The underground pickup drama
I've been waiting to blog about this and I am sure the landscape of pickup / seduction / dating workshop will change quite a bit in the coming months. This is more than just a fall-out from the VH1 show. If any self-proclaimed pickup doesn't get his act together, not only will s/he miss the boat on this round, but the likelihood of staying in business is very slim. Sure, there's a noticeable price increase in almost all workshops; but this impending change might raise the barrier of entry for many self-proclaimed gurus.
There was always Ross Jeffries doing his thing until Mystery turned the whole KJ world upside down. In came the marketing genius of David D, restoring the balance back to the KJ world with his one after another boring lecture. The first failure of Mystery was the TD/RSD split away from Mystery while taking away Mystery's method. In the land far-far-away, there was Juggler doing his thing in Michigan. Out came Style's book, which he capitalized on with his "final" bootcamp, his academy, more books,... who knows what drivel he will come up with next?! Finally, Mystery's VH1 show. Right before the taping of the show, there was yet-another-split between Mystery and "his" company, Savoy. In the meantime, RSD managed to survive the fall-out from Style's book and returned bigger and stronger than ever.
The rising tide initiated by Style's book lifted all boats. It opened up a whole new market that even David D failed to do. There was a huge feeding frenzy. Like any market that expanded, there's an inevitable contraction... which results in merger/acquisition and of course, many quitting because they failed to carve out their market shares. In camp one, there's Mystery, Style, and potentially, Ross Jeffries, and David D. The opposing camp, there's Savoy, BradP, and Badboy. Due to the existing bad blood between Style and RSD, looks like RSD is joining into camp two. There are a few stragglers: namely, Pickup101 vs. Sean Newman/Messenger, Juggler/Charisma Arts, and a few others.
This is just a natural history of any emerging market. As it matures, it usually ends up with only 2-3 competing conglomerates. There are still many undecided factors. Where will the barrier to entry be? How much of the market has yet to be tapped? If David D is going back to his marketing root, is this a sign that the pickup market has been tapped out? Will there be any niche markets? How will this market expand and reach the masses that Style, David D, and Mystery failed to do?
Just as there is no Santa Claus, this isn't a men's movement. It's just another self-improvement craze / fad that will fade away with time. If you actually spent money on this, you've been had. This was the genius of marketing and you were just a pawn. How to avoid all this bullshit?! Go out and talk to people, learn to interact with others before you even dream of getting any girl, any where, any time.
6 comments:
But the immutable politically incorrect laws of female psychology that work will still be around and much more easily accessible than in the pre-PUA era, no?
I don't think men are going to swallow the Oprah/feminist lines on how to get women like they did before all this stuff came out.
You are mistaken in believing that this is new. It isn't. People have going to bars to pickup girls and girls have been out having drunken sex since alcohol is available. Again, nothing new.
You said:
Quote{ If you actually spent money on this, you've been had. This was the genius of marketing and you were just a pawn. How to avoid all this bullshit?! Go out and talk to people, learn to interact with others }end quote
Bullshit - absolute nonsense. And this is awful, awful advice!
My purchase of David Ds DYD three years ago was the best thing I ever bought in my entire life.
It opened up a new world and enriched the quality of my life over and over many, many times.
You clearly do not know what you are talking about.
I could talk to people - in fact I was so good at it I was hugely popular and I had many, many friends and I could effortlessly strike up a conversation with anyone and have parties back in my house with an army of people I just met that night in the club.
I could talk to anybody about anything very easily. Talking to people is easy, natural and fun. It is not exactly difficult now, is it?
Being able to sleep with beautiful girls when I felt like it , well that was another matter entirely.
For learning this skill I will be eternally grateful to the pick up community and yes, the products that arose from it as they clearly work.....very effectively indeed.
Juiceterry, you obviously started at a different place than most weirdos in the community.
If you were that popular, then you didn't know how to escalate or connecting with a woman in such a way to make her want you sexually.
