I've been pondering this lately: what is the future of this community. Where will we be in 2010, 2011, 2015? Who will be the new gurus (barf to that word) and new companies to emerge?
The community has expanded since I first found out about it 8 or 9 years ago. It was actually weirder in those days but it was also cooler. Every answer wasn't solved with someone telling you to take their bootcamp or buy a product. As you know I'm tired of reading about or seeing new products month after month. $300, $400, $500, a $1000 dollar sets of 10-20 2 hour dvds and cd's. And like I said 9 times out of 10 all you need is a pair of balls and the personality to back up a desire to talk to women and be social, interesting and attractive. If I'm a big PUA business, company etc my mindset is like that of pharmaceutical companies - I don't want you to find your own cure I want to cure you and I want you to tell others they need me too and I can cure them from their 'AFC' ways. I remember arguing with a female friend who graduated with a degree in pharmacy and worked for a big name company. She loathed the idea of Americans getting any drugs from Canada or India or trying to find natural cures. She came up with rebuttals to those ideas saying they weren't safe, not FDA approved and everything else. What she was really saying is she doesn't want someone dipping in her pocket. It was the same argument I had with a former instructor who at the time argued that every guy outside of the community who isn't a natural needs this stuff and should take a bootcamp or purchase these products, otherwise his dating life will be miserable or his only option will be dating unattractive women. The truth is he wanted his customers to be successful more than anything but only because it kept money in his pocket not because he's concerned with your general dating welfare
and the quality of woman that come in and out of your life. He also had 'Guru-itis' which is the bug that hits community guys once they become instructors, they suddenly feel this god-like status come over them and their word becomes biblical in nature. God forbid you should disagree with them in a forum on a particular topic related to game. No, no, no! Ahhh the arrogance of being a community guy. The master gurus (the ones that start the companies, were mentioned in the book, or the ones that were around back in the day) feel superior to the instructors who feel superior to the guys in the forum with a thousands of post and lots of field reports (veterans) but haven't taken the plunge to be an instructor, and they feel superior to the newbies who feel superior the the AFC's and other guys outside of the community. It's one big chain reaction!
So what will the rest of 2008 and the start of 2009 bring? More products, bigger releases, super conferences with a merge of companies, higher bootcamp prices (please God don't say it's so) and the continuing of the soap opera effect: company vs company, guru vs guru, philosophy vs philosophy, dorks vs dorks arguing over it all, and a bunch of confused teenagers and men running around with their heads cut off wondering who to listen to, where to go, what to do and who to do it with.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Another Bootcamp review
Again I don't post names of companies to shame anyone but instead to expose a little reality on what really goes on sometimes. This one is from a guy who I talked to on the phone who emailed me his experience. He and I have been cool for about a year now and he got in the community in 2006 and saved up for his bootcamp started last December. Here was a short run down of his experience.
"Man I read all of the hype of how this was going to change my life and my perspective and everything else. That's what guys on the forum were saying so I had more than enough saved up and said what the hell. Mind you I have pulled women so I wasn't a newbie or a virgin. The other guy that took the bootcamp was a 22 year old virgin who had never really gone out. Of course his experience was going to be good but mine - well I'm 29 and have been laid about 15 times in my lifetime. My instructor wasn't all that great. Don't get me wrong he was cool and for the most part we hung out and he had us go into sets with a few natural openers and I got some good responses and socialized with about 5 out of 8 sets. The other sets I was pretty much shut out after a 10 second introduction. But the ones I did open it was pretty much vibing and nothing else. I did get two numbers but it won't do me much good because I flew in for my bootcamp. I never saw much from the instructor except him saying that I'm doing pretty good and I just need to lean back a little more, and relax more and that one chick was into me but I didn't catch on. He did 2 demos at each club we went to but it was nothing but him entering, getting hello's, and then a cool exit. He never escalated or anything. I have to say the feedback was decent but after the bootcamp was over I kept thinking of better things I could've done with the 3 grand I spent on everything. I give my bootcamp a 2 out of 5 stars. Had it been $500 I would've given in 4 out of 5 stars but the value and what I learned doesn't match the cost in my opinion."
