2016 - A Year in Review

This year, instead of spending a lot of time going over events that happened this past year in chronological order, I will sum up things.  I will list the top 10 worst things of 2016, the top 10 best things, and the top 10 things I hope to happen in 2017.  Here we go

TOP TEN WORST THINGS OF 2016

1) The fall out of Pickup - after five years of following pickup and with RSD especially, it all ended shortly after the World Conference and Miami 5-Day bootcamp in February.  Shortly after, my pursuit of pickup ended.

2) Didn't make many friends in 2016 - I felt like I completely regressed in that department.

3) The demise of the SoHo nightlife - After falling out of pickup, the SoHo nightlife became almost impossible for me.  While there were some interesting nights especially around Halloween, SoHo was never the same for me and vowed to never return until things change for the better.

4) Dating/Sex life didn't improve one bit, despite efforts at the beginning of the year and sporadic efforts throughout the year.

5) Uncle passes away.  I saw this one coming and it was only a matter of time.

6) Lot of celebrities, some famous icons some lesser known, passed away this year, and it seemed like many passed away this year alone.

7) Fallout with friends.  I lost way more friends this year than I've gained, including people I was friends with back 10-20 years ago.  Most of it was due to the election, one was due to outright betrayal, and another was because I told her to get out of my business.

8) The temporary fallout with the Tampa salsa community.  Glad that was saved.

9) No more network marketing, after completely quitting cold on Nikken and a failed attempt at a Beachbody business.

10) Obama just went insane this past year despite there being more terrorist attacks and conflicts in the streets and he got even crazier after he lost the election.

and now onto the TOP TEN BEST THINGS OF 2016

1) Moved to SoHo after wanting to do so for the last few years.

2) Didn't struggle financially as much as I did the last 8 years.

3) Got into Historical European Martial Arts, basically reviving my interest and practice in fencing

4) Trump won the election against all odds and showed that proud, hard working Americans still make up a great majority in this country.

5) Ran my first marathon

6) The year started really well, with an awesome makeout session and there were a few more to follow

7) Got to visit the mountains of North Carolina after wanting to do so for so long

8) Visited New York again, this time for my first out of state Salsa Congress

9) Visited St. Augustine after having to keep postponing that trip for many years

10) Got promoted to supervisor at work

and now TOP TEN THINGS I HOPE WILL HAPPEN IN 2017

1) This nation gets back on track and things become stable again in our government and America becomes great again.

2) I go to Disney a lot, something I haven't done once in over a decade

3) My dating/sex life improves DRASTICALLY

4) I become more social and outgoing

5) I travel to some awesome places

6) I work in New York, whether it be a week, a month, 10 months, whatever

7) Things in SoHo become great again, like they start having a legit Latin night over at HPC

8) I stay in shape and don't fall off the wayside

9) I read more books on my favorite subjects

10) I continue to move up in my career

Happy 2017 everyone!

It's Official - SoHo No More

Well that settles it - When an anti-anxiety drug everyone raves about can't help, there's not much more I can do in my current situation.  In 2017, I will no longer be partaking in the nightlife in SoHo.  I am tired of trying to fit in.  I've tried, many times, to hang out at venues, meet people, and even hook up.  The problem is it just comes down to me not fitting in.

I first started hanging out in SoHo some months after moving to Tampa five years ago when I wanted to just check out a nightclub in general.  I was starting to get into the whole pickup thing at the time, and before I was never a big fan of going to nightclubs but I wanted to give one a shot, so I chose to go to one in an area called Hyde Park/SoHo that offered salsa lessons at the beginning of the night.  From there, I became hooked and this opened so many new possibilities for me.  But alas, those days are over.  That venue no longer does the salsa classes or even has a true latin night anymore.  There was a time in SoHo when you didn't have to be a frat boy type or bro-dawg to have a good time.  There were definitely venues that catered to that, but there were also venues that catered to other interests - ones that were much more classy and attracted different types of people.  Now every venue tries to cater to the frat boys, the moron douchebags, the sorority snobs, the grinders, etc. and there's no escaping it.  It really sucks too because I moved down here this past year just to be closer to the venues and the Starbucks/Panera I always hang out at.  Now the venues are obsolete and there are better venues for me to hang out at elsewhere.

With that said, I will still live here.  After all, it's still relatively affordable with a roommate and all and it's one of the only walkable places in Tampa next to downtown and within a close distance to everything.  And who knows, maybe someone or some great force out there in the universe will make SoHo great again.  Until then, I will avoid the nightlife.  In fact, I may even skip town on Gasparilla weekend this coming year.  What sucks is no matter what my friend I'm living about it won't shut up about how I'm missing out on hot women or something like that, even though they're incompatible hot women usually and there are better hot women at dance socials or other venues.  Also I may still go to whatever pool socials they have at the apartment once the spring/summer rolls around.

Who knows though?  Maybe things will work in my favor and I may find motivation and reason to go out there again without having to struggle.  For now though, it's time to put it to rest.

One More Chance In SoHo

2016 is coming to a close, and I have decided to create an ultimatum.  I have decided to give SoHo in Tampa just one more chance before the year ends.  Just one more.  That will be this Thursday, the 29th.  If things don't go well, if I don't genuinely feel like I'm having fun or having a good time, if I feel like shit when I'm there or when I come home, then that will be the end of it - I will not be present in the SoHo nightlife in 2017.  Hell, this could mean that during Gasparilla I could just go out of town for that weekend, even considering going to Miami - a place I vowed never to go back to - for their salsa congress.

Ever since I moved to Tampa, SoHo was the place I primarily hung out at.  It's the place where PUA bootcamp instructors would take their students if there ever was a PUA bootcamp in Tampa.  I've gone out, I had fun, but I struggled way more than I felt I should have.  Still, I wanted to move to the SoHo area since I started hanging out there, and this past year I finally got to - only to no longer want to hang out in SoHo and go elsewhere.  This mainly happened after falling out of the Good Looking Loser program, having an overall bad experience on the Miami 5-day bootcamp that I had a lot of hope for, and just dropping pickup altogether.  I keep thinking maybe dropping pickup was a mistake and I should have stuck with it, but the truth is I wasn't doing myself good when I was in it; I wasn't being authentic with myself and at the end of the day I wasn't doing much better.  Lot had changed as well in SoHo with the removal of authentic Latin nights at the clubs and changes to karaoke nights this past year.

The truth is I no longer have to go out to SoHo; there are better venues elsewhere in Tampa and even in Orlando.  I still justify going to SoHo however because now I'm within walking distance, but it's like this past year especially I never liked going out and dealing with moron douchebags and stuckup bitchy women.

