"The Game" or Why You Shouldn't Sell Your Magic Tricks to a Sociopath Who Calls Himself "Tyler Durden"
July 26 2020
Before Reading "The Game" by Neil Strauss
Two things motivated me to read "The Game".
Initially my motivation came from a curiosity and desire to discuss it with my friends because if nothing else, I did recognise this prolific book as one which sparks conversation. I was 100% sure that this experiment would be uncomfortable going in but also humorous throughout. My friends and I are privy to boast about these little feats of curiosity and cringe- we like to come out the other side proud of having trekked through unfamiliar territory and thrilled to have the chance to introduce each other to the absurd things we discovered along the way. Really, part of it is just flexing. I had some perverse desire to be able to quote this thing and leave people dumbfounded. In addition to all this, I was curious about how bad it really was. Known as essentially the bible of toxic masculinity, I felt prepared for the worst. This will be a fun social experiment, but it may also "trigger" me and leave me with that feeling I have had when men try and trick me in to coming home with them when I travel alone- frightened, small, and powerless. It has been a while since I've felt sexually harassed, but the implicit caution is there forever and the power of confidence in feeling totally safe wherever I am is one I'll never get back.
This brings me to my second point of motivation. The way I see it, there is something empowering about being informed on this shit. From what I understand, the book is just as much a guidebook as it is a porthole in to the culture of pick-up artistry. From a feminist perspective, being able to know your oppressors intimately empowers you to take back some of the agency and power you lose to them. Though I am married and mostly safe from this kind of misogynistic predator behaviour, I can't help but feel I owe it to myself and my gender to know what this underground culture is all about and to educate myself on how it continues to influence incel culture. There is something exciting about taking the advantage of ignorance away from the men who read and worship this book. They may come out of this an expert in manipulating women, but I won't be one of them. Not only because I am shielded by whatever I'm wearing, my marital status, or whatever friends or men I have around me, but by knowledge of their trade. If that isn't empowering, I don't know what is.
Maybe this will just be "How to Win Friends and Influence People" but more stylish and skeezy. I doubt it, but I'm open to the idea that this has gained more notoriety than it might deserve. The terminology is what I am most excited about. I know about "negging" and the D.E.N.N.I.S system, but that is as far as my understanding of pick-up artistry goes.
It's August now and I've finished "The Game".
At first, it was hard to take seriously. Strauss appears self-aware of the outrageous insecurity around him in scattered and very brief moments, but the focus is never drawn away from the worship of PUA (Pick-up artist) gurus. Though Strauss may say over and over again that this book has been written to empower men and inspire confidence, it's more about identifying "targets", knowing your "score", and memorising routines.
Honestly, even the parts of the "educational" sections of the book that explicitly endorsed rape and the idea that "if you think you could've kissed her, you could've. If you think you could've fucked her, you could've. These things happening are not in her hands to decide, they are in yours, if you know The Game" could only upset me for so long. I am not exaggerating when I say that the majority of the set-up and the educational section of this book is just unintentionally hilarious and embarrassing. It is so unbelievably confident in pushing these techniques and ideas which anyone in the real world can immediately identify as bullshit.
Some techniques include:
1. Talk to her about how lions have sex by biting each other. Literally lick her arm. Then bite it. Immediately make out with her
2. The "condiment anchoring routine" to be done to waitresses involves doing some ASMR shit and fortune telling stuff. Maybe some rune readings. Then proceed to "put her life energy" in to a packet of ketchup and put it in her apron. She will associate that ketchup with how wet her pussy was while you were doing the rune readings. She will then give you her number
3. The choke-slam. Choke the woman, then stop and don't bring it up ever again. She will be constantly on her toes not knowing what you'll do next. This anticipation makes girls horny.
I'm not going to discuss techniques any more. They are all like this. They're all backed up by the far more sinister psychology and beliefs inherent in all PUA teachings, and these teachings make exorbitant amounts of money. If you are a chump who isn't getting laid and is mad about it, but doesn't want to work on himself at all, you can spend 8,000$ on a 3 day workshop with Mystery. You can internship with other gurus and students in places like Project Hollywood, in which you can live there for free on a mat in a bathroom, but you must also pay thousands of dollars in membership fees and basically be subject to free labour however the gurus see fit.
