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The Death Of The PUA Community

Charlie Powell
March 11, 2018

The pickup industry as we know it is DEADWipe your eyes and hear me out, because today you’re going to get an insider’s look at exactly what happened.

The community as a whole has been in decline for a good few years now and it’s sad to say that it will never be the same as it was. I remember back in 2007 when it was actually cool to be referred to as a PUA (seriously) and meeting up with a group of guys all wanting to better themselves in the area of “game” was enjoyable and actually something to look forward to.

Nowadays the community itself is known by the mainstream media as weird, creepy or perverted. To be called a PUA now is a social death sentence and you’d be insane to mutter those words to anyone. Now, who do we have to thank for the complete fall and destruction of a once very helpful community?

Liberals, of course.

Ahhhh… the fish hook mouth women!

Those fat, red haired, nose ring wearing slut walkers took the pickup industry under their flabby hairy wings and disembodied it over several years. Causing it to be nothing more than a place for genuine freaks and weirdos.

They would throw words around like it was nothing.

  • “All PUA’s are rapists”.
  • “Pick-up artists are professional sexual harassment creeps”.
  • “Tricking women into bed is not consensual”.

Mainstream media would portray PUA’s as desperate losers in the early days just trying to learn methods that would “trick” women into bed. As the years went on and the abuse continued, I think it’s safe to say that the PUA community is officially six feet under.

How the pick-up community started

Jump in the DeLorean and let’s take a trip back to 2005 kiddo.

Yo couldn’t walk in a busy part of town without seeing some dude peacocking with a feather hat and goggles.

This year was a magical year for many reasons, but aside from the micro level benefits, I want to focus on the macro level benefits. It would do two very important things:

  1. Ignite a fire under the arse of every loser and normal guy out there for years to come
  2. Create a global movement of men, later known to many as PUA’s or Pick-up Artists

Why did the year 2005 spark such interest in learning how to better oneself with women and finally get laid on a consistent basis?

The legendary book that sparked it off.

The book “The Game” was released in September 2005 in multiple countries across the globe. This book became an instant success and eventually sold over 2.5 million copies. It was a bible, a secret scroll, a blueprint, a cult classic, and a gift from above for the type of men that just couldn’t for the love of God get any pussy.

Prior to The Game, there were in my opinion, four types of men…

1. The geek, the loser, the misfit

Some call him KY, others just call him the vag-meister.

This guy was most likely a virgin or got lucky once and didn’t have a damn clue about how to attract women. He’d spend the majority of his time doing something considered “geeky” like playing games, building his own computer from scratch, coding at 3am, etc. Women were another species to him.

2. The “normal” guy

90% of us. Normal, not terrible with women and not great.

Your everyday guy, going to work in a call centre or shop, earning a shitty wage but living for the weekend. He’d get laid naturally, but it would be sporadic and not something he could repeat. He’d spend all of his money on enjoying life and just praying he got laid this weekend.

3. The relationship sloth

Awww, aren’t they cute?

He would for some reason be able to find a girlfriend and just fall into longer term relationships ever since school. It was his comfort zone. Find some pussy and stick to it until the relationship hit a wall. Having said that, these girls were not amazing to look at and he still had no game.

4. The “natural”

Every guy wants to be this guy at some point.

This dude got laid, a lot. For some reason, he’d be able to go to a bar and 9 times out of 10, come home with a girl that he’d bang until the early hours. Most weekends would end with him getting laid. This guy was a hero in the eyes of the other men and a complete anomaly.

Now, with The Game selling like crack cocaine all over the place, this led to an inevitable birthing of a monster. An insatiable thirst for more knowledge, like minded men and gurus that would teach you how to get laid in just one weekend.

The PUA industry unleashed

Almost every guy mentioned in the book became an instant PUG (Pick-up Guru). Even Neil Strauss himself, being referred to as Style.

This led to multiple companies being started around 2006/07 and at the time by these “gurus” and PUA’s inspired by the book. Here’s a bunch that I can remember…

Style (Neil Strauss)

Can you believe he doesn’t want anything to do with us anymore?

The writer who changed many lives. Neil Strauss started a couple of companies after the success of the book. One called Style Life Academy which was a monthly membership and the other was a one-off launch called Annihilation Method which was a recorded seminar and did a million dollar launch.

Company: Style Life Academy (Still operational but nothing like it was).

Turnover: $12 million per year at launch

Where is he now? Living the good life in Hollywood after marrying a smoke-show, having a baby and spending his small fortune that was made from The Game. He doesn’t want to be part of the PUA community anymore and focuses on other areas of writing.

