How Pickup Artists Work

Strauss and "The Game" also introduced the world to Erik von Markovik, better known by his PUA alter ego Mystery. The Canadian magician-turned-pickup artist served as Strauss' primary guru, introducing him to the aforementioned seduction community. As Mystery's personal mythology goes, he spent seven years honing his flirting skills, slowly figuring out what worked and what didn't, whittling it down to a semi-science (and book) called the Mystery Method [source: Belknap]. Due to his prominent role in "The Game," along with a two-season PUA reality show on VH1, Mystery is one of pop culture's most famous members of the seduction community. But he wasn't the first man to make a name for himself by teaching men how to talk to women.

Former comedy writer Ross Jeffries is considered the godfather of the modern-day seduction community. Although Eric Weber's 1970 "How to Pick Up Girls!" is a seminal title in the PUA library, Jeffries planted the seeds for tactics like those featured in "The Game" with his 1988 guide to getting women. Jeffries' "How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed" centers on a concept called Speed Seduction, a type of verbal hypnotism that supposedly amplifies a man's attractiveness. Teaching techniques, such as mirroring a woman's breathing patterns, deepening the voice and employing a host of sample pickup lines, Jeffries essentially encourages men to exert confidence and keep on trucking if a woman rejects an offer.

In 1994, Lewis De Payne, a Ross Jeffries fan, started the online group alt.seduction.fast, and the PUA community was born [source: Clift]. For the first time, men who had been reading and practicing pickup strategies could finally hop on Internet forums and message boards to learn from each other and share tips. Better yet , an online cloak of anonymity whereby men select screen names -- Mystery, Style, Juggler and so forth -- freed PUAs-in-training to share their fears, hits and misses regarding flirting with women. By the early 2000s, when Neil Strauss' editor caught wind of the phenomenon, the seduction community had spawned multiple blogs, Web sites and self-published e-books [source: Clift]. Offline, some groups of PUAs organized into local "lairs" or hangouts where they could talk "targets" and "field reports" in-person and chart out their next pickup ventures. Because when you're a PUA, practice makes perfect -- in theory.

Ross Jeffries' Speed Seduction technique echoes throughout Neil Strauss' "The Game" and Erik von Markovik's "The Mystery Method." Certain nuances might differ, but each share the same premise of teaching hapless men how to seek out, isolate, approach and converse with women. Moreover, most PUA strategies are framed in evolutionary theory to serve as supporting evidence for why women inherently shouldn't be able to resist a PUA's advances [source: George].

In a nutshell, the common PUA line of thought is that women seek out strong-willed, domineering mates who can protect them and their offspring, just like our primitive ancestors did [source: Clift]. Due to the heavy reproductive investment women might make if a one-night stand results in pregnancy, some women might resist PUAs' sexual advances. That's why these men must be so skillful at demonstrating masculine worth. Also, this theoretical foundation of PUAs as a male-by-nature hunting game explains why female PUAs don't exist [source: Harrell].

Von Markovik outlines the best-known PUA game maneuvers in his book "The Venusian Arts Handbook." If a Romeo-in-training goes to a bar looking for a lady to chat up, here's the step-by-step breakdown of the interaction:

Of course, PUAs' slick -- and not-so-slick -- stratagems don't always stick. For that reason, "The Game" also teaches men how to handle rejection, which is arguably as important as finessing their way into a woman's bedroom. How PUAs perceive a woman's refusal to accept their advances also strikes at the heart of why "The Game" is often characterized as misogynistic and unhealthy.

PUAs aren't innate "ladies men," endowed with the physical attractiveness and panache that draws heterosexual women like moths to a burning hot ember. No, PUAs start out as AFCs: average frustrated chumps who have trouble interacting with women [source: Thorn]. "I was so unhappy with myself," Strauss writes in "The Game," summarizing the common plight of the AFC [source: George]. Yet with that displeasure also comes a type of aggression toward women who are perceived as the sexual gatekeepers. Writing in "How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed," Ross Jeffries urges men to go seek and destroy their sexual targets, urging "Let's go to battle, men!" [source: Jeffries].

