Friday, February 11, 2011

Thoughts about the Industry, and Mr "Shit happens" Gunwitch

I've been rather busy these days, and it won't change for a while. Yes, I know that I announced a post on the movie "The Great Happiness Space", and it is still on my to-do list, as is everything else I have previously mentioned. But before I'll do that, I have to take care of all the other stuff that showed up in my email inbox, such as a notification about a lengthy comment to my post "PUA "Gunwitch" Shoots Girl in Face, Fans Still Love Him"

An organizer of PUA events felt compelled to voice his opinion. Since there are some rather interesting points that are worth discussing, it wouldn't be appropriate to just bury them in the comment thread.

So, here we go:
Look actually it all is about the "bad things" in the community. This is a fairly new business. There is no control what so ever.

True. There is no control whatsoever. People are scamming left and right, and apparently those businesses seem to think it's fine to not honor any of their promises, like the infamous "money back guarantee". Heck, recently, someone had to make a thread on PUA Hate and expose Andy "Yosha" from Daygame.com, and after several hundred views he -- surprise, surprise -- received an answer to his email requests and received his refund. But try this with PUA Training or Love Systems, who openly declare in the fine print that their programs are only for "entertainment purposes".

People are bashing a lot all the people who make a lot of money in this scene. Only if they provide you with what you want, it's okay.

That's a typical argument from scammers all over the Internet. In the Internet Marketing scene, it's also typical to hear the shills of Frank Kern et al. say that people only hate him because he is oh so successful. It doesn't matter that he offers products of questionable quality and encourages illegal business practices (as Salty Droid repeatedly pointed out). Well, Frank Kern and others ran into legal problems with the FTC for valid reasons, and, no, it wasn't because they had "the wrong disclaimers on their website", as Frank Kern's buddy Neil Strauss writes in his book "Emergency".

And then the other evaluation problem with this business is, it also depends of the motivation of the customer.

Oh, so if company X makes exaggerated promises if can't possibly deliver ("learn to get any women not matter how you look, how much money you have, or where you live" :P), it's suddenly the customer's fault if he doesn't succeed?

It's like Weight Watchers. If you don't loose the weight. Weight Watchers is to blame? You don't carry some of the "weight?"

Haha, that's a great comparison. The weight loss industry is shady, too. Well, we all know that if we want to lose weight, we have to eat healthy food, skip Coke, fast food, and all those crappy ready-meals, and exercise too. But for some those are unpleasant choices, so they prefer getting ripped off by various companies/authors that claim that they are okay. Instead of a healthy life style, they just have to follow some fad diet or some nonsensical procedures, which of course don't work. But because those people are beyond hope, they don't question the products themselves but buy into the next fad.

Similarly, what's the situation with pick up? In a nutshell, it is something like: "don't look like shit and talk to girls", but instead Vin DiCarlo tells you that working out kills your chances with women, Love Systems puts out a "manual" on texting, and Tyler from Real Social Dynamics believes that Brad Pitt is not good looking, and that his level of physical attractiveness has nothing to do with how attractive he is perceived to be. It's nothing but mindbogglingly stupid stuff.

From what I hear Gunwitch did a lot to help people for free. I think he actually earned the least of everyone who is in The Game.

Isn't this a non-sequitur? Or are you honestly saying that because Gunwitch didn't make as much money as Mystery did, he can blow some girl's face off? Heck, money has nothing to do with this.

He could have been successful if had cooperated with guys like Frank Kern or Eben Pagan. And then he would have a lot of money, and maybe would not have shot Amber.

OK, the trip down logical lane continues: You may want to read this brief survey of the issue of so-called counterfactuals. If-then-reasoning is rather pointless, in my not so humble opinion. Well, should you ever get stabbed in a dark alley, I'm sure you wouldn't think, "If only this guy had been a successful pick up guru that had teamed up with Internet Marketers. Then he would have had enough money and wouldn't have needed to rob me."

Luckily Amber is okay.

Is she? As far as I know, she is still missing half her face. Or do you mean by "okay" that she is not dead?

And the community will not have any problem with guys like Gunwitch.

Wut!?

Some guys and girls in this time have difficulty to get together. Spite all the freedom, there always will be problems with relations between guys and girls. So this industry is here to stay.

