A Seduction and Hypnotic Revolution!!!

My girlfriend occasionally has a look at my blog, and one thing she said was, "Why do you keep making fun of those people? They are such easy targets." She definitely has a point. Ridiculing the likes of Real Social Dynamic's Tyler, Vince Kelvin or Vin DiCarlo is hardly challenging. It's not as if I have to think about their output for hours until I finally find an angle to refute their statements. Instead, I look at it, and I am shocked and surprised at the depths those people reach. Then I laugh, and when I laugh so hard that my neighbors knock, I normally type something up so that others can share my enjoyment.

It's not all fun and games, though as it is indeed the sad reality that too many clueless fall for the empty claims and promises of PUAs. The mere thought that a mentally healthy person could look up to a person like Vince Kelvin may be absurd to you, but if someone really is socially inexperienced, then I can understand that you can be tricked.

I did receive some interesting reader feedback. The guy wants to remain anonymous, but has allowed me to quote his statement in full:

Ripping on Vince Kelvin is truly a public service. Meeting him in LA began my decision to GTFO of "the Game" and actually meet a few psychologically healthy people.

What ended it for good? Those photos from the Casanova Crew's Memorial Day picnic. Not a tit in sight. In a public park. In Los Angeles. On Memorial Day.

This made me laugh as well. "Anonymous reader" did add a correction later on, though:

Quick fact check: The Casanova Crew picnic was on July 25, 2010. Not Memorial Day. Still, there's no excuse for a bunch of "players" throwing a sausage fest in Griffith Park in the summertime. 

...which I just mention for the sake of completeness, and because I am a bit anal about details.

It is indeed a problem that some guys are completely deluded. One picture is currently making the rounds among the anti-PUAs, and it is this one:

Thanks to "Tryhards" for digging up this picture!

When I saw it, I was literally looking at it for something like ten seconds just to process it, before I erupted in boundless laughter. Reality really is stranger than fiction. I don't even know where to start here, but let me tell you once thing: If the guys in the audience had any clue, they'd get up and leave. I hope that just one or two among them figured out that something is seriously wrong here and stayed to watch this utter train wreck Vince Kelvin. Seriously, you've got some dude who tries his best to look like a fucked-up fifteen-year old, demonstrating pickup on a girl most butch lesbians would turn down. And you thought picnicking with the Casanova Crew guys was a bad idea...

Generation Nihilism reviews Minimal Game

I don't know whether you are familiar with Generation Nihilism, but if you are not, you should definitely check it out. It's a blog containing musings and often hilarious stories of a happy bachelor. Since I like this blog and sensed that the author comes from a similar place as I do, I asked him whether he'd be interested in reading and reviewing Minimal Game. He was, and this is why you can now read about his opinion of my book.

His perspective is most interesting because he is not associated with the pickup community and was never involved with it. By his own admission, he thinks that "a ton of PUA stuff is fucking stupid." So, if you want to know what a genuine "player" (as opposed to a guy who went through PUA at one point in his life) thinks of my book, read on:

Believe it or not, this was actually the first Game book I have ever read, and I was looking forward to possibly learning a thing or two along the way. Shit, I even took notes for the first time in years. 

So what is Minimal Game all about? It really is all in the title. Forgoing fancy evo-psych explanations and complicated routines, peacocking, and all that other stuff, Sleazy breaks down approaching, attraction, and closing to the simplest of forms.

[...]

Written as it is for beginners, Minimal Game is good shit. If I was a newbie, this would be a book I would want handed to me, and even reading it now it helped to refocus some things for me and highlight some things I have lazily gotten away from. Sleazy rightly keeps the scope of his book to foundational stuff, and you won’t have your head swimming with hundreds of steps and lines and routines. He writes it all in simple language with concepts that are easy to grasp, with knowledge you can use right away. I know I’ve said simple and minimal a lot during this review, but really, that’s what his stuff is. And that’s a good thing.

Illuminatus reviews Minimal Game

Illuminatus, whom you may know from Personal Power Mediation or as "Corvette" from the olden days of mASF recently wrote a lengthy review of Minimal Game. He does a systematic analysis of the content, but it's not dry at all. In fact, I did find some passages truly heart-warming, such as his statement that,

[t]he wisdom in this book is so simple, yet so accurate, that it is the sort of thing fathers should be telling to their sons when they come of age.

