Here’s my Halloween interview with Neil Strauss.
Dennis Prager Interviews Neil Strauss About Picking Up Women
Openers, negging, proof of social status.
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – For men seeking some romance over the holidays, pickup artist Neil Strauss has some advice — prepare well, because attracting women is not luck but an exact science.
Strauss was named the world’s greatest pickup artist three years running after infiltrating a sub-culture of men known as the "seduction community" for a book "The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists" published in 2005
Now Strauss has returned in time for the holiday party season with a two-volume book, "Rules of the Game: Master the Game in 30 Days," giving wannabe pick-up artists practical guidance on how to approach and attract women.
"Really it is all about being confident and competent, being interesting and interested, and don’t be desperate, needy or reaction seeking," he told Reuters.
"But all those components have a lot of pieces to them and the skill of walking up to a stranger and having them want to talk to you is tough."
From my 2006 archives:
This week’s Voice had a cover story by hotshot young Nick Sylvester reporting that men around New York are using Neil Strauss’s The Game, about pickup artists and their techniques, and that woman are increasingly aware of this and outsmarting their would-be seducers. We know said cover story has been removed from the Voice website. We know that the Voice’s acting editor-in-chief Doug Simmons, to whom we were referred when we called because the paper?s PR director has left the company, hasn?t returned our message. And we?re reliably informed that the newsroom ? such as it is anymore ? knows some sort of big shit is going down but isn?t being told what.
Here?s what we hear/speculate/gather: People quoted in the story claim they never spoke to the reporter. Editors at the paper now believe Sylvester likely fabricated material. Writers at the paper believe this is because young Sylvester ? a former Harvard Lampoon kid who writes criticism for the Voice and indie-music reviews for Pitchfork ? didn?t quite get the whole big-reported-cover-story thing, which he wasn?t really ready for and which Simmons was pushing him to do. Simmons, merely the acting editor, is trying to make a splash so he can get the job permanently. This is not the sort of splash he had in mind. Sylvester may or may not have fainted in Simmons?s office while being berated. And everything in the usually boisterous office is being kept very need-to-know.
Neil Strauss wrote Jenna Jameson’s autobiography.
Amy Sohn writes in Publishers Weekly:
I never dated Neil Strauss, but I dated guys like him. Like many New York women, I have always gone for balding, pale guys because they’re grateful and good in bed. But a few years ago, a distraught Strauss decided he was a loser with women and set about transforming himself into the world’s greatest pick-up artist. The Game is his long, often tedious but hilarious account of how he did it. This ugly-duckling tale will affect different readers in different ways, depending on their degree of cynicism: some will be awed by Strauss’s m?nage-?-trois snowball scene, while others will suspect it was cribbed from a third-rate porno Strauss watched in his pre-macking days.
From the book description:
Hidden somewhere, in nearly every major city in the world, is an underground seduction lair. And in these lairs, men trade the most devastatingly effective techniques ever invented to charm women. This is not fiction. These men really exist. They live together in houses known as Projects. And Neil Strauss, the bestselling author, spent two years living among them, using the pseudonym Style to protect his real-life identity. The result is one of the most explosive and controversial books of the year — guaranteed to change the lives of men and transform the way women understand the opposite sex forever.
On his journey from AFC (average frustrated chump) to PUA (pick-up artist) to PUG (pick-up guru), Strauss not only shares scores of original seduction techniques but also has unforgettable encounters with the likes of Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Heidi Fleiss, and Courtney Love. And then things really start to get strange — and passions lead to betrayals lead to violence. The Game is the story of one man’s transformation from frog to prince — to prisoner in the most unforgettable book of the year.
From US News, an interview with Strauss:
Do the pickup artists really become better people though?
I see people come into it and really blossom; they become charming and cool. Some people get really lost and try to be other people though. They start out as nice guys and end up looking like creeps in feather boas.
Why do men need this book?
Women have the whole culture of Sex and the City and Cosmo to learn this stuff. For men, it’s totally underground. This is leveling the playing field. These guys who weren’t popular in high school can learn to be popular.