So far over the last two years I've talked to 12 guys who've taken bootcamps with various companies. 4 out of those 12 have great experiences. Another 3 had decent experiences but felt it was a bit too expensive for what they got out of it and 5 had horrible experiences with reactions like "this was a waste for me!" Do your homework.
"Man I read all of the hype of how this was going to change my life and my perspective and everything else. That's what guys on the forum were saying so I had more than enough saved up and said what the hell. Mind you I have pulled women so I wasn't a newbie or a virgin. The other guy that took the bootcamp was a 22 year old virgin who had never really gone out. Of course his experience was going to be good but mine - well I'm 29 and have been laid about 15 times in my lifetime. My instructor wasn't all that great. Don't get me wrong he was cool and for the most part we hung out and he had us go into sets with a few natural openers and I got some good responses and socialized with about 5 out of 8 sets. The other sets I was pretty much shut out after a 10 second introduction. But the ones I did open it was pretty much vibing and nothing else. I did get two numbers but it won't do me much good because I flew in for my bootcamp. I never saw much from the instructor except him saying that I'm doing pretty good and I just need to lean back a little more, and relax more and that one chick was into me but I didn't catch on. He did 2 demos at each club we went to but it was nothing but him entering, getting hello's, and then a cool exit. He never escalated or anything. I have to say the feedback was decent but after the bootcamp was over I kept thinking of better things I could've done with the 3 grand I spent on everything. I give my bootcamp a 2 out of 5 stars. Had it been $500 I would've given in 4 out of 5 stars but the value and what I learned doesn't match the cost in my opinion."
So far over the last two years I've talked to 12 guys who've taken bootcamps with various companies. 4 out of those 12 have great experiences. Another 3 had decent experiences but felt it was a bit too expensive for what they got out of it and 5 had horrible experiences with reactions like "this was a waste for me!" Do your homework.
Monday, September 1, 2008
My Community Rant READ!!
I wrote this awhile back but bumped it up because there are so many truths to it that I want people to understand.
Okay so I don't want this blog to be nothing but a rant of me mocking the community but I do want to share the things I know or have discovered or just simply things that are annoying about the PUA community. I've been around a few dozen guys from community from ex-instructors, gurus, regular scene guys and the likes. I've had the opportunity to travel to London, Los Angeles, NY, San Fran, Miami, Toronto and other places because of my enthusiasm and desire to learn not to mention having a dad that was willing to pay for me to travel around.
For starters I won't call out anyone or any company. I'm not going to do damage to their reputation but at the same time I'm not going to endorse anyone or their company. The fact is there are some companies and guys teaching the business that have no business doing so which leads to my first and biggest rant and that's guys that jumped in this to milk the cash cow. In the years since I left and rejoined the community I will expose several things I've either witnessed first hand, heard from a good friend who was there or heard from an ex-instructor no longer around:
1) Hanging out against the bar or wall sipping a drink and talking to a buddy, opening maybe 1 or 2 girls and then going home after a few hours.
2) doing set demo's with less attractive, easy girls who already showed a bit of interest
3) making up field reports and bootcamp reports under different aliases to inspire business (ever notice that 90 percent of the bootcamp feedback is guys with only 1 or 2 post? Were they never apart of the forum before the bootcamp? Why don't they tell us their progress after the bootcamp or continue posting in forums?)
4) Giving overlong seminars, then taking guys out and pushing them into sets without demo'ing a set themselves. Instead they sit back with observations: "that was good, you did well, you just need to lean back a little" Several coaches I know who aren't dating will tell their students that they have a girlfriend so it gets them out of doing nothing more in a demo set than a introduction.
5) Fake sets! This was from a former instructor who said that yes some companies will actually pay girls before hand to make a students set go easier. The company has a relationship with a few girls outside of the company and pays them (or gets them free drinks or whatever) to interact positively with a student during a bootcamp.
6) Fake infield hidden cameras dvd's or audio. See above.
7) posing with women for added value. Yep I did it too! Posing with attractive women and showing it off to others saying 'yeah this girl was into me but she was psycho so I stopped calling her and...' I've seen almost every PUA do this including the most famous of them.
Okay so that's my main rant and that's why I said previously that some of these guys aren't any good. They aren't bad but they aren't the Gods that people on the forums make them out to be.
