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1. 

   Comment by Thread on 6 July 2008:

   You make fantastic points in this article, although you should look at the reason these pickup companies are arising…

   1) MAJOR PICKUP COMPANIES ARE WAY TOO OVERPRICED AND EXPENSIVE

   -Guys get in the game usually DONT HAVE 1,000 - 3,000 dollars tucked away to spend on a seminar or bootcamp (plus you have to fly out to LA or NYC)… They also dont have $500 to waste on a ridiculous DVD or Ebook…

   I love the major figures/ companies like RSD, Pickup 101, or David Wygant… But they are too expensive!!! Sorry for the tough love guys…

   2) EVERYONE WANTS TO HELP YOU BUT ONLY FOR 2-3 DAYS!!!

   -These expensive bootcamps are pointless because they dont offer REAL CHANGE… Only TIME will allow change so why waste your time on a fancy dancy bootcamp that only lasts 2-3 days. If anything all you’ll get is a fancy night out with a bunch of losers as hopeless as you!!!

   This stuff takes years to learn and even more to master…

   3)MASTERING THIS STUFF IS HARD WORK, AND WHEN YOU HAVE SPENT 2-3 YEARS MASTERING IT, WHY NOT PROFIT?

   -It takes alot of focus and dedication to work on this area of your life. If you spend so long doing it, and you learn to love doing it, why not make it your job?

   I mean surely YOU can offer more then anyother pickup company? Right

   ——————

   Point is, screw all these pickup companies. WE DONT NEED YOU!!!

   I love these guys but I have to say it…

   Mystery, Neil Strauss, Tyler Durden, David Deangelo, David Wygant, Cajun, Mehow, Paul Janka, Ross Jeffries, and every other Pickup company in the game……..

   YOU ALL LEARNED THIS STUFF ON YOUR OWN!!!!

   YOU NEVER NEEDED A BOOTCAMP OR A SEMINAR

   SO WHY DO I NEED YOU……

   I CAN LEARN GAME FOR FREE BY MEETING OTHER PUAS IN THE GAME, FIELD EXPERIENCE, MEETING NATURALS, AND TRIAL AND ERROR

   If more people would adopt this attitude, then there would be less pickup companies and the major pickup companies would be much cheaper
2. 

   Comment by Bobby Rio on 6 July 2008:

   I agree Donovan…as I’ve said before.. its getting out of control.

   Even the established guys are constantly pawning new shit on me… For instance, Mehow’s rep just contacted me about promting his new $500 course… I mean, really, how different is this Mehow course from the $400 infield exposed dvd set he put out last year.

   I pretty much tell every body contacting me now to send me a copy of whatever they are promoting.. if i find it revolutionary or helpful in a way that no one else is… i will review it on my site.. if not I don’t bother. (most of these new products fall into the latter category)

   I foresee a huge shake up in the pickup/seduction community very soon. The weak will be weaded out. Everyone has the right to earn a living… but if you’re recyling old stuff… I will have no problem exposing you.

   In the last 3 months out of the 20 or so companies that have contacted me I’ve only agreed to review two produts on my site. Window Shopping for Women (Because it was a niche that wasn’t explored in depth by too many guys.. and I personally was interested in learning Facebook game) and Bang (Because Roosh writes in a style that I think makes the information he is conveying a lot easier to digest than most of the authors out there)

   Personally I’m getting sick of it and becoming disillioned by it all.
3. 

   Comment by Brad on 6 July 2008:

   

   This is so fun!

   Hey Thread… from what I’ve seen, many of the guys that you’ve listed are “offshoots” of other guys that you’ve listed… lol.

   In other words, it’s replaceaguru in effect.

   I’ve got to say, I’ve talked to quite a few guys, website owners, and customers and apparently, there aren’t too many people out there in this market that are genuinely good guys.

   Another bad thing…

   I subscribe to most everyone’s newsletters and many of them are just thinly veiled pitches with no content whatsoever.

   The one thing I do like about David D (Eben) is that even though he does pitch in his newsletters… he has a shit ton of content that guys can take away and use… right now.

