Sleazy» is a member of the mASF forum. Acronyms used in this article can be looked up on the acronyms page. To get involved in discussions like this, you can join the mASF discussion forum at fastseduction.com/discussion.
Original discussion thread: http://www.fastseduction.com/discussion/fs?action=9&boardid=2&read=84018&fid=173
My reason for writing this article was that I had the privilege to attend a free boot camp by my local lair. I found the experience not without value, far from it. Yet, had I paid for it, I would have regretted it, because boot camps are so much less than an inexperienced guy might believe. Unfortunately, the principle of offering less value than you might expect seems to be the backbone of large parts of PU companies.
As food for thought, I would like to ask a rhetorical question: where did all the gurus and instructors all of a sudden come from? PU used to be something only very few people really excelled at, yet, past the publication of "The Game" there was no shortage of instructors anymore. (Hint: there are still only very, very few people around who are really good at PU.)
Note: I don't say that every company is disreputable. All I want to draw attention at is that some aspects of this industry are more than just a bit fishy. In the following, I will mention some case studies. Also, I want to make clear that I do not intend to bash the industry or the people I mention in general. For example, I am currently reading jlaix' archive. It's great! Yet, there are some practices of RSD which I find objectionable. The problem is simply that newbies will fall for a lot of these 'sham techniques' without even realising it.
== Mehow ==
Mehow apparently came out of nowhere, something many new professional guys also excel at. With virtually no 'street-cred' he started to offer products in 2006. According to his self-proclaimed guru status he started a preposterous thread on mASF called "its 10:01 on Tuesday - Mehow answers any questions". Five days later, he got the first reply, by Sinn. He asked him whether he was the same Mehow that posted on the MM lounge to have had one (!) lay in the year after his bootcamp (Sinn: "That means you can't teach their stuff kids."). On Sinn's blog, another MM instructor confirmed that Mehow edited his original MM lounge post, and also, that Mehow was employed as an MM instructor for a very short time. He got kicked out due to his apparent incompetence.
More from Sinn, taken from the thread:
"You actually edited the post after admitting that you only had 1 lay in the year after your bootcamp. I can post both versions if you give me permission to. Might help people get an idea of what they are getting from your programs. As for flaming you, I was honestly shocked and thought you were someone else with a coincidink name. Why would I flame someone who only gets laid once a year? Seems like kicking the homeless to me."
This is just an example of an instant-guru. Apparently, his status was more due to marketing than in field prowess. But there is more to it. In the same thread formhandle challenged Mehow:
"I've asked this question at one time or another to guys like TylerDurden & Harmless and now I ask you because it's never been answered to satisfaction. When you open girls in clubs/bars with a vibe that comes across ambiguously gay (gay tone, gay mannerisms, gay tonality, gay subjects), and then you take girls to your table and escalate SOME kind of interest (whatever that interest is), how do you:
1) With that initial vibe, how do you extract successfully to end up with isolation amenable to sex?
2) Once isolated (I am presuming you've isolated a fair number of girls for sex at your place or theirs or you would not be teaching), how do you transition from the gay vibe to clearly hetero sexual vibe without the girl freaking out and throwing up LMR to rival the great wall of China?"
Have you ever wondered where the video testimonials for the RSD DVD products come from? You can see a number of them on their website. In case of the Blueprint De-Coded, attendees of the superconferences were offered significant discounts for RSD products, or their boot camp, in exchange for giving a quick testimonial in front of the camera. There are two issues with it:
1) The testimonials were given in a pressured situation: 'Now is your chance to get a few hundred dollars off our bootcamp!" There was not much room for critical thinking. Imagine someone pulled you out of the bed of a chick right after you blew a nut. Of course you would say that it was a great experience. But would someone ask you a few days later how a certain chick was in bed, you might be able to give a more objective evaluation. Someone also told me that RSD pressures boot camp attendees at the last day to give a testimonial, which leads to potential distortions. The same principle applies.
2) The next problem is related: the video testimonials are bought in a way. The people giving them know that they can get a discount -- and they want that discount. So, no one would be willing to step up and criticize the superconference. Add in the usual component of 'hero worshipping' and you can easily figure out how objective and realistic a feedback these clips on the RSD website give.
This is an extension of the problem I mentioned in the Mehow section above. It is easy to open a set when you go in with a very gay vibe, because then you are the epitome of non-threatening. You could also easily get a number this way. For the purpose of actually seducing girls this might be a rather pointless way of proceeding. But there is one advantage of such an approach: you won't get blown out, and you will impress a clueless newbie. Clueless guys oftentimes think that a number of a girl guarantees a 'date' and gives a good shot at having sex, because that's what they have experienced in social circle situations where the girl was pining for that particular guy's dick for months.
