Neil Strauss: The Game

[darwinian_sympathiser]

Really? How did Strauss attract women then? Was it through his looks? I doubt it. Was it his sexuality? Possibly. Either way, you can't deny that the way he carried himself in social interactions was a BIG piece of the puzzle. Are you saying that Mystery's Method isn't a way of demonstrating higher value or are you saying that social value does not play a role in getting women?

Strauss, to me, is an ugly guy, like Ross Jefferies. He goes on about how in his early years it was always the other guys that gotten the women, and were making out with them, and not him. And guess what? It's still that way now for him, although he won't tell you that because he needs to keep up this charade because he's got stuff to sell, sooner or later he's going to start believing in his own BS as well. Most men go through life and eventually get someone, the get real, but what Strauss is saying in the book is pure BS. He needs to sell "technique" because that's how he makes his living.

Also status and fame can also be something to do with it as well.

The problem with this generalization is there's no real honest way to prove it nor disprove it. A woman isn't going to tell you if she was interested at first if she blew you off when you first approached her. They say women size you up in five seconds and think if they would sleep with you or not, I say that you can DHV and get them to "want" you if they didn't like the way you looked at first. It's all pre-selection.

The human condition, if we choose to call it that, is that you can never know certain things. That's just the way it is. Women are not, and never were, a problem that you can solve. They just are what they are. Strauss, Mystery and all these other courses claims to have solved the problem, and that's the reason for this BS of a book. Why even at the start of the book Mystery is telling the therapist that she'd easily be his if he didn't have his "problem", and Strauss bangs on about how Mystery is the greatest pickup artist in the world etc . . . :yawn: They CLAIM to get anyone to fall in love with you, or to be able to make out with a girl just by knowing how to act, how to dress and what to say. I say BS, because if that were true Jefferies would just bag himself a Hollywood A lister and be done with it, and so would Strauss. In the end these men only "got what they were worth" in the eyes of women.

If you had a guy that looked like Drew Carey walk into a bar, no woman would give him the time of day. If they found out he was Drew Carey, they'd be a little intrigued by him, since he's famous. If he came into a bar and had two HB10s clinging onto either side of his arm and heavily flirting with him, women NOTICE that and get MORE intrigued.

I asked a girl this the other day and she completely agreed with me. Her ex-boyfriend had a big nose and she thought she would never date a boy like him. Eventually, though, he was able to build attraction and she fell for him.

Drew's funny, he's also rich, but ultimately he's probably a great guy to have around. So of course a lot of women - and men but for a different reason - would want to hang out with him. And of a certain percentage of those women (but not ALL) would like to f*ck him. Nothing wrong with that. I dispute Strauss and all those idiots touting courses when they claim that they can get anyone to fall in love with you, when they claim it's not your looks or wealth that matters etc. . . . Because since when did "increasing the odds in your favour" become "I can get anyone I want"? This is utterly disrespectful to the women concerned, because that is not true and they don't work like that.

People like Shakespeare made a mockery of the so called "motivational" speakers touting courses in Othello. At the start of the play Roderigo, who is in love with Desdemona, give Iago money believing that Iago could in some way arrange for Desdemona to fall in love with him. In reality Iago uses Roderigo for his own ends and Desdemona doesn't care about Roderigo.

Brutal as that may be, that is exactly what Strauss and people who start these courses are really doing.

Um like I said, that kind of behavior is only fine if a women is already physically attracted to you but if you have no value to her, she's just going to think you're another chump. Now if you actually try stuff like David Deangelo's ****y+funny, Mystery Method, Pickup 101's banter, and you still can't get attraction from a women who probably wouldn't have given the time of day to you otherwise, then you can argue that you can't "create" attraction or everything in the game is BS, but going "hey what's your name?" "wow can i buy you a drink?" (i.e. Sinn mentions this is how almost all guys hit on girls), is generally not gonna work of women of sufficient quality.

