This is a thread idea that I stole from the Two Plus Two poker forum. Basically, if you've been around the block a few times, and you know your shit, eventually it's your turn to take a day in the well. Ask me any question, and I will tell you the answer.

First off, a bit about me:
I've been a pick-up artist for five years. I'm what some around the forum would call a "Second Generation" pick-up artist, having learned the art after reading Neil Strauss' book, but before much about pick-up was televised. I started out using material directly from The Game without considering that it was a New York Times bestseller. I went a remarkably long time before I got caught.

Afterwards, I immersed myself in the game, becoming one of this site's premier scholars on the topic. I read everything I could get my hands on, tried it all, kept what worked and threw out what didn't. I practiced, I got good, and eventually got better than good. I did my first five-for-five two years after getting into the game, had my first 20+ k-close night three years into it, and have maintained multiple girlfriends for the past three years with only moderate difficulty.

It's my turn to give back a bit. Speak into the Well, and your questions will be answered.

_________________
Repent now and save 50% on your next divine judgment.
-Monkey's Little Brother, Spud

Im always up for improvement so cheers bro.
I just posted this somewhere else, if you could give me some feedback that would be wicked

Met an emo girl in a club. Tattoos, piercings, real sexy and from meeting it was purely sexual. So she came to mine in the daytime last week and we ended up getting all of our clothes off, except for some reason she wanted to keep her bra on.
So she was pretty much on my dick form walking in the door and we did eveything but bang. First date so im thinking thats fine.

She came around last night and we watched a movie. Once again we started taking clothes off, doing oral and then when i reached for a condom she pushed me away. Still wouldnt take her bra off, i'm thinking she is insecure about her breasts, which are pretty big, so may be scarring

This was fucking annoying so i went straight for the freeze out. From this we didnt do anything again, even after going to bed ( we were previously in the living room )

Date 3 coming up ( if i want it ), i need to make sure we fuck or its going o get wierd. Anyone had this before?

Of course other people have had this happen to them before. ^_^ If you _haven't_, I don't think you can consider yourself a pick-up artist.

She's got a problem with her breasts. There are a bazillion possible image-issues that come from having large breasts, from being teased about them by other girls at a youngish age to boys getting turned off at the way they hang if they're not model-perfect to simply not wanting to be desired solely because of them. If you want to get to the heart of the thing, the only option is to ask her. She's the only person in the world who actually knows what her insecurities are all about.

The knee-jerk reaction to condoms sounds like a pact to me. She's gone into this with the mindset of "Ok, he's cute, he's funny, he's sexy, he's everything we want, but it doesn't matter because I _am not sleeping with him_ until X happens!" I see this all the time in sales, either personal pacts or pacts made with loved ones, and she may well have an agreement with someone else to the same effect. It's pretty obvious she's into you, and that's great, but you're going to need to break that pact down before you reach for the Trojans again. Statements of intention go a long way towards pact-breaking, so you're going to want to work those into your third date (unless you get the sense that X is "the third date..."). Let her know what you're expecting from this date, that you would very much like to get your dick wet (do not use that wording...), and that you're going to need to see some development on the sexual front if you're going to continue seeing eachother. From there, it's a judgement call.

_________________
Repent now and save 50% on your next divine judgment.
-Monkey's Little Brother, Spud

Monkey, what material would you recommend reading to become truly congruent with the 'Alpha Image' we try to portray.

I mean, I was on fire with this girl for over a month, but I was kinda the rebound guy. I was playing everything right, but overtime I became slightly more needy, didn't maintain 100% control and basically wasn't an Alpha.

You said you managed to maintain numerous relationships - keeping them interested is hard work, what's the secret ? I've obtained a lot of advice elsewhere but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Congruence is chiefly about practice. Read as much as you like, you still won't be congruent in the field until you are comfortable with whatever it is you're saying. It's not a trait you learn from books, it's a skill you learn from _doing_ over and over again.

What you're describing sounds more like a shift in attitude than a lack of congruence, though. When people get into a relationship, even a short-term one, there's usually a shift in mentality from "attraction mode" where you're worried about being impressive and hooking the girl to "relationship mode," where you're more comfortable being normal AFC self. Managing that transition can be a huge pain in the ass.

