The Marketing Syndicate and the Business Cycle of the Seduction Industry, Part II

In the previous post I have discussed the parallels between the Internet marketing scene and the seduction industry. The last quote I used was:

The Syndicate keeps prices high :: and dissent low. The Syndicate all but eliminates marketplace competition. (…) The Syndicate uses tough :: tasteless :: and intimidating tactics to defend against what it sees as threats to its unrightful domain.

So far I have only elaborated on the “keeps prices high” part. Of course they also want to keep dissent low, which is why you will get attacked if you question “generally accepted truths”. I don’t have to remind you of the lame actions of Formhandle from mASF took against me and some of my friends. For instance, you will find names such as “Sleazy” and “TVA” highlighted and linked to a page that contains his tasteless “defense” of his bruised ego. Some of his accusations are:

Creating "posses" or cliques of people (almost like a mini-cult) to sling ill-will as a group, constantly challenging what is otherwise common sense to the vast majority of others in the forum, or spurring flame-wars for the sake of creating drama to fuel ulterior motives.

Of course, having some of the most respected members of that forum speak out aggressively against “the common sense of the vast majority” is not good for business. Much better would of course be if we all wrote panegyrics to highlight the many "accomplishments" of the teachings of Love Systems et al. Telling people that they can get laid easily, without practicing lame “routines” and socializing for hours can’t be tolerated. Of course, a website that is plastered with ads from all major companies would sabotage itself if it allowed dissent. It would simply threaten their revenues. Probably we did and that’s why we’ve gotten the boot. In all honesty, I was surprised it took so long to get ostracized. I had actually expected this to happen soon after I posting my classic article “Is the PU industry a sham industry? Some observations.”

If you want to see further parallels, here is a traffic chart from the Internet marketing world:

Salty Droid goes on to explain:

These are the traffic spikes from the launches of five recent Syndicate frauducts. Andy Jenkins :: Frank Kern :: John Reese :: Jeff Walker :: and Ryan Deiss.  This same precise pattern can be traced back to 2005{ish} … no competition allowed!

And now think about what’s happening in the Seduction industry: scheduled releases and cross-promotions. It doesn’t stop here, though. The Internet marketing scene has its own syndicate, gathering in their private forums and plotting to scam the biggest numbers of people, and so does the seduction industry, where there is also a “secret” group, made up mostly of instructors. There are two, as far as I know of, but one is dead because the members were afraid the others would “steal their material”, and on the other forum they don’t talk much about seduction anymore but instead about ways to make money and how to keep in shape. A cynical comment from a guy in Chicago was that this was because they are all broke and out of shape.

So much for discussing parallels between those two groups. While in the case of the Internet marketing syndicate I expect lawsuits and crackdowns to follow, it may take a while until the seduction industry gets to this point. In the meantime, I expect to not only see less high-profile releases (“product launches”), but a lower price level in general, since the market has become too crowded.

There was a recent trend towards continuity programs like forum subscriptions with monthly payments, including some unethical elements like so-called forced continuity, something I discuss in greater detail in Debunking the Seduction Community. Also, readers have pointed me towards a new gimmicky offering. A German company now offers a “flat rate” for workshops. You put down 2.000 EUR and can attend all workshops for a year for a nominal fee of 20 EUR, and the reasoning behind it is apparently that people pay the inflated fee once and then get too tired of travelling to the various cities. In any case, this industry seems to run out of steam.

Read More

The Marketing Syndicate and the Business Cycle of the Seduction Industry, Part I

Salty Droid recently ran a couple of very interesting posts about a syndicate of Internet marketers. Given the close relationship between “gurus” in the seduction industry and Internet marketers --- it is often said that Internet marketers are the gurus of the seduction marketers ---, those findings are indeed revealing and can be used to draw many parallels. If you have followed the seduction industry for a while, a lot of it will sound eerily familiar to you.

