Pickup Artist Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Pickup Artist. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Without commitment, you cannot have depth in anything, whether it's a relationship, a business or a hobby.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
If there was anything I'd learned, it's that the man never chooses the woman. All he can do is give her an opportunity to choose him.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
In life, people tend to wait for good things to come to them. And by waiting, they miss out. Usually, what you wish for doesn't fall in your lap; it falls somewhere nearby, and you have to recognize it, stand up, and put in the time and work it takes to get to it. This isn't because the universe is cruel. It's because the universe is smart. It has its own cat-string theory and knows we don't appreciate things that fall into our laps.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Men are not dogs. We merely think we are and, on occasion, act as if we are. But, by believing in our nobler nature, women have the amazing power to inspire us to live up to it.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
After all, everyone's favorite subject is themselves.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
The strong live off the weak and the clever live off the strong.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
One of the things I'd learned ... was how to take a compliment. Just say, "Thank you." It's the only response a confident person can make.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
It’s not lying, it’s flirting.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
there are only so many ways to get rejected or ignored. It doesn't hurt at all anymore because why should someone who's a complete stranger have any control over your sense of selfworth?
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
To win the game was to leave it.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
I've never trusted collaborations, because most people in this world are not closers. They don't finish what they start; they don't live what they dream; they sabotage their own progress because they're afraid they won't find what they seek.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Beauty is common but what’s rare is a great energy and outlook on life.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
A rich man doesn't need to tell you he's rich.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
And yet I wasn't sure what his weakness was. We all do that as we get to know someone. Like a tabloid editor, we search for both greatness and weakness, jotting down notes in our heads for future exploitation. We are never comfortable with those who have no visible flaw.
Wayne Elise (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
One of the reasons I became a writer is that, unlike starting a band, directing movies, or acting in a theatrical production, you can do it alone. Your success and failure depend entirely on yourself.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
In fact, every woman I met seemed disposable and replaceable. I was experiencing seducer's paradox: The better a seducer I became, the less I loved women. Success was no longer defined by getting laid or finding a girlfriend, but by how well I performed.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
That's when I started to leave it behind. I realized that I got my entire validation from women. Women became like gods to me, but false gods.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
There are certain bad habits we've groomed our whole life -- from personality flaws to fashion faux pas. And it has been the role of parents and friends, outside of some minor tweaking, to reinforce the belief that we're okay just as we are. But it's not enough to just be yourself. You have to be your best self. And that's a tall order if you haven't found your best self yet.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
There is a downside to casual sex: Sometimes it stops being casual. People develop a desire for something more. And when one person's expectations don't match the other person's, then whoever holds the highest expectations suffers. There is no such thing as cheap sex. It always comes with a price.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
But who are we, really? Just a bundle of good genes and bad genes mixed with good habits and bad habits. And since there's no gene for coolness or confidence, then being uncool and unconfident are just bad habits, which can be changed with enough guidance and will power.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
For all the self-improvement books I had read, I still wasn't above shallow validation-seeking. None of us were. That's why we were in the game. Sex wasn't about getting our rocks off; it was about being accepted.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
I want to learn martial arts," he said docilely, "so when I want to kill someone, I can do something about it.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
If he wants me to stay away, he should leave me alone.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
We get stuck in old thought and behavior patterns that may have been effective when we were twelve months or twelve years old, but now only serve to hold us back. And, while those around us may have no problem correcting our minor flaws, they let the big ones slide, because it would mean attacking who we are.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Don’t trust anyone who promises you a new life. Pick-up artists, lifestyle gurus, pyramid-scheme face cream evangelists, Weight Watchers coaches: These people make their living off of your failures.
