The Game According To Pickup Artists

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Mystery

So many men and women say they are tired of “the games” in dating. I don’t believe them. It’s the push – pull that builds attraction and passion. Say what you will, all is fair in love and war, and it IS a war, or at the very least a game. Men and many women may make fun of  Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider’s book, The Rules (TM): Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right for being so strict and manipulative, but Honey, you haven’t seen manipulative until you read what men are reading. I just finished reading The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists and Bang: More Lays In 60 Days, which are books for men on how achieving their goals. The goals vary depending on the guy, but it could mean anything from to losing his virginity, to having a threesome, to finding a wife to have his children.

If you don’t know what a PUA is, it’s a Pickup Artist. Yes, they really do exist. I’ve met some. And yes, their techinques include everything from “Chick Crack” — spiritual or psychological subjects like astrology, tarot cards, and personality tests — to peacocking, and the more sinister Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). And thanks to the internet they have thousands of AFC’s following them. What’s a AFC? It’s an Average Frustrated Chump, and according to Neil Strauss’s book, The Game and coined by Ross Jeffries, he is the “stereotypical nice guy who has no pickup skills or understanding of what attracts women; a man who tens to engage in supplicative and wimply patterns of behavior around women he has not yet slept with.” AFC’s typically suffer from “One-itis” which according to The Game is “an obsession with a girl whom one is not dating; pickup artists believe that such an extreme fixation on one woman significantly lowers a man’s chances of dating or sleeping with her.”

Ross Jeffries

PUA’s crashed a Valentine’s Dating event that Kerry Reichs, Jess McCann, Cathy Alter and I had in 2009. I think they became aware of me after I suggested women read the other team’s playbook and familiarize themselves with the writings of Roosh Valizadeh, author of Bang. Probably through a Google Alert, Roosh found out about my post, and then wrote about me on his blog.

Rien Turner who was onVH-1′s “The Pickup Artist” with the most famous PUA of all, Mystery showed up to our event with the Washington, DC Lair. Yes, PUA’s have Lairs in major cities around the country and these guys go out “sarging together” to try and pick up women. They have no problem going up to a guy and his date or a group of five women. They call the groups “sets”, and they have no qualms about stealing a guy’s date or girlfriend, and do it all the time. They even give advice on how to deal with the AMOG, or the “Alpha Male of the Group”. Basically, they believe if you win over the guys, you can get to the girls. Usually they ignore the girls, get in with the men, and then work their target later.

I will never forget all these PUA’s rolling into our event together. One wore a cowboy hat and black trench coat, and Rien wore a hideous bracelet with a dried up beetle in it. I told him to get rid of it, because it looked like a dead roach. Now that I’ve read The Game, I understand that the guys were just “peacocking.”  This technique stems from Mystery, and according to The Game it means ” to dress in loud clothing or with flashy accoutrements in order to get attention from women. Peacoking items include bright shiny shirts, light-up jewelry, feather boas, colorful

Neil Strauss, Author of "The Game" Before and After Mystery's Makeover

cowboy hats, or anything else that makes one stand out in a crowd.” I don’t think too many men in Georgetown will be seen peacocking in this manner, but outrageous ascots, pocket squares and critter pants may work, too.

I also remember the guy in the cowboy hat who was overweight and not attractive in the least being a jackass to me right when we met. I was shocked that he would come to my event and be so rude. Who did he think he was? Well, now that I’ve read more on this, he was Neg’ing me. Now that I think about it, I think I have seen men use this technique at other times by Alpha males, but probably not by someone as unattractive as the guy in the hat. According to The Game, a Neg is “an ambiguous statement or seeemingly accidental insult delivered to a beautiful woman a pickup artist has just met, with the intent of actively demonstrating to her (or her friends) a lack of interest in her.” PUA’s believe that to win the target woman, they need to win approval of the target’s friends while simultaneously demonstrating a lack of interest in her. The attractive woman who is used to getting attention will wonder why this guy is different and not giving her attention, so she will work to get it from him.

The creepiest part of all this was NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Unlike traditional hypnosis, in which subjects are put to sleep, it is a form of waking hypnosis in which subtle conversational cues and physical gestures are used to influence a person on a subconscious level. It’s mind control. There is a part of the book where Ross Jeffries has a waitress conjure up memories of feeling attraction and then he uses anchoring to associate that feeling with a touch or a gesture. From then on, every time he uses that touch or gesture the woman gets really attracted to him. Living in Washington, I think we’re aware that the CIA or Terrorists may used mind control but it’s scary to think that there is a whole army of these wanna be’s out there who can come up to you at a bar or bookstore and use this tactic on you.

The steps that it takes to seduce a woman are also the chapters of Neil’s book — Select a Target, Approach and Open, Demonstrate Value, Disarm the Obstacles, Isolate the Target, Create an Emotional Connection, Extract to a Seduction Location, Pump Buying Temperature, Make a Physical Connection, Blast Last-Minute Resistance, and Manage Expectations. I highly recommend this book to men and women. It reads like a biography, as Neil Strauss is a journalist and got sucked into this subculture while doing research for the book.  Seeing how his life was transformed by several PUA Guru’s is amazing and highly entertaining. I think it’s important for single women to read this to learn the tactics men will use to get in your pants, and it’s definitely helpful for all the Beta men who are afraid to approach beautiful women. If you have problems with addiction, be careful. You can read in the book about all they guys who got so wrapped up in this world that they lost jobs, lost touch with friends and family, and became utterly obsessed by picking up women to the point that they weren’t even satisfied by getting the women and were actually bonding more with other PUA’s.

- Miss A

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