The online pick-up community started with a Google group called (A.S.F.), which would later be known as the “Class of 1998.” Men there published, shared, and learned from one another’s experiences in a kind of user-generated textbook that included tips, pick-up lines ,and “field reports” of their experiences. While I was doing The Game, a lot of people were doing the stuff for free. “Do you want me to tell you the truth, or do you want me to promote myself? It’s a sad thing right now and it’s true. He runs his own Stylelife Academy, which for roughly $2,000, supposedly turns average Joes into confident bachelors through coaching and personalized programs. “The difference between then and now,” Strauss says, “ back then it wasn’t commercialized, and now it’s commercialized.” Strauss is now one of the most recognizable pick-up artists in the world and, to one degree or another, responsible for a hyper-masculine dating culture that critics like Jezebel’s Madeleine Davies have described as “despicable” and “soul crushing.” Strauss went from hapless schmuck to Hollywood alpha-stud, all thanks to the tips he gleaned from the pick-up artist (PUA) community, and turned into an international bestseller. “When I look down at my pale, skinny body, I wonder why any woman would want to sleep next to it, let alone embrace it.” “I am far from attractive,” he wrote in the original article. His research started out as a personal endeavour, an attempt to overcome his low self-esteem and even lower luck with women. It’s a little over a decade since Strauss wrote an article for the New York Times spotlighting the burgeoning online seduction community. “I want you to be careful, because I really don’t want you to perpetuate someone’s marketing message.”

“Hear what I have to say overall and the answer will come through in that,” he warns me straight away. But Strauss still sounds as though he’s clicking his fingers and shaking his head from side to side. Unlike a member of the so-called “seduction community” haranguing women in the street, however, I arranged to speak with the author of The Game well in advance.

It’s early morning in the California desert, and Neil Strauss is wearing his bitch shield.įor those unschooled in pick-up artist lingo, the “bitch shield” is a woman’s repellent attitude.

Mystery the game pickup artist