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Book Review: The Game by Neil Strauss
By Samir | June 11, 2010
December 4, 2007 - I still remember the date. Having just received the results of the CA exam, and finding out I had passed, I was partying it up with my mentor at a downtown Montreal pub. Passing the exam was huge; it had been a long-time “to-do” of mine, en route to becoming a bona fide chartered accountant.
Except - now that it was off the list, a huge goal vacuum was created. I’d studied for the CA, either in university or through work terms, on or off, since 2001. It had shaped most of my major decisions: the decision to work at an accounting firm, the decision to go to Concordia University, the decision to buy a blue suit instead of a black one, and so on.
I’d mentioned it to my CA mentor, this whole lack of a goal thing, and he gave me words that would eventually change my life : “Go find this book called The Game by Neil Strauss, read it and apply it.” Indeed, the next life lessons I were to learn had nothing to do with ledgers, debits or credits.
I went home and ordered the book at 4 AM that night, and waited impatiently for it to arrive. I’d heard of Strauss, also known as Style back in 2003 when a few of my friends had chanced upon a bunch of websites dedicated to the fast seduction of women. Style was one of the pillars of the community, regularly providing Jedi mind-tricks to subconsciously trigger the urge to mate in females. Of course, I also weighed 250 pounds and had only seriously dated one woman in my entire life. I never bothered to dig deeper.
Fast-forward to that fateful December night, in 2007. I’d lost 45 pounds in the gym. I’d gotten a reputable professional designation (CA). I was a young professional with - I like to think - decent wit and some charm. This time, I was much more receptive to the message.
When the book arrived, I tore through it in 3 days. Then, I read it again. Then I did - nothing. I was too chicken. Then, I lost another 40 pounds, and in January 2009, I read the book a third time and decided to go for it. Here is a summary of that book and what happened after I read it. As a piece of non-fiction (we presume), I won’t bother evaluating the quality of its writing or the worth of its message. It’s not a great treatise - it’s a story of how a nerdy little roadie turned himself into the world’s greatest pick-up artist written in the crassest, simplest English. Therefore, its entire value, as a book, is pedagogical: if Style’s techniques worked for me, inspired me, pushed me to a new level of confidence - then I’d call the book good.
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The story of “Style” is a simple one, really. Neil Strauss was a self-described geek, a short, balding, awkward-looking roadie who’d experienced Urkel-levels of success with the ladies (I wonder if Urkel’s still pining for Laura Winslow…). As he was researching for an article, he came across the Internet seduction community. He signed up for a seduction seminar with “Mystery”, a leading pick-up artist. At the seminar, Mystery recognized Style’s incredible potential and asked him to be his protégé. The two travelled the world picking up women, refining the art of seduction, experiencing life and then crashing. Eventually, they, along with two other pick-up artists, rent a house in Los Angeles and call it “Project Hollywood”. They spend the next year or so sleeping with as many women in LA as possible. People start moving into Project Hollywood, Courtney Love shows up and spills food, some guy gets Paris Hilton’s phone number, and so on. Eventually, too many roosters cause the collapse. At the end, Style hooks up with Courtney Love’s bandmate, decides She’s The One, gives up “The Game” and life goes on. That’s the story in a gist.
But I wasn’t reading for the story - I treated the book like a textbook. I was getting back into the dating game and I needed material, techniques, direction. In the summer of 2009, I decided to approach every woman I was attracted to, and I decided to see what would happen. I didn’t want to be Style, or Mystery, or any other pick-up artists. I wanted to get out there, get my confidence up, get used to looking at a woman in the eye - and then, maybe, just maybe, I’d be ready for The One.
I approached 71 women using Style’s techniques, and managed to get 11 to a first date. It’s a ridiculously high success ratio, to be honest. I’d describe my appearance as awkward at best. I’m 5′11, with about 15 pounds extra, a round, homely face, and a goofy smile - in short, not exactly Brad Pitt. Most of the approaches were direct and in-person in the clubs on St-Laurent or the Old Port of Montreal. Some were girls Facebook suggested I add as friends… instead of doing that, I’d message them asking to meet up for coffee. A few were friend references, which made the job easier. All of them taught me something and confirmed that Style’s approach worked.
Among the more successful things Style preaches, the key principle is non-supplication. I’d noticed all kinds of outrageously hot women in Montreal, and each one had guys fawning over her - they’d have the pick of the litter! These guys were ready to do anything for these girls, in effect, communicating their inferiority and subservience. The best way to get noticed by these girls was to just be yourself. Sure you could be nice, but only if you truly wanted to - not because you thought it might get you laid. Or you could be an utter dick. The idea was to get things going on your terms, not hers. Girls notice these types of things, they translate it as a rare type of self-assurance which they correlate with value, status and in turn, desirability. When they utter “there’s something different about that guy,” but they can’t put their finger on it, this is what they’re subconsciously noticing.
Another great Style principle, which directly dovetails with non-supplication, is the idea of avoiding “one-itis”. According to the book, “one-itis” is a condition of obsession where a man becomes so enamored with a woman it causes him to be too pathetic around her to be considered mating-worthy. The best way to avoid one-itis, according to Style, is to date several women and make this known. This tactic subconsciously tells a girl you’re a high-value mate and she needs to compete for you if she wants you.
I think the idea of avoiding one-itis is sound. A guy should never wrap his world around a woman he’s merely dating (but he should never hesitate to do so for the mother of his children, it must be said). He’s gotta keep doing the things that made him awesome before he met any woman, and if he’s too available, too hot in pursuit, too desperate, it will scare a girl off. The “several women thing”, on the other hand - it was a buzzkill quite often with older girls who were aiming for something serious. I just avoided one-itis by never attributing a major importance to any girl I’d date unless she’d earn it. This idea is later taken up in the great film The Tao of Steve as well, where the main character, Dex, urges his friends to first be excellent in front of a woman, and then, to be “gone”, to retreat. The best expression in the game, that captures the idea is: “Give her the gift of missing you.”
Aside from that, there are various other tactics discussed: how to progressively initiate and escalate physical contact, how to get a kiss, how to “cock block” other males who are competing with you for the same girls, and so on. Some of the better pieces are “patterns”, i.e., rehearsed things you can use to pick-up girls, but I never bothered with those - it seemed a bit too robotic for me. I had confidence in my own infectious personality and my creativity.
In the end, I felt I’d both succeeded and failed. If my original goal had been to seduce as many women as possible and to “run up the score”, I’d call The Game’s a great book - not good, great. However, what I truly wanted was a Sweetheart, and the girls I ended up dating because of tactics and games were rarely long-term prospects. Not one of them was in my life for more than seven weeks.
Eventually, I found myself in a similar conondrum as the author. I met girl a became crazy about, and the Game just pushed her away. When I tried a few Game-type approaches, she hotly re-butted me and told me to leave her alone. When I dropped all the - ahem - games, and just put my cards on the table in front of her, she became my girlfriend. Though we’re no longer together, she was the girl I most saw myself with, once the summer ended.
Strauss talks about this too, in his book, saying that the only utility of The Game, in the end, was to give him the confidence to be himself, to drop the game itself and to use his genuine personality and honestly to score the girl of his dreams. Like all systems, The Game can become a crutch, a life limitation, for those who lean on it without bothering to walk their own. I’ll let Style summarize this paradaox as his words are more apt than anything I could think of: To win the game is to leave it.
Topics: Books / Livres |
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