From my September 2005 archive:
The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists
Book Soup hosted a full-house (about 25% female, including Neil’s girlfriend) for author Neil Strauss.
I sat in front of two young women who were huge fans of Jenna’s book.
Neil: "How many people here are from the community?"
About 15% of the room raises its hands.
Neil: "Now you know who to watch out for."
Neil reads a poem he wrote in 11th grade about his sexual frustration and fear of women.
He says he’s always been afraid of women. He went through highschool without a girlfriend. Then he went to Vassar college and didn’t get laid once. Then he became a rock critic, but was no more successful.
Neil says Marilyn Manson’s manager remembers how Neil would call from a girl’s apartment while she was out on a date. "I was always the nice guy."
"I toured with Motley Crue. The only person I kissed was Tommy Lee.
"One night I was at Dublins and I started making out with this girl and I felt really good about myself. We separated and she said, ‘Everyone here must think you’re a producer.’ Otherwise there’d be no reason why a girl like that would be making out with a guy like me."
A book editor at Regan Books, Jeremy, told Neil to write a how-to book on how to pick up women. "Guys with weird names like Mystery, Ross Jeffries, were telling people the formula on what it meant to be an alpha male and a way to talk to women that turns them on.
"I went to the online newsgroups and tried to figure out how to fix my problem 15-years too late."
Neil got into the seduction community because he wanted to be more successful with women. He eventually met the pick-up artist Mystery at a work-shop. "He was taking six guys out for four nights in a row and he was going to teach them how to meet women and point out women in clubs and get you to talk to them."
Mystery said you had to bring four things to his workshop: Pen, paper, chewing gum, and condoms.
"Mystery was this 6’5" illusionist in a sports coat and goth kit."
They met at The Standard hotel (8300 Sunset Blvd), which is the epicenter of the seduction world.
Mystery walked in and stole Scott Baio’s girlfriend.
Scott Baio turned to Neil and said, "Is this guy an illusion or is he actually stealing my girlfriend?"
Right then, Strauss knew that this stuff worked.
Neil says there are these seduction communities in every city of the world.
He reads an email from a guy who was running all these seduction techniques on a woman, only to find out 20-minutes later, that she was a prostitute.
"Peacocking" means dressing to attract attention.
One email says that Halloween is a great time to pick up women because they are hyper from all the sugar and it comes naturally to act cocky on that night.
One email guy wonders if he should use the money he spends on seduction courses on Tijuana hookers. When he’s with such a hooker, he pretends she’s his girlfriend and that builds his confidence. When he told one he wanted to lick her a–hole, she said that will be $10 more.
One email guy wonders which is the best anti-depressent to take for jacking off (many drugs make ejaculation difficult) otherwise the guy will be wanking it for 20-minutes and become exhausted.
Neil says his girlfriend was fine with the book — except for 20 pages and he tries to protect her from them.
Luke: "Did you get depressed hanging out with this world?"
Neil: "Before this, I was hanging out with writers and musicians, a very exciting cool world. I never got depressed [with the seducers]. To do this, you have to leave behind your old friends. As Oprah says, when fat people lose weight, their friends don’t like that because your weight made them feel good about their own inadequacies. Friends don’t want you changing."
Many of the seducers such as Neil rented Dean Martin’s old house above Mel’s Diner with Courtney Love.
Neil says that even the best pick-up artists feel scared about approaching women. "The better you get, the more fear there is. The first time, all you have to do is start a conversation and that’s a success."
A tall attractive woman complains that her boyfriend is addicted to using these techniques on women.
Strauss brought up Cameron, a Persian-American salesman by day who teaches classes on how to pick up women (attractadate.com).
Cameron says that the only thing Mystery loves more than women is the sound of his own voice.
"Mystery will do anything he feels like at the time — kidnap your dog, screw your girlfriend, steal your wife, slash your tires and he’ll say, ‘It was my emotional circuitry.’"
Cameron makes fun of Neil’s "I care about you" face.