You obviously don't understand where I'm coming from. I don't need con artists like DeAngelo, Mystery, Strauss or www.puatraining.com, to tell me how to "attract" women. I don't need to read pages and pages of pointless crap to understand how people are feeling, and I don't need to look up various body language signals in a large book that states the obvious to understand people's interactions. You don't "attract" women per se. Women decide how far you can go with them from the moment they see you, I do it to females approaching me as well. Doesn't matter what the background is. Like I said, I've had a HB 9.5 say hello to me for no reason, what do you think was going through my mind? Unfortunately she wasn't my type so I didn't let her get any further. Maybe she got pissed off and went to the local book store and started reading up about what attracts men and what to do when you see someone you like, and read someone like the female equivalent of Strauss pontificating about how it's really technique that she's lacking and that's why I didn't let things go further? You see the BS now?

So you're say that if a guy is born ugly, then he should absolutely give up, be anti-social, and not go out and find a women he really likes? That's just a horrible mindset.

I've never said something like that. What I'm trying to say is that women aren't this easily manipulated, and their wills are not manipulatable just because we will it so. Women's feelings are their own, your feelings are your own, that's what makes you human, and that's what the human condition is all about.

If you allow me to go further I will say that the reason why it's hard to get woman, why it's hard to attract them to get them to go on a date with you, is precisely the barrier required to sustain a long term relationship. If Strauss, Mystery, DeAngelo etc. . . are right, then I too could read up their teachings, and f*ck up some celebrity's long term relationship and come out on top. What do you think the chances of that happening is?

I leave the words of bondjamesbond from this great thread of his:

Some guys know all this simple stuff, but they become a creep.....can't take "no" for an answer, always calling or coming around. They've somehow convinced themselves that if they "Just say that right thing" that a chick will fall at their feet.

A real man knows when to walk away and stop wasting time. The idiot will drum up a hundred reasons in his head why a chick is acting cold towards him but will never accept the bottom line: She doesn't want to f**k with you.

and notice I've highlighted in bold what it is that Strauss and his believers want to believe.

 

[Dust 2 Dust]

The only thing that seperates PUA's from most regular guys is persistance. Mystery has supposedly slept with over 400 women in his life, but he also claims to have done 30,000 cold approaches in his life which gives him a success rate of less than 1%.

 

[The Deacon]

They CLAIM to get anyone to fall in love with you, or to be able to make out with a girl just by knowing how to act, how to dress and what to say. I say BS, because if that were true Jefferies would just bag himself a Hollywood A lister and be done with it, and so would Strauss. In the end these men only "got what they were worth" in the eyes of women.

I see what you're saying here. This is a valid point. I don't think any of the pick-up artists can steal away Angelina Jolie from Brad Pitt or Katie Holmes from Tom Cruise. To think that it's possible to steal those women away from those men with some techniques from a pop psychology book is ludicrous. Agreed.

On the other hand, Neil Strauss did mary Lisa Leveridge (they did break up after the events written in the book, she left him for some rock star). Although this apparently wasn't a healthy relationship, the Mystery Method doesn't really address what to do in an LTR in the first place, and as far as I'm concerned, the fact that Strauss married that HB10 is pretty sound proof.

I'm fully aware though that men have been picking up women without the Mystery Method for years, and the concepts in the book aren't really what's important. Mystery even states this explicitly in the Venusian Arts book. The important idea is to have some idea of the way social venues work. When you're an open and gregarious person (which is what MM demands), it's easier for you to meet women. With the MM and plenty of calibration, you'll get the abstract concept of meeting and attracting women. Following all those little routines/openers to a tee is just tacky.

Mystery has some techniques I use frequently. The whole idea of rewarding a girl for good behavior and punishing her for bad behavior is a pretty novel concept everyone should put in their game. Negging is also a very effective tool if you want to bring a girl off her pedestal, if done in a playful manner. Calibration is important. Mystery even says this too. If you're a keyboard jockey, you're not getting any action.

darwinian_sympathiser, the techniques and all that other stuff isn't what makes the methods successful, they're just training wheels. When you get better socially calibrated, even the best pick-up artists don't really even use what they teach to a perfect tee. You can't even write a method comprehensive enough to handle every social encounter, and if there was such a thing it would be absolutely ridiculous.