All of this stuff was shocking, sure. It was entertaining for a while. I can tell your'e supposed to read this and be in awe of these men who are able to walk up to a woman and confidently say "I can have you and there's nothing you can do to resist my magic powers", but the thing is that even when they succeed this isn't really indicative of skill or magic powers. What you have done, my dude, is frighten a woman enough to trick them in to submission, or you have done enough magic tricks that the vodka eventually tells them you're attractive. All things considered, the dogma of pickup artistry is just a watered down version of the DENNIS system, but with a very absurd interest in magic, rune readings, cold-readings, and pseudo-mystical stuff of that nature. Maybe in 2003 this was taken seriously, but I cannot imagine a woman being legitimately attracted to a magician without any sense of humour or even a shred of humility.
So yes, ok, I was surprised by how embarrassing and laughably unbelievable this whole thing was. I was honestly just about to give up, but then Tyler Durden comes in to the picture. Yes, like Fight Club, but no, not Brad Pitt. Yes, he is a man who named himself Tyler Durden. All PUAs are required to adopt a new name and all of them are stupid ("Mystery", "Sin", "Style","Papa", "Sweater", "Grimble", and "Extramask" to name a few), but none are as serious as Tyler Durden.
For many characters such as Mystery, pickup artistry is their dedicated lifestyle, craft, and scholarly pursuit. At first glance, I had to assume Tyler would be the same way, but what's interesting is that while he may be the perfect student, he was universally despised in the PUA community. He was despised for reasons that become creepier and creepier the more you sit with it, such that even Neil Strauss ("Style") starts to distance himself from him.
Tyler Durden exposes the unsustainable augmented reality these men created for themselves, worship daily, and let spread across North America like a disease. Tyler Durden, a young sociopath from Ottawa, and his unintentionally prophetic effects on pickup artistry as a whole, are what inspired me to trudge on and write something.
We all must suffer for our art.
Why Do pick-Up Artists Hate Tyler Durden?
Initially, you have to assume Tyler is a great face for the community. First off, he is a perfect student. Tyler is just 19 when he gets involved in the community and is immediately doing everything he can to study under each guru. He sleeps on all of their couches, he pays for every seminar, workshop, and buys every book. Tyler is constantly asking questions, approaching every situation with intent to learn more, do better, and meet others in the community. In addition to his dedication to his pick-up artistry education, he is humble. Tyler never aspires to what pretty much every other pick up artist ends up doing, which is becoming a guru themselves and trademarking their own approach. Tyler never ends up teaching and while he is boastful of his conquests, he never claims to be "the best". Tyler ends up living at Project Hollywood and working for Papa for free. Tyler never provokes Mystery and always keeps out of the various dramas within the house and community.
So...why do they hate him?
Why would they hate someone who embodies everything they have poured their lives in to perfecting?
Why isn't Tyler respected, loved, or followed?
The answer to these questions starts off as kind of obtuse, but understandable. Neil explains that people feel uncomfortable around Tyler because he is "all game". Despite what you might believe, pick-up artists are indeed still human and generally like to engage with the world and each other with a sense of shared humanity. In general, pick-up artists tend to stick to their own material and use it only to get laid, not for every-day relationships. Tyler does not take a break from "The Game" just to exist in reality. When he is out with the boys, he isn't interested in discussing sports, engaging in small talk, or going out to see movies. Tyler views every interaction as one he can mathematically "win", and the other PUAs are his teachers. When he isn't out sarging women, in any environment, he is constantly discussing PUA techniques, routines, and asking for advice & scores from others.
People are understandably annoyed by this at first, but later on Tyler's strictly scientific approach to love and human interaction alienates him from others for reasons they can't always articulate. Tyler approaches some kind of social uncanny valley caught in-between genuine human interaction and appearing to be genuine. PUA routines and techniques are supposed to come off as natural, genuine, and personal. We know they aren't, Tyler knows they aren't, and Tyler doesn't see why he shouldn't be applying these techniques all the time. If they have worked on women, why not men? If perfecting this performance has gotten him laid before, why bother being any other way?
Tyler does not see the benefit of being genuine after he has learned hundreds of ways to get the exact conversation and relationship he wants by following precise steps.
