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.