Thursday I'm going all out.  I have that day off from work, I have the next day off from work.  I have no excuse not to go all out.  This will be a day when I really will use a full dosage of Phenibut, which I have not used yet save one small dose a couple weeks ago.  This time I'll use the full benefit of the Phenibut, to help me get through the pain periods, the anxiety, and things that make me feel awful whenever I go out to these venues.  All I gotta say is if Phenibut does little to nothing to help me out, help me make the night as awesome as I'd like it to be, then nothing will.  Absolutely nothing will.  Not in my current state, nothing.  I would have to undergo a DRASTIC change in order for things to change.  That means developing a beneficial social circle among other things.

So will Thursday night be the last night in SoHo?  I will write all about it, what happened, whether the phenibut helped or not, etc.

Using Phenibut

Aaron Sleazy posted a recent blog entry about Nootropics, and one of the most common that kept getting mentioned was phenibut.  You can read the article here:

http://blog.aaronsleazy.com/index.php/2016/12/04/open-discussion-nootropics/

Ever since I started going out, I never took any anti-anxiety supplements or drugs or whatever.  All I did was drink, and I usually only drink beer when I go out; never hard liquor except on occasion.  When I do drink, I usually cut it off at 2-4 because it gets too expensive and I feel groggy when I drink too much alcohol.  Plus I have a high tolerance for alcohol.  In other words, it does little to nothing to help with whatever anxiety I have in place.  

So this is where a drug like phenibut comes in.  I ordered 200 g of it from LiftMode and am looking forward to trying it out and see how it effects me.  I don't know how much I need to take in order for it to have any effect on me, but hopefully it will suppress at least most of the anxiety I feel when I go out to a venue where there's a lot of hot women or when I'm dancing with a hot girl I could potentially make out with.  Right now, it's so out of control that it's just crippling, and nothing I can do on my own right now is really helping.  Hopefully something like this helps.  I even had friends tell me about their experiences with it and it sounds like a big secret of many guys when they go out.  

I'll update everyone when I get it and try it out the first time.  Hopefully it will push me to a successful night.

On Rejection

I keep meaning to write in this blog, but I keep putting it off because of the time and focus commitment.  I'm thinking I should go back to video blogs, which were much easier to make because all I had to do was ramble in front of a camera for however long.  Just need to free up a lot of the storage on my phone.

Rejection is a subject that has risen to the top of the lists this year especially, and has been the key challenge I have faced especially when it comes to meeting and dating women.  This hasn't just been the case with pickup, but this has been the case across the board.

To put it bluntly, I don't deal with rejection very well - at least not with women.  I don't think I ever handled it well.  Even as a kid, I hated the idea of going over to a friends' house and knocking on the door to ask if so-and-so is there, fearing that said friend wasn't there or couldn't come out to play, etc. and have the door slammed on my face or feel embarrassed for some reason.  I even feared going up to the counter at a store to ask for something as simple as a refill on a drink (this was back when most places you had to ask for a refill at the counter and only a handful had the self-serve fountain drinks).  Maybe it was because I was told no one time harshly or because I was afraid of people who worked somewhere because I was a little kid, or whatever.  I remember having to get my mom, dad or sister to come up to the counter with me whenever I wanted something.

Now obviously I don't have these sort of anxiety issues today, but with women it's still a major issue.  I think it's an issue for this reason - women reject guys, and guys who put themselves out there risk the chance of getting shot down hard.  When I was in elementary and middle school, I never asked any girl out.  I really wasn't in any position to date anyways, but I thought the ridicule would have been too great if I got shot down and I wouldn't have been able to live with the embarrassment.  What I would do was obsess over one girl every year, thinking it would be nice to go out with that girl but not doing so - not because of the fear of rejection but because of what ridicule I would face if I did get involved.  News travels fast, and I wasn't exactly the most popular kid in school.  In high school, things did get a tad bit better, but it was still more of the same obsessing over one girl a year.  In fact, this whole obsessing over one girl a year didn't stop until just five years ago, when I started learning pickup.  I learned how bad oneitis is, and I will give pickup credit for helping me rid myself of that.  However, I think one of the reasons why I had the oneitis in the first place was because I thought the girl was the best match at the time and yet I still didn't want to screw things up.

Pickup didn't make my fear of rejection go away.  It may have subdued it a little.  It may have allowed me to take more risks.  But the truth of the matter is it in some ways made things worse.  See when it comes to rejection, pickup companies are not clear on what they want to teach men and many times just outright contradict their own advice.  I would say just about all of them have no problems giving a long ass speech about how guys should not fear rejection but should embrace it, take it on, just get as many rejections as possible because that's how you learn not to care, etc.  However, once that speech is over, then they'll get into tactics, strategies, gimmicks, etc. on what body language you should convey, what you should be doing while you're out, what you should say to a girl when you approach her, how you should go about asking for the number, etc. and the more mainstream pickup groups will even go as far as telling you that you can switch on attraction triggers with any girl and if you don't then you executed step 2-B wrong or some bullshit like that.  I know it's all to sell overpriced ebooks and videos and even more overpriced bootcamps, because if you just tell guys to be themselves and stop looking to women for approval and screen girls out, they wouldn't be in business.  This idea of "ploughing through" has never worked.  Sure, maybe a girl might not be agreeable at first, but if she flat out doesn't like you, there really isn't any super technique you can do to change that.  It's better to be your real self instead of putting on a front as a means to avoid rejection and get what I call fake success.  I mean, if you're an accountant for example, and you have to make up some story about how you are a professional assassin because some pickup guru told you to say that because she would think you're boring otherwise, isn't that not only being inauthentic but downright missing the point?  It also made meeting women into a spectator sport.

I think I need to stop at this for now.  There's so much more I want to say on it, but I'm running a marathon tomorrow.  If I survive, I will speak more of this later.

What I have accomplished in 2016

2016 is a year that I feel overall has been a huge struggle, much like 2004, 2008 and 2011.  The problem is I never focus on the good things that happen in these years, and in this past year and those three years I mentioned, I have accomplished quite a bit.  Now I will take some time to discuss what I have accomplished this year:

1) I moved to South Tampa, something I was trying to do for the last 4 years or so.

2) I became more active and was more focused on exercise this year than in years past.

3) I finally got the chance to visit St. Augustine

4) I finally got to take a trip up to the mountains of North Carolina after not being able to do so in the past due to financial reasons

5) I got to visit New York again, this time on my own terms

6) I helped Donald Trump get elected president, making it the first time in 20 years that the person I wanted to win the presidential election actually won.  

7) I became a concealed carry gun owner

8) I picked up fencing again, this time in the form of historical european martial arts

9) I didn't struggle financially nearly as much as I have in years past

10) I got promoted to supervisor at work

11) I signed up for my first marathon, which I will be running this weekend

So why do I think 2016 has been a huge struggle?  As I have written before, it's because of the social aspect.  I went into the year thinking it was going to finally be the year where I get over my problem with meeting/attracting/dating women by starting off the year pretty strong and thinking I was going to springboard myself after the week-long RSD bootcamp in Miami this past February.  What happened was the exact opposite.  What happened instead was that I gave up pickup altogether, I stopped going out to the venues I was practicing pickup except on rare occasion, and when I did go I did little to no approaching of women.  I felt like instead of getting better I got worse, and I felt like I lost any source of motivation that I had as well as any form of parachute.  To make matters worse it I have a roommate who won't shut up about things like "sarging" and obsesses over pickup, even though he's just mocking it.  I get extremely irritated when he asks me if I went out sarging or some stupid shit like that.