So, this is obviously an issue. People don't like this. Women don't like it once they know what he is doing, and his fellow PUAs feel weird about being manipulated. Perhaps this should give the community insight in to how creepy and anti-social their behaviours and beliefs towards women are, but of course it doesn't. Instead, they draw the conclusion that Tyler makes them "feel icky" but ultimately he is making them a lot of money by buying all their magic tricks.
So, they keep him around.
Tyler's anti-social approach does more than just cause an uneasy feeling within the community, though. His perfection threatens their entire way of life. Can Pick-Up artistry be called "art" or even be considered something one can be "gifted at" if the whole system can be so easily mastered and broken simply by applying it with inhumane precision? Is it artistic or skilled if a master of pick-up artistry need only replicate formulas, applying them in no unique ways? Tyler has effectively taken a social skill and turned it in to a hard science.
Soon, Neil realises that what they are doing is not training men how to enhance themselves, but in reality gurus are effectively making carbon copies of themselves. Hoards of men are suddenly sarging on the Sunset Strip using the same 30 routines to an exact science, not bothering to change the formula in any way or approach situations with any kind of personal nuance. Suddenly, all of these students are understanding that Tyler has been right all along- why take the risk of being your genuine self, when this augmented playboy is so much better for results? Neil is especially horrified when he starts to see complete strangers dressing, talking, and acting exactly like him and not necessarily out of worship, but out of some understanding that Style is the "ideal pick-up artist" and thus they may as well copy him exactly.
What this inevitably creates is a situation where women catch on to "The Game" and can only be "had" once before they've heard it all, realise they were manipulated, and are uninterested in any other PUA and his approach. Tyler Durden and his approach effectively ruins the pussy economy and this infuriates the community. That's not all, either. Tyler Durden eventually gets seen as a kind of betrayal to the community. Not only does Durden indiscriminately "game" women his friends are dating, but he effectively "games" his friends as well. Neil Strauss actually has a semi-lucid moment in his book where he realises that Tyler has "frozen him out" and he describes a feeling of huge betrayal for being treated this way- for being treated like a target.
From there, everything falls apart. The book ends, Neil gets married, and it seems like it's over. But, of course it isn't. Tyler Durden is still out there today, as recently as 2018, getting arrested for sexual assault and getting banned from the entire country of Australia. Tyler is still out there inspiring robotic armies of pea-cocking magicians pressuring women in to sleeping with them, but even he realises this practice is unsustainable now, so they're never in any one place very long. Gone are the days of Project Hollywood and establishing bases. The last PUAs are a nomadic people, moving on to greener pastures after they have ravaged the land with their trickery.
Of course, you can trick people in to liking you, but you can't trick people in to loving you. Tyler doesn't mind being perpetually single, but his ambivalence towards this creeps people out. Not only is Tyler a person who efficiently strips himself and everyone he engages with of their implicit humanity, but he also could care less if he is loved or even liked.
Tyler is in this to win the game, and isn't it odd that all of these viciously competitive men are so opposed to this?
Masculine Empowerment in The Game
At this point I think it should be pretty obvious where the initially empowering ideals of "The Game" begin to falter. Not only are women stripped of their humanity by conceptualising them as sets, numbers, scores, and as a resource, but so too are men once Tyler's influence begins to run rampant in the community.
Even back in the days of early pick-up artists like Ross Jefferies, it was clear that male empowerment and success in the field derived from being successful at picking up women. Ross Jefferies claims that "(The Game) is not designed to hurt women, but to augment men", but at the same time his seminars and teachings still begin and end with the goal to increase a man's "score" (your score is how many women you've slept with). Tyler's influence is that this same success and empowerment also depends on men being efficient and consistent, like a telemarketer. A woman's value is explicit, but men are only valuable if they perform correctly in line with the status quo Project Hollywood has conceived. Use the formulas. Stick to the script, stupid.
As I mentioned earlier, this approach only results in thousands of men approaching women using the same handful of interactions, and with no genuine personality involved women naturally get tired of this and stop falling for pick-up artists and their magic tricks. Tyler Durden ends up creating an economy that crashes quickly and the more scarce women unfamiliar with their tricks become, the more conflict and competition arises.
