Know your pickup artists: Style
Mystery’s protege and partner in crime…and it appears the man learned well. Too well.
Neil Strauss - aka Style - is the author of The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of PIckup Artists. In the book he details his transformation from an average joe getting absolutely nowhere to a master pickup artist very successful with women. He also details his relationship with his partner-in-crime Mystery as well as other artists in the (then) underground community and the implosion of Project Hollywood, a mansion full of pickup artists. As he learned his trade from Mystery (and built upon it), his methods and beliefs are practically based upon The Mystery Method. I’m not going to waste my time going too much into his life as it’s all detailed in the book. Let’s talk about the “after” instead.
At the end of The Game, Style came to the conclusion that “to win the game was to leave it” and he settled down with girlfriend Lisa Leveridge, guitar player for Courtney Love. Following the success of the book, Style announced that he was getting out of the game and would pass on his knowledge to five individuals during a three-day seminar, becoming the last to gain his knowledge. Well, not quite. The recorded seminar was then sold to the public in a collection of DVDs, CDs and other material called “The Annihilation Method.” Style announced that only 375 copies would be sold (always “limited”). Oh yeah, and the set had a price tag of $3799. That is NOT a typo.
Going back to the book, Style hit the daytime TV circuit and even popped up on The View to promote his book. How many guys out there are watching The View anyway? That, and the four hens couldn’t go five seconds in the segment without cutting him off and interjecting. The whole painful segment can be seen here. (And to the one clucking hen, YES, the guys out there who are 26 and never held a woman’s hand ARE legit!)
Style may of had a “fairytale” ending at the end of The Game, but reality hit hard when his relationship with Lisa Leveridge dissolved. Despite “retiring,” Style went right back into his trade. In the summer of 2006, Style had a contest called “The Stylelife Challenge” where over the span of thirty days, daily challenges were given to guys to improve their confidence and appearance in the ultimate goal of getting a date within 30 days.
At one point the option for the movie rights to The Game was out there and causing guys on message boards to freak out that they’d be “exposed.” After some time, Neil sent out a mailing list message and shed some light on the movie rights situation as well as his future…
“Because I had no idea how successful The Game would be, I allowed a certain type of film option that I wouldn’t grant now. That film option bit me in the ass. It made it practically impossible to do certain things that would help the broadest amount of guys in the best way possible. These were things I’d dreamed about, things guys have been asking me for, things that would allow them to replicate my journey through a much quicker and easier route.
It saddened me to see more and more teachers out there who don’t really care. And who don’t have any real field experience or social skills. And who exploit my name in order to take the hard-earned money of people who have a real desire to master the game.
Well, that’s all about to end. The film option is now mine again.
So all the guys who are worried about The Game suddenly becoming a mainstream movie can breathe easy for now. I’m officially free to do something special for you. Something that’s never been done before.”
That “something special” ended up being an online “training program” of sorts called The Stylelife Academy, costing about $80 a month (with $50 setup fee). I’m not really sure how a studio having the option to the movie rights to The Game would prevent him from doing something like the academy anyway, but whatever. The program would only be taking on 505 students (again with the “limited” thing), but despite trumpeting this it ended up opening it’s doors later to everyone with an “Afterhours program” with no assigned coaching. Anyway, the academy revolved around daily assignments to better yourself such as talking to two strangers or whatnot.
If the above sounds similar to the free Stylelife Challenges above, you’re correct. I don’t know what they’re doing today, but at least during the first few months of the launch of the academy many of the daily challenges were rehashes of the Stylelife Challenge. There were some other benefits like teleconferencing and monthly packages involving CDs/DVDs and newsletters, but ultimately was not worth the price. I want to keep things rolling along but if you’re wanting a harsh but fairly accurate and more indepth description of the whole experience, then read this review from this site (I was a 505er too and agree with just about all of it).
Style later released another book called Rules of the Game. As The Game was more autobiographical, Rules of the Game is more instructional as it gives out daily challenges to help improve your social life. Yep, you guessed it….it’s another version of the Stylelife Challenge. I guess I can’t blame him for publishing it as the challenge had not been available anywhere else but the web at this point, but I wonder how many guys bought the book that were already familiar with this?
Meanwhile, another company got a hold of the rights to a movie version of The Game. You can count on guys fearing for the worst when that hit the theatres. That, and I’m sure Style will be offering something off the success of that…possibly involving the words “stylelife” and “challenge” again 
Style has been accused of being a marketer as this controversial but poignant article points out - as well as this article, and I can’t really argue with many of the points with that. I do think he seems like a nice, decent guy and has indeed helped a lot of guys out there, but he does reek of marketing techniques. I work in the marketing/advertising world as well and I can spot the tactics there. All in all, I think Style almost falls into the same category as Mystery…too inaccessible and expensive now. In other words, I wouldn’t count on him posting anything to the free newsgroups anytime soon.
The $3799 Annihilation Method was only available for a short time and even if you were insane enough to pay that you can’t buy that anymore anyway. The academy is still around but I definitely wouldn’t shell out a dime for that. I probably would take the time to read The Game, it’s a very good story that many awkward guys can easily relate to, won’t break your wallet and can be found in your local Borders or Barnes and Noble.
Honey Says:
July 12th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Plus, if that’s a picture of him, he’s VERY handsome. If I could be said to have a type, that’s it…the suit, the bald head…oooh!