RSS 2.0Top 10 Myths in the Seduction Community: Part 1
Posted in Pickup on 11/29/2010 09:22 am by DJ Fuji
Like any community or industry where most of the consumers are after quick-fixes and instant results, the seduction community definitely has its fair share of myths, mistruths, and sometimes outright lies. Some of these are obvious, but many elude even seasoned veterans of this industry. Combine ambiguity and vagueness in content and material, marketing hype, and even intentional misinformation, and what you get is an industry where the average consumer is understandably lost.
Like the spot training myth of the fitness industry, many of these community myths come about as a result of aggressive marketing campaigns and outright dishonest sales copy hype.
Let’s take a look at Part 1 of the Top 10 Worst Myths in the Seduction Community.
10. The main purpose of canned routines is to get a reaction/result when talking to women (get attraction, open the set, etc)
It’s not that I don’t like or use canned (e.g. prescripted) routines. It’s that nobody really understands what they’re used for. I wrote a long post about this earlier in the year to address the problem, but I’d bet that most people reading this still think that routines are used to get a result. An opener is used to open the set. A DHV story is used to get attraction. A comfort routine is used to build comfort. Makes sense, right? If only it were that simple. Like most things in pickup, the truth is pretty counter-intuitive. The purpose of routines is to teach you a skill. It’s not to get a result. If that sounds weird or confusing, check out the full length article.
9. DHV Stories
Almost a decade ago, Mystery pioneered this idea of the DHV — a demonstration of higher value. And while it was little more than very sophisicated and subtle supplication, the theory was founded on critical ideas — that women paid more attention to your subtext (what you said between the lines) than your overt communication. We took advantage of this by ‘embedding’ DHVs into our stories to convey attractive qualities about us. Now on some level we eventually realized that we were still in the same boat of trying to impress women, which we know today to be a very ineffective and unattractive mindset. But regardless of what we were doing, the stories seemed to get results, so screw all the naysayers, right?
Not quite.
I’ll be explaining the full details on this phenomenon in a future article coming in the next few weeks, but the basic premise is this: DHV stories don’t actually work as a result of the “embedded” DHV qualities. They work because you’re leading, you are confident, and you’re socially calibrated. What we thought was making them work was all wrong. Stay tuned for the full details on that in a few weeks. For now you’ll have to just trust me on this one.
8. You should never buy a drink or dinner or be nice to a girl
Oooo, this one’s a doozy. This one has been debunked so many damn times, but to this day I still see guys making this mistake. It’s the old, “don’t supplicate to her” rule, and it’s vastly misinterpreted. It’s not that you should never buy a drink (or dinner, or be nice) to/for a girl. It’s that you shouldn’t buy her attention or otherwise try to impress her by buying things for her or being overly nice to her. In other words, treat her like a good friend. If you’re talking to her for an hour and you want to grab a drink, offer her one too. If you invite a girl to dinner (which you shouldn’t do in the first place, but that’s beside the point), pick up the tab when the check comes. It’s called being polite and not being cheap and petty, and if you forget about that, you’ll lose way more attraction for that than you ever would have because of some arbitrary pickup law. In a woman’s mind, there are very few things more unattractive than you being a cheapass. In the same vein, being a jerk to a girl because you don’t want her to think you’re ‘supplicating’ is also ineffective and bad form. (That said, do not buy her a drink if she demands it unless she has a damn good reason.)
7. The One True Way Method
I have to give credit to Savoy for this one from the Magic Bullets ebook. Like football and religion (and well, most everything in a guy’s life), it’s really easy to get into something and pick a favorite ‘team’ and dogmatically follow their advice/path/career as the “One True Way.” Every theist-based religion revolves around this, as does sports, systems of government, programming platforms, operating systems, and countless other things. The problem, of course, is that it creates blind spots inherent in the group think mentality. Simply put, the One True Way fallacy means you follow one system, one guru, one method to the exclusion of all other methods. And we’ve already seen that that that didn’t work so well in the UFC. That’s why everyone in the UFC practices “Mixed Martial Arts” now instead of “boxing” or “karate.”
Pickup is the same way. Every style or methodology has certain strengths and weaknesses. Some apply better to sexually confident men. Others apply better to socially maladjusted men. But no system is ideal for everyone, or it would have to be so vague and open ended that it would be worthless (which is why I teach fundamentals rather than a system). The danger in following the ‘one true way’ is the same as trying it in the UFC — no matter how good you are at your discipline, you’ll eventually plateau (or more likely, get your ass handed to you) when your blind spots start to hold you back. Think of what happens when a boxer gets taken to the ground. Or when a wrestler can’t get in close enough to take down a stand up fighter. The same concept applies to schools of pickup.
