Points from The Game

The Game is a true non-exaggerated story about the authors life in the underground society of pickup artists. Neil Strauss, at the time of writing his book, was in the pickup community for about two years. And in those two years he was immersed in the art of seduction. The book isn’t a guideline for people to pickup women, but it is one of the best stories about one of the most transformed people in the pickup community who truly had a desire to be the best and find what he was looking for in life.

In order, here are excerpts from pages that I have tabbed. This information is to only be used for learning, and besides, most of this stuff is common knowledge that can be found on the net.

The first tab is about Maddash and how whenever he brings a woman to his place he always kiss-closes. He has her pick him up and she comes inside. He says that it’s easier to get a woman back into the room later if nothing has happened. At the end of the date, he invites her back to his place for drinks. If she notices the guitar (prominently placed), he plays a song for her. They play with his puppy. He shows her the rooftop. He brings her back to show her winamp, and sits her on his lap, and kisses her on the cheek. If she doesn’t kiss on the lips, he shows her some more stuff on the winamp visualizations, and then kisses her on the cheek again. He says that almost all women want to be directed and ordered about. And then he says that you can figure out the rest. This seems pretty simple to me.

On this page Style talks about all of the instructors and how they each have different methods. Style believes the same thing that I do. He believes that each instructor believes that his way is correct. Style says that his goal was to feed from all these instructors. He preferred to combine teaching and wisdom from various sources, find out what applied to him, and discard what didn’t. He goes on to say that with each teacher wants to believe that his material is the best. “Power is retained by attracting loyalty, and subjugation is guaranteed by giving it.” Some of the pickup artists that are mentioned are, Ross Jeffries (Speed Seduction – subliminal language patterns), Mystery (Mystery Method – social dynamics), David DeAngelo (Double your Dating – cocky funny), Gunwitch (Gunwitch Method – animalistic sexuality), David X, David Shade, Rick H., Major Mark, Juggler, Steve Piccus, and Rasputin. There are a bunch of methods, or combinations of methods, and a bunch of guys that are professionals when it comes to the pickup community; these guys are called pua’s (pronounced: poo-uhs) or pickup artists.

In Chapter 2 it mentions about a post from Juggler that intrigued Style. Juggler advised AFCs to overcome their shyness by trying to talk a homeless person into giving them a quarter or by calling people randomly out of a phone book to ask for movie recommendations. He told others to challenge themselves by making the pickup more difficult on themselves by saying things like they were a trash collector, or they drove an ‘86 Impala. Another thing he says later on is that talking too fast is a sign of a deep lack of confidence.

Rick H., had two rules mentioned in the book. The first: No good deed goes unpunished (A phrase, ironically, that was coined by a woman, Clare Boothe Luce.) The second: Always have a better answer. One of the corollaries to Rick’s second rule was to never give a woman a straight answer to a question.

There’s some stuff that I’m going to copy straight out of the book because it’s so brilliant, and was posted on the Mystery Method forums, but I’m only going to post the beginning of it. I’m going to italicize it.

One thing I have going for me is that I am fearless around women. My method is very simple. Every single thing a girl says or does to me is an IOI. Period. She wants me. It doesn’t matter who she is. And when you believe that, they start to believe it too. I am a slave to my love of women. They can sense it. The weakness of women is language and words. Fortunately, that is one of my strong points. If they try to repel my advances, I act like they are from Mars and what they are saying doesn’t make any sense.
I never try to defend myself or apologize for being a womanizer. Why? Because a reputation is attractive to women. It’s true. I am the other man who guys worry about when they marry a girl.

Zan keeps on going to explain his cocky-funny routine with waitresses. He says that he goes cocky-funny immediately.

Another excerpt is about beauty. Helena Rubinstein once said, “There are no ugly women; only lazy ones.” Since society holds men to less rigid standards of beauty than women, this is doubly true of guys. Give a man like Sweater—or any man—a tan, better posture, whiter teeth, a fitness regime, and clothes that fit, and he’s well on his way to handsome.