Mystery, who was once the top pick-up artist in the world boasting a score well in to triple digits, becomes victim to this scarcity. Mystery frequently acts out with jealousy, violence, and hostility. These behaviours were typical of Mystery and his mental illness is not ignored at any point in "The Game" (Though, it isn't given much introspection either) but once Tyler is in the picture Mystery excuses his violence towards others in the house as merely evidence of his "raw evolutionary masculinity". In order for his masculinity to be validated and to feel empowered, his score must continue to increase, and this logically isn't possible when women can only be "had" once.
What's odd is that these men could care less about the sanctity of virginity, which is usually the argument for a woman being "tainted" after sleeping with a man. Instead, the concern is that these men have willingly submitted themselves to a robotic dogma of the same dozen unbelievably stupid and/or rapey magic tricks that have efficiently revealed their bullshit to all women who are approached by them.
Earlier, women couldn't necessarily identify when they were being manipulated by a pick up artist because any given night or interaction would be maybe 25% routine at most. Tyler has figured out you can get away with doing 100% routine and leaving nothing to chance, and the only downside is that this is unsustainable and he must constantly be moving, un-tethered to any given social space.
Paradoxically, Pick-Up Artistry claims to be focused on a wholesome community of men teaching each other and supporting one another to be their best selves, both through "wingmaning" and education, but in this community and practice it is also inevitable that these same men will end up competing and attacking each other when they are the "loser" due to their "evolutionary masculinity" and the thoughtless system they've bought in to. Despite preaching male empowerment, the movement quickly produces a man like Tyler Durden who has no qualms turning the whole thing on its head and "gaming" men too. You may enter this thinking you're going to feel more confident, but you will leave being tricked, manipulated, and being degraded to a toxic status quo.
This is fascinating to me.
When I started reading this book, I figured Neil Strauss would end up leaving the community simply because he found a girlfriend he loved too much to risk losing. While this is somewhat true, the last section of his book clearly outlines this deeply unsettling sociological issue in the community.
You cannot treat women like objects and claim you've hacked in to all social relationships through formulas, without also degrading the men willing to sacrifice their own humanity to take part in this. It is a lose-lose no matter how you slice it, but at least women recognise what's going on after just one encounter with a pick-up artist. The men are not so lucky. They can get caught in this cult for years.
I can't believe I'm saying it, any more than I can believe that it is true.
"The Game" and pick-up artistry as a social science is more harmful to the men that empower themselves in it, than any women who falls victim to their tricks.
Before Reading "The Game" by Neil Strauss
Two things motivated me to read "The Game".
Initially my motivation came from a curiosity and desire to discuss it with my friends because if nothing else, I did recognise this prolific book as one which sparks conversation. I was 100% sure that this experiment would be uncomfortable going in but also humorous throughout. My friends and I are privy to boast about these little feats of curiosity and cringe- we like to come out the other side proud of having trekked through unfamiliar territory and thrilled to have the chance to introduce each other to the absurd things we discovered along the way. Really, part of it is just flexing. I had some perverse desire to be able to quote this thing and leave people dumbfounded. In addition to all this, I was curious about how bad it really was. Known as essentially the bible of toxic masculinity, I felt prepared for the worst. This will be a fun social experiment, but it may also "trigger" me and leave me with that feeling I have had when men try and trick me in to coming home with them when I travel alone- frightened, small, and powerless. It has been a while since I've felt sexually harassed, but the implicit caution is there forever and the power of confidence in feeling totally safe wherever I am is one I'll never get back.
This brings me to my second point of motivation. The way I see it, there is something empowering about being informed on this shit. From what I understand, the book is just as much a guidebook as it is a porthole in to the culture of pick-up artistry. From a feminist perspective, being able to know your oppressors intimately empowers you to take back some of the agency and power you lose to them. Though I am married and mostly safe from this kind of misogynistic predator behaviour, I can't help but feel I owe it to myself and my gender to know what this underground culture is all about and to educate myself on how it continues to influence incel culture. There is something exciting about taking the advantage of ignorance away from the men who read and worship this book. They may come out of this an expert in manipulating women, but I won't be one of them. Not only because I am shielded by whatever I'm wearing, my marital status, or whatever friends or men I have around me, but by knowledge of their trade. If that isn't empowering, I don't know what is.