6. All you need is Inner Game/Outer Game/Lifestyle/Social Proof/etc.
Similar to the One True Way, a lot of gurus and systems try to oversimplify the complexity of human interactions into a nice, compact, “all you need is X” type of formula. You’ve all heard it before.
“All you need is inner game. You don’t need to go out, you don’t need to change anything, you just have to have inner game. Do my 10 positive affirmations in your mom’s basement where you live and you will be the MAN by next week!”
Riiiiiiight. The same applies to outer game, lifestyle, social proof, or any other concept. It’s just not true. Maybe for a single isolated context it might be correct, but across the board it’s nothing more than a fantasy we’d all like to believe in. Don’t get sucked up into the hype. Run far and run fast from anyone who broadly claims that, ‘All you need to be successful is X.’ Unless of course, that ‘X’ is ‘everything.’
Continued in Part 2 of the Top 10 Myths in the Seduction Community
Agree with these myths? Disagree? Sound off in the comments!
11/29/2010 at 09:58
Going off of Myth #6 – All you need is Inner Game/Outer Game/Lifestyle/Social Proof/etc.
I definitely agree with you on this one.
The pickup industry is FILLED with marketing hype… I’ve been in the direct marketing business for a few years now and the ONE principle marketers are taught is to present their product/service as the 1 magic bullet that will solve all their customers needs. The more specific the product/service, the better.
What this has done with the pickup community is there are magic pills being sold left and right (from body language, to inner game, to outer game, lifestyle, fashion, etc) as the 1 solution to solve all a man’s women problems. This has developed many men to have an overly-simplistic outlook on how the real world actually is.
The result: a big chunk of the guys in this community having little to no depth…
You’ll see the guy who knows every pickup line in the book, whose outer game techniques are SOLID – but is 20 pounds overweight, living in his parents basement. Or the guy who has an awesome career, has lots of cool stuff going for him, but doesn’t want to look like an idiot with the cold approach route. Or the inner game guy that sits at home listening to his affirmation CD, but doesn’t pay ANY attention to outer game technique and doesn’t know what he’s doing when he’s actually out of the house and talking to a woman.
I think the game is coming full circle with guys such as yourself Fuji who are opening guy’s eyes that getting better with women is a holistic journey, where everything about who you are counts.
Great article and looking forward to the second part!
11/29/2010 at 12:43
I remember that I saw some video where Chris (Lovedrop) said how one day he and Matador realized that one of the biggest reasons why Mystery’s DHV stories were so interesting actually was the way he speaks (I … am … Mistery
)
Anyway I guess at least one of the top five myths will have something to do with misunderstanding some of the concepts like being unreactive, not seeking reaction, not giving a fuck, being alpha etc.
For example I often see guys post on forums that if what you are saying next to a girl is based on what she said previously, you are automatically being reactive and supplicating, and that you should just say whatever the fuck you want.
And also that you can make tactical mistakes, have retarded body language, fail shit tests etc. and as long as you “don’t give a fuck about what she thinks of you” it doesn’t matter.
Or maybe all of this is can just fall under number 6?
11/29/2010 at 16:21
Agree with almost everything. The point I partly disagree with is number 8. Some guys should go through a phase in which they DON’T buy anything for girls, so that they stop being the standard “nice guy.” After that happens, then they can proceed to buy girls drinks / whatever because they want to, and not because they want to “buy their attention.”
11/29/2010 at 22:31
It is a shame so many good PUA teachers use shameful marketing techniques – that’s what #6 reminded me of. David Deangelo, Conquer your Campus, and more are great, but also use marketing gimmicks that can be a turn off to their product, mainly to someone who is not new to the game. One myth I think you might want to mention is the stigma of immorality that surrounds the PUA community and keeps many out. There’s a lot born again Christians, good Catholic boys, Muslim’s and other’s serious about following their religion can learn! Perhaps they won’t be “true” PUA’s, but they can at least learn how to score themselves a super hot wife and become oool dudes with great social skills, and benefit from all the self development a PUA journey brings.
11/30/2010 at 12:22
Well thought out points. There is many points you make that so many guys in the community have misinterpreted in understanding the true context of a routine, DHV, gambit, and such.
Others here made good remarks. I agree that this business of pick up has many marketing tactics that can seem shady or provide outrageous claims.