He furthermore gives an interesting guide on how to read the book, geared towards people who are frequent readers of self-help books. You could be forgiven for thinking that books in this genre are sold by the pound. Just have a look at the tomes Tony Robbins has put out. In this vein, Illuminatus advises:

I therefore urge anyone reading this book, especially newcomers to seduction, to take their time and really consider each point Sleazy discusses. It is all too easy when reading a self-help book to skim a paragraph, think “I’ve already got this area handled”, and move on without really looking into whether or not this is the case. I have to make this point quite clear, because I have met up with several guys from the seduction community in the past and commonly found that each guy has at least one basic area where they are simply not doing what they are told.

If you have some spare minutes, I can only encourage you to have a look at Illuminatus's review of Minimal Game , and if it piques your interest, I would of course appreciate if you bought a copy for yourself, if you haven't already done so.

Why Cold Approaching is Pretty Much Useless

One of the basic ideas of the pickup community is the necessity of “cold approaches.” Often, you could get the impression that anything else doesn’t really count. Real PUAs go through hundreds of rejections before they finally get to enjoy the fruit of their labor. This is at least as the shared mythology goes.

In this article, I will show you that the concept of cold approaching is misleading. Please keep your pitchfork in your barn, because if you read on with an open mind, you will not only learn something about about male-female interactions, but you will also understand why, as guys gain more experience, their “batting average” often goes up significantly. No, it is not because their “game” got better. It’s something else.


Depending on the amount of community brainwashing you have undergone, it may be hard for you to swallow that success due to a genuinely cold approach does not exist. It is only due to ignoring or misinterpreting social cues that a guy thinks he got laid off a cold approach. Feel free to disagree with me later, but please read on, and carefully consider my point. In the end, you may even find that you agree with me.

I recently had an exchange with a commercial pickup coach in the comment section of my blog. In the article I had posted, I was mocking a rather illustrious character of the industry for wasting his time roaming the streets in his never-ending search for pussy. Success is not a friend of his. In the videos this guy posts, it is clear to see that the women normally aren’t interested at all and are only polite to him. The other aspect I pointed out was the absurd amount of time “sarging” takes. I met a handful of street gamers, and they all told me that their actual “conversion rate” (their terminology, not mine), was rather low.

Paul Janka, who is arguably the king of day game, says that he has sex with about 10% of the women whose number he gets. If you paid attention in middle school, you can deduce from this that the actual success rate is even lower since not all the women he approaches will give him their number. No, I do not want to bash Janka. I don’t know what he’s been up to recently, but my view of him is that he belongs to the very, very few honest dating coaches on this planet. Just keep the figure in mind for the following part.

Of course, there are ways to integrate “cold approaching” into your daily life, so that it comes at virtually zero cost. But once you free up time in your schedule to “sarge HBs”, the situation is much less favorable. I was mentioning a pickup coach who commented on my blog before. He said something like, “You may be right in general, but what if you have enough time for street game?” This is a nonsensical objection, and here is why:

You may think that you can take out one or two hours a day to do street game, and talk to girls who, for the very most part, will give you no indication that they have any interest in you. That’s of course because they don’t have any. I don’t care how good looking you think you are — most girls will just not be interested in you. (In me neither.) To increase your odds, you could therefore do something with your time you really enjoy. Surely, there is something that’s more compelling than getting rejected by one girl after another in streets and shopping malls.

The alternative is to pursue a social activity that allows you to easily meet women with whom you have something in common with. This instantly turns cold approaches into warm approaches! Let’s just compare two people: Pete PUA and Chris Common-Sense. Pete says to Chris, “Dude, you’re such a loser. You do gay shit like yoga and dancing, while I pickup chicks on da streets every day!!1” But what does Chris actually do? He enjoys yoga and find that it tones his body nicely. Because he really excels at it, there are plenty of hot girls around who give him fuck-me eyes. It seems that some “gay shit” like the crane pose easily gets him dates, and eventually laid.

Further, Chris likes music, especially tango. Salsa is not really his thing, so he doesn’t go there. But what happens at a typical tango class? Chris normally finds that there are about two girls for every guy, that the girls have on average more class than your random girl walking the streets (excuse the bad pun!). Even better is that some of those do indeed seem to be looking.

If you now think, “Sleazy, you’re just making this up!” I have to tell you that I don’t. I have spent about three years doing yoga, and it is my experience that is indeed fairly easy to talk to the girls there. You basically just have to go there. Of course, this only works if you go to classes because you like yoga, and not, like your typical PUA creep, to hit on girls. Dancing classes are just as excellent a venue to meet girls who already have something in common with you, but I won’t bore you with the details as it is just like in yoga. Even better is that you get to know the girls on a physical level. Just think of all the “kino” you could do, bro!

