The self-declared ‘Mystery‘ treats courtship as an interaction between a man and a finite automata, the woman. His eponymous method — the Mystery Method in promotional materials and MM to its adherents — essentially instructs adopters on how to crack a woman’s instinctual suitable-mate, pattern matching machinery to elicit (false-) positives. The ad copy proclaims it to be a brilliant self-help book and it is often billed as a way for shy, nice guys to get girlfriends. Ostensibly it is — in practice it’s not. This book is not about getting girlfriends. It’s about substituting sexual frustrations caused by lack of sex with sexual gluttony.
If you are, or at least believe yourself to be, a good man, acquiring the tools to overcome your own social phobias and a woman’s strong, evolutionarily-endowed defences is both self-improvement and mutually advantageous. Unfortunately, I doubt that this group dominates his readers. Instead, I assume the majority of his customers are men lured into reading his books because doing so offers the promise of getting laid by any attractive woman that falls under their gaze. (Even in Neil Strause’s best-seller, The Game, some of the PUAs seemed border-line sociopathic.) The subtitle of the book is devoid the ethical girlfriend pretence: “How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed.” The language used between the covers is more telling: women are (Hot Babe) HB7’s, HB8’s, HB9’s, and HB10’s. People buy it because they want to turn the fantasy world of pornography into their reality.
I am not saying this book is without value. On the contrary, I find no fault in the efficacy of his methods in the context of cracking women nor do I think his ideas on “social dynamics” are erroneous. From an evolutionary perspective, his narrative is plausible, even probable. After years of what appears to be meticulous study, he impressively reverse-engineered women. Unfortunately, the few good, albeit shy, men admitted into his realm, if they are astute readers, are probably perverted by their education. The original goal of finding a girlfriend turns to an addiction of cracking women — to “The Game.”
Mystery might counter that this is justified because it is natural. It is merely the product of evolution. If it wasn’t his readers, it would be the guy who is naturally manipulative or happened to accidentally posses or learn social procedures that get him laid. However, something viewed as natural or an artifact of evolution (or history) is neither moral nor beyond morality. Society enforces certain protocols to correct some of our biological quirks and inadequacies. As Mystery says, “the human being is an out-dated model.” Thankfully, our ability to share knowledge and socialize has supplemented our operating systems. Cracking our biological systems violates our socially constructed protocols. It is blatant manipulation. He admits his theories are based on a woman’s evolutionary drive to find a man that ensures her survival, while in the next breath he explains how this can help you get between her legs. ”Hacking” (i.e. in the colloquial sense that pisses off proper hackers) was cool at age 13; hacking is not cool at age 25 — it’s criminal.
I find no fault in youthful promiscuity. Oscar Wilde could have written a novel about my college years. It was part of my development as a person and I have (almost) no regrets. However, I always had some recognition as to the vapid nature of what I was doing. Mystery and his pickup hucksters want to nullify that socialized feeling, feeling themselves justified by our selfish genes and tribal heritage. Do there techniques work? Sure, but at a heavy cost. Years later, you might finding yourself watching The Blue Lagoon on Starz at 3:00am, realizing that you haven’t felt the feelings that the movie depicted — intimacy with consequence — since before “correcting” yourself.
…And you’ll realize you made a mistake.
P.S. I suppose it seems hypocritical of me to lambast Mystery and his cohorts. I have obviously read their material. However, I consider myself to be a hacker: I enjoy learning for the sake of learning. Whether it be an exposition on syntax-directed translation or pre-Raphaelite painters, I am curious. It could be correctly observed that understanding leads to, or is tangled with, exploration and exploration can lead to exploitation and corruption. I offer no counter-argument. In my case, I only hope that the temptation is attenuated due to previous experiences (i.e. college promiscuity) and increasing maturity.
P.P.S. I should also point out that I think Mystery — the media superstar of the pick-up artists — actually seems like a good guy. Sadly, I think he may be condemning himself to the second circle of hell, figuratively speaking. I think he genuinely believes that he is helping shy but good men in his workshops. I just think his readers — and best students — are probably predominately horny assholes turned oversexed assholes. Adverse selection is a bitch.
Even Neil stated in his main book “the Game” the mystery is a mentally ill person but he’s great at picking up. That alone is enough to discover that one should learn how to pickup or how to get over oneself’s anxiety but not how to live. There are too many people isolating themselves and this community is just a method to get a social life (again).
Neil Strauss is a good example how good it can work out who as far as I know lives happily in this 2nd long-term relationship, Mystery is the worse one.
Talking only about Mystery describing the pickup community is the same as you would make the “hacker” community equal i. e. to Bruce Schneier ( bad example but you know what I mean).
Years later, you might finding yourself watching The Blue Lagoon on Starz at 3:00am, realizing that you haven’t felt the feelings that the movie depicted — intimacy with consequence — since before “correcting” yourself.
The reason most of these guys get into the Mystery Method in the first place is that they’re not getting intimacy–with or without consequence–so even in your scenario where they don’t eventually tire of the game and seek intimacy, most of them are still better off. At least they’ve gotten laid.
I haven’t personally read about the MM (I just stick to the FastSeduction101 Player’s Guide, which is free and chock full of excellent information); but I do know you are drawing pointless conclusions. Unless you were a student of the MM, then I doubt you have the authority to group other MM partisans into the shallow-oversexed-perverted barn.
What is “a good man” anyway? A man that behaves according to the precepts ironed into him through the socialization process? Is he a man that is true to himself? Honors his instincts and strives for the apotheosis of his psyche, his mind?
I would argue that a true man, not a good man, is the final order of the day.
You cripple yourself by assuming the traditional stance, the stance that says “boys have girlfriends and girls have boyfriends”. That stance is a poor attempt to assuage the feminine and masculine complexes of the psyche that have not been reclaimed/integrated.
Integration of the feminine (for a man) has always resulted in the dissipation of any need to “have a girlfriend”, women become “friends with whom I have sex”.
PUA is about analyzing how women project their masculine component onto men and utilizing it. There is nothing wrong at all with giving a woman the emotional night of her life. Fucking her over is a different story, that generally means you’ve got some unresolved mommy issues if you can’t treat another female human with respect.
There’s too much to write in one comment on this topic, if you want to continue any further discussion with me you’ve got my email.
You guys are all huge nerds.
If a woman goes out of her way to make us respond to her without butting into existing relationships or trying to scam us, just for the purpose of winning us over, is she an unethical pick up artist? Or giving us exactly what we want?
I know I want a woman who takes care of herself and not one who shows up in over sized leggings and an old shirt. I like it if she made an effort to understand me. I like it if she’s aware of male/female interactions to a degree where she’s able to play with the situation we’re in and just have fun and get me to have fun…
So that’s what I try to offer in return. The various PUA’s offer a treasure trove of information on how to do this.
The suggestion that educating yourself about the dating game will lead to the inability to experience intimacy is not backed up by logic or experience as far as I can tell.
The bottom line is that any guy can fix himself up to a degree where he can get together with a wonderful woman and be a man. In the world today most men don’t have a clue about how to be a man and suffer greatly because of it.
Or maybe, you know, self-described “logical, rational males” can learn to relate to women as human beings, instead of seeing us as programs or machines to be “cracked.” We know when you see us as nothing but gatekeepers to teh poosay, believe me. I have no use for such men.