There are plenty of fun party guys who don't get laid. I might blog about that in the near future.
Hey Be1man,
Even though I can't really deal with the guys in the community anymore, I don't think you give the community enough credit.
There are some really desperate guys out there. If a guy works in nerdy fields, he may not come into contact with very many women or even with guys who are any good with women. The women he does come into contact with are all taken (feminists won't admit it, but a certain kind of intelligence confers a ton of value on women for men, so much so, that it's practically a luxury good!) A lot of the social structure that would have encourage pairing up just doesn't exist anymore. I'm thinking not only of girls partying into their late 20's, but also nice nervous girls who are afraid to date and whose family doesn't pressure them to find a guy. (If there are guys to timid to approach, think about how scared girls must be. There is an element of physical risk to dating, and a if a girl is unfamiliar with dating and is around low-value guys, there's a very real chance that she'll be stalked. Of course, there's also awkwardness).
But if there's a bunch of surplus dudes, there's got to be a bunch of surplus girls somewhere. And most of them are grinding away at silly office jobs. They probably don't have many guy friends, maybe some gay boyfriends. They have girly interests. Maybe they go out to bars on weekends or go to city outdoor events every once in a while. They may be attractive, but not so attractive that they get hit on by quality guys routinely. Or if they do, they simply do not offer enough to get commitment. They wonder why guys don't commit, but don't realize that the guys who have their act together enough to go out of their way to hit on them and jump through their hoops are going to be out of their league. These girls are probably the dating market equivalent of the AFC guys. And they'll never meet the AFC guys.
I guess what I'm talking about is assortative mating which simply won't work if there aren't enough girls who are similar to guys or if guys who have similar value in the dating pool never meet.
The community provides instruction for the AFC guys to meet those girls. The idea that social skills and pick-up can be learned is also a huge one. That and the fact that guys can meet other guys on the internet to try to pick-up girls is also a huge advance. (Anecdotally, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of guys out there who are willing to do what it takes to learn pick-up. I work in a field where they are a lot of hard-up guys. In three years in the community, I've talked to exactly two outside friends about the community. One of them who was pretty hard-up became a standard-issue community creep who talks a good game but can't close. The other is the best pick-up artist I know who is good enough to field-test and judge the community's advice.) Hell, even something as straightforward as Tyler's 25 points is a revelation to a lot of guys.
The major problem with the community is that it attracts a ton of creepy guys. (You should do a typology of community guys. Types I've seen: the latent homosexual (probably about 25% of the community); the fat/ugly guy who just needs to clock a couple of months at the gym before he tries peacocking; Peter Pan, the middle-aged guy who could probably do okay with girls his own age but really really wants to date 21 year olds; the last guy on earth, a guy so completely clueless that he can't do anything right; the hard-up techie; the new guy in town; and then the just plain off guy (these are often good-looking guys who girls and more socially adept guys stay away from because they're creepy but who rise in the community because the other socially awkward guys can't tell that they're off and because they pull attractive girls with emotional or alcohol problems). I found that I can deal with the techies and the last guys on earth. When I meet someone in the community who outwardly seems really normal, I know that they're unspeakably fucked up.) It's a mindfuck being around these community guys. And it's even worse to be ostracized by them.
This doesn't change the fact that the community offers valuable insights. In fact, it might become more normal as it becomes more professionalized. It might be better for a bunch of guys to pay a reputable coach to go out with them and provide in-field advice than for a self-appointed guru who is only in this for personal glory to go out and lead discussions of game.
As far as guys who have social lives and don't get laid, it's easy for a guy with some social skills to have a social life with guys. But it might be a social life that doesn't involve women and if it involves women, it may not involve being seen as sexual by them. The great usenet theorist of game, the Danimal (do a google groups search) has written extensively about this.
Thanks for reading this too long ramble.
Good ramble. I think the plight of AFC girls is partly what led to so much resentment against guys.
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