Putting the Fun back into Pickup

Given the rather high comic value of the pickup community, I always wondered why there aren't many people openly mocking fun of it and parody it. Admittedly, PUAHate is sometimes great at displaying the nonsense of the scene, but as far as parodies are concerned, not much has been around.

There were some attempts such as the hilarious article "Fast Seduction 101 and wikiHow" on Something Awful, which, among other things ridiculed the bizarre acronyms in use on mASF, and cited from retarded to downright scary posts. (Too bad they didn't cover some of the sickening "rape reports" such Gruenfeld's Hottie Hardcore LMR day2, but such is not funny but tragic and I hope that karma has gotten this a**hole by now.)

The article on Something Awful appeared over three years ago, but it didn't seem to catch on. Back then idiocy was about as rampant as it is nowadays, and Mehow had yet to appear on the scene.

Back then I also wasn't aware that developing an "insider vocabulary" was part of the marketing techniques, and it is actually part of the content of the products of fraudulent Internet marketers. For instance, convicted felon Frank Kern (who cut his teeth in the Internet marketing business by running a pyramid scheme) draws plenty of examples from the seduction industry. But people watching those programs apparently take it too seriously since they have paid serious money for it, or, in case of the US, just took out some more loans.

I also remember a parody of Mystery and Style in which a dude in horrible make up who calls himself "Misery" is teaching some geeks a couple of concepts from Mystery Method. His assistant has the name "Stylus". This was when the Nintendo DS was on the height of its popularity. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the video on Youtube.

What I did find, though, was this hilarious "tribute" to my favorite Polish PUA, Mehow:



I haven't heard anything from Mehow in a while. Rumors were that he wasn't doing that great these days, financially speaking. Then again, has he ever?

But none of this reached the extent of a thorough parody, but recently once guy crossed this threshold. He calls himself OGFurious. At first I wasn't sure whether he really is serious, but thankfully he has this message at the end of his videos:

Here is one of my favourites:



Indeed, unlike the other PUA videos which are unintentionally funny (again, Mehow comes to mind), this is a guy who makes parodies on purpose, and it's not bad at all.

Also check out this one:



Keep smiling. :)

(Thanks to JonniD for telling me about OGFurious).

Read More

Some critical Feedback to "Debunking", Part II

This post is the continuation of a previous one.

The email I mentioned didn’t stop with trying to defend Speed Seduction. It also questioned the role of looks, popularity and money, which I have plenty of times described as the main ingredients of seduction (no surprise, really).

The second thing is...you mention on the blog...also quoting some guy from your forum that started a thread (that had the word "fishing" in it) ...that good looking guys get the hot girls and bad looking guys the not so hot ones. Also you say being overweight is a deal breaker. I'm not trying to contradict you or start a debate or whatever... I'm just trying to make an observation and see what you think about it. Firstly I have a friend who's overweight and does good with women. He's very funny, smart and mature...girls seem to like that. He doesn't get the best looking girls yet he has never had a problem having an abundance of women in his life, both friends and lovers/fuck buddies. There's also a guy on Zan's forum, an overweight politician who does great with women. I also see quite a few overweight guys on the street holding hands with really good looking girls. I also have a friend who's really skinny and not good looking and he gets hot girls all the time. (he has a big dick but ...he's not classically good looking). The idea is ...I see quite a few not so good looking guys with good looking women ...and I can't connect this with your "theory" mentioned on the blog.

I have allowed myself to set in bold what the reason is those guys get laid. I’m really glad the guy who has sent me the email was critical enough to look for a reason beyond “game” that makes girls want to get involved with those apparently otherwise less attractive men.

Let’s just go through it in some more detail:

I have a friend who's overweight and does good with women. He's very funny, smart and mature...girls seem to like that. He doesn't get the best looking girls yet he has never had a problem having an abundance of women in his life, both friends and lovers/fuck buddies.

Yes, it’s sometimes enough if people just really like each other, and if he is “funny, smart and mature” he is in an excellent position. Of course, this doesn’t mean that he will automatically get the most attractive girls but if he is somewhat average then he does well by getting average girls himself. However, I bet that if he bothered to lose weight, he would suddenly be able to get hotter girls.