   Again, this post reminds me of a convo I had with Stephen Nash when he came down to Raleigh about Project Hollywood…

   “You’ve be surprised how many of these guys are teaching this stuff, yet haven’t so much as KISSED a girl in 3 months”

   Funny stuff.
4. 

   Comment by DateDemon on 6 July 2008:

   I think you are absolutely right with this. If I ever actually have a product and ever actually decide to charge for it, it will be 100% original at least =P Also yes Race and Kelly are doing really well. I also like http://www.pickuppodcast.com they really grew fast and its quality stuff.
5. 

   Comment by Thread on 6 July 2008:

   Yo Yo guys,

   No ones commented on the price of these things…

   Again, the way these things are priced only guys with money are the ones that deserve to get laid evidentally…

   I understand that companies have budgets, bills, and employees to pay…

   BUT… GIVE ME A BREAK GUYS

   If you made it cheaper, youd get more customers… You’d HELP more people, and you would actually get RETURNING CUSTOMERS!!!

   Theres a concept for some PUAs…..
6. 

   Comment by gigi on 6 July 2008:

   it’s very easy, trendy and cool to give it a shot at becoming a commercial pua.

   i’ve seen people spend tens of thousands of dollars and more on opening businesses that any baby could see that they were doomed to fail in the first place. and they did fail.

   becoming a commercial pua on the other hand takes a very small investment. plus it makes you feel like you ’switched to the gurus side’, so you’re sooo important now. hell, you might even actually get girls accidentally, now that you’re a guru and all.

   so no wonder so many give it a shot. little to lose (if you have free time on your hands) and everything to win.

   no happy ending to my post
7. 

   Comment by m0in10nz on 7 July 2008:

   “If anything all you’ll get is a fancy night out”

   Not even.
8. 

   Comment by Donovan on 7 July 2008:

   That’s guys. Great commentary.
9. 

   Comment by Ross Jeffries on 7 July 2008:

   Ha ha ha….it is funny to see someone ELSE complaining about upstarts and imitators when, in a sense, all of you are my bastard children.

   Ross “Dr. Frankenstein” Jeffries
   93/93
10. 

    Comment by chev on 7 July 2008:

    For those of you looking to cut through all the clutter, I offer a new three-day bootcamp on reading PUA-teacher websites.

    The first half of all the days will be where I teach my theory and all the terms used in the marketing jargon that seems to be common among all the different sites.

    The second half is the “in-field” portion, where I (along with my guest instructors) take the students to a local internet-cafe and we surf the net going to the different sites of all these supposed “gurus”.

    It’s only $4995. What do you have to lose?

    Oh yeah, your money… but besides that, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE??

    Act now!
11. 

    Comment by Jordan Harbinger on 8 July 2008:

    excellent points above. I’m glad to hear people think PickUp Podcast is legit, because that’s what it’s about. Besides, I’ll refund 10,000% of your money for every podcast you get from me if you don’t like it.

    -Jordan Harbinger
    http://www.pickuppodcast.com
12. 

    Comment by Dangerous on 9 July 2008:

    OMG…is that Joe D photo for comedic purposes or for real…if it’s the latter…then somebody needs to chop the head off the vampire and end this virus!
13. 

    Comment by Yuri on 10 July 2008:

    hey guys, I wanna comment about the price issue. most of the people cant afford to pay 200$ and more for some CD’s or books and they don’t. Therefore I think that the people that offer real value should concentrate more on boot camps and seminars - stuff that you cant just download, you have to actually be there and experience. everybody can write a book based on the hundreds of books already written, but not everybody can teach. and this is where the difference is.
14. 

