Luke Ford

Here’s my Halloween interview with Neil Strauss.

Victims of "The Game."

When midgets attack.

Dennis Prager Interviews Neil Strauss About Picking Up Women

Openers, negging, proof of social status.

Belinda Goldsmith writes:

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:

Village Voice Screws Up

Gawker reports:

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.

Neil Strauss’s "Rules Of The Game."

This stuff works. It helps men meet women and bed women.

I don’t practice it (I’ve learned many things from it that I’ve incorporated into my life, but I’ve not bedded women through it) but I’m fascinated by it. Who wouldn’t be fascinated by speed seduction? It seems so contrary to nature that shlumpy men could get hot women into bed without paying for it.

This book is the biggest news in the world this week. It has more significance to more people than anything else. Yet the MSM is too stuffy to cover it properly.

Neil Strauss is the king of pop culture writers. His books "The Game" and "Rules of the Game" have changed the world.

"Rules" comes out Dec. 18. Here’s an excerpt:

"When I’m not f—ing, I’m chasing. When I’m not chasing, I’m fantasizing. When I’m not fantasizing, I’m working to achieve status so that I can better attract those I’m f—ing and chasing and fantasizing about. I have had sex with tens of thousands of women in my mind… If I can’t have them in real life, I will have them in my imagination. I am an addict. I am a man."

Every physically healthy man is a sex addict unless they’re particularly moral or busy.

Neil Strauss, aka Style, recommends:

A successful conversation opener should be spontaneous, motivated by curiosity and be interesting to most people.

 

Never ask a question that can be answered with a yes or no answer.

Never start with "I’m sorry", "excuse me" or "pardon me". (Women are attracted to status rather than looks. A man of high status never apologises for his presence).

Try, "you guys look like experts", or "can you help me settle a quick debate", or "let me get your take on this".

A good opener will naturally lead to other questions and topics of conversation.

Beware the common beginner mistake, milking the opener. As soon as you start struggling to keep a dying conversation topic going, you may as well get straight to the point and ask for sex.

If you try hard, you die hard. One of the paradoxes of the game is that it takes a lot of effort to appear effortless.

When talking to a woman, be prepared to walk away and talk to other people at the party. Give her the impression that if she doesn’t act soon, she’ll lose her chance.

Make sure you pay attention to any men in a group you approach, otherwise they will try to end the interaction.

If you think any of the men mistakenly believe you are hitting on them (not that there’s anything wrong with that), mention an ex-girlfriend or a crush on an actress.

From Wikipedia:

Neil Strauss is a Los Angeles-based author and journalist who writes for The New York Times and Rolling Stone, where he is a contributing editor. He is well known for his best-selling book The Game.

Neil Strauss (b.1969) attended a private Chicago high school, the Latin School of Chicago. Strauss later attended Columbia University for two years, as well as Vassar College^[1]. He began his career writing for Ear, an avant-garde magazine, before moving on to the Village Voice, where he did everything from copy-editing to fact-checking^[2]. His fastidiousness paid off when he was invited by Jon Pareles^[3] to become a music critic at The New York Times, where he wrote the influential Pop Life column. He was then invited by Jann Wenner to become a contributing editor at Rolling Stone where he wrote cover stories on Kurt Cobain, Madonna, Tom Cruise, Orlando Bloom, the Wu-Tang Clan, Gwen Stefani and Marilyn Manson. He won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for his coverage of Kurt Cobain‘s suicide for Rolling Stone and his profile of Eric Clapton in The New York Times Arts & Leisure section.

Neil Strauss was a co-writer or ghostwriter of several best-selling books for various celebrities, including The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell with Marilyn Manson, The Dirt with Mötley Crüe, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale with Jenna Jameson, and Don’t Try This At Home with Dave Navarro.

After leaving The New York Times to ghostwrite the memoir of Jameson, Strauss authored The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (Regan Books, 2005), a book about a sub-culture of pick-up artists known as the seduction community. The book has made a month-long appearance in the New York Times bestsellers list in September-October 2005, and reached the #1 position on Amazon.com immediately after its release in the United States.

His follow-up book, a controversial graphic novel How to Make Money Like a Porn Star, came out in 2006 on September 26.

