The Game

Absolutely toxic. The pick up artist "community" preys on men who lack social skills. Women are not transactional robots. This mindset breeds and cultivates incels.

"The Game" is a memoir by NYT music journalist Neil Strauss. It covers a period of two years he spent in the "pickup artist" community. In the first part of the book, he describes his experiences learning strategies, psychological techniques, and sometimes canned lines or routines to help attract women's interest (and ultimately sleep with them). As the book proceeds, the experience of picking up women is largely abstracted out, and the focus becomes Neil's interactions with other members of the "pickup artist" community. Many of these people are oddballs with various mental disorders or personal issues. This culminates in extraordinarily dysfunctional, cult-like behavior as a group of pickup artists rent a house together and several try to monetize their skills by offering seminars."The Game" is not (and does not purport to be) any sort of instruction book. It is an autobiography. It is also a look inside a community of men who are often very insecure, who feel a hole within themselves, and who think that by attracting and sleeping with women, they will achieve meaning or restore value to their lives. Unsurprisingly, even those who become skilled at picking up women remain dissatisfied, sometimes more so than before they joined the pickup artist community. They learn some of the outer, superficial techniques and strategies for appearing confident and meeting women, but they still lack the underlying building blocks that make up a good life (including character traits like self-confidence and inner peace, as well as physical things like having a good job and working passionately to make the world a better place). Neil recognizes this, and his book chronicles a stage in his life that he seems glad to have moved beyond.This book has some notoriety, but I think it is generally undeserved. The pickup artists are not fooling or tricking women- the women know what they're getting into. (This may be one reason why most of the women the pickup artists attract appear to be struggling with their own demons, including self-esteem issues, illegal drug use, etc.) "The Game" is essentially a story of imperfect men and imperfect women seeking validation through each other- an unhealthy co-dependency that is part of muddling through, learning about oneself, and, hopefully, reaching a place where true self-confidence and a fulfilling relationship are possible.I would recommend this book to men who are having difficulty meeting women, but not for the reason one might think. The tips it provides are so sparse that they could be covered in a one-page cheat sheet, and they are so self-evident (e.g. self-confidence is attractive) that you hardly need a book to tell you. What "The Game" does is to illustrate that you're not alone- lots of people, both men and women, feel a need for intimacy, for sex, and for deeper validation. The path to true success- that is, lasting satisfaction and happiness- lies in authenticity and improving oneself, not in a bunch of psychological tricks and routines.

I thought this book was entertaining and a bit silly. It describes a fraternity lifestyle being lived by men in their 30s and 40s. They seem to be feeling very accomplished by having sex with multiple women but they are talking about betting barflies and drunk club hoppers. That’s really not any accomplishment. They all have an emotional IQ of a 16-year-old boy and that part is a little sad

In the end, virtually none of the characters one meets in this book ends up happy. But that's not the point. The point is, as a woman reading this story of competing schools of pick-up artistry, to understand the other side. Almost all of the pick-up artists in this book were deeply flawed, damaged individuals, who learned techniques to play women like violins in order to salve their bruised and battered egos. In the end, as the author notes, almost nothing is big enough to fill the hole inside their psyche. Still, it's a fascinating look at the other side of dating - the premeditated, consciously manipulative side. I felt like having a shower after reading the book, but it was difficult to put down all the same.

There's a good chance I wouldn't have believed some of the extreme claims made in this book if I hadn't seen VH1's reality show, The Pickup Artist, first. Whether you believe it or not, Neil Strauss' The Game is a fun and hilarious book that will suck you in and keep you reading until you hit the back cover.The gist of the book is as follows:Neil Strauss is asked by an editor to investigate the underground PUA (pick-up artist) community. Like most people, Strauss doubted that he would find anything legitimate, but decided to look into the assignment, partly out of self-interest. After learning some PUA techniques from Mystery, creator of the Mystery Method of seduction and perhaps the greatest PUA, and finding some success, Strauss takes on the alias "Style" and totally immerses himself in the lifestyle.Style uses the skills honed by years of writing and journalism to study the many schools of seduction and eventually emerges as one of the world's greatest pick-up artists, rivaling and perhaps even surpassing Mystery.Strauss packs in plenty of hilarious details about the encounters of various PUA's in many different situations, various episodes concerning Mystery and his emotional and mental disturbances, and the events leading up to the collapse of Mystery's ambitious Project Hollywood. Most importantly, Strauss provides his own insightful commentary on all the things the PUA community has completely wrong, namely the misogynistic tendencies of many PUA's, the lack of originality and individual thought amongst PUA's and the complete absence of any "techniques" for staying in healthy, long-term relationships.Despite Mystery's self-defeating personality, the lawlessness of Project Hollywood and having a large number of PUA's turn against him, Style manages to keep his head on straight and even lands himself the girl of his dreams-without using any seduction techniques! (they have quite the opposite effect, actually)Even if you don't believe in the powers of the pick-up artist, this book is worth checking out if only for Strauss' wonderful story of developing confidence in himself and finding happiness. And if you do think there is something to this seduction thing, then this book is a good starting point for learning some things and how to not let yourself get carried away.

Total losers . How embarrassing . No men in this book unless they’re after chapter14. Pathetic. Cringe worthy read. One star so he knows I didn’t forget to color in.