Lindy West (Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman)
If a woman has been married three years or more, you come to learn that she's usually easier to sleep with than a single woman.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
The problem with being a pickup artist is that there are concepts like sincerity, genuineness, trust, and connection that are important to women. And all the techniques that are so effective in beginning a relationship violate every principle necessary to maintaining one.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
I think the existential dilemma is: We're social animals, so we all wrestle with a sense of inadequacy. But when we realize that we're not as inadequate as we thought we were, and when we realize that everybody else also thinks they're inadequate, then that ache goes away and the idea that we're not a person of value disappears to some extent.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
We were all searching outside ourselves for our missing pieces, and we were all looking in the wrong direction. Instead of finding ourselves, we'd lost our sense of self. Mystery didn't have the answers. A blonde 10 in a twoset at the Standard didn't have the answers. The answers were to be found within.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
A man in the UK is 230 times more likely to be raped himself than be falsely accused of rape, so low is the number of false allegations.15 In the meantime, 85,000 women each year in the UK experience rape or attempted rape.16
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all)
We have this idea that love is supposed to last forever. But love isn’t like that. It’s a free-flowing energy that comes and goes when it pleases. Sometimes it stays for life; other times it stays for a second, a day, a month, or a year. So don’t fear love when it comes simply because it makes you vulnerable. But don’t be surprised when it leaves, either. Just be glad you had the opportunity to experience it.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
You don't shower or shave for a month, until you smell like a sewer. Then you walk around for two weeks wearing a dress and a goalie mask with a dildo strapped to the front. That's what I did. And I will never be afraid of public humiliation again.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Because, all too often, the things that we’re the most resistant to are precisely what we need. And the things we’re most scared to let go of are exactly the ones we most need to relinquish. At
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
in a society in which misogyny and violence against women are so widespread and so normalized, it is difficult for us to consider these things “extreme” or “radical,” because they are simply not out of the ordinary. We do not leap to tackle a terrorist threat to women, because the reality of women being terrorized, violated, and murdered by men is already part of the wallpaper.
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all)
I was no longer in the game to meet women; I was in the game to lead men.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
The right lifestyle is something that is worn, not discussed. Money, fame, and looks, though helpful, are not required. It is, rather, something that screams: Ladies, abandon your boring, mundane, unfulfilled lives and step into my exciting world, full of interesting people, new experiences, good times, easy living, and dreams fulfilled.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
In the field, one quickly learns that everything that was funny at age ten is funny all over again.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
He asked her what she was famous for—"everybody's famous for something
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Over a third of all women worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual violence (not including sexual harassment) at some point in their lives. One hundred and thirty-seven women across the world are killed by a member of their own family every day.
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all)
You know what else I did?' he yelled after me as I left. "I fingered her!" I turned back to look at him. He made me laugh. He pretended to be so confused and helpless, but maybe he was smarter than all of us. 'The inside of a vagina isn't at all what I thought it would feel like,' he shouted excitedly. 'It feels very organized.' Maybe not.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Well," he said, opening the door to his car, "all you can do is put on an appearance of confidence sometimes. And after a while, others will start to believe it." [Eric Weber] grabbed the door handle to pull it closed. "And then you die.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Women have always been the canaries in the coal mines, quietly singing. But we are so used to seeing them die at men’s hands, so used to justifying and excusing it as normal or “understandable,” that it wouldn’t occur to us to consider this enough of an aberration to raise alarm.
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all)
I was becoming too dependent on female attention, allowing it to be my sole reason for leaving the house besides food. In the process of dehumanizing the opposite sex, I had also been dehumanizing myself.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
...[Mystery] delivered one of the many great aphorisms that that he used to turn defeat into triumph. "Where there's a problem, there's an opportunity.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
On Seeing the 100 Percent Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning” by Haruki Murakami.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Pickup is a linear process: Capture the imagination first and the heart next. Interest plus attraction plus seduction equals sex.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Never underestimate your own capacity to care. “I
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
A pickup artist must be the exception to the rule. You must not do what everyone else does. Ever.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
The impact of articles like this is to create a false equivalence between the violently misogynistic men’s rights community and the feminist movement, suggesting that disagreements between the two are a matter of balanced debate.
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all)
It is not women, or even feminists, who have limited, frustrated, diminished, hurt, and damaged men but masculinity itself or, rather, our society’s constricting, toxic, self-defeating version of what it means to perform being a man. Yet every time anybody tries to make progress in tackling this particular version of masculinity, the MRM rises up as a united voice to condemn and undermine the attempt.