There's also a guy on Zan's forum, an overweight politician who does great with women.

Ah, politicians, this noble race which pretends to have nothing but the best in mind for society, as long as they can quench their thirst for power and money. Having lobbyists around who bribe you with tens of thousands must be sweet, and if you f*ck things up bad enough and you get voted out of office, you just get a cushy job in the private sector, incidentally in the same industry you were a benefactor of while you were in office. What happened to integrity? No, instead that dude brags about all the girls he is banging. Thankfully he can hide behind a username, but let’s just hope this comes back and haunt him once he gets more influential.

As I see it, politicians are inherently corrupt scum, up to the highest levels --- just think of “Dubya” and his cronies like Cheney, or former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who supported a major infrastructure project by Gazprom, then the third biggest company in the world, and, surprise, surprise, was hired as an “adviser” after his tenure.

Because politicians are inherently corrupt, they have no problem accepting bribery or, “speaking fees” for tens of thousands of dollars, and they are amazing liars too. So, even if all their money and power would not get them laid, they’d surely tell you with a blank face that, no, no, no, of course they never bill their expense accounts for hookers and escorts. No, never. It’s impossible. Instead, they go out and pick up girls at Starbucks, and probably shove a wallet filled with “Benjamins” into the face of a malnourished illegal immigrant worker.

I also see quite a few overweight guys on the street holding hands with really good looking girls.

As long as you don’t know more about those guys, you don’t know what they have going for them. It could be money, power, big dicks. Heck, those might be the colleagues of that corrupt scum bag of a politician for all you know, and the girls escorts, or their daughters.

I also have a friend who's really skinny and not good looking and he gets hot girls all the time. (he has a big dick but ...he's not classically good looking).


Let me spell that for you again: he has a BIG DICK. Yes, having a big dick is a huge benefit. Forget about the “size doesn’t matter, it’s what you do with it” nonsense. Besides, I never got why having a big cock would mean that you automatically have no clue how to use it.

This reminds me of one of my former girls who commented on my sizable cock while she was blowing me for the first time:

Her: You’ve got a nice one.
Me: So, you like ‘em big, girl?
Her (laughs): No, I want them small and really thin so that I don’t feel anything.

…and continued. Yes, it hurt when I entered her but it seems to have been worth it. While I am vain enough to tell myself that I get laid because I am good looking, the size of my cock also plays a role.

The idea is ...I see quite a few not so good looking guys with good looking women ...and I can't connect this with your "theory" mentioned on the blog.

Now you can. It's often very obvious why guys get laid. But thanks a lot for this interesting email, I've enjoyed commenting on it.

Read More

Some critical Feedback to "Debunking"

The email responses to “Debunking the Seduction Industry” keep coming, despite having released the book months ago. Only very few replies are critical, though, and in this post I will discuss one, since it basically covers everything the few guys wrote to me who objected to the content of my free ebook were saying:

Firstly I checked your "Is the PU industry a sham industry" post on mASF, there were quite a few replies to that post (I'm not a mASF member, I just came across your post via your blog). You said in the book that you didn't know of anyone who had success with speed seduction, yet I've seen lots of guys on that thread saying speed seduction is the best bla bla bla (the contrary to what you said). I don't really know what to believe, I tend to think Ross is not getting laid as much as he says, his system is useless and his testimonials are fake...but that's just me. Anyway,the question is how did you come up with that statement in the book that you don't know anyone who got success with SS when guys replied to your thread saying the contrary?

You say that there are “lots of guys on that thread saying speed seduction is the best”, but of course you have to take into account who is making those claims. Unfortunately, for your argument, you are referring to some of the most discredited individuals on mASF.

But allow me first a remark on the nature of the so-called “Masterminds” forum on mASF. This sub-forum was created after some people voiced concerns about the rapidly decreasing quality of the forum, which continues to this day. Formhandle also hoped that some other “big guns” would join in but the few that showed up made complete fools out of themselves, such as HuddersfieldMark and BigWillyStyle, and basically got laughed off the forum.

However, this doesn’t mean that all is well and good on that board. You basically received an invitation if you managed to get a “good” ranking by other mASF users, and this basically means that as long as you didn’t piss anybody off and wrote the occasionally field report, you were shooed in, which included a couple of guys that had barely lost their virginity.