While Pete PUA spends much more time “sarging HBs”, his actual success rate will be fairly low. In the worst case, he’ll be like your average PUA and all the numbers turn out to flake. His buddy Chris, on the other hand, meets girls literally as an added bonus to acquiring interesting skills and staying in shape. After one year, he can probably start thinking about dancing tango competitively, while his buddy is at a risk of getting an account for Zan Perrions’s Ars Amatoria forum, where he can tell the crowd that he’s gotten one date out of about a thousand approaches, but that all is fine because he enjoyed making the girls feel desired. (I wish I had made this up.)

Let me deal with the objections I presume some of you will have.

1) “Geez, Sleazy, you built yourself a reputation as a club gamer, which was nothing but cold approaching! And don’t tell me you liked those places!!”

Indeed, I did enjoy the night clubs I went to. I loved the music, the crowd, and the ambience. With very, very few exceptions I did stay away from mainstream clubs. As people who want to get into some of my old hangouts week after week notice, the door man is indeed an obstacle, and the patrons are carefully selected. This was true for the indie/electro scene in London, and to a lesser extent it is true for the techno scene in Berlin. If the guy at the door doesn’t like you, you probably have to check out a mainstream venue afterwards.

However, what people who either don’t go out regularly, or who go out indiscriminately, not realize is that the guys at the door don’t reject people randomly. They only tell you to take a hike if you don’t fit into the crowd. Yes, “there’s too many guys inside” and “sorry, we’re full” are just excuses to allow you to save face. When I was once walking down to one of my favourite watering holes in Soho in London, and, after considerable time in the queue, thought I was about to get in, the door guy pulled me aside, and whispered, “Just stay here for a while. We’re a bit packed right now.” Seconds later, he was telling the next bunch of people the same old excuses. Bottom line: If you fit in, you’ll get in, and if you get in, you pretty much have a stamp of approval on your forehead, and will normally find it easy to talk to the people.

2) “But dude, cold approaching works. It really does! I just had a date last week, after hitting on 98 girls in a row. And just earlier today, I got seven more numbers.”

As I said above, the success rates for genuine cold approaches are very low. Of course, sometimes you’ll get a girl, and if you are Harvard-educated, and as eloquent and handsome as Paul Janka, you may end up banging then percent of all the girls whose number you get. However, as you get more experience in general, your ratio will usually go up a lot. This is not because you get “better at game” but because you learn to read signals better, and focus on girls who are potentially receptive. Thus, you skip all the questionable cold approaches. This is the truth behind cold approaches, and, to take a page out of the marketing book of PUAs, this is indeed “one of the truths PUAs don’t want you to know.”



The reason why you may now think that your game is decent and that you “convert x percent of your cold approaches” is just that you can’t yet read signals properly and approach indiscriminately. While you “run the same game” on every girl, you just happen to occasionally bump into one that just likes you. Since you are more concerned with your game than her reaction to your presence, you may miss that she’s been glancing over three times already. Being blind to the obvious, you think that “game” got you the girl. However, with a more perceptive eye, you’d have to do a fraction of the approaches, and will have a much better turnout.



All of this doesn’t mean that you’ll now suddenly get every girl, but by focussing on girls you have something in common with and who are potentially interested, you’ll do so much better. Heck, maybe pickup will even start to become fun for you, and stop being a source of constant frustration. It’s the warm approaches that eventually get you the girls. Your cold approaches get you barely anything, and the little you get feels like work, because it is. Just think of all the “shit tests” you have to “plow through” now… Imagine you’d instead be among women who think, “Hm… I wonder who that guy is!”

Guest Review of Minimal Game by TheLetter

The other review of Minimal Game I recently received was from TheLetter, whom some of you know from the old mASF days. He points out the dramatic differences between Minimal Game and your typical community dating advice book. Enjoy!



Disclaimer: Aaron Sleazy is a personal friend of mine, and we've visited each other a few times and gone out. I've seen him pull off the kinds of seductions he wrote about in Sleazy Stories with my own eyes. As a courtesy, he sent me a couple copies, but given the price I would have probably bought it anyway. I bought a copy of the earliest print of Sleazy Stories. He's been a mentor and a friend in my development as a man and a seducer, so feel free to question my objectivity.

When I finally got around to reading Minimal Game, I basically went cover-to-cover in a pretty short amount of time.

Minimal Game really succinctly covers the fundamentals of seduction about being an attractive guy, geared more towards guys who just want to bang more girls, as opposed to guys who want to make their entire life about banging girls. I've met more than a couple guys who became totally immersed in mainstream PUA community crap, and they do not end up as all-around awesome guys. They end up as creeps, who underperform relative to their looks and occasionally get lucky on sheer numbers.