    Comment by Dennis on 12 July 2008:

    I saw this article and just HAD to reply. Why?
    First of all I would like to add one more point to Thread’s list:

    4) ‘Guru’s’ using their established brandnames as a means of pitching FAKE, non-related, not working products to you only to make more money for themselves.
    Lately I’ve seen an increase in the number of guru’s promoting all these ‘Love Potion Number 9′, ‘Alpha Male Cologne’, ‘Grow Your Dick 10 Miles And Thus Become A Guru Yourself’, ‘Which Foods, Drinks And Herbs Turn Her On So You Can Fuck Her Without Saying Nothing’ kind of products that have NOTHING to do with HOW to be more succesful with women and dating. I’m exaggerating right now but these products are solely for making money purposes and NOT about helping you be all you can be with women and dating. It gets me angry and makes me see THOSE ‘guru’s’ as being fake too, although some of them are known for revolutionary products within the community…

    Onto what Yuri said about real value, he has a point there.
    When you by a book, SURE you learn and visualize it working for yourself, fantasize about how it’s going to be, etc. But only your eyes get a taste. If you go to a seminar weekend (that has an fieldwork part in it)? You have something for your eyes, your ears, PHYSICAL experience, SEEING instead of fantasizing that it works, etc. They stimulate someone into remembering it longer when it comes to sensory stimulation, leaving out the total fascination of the experience! About the price…200$ in ONE payment is a lot, but remember that the good systems out there prive you with payment terms to spread out that 200 or so and so amount of bucks and ALSO have a risk guarantee.
    You can’t expect something without giving anything in return for it and frankly, when you DO encounter a system that works and has a lasting effect? It changes your life, and me personally…I’ll pay if it works and it lasts.
15. 

    Comment by sting on 17 July 2008:

    Fair points, Donovan.

    But what of the press, such as yourself?

    as a somebody who’s interested in having readers, guru’s have different degrees of value to YOU. a well known, established guy… gives your site credibility, while a newcomer doesn’t.

    I see links under the heading of “guru” on this site to Ross Jeffries and Mehow - both guys i’d gathered you didn’t think much of. whats going on here?

    you criticized Mystery and his company, and reading between the lines, it seemed much of it had to do with just getting attention for the site

    you criticized RSD, and reading between the lines, it seemed as though it was partially at least motivated by their ignoring you.

    i remember you wrote something in passing to the effect that Christian Hudson was the creative force behind Juggler - an absurd statement, which seems to come from his giving you time, while Juggler doesn’t.

    if a guy with a reputation like Mystery, Tyler or Juggler offered to write articles for this site - wouldn’t you accept?
    and if you accepted, wouldn’t you cut back on criticizing them?
    if so, is your criticism of them based on their what you think of their work? or is it based on your own political agenda?

    S.
16. 

    Comment by Donovan on 17 July 2008:

    I AM motivated by them not speaking to me which is how I found out all this other crap. It opened a HUGE rabbit hole.

    Political agenda? Hardly, I give equal air time to everyone. If Savoy did something ridiculous then I would call him on it, he’s a friend, but he isn’t immune.

    By the way, havie you clicked those guru links? They aren’t promoting anything, those links are for informational purposes, so if someone wants to know who Ross Jeffries is, they click on it. It doesn’t go to their website. Other that a blog or two.

    Christian Hudson was the creative force behind Juggler. That’s the fact. His business was nothing without him and it going down fast. Look at their new website, talk about downgrade. Their grasping at a “new web design” to help their bottom line, as if it’s a miracle cure, and it won’t work, because they aren’t evolving and their material isn’t the best it could be.

    Do you know something that I don’t? I love you coming around Sting, but at times you try and play the insider, without basis, because you’ve been around awhile.

    Hey, a healthy debate.
17. 

    Comment by Donovan on 17 July 2008:

    Oh btw, my site is it’s own credibility through the work I’ve done on it over the years. It’s a mutual transaction between the gurus and myself now, if not more leaning towards this site’s side. We both exchange credibility.
18. 

    Comment by Christian on 18 July 2008:

    Wow, what a great discussion. Thank you for cluing me into this Donovan.

    First of all, I’d like to self-promote. Given how long (and hopefully helpful) this response turned out to be, I believe this is justified; I just wrote a post on my blog about the absurdity of “scenes”. And the PUA community is a scene if I’ve ever known it. Go ahead and read the post here:
    http://www.thesocialman.com/blog/archives/71

    Now then, I’m willing to bet that I’ve been around this community for as long as anyone on this board. Juggler was not my first introduction to it, but by random introduction, I got pulled in as his business partner very early on. I’m still in it because I enjoy teaching and believe that I have some good things to say.