So with that said, will I finally climb out of this rut?  Hopefully now that I'm focused on it, things can turn for the better.  After all, I'm pinpointing what my biggest issues are, and the biggest one I have is I don't handle rejection well at all.  

I will write more about this later, but I just wanted to share these thoughts, and I want to blog more often.  

2016 - A Rough Year

2016 has been one of the roughest years for me.  It was a year where in the beginning thought that things were going to be awesome in how I finally got to move to the SoHo/Hyde Park area of Tampa (even if it meant crashing on my friend's couch for much of the year), how I was going to go on the Model Season Bootcamp with RSD, how the year was off to a really good start based on what happened over New Year's, etc.  I thought when it came to dating and pickup and sex, there was no way I could fail and I was going to have one of the best years ever in that regard - I was going to pull girls left and right and I was going to be more engaged.  What really happened though was the exact opposite.  Around April, circumstances caused me to quit pickup for good after finding out that what I was doing was a huge waste of time, it was counterproductive, and I was just working too hard on trying to hook up with some girl.  That led me to do other things such as focus on workouts, read all the time at Starbucks, and drive all the way to Orlando every weekend to go to a dance social.

Things also changed at the venues.  They all but did away with karaoke, and latin nights are all but non-existent.

But alas, the year is not over yet.  So what I've decided to do now that I'm moving to a new apartment in Hyde Park with my own bed and everything, I decided to go out four nights a week and just be there.  I won't approach any women unless I feel like I absolutely should; in other words there won't be any forced approaches like there were in the past.  The thing I can't control is how a girl reacts to me.  I can't control what a girl thinks of me.  What I CAN control however is something like how long I plan to stay out, and that is one of the biggest weak areas I deal with  Afterall, 5-7 hours of doing almost nothing and being exposed in a loud, uncomfortable environment IS very difficult and I know it's going to take getting used to.  I know it's going to take a lot of practice.  I know at first I'm not going to want to do it.  I know that I'm going to want to leave at the first sign of trouble, the first sign of boredom, the first sign I feel like I need to read or eat/drink something, etc.  What I fail to realize however is that by leaving, I'm missing out.  I'm sure I missed many chances at banging a girl by simply leaving too early or just not showing up at all.

This is what I'm going to do for at least a month.  Going to go one month at 3-4 days per week.  Let's see what happens in a month.  If things don't change, I'll go for two months.  Whatever happens, I cannot fail myself.

Pickup Is Not The Solution To The Problem; Pickup IS The Problem

I can literally write a whole novel about pickup, why I think it's a sham for many reasons, etc.  For now I will only focus on a couple issues.

First of all, if you go into pickup being afraid of rejection and/or not handling rejection very well, chances are your fear is not going to go away and may even get worse.  Sure, you might drop some of the insecurities you had such as looking good enough, not driving a hot sports car, etc. but now you have other insecurities - particularly performance anxiety.  You now learn all these things about how women think and feel, what gets them turned on, etc. and now you feel the need to run this perfect, 'smooth' game if you want to get the girl.  Furthermore, pickup companies can be complete and total hypocrites when it comes to the subject of rejection.  They'll do these long videos and seminars on how you should just go out and get rejected all night long and how it's perfectly okay and everything, and it's actually a good thing because of the exposure you're getting, etc..  Okay, great.  However, once that conversation is over, they then do a complete 180 and talk about tricks and tactics of what to say, how to dress, what body language you should be conveying, how you should always be in state, etc.  Even on bootcamps, they'll chew out their students for getting rejected by a girl.  Talk about double jeopardy!  Just a hunch, but you say that you should just go out and embrace rejection and be okay with it and do it often, etc. etc. but now you're implying that it's a bad thing that needs to be avoided or at least minimized.  They'll even draw in suckers by giving marketing spiels like how you're getting turned down often or not getting the best results because you haven't been listening to their advice and now you should pay $500 for their new online video series to help you do so.  It's clever marketing, but it is unethical in the sense that it's manipulating guys in need.  Guys who get caught up on things like text game or amplifying attraction or using the best canned openers/routines are learning anything but being okay with rejection.

The second thing I want to talk about is comparing yourself to other guys.  If you had a problem comparing yourself to other guys before learning pickup, you're going to have a greater problem after. Many pickup companies make seducing women or even just trying to find a girlfriend out to be this great competitive sport, and this is even evidenced by shows like Keys To The VIP and The Pickup Artist.  By learning pickup, you tend to think you learned all the secrets you wish you knew back in high school when you had a crush on the hottest girl in class and you couldn't even get close to her because you weren't even part of the in crowd.  You think when you go out to a bar or club that you have a leg up because you discovered some crazy secrets on the Internet that most guys don't know about.  When that turns out to not be the case, you beat yourself up.  Where guys really try to compete against each other is out on the bootcamp, which in itself is not a good thing.  You go out to these bars and clubs with these hot women you're instructed to approach, and you may befriend and wing with some of the guys on the bootcamp, but at the end of the day it's all going to come down to how you perform versus the other guys.  Some pickup companies, especially from the old school pickup, will even make claims that every time a girl rejects you, it's because you messed something up in the interaction and that you should have control 100% of the time of what the girl thinks about you if you just run perfect game.  When you don't, then you tend to beat yourself up.  Is this a really good place to come from?  For me personally, I've gone as far as avoiding going out for this very reason.

I can go on, but I'll leave it at this for now.  I'm glad I'm moving past the pickup community because it is destructive.

Update on StyleLife - The Demise Continues

Back in April, I wrote an article about the Demise of StyleLife, detailing how their site declined at a much more rapid pace than I expected.  Just wanted to give a quick update on that:

StyleLife did a complete makeover of their site.  They changed the layout and made it much more flashy and attractive.  While it looks like they're no longer offering live programs, they got plenty of good new material that isn't recycled whatsoever...right?  Well, as flashy and new their website looks, the webstats showing the number of page views over the past year don't look so good:




They went from 30,000 views back in April (the month I said the site was pretty much dead) to just 8,000 views in August.  What's even more shocking is according to digitalsitestats.com, StyleLife went from bringing in daily average income of $23 at the beginning of the year to just $7.

Furthermore, as dismal as the news was back in April, I predicted that the StyleLife Public Forum, despite its lack of activity, would stay up.  Well looks like I was WRONG about that.  As soon as the new site layout went up, they completely deleted the public forum.

On the website itself, they only have access to a handful of shoddy recycled articles.  They deleted most of their old articles and kept only a few.  If you want full access to the material however, you can pay their $85/month fee or $250/quarter fee to just read more bullshit.  I'll pass.