As for the Alpha Male mentality, I'm pretty torn on whether or not I think it's all that important. I'm not exactly an alpha male, at least not in the classic sense, and whenever I try to be, it works against me because of (you guessed it!) lack of congruence.

The secret to keeping multiple women interested in you is to be interesting.

One of the reasons I can't have more than three or four girls at a time is because I have a lot of stuff going on in my life. I'm an avid reader, I play a lot of games, I'm a self-educator and go on obsessive spurts through various subjects over the course of the year (last year's topics: blimps, the pro-choice movement, marketing and American politics), I love going out for coffee with my friends, I watch a lot of movies. I have things going on almost constantly, which means I have a lot to talk about, and I have a lot of things I can include my girls in. Admittedly, hearing about hot new blimp tech isn't every girl's ideal night with her man, but knowing weird shit like "The Hindenburg would not have caught fire if it had been filled with Helium, as it was supposed to be," can make for some strange and interesting conversations. Sixty percent of men in India are too small to fit condoms issued by the World Health Organization. Seventy thousand women are killed by unsafe abortions every year. I want Tarantino to write history books, because his version of World War II was more fun than the real thing. Jose Saramago writes a mean novel, but it wouldn't kill him to break out a quotation mark now and again. My tastes have slowly shifted away from mocha in the past few months, and I'm gaining a taste for latte, which I think makes me a bitch.

I think one of the most important skills a pick-up artist can learn is story-telling. If you can tell boring stories in a fun and interesting way, you become a dynamic and interesting person. If you tell amazing stories in a dull and boring way, your success with women will plummet. If you do fun and interesting things, and can bring people along for the ride, you become a dynamic and interesting person. If you _don't_ do interesting things, you'd might as well play World of Warcraft in your basement for all the good it's going to do you socially.

Also, be good at sex.

_________________
Repent now and save 50% on your next divine judgment.
-Monkey's Little Brother, Spud

Hey Monkey, thanks for sharing your wisdom with the community, that's great!

Maybe you can answer this question I have. It's actually a mixture of two. I asked it before, but I got zero advice. Probably a hard question to answer.

Here, I copied the post I made in the AFC Adam thread:


I actually have two different subjects, but they mix in the same basic thing.

I work as a cashier in a gas station. GREAT for working on social interactions. But thing is, I have no idea how to game girls there. I've managed to have girls be interested in me, but I don't know where to go from there. I rarely close, only when I'm sure that it'll work. Reason is, I can't screw up too much, because I'm at work. I can't go off trying to pick up girls and fail, because it could affect my job. Going at it too direct, or too hard, could get me in trouble. So what should I do? I know it's the PERFECT place to get girls, because I interact with so many beautiful women every day.

Secondly, it's about one particular customer. She's 34 (I'm 21, and yeah I sometimes love older women). She comes often and I've noticed that she finds me attractive BUT only when I'm not in my work uniform. She has no husband or boyfriend. Thing is, at one point she really looked like she was into me, one of the times that she saw me wearing my normal clothes. But the next day she almost evaded me. I'm pretty sure it's because I'm much younger. I told her in a story that I once dated women of her age, so she knows I'm used to this. She loves talking to me when she comes, so I was thinking that I should try to get her to do stuff with me outside of my work, but options are thin. I think she might have been weirded out by all of what happened, and she's a smart woman, she surely knows that I know that she knows. So yeah. Help would be MUCH appreciated on that one.

The problem with high-volume customer service is that you don't really have a lot of time with any given customer. The biggest benefit to high-volume customer service is that you don't really have a lot of time with any given customer.

I think you would be markedly surprised with the amount you can get away with when it comes to flirting with your customers. I'm not going to suggest you start sexually harassing people, but you can be a lot more direct than you might normally think and stay in the "safe" range. I work in a smaller-volume customer service position, and I hit on my customers all the time. Two of my current girlfriends were met through the store.

At the very least, you should be aiming for a number close. They're easy to get, relatively harmless, and allow for contact outside of the store environment. I wouldn't push too far past numbers, honestly; if you're caught fucking in the back room, I think that may actually compromise your job. ^_^

As for your older woman (I share said love), I think there's a chance you missed a window on this one. If you haven't, then you should probably go for the number or an instantish-date ("Hey, I'm off in twenty minutes, and I was going to do thing X. You should come."). Hell, even if you _have_ missed the window, you should go for the number or instantish-date, mostly just for information. If she's willing to give you the number, you're probably still in; if she's not, you'll learn something about her objections to seeing you, and you can start to work around those. If the objections are reasons (as opposed to excuses), then you should move on to the next hot older woman. You work at a gas station; you'll meet a lot of them. ^_^

No one looks hot in a gas station uniform. Wear it as little as you can get away with it.

