The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

Author	Neil Strauss
Language	English
Publisher	ReganBooks
Publication date	September 2005
Publication place	United States
Pages	452 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-06-055473-8
OCLC	61464341
Dewey Decimal	973.7/447092 22
LC Class	HV6584 .S77 2005
Followed by	Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (also known as The Game: Undercover in the Secret Society of Pickup Artists) is a non-fiction book written by investigative reporter Neil Strauss as a chronicle of his journey and encounters in the seduction community.

The book was featured on the New York Times Bestseller List for two months after its release in September 2005, reaching prominence again in 2007 during the broadcast of the VH1 television series The Pickup Artist, which was hosted by Mystery, Strauss's mentor in the book. In its original published hardcover format, the book was covered in black leather and bookmarked with red satin, similar to some printings of the Bible. Despite the reputation that The Game has gained as an exposé on the seduction community, it was primarily written as an autobiographical work.

Summary

Strauss stumbles across the community while working on an article. Intrigued by the subculture, he starts participating in the online discussion groups, mainly out of frustration with his own romantic life. As he becomes more and more involved in the romantic community, Strauss attends a bootcamp conducted by a man identified only as “Mystery.” The bootcamp consists of Strauss and other participants approaching women, and then Mystery and his counterpart Sinn giving them corrective advice on their behaviors, body language, and what to say. Strauss learns habits that, as he sees it, are often basic — and should have been taught to him by society in the first place.

The book then narrates the journey of how Strauss goes through the stages of becoming a pickup artist, description about members of the community and how Strauss befriends many of them, particularly Mystery. A good deal of the book focuses on how to obtain the elusive upper hand, or just hand, in a relationship. Strauss advocates various methods — mostly from the point of view of heterosexual men. He offers further guidelines for the process of seduction, which include preparing things to say before going out and telling groups of women surreptitiously impressive stories. He also uses “false time constraints” (a reason that the conversation could end very soon) to put the woman of interest in a situation where she must convince the man she is interesting, discusses how to very slowly increase the amount of physical contact, and more.

Strauss tells the story of his success, the spreading of the romantic community itself, and his life at “Project Hollywood,” a high-end mansion and a lifestyle plan shared by Strauss, Mystery, Playboy, Papa, Tyler Durden, Herbal, and other members of the seduction community. He details how rivalries and animosity between members of the community lead to Project Hollywood’s collapse and documents the start of “Real Social Dynamics” with Tyler Durden and Papa. By the end of his story, Strauss concludes that a life of nothing but picking up women is “for losers,” and he advocates incorporating pickup artist methods into a more balanced life.

Strauss mentions his experiments with sleeping habits, personal grooming tips, and encounters with celebrities such as Scott Baio, Tom Cruise, Andy Dick, Paris Hilton, Courtney Love, Dennis Rodman, and Britney Spears.

Reception

Neil Strauss was quoted in a review in The Guardian as saying “A side effect of sarging is that it can lower one’s opinion of the opposite sex,” though the reviewer noted that, “And yet, as he has described it, the inverse is true: a low opinion of the opposite sex is a prerequisite for sarging.” Strauss was also quoted as saying “The point was women; the result was men. Instead of models in bikinis lounging by the Project Hollywood pool all day, we had pimply teenagers, bespectacled businessmen, tubby students, lonely millionaires, struggling actors, frustrated taxi drivers, and computer programmers – lots of computer programmers.” The reviewer remarked that, “The sell is that, with the special techniques they learn from Mystery and other gurus, the ubergeeky can often give a convincing simulation of being a regular human being, even if, like one sarger in this book, they are in fact near-sociopaths.”

Another reviewer in The Observer wrote, “Some of the recommended techniques are sinister. One involves discreetly undermining a woman’s self-esteem by paying her a backhanded compliment in the hope that she will hang around to seek your approval. This maneuver has its own name: ‘the Neg.’”

Malcolm Knox wrote, “I doubt he has anything helpful for anyone except those men whose emotional maturity stalled at age 15.” He also wrote, “If the reader is too far ahead of the author, a book has a problem. On page 406, Mystery's mother says his problems are caused by his low self-esteem. Strauss reflects: ‘Only a mother could reduce a person's entire ambition and raison d'etre to the one basic insecurity fueling it all.’ No. It’s taken 406 pages for Strauss to realize what most readers will have got by page 10.” He notes the failure of Project Hollywood and that the book doesn’t recognize the role of women in selecting partners. He also writes, “The other false advertisement is that Strauss has ‘penetrated’ a ‘secret society’ of geeks-turned-gurus including Mystery, his rival Ross Jeffries and renegade PUA teachers nicknamed Papa and Tyler Durden. Yet when Strauss writes about them in The New York Times, they're thrilled.”

Alexandra Jacobs wrote that he “switched awkwardly between misogynistic comments and feeble attempts at self-awareness.” She also notes that “he does come to perceive one curious thing about the PUA's: They seem far more interested in spending time with fellow PUA's, amassing, refining and discussing the game, than actually getting to know women. Call them SLB's (scared little boys).”