Maybe this will just be "How to Win Friends and Influence People" but more stylish and skeezy. I doubt it, but I'm open to the idea that this has gained more notoriety than it might deserve. The terminology is what I am most excited about. I know about "negging" and the D.E.N.N.I.S system, but that is as far as my understanding of pick-up artistry goes.
It's August now and I've finished "The Game".
At first, it was hard to take seriously. Strauss appears self-aware of the outrageous insecurity around him in scattered and very brief moments, but the focus is never drawn away from the worship of PUA (Pick-up artist) gurus. Though Strauss may say over and over again that this book has been written to empower men and inspire confidence, it's more about identifying "targets", knowing your "score", and memorising routines.
Honestly, even the parts of the "educational" sections of the book that explicitly endorsed rape and the idea that "if you think you could've kissed her, you could've. If you think you could've fucked her, you could've. These things happening are not in her hands to decide, they are in yours, if you know The Game" could only upset me for so long. I am not exaggerating when I say that the majority of the set-up and the educational section of this book is just unintentionally hilarious and embarrassing. It is so unbelievably confident in pushing these techniques and ideas which anyone in the real world can immediately identify as bullshit.
 |
| Mystery (left) and Neil Strauss/Style (right) |
1. Talk to her about how lions have sex by biting each other. Literally lick her arm. Then bite it. Immediately make out with her
2. The "condiment anchoring routine" to be done to waitresses involves doing some ASMR shit and fortune telling stuff. Maybe some rune readings. Then proceed to "put her life energy" in to a packet of ketchup and put it in her apron. She will associate that ketchup with how wet her pussy was while you were doing the rune readings. She will then give you her number
3. The choke-slam. Choke the woman, then stop and don't bring it up ever again. She will be constantly on her toes not knowing what you'll do next. This anticipation makes girls horny.
I'm not going to discuss techniques any more. They are all like this. They're all backed up by the far more sinister psychology and beliefs inherent in all PUA teachings, and these teachings make exorbitant amounts of money. If you are a chump who isn't getting laid and is mad about it, but doesn't want to work on himself at all, you can spend 8,000$ on a 3 day workshop with Mystery. You can internship with other gurus and students in places like Project Hollywood, in which you can live there for free on a mat in a bathroom, but you must also pay thousands of dollars in membership fees and basically be subject to free labour however the gurus see fit.
All of this stuff was shocking, sure. It was entertaining for a while. I can tell your'e supposed to read this and be in awe of these men who are able to walk up to a woman and confidently say "I can have you and there's nothing you can do to resist my magic powers", but the thing is that even when they succeed this isn't really indicative of skill or magic powers. What you have done, my dude, is frighten a woman enough to trick them in to submission, or you have done enough magic tricks that the vodka eventually tells them you're attractive. All things considered, the dogma of pickup artistry is just a watered down version of the DENNIS system, but with a very absurd interest in magic, rune readings, cold-readings, and pseudo-mystical stuff of that nature. Maybe in 2003 this was taken seriously, but I cannot imagine a woman being legitimately attracted to a magician without any sense of humour or even a shred of humility.
 |
| Tyler Durden/Owen Cook |
For many characters such as Mystery, pickup artistry is their dedicated lifestyle, craft, and scholarly pursuit. At first glance, I had to assume Tyler would be the same way, but what's interesting is that while he may be the perfect student, he was universally despised in the PUA community. He was despised for reasons that become creepier and creepier the more you sit with it, such that even Neil Strauss ("Style") starts to distance himself from him.
Tyler Durden exposes the unsustainable augmented reality these men created for themselves, worship daily, and let spread across North America like a disease. Tyler Durden, a young sociopath from Ottawa, and his unintentionally prophetic effects on pickup artistry as a whole, are what inspired me to trudge on and write something.
We all must suffer for our art.
Why Do pick-Up Artists Hate Tyler Durden?
Initially, you have to assume Tyler is a great face for the community. First off, he is a perfect student. Tyler is just 19 when he gets involved in the community and is immediately doing everything he can to study under each guru. He sleeps on all of their couches, he pays for every seminar, workshop, and buys every book. Tyler is constantly asking questions, approaching every situation with intent to learn more, do better, and meet others in the community. In addition to his dedication to his pick-up artistry education, he is humble. Tyler never aspires to what pretty much every other pick up artist ends up doing, which is becoming a guru themselves and trademarking their own approach. Tyler never ends up teaching and while he is boastful of his conquests, he never claims to be "the best". Tyler ends up living at Project Hollywood and working for Papa for free. Tyler never provokes Mystery and always keeps out of the various dramas within the house and community.
