
The military con- and de-notations are definitely intentional. The rest of the book follows this tone, with terse imperative sentences describing your ‘missions’, giving you your ‘daily briefings’, lauding the brand of the Stylelife (8) Challenge and the in-group of the ‘Challengers’ that now includes you in their epic community of men who have lifted the wool from their eyes and have unlocked the badass secrets of masculinity and attraction and power. There’s one sentence where the author takes it back, but it doesn’t really matter - what does matter is that from the very outset this guy has established presence and power, which is basically what he claims he can give to you if you buckle down and do exactly what he says. This particular book opens (7) by jarring you to get your attention, the first page having a big READ ME title and the rest of the intro spent mostly mocking you for being so weak as to mindlessly follow orders. With rare exceptions girls (4) don’t respond to discursive seductions with much positivity, that kind of human interaction taking as its medium the language of looks and smiles (5) rather that the intricate grunts and marks that make up my textual relationships.īut enough about me (6).

I wanted more tools for human interaction, more confidence (3) in my ability to interact with humans in ways that don’t include transparently interrogating them or steering the conversation to a technical topic I like so I can show off the stuff I’ve been thinking about lately. So that’s the ladder I wanted to climb when I opened this book. But one-on-one the task of weaving my emotions into the immediate experience that I share with another concrete human being is a different beast altogether. Being on stage isn’t too bad - the audience blurs together into a nameless homogenous mass and I get really plugged-in to whatever it is that I’m talking about and my self-consciousness slips away and it’s somehow both exhilarating and peaceful at the same time. Human interaction more often than not leaves me feeling fried and drained and in desperate need of several hours of solid solitude. But they/you (humans) are complicated and hard. See, humans and human connections and humanity in general are deeply important to me both concretely and conceptually, kind of replacing capital-G God in my little cosmology (2). I did my sincere best to bracket that noise and come at it fresh and open to new ideas and experience, figuring I could just take the good and laugh at the bad (1). I’d also heard that PickUp makes you into a horrible misogynist asshole, framing women as sexual-gatekeepers to be manipulated and even tricked into giving up the warmth between their legs if that’s you really want them to do. I’d heard tell of the book before, of PickUp Artist-ry and its profound potential to transform you into a Randian Titan of pure will with respect to the female connections you want in your life. It was literally thrown at me by my helpful roommate one dark day when my romantic despair was so intense it was almost bending the light around my head.

I’d heard tell of the book before, of PickUp Artist-ry and its There’s a class of self-help books for men, books with bold titles like “ROAR OF THE MAN-WARRIOR” and “THE SEX GOD WITHIN” that promise explosive increases in sex/money/power/general satisfaction of desire for any man with stones enough to take the plunge. There’s a class of self-help books for men, books with bold titles like “ROAR OF THE MAN-WARRIOR” and “THE SEX GOD WITHIN” that promise explosive increases in sex/money/power/general satisfaction of desire for any man with stones enough to take the plunge.
