The Game: The Essence of Manipulation

Last year, a bright young writer named Neil Strauss published a book called The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick-up Artists. Neil Strauss is a writer in Los Angeles who before joining the "secret society" wrote for Rolling Stone Magazine and occasionally for the New York Times. Despite a fantastic start to a writing career for a guy in his late twenties, Strauss was unsatisfied and frustrated. He even declared himself an AFC (average frustrated chump). Neil was frustrated because he coudn't get laid - it was as simple as that.

Strauss joined the society of pick-up artists and after a year and a half of "sarging" (hitting on chicks), Neil claimed to have ten girlfriends with whom he would have sex as he wished. He would also go out to clubs and be ravaged by women. At one time he was seduced in a women's bathroom by an off-duty stripper. His adventure culminated in the openning of "Project Hollywood", which was a mansion in the Hollywood hills where pick-up artists would live, conduct training seminars, and seduce women.

Though Strauss' accounts left room for suspicion of embelishment (he wrote one paragraph while having sex and did not edit the typos to maintain authenticity), the story was compelling and I believe, for the most part true. And when I closed the book that intentionally looks exactly like a Bible, I thought about how our world has come to this.

The behavior of the pick-up artists is nothing short of pure manipulation. They intentionally berate and ridicule women in an effort to force them to seek the approval of the pick-up artist. And you wanna know what? It works. People have told me that if you treat 'em like dirt, they'll stick to you like mud. Is this true? According to Neil Strauss it might as well be the word of God.

But who is to blame for this? Men? Women? Society? Humanity? God?

Can you blame women for allowing men to treat them like shit and keep coming back for more, essentially positively reinforcing the behavior?

I can.

C'mon ladies! Let's make some progress. Let's move beyond your instictive nature to end up with arrogant, heartless, seemingly confident (but actually insecure) men. All this behavior by women will do is perpetuate the problem, and actually wire it more firmly into the brains of men. Men think like this:

I be asshole - I get laid. When it works, the think:

I be more asshole - I get more laid.

How can you argue with that logic? You can't - because it's true.

Men will not stop this behavior until they are forced to do so. Forced by women.

However, for the next millenium or so while women are rewiring their own brains and the brains of their children, Neil and the gang will be tenaciously sarging.

What the hell? It's worth at try...