 

[Francisco d'Anconia]

The only thing that seperates PUA's from most regular guys is persistance. Mystery has supposedly slept with over 400 women in his life, but he also claims to have done 30,000 cold approaches in his life which gives him a success rate of less than 1%.

I don't think it's just persistence. There's plenty of guys out there who are persistent and have little to no success what so ever. The difference is being able to determine what's not working and being able to adjust to doing something that brings more success. It's more about learning how to adjust to different situations well and not force something which doesn't work.

 

[Vice]

This guy is using people's opinions and reviews of the book on Amazon as proof that the book is BS.

Personally, I think the book was fascinating. I started to get a little bored near the end, but I finished it nevertheless.

It's just a written reiteration of what happened in his life in a span of two or three years. That's it.

No one is forcing you to believe it, or use the techniques that are ever so vaguely described.

hell, YOU'RE ARGUING ON THE INTERNET. A common trait of a LOSER is to start "debates" whenever they can about almost anything.

 

[ChocolateVanilla]

Strauss, to me, is an ugly guy, like Ross Jefferies. He goes on about how in his early years it was always the other guys that gotten the women, and were making out with them, and not him. And guess what? It's still that way now for him, although he won't tell you that because he needs to keep up this charade because he's got stuff to sell, sooner or later he's going to start believing in his own BS as well. Most men go through life and eventually get someone, the get real, but what Strauss is saying in the book is pure BS. He needs to sell "technique" because that's how he makes his living.

Also status and fame can also be something to do with it as well.



The human condition, if we choose to call it that, is that you can never know certain things. That's just the way it is. Women are not, and never were, a problem that you can solve. They just are what they are. Strauss, Mystery and all these other courses claims to have solved the problem, and that's the reason for this BS of a book. Why even at the start of the book Mystery is telling the therapist that she'd easily be his if he didn't have his "problem", and Strauss bangs on about how Mystery is the greatest pickup artist in the world etc . . . :yawn: They CLAIM to get anyone to fall in love with you, or to be able to make out with a girl just by knowing how to act, how to dress and what to say. I say BS, because if that were true Jefferies would just bag himself a Hollywood A lister and be done with it, and so would Strauss. In the end these men only "got what they were worth" in the eyes of women.



Drew's funny, he's also rich, but ultimately he's probably a great guy to have around. So of course a lot of women - and men but for a different reason - would want to hang out with him. And of a certain percentage of those women (but not ALL) would like to f*ck him. Nothing wrong with that. I dispute Strauss and all those idiots touting courses when they claim that they can get anyone to fall in love with you, when they claim it's not your looks or wealth that matters etc. . . . Because since when did "increasing the odds in your favour" become "I can get anyone I want"? This is utterly disrespectful to the women concerned, because that is not true and they don't work like that.

People like Shakespeare made a mockery of the so called "motivational" speakers touting courses in Othello. At the start of the play Roderigo, who is in love with Desdemona, give Iago money believing that Iago could in some way arrange for Desdemona to fall in love with him. In reality Iago uses Roderigo for his own ends and Desdemona doesn't care about Roderigo.

Brutal as that may be, that is exactly what Strauss and people who start these courses are really doing.



You obviously don't understand where I'm coming from. I don't need con artists like DeAngelo, Mystery, Strauss or www.puatraining.com, to tell me how to "attract" women. I don't need to read pages and pages of pointless crap to understand how people are feeling, and I don't need to look up various body language signals in a large book that states the obvious to understand people's interactions. You don't "attract" women per se. Women decide how far you can go with them from the moment they see you, I do it to females approaching me as well. Doesn't matter what the background is. Like I said, I've had a HB 9.5 say hello to me for no reason, what do you think was going through my mind? Unfortunately she wasn't my type so I didn't let her get any further. Maybe she got pissed off and went to the local book store and started reading up about what attracts men and what to do when you see someone you like, and read someone like the female equivalent of Strauss pontificating about how it's really technique that she's lacking and that's why I didn't let things go further? You see the BS now?