So once again, things don't just still look bad for Stylelife but they look worse.

When PUA Masters/Gurus Ban People For Criticism

Actions speak louder than words, and if you're still on the fence as to whether a PUA guru/master is legit or not, take this into consideration.  I talked about before how I was banned from the Elite Forum at Stylelife Academy for simply pointing out ten reasons why Stylelife was failing as a business.  Reasons such as how Stylelife teaches pickup and seduction from an academic standpoint instead of a practical standpoint, which is very ineffective.  Stylelife even went as far as deleting my post and accused me and another guy who was critical of them as being a part of the rape culture.  You know, that fabricated epidemic that feminists made up?  Now of course Stylelife is all but dead now and I figured this would be an isolated incident because they were losers and all, but I'm finding this sort of treatment towards people with criticism and differing opinions is quite common among the bigger, more well known PUA sites like Real Social Dynamics.  I heard for example people will post a critical post about a personal bootcamp experience only to have it deleted, get called a "fag" and then get banned from the forums.  I was also removed from a Facebook group called The Natural Society for posting about how game is bullshit and looks do matter.  They didn't like that very much.

PUAs teach guys to 'not be reactive', 'don't lose your cool', 'be the dominant alpha male', etc., yet they tuck tail and run when a challenger dares question the shrewd teachings

Currently In A Recession Period - Have I Hit The Trough and How Soon Will Recovery Come?

When it comes to going out, I always operate on a cycle.  There will be times when I'm just hitting it hard going out, for months on end, whether it be at a popular mainstream bar or club at night or some place like the mall or Starbucks during the day.  Then there will be times where while I don't completely lock myself away, I will experience this huge lull and undesire to go out and would rather read, type, just casually hang out at Starbucks yet not talk to anyone, or stay in over the weekend and watch movies or even go to the theater (something I only do a few times a year these days).  Usually peaks and lulls are triggered by events, whether it be traveling, going on a bootcamp, how often I have to work, or just a simple epiphany.  Even online dating, something I've been actively involved in, goes with this cycle.  

As the title suggests, I am in a lull period right now. 

The crazy thing is peak and lull periods happen when I least expect them.  Something that I would think would springboard me actually brings me down, or vise versa.  The last peak/lull I experienced, for example, happened from the second half of July up to the first half of October of last year.  What happened was I was going out regularly, even going to summer pool parties.  At the time, I was actively following RSD and listening to what they were saying, and I was excited to have a former RSD assistant instructor who has ties with all the big names live with me for a few months and show me how to 'game like a pro'.  While it was all good fun, unfortunately things didn't turn out how I expected.  Long story short, I became too dependent on him for success and he had his own things going on to the point where he himself didn't go out all that much.  What I thought would have been a springboard turned out to be a huge weight into a hole.  It got to a point where all I wanted to do was read and watch episodes of Dragonball Z.  Even going to dance socials at that time was not consistent and happened only every now and then.  

The moment I finally got out of the lull of last year was when I did go on my first RSD bootcamp in NYC in October.  After the program, I experienced that bootcamp high everyone talks about and I started going out all the time again after.  What really springboarded me after that was when I got into Good Looking Loser and did the approach anxiety program there, which overall I had a lot of fun with.  I also moved closer to where the action is in Tampa to fix my logistics.  Best of all, I had the five day Model Season Bootcamp with RSD coming up and I was all prepared for that.  After this bootcamp, I would have springboarded so high I could reach the moon.  There's no way I would regress ever again, let alone go into another lull...right?

Well, the Model Season Bootcamp was the beginning of the end.  I was really shocked that afterwards things would just come crashing down when the exact opposite happened.  First of all, the bootcamp was in South Beach in Miami.  That alone made things miserable.  Furthermore, I had a hard time enduring three days in the previous bootcamp, and I was about to endure five.  Well, I should have been well prepared to handle what the instructors would throw at me.  I felt comfortable and confident the first night since I had high momentum and was ready to go.  I may talk about my Miami RSD bootcamp in much greater detail on a later date since it wasn't too long ago and title it something along the lines of "The End of RSD for Me", but to sum it up, it was just negative reference experience after negative reference experience after negative reference experience.  On this bootcamp, like all other RSD bootcamps from what I understand, the instructor uses his elbow to point towards a girl or group he wants you to open, and you better be in set the whole time.  They don't even let you drink alcohol on bootcamp (which in a way is a good thing since alcohol can be super expensive at some of these venues).  If you're paying $2,000 to $3,000 for a bootcamp, I think there should be much more involved than going to some venue you may or may not even like and have the instructor just throw you into sets the whole time and tell you to plow through interactions and just ramble a bunch of bullshit hoping that the girl will cave somehow and latch onto you.  But that's beside the point.  The worst thing was after all that, I still hadn't learned my lesson.  I felt that I did better on that bootcamp compared to the last one, so I felt I should do a week of Vegas Immersion.  I even paid the $200 deposit for a week, but after recent events I decided to just cut my losses because I never want to go on a bootcamp ever again.

The bad reference experiences didn't stop at the end of the bootcamp.  I was doing the bootcamp while doing the later exercises from the AA program at GLL, which are some of the most outlandish and ridiculous things ever (e.g. going around telling random girls that they're sexy and seeing how they react).  There were instances where I almost got thrown out of venues, almost got into fights, and almost had girls call the cops on me - okay it didn't get that bad, but I felt I was teetering on a level where I was about to get into serious trouble.  

Other events outside of pickup triggered the recent lull.  Nothing bad, but I started getting more involved with working out and becoming more involved with running a business and doing personal development.  I wanted to focus on the working out and get in super shape.  That included cutting out alcohol.

What really changed things for me however was when I started reading Aaron Sleazy's material.  For the past several years, he has exposed the pickup industry for the sham that it is.  I wouldn't have believed it had I not experienced it myself, and I believe what he says is true because the evidence is clear and present.  I think that's what motivated me to start writing in this blog more frequently, but it has also led to regrets about how stupid I was to waste a whole lot of time and money on doing pickup when all I needed to do was just get in shape and stick with the right venues.

How long this lull period will last is up in the air, but I'm confident it will not last.  There will come a time where I just say 'fuck it' and just start going out again.  Maybe not five days a week like the typical PUA tells you to do, but at least on the weekend.  Right now I think I'm trying to avoid alcohol consumption, which is very difficult when going to these venues especially on the weekend.  There's also the possibility that I might be moving in the near future out of Tampa seeing how one-sided it has become with all the venues catering to sports fans.  

Why I Hate South Beach/Miami

Living in Florida all my life, I am very familiar with the state.  Some places are great, some places are okay, and some places are just downright awful.  One of those downright awful places is Miami.  

I've been to Miami, primarily South Beach, four times within the last two years and I'm never going back.  All four times I went down there were related to pickup, whether it was a seminar or a bootcamp.  All four times were completely miserable from the minute I got there to the minute I left, and the only thing good about Miami is the road that leads out of it.  