The guru worship is a bit redundant as well as the guru hate. Neither is deserved. I realize there are guys who don't get laid so any information to them is like placing a dumbell in a skinny guys hand and telling him to curl it repetiously. But you know I realized even before the community that going out and actually having a conversation with women solves 1/4 of your problems and I don't want to hear the 'Thats what AFC's do' excuse because it's a lame excuse. WTF is an AFC anyway and why do guys who've been around for 3-6 months feel like they are so much better than them? And as far as some of the so called 'gurus' well I've seen some of these guys and some of them are train wrecks. Would you want some guys giving you relationship advice who have never been in a relationship longer than 1 year? Yes some of these guys are good at gaining interest and attraction and notice I said some not all, but many have deeper issues that lie outside of pickup theory and practice.
So that's my community rant. It is what it is. I've seen the good and the bad and it's not as great as it seems and it's not as bad as it seems, just somewhere in between.
Okay so I don't want this blog to be nothing but a rant of me mocking the community but I do want to share the things I know or have discovered or just simply things that are annoying about the PUA community. I've been around a few dozen guys from community from ex-instructors, gurus, regular scene guys and the likes. I've had the opportunity to travel to London, Los Angeles, NY, San Fran, Miami, Toronto and other places because of my enthusiasm and desire to learn not to mention having a dad that was willing to pay for me to travel around.
For starters I won't call out anyone or any company. I'm not going to do damage to their reputation but at the same time I'm not going to endorse anyone or their company. The fact is there are some companies and guys teaching the business that have no business doing so which leads to my first and biggest rant and that's guys that jumped in this to milk the cash cow. In the years since I left and rejoined the community I will expose several things I've either witnessed first hand, heard from a good friend who was there or heard from an ex-instructor no longer around:
1) Hanging out against the bar or wall sipping a drink and talking to a buddy, opening maybe 1 or 2 girls and then going home after a few hours.
2) doing set demo's with less attractive, easy girls who already showed a bit of interest
3) making up field reports and bootcamp reports under different aliases to inspire business (ever notice that 90 percent of the bootcamp feedback is guys with only 1 or 2 post? Were they never apart of the forum before the bootcamp? Why don't they tell us their progress after the bootcamp or continue posting in forums?)
4) Giving overlong seminars, then taking guys out and pushing them into sets without demo'ing a set themselves. Instead they sit back with observations: "that was good, you did well, you just need to lean back a little" Several coaches I know who aren't dating will tell their students that they have a girlfriend so it gets them out of doing nothing more in a demo set than a introduction.
5) Fake sets! This was from a former instructor who said that yes some companies will actually pay girls before hand to make a students set go easier. The company has a relationship with a few girls outside of the company and pays them (or gets them free drinks or whatever) to interact positively with a student during a bootcamp.
6) Fake infield hidden cameras dvd's or audio. See above.
7) posing with women for added value. Yep I did it too! Posing with attractive women and showing it off to others saying 'yeah this girl was into me but she was psycho so I stopped calling her and...' I've seen almost every PUA do this including the most famous of them.
Okay so that's my main rant and that's why I said previously that some of these guys aren't any good. They aren't bad but they aren't the Gods that people on the forums make them out to be.
The guru worship is a bit redundant as well as the guru hate. Neither is deserved. I realize there are guys who don't get laid so any information to them is like placing a dumbell in a skinny guys hand and telling him to curl it repetiously. But you know I realized even before the community that going out and actually having a conversation with women solves 1/4 of your problems and I don't want to hear the 'Thats what AFC's do' excuse because it's a lame excuse. WTF is an AFC anyway and why do guys who've been around for 3-6 months feel like they are so much better than them? And as far as some of the so called 'gurus' well I've seen some of these guys and some of them are train wrecks. Would you want some guys giving you relationship advice who have never been in a relationship longer than 1 year? Yes some of these guys are good at gaining interest and attraction and notice I said some not all, but many have deeper issues that lie outside of pickup theory and practice.
So that's my community rant. It is what it is. I've seen the good and the bad and it's not as great as it seems and it's not as bad as it seems, just somewhere in between.
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