PDF Summary:The Game, by Neil Strauss

Author Neil Strauss had always assumed that it took natural charisma and confidence to pick up women—and that he simply didn’t have it. That all changed when he discovered the world of seduction and pickup artists (PUAs), a community of men who exchanged tips and advice for seducing women.

Over the course of two years, Neil learned pickup lines, approach tactics, and even hypnosis from the top PUAs in the seduction community. Neil started picking up, dating, and having sex with more women than he’d ever imagined possible. But, over time, Neil realized that mastering the game wasn’t about memorizing lines and routines in order to get women into bed—it was about developing inner confidence.

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Style had begun to view women as benchmarks of his pickup ability, and his interactions with women had become scripted and strategic, substituting for genuine connection.

Meeting the Gurus

As Style refined his seduction skills, he continued meeting the various gurus and integrating their teachings into his skill set:

• Juggler advocated tactics that were bold and unorthodox. For example, he told his students to get over their fear of picking up women by calling random numbers from the phone book and asking for movie recommendations. Juggler also encouraged PUAs-in-training to make their pickups more challenging by telling women that they worked as garbage men or drove old cars.
• David DeAngelo developed and promoted a strategy called cocky funny, which was a hybrid of arrogance and humor. DeAngelo coined cocky funny when he discovered that women were more receptive to him if he relentlessly teased them in a playful way.
• Steve P. and Rasputin worked together as a hypnotist duo, but they also had impressive individual credentials: Steve P. allegedly got women to pay him up to a thousand dollars to have sex with him, and Rasputin performed hypnotic sexual engineering, in which he framed sex as a privilege for the woman.
• Rick H.’s simple seduction philosophy centered around two rules: Don’t be nice, and never give a direct answer. For example, if a woman asks about your job, give a facetious answer like a white slave trader, professional hopscotch competitor, or cigarette lighter repairman.
• David X oozed alpha male confidence. He told men not to care what women think, to remember that they were more important than the women they were picking up or dating, and never to lie to women. David X was known for dating multiple women (known in the community as harem management) without lying to any of them about it.

Getting Too Deep in the Game

By this point, Style was far beyond merely observing the community for his writing assignment—he was a full-fledged member and a well-respected pickup artist (PUA).

He was enjoying his new powers—especially after so many years of feeling completely inadequate around women. But the better Style got at the game, the more automatic his interactions with women became. Learning to seduce women didn’t teach Style how to connect with them.

One day, Style got an unexpected visit from his college friend, Dustin, who had always been comfortable, confident, and successful at picking up women—but now, Dustin informed Style that he was living in a yeshiva and abiding by a vow of celibacy. Dustin had recently realized that he’d been basing his self-worth on his success with women, so he turned to a life of God. Dustin had come to ask Style’s forgiveness for glamorizing a corrupt womanizing lifestyle.

However, Style didn’t see Dustin’s lifestyle or the seduction game in general as corrupt. Style argued that the game hadn’t just helped him pickup women, but it also had made him a better person: He’d begun exercising, improved his diet, become more confident, and learned how to interact with people more effectively.

Training the Next Generation of PUAs

Style wasn’t alone—just about every student who took Mystery’s workshop started dressing better and carrying himself with more confidence.

The seduction game was based on the premise that everything standing between you and picking up a woman was within your control. Being successful with women had nothing to do with good looks or innate ability—men simply had to correct bad habits and learn new ones, from their posture to their clothes.

However, as Style and Mystery gave their students the same tips, techniques, and lines—workshop after workshop—they didn’t realize that they were inadvertently creating clones of themselves, instead of coaching men to be their best selves and helping them develop an inner confidence.

The Community’s Downturn

Style began to notice that many of the men in the community had become addicted to picking up women, and they were constantly determined to improve their game. Some men had left their jobs and quit school in order to spend more time sarging.

Style was no exception: He’d all but stopped taking writing assignments, and he was neglecting his family and friends outside of the community.

A New Generation Emerges in the Pickup Community

While Style’s life balance was far off-kilter, all the time and energy he’d dedicated to the game hadn’t been in vain: Style had inadvertently become a guru. Flocks of eager young men—some still in high school—were constantly joining the community. Many of them had read Style’s posts religiously and looked up to him as an idol.

These young, new members didn’t just want seduction technique, but also day-to-day advice, such as where to apply to college. In every aspect of life, they wanted to be like Style and other top PUAs.

Tyler Durden Hits the Community by Storm

Among the young, aspiring PUAs was a 22-year-old college student with the alias Tyler Durden. Tyler had read thousands of pages of archived posts on the seduction message boards, and he relentlessly emailed Style for tips.

Tyler was also active posting on the message boards, proposing that new members of the community get over their shyness with women by physically running into women or playfully hitting them with something soft. Tyler’s brazenness and constant presence on the seduction message boards helped him become well-known within the community.

When Style was unavailable to wing Mystery’s upcoming workshops, Mystery asked Tyler and another young PUA, named Papa, to step in as his wings. They eagerly accepted Mystery’s invitation.

Tyler Durden and Papa Go Rogue

Mystery brought Tyler and Papa to Europe for several workshops Mystery had scheduled there. The demand for the workshops was growing so much that, when Mystery had to fly home, he left Tyler and Papa in Europe to lead a few more workshops in his absence.

Papa and Tyler were supposed to simply continue teaching the Mystery Method, but, one night, they went off-script and invented a new technique, called AMOGing (AMOG is an acronym for alpha male of the group).