In The Game, Strauss tells the tale of his transformation into "Style," a pickup artist under the tutelage of Mystery. The book charts two years in his life. In addition to documenting his experiences with pickup artists like Mystery and Ross Jeffries, it also describes his interactions with celebrities including Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, and Courtney Love. Strauss writes of his distrust of pickup artists "Tyler Durden" and "Papa," the co-founders of Real Social Dynamics. In promoting his book, Neil appeared on various TV shows, including The View^[4] and ABC Primetime. ^[5]

In September 2007 copies of The Game started circulating with a sticker advertising a new book called The Rules of the Game. The sticker on the book includes a link to Strauss’ website, www.neilstrauss.com. The website, as of October 2007, does not describe the content of the new book however.

In the seduction community, Strauss is known by the pseudonym "Style" (also known as "Chris Powles"). Three years after he had joined the community, he published an article in the New York Times about his experiences^[6]. After publishing the book, Strauss temporarily retired as a pickup artist and settled with a long-term girlfriend Lisa Leveridge, who plays guitar in Courtney Love‘s all-female band The Chelsea.^[7] An article in the Sunday Mirror, however, suggested that Leveridge broke up with Strauss in February 2006 to date Robbie Williams.^[8] A more recent article in Ireland Online seems to indicate that she has broken up with Williams as well.^[9] Strauss denied the Williams rumor, but confirmed his breakup with Leveridge on his mailing list a few months later.

At the end of 2005, Strauss passed his knowledge, which he has titled the "Annihilation Method", to 5 selected followers at a three-day seminar at his California home. He recently sold 375 exclusive copies of the "Annihilation Method" program to those who arrived first on his website, only375.com. Strauss completed an interview with the popular seduction blog The Attraction Chronicles in mid-June 2006 that helped to give members of the community a glimpse into his goals and future influence in the seduction community.^[10] Strauss recently held a private reunion teleconference ( Oct 12, 2007) with the men known as the "375" to see how they’d progressed in their lives. Of course, the number was actually lower than 375, as many people had returned the program, defaulted on payments or left/lost interest in the community. The actual number of copies sold is a closely held secret by Strauss. Some of Neil’s top "375" students went on to publish their own seduction material, such as How to Fuck Strippers^[11], a controversial book, by a former student. Others went on to found their own "new wave" seduction schools, such as Become Alpha, a school later featured in Forbes^[12] and other major publications.

1. ^ http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0106/0106thegame.txt
2. ^ Slushpile interview with Strauss
3. ^ Interview with Strauss on MediaBistro
4. ^ Neil Strauss on The View
5. ^ Neil Strauss on ABC Primetime Live
6. ^ Neil Strauss: "He Aims! He Shoots! Yes!!" The New York Times, January 25, 2004
7. ^ Emma Forrest: "All the right moves." The Observer, September 11, 2005
8. ^ "Exclusive: She’s the 6ft One", SundayMirror.co.uk, February 19, 2006
9. ^ "Robbie Williams: It could be a man for me." Ireland Online, September 11, 2006
10. ^ Neil Strauss Interview
11. ^ https://www.bang-strippers.com/how-to-fuck-strippers-book.html

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on Neil’s book "The Game":

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists^[1] by Neil Strauss is a book about the seduction community. It featured on The New York Times Best Seller List during September and October 2005, again in September 2007,^[2] and was the best selling book on Amazon.com soon after its release.^{[citation needed]}

The book details Strauss’s induction into the community and his rise from "average frustrated chump" to becoming a "master pick-up artist" under his pseudonym, Style. It documents Style’s learning from other pickup artists including Mystery, Ross Jeffries, and David DeAngelo.

The book is not so much a "how to", but more of an autobiographical work on Strauss’ own "rise to fame" within the seduction community. Although the work is largely driven by a seduction or NLP principal theme, other interesting anecdotes and "mini-stories" or subplots abound throughout, one such example is the description of the author’s trip through Trans-Dniester, or the attempt to adopt a new sleep regimen. Interestingly, the book includes a half dozen celebrity (secondary) characters such as Courtney Love, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise and Britney Spears. There are also dozens of pop culture references, including obvious references to Fight Club.

An upcoming companion to The Game, called Rules of the Game by Neil Strauss, contains The Stylelife Challenge and The Style Diaries. The release date for Rules of the Game is December 18, 2007.

Sony optioned the rights to make the book into a film, and comedy director Chris Weitz signed on to helm the project for Columbia Pictures.^[3][4][5] Spyglass Entertainment has since obtained the rights to the film with screenwriter Dan Weiss adapting the book into a screenplay.^[6]

During the November 14, 2007 episode of Loveline, Dr. Drew expressed his displeasure at the book somehow making it into the "Recommended Books" section of Lovelineshow.com, and advised listeners that the he didn’t agree with many of the themes in the book.

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