This background allows you to put into perspective the claims of the two most vocal supporters of Speed Seduction in this thread. The first one, Mankite, does, from what you can deduce from his posting history, get laid rather infrequently, and if he does, he somehow manages to backward rationalize it by saying that he was using Speed Seduction. For instance, he has written a “lay report” in which he seduces a girl that was listening to a small solo performance (!) he has given, completely neglecting the fact that just holding a music instrument on a stage is pretty much enough to get laid --- and then you read that he was “pacing” and “hypnotizing” the girl with his instrument.

Further, I have reason to believe that Mankite does not get laid by hot girls. Evidence are his “I’m in love” posts which show up about once a year whenever he’s managed to bang what he considers a hottie, and makes sure that everyone else also gets that impression.

The other guy, Baddog, was a running gag on mASF. He had the shtick of posting Youtube videos with no explanatory text at all and a title like “Best example of X”, claiming that this meant that he was teaching us seduction via the Socratic method. Later, he went on to develop an “open source” seduction method called A.C.E.D., which was the most vague “method” I have ever seen. It took a few months, but eventually many of the other “Masterminds” ganged up and told him publicly what they think of him. Eventually, he was banned from the Masterminds sub-forum and, as far as I know, he hasn’t posted ever since, because it was such a blow to his ego.

Let’s have a look at some of his claims: he claims to have had nine “lays” that year (and this was in August), including --- red flag --- “a 4 month dry spell earlier this year where LMR was my middle name because I was re-calibrating without SS”. At this point your conclusion can only be “whacko”. But the very next sentence is: “I COULD get laid several times a WEEK if I used SS like before, and was so inclined, but I’ve abandoned it for.... (get THIS!) ETHICAL REASONS.” Sure you have.

Whenever somebody tells you how many times he could (!) get laid, run for the hills. Oh, and surely you have read this line of Baddog, too: “ It’s taken me 2 years of 6 to 8 hours of study or field work PER DAY to get to the point I’m at.” Later on, he writes, “Typically I'll open at least 20 or 30 people, maybe over 10 or 15 sets in an evening.”

Hahahahaha.

Dear email writer, if Baddog’s claim that he really has invested 4300 to 5800 hours (!) is true, approached as many girls as he does, and all that he can show for this effort is about one “lay” a month despite the absurd amount of time he puts in, then this guy does nothing but discredit Speed Seduction. If you then actually bothered to look up the “lay reports” Baddog has posted, you will find that he eventually stumbled upon a horny girl and then thinks that he now has to use Speed Seduction to get her, i.e. to him it is inconceivable that girls can just be horny, which then leads him to deceive himself by stating that she got horny by using "Speed Seduction". One wonders why the other dozen or so girls were immune to those superb techniques, though.

What Baddog does is applying the same faulty reasoning I have outed in “Debunking the Seduction Community”, when I was stating that "game" is nothing but backwards rationalizing.

I could go on about Baddog, but this should be enough.

The email of the guy didn’t stop here, but this post does. Stay tuned for the second part!

Read More

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

The Industry further degrades

I consider the websites in the pickup/seduction industry to be on the same level as the oh-so-renowned business men trying to sell you techniques that make your cock grow, last longer, cure hair loss, or get you abs within days with zero work at all. This has been mocked by me to some extent already, but the Industry is not sleeping. Quite the contrary, it seems to be a on a roll.

Read on for what I recently got via "Formhandle", the guy running fastseduction.com, home of mASF. The following advert was included in a newsletter and it shows in what a sad state the "community" is. Sure, after tricking people of IQs at borderline-retardation levels into taking bootcamps, you might just sell them some other crap as well as long as they have their wallet open.

#### THAT SHING THAT MIGHT BE SHITTY ####

Oh, yeah, and a reminder about that thing I'm NOT recommending...

It's called Superman Stamina, I've not actually got my hands on it

so I can't really review it, so for all I know it's a total turd

of a product.  Still, since you're probably hearing about it from

other places, I've got to point you to it:

http://www.fastseduction.com/superman-stamina-might-be-total-shit

Get the freebies they'll be emailing.  I think there's an article

behind the page that link leads to, I don't actually remember.

Read More