Tyler posted about AMOGing on the message boards, and the tactic took off. Soon, Tyler and Papa launched a company and offered their own in-field workshops. They called their company Real Social Dynamics—which was just one word off from the name of Mystery’s seminars, Social Dynamics.

Mystery felt betrayed: Not only had Tyler and Papa used his workshops as a platform to develop and promote AMOGing, but they’d also created a competing business with a nearly identical name.

Launching Project Hollywood

Style began to realize that he’d been focusing too much on memorizing pickup routines and simply picking up women at clubs. He now saw that the real purpose of the game was in creating a lifestyle that was interesting, exciting, and fulfilling. Men with that lifestyle exuded confidence and vibrancy that naturally attracted women.

Style was ready to graduate from sarging and build this lifestyle. He decided it was time for him and Mystery to create Project Hollywood, which would be a seduction headquarters.

Style and Mystery found a mansion in Hollywood—Dean Martin’s former home—and they planned to use it as a home base for PUAs, a venue for parties and seminars, and a meeting place for Mystery’s workshops. Since they didn’t want to take on the risk of putting their names on the lease for a massive party house, they got Papa to sign the lease (despite the fact that he’d recently betrayed Mystery).

Papa immediately took on the role of manager of Project Hollywood. He had ambitions of renting the mansion out for movie premieres, after-parties, and corporate events. Instead of using his game to pick up women, Papa began using it to network for Project Hollywood.

Project Hollywood hit the ground running: The first party drew 500 people. Soon, similar seduction venues were popping up around the world—in Austin, San Francisco, Sydney, and Perth.

Tyler Durden Joins Project Hollywood

Without approval from the rest of the housemates, Papa invited Tyler Durden to move into Project Hollywood.

Style had a gut instinct that Tyler couldn’t be trusted—and he soon found out he was right:

1. Tyler told Style that he sometimes pretended to be Style (more accurately, Neil Strauss, a Rolling Stones writer) in order to impress women.
2. Tyler had created a new technique, in which he undercut fellow PUAs. For example, while talking to a group of women, Tyler would point out Mystery from across the club and say that Mystery loved attention and often made rude comments. This made it impossible for Mystery to approach that group with his own routines and negs (backhanded compliments).
3. Tyler had invented a technique called Stylemogging, in which he imitated Style’s phrases, mannerisms, and habits. Since Style was a top PUA, Tyler studied him incessantly in order to understand what made Style so successful. Tyler then broke down everything Style did into a formula and taught it to workshop students.

Style saw Stylemogging as a symptom of a larger problem within the community: Men were becoming robotic pickup clones who were obsessed with the game. They developed no real interests or hobbies outside the community, and, as a result, they had no real substance beneath the rote pickup lines and routines.

The irony was that the purpose of the techniques were to make men appear interesting, but their obsession with the game prevented them from being interesting, which was the most effective way of attracting women.

Project Hollywood Starts to Fracture

Tension was building at Project Hollywood.

Tyler Durden and Papa were still running their business, Real Social Dynamics, and now they were using Papa’s room as the business headquarters. Papa had an unknown number of people sleeping on the floor in his room, bathroom, and closet—and they were all part of the Real Social Dynamics team.

At the same time, Mystery was still operating his own seduction business. As a result, the house became split between the two competing businesses.

Additionally, Mystery quickly became serious with a woman named Katya, and she moved into the house. However, when their relationship fell apart, Katya got involved with another housemate. The love triangle caused constant drama in the house.

Style reflected on the optimism he’d had when they started Project Hollywood, that it would be a place where the men in the community could come together for self-improvement and life enrichment beyond sex and romance. That dream was now shattered by the harsh reality that the house dynamics were breeding instability and dysfunction.

The End of an Era in Project Hollywood

The very concept of Project Hollywood—as a place for men who dedicated their lives to chasing women to coexist peacefully—had been flawed all along. It was overly optimistic to assume that they wouldn’t fight over women, their competing businesses, or their egos.

The tensions of living with business competitors and with his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend ultimately pushed Mystery to move out of Project Hollywood. Despite the dysfunction at Project Hollywood, he planned to move to Las Vegas and launch Project Vegas.

As more new people moved in to join the Real Social Dynamics team, more of the original Project Hollywood housemates began to move out. Style found himself living with strangers—and, oddly, they all blatantly ignored him.

Style eventually discovered that Papa and Tyler Durden had instructed everyone in the house to freeze Style out, in order to push him to move out. Papa and Tyler had twisted the principles of social dynamics that they’d learned for seduction in order to manipulate people to do what they wanted. In this case, they wanted to make Project Hollywood a headquarters and dormitory for Real Social Dynamics.

Style had known it was time for him to get out of Project Hollywood’s toxic environment, and this was the final straw.

Style Exits the Community

During Style’s two years in the seduction community, he’d learned pickup techniques from top gurus, enjoyed unprecedented success with women, and—most importantly—developed inner confidence.

Style’s newfound confidence had helped him get into a relationship with Lisa, with whom he felt a deeper connection than he’d ever had with a woman.

Lisa was so confident that none of Style’s seduction techniques had worked on her—in fact, they’d almost ruined his chances with her. Ultimately, he had to toss his lines and routines out the window and be himself in order to win Lisa over.

However, even though Style’s pickup tactics had pushed Lisa away, Style recognized that, before joining the community, he wouldn’t have had the confidence he needed to pursue her.

So much of the game was artificial—the scripted routines, the peacocking outfits, even the aliases—but mastering the game had helped Style develop the inner confidence to be himself. Style could now graduate from the community.