_________________
Repent now and save 50% on your next divine judgment.
-Monkey's Little Brother, Spud

Very good info Monkey! I finally got the advice I wanted

First off, it's winter, so I can wear a vest on top of the work shirt, so that helps with the looks.

Secondly, I'll be more direct. I do recall the look on certain girls' faces, hoping I'd ask for a number but never did. Besides, I wouldn't think that any girl would complain to my manager just because I asked for a phone number. That would be pushing it.

Thirdly, I'll try out anyways with the older woman. Like you said, if I did miss the window, so what, I'll move on.

Thanks for the insight Monkey, very much appreciated.

I'm going to assume that was supposed to say
The first thing that comes to mind is, know your sources. By a completely rough guesstimate, I'd say roughly five percent of the people who post here on a regular basis are worth of the title "master" pick-up artist. Fewer are capable of communicating their knowledge in a way that doesn't suck. Most of the stuff that gets tossed around in any pick-up forum is a pile of crap, with a couple of gems thrown in for color. This is an ego game, and a lot of guys get into this expecting to be the next Mystery or AFCAdam; I'm guilty of spouting bullshit when I was young and inexperienced, and I can't imagine I'm the only one. Hell, less than a year in, I built my own "method" out of a bunch of other people's crap, and posted it like it was the New Hotness in Pick-up Technology.

Knowing who you're taking your advice from can be the difference between fast-tracking it to success and slogging through bad advice to find the good stuff. Usually, I suggest to people "Try everything, keep what works and throw out what doesn't," but the signal to noise ratio in the pick-up community has gotten a lot murkier over the years. It's important to keep the signal clear and take the advice that is most likely going to improve your skills. Try everything THOSE people say, keep what works and toss what doesn't.

The list of people I'll take advice from on this forum is pretty slim, and it's full of people who have proven their worth over the course of years of quality posting.

Second, I think it's really important that you separate quality from quantity. I hate to dig up old fights, but I seem to recall a prodigious poster from back-in-the-day who happened to be completely full of shit (*cough*LATripp*cough*). The fact that he was always posting provided him a level of respect that wasn't backed up by anything more than hot air. For most of the best posters on the forum, you'll find that the opposite is true. They don't write a lot of pages-long article posts, but the small amount that they do post is quality. A lot of the best posts in the forums are short, to the point, and in their simplicity will win this game for you.

Think about something like the three-second rule. It's a really easy thing to write.
That's barely a paragraph, but it's some of the best advice ever given in the pick-up community.

Also understand that people who spend a lot of time on a forum are not spending that time out picking up women.

Third, be willing to try new things. Sometimes you need to stretch the boundaries a bit, try things that don't fit in with the mold of the commonly accepted views in the community. When someone you trusts suggests trying something outrageous, don't be afraid to give it a shot. If it works for you, if it meshes with your style better than you thought it would, there's a cool new weapon in your arsenal. If it doesn't work out, you have a funny story to tell.

Fourth, and I think this may be one of the most important things you are ever going to read on this forum, GIVE FEEDBACK. Lurking has it's place, and it's important for new people to lurk for a while and gain some knowledge before they start spouting about their "skillz." Providing constructive feedback, asking questions, and reporting your results with a suggested technique or routine is an integral part of the scientific process here. Hypothesize, test, report, repeat.

At first, it's best to give your feedback in the General Questions forum. Don't pollute the Lounge with newbie shit, because it's not going to do anyone any good. If your comment or question is a newbie comment or question, then put it in the forum that was designed for that. If you have recently suggested something in the lounge, and you think newbies will be trying it out, it behooves you to watch the newbie forum for notes and questions on your topic, and answer accordingly.

If you're good, your feedback may be more important to the process than the original post. If you try something in the field, and it works, letting other people know that the advice is legit is important. If you try something in the field and it doesn't work, it's important to let other people know that it didn't work for you as well as the original poster suggested, or that he or she is actually full of crap.

