Neil Strauss & the [Cult of PUA]

The Ender

Ooh, NYT Bestselling Author! What deep insights might I pry from this investigative work?

So, I keep getting these ads on YouTube from this PUA channel, most of which are unskippable. This has brought so much joy and luminescence into my leisure time that I have decided to share the marvelous bounty.


Who is this NYT Bestselling Author. Neil Strauss? No doubt a fine individual doing God's work (also known in some circles as 'investigative journalism')?

Neil Strauss is what scientists refer to as an 'asshole', and - like most assholes - he began his existence (or the relevant part of it, anyway) as a washed-up freelance writer. Tired of being Somebody That Oprah Winfrey Did Not Talk About, Strauss abused the trust of his boss (while writing columns nobody could give half a shit about for the New York Times and ghost writing fake memoirs for Jenna Jameson) to travel to Los Angeles as an 'investigative reporter' sometime in 2001 (...or sometime thereabouts). He met-up with his friend, Erik von Markovik - a professional matchstick man, drug dealer & occasional stage magician - and the two built a business plan that centered around self-help books & seminars to scam mentally ill persons out of their money (while also teaching them destructive attitudes towards women).

Things did not go well, by any and all third party accounts. People were not interested in these seminars, Strauss & Markovik's various online personas were not taken seriously by newsgroups or message boards and the Times refused to publish any of Strauss's 'findings' (which was the primary mechanism by which he hoped to generate buzz) because they sounded too incredible and he wouldn't / couldn't source them; they only allowed the publication of a single op ed, and Strauss had to agree to author it under a pseudonym.

Then, in 2005, Strauss put together a manuscript and got it published: The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists.

After that, he no longer had to worry about being Somebody That Oprah Winfrey Did Not Talk About.


What is this book?

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists is what scientists refer to as 'a load of bullshit'. I know that this is an unimportant distinction for most people when it comes to works that are fundamentally disgusting anyway, but it's important to me: nothing in this book is true. Either nothing in it actually happened, or so little of it actually happened that it's hardly worth counting. Strauss brazenly name drops celebrities & socialites that he supposedly mingled with because, hey, who can ask Paris Hilton or Courtney Love whether or not these guys hung out with their at their exclusive parties? It's a brilliant way to establish unimpeachable credibility.

Well, unless you're Jann Wenner - who did decide to see whether or not his former contributor went on an investigative adventure through this hitherto invisible world of Pickup Artistry. As it turns-out, almost none of the people Strauss mentioned ever remembered seeing him, talking with him, or knew who the fuck he or Markovik (stage name 'Mystery') were prior to the book being published. The single exception was Courtney Love - but not because she'd hung out with him; he'd been dating one of her friends, whom he met through entirely unrelated circumstances.

But, the reliability of The Game notwithstanding, an entire industry bloomed in it's wake, followed by a devoted cult.

In essence, The Game uses long discredited junk science like Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the worst bits of Evolutionary Psychology to encourage autistic men to date rape women (even if / especially if they are married / have boyfriends) and justify the act, using terms like 'token resistance', 'alpha males', 'friends zones', 'neg hits' (insults you use to prove to a victim that they are beneath you. Oh, and it doesn't matter if it 'works' or not, because they're going to rape the victim anyway), 'orbiters'... the magical phrases & acronyms would fill quite the tome. Both Strauss and Markovik to this very day hold very expensive pep rallies where they encourage men to treat other people like voo doo instruments, where the proper touches and incantations will net you exactly what you want - and various offshoots, of course, now permeate both the print world and the Internet.


I am sick of this shit.

People cannot be magically programmed by saying specific phrases and waving your hands around. The brain does not have 'modules' (this has been repeatedly falsified in experimental testing. Fucking deal with it. Evo psych is a joke, and if you have a degree in it you've wasted your time & money), and even if it did, nobody knows how to fucking classify these Goddamn modules or what personality / morphology traits correspond to what modules (not that any traits do, because there are no fucking modules, fndsfhdasulifbdasfipdbs;). There is no friend zone. A guy who is pissed-off that you've been creeping on his girlfriend all night is not an 'alpha male'. If you refer to someone as an 'orbiter' because you really do think you should literally interpret civilization as being a thing that revolves around you and your boner, you should probably seek help.


This thread is for discussing the cult of PUA, the crime of date rape, the joke that is NLP and the entitled scumbags that permeate the 'nice guy' culture.

Tube

I knew specifically banning this in the rules would pay off.