Mystery (Erik Von Markovik)

Look at my shiny peacock nails!

The main guy the book was written about, he founded his own methods called “The Mystery Method” and even starred in his own show “The Pickup Artist” on VH1. Part magician, part strange.

Company: Venusian Arts (DEAD). Also started a company called Love Systems with Nick Savoy, but allegedly got kicked out.

Turnover: $10 million per year

Where is he now? Running around Europe with a well known PUA called Beckster, selling tiny bootcamps and making next to no money. A shame really as he was THE original guru. Some say he had a bad drug habit and had a kid, but it didn’t work out, but I’m not sure of the whole story.

Tyler Durden (Owen Cook)

Ginger man with big balls.

A big name and prominent figure in the book, he started RSD which is alive and well still to this day. Probably one of the smartest of the PUA’s in terms of business. He actually built an empire worth millions, so kudos to him. RSD also focuses on the more normal side of pick-up too.

Company: Real Social Dynamics

Turnover: $5 million+ per year

Where is he now? Chilling in the Hollywood hills with his two kids. I think he’s divorced, but still stinking rich so it’s all good. He battled through the Julien Blanc debacle like a boss, so I have respect for the little balding ADHD guy.

Lovedrop (Chris Odom)

Tried to sneak off into the crypto world. We know who you are!

One of the originals in the book, Lovedrop moved around from company to company but still retained a loyal following and recognition for his methods. He co-authored some courses and books with Mystery, but never started his own venture.

Company: Couldn’t find one

Turnover: No idea

Where is he now? Trading Bitcoin. No seriously, he’s now a Bitcoin/Crypto geek and is allegedly pretty good at it.

Zan Perrion

The zoolander of the PUA’s.

The smooth operator that is ZP. A nice guy and considered one of the naturals and had some good stuff to teach. He was always a lone wolf and never partnered with anyone from the industry as far as I know.

Company: Alabaster Communications Inc

Turnover: ~$100,000 per year

Where is he now? Still teaching pick-up but on a very low level and living in Budapest. He does Skype calls, one-on-ones, digital courses, etc. He doesn’t seem to have adapted well to market changes.

Ross Jeffries

The creepiest man you will ever see.

The weirdest guy of the bunch by far. Known for his hypnosis/NLP pick-up skills, he specialised in creeping people out basically. Had a legion of hypno followers. I honestly don’t think his stuff works on most people, maybe highly suggestible dummies.

Company: Seduction.com (Ghita Services Inc)

Turnover: ~$250,000 per year

Where is he now? Still selling hypno crap basically and doing private coaching as well as in-person live events on a very small scale.

David DeAngelo (Eben Pagan)

The smile says “I used to make 22 mill a year from pick-up brah”

David D, without a doubt the best and still an OG in my opinion. His techniques were focused on what the naturals do and was the creator of the term “Cocky Comedy” which still to this day works just fine. He rolled solo mostly, creating recorded live events and interviews.

Company: Double Your Dating. He sold it a while back because it was dying and now runs Eben Pagan Training.

Turnover: ~$20,000,000 per year in the early days, but is doing very badly now.

Where is he now? He got married to an absolute beauty, just kidding… about the beauty part. He seems happy, working on his own personal brand and still making that sweet internet money from selling a billion different products.

The Asian Playboy (JT Tran)

The Asian bro, just smashing through that yellow puss.

The token Asian kid. This guy was genuine and seemed nice, definitely not someone I could look up to, but I could see the appeal, especially for other Asian dudes who couldn’t get any puss.

Company: ABC’s of Attraction (LIVE)

Turnover: ~$500,000 per year

Where is he now? Still running the company he started back in the day, mostly bootcamps but also digital products. The angle is of course still Asian dudes, so he’s mastered his niche for sure.

Juggler (Wayne Elise)

What went wrong Juggler?

Juggler was another natural that was awesome for a while. Smooth, great techniques and easy to learn from. He seemed the most normal along with Zan Perrion to me.

Company: Charisma Arts

Turnover: ~$100,000 per year

Where is he now? Oh man, he went from one of the best to one of the worst. He looks like an out-of-work mime artist who couldn’t be arsed to put the paint on his face. Charisma Arts used to be huge, now it just sells Skype calls and private coaching.

Nick Savoy

Something is off about this guy, can’t quite put my finger on it.

Not mentioned in the book, but still a hustler in the industry, starting multiple companies and writing a lot of material. He was a cross between Mystery and the weird kid that gets bullied at school. Did have some good routines though, I think.