This is Styles response to Papa when Papa was talking about how rich he and his dad is. “You’re qualifying yourself to
us. Instead of gaining our admiration, all you’re doing is displaying lower status. A rich man doesn’t have to tell you he’s rich.”

I’m in middle of reading ‘Think and Grow Rich’ and I can’t help but laugh at what Mystery wrote that was put into Style’s book.
I’ve been reading Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, and I want to suggest something related. If you regularly masturbate, you can easily become addicted. This addiction comes in the form of daily regularity that curbs your desire to go out. It also does not allow you to harness your sex drive, which can be used to motivate yourself to work on wealth-building projects.
If you aren’t getting laid on a regular basis (which happens to all of us from time to time), then don’t just choke ’til you’re broke. Set a date with yourself. Only jerk it once a week. If you jerked it today, set the jerk date for seven days from now. If you don’t get a girl between then and now, you’ll have something to look forward to. Make it a good jerk! Use the best porn and hand lotion. Look forward to it and this will keep you from wasting your life away jerking it daily and focusing constantly on the pain of not having a girlfriend.
In the meantime, harness your sex drive and build something.

Another quote… One of the primary rules of pickup is that a girl can fall out of love with you as quickly as she falls in love with you. It happens every night. The girls who start rubbing your chest and making out with you in a club in two minutes will leave you just as quickly for a bigger, better deal. That’s the game. That’s life in the field. And I understood that.

Another quote that I edited because it’s context has a greater scope.
…you can do it alone. Your success and failure depend entirely on yourself. I’ve never trusted collaborations, because most people in this world are not closers. They don’t finish what they start; they don’t live what they dream; they sabotage their own progress because they’re afraid they won’t find what they seek. You are your own worst enemy.

According to Style…Pickup should be a glorified hobby.

Eric Weber was the first modern PUA. A question was asked about naturals and guys working on their game.

What do you think is the difference between naturals and guys like us who need to learn analytically?
I think that naturals have the psychological power to do it. Toward the end of my singlehood, I found a boldness that was shocking. I developed the courage to tell a woman after a glass of wine, “I’d like to fuck you.” There are some women looking for you to be bold and a leader. It took me a long time to learn that.

“All you can do is put on an appearance of confidence sometimes. And after a while, others will start to believe it. And then you die.”

Dr. Phil – Women Beware!

Probably the only post I will have as far as this 'pickup community' goes.

I think Smoothcall wrote one of the best posts there is on this subject and I congratulate him for it. I think women misinterpret what this ‘community’ or ‘game’ is. While yes, sex is involved, it is not by any manipulative means worse than taking a girl out for dinner. If you’re a chode, being yourself is not going to work. The community helps you to be your best self. Some other motto’s that are used in the community are, “Leave a woman better off than you found her.” So if you still think ‘the community’ is horrible, keep your kids away from my kids whenever I have kids, because you bet they’ll be raised up right.

SmoothCall Says:
April 12, 2008 at 5:25 pm

I have struggled my entire life with social anxiety and depression and I know many others who have also. While I mostly disagree with what you are saying, I’ve studied NLP and will let you know that I do agree that NLP is mostly manipulation.

However, as to the rest of what you have written, I would like to voice my strong disagreement.

I would suggest you consider that many of us have found that the “thousands of qualified therapists in the U.S. to help people . . .” generally like to give us drugs. They don’t teach us social skills. Many of them ignore the cutting edge research that is beginning to indicate that perhaps we can change our brain chemistry and neuro-structures through meditations and getting out into the real world and interacting with others over and over.

I’ve had many painful times in my life when I stood in the corner of a room full of people, even people that I knew, and was afraid to talk to them. Inside I was crying. Outside, I covered it with a veneer of being an unfriendly grouch. People called me cranky, nerdy, aloof, arrogant, and standoffish. Really, I was dying inside. I often had panic attacks. Taking drugs stopped the panic attacks, but never taught me social skills.