I've never said something like that. What I'm trying to say is that women aren't this easily manipulated, and their wills are not manipulatable just because we will it so. Women's feelings are their own, your feelings are your own, that's what makes you human, and that's what the human condition is all about.

If you allow me to go further I will say that the reason why it's hard to get woman, why it's hard to attract them to get them to go on a date with you, is precisely the barrier required to sustain a long term relationship. If Strauss, Mystery, DeAngelo etc. . . are right, then I too could read up their teachings, and f*ck up some celebrity's long term relationship and come out on top. What do you think the chances of that happening is?

I leave the words of bondjamesbond from this great thread of his:



and notice I've highlighted in bold what it is that Strauss and his believers want to believe.

Women have first impressions when they first see you, that's about it. Also, that part you bolded OBVIOUSLY shows that you clearly do not understand mystery method. It's the concepts within the method that makes the method work. Again, the actual words you say do not matter as much as the calibration and the congruence, Savoy has pointed out numerous times that 7% of human communication is nonverbal, so has Mystery, and even within those 7%, there's a lot of subcommunication that goes on. The routines are just training wheels until you understand the concepts like frame control, how to demonstrate value, how to avoid saying things that make you appear unattractive and until you actually get social skills and the calibration from being in-field. Most guys memorize lines, memorize what to do in certain situations, where you simply can't do that. But if you understand the overlying mechanisms and principles, you won't have to memorize but you can apply them automatically. Mystery method isn't "say something" and get the women to fall for you. It's not what you say, you can tell a canned story and have it not work because of incongruence. It's about understanding concepts and being able to apply them within the framework of a cognitive model which can be altered depending on the situation. Again, obviously you do not have a good grasp of mystery method and most people do not, I know I didn't when I first heard of it.

Also, other people's faulty opinions and reviews from Amazon.com don't constitute proof in any way, shape or form.

I have no experience with pua-training.com so I'm unaware of their teachings.

Again, there's obviously no point talking with you when you've clearly never tried or even understand Mystery Method.

 

[Johnny_Kage]

This thread is stupid.

Yes, Neil Strauss is cashing in on the fact that he knows exactly how to pick up girls. So is Mystery. So is David DeAngelo. So is Tyler Durden. Everybody is these days and for good reason: the product sells. A lot of guy out there don't know how to pick up girls. They know how to pick up girls AND how to create a better lifestyle in general. In fact, many of the PUAs preach self-help techniques. People that write self-help books alone also charge money for their seminars.

It's a basic principle of supply and demand. No one is being ripped off. The PUAs make money. The AFCs start to get what they want out of life. Everybody wins.

As far as The Game, I didn't find it very informative (his new book is quite informative with the Stylelife Challenge), but I found it to be a great read. This would be something I would not hesitate to spend money on just for the simple fact that it's an awesome book: great stories and very well-written.

And guess how much money I've spent directly on pick up products since being introduced to The Game: $0.


Warmly


Kage

 

[darwinian_sympathiser]

So, how many hot chicks have you slept with in the last year?

True, that I don\'t believe a lot of this, but when you are slagging us all off, when it\'s pretty damn safe to assume you don\'t have the balls to cold apporach or whatever, it\'s kinda annoying.

So why would I bother to start a thread like this? Ask yourself why?

Because, however you want to see it, I like to see what speaking to a bunch of totally delusional people is like. People who are willing to emotionally react and not think due to their pathetic beliefs. In fact it seems to me that most of you here don't - or can't be bothered - to think.

So what's this "how many hot chicks have you slept with in the last year?" got to do with it? None of your business. And that's a reaction from someone who cares about the women that he cares about, not someone who bangs some girl and then brags to his friends so as to inflate his own ego.

