The Game

anyone else. However, Papa had taken it upon himself to invite him, converting one of his bathroom closets into an extra bedroom by putting a mattress on the floor.
    We didn’t have furniture yet. Just a collection of fifty throw pillows we’d bought to cover the sunken dance floor. That night, Playboy rigged his movie projector to show films on the ceiling, and we all lay in the pillow pit and watched Carnal Knowledge.
    Afterward, Tyler Durden turned to me. “Your archive has been really influential in my game,” he said. My collected posts on the seduction newsgroups had been compiled into a large text file and posted online along with the archives of Mystery and Ross Jeffries. “A lot of my best shit I took from there.”
    It was hard to get out of a conversation with Tyler Durden. Whenever he wasn’t playing the game, he was talking about it.
    “I’ve been experimenting with telling people I’m you in the field,” Tyler said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I tell them I’m Neil Strauss, and that I write for Rolling Stone.”
    “And does it get results?” The idea of this pasty little freak running around telling people he was me turned my stomach, but I tried to act nonchalant.
    “It depends. Sometimes they think I’m lying. Sometimes girls instantly say, ‘Oh my God, we should hang out’. And other girls, if you tell them that shit, you’re blown out because it looks like you’re bragging.”
    “Let me tell you something. I’ve been writing for over a decade, and it hasn’t gotten me laid once. Writers aren’t cool or sexy. There’s no social proof to be gained by hanging out with a writer. At least, that’s been my experience. Why do you think I joined the community? But I’m flattered that you tried.”
    That weekend, Tyler Durden, Mystery, and I went to Las Vegas. Papa had booked ten students for Mystery, which was pretty good for a six person workshop. We took them to the Hard Rock Casino. Generally, on the first night, the students watch the instructors work.
    As a PUA, Tyler Durden had improved drastically since I’d last seen him in Los Angeles, where he didn’t talk to any women. When I noticed him sarging a bachelorette party, I inched closer to listen. He was talking about Mystery.
    “See that tall guy in the top hat?” he was telling them. “He needs a lot of attention, so he’ll say hurtful things to people just to make them like him. So humor him, because he needs help.”
    He was giving away Mystery’s game—neutralizing his negs.
    “He likes doing magic tricks to get people to accept him,” he continued. “So just be nice and pretend like you’re excited. He does a lot of children’s birthday parties.”
    Now he was neutralizing Mystery’s value-demonstrating routines.
    After Tyler Durden left the set, I asked him what he was doing. “Papaand I have developed a lot of new techniques to blow you and Mystery out,” he said.
    “So what do you say about me?” I asked, trying to pretend I wasn’t disturbed.
    Tyler Durden started laughing. “We say, ‘There’s Style. He’s actually forty-five years old, but he looks pretty young to me. He’s so cute. He’s like a little Elmer Fudd.’”
    I stared at him in disbelief. He was AMOGing his fellow PUAs. It was diabolical.
    “You can get me,” Tyler said. “You can say I look like the Pillsbury Doughboy.”
    I choked back my disgust and thought, “What would Tom Cruise do?”
    “But I don’t want to get you, man,” I replied, keeping my own counsel and giving him a big smile like I thought it was all very funny. “Here’s the difference between you and me: I like to surround myself with people who are better than me because I enjoy being pushed and challenged. You, on the other hand, like to become the best person in the room by eliminating anyone who’s better than you.”
    “Yeah, maybe you’re right,” he said.
    Later, I would realize I was only half right. Tyler Durden did like to eliminate competition. But not before he’d squeezed every piece of useful information out of them.
    For the rest of the weekend, whenever I talked to a person, male or female, Tyler Durden was hovering behind me, listening to every word. I could see him thinking, trying to figure out the rules and patterns behind everything I said that kept me dominant in a group. He had studied my archive. He was studying my personality. Soon, he would no doubt know more about me than I did. And then, as with the AMOGs in