    Donovan’s site has also been around for as long as I can remember. And in all of my experiences with him, I will say this about Donovan - he generally approaches every ‘guru’ with an open mind. Look at all the other big names who comment here - Ross, Savoy, etc… that says something about his credibility. Its not until a guru does something flagrantly stupid or disrespectful that they begin to get negative coverage from him. And keep in mind, this is HIS site. He’s entitled to his opinion.

    The thing that I have a problem with is when guys who don’t know all the facts start to form opinions. Its stock guru worship. When I announced my new thing about a year back, I received a TON of hate mail. But how many people actually know what went on inside Charisma Arts? @sting - do you really know what happened there? IMHO, Johnny Savior was responsible for some of the most important things that CA teaches, but no one *really* knows that, you know?

    Now moving onto this notion of new products…

    Look: getting good with women is hard. Presenting the ideas behind it is even harder. And here’s where I’d like to disagree with many of you.

    Ross, Erik and Wayne conceptualized some good things, sure. None of us would be here if Ross hadn’t come up with speed seduction back in the day and if alt.seduction.fast hadn’t been created as a result. But we live in a market-driven society, and there is a market for information. Ross didn’t own the market for ideas (and Ross, if that really is you commenting, props man - we’re all in your debt in one way or another).

    So guys like Erik and Wayne came along with some new ideas, developed a little cult on ASF, and new businesses were born. Erik and Nick parted ways, and Nick is a good business man. I don’t know exactly what TMM is teaching these days, but if people are getting better because of it, then he’s got a legitimate claim to what he’s doing (although continuing to use the ‘Mystery’ name is a grey area). Wayne and I parted ways. I went on to try to create some innovative products and add some new ideas to this cauldron of a community, and well, I’m not exactly sure what Charisma Arts has done except for turn their site into a blog and start charging for access to parts of their forum.

    Mehow took some of Mystery’s concepts, expanded on them, and teaches them differently. He has sick production values, great marketing, and presents ideas clearly. If someone buys his stuff and doesn’t like it, I’m sure he’d honor them for a refund. And while all this chatter about him ripping off Mystery is a compelling part of the this little pickup “scene” (again, see my blog post), I’m willing to bet that he’s actually helping lots of guys get better with women.

    So let’s use another market for ideas: particle physics. My understanding is that some physicists like to rag on Brian Greene for going “mainstream” with his books. And he certainly didn’t invent general relativity or quantum mechanics. But hey, he’s explaining concepts in a way that lay people can understand. So to hell with the detractors.

    My feeling is that if a guru can acknowledge his sources (as I know that both Brian Greene and Mehow do), but present concepts in a way that they are learnable, he’s got a legitimate claim to be teaching things. Erik is a bright guy - I don’t think too many people would deny him that - but if someone can take what he’s developed, expand on it, and teach it in a way that’s helpful to others, well, that’s capitalism, my friend, and there will be buyers.

    We’re all entitled to our opinion about what works and what doesn’t. At CA, we made a lot of of our money by being the “anti-mystery” guys. But I say try everything and see what gets you results. Go buy Bang or Revelation or Conquer Your Campus - all these books and products have generous refund policies anyway - and if it works for you, fantastic. If not, ask for your $$$ back.

    As for teaching this stuff…

    I had a client this weekend who had taken six bootcamps. And on Saturday night of our event, he was still getting blown out. Why? He’d worked with TWELVE coaches in the last few years. He knew every routine. And he wasn’t a bad looking or poorly-dressed guy. What was going on?

    Well, this guy had a negative and defensive worldview. It was so deep that he didn’t even see it, but women could feel it immediately. I don’t want to give Nick Sparks (who did a lot of the inner game work with this guy) too much credit yet, because I don’t yet know if the exercises he did will have long-term impact, but Nick and I certainly opened the door to things no one else had shown him before. And to that end, helping a guy become good with women is really hard.

