What Do They Have to Say 3 Months or 6 Months Later ?

Clifford:

The following discussion started off as an email I received from a reader, Mark of L.A., unsubscribing to this newsletter. He had included this comment as his reason for unsubscribing:

“Too many people (gurus) who seem to only want to sell something without giving any real information. Too much theory and not enough specifics.”

I replied with, “While I can understand your not liking that type of material, I really think that's an unfair criticism of my list. I think if you go through the archives, you will see a lot of incredible information ... all for free. And I do as much as I can to remove any upselling in the posts, not to mention that most of the posts aren't from guys in the business, so they have nothing to gain by not giving any 'real information.'”

He answered: “We'll have to disagree about the content, but one thing I should have done was thank you for the free information. I apologize for that. It's not like you have to do it, after all.”

Then I said, “You need to explain what you mean by 'disagreeing about the content.' I try to get a wide variety of perspectives and, overall, that should show in the archives. I do get a preponderance of PUA / seduction type material submitted to me, so that's why it leans that way more than any other, but there are a huge variety of perspectives expressed in the archives.”

And then he took the time to really explain his thoughts, and provided me with some outstanding criticism that I greatly appreciated:

“I don't disagree that there are different perspectives, and to an extent, that's well and good. However, there are so many different schools of thought regarding pick-up and seduction that this can be a problem, in my opinion. You have Speed Seduction, the Mystery Method, natural game, cocky and funny, the Gunwitch method, Badboy, Juggler, etc. It can be quite confusing, especially for someone who's new to this.

“I realize that the response to what I'm citing would be to find a method that suits your own style and put most of your focus on learning that one, or else to adapt one to your style. That advice has a certain amount of validity, but when you have someone like Gunwitch, who basically says forget about using game and gimmicks, and someone like Mark B. (I'm sure you remember him), who believes that if you get yourself in shape and look good a lot of your difficulties attracting women will diminish, that indicates, to me at least, that perhaps some methods are actually better than others (although not necessarily.)

“I'd like to see more of what I call 'real world' debate about this. I'd like to hear more from regular guys, not guys who are part of the pick-up community. For example, getting back to Mark B, most of the debate consisted of pick-up gurus telling him he was wrong, and that's fine and to be expected. But I would have liked to have heard from more 'regular,' non-pick-up community guys who did as Mark B advocates, and who can say whether that helped or not, and to what extent. This could have really been an enlightening, interesting debate, but it didn't get explored nearly as deeply as it could have been.

“I don't blame you for that, however. I think it's simply the nature of the forum. Only men who are really into seduction will be likely to voice an opinion.

“Many of the posts are more like a story being told and not a lesson being given. Example: a poster will recount an experience of approaching a woman and using a particular opener, and then telling how it went from there. What's wrong with that ? Nothing, but I believe more needs to be added to this picture. I want a more scientific evaluation given. How often has that poster used this approach ? How often does it work ? How often does it fail ? I'd like to see others comment on the post, any why they felt it worked or failed. I know this does happen, but I'd like to see more of it.

“Again, many of the posters are telling a story, and it can be interesting, but after all is said and done, I'm not sure I learned anything I can use. The story may be a unique one, as is the result. Perhaps I need my hand held too much. Of course, all human interaction is somewhat unique, but I believe it can be scientifically broken down.

“With all the advice out there, there still seems to be a lot of confusion and varying schools of thought. I'm not saying one size fits all, but it seems not a week goes by without some new 'guru' emerging with their own unique method. Let's really put them to the test. Perhaps we'll discover that all you really need to do is approach a lot more and you'll achieve success, or at least a certain amount of success. That 'game' helps you out, but it's not the Holy Grail ... more like the icing on the cake. On the other hand, maybe we'll discover that tight game is absolutely essential.