And when they inevitably lose the battle along the way, PUAs are trained to become desensitized to rejection by transposing the unattractiveness onto the woman. Suddenly, a lovely target idly perched on a barstool becomes a "sleazoid slut" [source: Jeffries]. Or, in the case of the Mystery Method, women are often characterized as nonhuman creatures, such as cats, that can be trained and manipulated [source: Markovik]. Not only does that create protective psychological distancing, but also fosters the notion that women are entirely disposable since they merely represent individual parts to a homogenous mass. At the extreme end of this misogynistic spectrum lies the Gunwitch method, which Strauss describes in "The Game." Coined by a PUA named Gunwitch, the idea is to "escalate physical contact until the woman says no" [source: Strauss]. In January 2011, Gunwitch was also arrested for allegedly shooting a woman in the face [source: Stewart].

Characters like Gunwitch and the PUA premise of "negging," or insulting, a woman in an attempt to sexually entice her have understandably attracted controversy to the seduction community. Neil Strauss in particular has defended PUA training, claiming that its pop culture portrayal has emphasized the misogyny and ignored the "inner game" or self-esteem buildings that it accomplishes. Becoming a master PUA relies on a man accepting and appreciating himself as a person -- rather than being a self-loathing AFC [source: Thorn]. Strauss has even described "The Game" as a socially acceptable form of male self-help since it revolves around sexual pursuit and hyper-masculinity [source: Thorn]. Lesser-known forms of pickup artistry, such as the Authentic Man approach, also direct more focus on building rapport with other men and understanding how to socialize with women, rather than needing to seduce them [source: Decker].

At the end of the day, considering the profits Strauss, Mystery and other PUA gurus have enjoyed, one also has to wonder whether "The Game" is a results-driven dating tool or a money-making device. After all, these men aren't preaching the gospel of "The Game" for free.

J.T. Tran, who goes by the PUA handle Asian Playboy, is something of a specialist. He's spoken at Yale, Harvard, the University of Chicago and elsewhere about how Asian-American men can attract beautiful women -- particularly white women [source: O'Connor]. Beyond motivational speaking appearances, Asian Playboy also organizes seduction "boot camps" for men, delivering the nuts and bolts of pickup artistry in a weekend, in contrast to Neil Strauss' two-year PUA pilgrimage for "The Game." Learning from the master isn't cheap, though. Asian Playboy's tuition costs $1,450 [source: Yang].

Tran isn't the only self-proclaimed ladies' man cashing in on his skills. Master PUAs often host workshops and boot camps, in addition to motivational speaking at conferences and events; some also serve as private dating coaches. Certainly, the heart of the seduction community remains in online forums and members-only sites, but a cottage industry has also emerged for men who desire real-world, hands-on training in pickup artistry. For instance, Jeremy Bonney -- who goes by Soul -- rakes in $1,500 a head for his eight-hour seminars [source: Harrell]. The entrance fee to the Love Systems Superconference, which promises to trot out a laundry list of PUA masters for a two-day seduction extravaganza, runs $3,997 [source: PUA-Conference.com].

For all of the time and money that some men invest into becoming a genuine PUA, is it worth it? Anecdotally, all the related handbooks, message boards and first-person accounts maintain that, yes, the system works. They started out as the average frustrated chump (AFC) and, like Strauss and Mystery, evolved into more confident, domineering Casanovas. Although no empirical studies can verify purported success rates, a recent academic survey indicates that some women are attracted to the PUAs' typically sexism-fueled pursuit. The communications researchers from the University of Kansas found that women who demonstrated sexist attitudes toward other women were more receptive to PUA-style aggressive pursuit [source: ScienceDaily].

Pop culture has also given PUAs a negative reputation. Reality shows and other publicity have emphasized the quirkier aspects of the seduction community -- loud wardrobes, nicknames and PUA lingo -- as well as its latent misogyny. Informing a woman that he's a PUA might earn a man instant rejection rather than an IOI, indication of interest. Opining about PUAs in the Washington Post in 2010, Ezra Klein also observed that online dating may have rendered pickup artistry obsolete [source: Klein]. Who needs to study up on how to walk up to women at a club when you can message one online? At the same time, Klein might not have realized that plenty of PUA message boards are buzzing with how to "sarge" in cyberspace. After all, the object of "The Game" is to never come down with a case of "oneitis"; the only way for Sisyphean PUAs to win is to keep on playing.