    Guys who are good with women either have delusional self-confidence or genuine confidence. Every line you deliver hits successfully from that frame. Some guys are born with delusional self-confidence, and others can borrow some from being around a guru for a weekend. But long-term, a guy who has deeper issues will eventually fall if he doesn’t develop genuine confidence. I see gurus who develop delusional self-confidence because they command a big audience on their blog or something (not you, Donovan) or hook up with a few hotties. Are they qualified to teach some men how to approach women? Maybe. Are they qualified to teach all men how to be truly better with women? Well that’s a different story.

    The guru with delusional self-confidence is like the derivatives trader who leaves college, immediately jumps into a six-figure job, rides the wave of prosperity into his forties, then kills himself when his positions collapse and he stands to lose everything. His confidence was built on external validation, not inner strength or a true understanding of what made him happy.

    Personally, I kept dating hotter and hotter women, eventually dating a few top, top models here in New York, but after four to six months, my relationships would collapse, because I was externally validated. My frame was strong for as long as I had things around me propping me up. There was one night when I was dancing with a new model du jour at at a club, and a former model gf walked up to her and said “be careful, he fooled me too.” I really took that to heart, as I’d not only been fooling her, but myself too.

    So look, the guys who are good candidates for bootcamps are the guys who have their shit straightened out to begin with. They come in, learn the right frames, the structure, some techniques, and watch a guru do it, and they’re off to the races. And there are probably quite a few people qualified to teach those guys.

    But most instructors teaching this stuff simply haven’t had the life experiences to know when their standard curriculum isn’t working. They know how to pump buying temperature in a way that makes it look like they have good game, and they’ve slept with a few semi-attractive girls. They might be able to pump their clients’ buying temperature too, to the point where the guy is able to go into the bar, recite some lines he’s been taught or merely bring a strong positive energy, and get a number or two.

    I have a friend who took a bootcamp with one of the top five PUAs in the world according to Thundercat. The bootcamp was total shit - the instructor did two half-assed demo with wait staff and just kept telling his students to go “open sets”. But because of the reality distortion field around who this guy was (an old term that hearkens back to how Steve Jobs would make people feel), a few of the clients thought they were making progress. Two other clients apparently gave up by 11 pm on the second night, and just pulled out their cheat sheets from a previous TMM bootcamp they’d taken.

    So sometime, years back, the market coalesced around the ~$1500 weekend bootcamp. It was driven by the respect - perhaps unfounded - that gurus commanded from their forum posts. They were the leaders - out there in the wild and dealing with uncertainty, risk and rejection. There was a lot of demand for instructors and not much supply. Everyone wanted to see how it was done. But now you can buy mehow’s infield insider or my hidden mic pickups and see and/or hear it.

    So frankly, I think that the rate for good instructors is going to go up, and the rate for approach coaches is going to go down. The models of instruction are going to change dramatically over the next few years. The challenge with bootcamps is that they’re expensive to run, both in terms of costs (if you’re traveling) and in terms of opportunity costs. But unless you live in a major metro city with access to good coaches, you don’t have a week or a month to do long-term coaching. It will be interesting to see how the market deals with this.

    And hey, some guys will get good simply by going out and doing it on their own. @Thread - good for you for having the temerity to do it on your own. If all men were like you then we’d all be out of business. But a lot of men need more hand-holding, and deeper plumbing work. Don’t make the guys who need more help feel bad about that with your bravado and chest-thumping.

    My crystal ball says this: the seduction market is going to be like the Linux market. We are all going to settle on a general “operating system” of what works and what doesn’t with women, and this is going to be free or very cheap. it is going to be a hybrid of things that lots of different gurus have taught (more self promotion: I’ve already started hosting lots of free videos explaining this stuff on my site - http://www.thesocialman.com/resources/video01.php - although the site is still in beta), but lots of companies will spring up around implementation and custom solutions.

    Or maybe we’ll all just return to our caves and forum posts. As for me, I need to shower and get to a friend’s birthday party. Hope you all have fantastic weekends planned.

    Rock and roll,
    Christian
19. 

    Comment by Bobby Rio on 18 July 2008:

    Well said Christian!
20. 

    Comment by The Asian Rake on 18 July 2008:

    Holy crap, Christian. Even though I’m biased, etc., I have to say that this is the best comment I’ve ever read on a blog like… ever.

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