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all)
...Logically, I know I'm being controlled by my emotions. But my logic is just 2 percent right now. I feel emotionally raw." [Mystery] clenched his bedsheet in his fist. "I feel strange and empty, like after a shit.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
He was telling the students about the hypnotic technique of using quotes in a conversation. An idea is more palatable ... if it comes from someone else. "The unconscious thinks in terms of content and structure. If you introduce a pattern with the words, 'My friend was telling me,' the critical part of her mind shuts off.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
If there was anything I’d learned, it’s that the man never chooses the woman. All he can do is give her an opportunity to choose him.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
The number one characteristic of an alpha male is the smile,” he said, beaming an artificial beam. “Smile when you enter a room. As soon as you walk in a club, the game is on. And by smiling, you look like you’re together, you’re fun, and you’re somebody.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
The PUAs have a name for this: They call it one-itis. It’s a disease AFCs get: They become obsessed with a girl they’re neither dating nor sleeping with, and then start acting so needy and nervous around her that they end up driving her away. The cure for one-itis, PUAs like to say, is to go out and have sex with a dozen other girls—and then see if this flower is still so special.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Besides confidence and a smile, we learned, the other characteristics of an alpha male were being well-groomed, possessing a sense of humor, connecting with people, and being seen as the social center of a room.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Undercover in the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
He spread out in his chair like a melting shard of Swiss cheese and informed us: “The only lies I’ll ever tell are: ‘I won’t come in your mouth’ and ‘I’ll just rub it around your ass.’” It wasn’t a pretty visual.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
In recent weeks, I’d figured out my own routine. It was a simple structure that allowed me to determine the direction in which I needed to take a girl: First, open. Then demonstrate higher value. Next, build rapport and an emotional connection. And, finally, create a physical connection.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
the American Psychological Association (APA) took the unprecedented step of acknowledging publicly that “traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage.
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all)
There is a downside to casual sex: Sometimes it stops being casual. People develop a desire for something more. And when one person’s expectations don’t match the other person’s, then whoever holds the highest expectations suffers. There is no such thing as cheap sex. It always comes with a price.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
As anyone who regularly reads newspapers or true-crime books knows, a significant percentage of violent crime, from kidnappings to shooting sprees, is the result of the frustrated sexual impulses and desires of males. By socializing guys like Sasha, Mystery and I were making the world a safer place.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
I am not particularly interested in a “redemption” narrative for incels. That is a question for those individuals to ponder. We do not implore the victims of other forms of terrorism to absolve and educate their tormentors. Nor do we require that other extremists be acknowledged as some kind of wounded, misunderstood victims. It is ironic that so much pressure is brought to bear on women to allow for the humanity and individuality of fallible men when it is precisely this courtesy that incels unfailingly refuse to pay to women.
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all)
He was a flower that bloomed with attention—be it positive or negative—and wilted when ignored. Peacock theory wasn’t just to attract girls.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
We talked for a half hour, and they supplicated to me the whole time.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
But I couldn’t commit to the time. I needed to resuscitate my career.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Dog Training by Lew Burke
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
If she eats garlic during dinner, does it mean she isn’t planning on kissing me?”;
Neil Strauss (The Game: Undercover in the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
fell silent and did what the PUAs call triangular gazing, looking slowly from her left eye to her right eye and then to her lips to create suggestive sexual tension. She
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
We ran around the party asking everyone for their opinion on having wallabies as pets. Between the opener and my shirt, within a half hour we were surrounded by women.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
I had violated one of Ross Jeffries’s only ethical rule of seduction: Leave her better than you found her.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
A man has two primary drives in early adulthood: one toward power, success, and accomplishment; the other toward love, companionship, and sex.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Every problem had a solution; every dispute had a compromise; every ego had a way to be stroked.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
NONVERSATION—noun: a conversation in which one person isn’t paying attention to what the other person is saying, generally due to lack of interest or being distracted.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
He’d been so neglected as a child that the withdrawal of love pulled all his emotional triggers, exploding the carapace of narcissism built by his childhood escapism. As
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
At its simplest, the argument goes like this: if women’s sexual autonomy has given them wicked and tyrannical control over men’s lives, then women’s liberation is at the root of all male suffering. Therefore, the obvious remedy is to remove women’s freedom and independence and to use specifically sexual means (like rape and sexual slavery) to do so. In other words, the problem is not women having sex but women having the choice of whom to have sex with.