Company: Love Systems (SOLD)

Turnover: $5,000,000+ per year originally, not sure about now

Where is he now? Apparently he sold the company to someone, so I’m assuming he’s under a pile of hookers in Bangkok. Who knows. He’s disappeared from the PUA scene anyway.

Gambler (Richard La Ruina)

Smashed his way through Europe, was more successful than the vikings.

Another guy not mentioned in the book, but started PUA Training from his bedroom in Central London sometime in 2007. Known for his natural approach and calm seduction style, he’s still a well-known figure in the industry.

Company: PUA Training

Turnover: $1,000,000+ per year

Where is he now? Living that good life somewhere in Eastern Europe. He’s pretty public with his social media, so you can see he’s married and travels a lot. The company have dropped the bootcamps/live events and are heavily focused on digital products and partnerships.

The messiah complex (buy my sh*t!)

So those were the PUA’s that launched their pick-up careers and companies off the back of The Game. As you can imagine, all of them had their dedicated followers and were treated like messiahs floating on water. Mostly by the gimps though.

You there… peasant. Buy my sh*t.

Mystery was by far the most popular, followed by RSD in terms of the US. Overseas, Gambler was running the show pretty much for a good few years.

Because everything was new and shiny back then and pick-up methods were such a different concept to meeting women, it was easy to hold them all in such high regard.

As time went on, we eventually saw that they were just men riding through the good times and weren’t really THAT incredible with women as they were perceived to be. Some were obviously better than others, but none were Godlike. In my mind, 2008 was really the peak of the PUA hysteria.

Feel old when you look at this? I do.

Bootcamps, live events, eBooks, CD’s, physical books, members forums—the market was rife with methods, techniques, secrets and tips to get laid. The community continued to flourish and men continued to get better with women. That’s when a shift started to happen and the liberals began to kick up a fuss.

The decline: How the mainstream media portrayed the community

Everything comes to an end and nothing lasts forever right? With the rise of feminism and their toxic ideologies sweeping the West at an alarming speed, it was time for them to target something that had been on their radar for a while.

I don’t think the Guardian like PUA’s. They are subtle with it, but I’ve got a great 6th sense.

Name-calling and pointing fingers trying to shame men for learning the art of seduction, really didn’t have enough oomph, so it didn’t gain much attention. What these freaks needed was something big, something that would give their false accusations some weight.

In May 2014, they got exactly what they needed to fuel the fire and finally start hacking the ankles of the PUA community, in the form of nut job Elliot Rodger.

The son of a prominent film and TV producer and rich kid, Elliot Rodger was one messed-up sociopath. He seemingly had everything going for him—rich, somewhat good looking, living in a wealthy neighbourhood and educated. But yet, he was missing something: he couldn’t get laid.

No girls were interested in him (his words) and he was still a virgin. So he decided after filming several videos in is car that he would finally take revenge on the “sluts” that had ignored him for so long. He would “slaughter them all like animals.” And that he did.

On May 23rd 2014, Elliot went on a killing rampage in Isla Vista (California), killing 7 people and injuring many others. Both men and women.

A tragic event, I think we can all agree, but this tragedy was the catalyst which sparked a hatred for anything relating to pick-up. All the media wanted to do was peg PUA’s as women hating degenerates.

The media’s onslaught

Six months pass and although the initial hit pieces on the PUA community died down, something else was about to kick-off that would be the final nail in the coffin for pick-up: Julien Blanc.

A controversial video had surfaced of Julien, a prominent instructor at RSD and good friend of Owen Cook.

This video showed Julien placing his hand on the throat of a Japanese girl whilst whispering through gritted teeth into her ear. The media got wind of this video after several red-haired fat feminists started raging about it on their man-hating forums.

Once it got picked up by the mainstream, all hell broke loose and he was actually banned from several countries. In November 2014, Julien became the most hated man on the planet and the target for every single bit of hate towards the PUA community.

RSD events were shutdown, brawls took place outside their venues, and instructors were physically assaulted, all because the media portrayed Julien as an abuser who likes to man handle women.

Traffic starts to fall along with profits

What did this do for the pick-up businesses? Traffic initially spiked due to the attention, but then slowly began to dwindle over time. A big traffic source for most sites is Google organic search.

Some say that Google started shadow banning search terms and pushing pick-up related sites further down the rankings to disassociate themselves from anything PUA.

The good old days… never to return.

Normal men outside of the community didn’t want to be known as the type of guy that physically assaults women, so they boycotted the industry, causing profits to fall.

Big mainstream companies detach from pickup

Google, PayPal, Facebook, GoDaddy are some of the major players in online advertising and hosting started to ban certain pick-up sites.