The irony is Miami is the one place most people think of when they think of Florida, yet when you go there it's nothing like the rest of the state.  Instead it's like being in Southern California, but worse.  

First thing you will notice when you get to South Beach is how abysmal the traffic and parking is.  Granted, I think New York City is actually worse in this regard, but at least there you don't have to drive even if you live a relative close distance outside the city.  In South Beach, there is no public transit, or at least no reliable public transit.  Thankfully we have Uber, or else you would have to drive everywhere even if you've flown in from out of town.  Taxis are unreliable and the drivers are dickheads.  

Second, the people.  The people in South Beach are some of the worst people on the planet.  They're rude, they're vulgar, and it's like they go out of your way to make your experience an awful one.  Not just the general public there, but even those working in customer service.  Everyone talks about how rude New Yorkers are, but at least there's SOME justification for their rudeness.  In New York City, just about everyone there is on a time crunch.  These are super serious people making a huge living in the financial capital of the world, so everyone is trying to be efficient and not waste any time.  Therefore, there's zero to no tolerance for those who get to the front of the line and still don't know what they want to order while fifty people are waiting behind them.  Even so, people are friendly if you do ask for directions and there are places where customer service is top notch.  It's actually way worse in Miami, let alone the fact that it's supposed to be a world-class vacation spot, so shouldn't the customer service be at least a tad bit better?  Even places like Panera Bread suck down there.  

Third, everything is a ripoff there, from parking to food to hotels to alcohol.  Beer costs no less than eight bucks, water is sold at a premium, you're SUPER lucky to find a parking space you don't have to pay out the ass for (unless you just park in the Washington/Collins garage, which is mandatory if you plan on staying there for a while), and you get what you pay for when it comes to hotels.  If you want to stay in a decent place, you better be willing to pay at least $500 a night or else you're going to have to settle for a dump.  Even AirBnB hosts charge out the wazoo there.  

Fourth is just the overall atmosphere.  South Beach is for the super rich and super good-looking, glamorized in rap videos by Lil Jon.  People there party and snort coke for a living, like 24/7.  Even if I was super rich and good-looking, I would never visit there again, let alone live there.  Pickup companies love to hold bootcamps there though, and they wonder why most of their students feel miserable from the experience.

My Best Seductions Required Little To No Effort On My Part (And Why Pickup Is BULLSHIT!)

I'm really surprised that Penn & Teller never did an episode of the Bullshit show about the pickup community.  After all, they covered things such as aliens, ghosts, organic food, astrology, and even went after the self-help industry as well as network marketing/MLM companies.  The closest they ever came to an episode knocking the pickup community was the season 2 episode "The Business of Love", which bashed dating advice and modern dating customs in general.  I heard that they even tried to get Ross Jeffries on the show but he declined.  I would have loved to have seen an episode where Penn & Teller mock pickup by saying some stupid canned lines to the women they usually have on the set, and then have the camera crew go around interviewing local lairs and showing a live recording of a bootcamp.  I heard there were so many episode ideas that they were considering for the Bullshit show but had to handpick a few.  Hopefully Penn & Teller will bring the show back someday, even though now it might be unlikely they would create an episode on pickup since it's a dying industry.

Just briefly, I want to summarize my best seductions and why Neil Strauss and other 'gurus' would discredit them.  My best seductions were mainly through dancing.  Because I'm a relatively good dancer, having been involved with the latin dance scene for the past four years, many girls find that attractive.  I don't even have to say a word; I can just ease into a makeout and go from there if I can tell the girl is into me.  But guess what Neil Strauss, the "greatest pickup artist in the world", told me personally?  That dancing with a girl doesn't count as physical escalation (or 'kino' escalation as they like to call it).  How does it not count?  If a girl dances with me, it's by choice; it's not like it's a forced arrangement.  Plus, the majority of girls I dance with are complete strangers.  Granted, there are girls who just like dancing and have no interest in most of the guys she dances with, but I can certainly escalate much faster through dancing, especially through more seductive dances like bachata or kizomba, with very little effort on my part than I can if I throw out some shitty-ass canned lines and magic tricks/bar cons like Neil and other gurus in the community tell you you're supposed to do.  Nevertheless, I was an ignorant motherfucker at the time and believed what the guys with the credibility to their names said.  In other words, straight up drinking the kool-aid.  It really set me back and make me shoot myself in the foot many times with all the garbage theory thrown out there, like how you shouldn't make out with a girl on the dance floor, or you need to build attraction before you can escalate and if she backs off from your physical advances then you somehow didn't build enough attraction, or if she flakes on you than you screwed something up in the interaction, never taking into account where the girl is coming from.  

The irony is that the pickup industry likes to point out a lot of myths with conventional wisdom, yet they create a lot of myths of their own.  The first myth is that women are far more into a guy's personality than they are with his looks, lifestyle, etc.  Yes, a good personality does help, but that's true with both genders.  The pickup industry however leads you to believe that women are some completely different alien race that have crazy psychic powers yet can be fooled into becoming attracted to a guy if he just has the perfect body language and he says the most intriguing and funny things, even if he is obese and lives with his parents.  That leads into the second myth, how a guy's attraction for a woman is like a light switch, in that a guy will automatically be attracted to a girl just by looking at her, and a girl's attraction for a guy is like a volume knob, meaning that a girl's attraction builds if the guy does all the right things, passes her shit tests, etc.  Again, this is really stupid.  First off, if this were really the case, online dating would be pretty much useless since there's not real way to express yourself on those sites and the best way to convey yourself is through your pictures.  While women do get more emotional over certain things, at the end of the day they are not much different at all from men; women are attracted to hot guys as much as men are attracted to hot girls.  Of course there's other factors for a guy such as how much money he makes or what his social status is, and his ability to lead is taken into consideration as well.

One of the biggest fallacies of pickup is how they tell you to be the buyer; not the seller, but at the same time they suggest going up to every girl in the venue and 'plow' through interactions and 'burn them to the ground', even if the girl is clearly not interested from the getgo.  Some examples even include talking to a totally non-receptive girl for seven minutes or more for the mere chance that she'll cave and then fuck you after.  Pickup also focuses mainly on talking your way into a girl's pants.  RSD has mixed views on this seeing that they're rooted in traditional pickup, but most other companies believe you have to build attraction by telling intriguing stories and being cocky/funny, etc.  I personally am not a big talker.  Never have been, and I get annoyed by people who talk for ten minutes on a point that they could have summed up in 10 seconds, which makes me think I would fit in better in New York City.  Talking over loud music at a club is especially annoying.  I realize now that a lot of pickup advice comes from guys who don't go to a lot of clubs often but might go to a couple just to say they go to clubs, and the ones who do go aren't successful.  Girls are not in clubs to have a 'nice' conversation and to listen to some random dude's intriguing stories.

