About three weeks ago I had lunch with a coworker. Ruth is a coworker of mine like Stephen Davis was a classmate of mine. We inhabit the same space, pass each other weekly about our daily business, and exchange smiles of anonymous benevolence that are shared among familiar strangers. But this digression is not precisely relevant to my story. I upped the relationship and asked Ruth out to lunch which resulted in her loaning me a copy of a book she enjoyed, The Game, by Neil Strauss. This book has set off more than one interesting conversation among friends and the Grand Experiment.
OK. So calling this the Grand Experiment is as ostentaciously self-flattering as I might fear to be. It is really a glorified attempt at increased carnal gratification. But as an engineer (read: scientist that does shit) there is an equally strong intellectual appeal of a sociological experiment that could glean insights into human nature. Instead of more circumlocution, I’ll say that I’m going to be trying some outlandish behavior on random people in the coming weeks. Those people will be mostly women.
Your 15-second review of The Game is as follows: journalist Neil Strauss decides to follow Pick-up Artists (PUAs) as they ply their trade and recruit wealthy and desperate spendthrifts that seek to improve their abilities to pick up women. A lot of money is made, a lot of women are bedded, and everyone (particularly the masculine half of this selection) ends up a lot happier. In the end hearts are broken, friendships are created and destroyed, etc. As I said: it’s about picking up women.
As Rich and I were stumbling back from The Phoenix in our mid-Sunday post-game beer buzz (fucking Titans!), he mentioned that I should be adding this to the blog. So, for article one on this topic, I’m going to describe three things that have happened in the last week as a result of having read this book:
- Asking (and receiving) a quarter from a homeless person.
- Cologne experiment at Valley Fair.
- Running The Cube at Booty on Friday night.
Before I get into the hitting on women part, I’ll mention that the biggest component of the success of the PUA is his own self-confidence. Its surprising how many references exist in the book to motivational material entirely aimed at convincing someone to believe they can succeed. Along that vein, one PUA recommended that his students start asking homeless people for change. Since the indigent tweakers at the 7-11 near my hockey rink are constantly asking me for change, I’ve had targets for this reverse maneuver. On Tuesday I interrupted an “Excuse me, can I…” with an excited “Thank God you’re here…I need a quarter bad. Can I have one?”
Let me tell you, that beggar backed of his mark like a jaguar off a poison frog. But my devious joy was squelched on Friday when I asked a homeless man selling Street Sheets in the SOMA for a quarter and he rifled his clinking pockets to hand me the gleaming prize. Uh, I don’t think I’m going to harass the homeless anymore to flagellate my own self-esteem. (Incidentally, I ended up buying his fucking paper, you goddamn hippies.)
Experiment two (not ordered temporally) involved me approaching women at the Valley Fair shopping mall. The routine–again, briefly mentioned in The Game–involves using a “Which cologne do you prefer more?” opener on random women. I tried this on about a dozen women on Thursday night with fairly impressive results. It seems that most women responded with excitement and curiosity at the unexpected quiz and engaged in short but enjoyable conversations. While I didn’t transition any of these into actual date-like moves (“So, would you like to grab a slice of pizza at Sbarro?”) I had fun practicing an approach to absolute strangers.
(Incidentally, while the cologne opener worked perfectly in the non-social setting of Valley Fair, where most of my targets were employees banking their hourly wages, it had one failure at Booty on Friday night. The first girl I used it on exploded with, “My God, why are you using this terrible line on me?” As it turns out she had been approached by one guy on a previous night that had used a less discreet location than his wrist to draw her blushing face.)
In experiment three I used a value demonstration routine called The Cube which is best described in the link for the same above. To the uninitiated skeptic, The Cube is a cold reading technique that enables your fearless hero to demonstrate his prowess at divining one’s personal secrets while offering senseless flattery, to boot. I cannot tell you of a single time in my life that I have so successfully captured the unwavering attention of a woman in a social setting. And with that conversational crack rock in my arsenal, I successfully ensnared five enrapt damsels with only minutes of bullshitting. The details of these engagements will have to be shared in person.
The book is nearly behind me now, but it has spawned a new micro-hobby of conversational manipulation. I’ve got an Amazon order on the way for instruction on the topics of cold reading, self-motivation, and neuro-linguistic programming. With any luck they’ll arrive before the weekend and I’ll have the benefits of a short lesson before flying to Vegas.
Game on.
Am I permitted to be afraid yet?
I will be bringing my camera this weekend — should any of this “game” actually occur, I will surreptitiously photograph the targeted and post later to document the caliber of the prey.
I consider this a community service — like RF-tagging sea turtles for science.