It is important as you stated in point 6…there is NO magic bullet to fix everything. The lure of a magic pill that will cure all of guy’s weaknesses is such a farce. Sometimes its not that simple. IT would be great but there’s work involved. The work needs to be done in so many levels as stated in point 6. Its a holistic approach and some teachers and guys in the community fail to see that.
Great insight and retrospective into the “myths” of the community.
Look forward to reading part two.
12/02/2010 at 08:48
Good article. I bet the myth of the guru will be on here too.
As for your bit about routines, TD said back in the day that routines are like a “time capsule” that allow you to work on your subcommunications since your mind is at ease since you’re delivering prescripted verbals. Makes sense.
As for the “One True Way” myth, very true – when it comes down to it, we get good by pushing through our fears and figuring out what works for ourselves.
King Chen
12/04/2010 at 10:16
Great post, I’m glad I found this blog as it seems to be something of an oasis from all the BS and hype which characterise much of the pick up industry. I really hope the industry evolves into something far more professional in the future, especially with regard to helping men who have little or no experience with women. Lets ditch the pop psychology and base teachings on scientific studies, and drive the trashy products out of business.
DJ Fuji said on another post something like ‘its fundementals that get you laid’ and this I think is something which never gets the attention it deserves. Without the basic social skills to interact with someone your never going to get anywhere, no matter how much pick up you know.
I began studying pick up a few years ago to break a lifetime of virginity and pretty much threw my wallet at the industry, falling for all the shameless marketing tactics. Whilst I learnt so much theory I could probably write my own e-book, it was completely useless to me in the real world, simply because my fundemental social skills were so weak. Its only now, at 28, that I feel I have got to grips with the basics of socialising that I’m in a realistic position to actually have a chance at solving this problem.
12/04/2010 at 19:18
Hey guys, thanks for all the comments/feedback. Part II of the series should be up shortly.
@Frozen: Yes, all of that falls under #6. The thing about saying whatever you want relies on existing tactical skill and comprehension. If you have the naturalized, INSTINCTIVE ability to say the RIGHT things with the RIGHT delivery, then yes, you can just say whatever. But if you DON’T have that skill, saying ‘whatever’ will just get you blown the fuck out. A HUGE problem in the community revolves around guys NOT LISTENING TO GIRLS. They don’t listen because they’re stacking, because they dont want to be ‘reactive’ and because they’re thinking of the next thing to say rather than actually listening to what she’s saying. It’s not that you don’t want to react to anything. That’s just stupid. It’s that you want to minimize the amount of EMOTIONAL reactivity. The person reacting emotionally the LEAST is usually considered the ‘higher value’ person. In the real world that means that the person reacting (emotionally) the least is usually more “important” in that context. (e.g., the owner of the club reacts less than the random girl in the club = he’s more important in that context.)
@MC: I don’t think it’s necessary to go to that extreme. It’s that extreme which causes things like this: http://www.taoofdjfuji.com/2010/01/18/the-chode-quandary/. A better solution is simply to have a few rules that dictate when it’s ok to buy drinks and when it’s not. You don’t for example, need to slap the girl around in order to teach yourself not to supplicate.
12/05/2010 at 17:59
I think Style is one of the biggest gimmicks to come out of the PUA industry. I unfortunately bought into his marketing hype. His success was in most part based on the success of his book The Game. He is probably competent in field, yet there’s never been any footage of him out there. He makes himself out to be a god-like PUA that never gets blown out, which is in essence his marketing hype strategy.
12/06/2010 at 04:47
@Just another PUA yeah check this out! http://www.practicalpickup.com/thoughts-on-the-game-by-neil-strauss
12/06/2010 at 05:07
@JustanotherPUA: Unlike most of Neil’s critics, I’ve actually met him and spent a decent amount of time hanging with him. And you know what? He’s a regular guy, like you and I. He happens to be a very good PUA, but he gets blown out just like everyone else. Sure, he’s successful and everything and a lot of people look up to him, but behind all the fame and the book and everything else, he’s just a regular dude who works hard and has his own share of quirks, strengths, weaknesses, and insecurities. Is his marketing hype-y and shameless? Sure. But that’s how good marketing works. Just because I’m more self-righteous than I am business-smart doesn’t mean I look down upon or judge those who don’t share my views.
12/06/2010 at 06:31
I hung out for a day with Neil back before he got big from his book. He’s a cool guy, just normal like you said. He hired about professional marketers to manage his site, paying really big bucks. I forget the name of the company, but it was the same people that launched stompernet