[custom_headline type=”left, center, right” level=”h2″ looks_like=”h3″ accent=”true”] Case Studies [/custom_headline]
These are observations of PUAs I have known through the years and how their time in the industry shaped their lives. I am not using names. This is not about gossip. This is about information. I am changing details only relevant to their identity to keep them anonymous. It is my opinion combined with a honest account of what I saw happen. Use it to live better rather than judge.
These are all guys who put Social Value, Technique and Masculine Image before their expression. This is the point of me posting these stories.
Here is the article and video that inspired this all – THE FALING & IMPLOSION OF THE PUA INDUSTRY
1 – THE PRODIGY
When I first got involved in pick up there was a young man who was teaching and one of the most popular in the industry. He was good. He could meet women and get laid in the same night with ease. He was a great teacher, he was the protege of one of the most famous PUAs of all time. Now he was one of the most famous.
I was around this guy a lot. I have seen him in action, I have attended his seminars, I have even helped him teach a few times. However everything with him was value. Everything with him was an equation. He had no emotional skills or intelligence. This is common for many people who come in the PUA scene. Many guys don’t have the same emotional range as the ‘average guy’. This doesn’t mean anything bad, it means that to get a good social and sexual life you just need to start a different place and also move in a different direction. The curse is that in this guy’s case he was so good he actually got results without ever having look at himself. He could get all the sex he wanted, he was making money and he had a huge base of men looking up to him. In the cultural map of life he was doing great. In the PUA temple of life he was doing great, however he hated sex, women and himself. We would talk about this a lot.
He had a consistent pattern of burning bridges. Eventually he burned one with me. I can personally say I have gone through this in my life too and he was kinda young (mid-twenties) and I did the same at that age. However, let’s fast forward 7 years later. I get a text from a mutual friend telling me about him. He shows me the message written from this guy. It says,
“I don’t think day game works for 9s and 10s. I don’t think game works at all can you help me?”
Our mutual friend was asking me for advice on what to tell him, mainly because I knew the guy well and knew how to communicate with him.
Now let’s put this into perspective. A guy that has been teaching for over 10 years has had sex with minimum 500 women in his reign is messaging this. To me this style of thinking is totally out of date. I can’t even comprehend thinking in that way. If I wanted to meet a ’10’ (whatever that is, but let’s assume it’s a woman who is my ideal) in the day time, I would simply go to a place where women I liked hung out and make conversation and see what happened. In a week, I’d have a few dates and I’d go from there.
However in this case our mutual friend decided to help him. He said, let me listen to you infield and I can give you some pointers.
Then he kept messaging our fallen out PUA just about life and such only to get a few weeks later,
“I can’t talk to you anymore, you still believe in pick up.”
Here’s the thing. When I get a client who has Aspergers of can’t emote in a way that people commonly emote we start there. We move in that direction. The curse of this guy was he was good. He hung out with the founders of the PUA world. He started getting laid. He got laid a lot. He had validation. He chased the idea a dream of what society said was good, pick up said was good and forgot to look at himself.
Most guys with Aspergers don’t get results like this and are forced to look for coach after coach who will work with them, this is extremely frustrating and another massive flaw of the industry. However, this lack of results keeps them from getting in the trap that this rare being found. Sadly today his life is isolation. He no longer has any friends. His bridges are burned. He has money from the products and online marketing he put into place. His sex life consists of traveling to Asia to visit hookers. I actually have nothing wrong with the idea of prostitution (a whole different topic), having a sexual life should not mean living in isolation and desperation just to have the connection you were born to have.
2 -THE STUDENT
When I first started teaching I had a client who came to me off of a break up and wanted to get back in action. I took him on. He had a lot of potential. He had dated a lot of women before that were pretty attractive but he had discovered pick up and seen the light. We worked together for a few months and then he sort of dropped off. He started telling me about other companies and how ‘nobody wad better than these guys’ and buying into this cult based mentality.
Eventually he started challenging me, “Steve if you’re as good as you’re supposed to be you should be pulling as good as XYZ”.
This is always a fun thing to be told. At this point in my PUA journey I was pretty much over that. Everyone has a different threshold but for me it was about 2 years of getting laid like a mad man, and then pulling back and thinking ‘there’s something wrong with this and right with it, let me figure it out’. I decided to cut ties with the guy.