More on this later.  

My RSD Bootcamp Experience

I figured I would get this out there while it's fresh on my mind.  In the five years I've been involved in pickup, I've gone on three bootcamps.  One was with Stylelife and the two others were with Real Social Dynamics.  I may talk about the Stylelife bootcamp, but right now all I'm going to say is it's mainly like any typical PUA bootcamp where the instructors give you an opener to use and then tell you to use a line or "DHV" on all the girls you open.  The instructors don't get laid, at least not with the girls that they cold approach in bars and clubs, but they're really good at convincing you that they successfully do every week.  It really doesn't matter at this point because Stylelife, like much of the rest of the pickup industry, is going the way of the dodo.  I want to focus on RSD for two reasons though.  Number one is because I went on both bootcamps relatively recently (first one in October 2015 and second in February 2016).  Second and most importantly, RSD is not your typical run-of-the-mill pickup company; they were the first pickup company to make it to the mainstream, they've become the #1 frontrunner and flagship company of the pickup industry for many years, they have the most number of followers and a very strong YouTube presence, and unlike just about every other company in the industry, they have evolved with the times past running routines and gimmicks and placed much of their focus on natural game and inner game/self help.  Also, an RSD instructor gets laid FAR more often than any typical PUA guru, so they do at least practice what they preach.  With all that said, when you pay $2,000-$3,000 for an RSD bootcamp, you're definitely going to get one badass bootcamp that just totally blows the competition out of the water and you'll go from "chode to champ" in only 3 to 5 days, right?  Well not quite...

First of all, before I get into talking about my bootcamp experience, I just want to say that I'm not here to bash any of the instructors.  They all do their jobs well and everyone has a different bootcamp experience.  I'll even still watch the occasional RSD video on YouTube because, while some of their advice might still be ingrained into old school pickup or typical self-help advice, they still put out good content from time to time.

Just a little bit of background too, I first heard about RSD like most people - by reading The Game.  I wonder if Neil Strauss realized that he heavily promoted RSD in his book when he was trying to condemn it and its founder Owen Cook aka Tyler Durden.  I first took interest in it myself when I watched Julien's free tour video titled "Rejections and the Harsh Truth of Pickup", and I got hooked from there.  However, it wasn't until I got really sick of the canned routine shit and all the drama that happened with Stylelife that I decided to check out RSD more.  Luckly I knew a guy who lived locally that used to be a bootcamp assistant for Brad and he let me borrow a bunch of his DVDs, including Foundations and The Blueprint.  It all definitely changed my perspective on pickup and meeting women in general after being exposed to canned routine game for so long, and the product I really got a lot out of was Ozzie's book The Physical Game, which I still think has a lot of great stuff in it even to this day.  It wasn't long before I went to my first RSD live event, which was Alex's free tour and Hot Seat in October 2014 (one of his last).  I thought just going and attending that was a real transformational experience, and it clearly changed the way I viewed pickup and how I went about doing pickup in general.  If I got that much out of doing a hot seat, I was sure to get a lot out of a bootcamp.  However, due to obvious financial reasons, it would be another year before I would attend a bootcamp.

In early 2015, I started following Todd a lot.  I liked his videos because he said a lot of stuff I could really relate to, even if much of it was ingrained into old school pickup as he was one of the original residents of Project Hollywood.  Therefore, it was only natural that I would choose him as my bootcamp instructor (on top of enrolling in Valentine University and buying 3 Girls a Day), and what better place to do it than New York City - a place I've never been to but always wanted to go to for many reasons, super hot women being one of them.

I'll try to remember as much as I can.  Basically the bootcamp followed the free tour.  I was instructed to meet outside this hotel in a relatively quiet area of midtown.  Todd arrived with his assistants as well as Madison, who was an up-and-coming instructor at the time.  Instead of three bootcamp students, there were six of us and it was both Todd and Madison conducting the bootcamp.  I didn't really know who Madison was at the time and I never saw any of his videos, but I was about to find out.  So basically the bootcamp started out with the instructors briefing us with what to expect, and their whole mantra was "The first rule of bootcamp is to do whatever the fuck your instructor tells you to do".  So that means if your bootcamp instructor tells you to approach and open a set with some big ass alpha dude making out with some hot chick, or some bitchy-ass looking girls ready to tell you to fuck off as soon as you approach, you better do it or else...

So after briefing, they had us all jump into an Uber to drive over to the venue, which I forgot the name but it was some little crowded dive bar in the Chelsea/Meat Packing District area.  It's a good thing I'm somewhat used to such venues, being someone who used to hang out in the SoHo/Hyde Park area of Tampa all the time, so I can't imagine how this would have been had I gone in as a complete newbie.  Once we got in, Todd started telling each of us which groups to approach.  I got really lucky that the first girl I approached was into me and I was dancing with her like crazy, but I didn't find her very attractive and I felt I could do better, but unfortunately things went downhill from there.  Madison told me to do some crazy ass shit I didn't want to do because only a creep/weirdo would do it, so he made me do pushups in the middle of the bar, sending a message that he will embarrass the fuck out of you if you don't do what he says.  There came a point where right there and then I almost wanted to say fuck it and leave, but I didn't want to be a deserter and plus I paid good money to be there, so I hung in there.

Basically what RSD instructors like to do on their programs is have their students spam approach every girl in the club, and instead of just leave if the girl doesn't show any sign of interest, they make you 'plow' through until the girl just gets up and leaves or until she just finally caves and starts showing interest.  I hear some instructors even force you to go as far as only leaving if the girl threatens to get the bouncer or physical violence, even if it means following the girl if she gets up and leaves.  Their advice is still ingrained into old school pickup when it comes to how a girl reacts, making you think that the girl is simply rejecting your approach rather than her just not being interested in you based on your looks or style.  It really fucks with your head because they make it seem like you have control over every single situation and that you just have to push past a girl's "bitch shield" and a girl will only be attracted to you if you're "in state" and "in total congruence".

I'm not going to go into too much detail for the rest of the Todd/Madison bootcamp because much of it was pretty much the same.  We spam approached girls in popular bars and clubs AND out on the street, something I struggle with and for good reason; it's just unnatural and downright creepy.  I don't know about you, but I don't like being approached on the street, so why would some chick?  There was one part of the second night of the bootcamp though where one of the guys got with this pretty hot girl and Todd thought it would be the perfect opportunity to distract her not as hot friend, who I ended up making out with.  Me and the other student pulled them to this 24 hour diner, but they were with one of their other friends who hooked up with these two other guys.  I didn't care to go all the way and I'm glad that I didn't because I wasn't really attracted to the girl I was supposed to be with.