Reading the book reminded myself of some obvious things, that I learned and forgot in my history of following Sleazy's writings. I will probably re-read it every time I come back from a hiatus where I have to reboot my sex-life after spending some time in other areas of personal development. I do a similar exercise with Razorjack's mASF archives, but this is way, way, way more succinct. This is not a book about routines or gimmicks. It's about how to have the behaviors, fashion, and lifestyle of an attractive guy where women are open to meeting you or even approaching you themselves.

Most "pickup" books are embarrassing to own. If I owned a copy of The Game, I'd be mortified if a girl ever found it in my home. The philosophy behind Minimal Game is so natural, honest and forthright, you could basically flip open any page, show it to a girl, and she'd think something on the spectrum of "Yeah, well, duh?!" to "Oh no! Guys aren't supposed to know that about us!"

My one quibble with the content is that there are some very frank opinions about the bare minimum physique a guy needs to be really successful with women. Sure, more height and a better body can never hurt, but as a short-statured guy in rather mediocre physical shape, I actually well over-perform relative to my looks. Some of that has to do with making the most of what I've got, but a lot of that has to do with the mindsets and attitudes I've learned from Sleazy over the years; much of that knowledge is distilled in Minimal Game. But in fairness, I think the writing there is to limit false expectations and to push readers to better themselves.

Price is very minimal, too. Aaron Sleazy is basically giving it away.
—TheLetter

Guest Review of Minimal Game by illuzsion

I've recently received two reviews of Minimal Game, and I'll gladly publish both on my blog. The first one is by illuzsion. He once called Debunking the Seduction Community the best book on pick-up he has ever read, but he seems to have changed his mind after reading through Minimal Game.

The review is interesting because it puts the content of my book in relation to his personal experiences. Without further ado, here's illuzsion's excellent review of Minimal Game:

Minimal Game is not a guide for wannabe Casanovas who have fantasy pipe-dreams of seducing any women they want. It is written for guys who want to get laid on a fairly regular basis, making best use of their limited time and effort. Those who have been exposed to The Game or any of the pickup fantasy fiction books are in for a shock as they read on.

The aim of Minimal Game is not a phone number, nor a kiss, or a date. It’s objective is crystal clear: sex! Those who have already been led astray by many of the commercial game theories that focus on verbal material can have a sigh of relief when they learn from world-renowned seducer Aaron Sleazy that your verbal skills are not just rather irrelevant when it comes to getting laid, but that they can actually be counterproductive in many situations. This is true, as many guys literally talk themselves out of pussy.

What is the foundation when starting out on the road to have satisfying sexual encounters with women? That is addressed in the first section of Minimal Game. When Sleazy says that it is about looks, and how attractive your life is that increases your chances to get laid, he gives full-fledged information on how to improve both these areas of your life. It would come as a surprise to most that the basic prerequisites are to like yourself and be comfortable with your sexuality. Sleazy just doesn’t say the most obvious things when it comes to getting your dick wet, but makes us sit and think for while as to why we don’t think for ourselves in improving our sex life in the first place.

The principal rule on which Minimal Game is built on is this: "Mate selection is the domain of the female." I myself have realized over a period of months of extensive cold approaching that this is not just true, but many guys tend to overlook this fact, which leads to intense feelings of frustration. It’s said that the ability to spot an opportunity, i.e. a receptive woman, and seal the deal quickly is what separates a player from the rest. Sleazy gives a lot of pointers on how to do this.

The community is entirely oblivious of what are the realistic average success rates of a guy who pursues random women for sex. Hence, guys fall into the trap of putting too much emotional energy into every single number they get or each single interaction that goes well. As most such women won’t be willing to spread their legs, this leads to guys ending up banging their heads against a brick wall. Sleazy's remark in a section with the heading "Curb your Enthusiasm" will help to be level-headed when we experience countless false starts.

The most important part of the book is where Sleazy lays bare the simple steps to initiate contact and the steps thereafter. He doesn’t recommend fancy openers or creepy introductions. I wont spoil the meaty part of this book by revealing what it is instead. It’s for you guys who have been reading this far to take a look at the paperback book for this part. It’s not a futuristic tactic but just how people were getting laid through ages ever since the days of cavemen.

