neil strauss wants to game me; i reluctantly accept

the misogynist game, naked swedish 10s, the annihilation scam

So being the worldly young master of science that I am, I signed up for Neil Strauss' ("The Game") mailing list a few weeks ago to keep updated on the goings-on of the male pick-up artist community. I figured, perhaps naively and perhaps underestimating my own worldliness, that I need to know these things to protect myself on the rare occasions that I might actually leave my apartment. And plus, I find this PUA world quite interesting. I find "The Game" far less hateful than "The Rules," but it's still frightening that women (girls, that is) fall for this my-friend's-wallaby back-handed compliment crap - but I guess that's why I'm a girl-hating feminist. Then again, their behavior is just a creation of the male hegemony. (Though according to Nick Sylvester's lies, New York women are too smart for the Game! The Village Voice's shoddy editing has set us back to the mid '90s! But I digress.)

So far Neil Strauss has continually irritated me with his self-aggrandizing e-mails: handle "manofstyle," and last week's installment detailed how he "accidentally" took a Swedish super-model-type up to his room and "accidentally" got her naked. He got this "10" Swedish chick by using the "Annihilation Method," complete with "Black Mirror Technique." Strauss claims that he is one of only six men in the world who know the Annihilation Method (complete with Black Mirror Technique) - but now, he says, he's ready to share it with "a select few" culled from his e-mail list of more than 23,000.

And today Neil Strauss chose me. Tomorrow afternoon, he says, he'll send me an e-mail with a link to a web site that will lay out the Annihilation Method in great detail.

"My assistant is a techno-superman. He has installed some sort of code on my web site that tells exactly how many people are going there. As you know, I'm not inviting everyone to listen in on this. So - if I see that MORE people go to the site than I actually invited, I'll know that someone leaked it out. And if that happens, I'll delete the web page.

So please, Susie ...don't share this with anyone."

I'll admit, I was pretty excited. But now I feel a little dirty and complicit, being so willfully let in on this gross secret, this plan to dominate my (hotter, stupider) peers. And it seems, to me at least, to beg the question: where are the women who want to play, rather than always getting played? Are they all like those hideous Rules women, hell-bent on getting married and having babies? (Rule #7: "Close the deal - Rules women do not date for more than two years.") Can men just not stand the idea of getting played, of not having the power in a relationship? Are the Rules women right to always give the man the upper hand, to exert their power only by withholding sex? Do women really only care about goddamn babies?!

Until I complete the spiral downward into the ninth circle of utter despair over this gender inequality, I'll perhaps propel myself even further by studying the Annihilation Method - while finishing up Are Men Necessary?, of course.