the effect, he added:

“Of course we are unique and special in many ways.”

The room erupted in laughter, not because anyone intended to mock him but because the remark revealed something everyone recognized instantly. Institutions often survive on carefully balanced narratives about themselves—humble yet exceptional, ordinary yet distinctive. When those narratives momentarily contradict themselves in public, the entire room suddenly becomes aware of the structure holding the organization together.

Again, the catalyst was small: a single sentence.

But in that moment the underlying psychology of the institution briefly revealed itself. Everyone in the room could see the gears turning.

The same pattern appears in more personal moments as well, sometimes with surprisingly decisive consequences.

I remember a night when a man was attempting to pick up Mariko. It was the sort of situation that unfolds quietly in bars and restaurants all over the world—nothing dramatic, just two people talking while someone else tries to determine what role they themselves are supposed to play in the unfolding scene.

For a while the equilibrium held. The conversation drifted, the man continued his efforts, and I watched the situation with the vague uncertainty that sometimes accompanies these moments. Was I a bystander? A friend? Something else?

Eventually I said something very simple.

“We’re together.”

That was it. A single sentence. A declaration that had not existed in explicit form until the moment it was spoken.

But the effect was immediate.

The conversation stopped. The geometry of the room rearranged itself instantly. What had previously been ambiguous became clear. The situation resolved itself within seconds.

Looking back, it was another catalyzed emergency. The sentence itself did not create the underlying possibility. That possibility had already been present in the emotional structure of the evening. What the sentence did was activate it, collapsing uncertainty into decision.

The remarkable thing about these moments is how small they often appear at the time. They do not arrive with the dramatic clarity of historical turning points. They slip quietly into the flow of ordinary life—a conversation during a break, a remark in a meeting, a sentence spoken in a bar.

Only later does the pattern become visible.

Most of life feels gradual while we are living it. Days follow one another in a steady rhythm. Institutions maintain their procedures. Relationships drift along familiar channels. The tensions that shape events accumulate quietly beneath the surface, rarely forcing themselves into view.

Then something small happens.

A remark.
A confession.
A declaration.

And suddenly the structure reveals itself.

The catalyst may be nothing more than a sentence spoken at exactly the right moment. But once the reaction begins, the system rarely returns to its previous state unchanged.

Note: This is Part III is our series on the concept of the “Catalyzed Emergency.” You can read the other two essays below.

The Theory of Catalyzed Emergency
On the Origin of the Phrase “A Catalyzed Emergency”
Posted on by Matt Thomas

Elodie and Matt: A Modern Fairy Tale

Note: This play is drawn from memory, but memory here is treated less as record than as atmosphere. Names, places, and events appear as they were experienced emotionally rather than documented factually, filtered through the language of myth, music, and personal symbolism. The characters onstage are not archetypes or allegories but autonomous individuals whose lives extend far beyond the frame of this story. What unfolds is therefore not a romance or confession, but a study in misreading, projection, and eventual integration — a modern fairy tale in which the magic lies not in possession or escape, but in recognition, gratitude, and the quiet act of returning home.

A memory play in five acts

ACT I — THE WAYFARER

Scene 1 — Registration Desk (Threshold)

Lights: institutional white → warm amber shift
Sound: conference murmur, distant piano

At rise:
The Gatekeeper behind a desk. A lanyard hangs like a charm.

MATT enters, hesitant.

GATEKEEPER
Name?

MATT
(offers badge request)

Stamp sound. Badge handed over.

CHORUS (soft, overlapping)
Arrival.
Conference.
Inn.
Story begins again.

NARRATOR-MATT (aside)
I thought I came to learn.

Badge becomes talisman. Lights dim.

Scene 2 — The Inn Common Room

Lights: warm tavern glow
Set shift: chairs, tea cups, quiet laughter

ELODIE enters naturally, in motion.

MATT watches.

NARRATOR-MATT
Voltage.

ELODIE (simple kindness)
Tea?

MATT
Thank you.

Beat. Shared glance. No claim.

CHORUS
House lady.
Innkeeper.
Muse.
No — person.

Blackout.

Scene 3 — “Sing for Your Supper”

Sound: faint guitar motif
CHORUS transforms room into fairy-tale inn

MATT sings a fragment (non-specific).

ELODIE listens but does not elevate the moment.

NARRATOR-MATT
Hospitality is not destiny.

Lights fade.

ACT II — THE HOT ZONE

Scene 1 — The Casino

Lights: green felt + rotating spot
Gatekeeper → Croupier

Chips placed.

CROUPIER
Place your bet.

MATT
Meaning.

ELODIE watches from edge.

CHORUS
Luck.
Chance.
Myth begins when odds are misread.

Chip falls. Lights snap.

Scene 2 — Triptych (Three Trips)

Lighting: three pulses
Sound: abstract tones

MATT (repeating softly)
Three trips.
No more trips.

CHORUS figures: genie, ghost, messenger

NARRATOR-MATT
Inspiration gone.

Silence. Pulse ends.

Scene 3 — Jungle Confrontation

Set: minimal green light + shadow
MATT facing ELODIE

MATT (listing options, fragmented)
Her.
Leave everything.
Frontman.
Practice.

ELODIE
No.

MATT
What is this?

ELODIE
Not your exorcism.

CHORUS
Brink.

Blackout.

ACT III — NAMING THE PATTERN

Scene 1 — “Needy Boys”

Lights: neutral white
Two chairs

MATT
You don’t like—

ELODIE
Don’t narrate me.

Beat.

NARRATOR-MATT
I was writing her.

Lights dim.

Scene 2 — Chapel

Sound: breath, no music
Set: empty bench

MATT sits. ELODIE across.

Silence.

CHORUS (whispered references)
Meaning.
Destiny.
Story.

NARRATOR-MATT
Room, not revelation.

Scene 3 — Pattern Recognition

Lighting: gentle fade across timeline

NARRATOR-MATT
Senior year.
Again.
Again.

ELODIE
Your pattern is yours.

MATT
I see it.

CHORUS
First choice.

Blackout.

ACT IV — RELEASE

Scene 1 — The Offer

Lights: dusk tone
Standing conversation

MATT
Part-time.
Scout.
Not jungle.

ELODIE
Boundaries are kindness.

Beat.

Scene 2 — The Pivot

Lights: warm home light overtakes jungle hue

MATT
Family.
Music.
Life.

CHORUS (trying to pull him back)
Myth.
Escape.
Hero.

MATT
No.

Silence holds.

Scene 3 — Chorus Dissolves

Lighting: references dim one by one
CHORUS removes masks

NARRATOR-MATT
The story stayed.
The spell lifted.

Blackout.

ACT V — OXFORD CODE

Scene 1 — Gesture

Lights: morning Oxford grey
Set: minimal street/bench

MATT and ELODIE share brief exchange

Object returned / phrase echoed / look held.

ELODIE
Take care.

MATT
You too.

Beat. No drama.

Scene 2 — Benediction (Chapel Revisited)

Lights: same chapel, calmer tone

NARRATOR-MATT
Gratitude.

Silence. Breath.

Scene 3 — Train

Sound: distant platform announcement
Gatekeeper → Conductor

CONDUCTOR
All aboard.

CHORUS (old ending attempts)
Run back.
Declare.
Confess.

MATT
No.

Boards train.

NARRATOR-MATT (final fragments)
The jungle is real.
The girl is real.
The story remains.

Lights fade with train sound.

Note: If you liked this play, you may also like On Transference in Artistic Collaboration. You can read it below.

On Transference in Artistic Collaboration