Overall, the first bootcamp was OK.  It was cool to hang out with Todd in person and all that jazz, but I definitely do not believe it was worth $2,000.  I think a properly run bootcamp should be tailored to the student's interests and strengths rather than just trolling places that are popular but not so exclusive that you can't get in.  But I couldn't be quick to judge because I was already set to do the Miami Model Season 5-Day bootcamp, one that I hear that's so badass that only alumni students can go on it, so it was like I had unfinished business.  I heard Tyler himself was involved with this bootcamp and so were several other instructors.  I was in for a real treat, and this would DEFINITELY be the bootcamp experience I've been waiting for.  Right?

First, let me just come out and say it - I LOATHE Miami Beach.  It is one of the most god awful places in existence and is only one step above being a third world dump.  Everything there sucks.  The parking, the people, the hotels, the traffic, the customer service, the price of everything especially alcohol...the beaches are pretty nice, but even that gets ruined whenever they have these major parties where no one bothers to pick up after themselves.  But some how, some way, it's one place I visited FOUR times in the last two years - all pickup related.  However, every minute I spend there, be it a day, a few days, or heaven forbid a week, is complete misery and hell.  With that said, I did vow that this would be the very last time I would ever visit South Beach, and I certainly would be going out with a bang since I would be there for five days.

I booked at a shitty hostel where I had to share the room with some douchebags because you have to pay a ton of money to get standard quality in South Beach.  Usually I don't make a big deal out of where I'm staying because I usually only go there to sleep, but the experience in South Beach is so bad that even sleeping is painful.  Most of the week, I was not well rested, I didn't eat the best of foods, and the only exercise I got was from walking a bunch.  Anyways, this five day bootcamp was the same week as the RSD Winter Summit, where I got to meet all the instructors in person.  They were running the Model Season bootcamp a little differently this year where instead of switching off instructors, you stick with the same one throughout the entire program, so I chose Max since I thought he was the coolest.  At the time, I was doing the Good Looking Loser approach anxiety program, so I felt like I was much more prepared for this bootcamp and I knew what to expect.  Max was definitely a cool guy, but blurted out the same mantra of state control and how a girl turns you down only because you weren't in congruence or some BS like that.  I won't go into too much detail with this bootcamp because much of it was the same - spam approach every girl you see and plow through the interactions.  The major difference was the two extra days we had, we did day game out at Lincoln Road Mall, where we would embarrass ourselves trying to hit on these model girls who could barely even speak english only to be blown out in the worst ways possible.  I'm surprised from this experience I wasn't physically assaulted.  In fact, I'm surprised in the five years I've done pickup that I was never physically assaulted, even though there were times I felt like I deserved it.  The last night of the bootcamp was pretty much a bust.  Imagine every RSD instructor as well as all the bootcamp students and a ton of guys attending summit all meeting at Nikki Beach on a Sunday night trolling the place.

At the end of the day, an RSD bootcamp isn't much different from any typical PUA bootcamp.  Sure, they don't make you recite any canned openers or routines/gimmicks to go up to use on the hottest girls in some exclusive nightclub like LIV in Miami, but spam approaching a bunch of girls in the venue and out on the street isn't much different.  It's especially bad when the venues that they choose to run bootcamp at are venues heavily frequented by many PUAs, like Delano or Lincoln Road Mall in Miami.  At this point, I say it's not worth it, but everybody's bootcamp experience is different.  There was one guy who got laid every night on bootcamp, but he was an extremely good-looking European guy who was already getting laid a lot prior to the bootcamp.  Not sure why he wanted to blow $3,000, but whatever.  I really think a bootcamp should be tailored to the student's strengths and interests; not to his weaknesses or what's mainstream and popular.  Neil Strauss himself at his conference I attended in 2014 flat out told me in front of the audience there that just meeting girls who want to do latin dancing is lame and I should be doing bar cons instead to reach out to more women.  Fuck that.  I can't say for sure, but I imagine that if I requested we went to a latin dance social on bootcamp, they'd do everything but with the excuse that I need to get out of my comfort zone, another BS mantra of the pickup community.  Okay, I can understand getting out of your comfort zone by leaving your bedroom at least every once in a while, but forcing yourself to endure venues you don't even enjoy with people who don't even get along with?

Ok, I've rambled a lot on the subject and I'm sure I will ramble even more on another day at another time.  For now, I'm going to go out and do something I really enjoy - attending a latin dance social.

My Experiences In Pickup: David DeAngelo

What's the best way to start this series than at the beginning with the one source that got me started with the Pickup Community - David DeAngelo and Double Your Dating.

I already talked about how I was introduced to David DeAngelo and ultimately the Pickup Community via intriguing link on OkCupid.  I downloaded the ebook Double Your Dating and I was completely amazed by what I read.  Now here was someone who I felt wouldn't hold back and was telling the honest to God truth as to why I haven't been successful with women in the past.  Most poeple, particularly friends and family, would give the typical advice and think that I was doing everything right in being a nice guy who will eventually get the girl, but of course that never panned out.  It was because of reading Double Your Dating that I just miraculously discovered and decided that "sagas" were a waste of time.  A saga is another name for a crazy obsession/crush over a single girl for a long period of time, or what the PUA Community likes to refer to as "oneitis".

Not only did I follow the advice from Double Your Dating, but I also subscribed to the emails David sent out on a daily basis.  It was a lot of the same advice from the book but reemphasized.  Basically the jist of the advice was women were mainly attracted to personality moreso than looks or wealth, insecurity and neediness kill your chances with women, and being cocky and funny was key.  Cocky & Funny was David DeAngelo's signature dating strategy, if that's what you'd like to call it.  He further emphasized on this in his second ebook called Attraction Isn't A Choice, which talked about how women are attracted to jerks moreso than nice guys even though nice guys are clearly a better choice.  From there I got a couple of CD's from his monthly interview series, where he interviews guys like Dr. Paul and talk about subjects like the psychology of women and perseverance through dating challenges as well as strategies for online dating.

Later, I took interest in David DeAngelo's DVD series, which covered multiple subjects like body language, cocky comedy, meeting women in clubs and bars, inner game, and even the advanced dating program.  I was hooked, but I didn't have the money to buy all of them outright.  I started with a few at a time.  The first once I checked out was the Cocky Comedy DVDs.  Basically this DVD series, like the rest of David D's DVD series, are filmed seminars focusing on specific topics.  David will do a presentation and then have several guest speakers come up and talk.  This is how I got introduced to many of the guys involved in the community including guys like Mystery and Sean Stephenson.  I was really drawn in to Sean Stephenson, who gives some of the best motivational talks and I even went on to read a couple of his books after.  There were guys advertising bootcamps and coaching etc., most of which didn't exist by the time I watched the DVDs since most of them were filmed in the mid 2000's.  Since I didn't know better and since I was really bought in by the marketing, I just had to have more and more and more, thinking as long as I soak up all the information, I will overcome all the obstacles standing in my way to have the best relationship/sex life ever.

