This is obviously the CocaCola / Microsoft / McDonalds of the pick up community. Unsurprisingly it was also my first real learning aid (as mentioned below The Lay Guide was my introduction, but that’s just a shameless rip-off of the Gunwitch ebook and is more like a journalist’s cut’n’paste job than a unified theory of pick up artistry).
I loved the VH1 show. There’s something about seeing total dweebs plugging away and handling horrid rejections, then gradually improving, it just gives that same feeling as Royce Gracie beating the ninjas in the Octagon – the little guy can win! Ok, so it’s a constructed narrative and the first few episodes are shamelessly point’n’laugh TV but there’s a real demonstrative effect. Remember, I hadn’t been to any boot camps at this stage, nor did I have any mentors. Just what cowboys might call “book larnin'”
Pros
- Indirect method is a great way to open big sets when you’re a beginner
- Routines give a crutch to get some air-time in set
- Theoretical underpinning always gives a sense of where to go next. The A1-S3 model is analagous to the Brazilian Ju-Jitsu position progression
- Peacocking gives confidence
- MM is fun to do
Cons
- It’s clearly tailored to help tall magicians get the hottest girl in the room
- It’s way more advanced than necessary to pick up a girl around your level
- Going indirect creates new roadblocks, such as how to escalate
- You can learn to be a social robot that has some success without ever reconstructing the chode heart that beats within
So I try Mystery Method one night – Cargo nightclub, Old Street, 19th June 2009
First thing I see is a massive queue outside with literally hundreds of people in. I’m with a wing and his girlfriend who has agreed to pivot. I walk up to a pair of young guys near the front of the queue:
Krauser: Hey lads. Quick question. If you could have any superpower, you know like you’d just been invited to join the X-Men, what would it be?
Guys: blah blah blah
* Krauser locks into queue. 2 min later wing and pivot join. 1 hour queueing avoided. Thanks Mystery*
Early on my wing opens a 2-set of Italians standing against a wall in the beer garden. I join in and he lets me run the set. I run some routines, tell some DHV stories. Girls coo and say “you are really good at telling stories, you should write a book” etc. Some random chodes start tapping the targets shoulder from behind to get her attention. She turns around, so I say “Hey, the show is this way”, she laughs and the chodes disappear. Later two Portuguese interrupt, who she knows, and she practices her Portuguese with them. I’m stumped. I roll off rather than chode out. Five minutes later the guy from the queue says hello to me. Great, instant pawn. I pull him to the set, interrupt with “Hey, you’re Italian right. Where did you say your holiday way in Italy *to the dude*” and the Portuguese chodes are blown out. I run the set again.
I email close and its a flake. But I’m extremely friggin’ happy because I just ran a thirty minute 2-set using MM dealing with interrupts, pawns and got a close. She was an HB8.
I also encountered a noob problem with MM – I was the entertainer guy. The dancing monkey. I didn’t escalate, didn’t peel them off the wall, didn’t do anything except hold their attention and make ’em laugh.