Fifth, teach. You'd be surprised how quickly your own game improves when you're able to see things you do wrong done wrong by people who are not you. I got a lot better a lot faster through teaching. Don't teach when you don't know, because you'll be making things worse for your students, but when you're "meh, pretty good..." you're good enough to get some guys started on the path. Watch them, correct the obvious mistakes, and when you're done, you've got new wingmen.

Don't go on the chat. It's a silly place, full of bad advice given at the speed of light. ^_^

_________________
Repent now and save 50% on your next divine judgment.
-Monkey's Little Brother, Spud

Hi Monkey ,

I have a couple of questions :

1- When I go to chilled out lounge venues and see a seated mixed set , I dont know what to open the guy with. I usually pretend I know him from somewhere and it worked but I need something more solid

(Opinion: I think that mixed sets are the best sets to open because you get some really good results , either you make new friends , or get a solid lay)

2- Im working on getting more girls in my life right now , even if I like one of them I throw away my feelings and keep around as a friend. Im going in accordance to etourage game but the thing is I dont have any special event to invite them to. What do you advice ?

thanks bro

Why not open the guys with exactly the same type of thing you'd open the girls with? The vast majority of openers, canned or otherwise, are gender neutral. The only ones I can think of that wouldn't be are the super-direct openers like Armageddon. If you open a guy with "Want to come home with me?" you'll be nursing a sore head or a sore ass the next morning. ^_^

Ex-girlfriends who are your friends are amazing. No one is going to sell you better than a girl who has given you a thorough test-drive. As such, I find it strange that you would "throw away your feelings" and friend-zone your prospects. I'm going to strongly suggest you stop doing that. Every girl you want is a prospect, from now on. If they don't end up fucking you, well, they're still your friends. If they end up fucking you, you win. Go you.

As for events, if you don't have any that you're going to, find some. Most towns and cities have a local paper full of concert listings, hip restaraunts, fun date spots and cool events. Make sure to pick one up every week and familiarize yourself with what's going for the next couple of weeks. When you meet some cool people and you want to bring them to an event, you've got a list of events that just happen to be going on.

Barring that, make an event. Some of the most successful pick-up related events I've been to were house parties and dinner parties. One of the better guys in my city holds a monthly potluck at his place, and invites Incredibly Precious People only. One of my wingmen does regular parties at his place, as well as social dinner events. If you don't have a party to go to, make one.

_________________
Repent now and save 50% on your next divine judgment.
-Monkey's Little Brother, Spud

This is a well of gems (nice usage of 'lurking')

What things stand out to you in terms of what you did to better yourself that led to the results you had been aiming for. (what modifiations made the car run better?)

More than anything, outlook.

Quite simply: I am the tits.

Now let me qualify that by saying a few things that are also true about me: I'm a geek, I work at a comic shop, I'm overweight, I have tape on my glasses, and I'm pretty average-looking.

But god damn I'm sexy. It took me a long time to realize that some women are out there looking for _exactly me_. They don't want a skinny guy or a muscley guy; a guy with some flesh on him is what they like. They don't want a cool guy, they want someone who has weird stuff to talk about, stories they've never heard before.

Now, there are other women out there who are looking for someone who is very much _not me_. But the point of being able approach a hundred women a week is that it's a scattershot approach to finding women who find you attractive. Law of Averages says that if you talk to enough women, some of them have to be attracted to you.

Also: Flexibility. I didn't just master one kind of game when I started out. I learned a few, and focused on becoming proficient with each, which gives me a LOT of weapons to pull out when I need them. Being able to tailor your game to the girl you're talking to increases the number of women who will find you attractive, which is completely win.

_________________
Repent now and save 50% on your next divine judgment.
-Monkey's Little Brother, Spud

Hey Monkey its a cool thing what your doing for the community.

I have been making great progress in improving my game but i still have a limiting belief that my age will make a difference if a girl will get with me or not. I tend to get girls who are older than me as I am 19 and I tend to look for girls in clubs. I often get asked what my age is and I really want to lie as I feel that girls are quite specific about how young they date.

My inner game is getting better so it isn't really an issue for me just to say im 19 but I was wondering if there any specific tactics I can use when this issue gets brought up? I tend to just avoid it by moving on to something else.

Cheers

How did you get the nickname Monkey? Does it tie into your style?