I was very fortunate with women because I was good looking in my younger days, women would approach me. But the attractive, sane, well-adjusted ones would often quickly excuse themselves because they could tell I was “off”. So, I the women I had relationships with were those who were attracted to my looks, chose me, and settled for my personality. You have no idea how emasculating that is to a man — I couldn’t have a woman I wanted — only those that wanted me. My relationships were lousy because they were with people who were as damaged as I was.

I was bitter and angry at the world and myself. It made no sense to me that a tall, fit, handsome man with a six figure income couldn’t talk to women and had the utmost difficulty even making friends.

So, I made it a goal to fix the problem. I’ve spent years studying books by some of the people you rail against, and many others, including Daniel Goleman, Robert Greene, The Dalai Lama, R.Don Steele, Liel Lowndes, Nathanial Bradin, David Deida, Eckhart Tolle, Neil Strauss, John Sarno, M.D., Dossie Easton, Cathrine Liszt, and many many others (I just looked at the books on my close bookshelf — there are dozens more downstairs).

I have incorporated many things they write about and teach into daily meditations and into my daily actions. And guess what? Now I can say hello to a stranger for no reason other than to say hello. Sometimes (on a good day) I can walk into a party, conference, bar, grocery store, mall, or other public place and actually “pick up” a woman. I’m guessing you wouldn’t want the details of how I walked into a bar last year alone and walked out with two women who came home with me — so, I’ll spare you. But like I said, some days are better than others. (smile)

But besides “women” I am really good now at introducing myself to both men and women in business settings and conferences and so forth. I could never do that before. I actually seem to like most people now. I used to hate them all.

What I find surprising is that you seem to misunderstand the television’s show depiction of the playful banter that occurs between some men and women. You call it insulting. We call it flirting. Sometimes it is testing and qualifying. It is part of a necessary screening process for men and women who have many demands made on their time.

Men and women who have many demands made on their time by others must have a screening process to establish who is worthy of their time. This is necessary — as humans, we each only have 24 hours each day. When it comes to men, women, and sex — I can assure you that very few attractive women would have enough time to accommodate all the men who want to have sex with them. Therefore, they must screen.

The first type of man these women almost always eliminate are those who they do not consider their “equals” (read an old book called “The Passion Paradox” for insight on this — but there are also plenty of evolutionary theories to explain this). Playful banter, mild putdowns, back handed compliments, carrot and stick, push-pull are all things that have been used for thousands of years to screen out the unworthy. If you can take it as well as you give it, that is, if you understand how the game is played, you are one step closer to being “in”.

There are other tests and screening devices. The higher a value society puts on that person as a whole, the tougher the screening devices and tests. The modern day pick up artists did not invent this game. But they have broken down the rules and taught them to those of us who are socially retarded nerds. The game is being played — with or without you and me — if we want to join, we must know the rules and possess the skills.

And I want to join. I understand that you don’t. It appears that you are happy with your husband and life and that is of course a wonderful thing. That should be enough for any of us, right? To be happy with the lives we have had the good fortune to build.

As I said, I want to join “the game” and hang out with the popular and beautiful people. And to a limited degree I have — I’ve “dated” my share of the so-called “beautiful people” — including some very minor movie starlets. I’m sure I’ll get flamed for this next politically incorrect statement, and most people will say I am shallow: But my experience has been that the socially savvy, pretty, popular, cheerful, successful, funny, smart people are usually way more fun than “regular” people.

Finally, there’s one more point I want to make right now: The kind of women that “the game” makes angry are generally the kind of women we don’t want. So, really, we are in a perfect world, because the kind of women we make angry don’t want us. See, so there’s nothing to fight about. (smile)

Nevertheless, this blog has attracted some minor attention in the PU community. Thus, I have written this post to give heart and encouragement to my brothers, those former frustrated chumps, who no longer view “the game” from the sidelines, wishing to be able to play. Sarge On!

P.S.: don’t feed the trolls.