So...why do they hate him?
Why would they hate someone who embodies everything they have poured their lives in to perfecting?
Why isn't Tyler respected, loved, or followed?
The answer to these questions starts off as kind of obtuse, but understandable. Neil explains that people feel uncomfortable around Tyler because he is "all game". Despite what you might believe, pick-up artists are indeed still human and generally like to engage with the world and each other with a sense of shared humanity. In general, pick-up artists tend to stick to their own material and use it only to get laid, not for every-day relationships. Tyler does not take a break from "The Game" just to exist in reality. When he is out with the boys, he isn't interested in discussing sports, engaging in small talk, or going out to see movies. Tyler views every interaction as one he can mathematically "win", and the other PUAs are his teachers. When he isn't out sarging women, in any environment, he is constantly discussing PUA techniques, routines, and asking for advice & scores from others.
People are understandably annoyed by this at first, but later on Tyler's strictly scientific approach to love and human interaction alienates him from others for reasons they can't always articulate. Tyler approaches some kind of social uncanny valley caught in-between genuine human interaction and appearing to be genuine. PUA routines and techniques are supposed to come off as natural, genuine, and personal. We know they aren't, Tyler knows they aren't, and Tyler doesn't see why he shouldn't be applying these techniques all the time. If they have worked on women, why not men? If perfecting this performance has gotten him laid before, why bother being any other way?
Tyler does not see the benefit of being genuine after he has learned hundreds of ways to get the exact conversation and relationship he wants by following precise steps.
So, this is obviously an issue. People don't like this. Women don't like it once they know what he is doing, and his fellow PUAs feel weird about being manipulated. Perhaps this should give the community insight in to how creepy and anti-social their behaviours and beliefs towards women are, but of course it doesn't. Instead, they draw the conclusion that Tyler makes them "feel icky" but ultimately he is making them a lot of money by buying all their magic tricks.
So, they keep him around.
Tyler's anti-social approach does more than just cause an uneasy feeling within the community, though. His perfection threatens their entire way of life. Can Pick-Up artistry be called "art" or even be considered something one can be "gifted at" if the whole system can be so easily mastered and broken simply by applying it with inhumane precision? Is it artistic or skilled if a master of pick-up artistry need only replicate formulas, applying them in no unique ways? Tyler has effectively taken a social skill and turned it in to a hard science.Soon, Neil realises that what they are doing is not training men how to enhance themselves, but in reality gurus are effectively making carbon copies of themselves. Hoards of men are suddenly sarging on the Sunset Strip using the same 30 routines to an exact science, not bothering to change the formula in any way or approach situations with any kind of personal nuance. Suddenly, all of these students are understanding that Tyler has been right all along- why take the risk of being your genuine self, when this augmented playboy is so much better for results? Neil is especially horrified when he starts to see complete strangers dressing, talking, and acting exactly like him and not necessarily out of worship, but out of some understanding that Style is the "ideal pick-up artist" and thus they may as well copy him exactly.
What this inevitably creates is a situation where women catch on to "The Game" and can only be "had" once before they've heard it all, realise they were manipulated, and are uninterested in any other PUA and his approach. Tyler Durden and his approach effectively ruins the pussy economy and this infuriates the community. That's not all, either. Tyler Durden eventually gets seen as a kind of betrayal to the community. Not only does Durden indiscriminately "game" women his friends are dating, but he effectively "games" his friends as well. Neil Strauss actually has a semi-lucid moment in his book where he realises that Tyler has "frozen him out" and he describes a feeling of huge betrayal for being treated this way- for being treated like a target.
 |
| Tyler Durden exhibiting "social proof" |
From there, everything falls apart. The book ends, Neil gets married, and it seems like it's over. But, of course it isn't. Tyler Durden is still out there today, as recently as 2018, getting arrested for sexual assault and getting banned from the entire country of Australia. Tyler is still out there inspiring robotic armies of pea-cocking magicians pressuring women in to sleeping with them, but even he realises this practice is unsustainable now, so they're never in any one place very long. Gone are the days of Project Hollywood and establishing bases. The last PUAs are a nomadic people, moving on to greener pastures after they have ravaged the land with their trickery.