Sure, the sexes have issues with each others, but do you honestly believe this industry solely exists to help people? Have you ever head anyone say that he turned down a potential client because he wasn't ready (yet)? When I was coaching, I always made sure the guy would really profit from working with me, and if there was no fit, I told them what the issue was. Surely, Mystery and Gambler gladly take $3,000 from overweight guys instead of telling them to get in shape first.

And at some time people will take on control, built schools, have certifications etc. Look at NLP (Richard Bandler was a suspect in murdering a woman too). It's all there.

NLP didn't hold up to scientific scrutiny, and if one day there will be a "Worldwide Association of PUAs" with certifications and all that sh*t, it still won't turn this scene into a legitimate industry.

Give it time, the industry is like 6 years old or something. There always going to be more shit happening.

I'm counting on that.

Just like any other business who is not controlled by an indepedent council. And even then shit happens.

Where in this world do you have "independent councils"? Industries govern themselves, and the financially most powerful ones happily bribe governments to make sure they can continue ruining the planet (BP, Exxon etc) and ruin the lives of people and entire economies (Goldman Sachs, Bank of America etc.)

So shit happens.

Yes, shit happens, and shit will continue to happen, but tell me what else this fact provides than a good reason to get depressed?

6 comments:

  1. 1. haha, I think the gunwitch incident shed a very negative light on the community and made some of its darker sides known to the public, and now some 'gurus' are worried about their sales.
    If the whole thing really gets mainstream attention, maybe when The Game movie is released, Pickup will face public opposition like violent video games or hardcore porn. What will mothers say when they find out their kid is gettin sold clearly misogynistic advice by a lunatic named Gunwitch?

    2. I recently put up a site with several arguments against pickup:
    http://beyondpickup.wordpress.com
    let me know what you think of it.

    cheers

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ah, SmoothDoc, a regular poster on DutchAttraction. I got the impression he's somewhat of an OK guy, even though I do not intend to go to any of his bootcamps - nor will I attend any bootcamp whatsoever, I'm currently doing very fine going out by myself and not bothering any community-like site with my FR's. ;) Still, his comment on the Gunwitch story is kinda sad.

    @domster: I seem to be unable to respond to your blog, is that intentional?

    @Sleazy: looking forward to any insightful post about, for example, this Happiness thing I saw some minutes of. I don't care about the community or the bashing thereof, even though I understand your reasons to do so very well and find the way in which you dissect for example SmoothDocs comment quite insightful (I'm not very good in analyzing people's statements, I'm afraid...).

    Cheers,

    JCZ

    ReplyDelete
  3. Correction: "kinda sad" => "quite sad".

    ReplyDelete
  4. yo, this is superjoint

    big fan of your book about the seduction community

    ReplyDelete
  5. domster,

    a few people have emailed me about http://beyondpickup.wordpress.com already. I think it's a useful site, and I especially like that the first sentence on the main page is a Sleazy quote. ;)


    jcz,

    school doesn't teach people how to analyze arguments properly. In many cases, people wrongly assume they learn how to think critically but instead they are only fed dogmas. Economics is a prime example for this.

    Frankly, who on this planet would have an interest in a critical populace? Our politicians surely don't, and neither do tycoons of industry. This is a serious issue, extending far beyond scammy Internet industries. With some more spare time on my hand, I'd write a short ebook, similar to "Debunking", and most likely under a different pen name, to analyse deceptive argumentation strategies. "Debunking" didn't take me a long time to write, and it has reached many more people than I expected. Deception by misleading arguments is a much bigger issue than those small time Internet scammers, though. Well, it's on my to-do list, but don't hold your breath.


    Superjoint,

    I'm glad you like my book!

    ReplyDelete
  6. >It's like Weight Watchers. If you don't
    >loose the weight. Weight Watchers is to
    >blame? You don't carry some of the
    >"weight?"

    That's a deceptive analogy, because weight-watchers give you a scientifically backed and reproducible plan that always works IF you follow it.

    For those who don't know, weight-watcher lets you eat whatever you want, as long as you count calories (they make it all cute by calling them points, but it's basically calorie counting).

    So as long as you stay below the calorie-restriction they give you, then you will lose the weight. It's basic thermodynamics.

    With self-help crap and pua-crap, there's nothing to reproduce. It's vague. There's nothing that measurable, falsifiable or repeatable.

    ReplyDelete

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