I might not do MM (the company) justice, but I did see an MM instructor pull the 'gay persona' out of the hat in field. Someone mentioned that Savoy gave off a pretty gay vibe on the relatively recent Dr Phil interview. Maybe someone can comment on that.
Dream is a member of this forum. He does not post much anymore, though. I stumbled upon him because one day I had checked BradP's recent posts. One of them was a reply to a thread called "The State of my Game 9/17/07" by Dream. I had to look up the exact title in the archives. Unfortunately, Dream has 'pulled a Mehow' and deleted its incriminating content. I woud have loved to quote from it, so for the following my memory has to suffice. In the thread Dream stated that he has had three lays. Honestly, three lays and now he is teaching?! BradP then challenged him that a pro should have at least forty or fifty lays, otherwise he just does not know what he is teaching. Everybody in his right mind would probably agree. From his blog, called "The Dream Lounge", I have taken this passage: "I direct the Under 21 Convention as well as Under 21 Lifestyle where I teach guys of all ages how to become normal, cool, and charismatic." So, the blind is leading the blind. How presumptuous is this guy, if I may ask?
He has more than one ebook out, apparently. The first one, the one I remember because of its ludicrous title, was called "Getting Laid with your Wii". Ha ha!
== PUA Training: The 'shy guy' approach, and the myth of the phone number ==
PUA Training is the company Mystery mocked in his (only) post in 2007. It's called "Mystery assseses PUA in a daygame 2set". He analyzed one of their in field videos which they had released for marketing purposes. The clip is still online, so this thread is probably worth checking out. Sure, one does not have to agree with all of Mystery's criticism because it is of course based on his method, but there were a lot of glaring errors in it a really experienced guy would not make. Yet, this company charges a lot for its training.
One of the instructors of PUA Training teaches 'shy openers'. I think he might have gotten these from BradP who once made a post about overcoming AA with very insecure guys. Just send them in set and let them tell a story a la (paraphrased): "My shrink told me I should talk to five women today / Oh, and which number am I? / The seventh." If you do it this way, you can use the pretended shyness to open a set pretty well, and the punch line should at least trigger a bit of interest. However, the guy from PUA Training suggested a story that played the shyness out to the extreme: "Oh, excuse me, can I talk to you. / ... / You know, I am really shy. /.../ And I would really like to meet new people." This sound completely ridiculous, and it is. If anyone is interested in the actual wording, I could dig it up. I might have jotted it down somewhere, maybe I haven't. However, the problem is obvious: if you use shyness as an excuse to stay in set (the instructor said that the women would have to be extremely cruel to shoot you down for your shyness, which is of course true), and because you want to 'play it safe', you will stay in set, but on the other hand you will not get anywhere in terms of actual seduction. But a newbie doing this will be stoked because he managed to talk to women for a couple of minutes. He might think that he is "getting somewhere", but in fact there is not much he can learn from it. Maybe he can overcome AA with this. Still, teaching this as a legit opener is sickening.
Also, PUA Training has female instructors. One of them recently put an article on "creative number closes" up. I think it is on Seduction Chronicles, but it does not really matter anyway. I have skimmed it and found it laughable. Her article did nothing to counter the myth that the battle is as good as won once you've got the number. Yet, many men think like this: "wow, I've got her number". We as experienced guys however know that a number-close is worthless -- the g-close is important. If I run solid game on a girl, I have absolutely no need for fancy number close routines, I only have to shove my phone in her face and I'll get her number. This, however, will not be obvious to a newbie with shitty game. He might be able to succesfully hassle a girl to give him her number, but get nowhere afterwards.
Initially, I wanted to write an article called "The dirty tricks of professional instructors, or: why you should think twice before shelling out a couple of grand" as a word of warning to newbies who might feel tempted to attend a commercial boot camp. Then, I realized that there is more to this topic, so it deserves being put up in the Masterminds' forum.
Mehow's gay vibe can be clearly seen in the Youtube videos he put up for the promotion of his DVD product Infield Insider. I've watched a number of those, and they made me chuckle. Formhandle made an excellent point. I have more to say on the 'gay persona problem' in a moment.
== RSD: Dubious Testimonials ==
== MM: The gay vibe ==
== "The World's best under 21 PUA": speaks at conferences, has one ebook -- and three lays ==
This is all stuff that just came to my head when thinking about this topic. I haven't done any kind of new research, but I am sure that one could easily come up with more examples. Yet, my impression is that to a significant extent the PU industry is shady.
