The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I pride myself in being able to read anything… which is less about reading and more about having an open mind. So it was really surprisingly (or not) hard for me to even agree to read this book. And when reading it, I wanted to dislike it. Don’t get me wrong; there is plenty in this book to dislike. The biggest problem I had with the book though, as it is about a real thing, is the narrative voice. The narrator isn’t the individual going through the book, it’s often someone who both is expressing their attitudes at the current place the reader is, and at the place after the book was writing. As such, sometimes you’re not sure if the narrator is foreshadowing, being paternalistic towards the reader, or totally into what’s going on at that place in the narrative. This confusion makes sense later on though, when you realize that the author, who presumably is the same man as the narrator as he claims, is still giving pick up artist classes and so on. So even while in the book, he’s reacting with horror, being super self-aware of the limitations of what will happen, how terrible this society of pick up artists is, he’s still involved at least in making money on it.
In reading this book you become aware that while misogyny can happen as a side effect, the majority of men who go into this field lack a sense of self worth when it comes to women. To even acknowledge this, for most men, is incredibly frightening. But still, it’s not surprising given the lack of education, contradictory messages, and lack of self-awareness our society has towards sexual relationships. With the disruption of capitalism and the loss of community in modern society, we have very little traditional resources to rely on in meeting others. So yes, while PUA is about playing on the self esteem of women to get them to spread their legs, it’s really about the (lack) of self esteem of the men who participate in PUA.
It’s also interesting that the majority of women who target their complaints on the PUA community focus on how these men are women hating and how these men are the enemy. Again that’s a knee jerk reaction — one predicated on the anatagonisms of sexual relationships that gave rise to the PUA community in the first place… an understandable but hardly constructive response. What makes this reaction understandable is that it does appear to be an us vs them mentality — but really it shouldn’t be, because in the end, both sexes want the same thing… just with the person of their choice.
As highlighted in the book, the majority of it seems, at first glance, to be about technique, the main tool is social dynamics. Scripts are a good way of learning how to interact, having ropes upon which to hang onto. But in the end, scripts only work on the ignorance of the other part (if women are aware of the scripts they won’t work) and as such, in the end what counts is real interaction. Scripts only work in the context of pure ignorance. They do not work to maintain a relationship, once it’s started. The limits of PUA is the limit of what can be controlled… and since everyone is different to really get the dream relationship, both parties do ultimately need to be committed, mature, self aware and giving… something that is far beyond what PUA can teach, at least, as presented in the book.
What’s most offensive is still, of course, objectification of women, manipulation, and the lying that these men do… reducing courtship to a series of tricks. But like meeting people who seem cool, after a while you do run out of your bag, and you do have to be genuinely yourself… something that takes time and understanding of who you are.
When you think about it though, there are scripts for everything. Including dating. Who pays, how do have conversation… although most of these scripts are not as tightly controlled as PUA techniques, people do have them. It goes beyond the book to say, but I think a large part of what looms over PUA is the build up we have, as a society, of physical beauty and romantic love. These two ideals are among the most socially destructive forces because it weighs too much authority and power on those who happen to be born with what is decided to be physically beautiful…
I am not a woman so I don’t know what it’s like being a woman, but having grown up as a man, I can recollect that much of my formative years was spent in ignorance of how to approach women. If it wasn’t for a few close friendships that I had for many many years with women, I would be in even bigger ignorance. Because I was able to socialize with women on a fraternal level, I could see them as being real people. Different in some ways, given different social pressures, but still actual people. This was very different from some of my guy friends who had no friendships… who would latch onto what seemed to them to be truths about women, some of which were very negative.
As a society we value equality. True equality doesn’t yet exist, at least not among the sexes. We do have a long way to go. If equality is to happen both men and women need to be socialized better, to get a better sense of self and a better sense that others are genuine people too… (un)fortunately, to do this we do need to learn scripts, (as children we do, to some degree), master them, discover why they are not who we are, and then find out who we are by trial and error… a kind of dialectic of self development.
Overall the book felt stunted until the latter 1/3. I give it three-ish stars because it provides much interesting content to think about, but lacks some of the finer narrative cohesion as mentioned above… also given the ending it gave itself, the book could have been smarter about how it began… as the two narrative voices clashed, it felt a little deceptive as to what it was really trying to say.