The Roadblocks section helps you overcome the basic issues most men have that prevents them from scoring with the ladies. This section is deeply grounded in reality and understanding it will greatly reduce the learning curve of guys."Great Expectation" section shows how Disney and Hollywood have fucked up so many of us deep inside, even though we claim to be enlightened about male-female relationships due to exposure to the community. Picking the right girls and closing the deal quickly is what game is entirely about. Sleazy puts in very simple terms on how to do this efficiently and faster.

The section on various types of relationships surprised me with its crisp content. It's just a few pages in total, but it will put a lot of pressure off guys to learn that it’s not like rocket science either but is instead a natural but optional continuation after a successful seduction. Sleazy discusses all the various relationship arrangements with ease, and thus this section is a fitting conclusion to the best no-nonsense guide for a regular guy who is willing to take the steps necessary to get laid often!

Thanks to Sleazy for Minimal Game!

—illuzsion

...and I thank illuzsion for taking the time to write this review!

The Dirty Secret Behind Boot Camp “Number Close” Demonstrations

I did play with the idea of adding some material to Debunking the Seduction Community but not only have I for the most part moved on from bashing this industry. I am also quite intimidated by the enormous amount of material I have on various people in this business. Debunking was not necessarily about “guru” A, B or C, but about the industry as a whole, and about general trends and common problems.

 I did not have the intention to slag off some guys. In fact, I really had to restrain myself from not spilling the beans on some people. However, the occasional blog post that surfaced in the meantime did rectify this.

Today, I have something very special for you. It is a “business secret” of one of the many #1 PUAs / dating "gurus" in the world. You can make your own guess, but probably someone will chime in in the comments and reveal it sooner or later anyway. Let’s just call him PUAZiph.



The story goes as follows: Our internationally renowned dating guru PUAZiph needs some money. He always needs money, just like the invisible man in the sky. Thus, he sets up a couple of boot camps in the United States. Because he himself can’t demonstrate all that much, as he doesn’t want to piss off his wife, he enlists some “assistant coaches” from a local lair. He’ll just tell the boot camp students that he’s trained them. It’s also a neat way for him to make more money since those guys are more than happy to “help out” such an esteemed person as PUAZiph free of charge.

This is even worse than VK's "number closes"!

What can you expect during a boot camp? Well, not much, but at least you'll get some decent "demos", like some dude collecting a number in front of you. PUAZiph's students are happy to just see someone talk to a girl in a bar, so they won’t easily get disappointed. However, what they don’t know is that what they are going to witness is not what has actually happened.


The student sees something like this:

The PUA instructor tells the guys, “watch this!”, and walks up to a woman at the bar. After some conversation, they witness him keying his number into her phone and ringing it, and they are all giddy. After all, they haven’t seen such a God among men all their life.

However, this is what really happens:

The PUA knows that he doesn’t do any better than your average schmuck, and if his numbers are a bit higher (but not that much either) it’s merely because he’s always “out in the field” and has a stash of viagra in the car in case he pulls a fattie once again. Therefore, he’d have good reason to be anxious about demonstrating “number closes” in front of eager students.

 Thus, his "game plan" is the following:

1) He's looking for a girl who seems friendly. She may or may not be by herself.

2) He starts a conversation that goes something like this: “Hey! Could I ask you for a favor?” Then he'll tell her a little story about how his phone doesn’t quite seem to work and that he has to reach one of his friends, or want to make sure that his friend can reach him. Hold on, because I am not done yet!

Now you may think that this is an utterly stupid “opener”, but it works for its intended purpose. After all, you only want to get her number, and it doesn’t matter that it was a completely non-sexual interaction. It's a bit like the bastard version of Mystery’s “We’re throwing a big party at our pool this weekend. Can I take your number? You can bring your friends, too.”

To make sure that the PUA can get his “number close”, he then asks the girl whether she could possibly call his number from her phone. Since he wasn't exactly a “sexual threat”, and she just viewed him as some random guy instead of a potential sexual partner, she readily calls your number. He made a friendly request, and she wouldn't even have to bother about "shooting him down" since the interaction is not on that level.

The PUA's phone rings, and he has achieved his objective, namely to demonstrate a “number close”. Now he thanks the girl, and if he's feeling lucky, he may try to make her kiss him on the cheek before heading back to his students. Those, of course, will now hear a story about his awesome opener, and the sexual innuendoes she has made, that he and his "material" are "so money," and that she is “as good as in the bag”. Phrases like "Have you seen this, bro?" are likely to be repeated numerous times.

Some of his students may even fawn and say stuff like, “Wow. Awesome! You are really good. I wish I was as good as you with women.” 
But now you know how this dirty trick works, and you can easily be as good as your favourite #1 PUA in the world. All you need now is some desperate men who want to part from a couple of grand.