Of course, you can trick people in to liking you, but you can't trick people in to loving you. Tyler doesn't mind being perpetually single, but his ambivalence towards this creeps people out. Not only is Tyler a person who efficiently strips himself and everyone he engages with of their implicit humanity, but he also could care less if he is loved or even liked.
Tyler is in this to win the game, and isn't it odd that all of these viciously competitive men are so opposed to this?
Masculine Empowerment in The Game
At this point I think it should be pretty obvious where the initially empowering ideals of "The Game" begin to falter. Not only are women stripped of their humanity by conceptualising them as sets, numbers, scores, and as a resource, but so too are men once Tyler's influence begins to run rampant in the community.
Even back in the days of early pick-up artists like Ross Jefferies, it was clear that male empowerment and success in the field derived from being successful at picking up women. Ross Jefferies claims that "(The Game) is not designed to hurt women, but to augment men", but at the same time his seminars and teachings still begin and end with the goal to increase a man's "score" (your score is how many women you've slept with). Tyler's influence is that this same success and empowerment also depends on men being efficient and consistent, like a telemarketer. A woman's value is explicit, but men are only valuable if they perform correctly in line with the status quo Project Hollywood has conceived. Use the formulas. Stick to the script, stupid.
As I mentioned earlier, this approach only results in thousands of men approaching women using the same handful of interactions, and with no genuine personality involved women naturally get tired of this and stop falling for pick-up artists and their magic tricks. Tyler Durden ends up creating an economy that crashes quickly and the more scarce women unfamiliar with their tricks become, the more conflict and competition arises.
Mystery, who was once the top pick-up artist in the world boasting a score well in to triple digits, becomes victim to this scarcity. Mystery frequently acts out with jealousy, violence, and hostility. These behaviours were typical of Mystery and his mental illness is not ignored at any point in "The Game" (Though, it isn't given much introspection either) but once Tyler is in the picture Mystery excuses his violence towards others in the house as merely evidence of his "raw evolutionary masculinity". In order for his masculinity to be validated and to feel empowered, his score must continue to increase, and this logically isn't possible when women can only be "had" once.What's odd is that these men could care less about the sanctity of virginity, which is usually the argument for a woman being "tainted" after sleeping with a man. Instead, the concern is that these men have willingly submitted themselves to a robotic dogma of the same dozen unbelievably stupid and/or rapey magic tricks that have efficiently revealed their bullshit to all women who are approached by them.
Earlier, women couldn't necessarily identify when they were being manipulated by a pick up artist because any given night or interaction would be maybe 25% routine at most. Tyler has figured out you can get away with doing 100% routine and leaving nothing to chance, and the only downside is that this is unsustainable and he must constantly be moving, un-tethered to any given social space.
Paradoxically, Pick-Up Artistry claims to be focused on a wholesome community of men teaching each other and supporting one another to be their best selves, both through "wingmaning" and education, but in this community and practice it is also inevitable that these same men will end up competing and attacking each other when they are the "loser" due to their "evolutionary masculinity" and the thoughtless system they've bought in to. Despite preaching male empowerment, the movement quickly produces a man like Tyler Durden who has no qualms turning the whole thing on its head and "gaming" men too. You may enter this thinking you're going to feel more confident, but you will leave being tricked, manipulated, and being degraded to a toxic status quo.
This is fascinating to me.
When I started reading this book, I figured Neil Strauss would end up leaving the community simply because he found a girlfriend he loved too much to risk losing. While this is somewhat true, the last section of his book clearly outlines this deeply unsettling sociological issue in the community.You cannot treat women like objects and claim you've hacked in to all social relationships through formulas, without also degrading the men willing to sacrifice their own humanity to take part in this. It is a lose-lose no matter how you slice it, but at least women recognise what's going on after just one encounter with a pick-up artist. The men are not so lucky. They can get caught in this cult for years.
I can't believe I'm saying it, any more than I can believe that it is true.
"The Game" and pick-up artistry as a social science is more harmful to the men that empower themselves in it, than any women who falls victim to their tricks.
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