2 Years later he came back. He said, ‘I was in a different place and I am having all these sex issues now and you always talk about sex, can you help me?’ I told him I’d only help him if he was serious. He guaranteed me he was. I even gave him a discount.
When it comes to sex and sexual health you need to look at yourself. You need to be honest. You need to be deep. As soon as that came into the mix he bailed. Then he came back then he bailed again. I am so open to people he did what so many people do when they are confused and unwilling to face what is in front of him. He created drama to force himself to not have an excuse to work with me. As I alway say, ‘My door is open’. I realize sex is a big deal and it freaks people out. Unless you cause harm to our groups or me, you can always comeback.
Now 3 years later, I still run into this guy downtown when I am teaching. He still gets all into it. He approaches like a maniac. He only has PUA friends. He can hold a set of a bunch of girls and manhandle and isolate them. But he can’t have a relationship. He still has issues with sex and he has a skill with no worth. What he came to the industry for he never got, but he did get a skill or opening and looking cool and a bad perspective of women.
3 – THE STAR
There are a few of the most famous PUAs in the world. None of them are happy. None of them have functioning lives. None of them see life outside of the template of value. For this gentleman I have known him for years. Nice enough guy and never really means harm, but in the day, weeks and months I have spent with him I can’t say I really know him.
I remember years ago telling him that he and his girlfriend should talk about that more. He was one of the few PUAs I know that has a woman who lives with him, works with him and shares his life. I remember saying it to both of them and they looked at me like I was speaking a different language. They then talked about the next thing they were going to sell. I figured no big deal, some people have different values. In the years to come I would meet with them at conventions, dinners and so on. I always thought is was crazy because I worked in music, theatre, film and photography before all of this and that is all he and his girlfriend would talk about. How famous they were and how much talent they had and playing music, drinking and partying was my life for a few years. Working as a photographer was my life for a few years, and working in theatre, TV and film is what I did and all I did for many years. I worked my ass of at this shit, and he just kinda thought it was cool and impressive because society said so.
It soon became clear that his relationship with his girlfriend was based on status. They would talk about it, “I’m in love with BLANK, because he/she is literally the most popular person I know. They’re the best at everything.” This is the kinda crap I never related with. I mean it is not reality. This is what people who are starved and malnourished at the cellular level of morality make their lives. When you sat in front of them you always saw a bunch of fan boys who bought into their pile of shit and them lying about what seemed to be cool.
In his entire PUA career he really hadn’t been with many other people than her. It always made me say, he does stuff that a guy who doesn’t get laid does. Low and behold, him and the old lady split and guy what, he starts another relationship to the first girl that gives him attention. He decided to call it quits in the PUA scene to be an ‘artist’. Guess what, he fails. He’s still a popular PUA. He gives some good standard PUA advice of upping your value, but more and more you can see the pressure build. Much like all the other high line guys in the industry I can only see him collapsing massively and publicly. When you only know how to look good and have more as your solution that is what you do when the money stops and the validation thins. If he were to actually pop his head out of his ass and get into reality honesty and seduction he’d probably get to a pretty good place. From what I need now, he’s trying harder and harder and living more and more desperate.
4 -THE HERO
So many guys that instruct in this industry get caught up with an image. I mean it is almost impossible not to. You’re a coach so people are supposed to respect you. You tend to mix up teaching with authority. Pick up is terrible with this. One of my coaching buddies was traveling with me and we had just done a few workshops on the road.
On our break he told me,
“I’ve in love, but my girlfriend is sleeping with other men. I don’t want her to.”
To me this is a no brainer,
“So if you stop sleeping with other women will she?”
He tells me,
“That is what she wants, but I can’t do that. I need to hold the right frame and make her listen to me.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. If I ever talked with Jason Savage or Hypnotica or any of my guy friends who were good with women they’d get it. As a man or a woman in an open relationship you get jealous. You can work through it or you can change. But in this situation it wasn’t about feeling or sex or his sexuality, it was about an image.
He kept going on and in about how people needed to look up to him and people don’t follow someone who is afraid or controlled by a woman. He needed to be a ‘hero’.
