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.