This meant that money was held which should have been rightfully paid. Sites went down overnight because they said the sites violated their TOS’s and successful ad campaigns stopped, never to be taken live again.

Like making money online? NEVER use PayPal!

The pressure that these liberal companies were under by the dummies on the left was overwhelming, so they acted to please them. Feminists organized online and emailed and tweeted companies to shame them into submission. Did they care about the livelihoods or well being of the men they affected? No.

Meetups for “men only” are cancelled

After a year or so, what’s left of the PUA community is hanging on by a thread. In February 2006, Roosh had meetups scheduled around the world. They were intended as a way for like-minded masculine men (and not necessary PUAs) to meet in person, but then a thought experiment that Roosh wrote on legalising rape got picked up by the mainstream media (do you see a trend here?).

Now feminists had one thing in mind: brand Roosh a rapist and any man that attends one of these events. They begin to rinse-and-repeat the same shaming methods, causing the meetups to be cancelled.

A sad day and one of many.

Roosh himself had to hide publicly and even hire security just so that he could ensure his safety.

The fall: how it all ended and what’s next

Rest in peace young PUA’s.

We arrive to the present day. As I stated earlier, pick-up is DEAD. The need for getting laid is still there, the desire to learn how to meet and attract women is still there, but the public community is gone.

Forum communities shut down

Gone are the days of thriving forums where men were giving each other advice and guidance. It’s now a wasteland of forgotten threads and lifeless forums.

The game is changing people.

PUA Forum was once one of the biggest around—now it’s no longer active. There are some that remain like Roosh’s forum and RSD, but due to the negative backlash the community received from the media, trolls became a big problem, hence banning became a necessary evil.

Anything related to pickup is being banned

Thinking about writing a book on picking up women and getting a big publisher on board? Think again, you’ll be rejected immediately.

Did you read that? The West is AGAINST PUA’s.

Want to make money from your own YouTube channel because you think men would benefit from your advice?Forget it, you won’t make anywhere near what your thinking. The apocalypse and demonetisation methods YouTube use will kill you off pretty quickly.

No money for you on You Tube. Be gone from here, filthy PUA.

Want to design a game that will help men become naturals? Sorry dude, it won’t work. Sony and Apple want nothing to do with you. In fact there will most likely be a lynch mob after you if you do. Obviously the liberal media have to jump on and give their two cents as to why PUA’s are peddling hate

Let me guess. The author is a fat pig.

It’s gotten so bad that corporate intranets and some hotels have blocked PUA sites, seeing them as hate peddling platforms.

Companies forced to adapt

So where’s the money if it’s not in pick-up anymore and how are these companies able to survive? Like anything that survives, it’s forced to adapt.

Are those words… “I take KRATOM!” by any chance?

RSD is moving into self-help and happy clappy stuff. PUA Training has gone from teaching guys how to get a girlfriend to telling them what the best adult cam sites are. Neil Strauss has disassociated from pick-up and focuses on writing about other subjects.

Other well known PUA companies have been forced into more aggressive forms of marketing and even selling dick pills.

Sounds legit, where can I buy these herbs in pill form?

There’s just no money in traditional pick-up anymore.

Will the community ever return?

Goodbye my fellow PUA’s and good luck.

That’s a good question. Honestly, I think it will stay buried. It was a phenomenon of its time and gained too much momentum to ever reach peak levels again.

Aside from feminists bashing and silencing the community for as long as they could, new movements have begun to surface, so you’ll see people from the PUA community shuffle over to those. You know what I’m talking about: MGTOW, alt-right, men’s rights, and Roosh’s own neomasculinity.

These communities serve a significant purpose for men, they give them a forum to voice their opinions and concerns about women, whilst helping them become better men. So if it’s not PUA, it’s something else.

It seems the feminists have not only ruined it for men, but they’ve also ruined it for heterosexual women too. Men are boycotting them, pumping and dumping them, and not following the traditional path of threating women as equals. And that folks, is how and why the PUA community is no more.

Read More: This Man Wrote An Article For Vice Hating On Pickup Even Though It Got Him a Girlfriend


TheRedArchive is an archive of Red Pill content, including various subreddits and blogs. This post has been archived from the blog Return of Kings.

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Post Information
Title The Death Of The PUA Community
Author Charlie Powell
Date March 11, 2018 10:00 AM UTC (6 years ago)
Blog Return of Kings
Archive Link https://theredarchive.com/blog/Return-of-Kings/the-death-of-the-pua-community.5585
https://theredarchive.com/blog/5585
Original Link https://www.returnofkings.com/159286/the-death-of-the-pua-community
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