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all)
Every weekend, I’d drive two hours south to San Diego and stay at Steve P.’s small, squalid apartment, where he raised two sons the same way he talked to his students—with compassionate obscenity.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
I idealized a lifestyle and behavior that were corrupt,” he explained. “I abhorred kindness, mercy, human dignity, and intimacy. Instead, I used, degraded, and exploited women. I thought only about my pleasure. I despised the good instincts within me and within others, and attempted to corrupt anyone I met.” As
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Among the required reading for all PUAs were books on evolutionary theory: The Red Queen by Matt Ridley, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, Sperm Wars by Robin Baker. You read them, and you understand why women tend to like jerks, why men want so many sexual partners, and why so many people cheat on their spouses. At the same time, however, you understand that the violent impulses most of us successfully repress are actually normal and natural. For Mystery, a Darwinist by nature, these books gave him an intellectual justification for his antisocial emotions and his desire to harm the organism that had mated with his woman. It was not a healthy thing. Tyler
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Men are not dogs. We merely think we are and, on occasion, act as if we are. But, by believing in our nobler nature, women have the amazing power to inspire us to live up to it. This is one reason why men tend to fear commitment—and sometimes, as in Mystery’s case, even rebel against it by endeavoring to bring out the worst in a woman.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Women, the most beautiful things in the world,” answers the model. As if it’s the only thing worth painting, as if everyone should aspire to it. Normally coming from a guy that answer would sound so incredibly skeezy—a greasy, obvious pick-up line. But something about this guy’s earnest tone tells me he means it." -from Model Position by Kitsy Clare
Kitsy Clare (Model Position (Art of Love #1))
Beauty is common but what’s rare is a great energy and outlook on life. Tell me, what do you have inside that would make me want to know you as more than a mere face in the crowd?” If she begins to list qualities, this is a positive IOI. 12
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
His weapon is his voice. After years of studying everyone from master hypnotists to Hawaiian Kahunas, he claims to have found the technology—and make no mistake about it, that’s what it is—that will turn any responsive woman into a libidinous puddle. Jeffries, who claims to be the inspiration for Tom Cruise’s character in Magnolia, calls it Speed Seduction. Jeffries
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Using words like "casual" and "hang out," and the time constraint, were all part of a strategy to make the visit a low-pressure event. It's a much better way to get someone to commit to time with a stranger than AFC-style dinner dating, which can be a painful, drawn-out affair that involves two people who may have nothing in common stuck together for an entire night of awkward conversation.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
After an hour of blather, I started to understand Tyler Durden. Human interaction to him was a program. Behavior was determined by frames and congruence and state and validation and other big-chunk psychological principles. And he wanted to be the Wizard of Oz: the little guy behind the curtain, pulling the strings that made everyone around him think he was a big and powerful master of the realm. I
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
I felt the heat of her body and was reminded of how much I love human contact. Pets like to be petted. It isn't sexual when a dog or cat begs for physical affection. People are the same way: we need touch. But we're so sexually screwed up and obsessed that we get nervous and uncomfortable when another person touches us.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
All of your emotions are going to try to fuck you up. They are there to try to confuse you, so know right now that they cannot be trusted at all. You will feel shy sometimes, and self-conscious, and you must deal with it like you deal with a pebble in your shoe. It’s uncomfortable, but you ignore it. It’s not part of the equation.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Mystery had recently developed another theory of social interaction. It basically stated that women are constantly judging a man’s value in order to determine if it can help them with their life objectives of survival and replication. In the microcosmic world we had created at the Highlands that night, I had the highest social value in the room. And just as most men are attracted in a Pavlovian manner to anything that is thin, has blonde hair, and possesses large breasts, women tend to respond to status and social proof. In
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
It was a completely pointless ambition, with no practical application whatsoever. But if you sit the average male down in front of anything halfway intriguing and explain to him that it has a system of rankings that he can get better at over time, he’ll become obsessed. Hence the popularity of video games, martial arts, Dungeons and Dragons, and the seduction community. I
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Yet the opposite is true. Those who speak of ‘toxic masculinity’ are not criticising men, but rather defending them: describing an ideology and a system that pressures the boys and men in our societies, in our families, to conform to unrealistic, unhealthy and unsustainable ideals. Crushing gender stereotypes are damaging to men as individuals, as well as to the society in which they live.
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists, the Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All)
I wasn’t a misogynist when I started this,” Tyler replied. “But you get good and you start sleeping with all these women who have boyfriends, and you stop trusting women.” A side effect of sarging is that it can lowers one’s opinion of the oppo35D site sex. You see too much betrayal, lying, and infidelity. If a woman has been married three years or more, you come to learn that she’s usually easier to sleep with than a single woman. If a woman has a boyfriend, you learn that you have a better chance of fucking her the night you meet her than getting her to return a phone call later. Women, you eventually realize, are just as bad as men-they’re just better at hiding it. “I got hurt a lot when I first started picking up,” he continued. “I’d meet an amazing girl I really liked, and we’d talk all night. She’d say she loved me and was so lucky to have met me. But then I’d fail one shit test, and she’d walk away and wouldn’t even talk to me anymore. Everything we’d built up over the last eight hours would just go down the drain. So it hardened me.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Strip away the community bond and the seduction business interests that united us, and what was left? Six guys chasing after a limited subset of available women. Wars have been fought, world leaders shot, and tragedies wrought by males claiming territorial rights over the opposite sex. Perhaps we’d just been too blind to see that Project Hollywood was doomed from the start by the very pursuit that had brought it together. After
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Focus is passé. In the modern world we want to feel everything all the time. There is no point in just taking a walk in the park when we can also listen to headphones, munch on a hot dog, crank up our vibrating soles to the maximum, and check out the passing carnival of humanity. Our choices about the creed of a new world order: stimulation! Thought and creativity have become subservient to the singular goal of saturating our senses.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Here,” he said. “I brought this for you.” It was a small hardcover edition of an eighteenth century book called The Path of the Just with a note he had written for me inscribed on the title page. It quoted the Talmud: Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world. So he was trying to save me. Why? I was having fun.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
But it’s depressing to think of the number of vulnerable young men who might approach these so-called experts in the genuine hope of improving their relationships with the opposite sex, only to find themselves immersed in a bewildering world of insults, negging and dehumanisation. Take, for example, one pickup guru’s insistence that men should ‘interrupt what a girl is saying every 10 words’, simply to throw her off balance and undermine her confidence.
