First, I love Neil Strauss the author. I just read Emergency and it was nearly as awesome as The Game. His career as an author, and the way he immerses himself gonzo style into his subject matter is really inspiring to me.

I used to think he was an awesome PUA guru. He was one of the guys with the most no-nonsense approach to seduction, had a cool sense of fashion, and seemed like a genuinely cool dude. Then his shit went big-time. He started pumping out a new DVD set every 6 months and charging stupid prices for them. Then he started putting together Stylelife and The Society and whatever other weird schemey networks he owns. And it appears that he's outsourced it all to whatever fanboys follow him around the most. Recently, with "The Society," his emails (which I get a couple of a day it seems) seem to be recruiting guys to pay to be "ambassadors" or whatever, to build a network of dudes across the world supposedly to help one another find self improvement, but it looks more like a pyramid scheme to sell products.

I found the community back around 2005 or so, right around the time The Game was published. I didn't read it for years (I did love it when I finally did read it, though), instead studying TMM and a few other "methods". But it was awesome. Half of the fun was that it was a secret club of mostly nerdy guys going out and fucking with the Matrix of society. There was bonding and brotherly love. PUA gurus actually participated in the forums and answered your emails. Then it became big business. It wasn't all Style, everyone seemed to jump on the monetizing aspect of it all at once.

But as one of the most well known gurus in the world, he sure hasn't set a very good example. I'm all for dudes making money off of what is a pretty in-demand and hard to master skill set. But the fucking over-the-top commercialization of seduction is really lame. It has really put a big dent in the brotherhood aspect of the community in my opinion.

Part of the problem is that most of the stuff seems to be the same information repackaged and relabled. It just makes me not want to have anything to do with the guys like Style who have gone from PUA to CEO of a business that wrings every last penny out of poor AFC's who just want some control over thier sex lives and are so desperate to get it that they will give up nearly anything for a shot.

Luckily, there seem to be a few people out there that are still legit. Juggler, Swinggcat, even RSD to an extent - I know that they are the worst in some ways, but at least TD still actually is involved with it and they give away a ton of good videos.

Fuck, sorry for the rant. I'm not sure what my point was.