Here is Salty Droid’s take on the Syndicate:

The Syndicate is a cartel at the center of the get rich quick world of Internet Marketing. Each of the members tries to pass himself off as a freewheeling entrepreneur. (…) Each sells a version of this easy freedom in a bottle to seekers … the sadder the seeker … the better. But the dream :: like the cake :: is a lie. Success in “the industry” correlates not with value :: individuality :: or effort … but with proximity to a toxic core whose basic operations constitute a serious felony and moral failing.

In plain language this means that we have Internet marketers A, B, C, …, N who all have their own special products that cater for a certain problem. But the seduction industry does not have people worrying about improving their “click-through rate” but instead minimizing the number of flaky phone numbers, which then gives rise to a 3 DVD set with the title “No Flakes!”, co-created by Vin DiCarlo, one of my long-time favourites. Maybe Vin should start to work out if he gets too many flakes.

Of course this level of specialization only started after the big categories like “routines-based game” and “direct game” were filled, in addition to whatever it is that Real Social Dynamics is advocating. Then there was a focus on “day game” and the online game fraction is getting bigger, too.

If you have been around for a while, you might have noticed that there was always a release to look forward to. Neil Strauss aka. Style released his “Annihilation Method”, Venusian Arts their “Mind of Mystery”, and Mehow had his “Infield Exposed”, which is easily the most bizarre stuff I have ever seen. Then another crop of people turned up. Suddenly PUATraining and “Gambler” were pushing products. By that time people were telling me that if you have signed up for one guy’s newsletter, you suddenly got bombarded by emails in which other products were being pushed as well. This was arguably the phase when cross-promoting (affiliate marketing) got popular.

By that time people seemed to slowly wake up to all the nonsense those companies spout out. Of course, if there is a ton of competition you better differentiate yourself and find your own niche. However, for the amount of money some people charge for a scaminar seminar on “how to pickup strippers” you could directly spend it on the strippers yourself --- and have sex with them until you are getting sick of it.

But back to “The Syndicate” and Salty Droid:

The Syndicate keeps prices high :: and dissent low. The Syndicate all but eliminates marketplace competition. (…) The Syndicate uses tough :: tasteless :: and intimidating tactics to defend against what it sees as threats to its unrightful domain.

The comment about price-fixing was true at least until recently. While Neil Strauss wanted to sell his “Annihilation Method” DVDs for close to $4.000, which is downright obscene, others were a bit more modest and just charged the comparatively modest sum of two grand. Unfortunately for our sad bunch of seduction gurus, the Seduction Market is much smaller than the market the Internet goo-roos want to serve, which presumably includes a lot of wannabe seduction gurus. For this reason you still have the Internet crowd trying to charge two grand for their "products", but the seduction gurus either stopped producing DVDs or lowered the prices drastically. Some people now sell their DVD sets for less than $200, which is still an extremely high figure given production costs. Others such as Real Social Dynamics have stopped releasing “programs” altogether, which is a shame since I was so eagerly looking forward to the stuff that was supposed to be released after the “Blueprint” and “Flawless Natural”. RSD claimed it would “really blow your mind”, but I guess it won’t anymore. Shame on all those "piratefags".

To be continued...

Read More

Seduction Industry vs Get Rich Online Industry, Part II

The Salty Droid article I referenced in my last post had an interesting comment by the user sidon:

@RunBrunsonRun, These people and all steal everything from everyone else because they are so freakin clueless about making something right in the first place. See they all think the other guy knows everything they need to know so they all end up doing the same thing over and over and looking such freakin idiots (like right now for Ray, Schirmer, Byrne, Vitale, and on and on). Their life becomes a viscous cycle of copy cat syndrome.

You obviously see the very same happening in the "seduction community". They are all running around like chicken with their head cut off, coming up with new concepts on "attraction", which is all just mental masturbation. One guy copies from the next, trying to integrate it into his "method". Recently someone emailed me that some other "guru" has copied some of my concepts, but about something like that I can only laugh. If the whole method is nonsensical and misleading, then having some sound aspects won't do much good.

Read More