Neil Strauss The Game

Neil Strauss aka Style is the the author of the best-selling book ‘The Game: Penetrating The Secret Society Of Pick-Up Artists’. Strauss, before discovering the seduction community via the Internet was a self-confessed ‘AFC’- or Average Frustrated Chump- a man unable, despite no obvious defects, to have the kind of success with women in life as he experienced in his career.
Having discovered that there were other men with the same problems he was experiencing, Neil Strauss became engrossed with the concept of visiting online forums and reading around the various materials on offer. There he made contact with Erik Von Markovich aka Mystery and took a bootcamp under his tutelage.

The next stage was to actually become what he had read about: a Pick-Up Artist. Neil Strauss, through a period of around a year honed his skills and practiced- eventually moving from New York to California- becoming so good that he eventually became a partner of Mystery hosting bootcamps for students.

Having made the transition from Neil Strauss AFC to Style PUA, the next stage was for him to pen his memoirs. This took the form of ‘The Game’ as Strauss had earlier published his account of the goings on at Project Hollywood in The New York Times. Other established PUAs amongst the community featured in the book such as Tyler Durden, Herbal and David DeAngelo.

Post-‘Game’ Neil Strauss established his own method: The Annihilation Method in which he shared with a select 375 students his own patented method of seducing women in late 2006. He sold The Annihilation Method for close to $4000. The product was later widely pirated. Reviews are mediocre with a lot of the material being the same as one can read in The Game, or find for free online.

Disaster wasn’t far from the horizon as Strauss’ long term girlfriend Lisa Leveridge, guitarist of Courtney Love’s band The Chelsea, left Strauss for rock star Robbie Williams.
Meanwhile The Game was optioned by Columbia Pictures, with the director of About A Boy set to take the helm. The option has since expired and the rights to any future movie are back with Neil Strauss. There is no movie version of The Game currently in production.

Neil Strauss’ effect on the seduction community was to bring it into the limelight of the mainstream media as he appeared on TV in America, Europe and Australia amongst various media drives aimed at Internet audiences. For that, he is to be applauded, since many men have benefited from finding out that ability with women is a learnable skill. However, just as many use Neil Strauss' techniques which are very focused on "outer game" and neglect the more important aspects of inner and natural game.

Mystery Method VH1 - Erik Von .....Whatever?

The Mystery Method is a method of seduction, first popularized by Erik Von Markovik a.k.a "Mystery". The system was initially outlined in posts on the newsgroup alt.seduction.fast. Since October 2006, Mystery is no longer part of the Mystery Method's website, which has grown and changed in his absence, and he has launched his own website.


Mystery is billed as "the World's Greatest Pickup Artist," (Elle Magazine, Saturday Night Magazine, etc.), and is responsible for coining a lot of terminology now used in the world of seduction: such as "3 second rule", "set", "peacocking", "indicator of interest", "indicator of disinterest", "last minute resistance", "routine", "neg hits", "canned material", etc. The Mystery Method is now marketed online, via books, DVD sets, and most notably, live seminars and coaching with various instructors, including Markovik himself.



The M3 Model
The Mystery Method M3 Model is divided into 3 steps: Attraction, Comfort and Seduction, each of which is divided into 3 phases. The Method teaches a set of strategies and tactics for each phase to successfully move the interaction forward toward the end goal, which is the creation of an intimate sexual relationship.


Step 1: Attraction
The goals of the 'Attraction' phase are: to start a conversation with the target ('Opening'); demonstrate high 'value' to the 'target' in order to build her attraction to the pickup artist ('Female to Male interest'); and to appear to become increasingly attracted to her, for reasons other than her looks, while making her increasingly invested in the interaction ('Male to Female interest').

Step 2: Comfort
In the 'Comfort' phase, one should attempt to establish rapport, trust, connection and a sense that the interaction is real and genuine. According to the Mystery Method, "the game is played in comfort". It is the longest and most crucial step and generally takes several hours, possibly over the course of several days, to complete. Mystery writes that of the average 4 to 10 hours (cumulatively) it takes to build a connection sufficient for the initiation of a sexual relationship, as much as 90% will be spent in the comfort-building phase.

Step 3: Seduction
The 'Seduction' phase is the physical escalation towards sex and dealing with a woman's natural apprehension towards sex with a new partner. It also includes dealing with Last Minute Resistance (LMR), for which the Mystery Method advocates freeze-outs in which you purposely destroy the pleasant move by agreeing with the resistance ("you're right, we shouldn't be doing this"), withdrawing and re-directing the situation to something boring like playing cards.

'Negs'
Media attention directed towards the Mystery Method often mentions the concept of 'negs' as an example of what the method teaches. The oft-quoted example is the comment:
"Nice nails, are they real? No? Oh, well they're nice anyway."


Negs are intended to be false disqualifiers and are intended to lower the target's comparative value to the seducer. Specifically, they are not insults; instead, they resemble the comments of a person who does not view the target as being sexually interesting.


In his television interview with The View, Neil Strauss explains that some men will demonstrate lack of interest by passively ignoring a woman; but since she doesn't notice him, she won't know that he is not interested. Therefore the purpose of the neg is to actively demonstrate lack of interest by disqualifying one's self as a suitor ("It's too bad I'm gay or you'd be so my type"), or by falsely disqualifying the target ("You are too much of a nice girl to me")


According to the method, a proper neg never makes the target feel insulted or degraded, but rather questions whether the man approaching her has fallen under her spell. Women of particular beauty often tend to assume males approaching them are interested in them solely as a result of their looks, and negs attempt to neutralize that assumption by demonstrating that the man is not (yet) interested in her, despite her beauty. A successful neg will make the target feel self-conscious and attempt to regain control of the situation by qualifying herself.

Disqualification theory
Disqualification Theory is an expansion of the neg. It is a social tactic based on the idea that what a woman can't have, she wants more. It is a large part of indirect game as it can disarm a woman by keeping her from thinking that the man is hitting on her. It can correlate to preselection theory as well; if a man is taken, he is like a forbidden fruit to other women.
A disqualifier is the direct application to the disqualification theory. Examples of disqualifiers:
"If I weren't gay, you'd be so my type."

"I've got something to tell you...there's something in your teeth."
"The ring? 30 years of bliss, honey. Who says doctors can't find happiness, right? Want a drink?"