Improving Our “Signals” and “Beings”

This is a book review of Neil Strauss’ The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists.

The Game is a truly fantastic read. Author, Neil Strauss, takes the reader through his life changing journey of transformation from a geek to a woman magnet. He starts out as an unconfident, shy, passive, and introverted writer for The New York Times who within two years becomes one of the world’s greatest pick-up artists (PUAs).

A pick-up artist is a man who goes out and attracts women with his tremendous communication skills. Though they don’t refer to the skills as “communication skills,” the many pick-up artists throughout The Game are extremely competent in reading a woman’s body language, keeping her interested, and having great conversations. The PUAs with their fine-tuning to improve their skills, rapid adaption to the situation, routines, and high awareness put the majority of people who learn communication skills to shame.

Each character in The Game has his own name which the pick-up artists refer to one another by. The author, Neil Strauss, goes by the name of “Style” and learns these pick-up skills with guys like Extramask, Juggler, and WideFace from the pioneers in the field who are Mystery and Ross Jeffries.

Neil Strauss is the main character in the book. After reading a bit about pick-up skills online from what they call a “lair” where guys learn how to attract women, Style meets up with Mystery at a workshop for the first time who is with a friend and fellow instructor by the name of Sinn. Mystery and Sinn both begin to instruct Style and two other students on what to expect at the workshop.

On the first night, the two instructors blow the students’ minds away as they see the instructors attract women before their very eyes. The three students are caught in disbelief as their past beliefs of only good-looking guys get the hot women are destroyed (most characters in the book are unattractive). The following nights at the workshop where the student’s begin to practice are filled with failure yet they manage the occasional successful approach which excite the students.

Style gets hooked on the whole pick-up subject and soon commits to making the decision to get this part of his life solved. He becomes sick of not being able to talk to women and sets out on a journey to become ultra successful with women. After learning from the many greats like his best friend, Mystery, attending seminars, practicing and failing, and reading many books on various topics, Style soon becomes one of the world’s best at picking-up women.

These guys have an amazing ability to penetrate a group of 10 people consisting of 9 men and 1 woman and come out with the woman’s phone number. There is a scene in the book where a character by the name of Mystery (arguably the World’s greatest PUA) basically steals Scott Baio’s girlfriend who is a very attractive lady. Mystery achieves this by firstly befriending Scott. He approaches the group by performing magic tricks to demonstrate a higher value which sets him apart from other men. Scott’s girlfriend urges Mystery to show her more tricks which he ignores. Because of her requests, Mystery occasionally negs her by making comments to Scott like “Is she always this demanding?” In under 20 minutes, Scott’s girlfriend is handing Mystery her phone number (number-close).

As you can probably tell, the attraction community is filled with their own jargon like negging (a gentle put-down), average frustrated chump (AFC – typical guy who isn’t good with women), indicator of interest (IOI – a sign of interest a woman displays), and demonstration of higher value (DHV) to name a few of the many terms. Pick-up artists or soon-to-be pick-up artists go sarging in-field (meaning they go out to practice their pick-up skills on women). The men mostly go in-field for “night game” at night-clubs and bars though there are a few pick-up scenes at “day game” venues like bookshops in the The Game. In fact, the first day game approach Neil Strauss did was a success in number-closing a Playmate of the year.

There’s other famous situations like when a character by the name of Papa number-closed Paris Hilton at a taco store. Another one is when Courtney Love moved into the pick-up artist’s house – named “Project Hollywood” – during Courtney’s legal battle. This situation goes on for a few chapters with Courtney having a funny “Muffin Day” and “Lemonade Day” where she makes mass amounts of muffins and lemonade for the guys. Also, later on in the book when Neil Strauss has mastered pick-up skills, he interviews a resistant Britney Spears for The New York Times. After running a few routines on her, Britney all of a sudden opens up and begins to heavily participate in the interview.

The Game does contain the occasional swearing and adult scenes. The book is written in a novel format which had me hooked word-for-word. I rarely read novels but Neil integrates a narrational style of writing on the scenes that take place by educating the reader with what is going on at a deeper level as the skills are used. You are taken inside the mind of pick-up artists as you discover the various and intriguing skills they use. You really do penetrate the secret society of pick-up artists.

The Game is a fantastic book. Those who aren’t familiar with the pick-up community will find this truly interesting. If this whole topic interests you, go and get your copy of Neil Strauss’ The Game directly from Amazon.com by clicking here today. Next, check-out the videos below where Neil (the bald guy) discusses his book and some of the techniques on various T.V. shows.

Videos

ABC Primetime Special

Neil Strauss on Jimmy Kimmel Live

Get your copy here.

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