There were some other pickup gurus that I got into either as a result of watching one of David D's programs or through one of the other gurus, like using the network to my advantage.  As I started getting into these other guru's, my interest in David DeAngelo started to significantly wane.  However, I was following a new found philosophy and knew I couldn't turn back.  The problem was by the time I got into David D's material, he was already facing retirement.  He only came out with one new product since then, which was Becoming Mr. Right.  After that, he officially retired the David DeAngelo name and became Eben Pagan and started talking about finance and entrepreneurship instead of dating and sex.  I never met David D in person, and from what I understand I'm glad that's the case; I heard he isn't very nice in person and has been rude to followers of his.  I think he even blocked me from his Eben Pagan Facebook page when I mentioned David DeAngelo in the comments on one of the posts.

Looking back, I feel like an idiot for falling for a lot of the marketing.  I spent hundreds of dollars on David D material.  However, a common thing I'm going to bring up over and over again is I cannot bash anything without experiencing it first.  Besides, getting into David D's material was what I started to see as the first step in the right direction, but I would later continue to walk through the marketing and BS.

Join me next time as I talk about the Secret Spartan Society (SSS), a local group in Tampa that I partook in based on my interest in David DeAngelo and pickup.

Why Did I Get Involved With Pickup In The First Place?

In this segment of my talks about my involvement of the Pickup Community, I will talk about how I originally got into pickup and why.

From my understanding, pickup has been going on for a while.  It started out with Ross Jeffries, who developed a system based off of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) called Speed Seduction back in the 90's.  Then in the late 90's and early 2000's, we had Erik Von Markovik aka Mystery, who developed his own set of routines and seduction tactics based on years of trial and error in the field.  Back then, the Pickup Community was nothing more than just a handful of guys posting on some messageboard.  However, one of the guys who came about the Pickup Community was Neil Strauss, who back then was mainly known for his articles in Rolling Stone magazine and his autobiographies for Marilyn Manson and Jenna Jameson.  Neil Strauss got involved with the Pickup Community back in the early 2000's, which led to him writing the book The Game, the book that brought to light the entire Pickup Community and paved the way for the once small Pickup Community to develop into what would become the massive Pickup Industry, leading rise to many Pick-up Artists (PUAs) that peaked sometime between 2005 and 2009.

Despite all this, I had absolutely no knowledge of the Pickup Community until 2011, right after I graduated from grad school at the University of Central Florida (UCF).  No one I knew talked about it or even knew anything about it; it was one of those things that was very underground despite becoming mainstream - something very surprising considering that I was on a very large and very active campus.  I discovered pickup on accident.  It was February 2011, things in my life weren't going all that great, and that included my dating life.  I was online searching on OkCupid when all of the sudden I saw a link that said "Nice guys do finish last.  Click here to find out why!".  I was skeptical at first, but it did make me curious so I went to check it out.  The link led me to a video of a guy who went by the name David DeAngelo.  He talked about his ebook Double Your Dating and why you should get it.  I've bought books on dating beforehand, including a Dating For Dummies book, but what really stood out was he was the first guy to mention that he at one time sucked really bad with women but he was about to share how he got really good to the point where he was dating all the hottest women he could ever hope for.  That's what I wanted and that's what drew me in!  I went ahead and paid for the ebook.  I wanted to see if it really did go beyond common sense and traditional dating advice and tell me something I didn't already know.  Sure enough, it did.  Not only that, but it pointed out EXACTLY everything I was doing wrong, from being way too nice to being a pushover to being insecure and needy, etc.  The book kicked my ass, as I would say, and I couldn't wait to get more.  The rest is history.

Five years later, I know now not to trust such shoddy advice and marketing.  However, back then I was not only ignorant, but I was desperate and thus extremely vulnerable to anyone marketing pickup material to me.  I never questioned the validity of the guys marketing it; if I was drawn in by the marketing, that was enough to make me shout "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!".  Why was this?  Well, not only did I never date in high school, but I never dated the entire time I was in college either.  There's two major reasons for this.  1) I wasn't the highly social type and was much more interested in other things, mainly academics and sports I was involved in, and 2) I had very unrealistic expectations.  There would be one or two girls that would come along every year that I would crush and obsess over, believing she's the one and I absolutely MUST get with this girl in order for my life to be complete or else I will be sad and desperate forever.  As I was obsessing over said girl, I thought that no other girl could compare.  I even went as far as fantasizing about said girl and creating stories about where the end goal would be to get with said girl.  Looking back now, I realize how utterly pathetic that was, but the truth is that was the norm and that was reality for me, and it went on for many years.  It very well could have continued on had I not discovered the Pickup Community, so I give it credit for helping me get past that.  After all, the last girl I obsessed over, I was stuck on for a year and a half only for it to amount to absolutely nothing.  Looking back, none of the girls I obsessed over, crushed over, even wrote fantasy stories about, would have been a good match for me.  This is despite thinking at the time they were absolutely perfect and it would be impossible to find another girl or a better girl.  This is especially true with the very last girl I was stuck on, who still lives at home with her parents and wants to live with her family in her small town forever.  No problem with that; but that doesn't support my goals and aspirations at all.

So why was I so vulnerable to shady marketing tactics?  Because everyone around me, be it family members, friends, and society as a whole, made it clear that nothing you do in life is more important than your relationship/dating/sex life.  If you don't have that together, then you are a LOSER even though you are successful in many other aspects.  Throughout my life, I have been judged and ridiculed for not having a girlfriend, not ever being in a long-term relationship, not having an active sex life, etc.  It was like there was something wrong with me because all my friends were in relationships, even if they weren't with the best girls.  My mom was one of the worst offenders.  So overall, I really craved the validation.  I was open to any crazy, manipulative tactic to get any girl I wanted just so I wouldn't feel like a loser and so people would shut up.  The part that made me REALLY desperate was the fact that I just realized that I was already 26 years old, meaning that my 30's was coming up and I was afraid that if I didn't make an effort to get this part of my life handled, it will be too late.  Nothing else mattered.  The problem was, other than get a good job, I pretty much put the rest of my life on hold and made it the most important thing ever, but unfortunately following pickup advice did nothing but backfire.  With that said though, pickup advice did help me get out of my comfort zone and got me into doing stuff I didn't think possible, and I am thankful for that.

Stay tuned as I will go more in depth with the PUA's I was heavily involved in.  I will start by going in more in depth with the first PUA I followed religiously, David DeAngelo.

The Demise of StyleLife

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.

I Am Leaving Pickup After Being Involved For Five Years

It has been over a year since I've updated this blog, and I think it's about damn time to update once again.  I've been so busy preoccupied with other things as well as lacking motivation that I just didn't have the willpower to blog, especially since I haven't really gotten settled into this blog after Xanga went down the tubes.

Anyways, I have a LOT to say about being involved in pickup since February 2011 and how and why I decided to all but abandon it in April 2016.  So much so that it will have to be split up into different categories and topics, such as my experience following a certain "guru" or company, where I was and where I'm at now, my bootcamp and seminar experiences, etc.  

There's one company I want to talk about first before I get into anything though...