Film adaptation

In 2006 Sony optioned the rights to make the book into a film, with comedy director Chris Weitz reportedly signing on to helm the project for Columbia Pictures. The film rights eventually shifted to Spyglass Entertainment, and as of 2011 is under development by MGM, with Brian Koppelman and David Levien rewriting a previous script by Dan Weiss.

Other works

A companion to The Game, called Rules of the Game by Neil Strauss, containing two parts, The Stylelife Challenge and The Style Diaries, was released on December 18, 2007.

Popular culture

Since the book’s release, visual and written references, including satires and parodies, have shown up in popular culture media. The following are a few examples:

• Criminal Minds – In the episode “52 Pickup” (season 4, episode 9), investigators chase after a man who is seducing and murdering women after taking a pickup workshop with an expert named Raven.
• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – In the episode “The D.E.N.N.I.S. System” (season 5, episode 10), the character of Dennis Reynolds reveals his foolproof system for seducing any woman.
• Family Guy – The character of Glenn Quagmire teaches a class on how to “bring out your inner stud.”
• CSI: Miami – In the episode “The Score” (season 4, episode 12), an evil pickup artist advises “work the game, drop your negs,” and a number of techniques from The Game are used by various characters.
• Wainy Days – In “The Pickup” (a YouTube original series), Paul Rudd portrays a pickup artist named Alias.
• The Mentalist – In the episode “Crimson Casanova” (season 1, episode 14), an investigation involves a pickup artist named Paul who divulges some of his techniques.
• Parks and Recreation – In the episode “The Banquet” (season 1, episode 5), the character of Tom Haverford tries peacocking.
• The Closer – In the episode “Tapped Out” (season 5, episode 6), a man named Intrigue is famous for his method of picking up women.
• Jake & Amir – The co-workers practice techniques to pick up women.
• The Big Bang Theory – In the episode “The Lizard-Spock Expansion” (season 2, episode 8), the character of Howard decides to try peacocking and negs, and strikes out.
• The Venture Bros. – In the episode “The Better Man” (season 4, episode 7), Hank takes Dean to the mall and teaches him how to pick up girls. Terms such as “kino escalation” and “isolate your target” are used.
• The Simpsons – In the episode “The Blue and the Gray” (season 22, episode 13), Moe attends a seminar from a character named Dr. Kissingher on how to gain confidence with women, and asks Homer to be his wingman.
• Castle – The episode “Till Death Do Us Part” (season 4, episode 11) involves pickup artists with routines similar to those described in The Game.
• The League – The character Andre uses several techniques described in The Game, as he feels it's the only way to pick up women.
• Adventure Time - In several episodes, characters reference Jay T. Dawgzone's “Mind Games,” which describes techniques similar to those found in The Game.
• Ugly Betty - In the “A Thousand Words Before Friday” episode (season 2, episode 13), Betty interviews a character named Phil Roth, a guy who writes books on how to pick up women, and Henry and Gio compete to see how many women they can pick up using his methods.
• The Boondocks - In the “Guess Hoe’s Coming To Dinner” episode (season 1, episode 3), Granddad uses The Game with a younger woman who turns out to be a prostitute.
• Saturday Night Live: Presidential Bash 2008 - In the Clinton Halloween Party sketch, “Bill Clinton” dresses up as Mystery and accuses “John Edwards” of using The Game on “Hillary.”
• How I Met Your Mother – In the episode “The Playbook” (season 5, episode 8), Barney uses a book of routines called “The Playbook,” with a black cover, gold-edged pages and a satin ribbon bookmark, to help him seduce women.
• Twins - In the episode “Sneaks and Geeks” (season 1, episode 14), a character named Eric shows up. He’s a nerdy former classmate of the two sisters on the show, who’s transformed himself since high school and written a book called “A Geek’s Guide to Getting Hot Women.” He mentions that his techniques for getting women include approaching on an angle, ignoring and mildly insulting them.
• Seventeen Again - In this movie starring Zac Efron, when the character of Ned Gold goes to meet the attractive female principal for the second time, he wears a flamboyant outfit similar to what Mystery would wear and she asks him if he’s peacocking.
• “Deep Throat” by Claude Von Stroke. In beginning of the video for this song, the kid is reading The Game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg590RzMenk.
• Ugly Americans - in the episode “Treegasm” (season 1, episode 5), a tree creature (or treeture) named Neel realizes he has options and decides he wants to become a player. He reads The Game and peacocks by wearing wild sunglasses and gold chains.
• Ghosts of Girlfriends Past - In this 2009 comedy film, there’s a scene where Wayne (Michael Douglas) teaches his young nephew Connor (Matthew McConaughey) the rules of seduction. They include ignoring women, insulting women to flip the power dynamic, and using a wingman.
• Sex Drive - In this 2008 sex comedy film, the character named Lance is a pickup artist who tries to teach his friend Ian how to open and close with women, and tells him to stop being a nice guy all the time.
• “War of the Sexes” by The Streets Mike Skinner of the band The Streets admits that their song “War of the Sexes” is based on The Game.

In literature

Author Alan Bissett's third novel, Death of a Ladies' Man, was in part influenced by The Game and Neil Strauss.