> Being a casual student of David DeAngelo for 18 months or so, my view
> of the seduction scene is governed by excercises and techniques
> reminding guys that in order to be men, they have to stop being so
> needy, etcetera, etcetera.
>
> I found out that there were other players in this scene of helping guys
> a few months ago, and never really gave it much thought - they were
> simply other guys like David D looking to make some money out of the
> techniques they had amassed and developed, all in a very friendly
> manner. I saw clips of Mystery after having seen him in David D's Body
> Language seminar, and was struck by his arrogance and separation from
> women, resulting in an apparent lack of connection with women. I
> listened to David D's interview with Tyler, and found the guy to be
> fascinating; intelligent, fairly well spoken, and original. So formed
> my first conceptions of the other facets to the seduction community.
>
> Then, out of sheer coincidence, my best friend suggested that if I was
> getting into all this Attraction Isn't A Choice deal, I should read
> "The Game". This was fairly surprising, given that my best friend is an
> AFC under the disguise of a very well built guy with a long-term
> girlfriend. The good build, however, came from an insecritu about his
> natural genetic big-bonedness, which led him to go crazy in the gym. He
> no longer looked overweight, but due to his body shape, he still looked
> large. Even though he had now formed a body that I would kill to have,
> he still felt an insecurity about it. As for his long-term girlfriend,
> she was an unattractive nymphomaniac with at least as many insecurities
> and issues as he had. Their relationship was a strange dynamic of both
> being so clingy to each other that the clingyness negated in a strange
> nullifying defiance of social law, that I imagine is highly uncommon.
>
> I then realised that he had not read the book. Instead, it had been
> recommended to him by a mutual friend of ours, who fancied himself as a
> bit of a ladies ban, though in reality he had as much game as a donut.
> Apparently he had read "The Game", and tried to use the "techniques"
> therein to attract members of the opposite sex. What it ultimately came
> to, though was simply him targeting drunken girls wearing huge pairs of
> beer goggles, and making highly sexual advances on the dancefloor,
> which were nothing more than the accidental good moves of a guy with
> the balls to slide his hand up a girl's leg. The poor dear probably
> thought he had all the moves, and was a maestro in bed, but the truth
> was, the only girl he'd had sex with was a promiscuous girl I'd fooled
> around with behind his back. I could have slept with her were it not
> for the fact that I realised that she wasn't at all attractive, with
> fucked teeth and an overbite that wasn't even close to being Britney
> Spears cute. That, and the threat of divine knife-wielding retribution
> from her man lest he find out.
>
> And so, when I was told to read this book, I approached it thinking it
> would be yet another AFC pretending to be a pickup artist (See Player's
> Guide on askmen.com for an example), with no game, and simply
> rephrasing the points found in dating handbooks written by alleged
> experts in the field of human interaction. (See "Men are from Mars,
> Women are from Venus" for the greatest example of a man getting it
> wrong, and hordes of men follwing him) I was, however, blown away.
>
> The author described himself in a way that was not completely
> dissimilar from myself, though the man was far older with much more
> life experience than I. Several pages in, he mentioned David DeAngelo,
> Mystery, and others. My interest was piqued. These were names I had
> heard of, and knew of - knew that they were real, and weren't just
> bullshitters.
>
> I progressed further into the book, and started to see this world of
> underground seduction through the eyes of a man who thought in much the
> same way I did, though I do not say this in a way that implies that
> Neil Strauss in any way have a connection on any level. As I saw these
> people I had seen online and studied in a new light, my view of the
> whole community changed. All of a sudden, I realised that in this
> community, there were those who were naturals teaching what they knew,
> and nerds who learned the programming, and teaching the programming to
> other nerds. I wasn't sure what to make of it all.
>
> The irony is, I picked up the book a few months ago, and got to the
> scene in which the sheltered Catholic "Extramask" had his first sexual
> encounter with a woman. ("Extramask", I learned later, has now become
> an instructor for the Mystery Method spinoff Real Social Dynamics, who
> goes by the callsign "Twenty-Six") I only started reading the book
> again two days ago. Since then all of the important points have come
> out of the woodwork.
>
> Whereas I once envied and respected "Tyler", I now have not the
> slightest iota of respect for him. His lack of a sense of honour, and a
> lack of interest in women, disgust me, when I hear of the things he has
> done (and maybe still does) in this world of female seduction. The fact
> that he can reduce virtually any social interaction to the mechanics
> and understand it that way totally removes any romanticism that could
> be associated with him. Perhaps it is because of the fact that I love
> women, and enjoy making women feel fantastic, and adore the
> spirituality of inimacy, and having a connection with a woman, that I
> find his breakdown of that which I love so disgusting. The kid
> manipulates women by flicking their imaginary switches, and puts down
> other PUAs tho threaten his "game". He doesn't do this because he loves
> being with women and making them feel fantastic (a la Casanova), rather
> he loves the power he feels over other guys who try to "game" women and
> make them his. In breaking down the entire mating process and
> understanding how to manipulate it as he saw fit, he totally destroyed
> his chances of feeling any intimacy with any woman. At first I thought
> that perhaps he was gay, using his control of women in front of other
> men to get back at the jocks who had teased him for his effeminacy in
> his youth. But then I figured that if he was this cold and negative to
> men, particularly other men (or boys pretending to be men) who had
> skill in "gaming" women, the chance of him actually wanting to love
> another man were miniscule. Therefore, I decided that Tyler Durden was
> an androgynous male robot, who understood how to get a woman to do
> whatever he wanted, but had no desire to ever make a true connection
> with a woman.
>
> Of course, this portrayal of this university student with too much
> babyfat and silly hair could be completely false - perhaps an attempt
> by a jealous fellow PUA to discredit him by making him appear robotic
> and cold - but I was tempted to think that Neil Strauss's perception of
> him was true.
>
> What really astounded me, though was when I came to this newsgroup, and
> saw that it only had around 1600 subscribers. From the hype built up in
> The Game and on Mystery's website, I assumed that by now hundreds of
> thousands of men had flocked to this newsgroup, and every other out
> there, and totally destroyed any close-knit group of seducers. This
> isn't to say that 1600+ isn't a large number, but all the same, I had
> expected more.
>
> And so, after my lengthy babble and first post in this newsgroup,
> perhaps you could share with me your perceptions of the world of
> seduction. Is it as I think it is? Is there a place in it for a guy who
> simply wants to make a great connection with an attractive woman and
> achieve new levels of intimacy with her? Any and all replies will be
> greatly appreciated.
>
> Yours,
>
> The Late Romanticist
>