Before reading this post, be sure to read my post from January 2015 Banned From StyleLife to get a basic backstory as to my involvement with this company and why I eventually left.
When I was banned from the Elite Forums at StyleLife and decided to not involve myself with the company anymore, things weren't going so hot over there. Forum activity was at an all-time low, they hadn't come out with any new material for the past few years, they were offering about half the number of bootcamps in 2015 that they did in prior years, and whether they were going to have their annual world conference in Los Angeles that year was totally up in the air. Had Neil Strauss not been involved with the company and have him and his legacy from The Game represent the site marketing, it would have gone out of business years ago with the likes of other PUA company websites. Now however, it looked like Neil Strauss was interested in moving on from the PUA community for good. His wife was about to have a baby, and he was in the midst of writing a book that would talk about how pickup really fucked up his mind.
When I was banned, I still had forum access but I just couldn't post, so I could at least see what was going on. To my disappointment, nothing interesting really happened. Once I was gone, it was back to business as usual. People were still posting like social robots, the coaches were still giving out the same shoddy advice. The only difference was the posts were less frequent. Nothing really stood out other than this tool named Jack Sherwood on the site posting about how his new girlfriend found his copy of The Game and claimed that she's now "winning the game against him" and must game her even more just because she found out he manipulated her with pickup techniques. I don't even have to comment on the ridiculousness of that...
I predicted that StyleLife wouldn't stay in business within the next five years if they didn't make necessary changes to their business. Well, I got the five years part wrong. It turns out it only took about a year for that to happen, and the decline in 2015 was rapid. First of all, the forum posting became even less frequent than it already was. Second, they were having trouble filling slots for the few bootcamps that they did schedule for the year. I found it odd that they would go from having most of the slots open up until only a few days before some bootcamps only for them to be filled up, meaning that they probably got other people to fill those slots who were not paying students. Third, there was no world conference in 2015. If there was one, it certainly wasn't advertised let alone advertised well, no one talked about it, etc. If they had a conference at all, it was probably a completely private event where they handpicked a couple of students to attend - if they had a conference at all. Fourth, they went from writing some new articles and recycling others to completely recycling articles when they decided to post one at all. Even their StyleLife Girl interviews, which they were holding every month, dwindled down to pretty much nothing.
You thought 2015 was bad, 2016 has been completely abysmal so far for StyleLife. They had one bootcamp in LA in January (that no one went on I bet) and haven't had one since. They went from recycling old articles and material to just flat out not posting anything at all. I think they still have the calls but I wouldn't doubt that no one gets on them and I'm sure that's going to be axed soon as well. Some people on the forum at the beginning of the year even complained that none of the videos worked, and I experienced the same problem when I wanted to watch the wing wing wing joke video just for laughs. Now as of April 2016, forum activity is down to absolute zero. There has been absolutely no activity on the Elite Forum for almost two months now, the longest the forum has ever gone without anyone posting. Even their public forum, which I'm sure will stick around forever since it's through vbulletin and anyone can join and post on it, doesn't have much activity; just the once in a while sporadic comment, but there's no one moderating the board it looks like, which probably means if you try to register and a mod has to approve you, you'll be stuck in limbo forever. Something tells me there probably won't be an annual conference again this year.
What happened? Did the coaches, the people running the company, and Neil Strauss himself just give up? They were in complete denial that the company was going under when they banned me, so now is this their way of saving face? By just walking away, not telling anyone they're closing their doors, and just leaving their website up until the domain expires? That's most likely the case. They decided instead of restructuring their business to revive it, the coaches and people running the business decided to just walk off and play Dungeons & Dragons instead. What about people who are still paying for a monthly membership? Did they get rainchecks? I still see they're still advertising memberships, still charging a ridiculous amount, and still using the same bullshit marketing tactics that PUA companies usually use.
At this point, StyleLife is pretty much dead. It might be still alive and breathing, but it's basically a vegetable. I don't think it's ever coming back especially since the entire pickup industry is going under. Even Real Social Dynamics, the frontrunner of the pickup industry, is experiencing a decline. It will only be a matter of years before the entire industry bottoms up.
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