“Also, when someone reviews a boot camp or seminar, they usually do so shortly after the boot camp. This is understandable, but they are posting when they're still, in my opinion, feeling the emotional high from the boot camp. What do they have to say 3 months or 6 months later ? In these sorts of things, we only tend to hear from the men who are happy. The ones who don't have much lasting success, I suspect, just fade away, never to be heard from again. And of those who were successful, was their success because of something Mystery or Ross told them to say or do ? Or was it more due to the fact that they just needed a jump start to approach more ?

“I don't know, but I think things have gotten a little too complicated. I certainly don't advocate 'just be yourself,' although I do now believe, from my own experiences, that the proponents of natural game are more on the right track than anyone else.

“I don't expect you to take sides. I do feel this is a very important question facing the pick-up community, and could determine its evolution. I think there's too much theory (guessing, really) about women and the nature of male-female relationships. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but too many gurus and others are stating certain things as absolute facts when they can't know whether that's actually the case or not. Example: the assertion that women are genetically programmed to be attracted to the alpha male or a dominant man. This may be true, but you can never totally separate genetics from the environment, so I think we should be more cautious in this type of thinking. I don't deny that women do definitely seem to want men who are alphas (bad boy thugs in some cases.) But that may be more due to social conditioning than genetics, or a combination of the two. Who really knows ?

“I feel we should restrict ourselves to what girls respond to, and leave the theories to the Psychologists, Social Scientists and Anthropologists. There's a little too much of this for my tastes. Let's just focus on whether or not something works, and how often. I'm not against theorizing, but we need to realize when we are engaging in theory and not fact.

“One final thought on content. You once had stories about David (not David DeAngelo) and Dimitri the Lover, and you revealed some examples of things they said and did, but it didn't really reveal why this worked for them. Would it only work for their personality types ? When David saw a HB and said 'Wow,' and she smiled, why did it work for him ? Was it him ? Was it the environment ?

“That kind of approach hasn't worked for me, but perhaps it needs a certain mindset for it to work. If so, how does one get that mind set ? This wasn't explored.

“By the way, I live in the Los Angeles area, and there are many Latina girls and a fair number of Asian girls, also. I think some of the approaches and methods are more suited to native born American and Canadian women, particularly white girls. Latina women, in my experience, will tend to totally ignore you if you approach them in a grocery store or mall, let alone on the street ... Mystery Method or not. But perhaps that's just me.

“Sorry for rambling, but you asked, and I wanted to be fairly complete in my response. You obviously care about making your newsletter better, so I feel you deserve more than a short response that tells you nothing. You've earned that courtesy, and it's not like I never got any good advice from your free (note I mentioned free) newsletter. I do think it could be a little better, but perhaps I've just absorbed most of the knowledge I can on this, and it's time for me to move on.”

I replied to him:

“You have in many ways hit the nail on the head. Part of what Cliff's List is all about is helping guys to find the advice that is right for them, and we will be unveiling some interesting twists on that in the future.

“As for most of the rest of what you commented on, these are some of the directions I want the discussions to go towards. We want the conversations and debates that will take place on the site to delve in depth into this kind of solid content, particularly avoiding getting into personal, news or gossip-type threads that you really don't learn anything from. We don't want to be a National Enquirer or People Magazine for the community ... there are already too many of these out there.

“We are working to make the kind of changes that will have a genuine and valuable impact on the material that appears on the site such that we intend to be the primary website on the net dealing with helping men to have more success with women. We have some pretty ambitious goals and plans, so keep your eyes on us, as you will be seeing some very interesting things shortly.

“Right now, we want to stimulate some active discussions on relevant topics.

“I would also mention that I always have hunted out regular guys who are not in the PUA business for their ideas. Unfortunately, in recent years I haven't had the time to chase them down the way I used to, and you can probably see more of that type of posting the further back you go in the archives. But I really encourage those who are not in the business to post, because I would like them to share their knowledge with us.”

“We have a lot of exciting things coming for the readers of Cliff's List, and we do appreciate getting your views to help make it better.”

By the way, Mark resubscribed.

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