The bubble of the seduction community
The internet’s dot com bubble bursted in the late 90s…will the seduction community share a similar fate a decade later?
“With no guile and no game, there’s no girl.”
~Hitch
So very true. Of course I’ve heard guys out there respond to this by saying “Duh…but *I* have no game and I get women.” Either these kind of guys need to be asked what *kind* of women they’re getting, are exaggerating and is with one woman, or they’re simply being modest and they are better than they give themselves credit for. Yes, some men know game naturally. For others, they are willing to pay money to learn game, and there’s certainly no shortage of pickup artists/gurus in the seduction community out there to teach men.
But…I think the whole seduction community is on the verge of a bubble that is about to burst. Years ago it was just a few main guys selling their products along with the exchange of information on usenet boards. Then the students of those men went on to start their own business selling products and/or bootcamps. Now it’s getting to the point that the students of those students are breaking out on their own. It’s creating far too much product out there all containing variations of the same stuff.
So yes, oversaturation is one problem…overpriced is another. My problem with it all is that some of these products and bootcamps are priced so far out of the hands of the younger, clueless people who need it the most! In the book The Game, Neil Strauss paid $500 to learn from Mystery. While some people out there would think that’s overpriced, it was a freakin’ bargain compared to what’s such things cost today. Depending on who is teaching them, you can pay upwards of $1500+ on a bootcamp. In more extreme cases, some have offered “limited number” DVD collections costing as high as $3799.
Not that I don’t think they shouldn’t make money off their efforts…being financially successful from doing what you love is the American dream. However, it’s still quite possible to sell your products at a reasonable price and still make lots of money getting it into more hands…without those hands turning to BitTorrent in retaliation.
I know someone out there will argue that the benefit in the information being priced so high is that it keeps it out of the hands of people who aren’t serious and will keep the pickup artist community “underground.” I think the moment that stuff like best-selling books and reality TV shows hit the market that it lost all credibility of being “underground.” To put things in perspective, even my 56-year-old mother knows who Mystery is.
There is another aspect that I’m looking at that makes me believe even more in the bubble. Girls are starting to pick up on this stuff and identify that one line is “a Mystery line,” or that another one “she read about in The Game.” Go on any seduction message board in the field reports and you’ll hear about a guy who got busted on his scripts. Of course the usual responses are things like “she won’t care you’re gaming her if she’s into you,” or “there will always be ways to lay girls,” or my favorite “you’re not supposed to use the techniques in the book as is, you gotta change them.”
None of that matters if she can generally identify an opinion opener, a neg or a time constraint, all which you can thank the book and the TV show for. While there is some truth in the above, girls aren’t stupid and I do think the guys out there know this. Whenever the game is threatened to be revealed to the mainstream (such as the one-time proposed movie rights to The Game or VH1’s The Pickup Artist), you can read all about guys freaking the fuck out on message boards.
Which is why natural game makes more sense to me. If you are able to seduce a woman using your own natural charm and your own thunder, then your game is your own original product….not something being recycled by a ton of guys out there. You’ll never have to be fearful of the media “exposing you,” either.
Not that I don’t think the scripted game has it’s lessons to be learned, because there is a lot of truth in what those kinds of pickup artists teach as well. Whether I paid for it or used “other” means to get their products, I have read and heard much from the writings of a lot of gurus out who have been impressional on me in one way or another. In upcoming entries on my blog, I’m going to be running down my opinion of different pickup artists and my advice and thoughts to those who might seek out their information.
The Dateable Dork Says:
July 11th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Call me crazy, but the whole idea of “pickup” is absolutely ridiculous to me. Don’t girls just want guys to be genuine? Why pay all this money to become someone you’re not?
The Virgin Says:
July 11th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Dork: Many guys are “genuine” and yet they don’t understand why they don’t get anywhere, hence they seek help. Just look how I bombed in my back story being “myself.” Fact is, the guy isn’t going to get anywhere if they’re doing the EXACT same thing that twenty guys before them already did on the girl being hit on right and left. It’s important to be educated on some matters. Is paying for college to learn a skill for a job “deceptive?” Some guys know game naturally, and way more do not
At the very core of it, it’s about mastery over YOURSELF (self-improvement) and social situations. BUT…it can be a trap. Different guys I’m going to be writing about here have different approaches and I think it’s important for guys to stop and think who might be really trying to help…and who might be playing off marketing, selling snake oil or counting on guys who hop from product to product looking for the “magic pill.”