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A review by misha_ali
The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss
4.0
This is probably the most important book I read in 2014. Not the most enjoyable or well written, although I did enjoy it and Neil Strauss' writing style is really well suited to this kind of book.
This book is full of broken human beings looking for validation by becoming experts in the art of seduction, although by the end of the book the various schools of seduction are more science than art as each of these men rote-learn formulae and seduction tricks and then go out "in the field" to practice them in the wider community with significant success.
A lot of people gave this book a bad review because they apparently confused reporting on misogyny (which Neil Strauss does really well, no judgments just narrating everything) with approval or endorsement of misogyny. Strauss, to his credit, does a great job staying in character for almost all of the book, which may piss off a lot of people. I suspect if most of these people read the book all the way through, they would be significantly less outraged.
I read this book because a friend recommended it to me because I wanted a guide to establishing a rapport with people. This is not a manual for seduction, but rather a blow-by-blow account of one man's immersion into the subculture of male Pick Up Artists (PUAs), his eventual mastery of said field and his thoughts on how that affected his life. There are many interesting ideas in this book, as the various characters come to terms with the idea that there was a gap in themselves that they wanted to fill. In fact, a surprising revelation is that for many PUAs, the goal was not a relationship, or in many cases, even sex, but the conquest and the tally. The author compares the game to any popular male pursuit: Video Games, Sports, even Dungeons and Dragons, where you put in time and effort into "leveling up" to essentially show off to other "Alphas" for that group and gain points and respect. Revelation: The Game is really about scoring points and moving up the hierarchy with other men.
Strauss also compares the relationship between a PUA and the girls he picks up to a comedian and their audience: if the audience is too easy to charm, the comedian loses respect for them, and as a result for himself because his self-value is based on the opinions of his audience. This part struck home for me because who are we (well, at least me) except insecure people scrambling to fill voids in our lives and selves with anything that seems a decent fit and then hoping desperately that someone will come along with the secret to becoming a person.
The best bit of advice I got from this book was to stop living in my head and to just walk up to strangers and introduce myself. After a while, the fear of rejection will go away.
I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a really easy read about this lifestyle and ask them to withhold judgments till they get to the end.
A quote from the end: “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.”
This book is full of broken human beings looking for validation by becoming experts in the art of seduction, although by the end of the book the various schools of seduction are more science than art as each of these men rote-learn formulae and seduction tricks and then go out "in the field" to practice them in the wider community with significant success.
A lot of people gave this book a bad review because they apparently confused reporting on misogyny (which Neil Strauss does really well, no judgments just narrating everything) with approval or endorsement of misogyny. Strauss, to his credit, does a great job staying in character for almost all of the book, which may piss off a lot of people. I suspect if most of these people read the book all the way through, they would be significantly less outraged.
I read this book because a friend recommended it to me because I wanted a guide to establishing a rapport with people. This is not a manual for seduction, but rather a blow-by-blow account of one man's immersion into the subculture of male Pick Up Artists (PUAs), his eventual mastery of said field and his thoughts on how that affected his life. There are many interesting ideas in this book, as the various characters come to terms with the idea that there was a gap in themselves that they wanted to fill. In fact, a surprising revelation is that for many PUAs, the goal was not a relationship, or in many cases, even sex, but the conquest and the tally. The author compares the game to any popular male pursuit: Video Games, Sports, even Dungeons and Dragons, where you put in time and effort into "leveling up" to essentially show off to other "Alphas" for that group and gain points and respect. Revelation: The Game is really about scoring points and moving up the hierarchy with other men.
Strauss also compares the relationship between a PUA and the girls he picks up to a comedian and their audience: if the audience is too easy to charm, the comedian loses respect for them, and as a result for himself because his self-value is based on the opinions of his audience. This part struck home for me because who are we (well, at least me) except insecure people scrambling to fill voids in our lives and selves with anything that seems a decent fit and then hoping desperately that someone will come along with the secret to becoming a person.
The best bit of advice I got from this book was to stop living in my head and to just walk up to strangers and introduce myself. After a while, the fear of rejection will go away.
I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a really easy read about this lifestyle and ask them to withhold judgments till they get to the end.
A quote from the end: “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.”