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists, the Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All)
One day, a scorpion stood on the side of a stream and asked a frog to carry it to the other side. ‘How do I know you won’t sting me?’ the frog asked. ‘Because if I sting you, I’ll drown,’ the scorpion said. “The frog thought about it and realized that the scorpion was right. So he put the scorpion on his back and started ferrying him. But midway across the stream, the scorpion plunged its stinger into the frog’s back. As they both began to drown, the frog gasped, ‘Why?’” “The scorpion replied, ‘Because it is my nature.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
It’s a type of frame control,” Tyler Durden replied. A frame is an NLP term: It is the perspective through which one sees the world. Whoever’s frame—or subjective reality—is the strongest tends to dominate an interaction. “Style has all these really subtle ways of keeping control of the frame and getting people to qualify themselves to him. He makes sure that the focus is always on him. I’m writing a post about it.” “That’s awesome,” I said. Suddenly, Papa, Tyler Durden, and the students laughed. “That’s one of the things you do,” Papa said. “Tyler’s writing about that.” “What? I just said ‘awesome.’ That’s because I think it’s hilarious. Seriously, I can’t wait to read it.” They all laughed again. Evidently I was Stylemogging them. “See,” Tyler Durden said. “You’ll use curiosity as a frame to get rapport and make the other person lose social value. When you show approval like that, it makes you the authority and makes other people want to seek your validation. We’re teaching that.” “Shit,
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
If you regard women as people endowed with certain inalienable rights, then heterosexual sex -- as distinct from rape -- has to be something two people do together because both of them want to, but this notion of women as people is apparently baffling or objectionable to hordes of men, not just incels. Women-as-bodies are sex waiting to happen -- to men -- and women-as-people are annoying gatekeepers getting between men and female bodies, which is why there's a ton of advice about how to trick or overwhelm the gatekeeper. Not just on incel and pick-up artist online forums but as jokey stuff in movies and books, going back to Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Casanova's trophy-taking.
Rebecca Solnit (Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters)
The first and most obvious politician whose success has emboldened the manosphere and alt-right alike is Trump. From his description of women as “fat pigs” and “dogs” to his assertion that putting a wife to work is “dangerous”; from his own admissions of grabbing women “by the pussy” to his implication that women on their periods are unstable; from his description of Mexican immigrants as rapists to his tweets telling four ethnic minority U.S. congresswomen to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came”—the president repeatedly voiced ideas and deeply misogynistic, racist statements that fit neatly within the worldview of male supremacists and the alt-right.11
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all)
About Danielle, I remember, my feelings were no more specific than pleasant anxiousness. She hadn’t caught me, obviously enough, at a very erotic moment in my life. I had never been much of a pickup artist—a few ghastly encounters in my twenties had seen to that—and the alternative prospect of a euphoric romance not only exhausted me but, in fact, struck me as impossible. This wasn’t because of any fidelity to my absent wife or some aversion to sex, which, I like to think, grabs me as much as the next man. No, it was simply that I was uninterested in making, as I saw it, a Xerox of some old emotional state. I was in my mid-thirties, with a marriage more or less behind me. I was no longer vulnerable to curiosity’s enormous momentum. I had nothing new to murmur to another on the subject of myself and not the smallest eagerness about being briefed on Danielle’s supposedly unique trajectory—a curve described under the action, one could safely guess, of the usual material and maternal and soulful longings, a few thwarting tics of character, and luck good and bad. A life seemed like an old story.
Joseph O'Neill