As the conversation went on it came down to, he was in love with his girlfriend and wanted to be with her but knew he could make it work.
In 2 weeks they dramatically split, he went full fledge into teaching and still to this day I have never heard anyone referred to as a ’hero’ than him. I guess he did it.
5 -THE CLOWN
This could really be so many people in the industry. However, there is this idea that if we can entertain and be funny get attention and act like an immature asshole that is somehow being good with women. It is encased with this idea of curing social anxiety, and after years of doing it and misinforming men, it basically accomplishes short term alleviation, followed by poor relationships and more insecurities. The worst thing about this is when guys come to the industry with real issues. Psychological problems, PTSD and they are told to do something crazy over and over again to help them. If you have ever known anyone with serious psychological problems you know how dangerous and malicious this can be.
You say your buddy get killed and were abused as a child so you’re afraid to leave the house, go up to a stranger and pick your nose while you talk to them and you’re on the path to masculinity.
You are given social freedom.
Let’s say you’re a lower level of social anxiety and it is just that talking to men and women who you don’t know scares you, this still works against you. Going up to someone and ‘killing your ego’ by moon-walking around them just gets you out of your head for a minute and that’s about it. Once you can stop freaking out then you need to learn some socially healthy techniques like learning empathy, connection and how to express with a full range of emotions. Sadly the geniuses who designed this stuff were such social misfits and riddled with insecurity their solution was not empathy, seduction or connection, but it was to mask their insecurity by something louder and unavoidable.
I have known and travelled with many clowns, I mean hell, I’m a clown. But people who make this their form of communication have 1 single characteristic –
They approach a lot
They get people’s attention
They have little connection with women or men
They have few friends
They are frustrated and full of resentment
In one occasion I was staying with a guy 2 weeks. He was a teacher. He approached over 100 women minimum ‘doing pick up’, he got zero dates, maybe a few numbers. Of course this isn’t the case for everyone, and we all have bad streaks, but the thing about it is, if you’re not being yourself you can’t connect. It doesn’t take exaggeration to be yourself, it takes very little. If you’re a guy that likes to joke around no biggie. Just learn to be genuine too.
I’m stunned that whoever runs this site actually allowed this to get published, and I AGREE with most of what “Steven (love how he says he’s not going to include names, then has somebody call him by his in a story, then mentions Hypnotica and some other PUA)” says. This reads like it was written by somebody for whom English is a second language, yet at some point he suggests that he works with people with Asperger Syndrome?! Really?
But yeah, the bottom line is this: to get really good at pickup, you have to be somehow disconnected from yourself, like a sociopath, which is what you have to do in order to do porn too. I know there are a lot of guys who (don’t have much, if any, romantic experience with women) still think this is a good thing, and if so, okay, but it’s not something I ever aspired to, which is why Pickup got real old for me really fast. I just wanted a girlfriend, period, and came to realize that you get that by always wearing nice, clean, new clothes, having a body weight you’re comfortable with, keeping your hair trim and neat, and working on the personal issues that made you bad with women in the first place. For me, that required therapy. Once I got it, though, I got it.
I always love comments like this, because it is a great display of the point I was trying to make…
Sadly, yeah, I write like shit. Didn’t reread this before I published it. I have always had dyslexia and I might as well kill myself now, thanks…
As for mentioning Hypnotica and Zan, they’re both friends of mine and I used them in a good light. Maybe I should have spelled this out, if I am talking shit I will not use their name, if I am not I can use their name – also when eating you put the food in your mouth and chew.
And Aspergers, well, I have worked with many. I have also worked in rehabs and prisons. Believe me I have worked with a lot of people who aren’t of the ‘norm’ like you.
And what else…
PUAs Sociopaths, well, I can agree to a point, but look, our entire culture values what a ‘sociopath’ values. How often do we suppress empathy in order to get our way.
You know if I had to take a stab in the dark I’d say you’re kinda pissed off a little too much at a simple blog post. I don’t know you, but i sure do like Alan Smithee films because they embody the shame of a man. Maybe you should find a group of people you can talk to and trust and get better. Being unhappy isn’t worth it.
The internet is a great place to stay pissed off.
Thanks
Steve
I’m assuming “The Prodigy” is Sinn. I always wondered what happened to that guy.