In science, and sometimes in life, there are situations that are called "problems" that you can "solve". I'm afraid to tell you all, and Deep Dish and the other brilliant posters will back me up, that the creation of attraction (which Strauss and DeAngelo and the other con artists will have you believe otherwise) does not belong to that category and hence is not amenable to techniques/tricks. What happens is someone is attracted to you and you respond/deal to it. You do not create/force that attraction through what Strauss etc . . are proposing. Why don't people like Strauss, Mystery etc . . . go up to Kate Bosworth and see how their beliefs goes. She's always been out with good looking guys - she's not interested in ugly men.

I write this thread because I actually feel sorry for the people who listen to Strauss and go on courses like puatraining.com because they are being blatantly conned.

 

[Tazman]

I think books like this simply "confuse" the issue. Yes, certain "behaviors" are attractive, and some are not. The way you behave can certainly affect the outcome of an approach, but it isn't the most important factor (given you're mannerisms are considered "normal" by the person you approach).

When "attraction" exists, there really is very little you can do wrong except not approach out of fear/insecurity, which means nothing will happen. We all know that the majority of women won't approach a guy, let alone let their true feelings be known outright, but that simply means you take the initiative and roll the dice.

I believe DS mentioned this, but you cannot "know" why any particular woman gets involved with you. She may indeed be attracted to you and enjoy most things about you, or she could be going through a dry spell, feeling lonely, in need of comfort/security, etc. This is the reality of dealing with people, there will be things you simply won't know about a person.

My success with women increased through sheer "initiative" in approaching women I felt I could succeed with, having tested the waters with eye contact, observing IOIs, etc. The best "techniques" I've learned is interpreting body language, gauging chance of success and knowing when to walk away.

 

[Stéphane]

People don't understand that in order to get women you must follow guidelines. {Attraction>Comfort>Seduction} > Relationship (this wasn't written in the book). All the routines, and gimicks were used in different stages in the process. The cube was used in order to build comfort. The openers were used in order to build attraction.

All the routines were used at all the right times. Some we're used in order to build comfort, other to demonstrate higher value, but they wereall used at the RIGHT time. A newbie reading this would probably mess up, because he could open with the cube.

 

[darwinian_sympathiser]

People don't understand that in order to get women you must follow guidelines. {Attraction>Comfort>Seduction} > Relationship (this wasn't written in the book). All the routines, and gimicks were used in different stages in the process. The cube was used in order to build comfort. The openers were used in order to build attraction.

All the routines were used at all the right times. Some we're used in order to build comfort, other to demonstrate higher value, but they wereall used at the RIGHT time. A newbie reading this would probably mess up, because he could open with the cube.

Here a thread that people who are clued up reply to, just look at the state of the discussion and how most of the posters feel sorry for the ones being conned by www.puatraining.com:

http://forum.preys-world.com/viewtopic.php?t=20812

What I'm trying to say is the Strauss's book and a lot of stuff here is the Emporer's New Clothes. There really is nothing there, never was, but they need you to see something there in order for you to part with your money.

What you and Tazman reply are too obvious to bother with. What I will say is that:

1) you can't force attraction - no matter what Strauss, Mystery, Jefferies, DeAngelo etc. . . will have you believe
2) Mystery, DeAngelo, Strauss etc . . . have blatantly miss understood the Darwinian concept of an "Alpha Male". If it were easy to fake being an alpha male then, by simple evolutionary principles, there would evolve selection strategies that could see through the faking on the part of the chooser, or there could be a gradual move to non hierarchical groupings (and this has NOT happened!) If being an Alpha male could be easily faked the whole hierarchy would collapse. More to the point, what we have are idiots who "believe" they could fake it and the real Alpha males looks at them and laughs in their faces (and the women will join in as well). The only time where the latter does not happen is in books by Strauss, Jefferies, DeAngelo etc. . . because they need you to believe what you want to believe
3) There is a strong under current of misogyny pervading all these works by Strauss, Jefferies etc. . Also in www.puatraining.com as well. It sort of like they want revenge for past slights, and that's just SAD. Utterly SAD.