The Game: Penetrating The Secret Society of Pickup Artists - Reception

Reception

Neil Strauss was quoted in a review in The Guardian as saying "A side effect of sarging is that it can lower one's opinion of the opposite sex", though the reviewer noted that "And yet, as he has described it, the inverse is true: a low opinion of the opposite sex is a prerequisite for sarging". Strauss was also quoted as saying "The point was women; the result was men. Instead of models in bikinis lounging by the Project Hollywood pool all day, we had pimply teenagers, bespectacled businessmen, tubby students, lonely millionaires, struggling actors, frustrated taxi drivers, and computer programmers – lots of computer programmers". The reviewer remarked that "The sell is that, with the special techniques they learn from Mystery and other gurus, the ubergeeky can often give a convincing simulation of being a regular human being, even if, like one sarger in this book, they are in fact near-sociopaths".

Another reviewer in The Observer wrote "Some of the recommended techniques are sinister. One involves discreetly undermining a woman's self-esteem by paying her a backhanded compliment in the hope that she will hang around to seek your approval. This manoeuvre has its own name: 'the Neg'".

Malcolm Knox wrote "I doubt he has anything helpful for anyone except those men whose emotional maturity stalled at age 15". He also wrote "If the reader is too far ahead of the author, a book has a problem. On page 406, Mystery's mother says his problems are caused by his low self-esteem. Strauss reflects: 'Only a mother could reduce a person's entire ambition and raison d'etre to the one basic insecurity fuelling it all.' No. It's taken 406 pages for Strauss to realise what most readers will have got by page 10". He notes the failure of "Project Hollywood" and that the book doesn't recognise the role of women in selecting partners. He also writes "The other false advertisement is that Strauss has 'penetrated' a 'secret society' of geeks-turned-gurus including Mystery, his rival Ross Jeffries and renegade PUA teachers nicknamed Papa and Tyler Durden. Yet when Strauss writes about them in The New York Times, they're thrilled".

Alexandra Jacobs wrote that he "switched awkwardly between misogynistic comments and feeble attempts at self-awareness." She also notes that "But he does come to perceive one curious thing about the P.U.A.'s: They seem far more interested in spending time with fellow P.U.A.'s, amassing, refining and discussing the game, than actually getting to know women. Call them S.L.B.'s (scared little boys)".